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January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponeck
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
January
6, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Students
Put the Heat on Foreign Sweatshops
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
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
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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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Reviews of Gore:
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January
13, 2002
Why We Kill People
By C.G. Estabrook
Television news programs are suddenly a-flutter
over accounts of the Bush administration's negotiations with
(and threats to) the Taliban about oil, long before September
11. It's an indication of how insular the US media are that
these reports were discussed two months ago in the European press.
But the US attack on Afghanistan wasn't exclusively -- or even
primarily -- about oil. Of course oil is always in the background
in US foreign policy, the control of world energy resources being
a major instrument in US control of its principal economic rivals,
the EU and East Asia. But the war in Afghanistan, like all of
America's wars for generations, is not in the first place about
acquiring territory or resources: it's about demonstrating to
the world at large that -- as the elder Bush said in his school-boy
argot at the time of the Gulf War -- "What we say goes!"
Since the Second World War, the US has
launched a series of "demonstration wars," insisting
with murder and torture that no country in what used to be called
the Third World was to be allowed to employ its resources independently,
and not incorporate them into the world-wide American economic
empire. That was the primary motive behind even the Vietnam
War, which was only incidentally about southeast Asian resources.
So long as the Soviet Union existed, this policy could be presented
as "fighting communism," but that increasingly transparent
excuse disappeared entirely with the fall of the Soviet Union
a decade ago -- and, remarkably enough, the disappearance of
the Evil Empire affected US "defense" spending not
a whit -- because of course it was never the real issue. The
USSR was a bete noir, useful to cover US hegemony.
And America's demonstration wars didn't
cease with the Soviet Union. In fact, it can be argued that
without the partially restraining influence of the other "superpower"
(whose economy barely approached half the size of that of the
US), they increased. First to feel America's post-Soviet wrath
was Panama, where Bush I sent bombers to kill perhaps thousands
of people in what could no longer be called an anti-communist
crusade -- so it was called "Operation Just Cause."
(Some at the time suggested that meant, "Just 'Cause We
Want To.") The ostensible reason was the apprehension of
a former CIA operative, now Panama's military ruler. Like a
Mafia godfather, the US finds itself often attempting to whack
former clients -- Noriega, Saddam Hussein, indeed the entire
Al-Qaeda network. All of these and others had been beneficiaries
of the largesse of a remarkably inept CIA, and then had chosen
to stop obeying orders. It was therefore necessary to make an
example of them, so that other clients wouldn't get the wrong
idea, the idea that they can act independently. Hence another
demonstration war is required.
In the 1990s the Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations
went to war with Iraq, rejecting that country's offer to negotiate;
with Somalia (where the US military may have killed 7-10,000
Somalis, but commanding Gen. Anthony Zinni -- now negotiating
"peace" in Palestine -- said, "I'm not counting
bodies ... I'm not interested"); and with Serbia, again
rejecting negotiations, so that US might could be demonstrated.
In the wake of the vicious Reagan wars in Latin America in the
1980s, the US has sponsored a major and on-going demonstration
war in Colombia. It has supplied weapons and materiel for genocidal
ethnic cleansing by its allies in Turkey and East Timor. And
it has supported most of all its regional enforcer, Israel, in
its brutal occupation and attacks on its neighbors. Even a largely
incidental US bombing of Sudan accounted for more deaths that
the attacks of September 11.
The serious flaw in the American government's
presentation of its "War On Terrorism" -- popular as
that phrase is with governments that want an excuse to attack
their own dissidents -- is that it is impossible to craft a definition
of terrorism -- generally, killing civilians in furtherance of
a political goal -- that doesn't include these demonstration
wars. But British writer Tariq Ali explains how the problem
is overcome. "If you see what passes as the news on the
networks in the United States, there's virtually no coverage
of the rest of the world, not even of neighboring countries like
Mexico or neighboring continents like Latin America. It's essentially
a very provincial culture, and that breeds ignorance. This ignorance
is very useful in times of war because you can whip up a rapid
rage in ill-informed populations and go to war against almost
any country. That is a very frightening process."
Paying some attention to recent history
-- accurate history, not propaganda -- may counter the rage that
leads us to acquiesce in the plans that the killers who run our
government propose.
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