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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 21, 2001
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Kalpana
Sharma
Flower
Power:
A Blow for Peace
Tony Mauro
The Quirin
Ruling:
FDR's Horrible Precedent for Bush's Terror Courts
C.G. Estabrook
American
Crusades
November 17, 2001
Zoltan Grossman
It Ain't
Over Til It's Over
November 16, 2001
Rick Giombetti
Rep.
McDermott and
the Decay of Liberalism
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
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 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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November
22, 2001
Homeland Thanksgiving Blessings
by Oscar Gonzalez
People are more conflicted than ever this Thanksgiving.
The deaths of 4,000 people in New York make many of us wonder
whether God is sleeping on the job.
It is said there are no atheists in foxholes,
but, on the flipside, I wonder what happens to the faithful when
they are targeted for random acts of violence. "In God
in We Trust, United in Stand" signs have popped up everywhere.
But can we really trust a deity who couldn't even make a dozen
religious fanatics trip and impale themselves on their box cutters
as they passed through airport metal detectors?
Then again, maybe God is giving us some
good news. The Taliban is retreating faster than a Democrat
before a war resolution. Better still, we have Bin Laden on
the run. If we're lucky, by Thanksgiving morning we'll all get
a nice holiday treat and he'll be dead. If God wants to top
this serving of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, He'll also help
us take out Saddam. Then we'll really have some blessings to
count.
It may seem crude, but thanking God for
your enemy's demise is very much in keeping with the Thanksgiving
tradition. In 1637, John Winthrop, first Governor of Massachusetts,
gave solemn thanks for the safe return of his troops from the
messy, but necessary, job of massacring over 700 Pequot women,
children, and men. The governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts,
issued our country's first official Thanksgiving Proclamation
on June 20, 1676. The proclamation thanked our Creator for making
sure that heathen natives were "in any measure disappointed
or destroyed." Leave it to the Puritans to find the rosy
side to colonial domination.
Thanking God for the death of your enemies
is just one way of finding the silver lining in the dark clouds
of doom that envelope us. Even war has a bright side. Take
Abraham Lincoln's 1896 Thanksgiving Proclamation, for example.
Right smack in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed,
"peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been
maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony
has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict."
There you have it. The nation was at peace if you just ignored
"the theatre of military conflict" that cost the lives
of several million people. Obviously, the Great Emancipator
has an unearned reputation for being gloomy.
Indigenous people, on the other hand,
tend to dwell on unpleasant things. They can be genuine sticks
in the mud, if you ask me. They're likely to remind us, as they
typically do, that September 11 was not the first major act of
terrorism on American soil. The hackneyed line is that native
people have been the targets of over 500 years of uninterrupted
terrorism. They might point out that tens of millions of their
people lost their lives to European expansion, a colonialism
with precursors to today's bioterrorism (millions died from smallpox,
measles, etc.). They may even have the audacity to offer examples,
all of them historically marginal by any sensible measure, of
how Manhattan has seen its fair share of terrorist attacks pre-September
11. They may mention that in the 1640s the Dutch acquired the
island by exterminating the Weckquaesgeeks, the island inhabitants.
The way I look it at, examples of Indian
suffering can't be taken too seriously given the complete lack
of live video footage.
Thanksgiving is supposedly a secular
celebration, but the religious overtones, always within earshot,
this year are overwhelming.
People keep saying "God Bless America."
This doesn't sound much like a prayer of thanks. It's not a
humble entreaty or the embodiment of some vague hope -- not "May
God Bless America". No, it sounds menacing. We're not
asking for God's blessing. Instead it seems that we're placing
an order. Dictating, in fact. "Hey God, bless America
. . . Or Else." Most folks on this good green planet would
probably shy away from giving even a hint of such impertinence
before the All Mighty. God, while His mercy knows no bounds,
does not look kindly upon anyone who questions His authority.
God's memory is long (stretching all the way to infinity and
back, in fact) and He keeps pretty good records on all transgressors
and malcontents. Very Santa-like. If you act up, God is apt
to force you to attend a Britney Spears concert. The punishment
could be even harsher. God could banish you to the Green Party,
a political purgatory if there ever was one.
But even God should be wary about taking
on the USA. After all, how many times has He faced a superpower
with a trillion dollar a year defense budget? Sure, God seems
omnipotent when contrasted with, say, Pharaoh's army. But just
let Him try to take on the USA. Make our day. We have the firepower
to make Sodom and Gomorrah look like an Aggie bonfire. Listen
up God. Don't think there's anywhere you can hide from us.
We'd like to see what your golden throne and "heavenly paradise"
would look like after a couple months of carpet bombing.
Don't bomb Afghanistan during Ramadan? Ha! Not only will we
bomb, we'll light up the whole country like a Christmas tree
and decorate it with soldiers from our broad international coalition
of troops from Britain and the USA.
Speaking of Christmas, assuming this
war is still on, I hope we call a ceasefire during Christmas
Eve and Christmas Day. Our piety requires that we reflect upon
the birth of the Prince of Peace. We must pray that people everywhere
will some day open their hearts and realize that universal love
and fraternal harmony are possible, if only we can muster sufficient
faith to make Heaven on Earth a reality. But come December 26,
let's get back to some serious ass kicking.
Finally, as you cut into the old butterball
and try to ingest your third serving of grandma's special walnut
and date cornbread stuffing, please turn down the volume of whatever
NFL rout you're watching on tv (it's only for a minute!). Take
a second to remember the millions of war refugees who are starving
in Afghanistan. Join me in petitioning Our Heavenly Father to
go easy on any suffering He might inflict on these misguided
people. If He wants us to stop the bombing, let Him show us
a sign. We are, after all, His instruments in this war and we
will do His bidding (within reason and as long as it doesn't
compromise national security, of course). What kind of sign
would make us stop? Something like cutting the defense budget
in half or resuming the Florida recount would do nicely.
But in the absence of a heavenly sign
or of some unfathomable switch by God from our side to the enemy's,
let's stuff ourselves with grub and gear up for Friday, the biggest
shopping day of the year. This year, we are under a patriotic
duty to spend our way out of our communal funk. Under the Gospel
according to Bush and Greenspan, God will surely lavish upon
us blessings piled high (to be stashed in our car trunks), but
if only we can make it to the malls. CP
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