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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Welcome to the Capitalist System! Love It or Change It: Cooking the Balance Sheets? We're So-o Shocked; Martha Stewart's Tips for Prison Décor? Don't Bet on It; Fiddling While Rome Burns: Liberals Pledge Allegiance to Ethic of Greed and Exploitation; Ridge Suggests Big Labor is Tool of Terrorism; Drink Water in Vegas and Glow in the Dark: Senate Okays Mad Yucca Mountain Plan; When Giants Walked: Jim Abourezk Recalls His Senate Years; Vanessa's Postcard from Down Under. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683

July 16, 2002

Salam al-Marayati
When is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?

Kathleen Christison
The Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush

July 15, 2002

Gavin Keeney
In One of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other

CounterPunch Wire
Nader in Cuba

Ralph Nader
The Secret World of Banking

Dave Marsh
Vincible: Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel

Rahul Mahajan
Justice for Bhopal

Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson

July 14, 2002

Bill Christison
The DOA (Poem)

David Vest
I'll Never Get Out of This Band Alive

July 13, 2002

M. Junaid Alam
A Process of Dehumanization

Gavin Keeney
Go Tell Karl Rove!

Matt Vidal
Corporate "Ethics" Red Herrings

Ed Whitfield
Lessons from Independence Day

July 12, 2002

Sean Donahue
The Other Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia

Walt Brasch
Sin Tax Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."

Steve Perry
A Tale of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?

July 11, 2002

Lloyd Marbet
Arrested by the Chamber
of Commerce

David Krieger
Law vs. Force

David Vest
Fountain of Foo:
Strike Three Called

Irit Katriel
A Deep Ideological Crisis

Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing

July 10, 2002

CounterPunch Wire
Third Party Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status

Nassar Ibriham & Majed Nassar
Bush's Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing

Robert Fisk
Ain't That America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom

Dave Marsh
The Return of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting

Bernard Weiner
Hope and Despair in
the Body Politic

Gary Leupp
European Worries and
Bush's Terror War

July 9, 2002

St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.

Jack McCarthy
Florida: a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?

Robert Fisk
How a Saudi Billionaire
Does Beirut

Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated

Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging with Tanks

Bill Christison
Disastrous Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?

July 8, 2002

Rick Mercier
Yucca Mountain Bound

Lev Grinberg
The BUSHARON Global War

Tariq Ali
How Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World

Lori Allen
The Tugs of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew

July 7, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
White House Crooks

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
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published March 15, 2002

  • Facing Down Rehnquist and Scalia:
  • Jennifer Harbury at the Supreme Court;
  • ADL Throws in Towel, Pays Up:
  • How They Worked for Apartheid Regime and Spied on NAACP:
  • Cockburn on America the Bully:
  • From Teddy Roosevelt to George W.
  • St. Clair on Musicians Against the Death Penalty & The Legacy of the Mekons.


    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

Buy This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
 

Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

July 16, 2002

The "Distraction" that Takes
the Heat off al-Qa'ida

by Robert Fisk
The Independent

How better to distract Pakistan's army from supporting America's "war on terror" than by promoting, yet again, a war in Kashmir?

Whether or not the mysterious "Hindu" holy men who turned into mass murderers in the slums of Jammu on Saturday night were Islamist gunmen, a suspicion is growing in Pakistan that supporters of Osama bin Laden would be happy to provoke another crisis with India if it relieved the pressure on al-Qa'ida along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier.

In the past two weeks, two major gun battles have been fought in the tribal territories along the Afghan border between Pakistani troops and al-Qa'ida men, in the last of which four Islamists, all apparently from Chechnya, were shot dead near the Jarma Bridge in Kohat.

A Pakistani policeman and a soldier were also killed. The authorities in Islamabad have been boasting that their para-military forces have penetrated some areas of the semi-autonomous tribal territories along the frontier for the first time in 100 years--a claim which probably says as much about the last days of the British Empire as it does about modern Pakistan.

But al-Qa'ida knows that these battles are being encouraged by the FBI, whose officers are urging the Pakistanis to move ever deeper into the hitherto untouchable Pashtun tribal zones whose rule has always been entrusted to local village chieftains.

In recent days, credible reports have described how some local Pakistani tribal elements have been seized by US special forces inside Pakistan, in effect, kidnapping them then taking them for interrogation in Kandahar.

Little wonder, therefore, that al-Qa'ida might want to hit back. By indulging in a new round of guerrilla warfare and killing along the old Line of Control in Kashmir, Islamists can achieve several objectives. They can force President Pervez Musharraf to withdraw his troops from the Afghan border to reinforce the Pakistan army opposite the Indian front line. They can once more force the world's eyes away from the guerrilla battles in Afghanistan.

Most of all, they can force Washington to pay more attention to the dangers of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan than to its continuing and still far-from-successful campaign in Afghanistan.

At the same time, a resurgence of violence in Kashmir reminds 150 million Pakistanis that it is the nation's most serious wound and the source of constant humiliation. General Musharraf's latest tinkering with the constitution-- along with his continued support for the US--is creating renewed anger in the country's cities.

The massacre of 24 civilians by attackers dressed as holy men can only concentrate the minds of those who are losing faith in General Musharraf, not to mention those Muslim religious extremists who always opposed him.

It was surely not by coincidence that the attack came at the moment when US and Indian intelligence officers were concluding two days of talks on "counter-terrorism" in Washington, a conference--the fifth of its kind--which ended with a joint statement that "the two sides agreed to further intensify intelligence sharing and co-ordinate action in pursuit of the remains [sic] of al-Qa'ida members and associated terrorist groups".

In reality, any militant Islamic group can regard itself as part of al-Qa'ida if it wishes--bin Laden's "foundation" is not a formal institution with card-carrying members-- although this is still not apparent to the US.

Saturday's killings will therefore serve to recreate all the old ambiguities.

India and Pakistan will have to pretend to be more interested in crushing "terrorism" far from Afghanistan than ending the Kashmir dispute, while the Americans--anxious to encourage the continued assistance of both sides against al-Qa'ida--will have to pretend to be more interested in Kashmir than in their "war on terror". All of which will be good news for Osama bin Laden.

Today's Features

Salam al-Marayati
When is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?

Kathleen Christison
The Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush

Gavin Keeney
In One of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other

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