by Robert Kuttner

THE ADMINISTRATION is trying to move a global trade agenda that was blocked two years ago in Seattle by protesters in the streets and skepticism in the Third World. This time, the World Trade Organization talks have been moved to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a despotic oil emirate where protesters, foreign and domestic, are simply not permitted.

But it remains to be seen whether the current talks will produce what the US government considers progress and whether such progress is really in the national or the global interest.

At the Qatar meetings, one big issue dividing the Americans from developing countries is access to cheap drugs. Poor countries cannot afford the huge markups pharmaceutical companies charge for a few cents worth of chemicals. If they pay the price, their people do without.

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by Salim Muwakkil

Our national leadership has been mouthing pieties about all-for-one patriotism but practicing spare-the-rich favoritism, in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Under the guise of an "economic stimulus," the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has been busy allocating long-sought benefits for powerful interest groups, while urging a spirit of sacrifice for the rest of America. Reports about skyrocketing unemployment rates have darkened the economic outlook for many low-to-moderate-wage workers. But the national stewards of the federal budget seem determined to make sure the rich don't starve.

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by William Pfaff

PARIS -- Britain's prime minister and France's president both visited Washington last week, after a rather bad-tempered Downing Street dinner where nine European leaders tried to find a common European stand on the war in Afghanistan.

They came up with three priorities: emphasis on the political over the military in the war; action on the humanitarian consequences of the bombing; and new negotiations on Israeli-Palestinian settlement. These do not seem high priorities in Washington.

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by Robert Jensen
A talk delivered to the Peace Action National Congress, November 10, 2001

This summer I wrote a book review for an academic journal -- one of those terribly important pieces of writing that will be read by tens and tens of people, some of them actually people outside my own family. The book is about the history of governmental restrictions on U.S. news media during war, and it's a good book in many ways. But I faulted the author for accepting the American mythology about the nobility of our wars and their motivations. I challenged his uncritical use of the term patriotism, which I called "perhaps the single most morally and intellectually bankrupt concept in human history."

By coincidence, the galley proofs for the piece came back to me for review a few days after September 11. I paused as I re-read my words, and I thought about the reaction those words might spark, given the reflexive outpouring of patriotism in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I thought about the controversy that some of my writing had already sparked on campus and, it turned out, beyond the campus. I thought about how easy it would be to take out that sentence.

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by Todd Gitlin

NEW YORK --Years ago, a student of mine at UC Santa Cruz drove a Volkswagen van with a QUESTION AUTHORITY bumper sticker. One day, somebody scratched out the message. Lately, at a time when some people think loyalty must be demonstrated with a shut mouth, I've been thinking of my former student and her anonymous vandal.

Whoever felt the need to crush that young woman's audacity was stomping on democratic ideals, failing to understand that questioning is precisely what authority needs. In a democracy, authority needs to convince those it governs. To be convincing, it must be willing and able to defend itself, even--especially--when pointed questions are asked. In his essay "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill wrote that even if one and only one person dissented, the dissent should be heard. First, because the dissenter might just be right. Second, because the authority of the majority opinion--even if close to unanimous--can only be bolstered by having to confront its adversaries. Amid free discussion, arguments only improve. So the expression of rival views is necessary for practical as well as principled reasons. But during the current emergency, a stampede of unthinking censure is muffling the debate we need to have in order to fight the smartest possible campaign against our enemies. Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, scolded that Americans should "watch what they say." He was not referring to advance notice of troop movements, which of course no one ought to blurt out. He was referring to a tossed-off remark by talk show host Bill Maher. And Fleischer is not alone in blindly discarding the democratic faith in free discussion. In the Wall Street Journal last week, Gregg Easterbrook wrote that, since novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Arundhati Roy have written harshly about the American flag and America's approach to the world, "bookstores may fairly respond by declining to stock their books." Stocking their books, he suggests, amounts to "promoting" their views.

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by Bill Kauffman

The Office of Homeland Security. Has a nice retro-Soviet ring to it, eh? Or how about Operation Infinite Justice, the Orwell-by-way-of-Madison-Avenue moniker that Pentagon image-makers first hung on our nascent World War Three? When the propagandists adopt phrases plucked from dystopian novels, we're in trouble.

We are not yet living in a police state; not even close. But neither are we quite living in America any more. Erstwhile civil libertarians endorse national ID cards. The ominous whisper of a military draft is in the air. When in the privacy of the family homestead I ventured the opinion that the 11 September attacks were a wicked response to wrong-headed US intervention in the Middle East, a dear family member counseled, "Don't say that too loud, Bill. Someone will report you to the police." She was serious.

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