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November 8, 2001
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
Resources:
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About 9/11
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8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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November
7, 2001
School Girl Gets the Boot
for Anti-War Opinions
By Michael Colby
Civil liberties are often the first casualties
of war, just ask the 15-year old sophomore from Charleston, West
Virginia who wanted to start a high school club that opposed
the U.S. war on Afghanistan. Katie Sierra, a self-described anarchist,
not only wanted to start a club to spread her views against the
bombing but she also went to school wearing this message on her
t-shirt: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children
on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God
Bless America."
But the school officials at her Sissonville
High School ruled that neither the club nor the t-shirt would
be allowed on school premises. And when Sierra insisted on wearing
her t-shirt she was suspended by the school's principal. Worse,
when Sierra appealed the principle's decision to the county board
of education, the board upheld the decision.
"We want students to be able to
express themselves, but in a way that does not disrupt the educational
process," explained board member Cheryle Hall. "We
will back [the principal] to make sure the environment at the
school is protected and harmonious."
Sierra responded by filing a lawsuit,
arguing that her free speech rights were being violated. And,
to add insult to First Amendment injury, the West Virginia judge
who received the case ruled almost immediately in favor of the
school.
"The Constitution is at stake,"
declared Roger Forman, Sierra's attorney. "Every day her
free speech is inhibited, the Constitution is harmed."
On Monday Forman filed an appeal with
the West Virginia Supreme Court. There's no timetable on when
(or if) the court will hear the case.
In an interview with the Daily Curio,
Forman also reported that he was considering libelous suits against
at least one member of the Board of Education for comments made
during the public hearing they held on the matter. According
to Forman, board member John Luoni accused Sierra of "committing
treason" by espousing her anti-war views.
"Accusing someone of committing
a crime when there was no crime committed is libelous,"
Forman told the Curio. "And we intend to follow up on it."
The local media in the Charlestown area
has been pummeling Sierra in the court of public opinion in recent
days. On November 5, Sierra's hometown newspaper, the Charleston
Daily Mail, ran a stinging editorial with this headline: "The
School Day is for Education, Not Disruptive Political Expression."
The Daily Mail's editorial began with
this head-scratching gem: "Americans cherish the freedoms
guaranteed them under the Constitution, but the thoroughly egocentric
exercise of those rights becomes tiresome." And it ended
with this similarly frightening bit of reasoning: "Americans
have the right to express themselves, and that is sacred. But
there is not, and never has been, a constitutional right to force
everybody else in society to listen during school hours."
Forman reported that Sierra is following
the rules set forth by the school until the matter is ultimately
resolved in the courts. But she's not giving up all her rights
to protest against both the killing by Osama bin Laden and the
killing being done in the name of her country. Forman said that
while Sierra is not wearing her slogan-bearing t-shirt, she is
wearing black armbands as a symbol of her opposition to the U.S.
militaristic response to the September 11th attacks.
"She's a bright kid," Forman
said. "She's a politically astute kid. And she doesn't believe
that war - and more killing - is the answer to our problems."
Michael Colby
is the editor of the Food
& Water Journal. His last story for CounterPunch, Nuked Mail,
dissected the feds' plan to irradiate the US mail as a way to
calm fears about anthrax and help bail out the nuclear waste
industry.
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