For those eagerly awaiting the uproar from this writer on the
unspeakable assaults on Palestinians on the West Bank, the carnage in the
camps and the siege of the Holy Church of the Nativity by Sharon's troops, a
word of warning: This column contains reflections on barbecue, a subject
that arouses even more passion than matters affecting the peoples of what
used to be termed The Holy Land, so parental discretion is advised. Onward.
Greer, S.C.: On the road again. This time the vehicle of choice
is a 1985 Ford Escort station wagon. Nothing much to look at, but in the
mid-1980s, Ford put 4-cylinder Japanese diesel engines into a few of those
Escorts, and this is one of them: 50 or 60 miles to the gallon, tight gears
and the feel of a sports car. I head off down the road from Greenville S.C.,
towards Birmingham, Ala., and my cell phone rings. It's a fellow from the
New Republic who is eager to quiz me about some recent remarks of mine about
the Internet being awash with anti-Israeli material.
Amid the crackle and hiss of the ether and the roar of the
interstate, it's hard to hear Frank through the no-hands speaker on my
dashboard, but eventually, I catch his purpose and ask him flatly, in
more-or-less these words, "Frank, is your purpose to accuse me of
disseminating anti-Semitic libels, under the guise of relaying rumors on the
Internet?" Frank allows as how this is indeed his intent. I tell him that in
my opinion, the stories about Israeli spies, as categorized in a DEA report
discussed by John Sugg of the Daily Planet
(
http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-03-27/fishwrapper.html), by
Justin Raimondo on antiwar.com, on Fox News, by the French newsletter
Intelligence Online and various other news sources, including the British
Jane's, are legitimate topics of comment, as are the stories about anthrax
dissemination involving an anti-Arab researcher.
We go back and forth on such issues until the static gets too
bad. Later, I retrieve a magnanimous message from Frank saying that he is
conferring with associates whether to deal with me in the New Republic. So I
assume that at some point, Cockburn will be stigmatized yet again as the
purveyor of anti-Semitic filth. It's all pretty predictable. The viler the
actions of Israel and the more rabid and undiscriminating the assaults of
their troops on Palestinians in the camps, the shriller become charges here
that almost any discussion of Israel or of the Israel lobby here is by its
very nature anti-Semitic. The day there's a photo of an Israeli soldier
shooting a child next to the font in that Bethlehem church you'll find a big
story in the New York Times about the troubling resurgence of anti-Semites,
with plenty of quotes from Abe Foxman of the ADL.
And on the topic of the NYT, have you noticed how that great
paper has had a front-page piece rubbishing the Catholic Church as a nest of
molesters every day for some time, especially since Sharon invaded Ramallah?
The uncharitable could see this as a pre-emptive strike against Papal
criticism of Israel's actions, and also to shift attention away from the
blood-stained molestations of the adherents of one or the other monotheistic
religions.
I'm now in Birmingham, Ala. Kathy Johnson and Dave Gesspass,
stalwart outposts of the National Lawyers' Guild, take me to Dreamland,
promoting it as homeport for some of Alabama's best barbecue. The pork ribs
are succulent, the sauce not excessively piquant, nor too tomato-laden in
flavor. I report as much to friends in the Pacific northwest and receive an
e-mailed warning from Dave Vest, member of the region's hottest blues band,
the Cannonballs. In earlier decades, Dave lived in the South, and as readers
of my column know, he toured with Tammy Wynette in the early years. Dave
warns that Cockburn "will observe a steady decline in the quality of the
barbecue as he travels west. In Texas they will feed him saddle leather with
ketchup on it. The Amoco station in Hattiesburg, Miss., will probably be his
last chance for a decent bag of boiled peanuts."
I return from Dreamland to my motel and watch CNN reports of
preliminary plans for Secretary of State Colin Powell's urgent trip to bring
peace to the Middle East. His itinerary makes Odysseus' journey home from
Troy to Ithaca look like a model of decisive brevity. From Morocco to Egypt
to Spain, and maybe a chat with Arafat by the following weekend. It all
looks like a conflict of interest to me. Is Powell a senior official of the
U.S. government or under contract to Travel and Leisure? I suppose the plan
is to give Israeli troops plenty of time to shoot more women and children,
plus a few journalists, and push ahead with the project of rooting out
"terrorism."
I check into a motel outside Meridian, Miss., hometown of Jimmy
Rodgers, and take a look at e-traffic. The Trilateral Commission is in
executive session. The Washington Times runs a silly piece where the
reporter pours scorn on those mostly right-wing populists, who denounce the
Commission as a "Secret World Government." Without irony, the reporter notes
that among those attending are 250 political and business "leaders" from
around the world, with the United States fielding a strong team, including
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Greenspan and Paul Volcker. Absent a few Chinese
trillionaires too busy consulting their astrologers to attend, this sounds
like World Government to me.
The thing the conspiratorialists miss is the disposability
problem. In the old days, world leaders, captains of industry, bankers and
politicians died of heart attacks or lung cancer not long after getting the
gold watch for meritorious service. Or they went to the penitentiary. In
less decorous parts of the world, the hangman or the firing squad performed
the same purgative function as the First World's ribeye, gin martini or the
Marlboro packet.
The elites are living longer, and so the executive sessions of
World Government -- the Trilateral, Bilderberg, Davos, Sun Valley, Aspen,
Dubai, the Bohemian Grove -- proliferate. Henry Kissinger pockets his
speaker's fee and expenses, and anyone challenging the consensus of these
peripatetic world governors gets cut off by the IMF. The Palestinians don't
count, and neither does barbecue.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
