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February
25, 2002
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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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
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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 New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
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:
a User's Manual
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February 25,
2002
A Prayer for America
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich
I offer these brief remarks today as a prayer
for our country, with love of democracy, as a celebration of
our country. With love for our country. With hope for our country.
With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished
as long as it is inside of us. With a belief that freedom rings
resoundingly in a democracy each time we speak
freely. With the understanding that freedom
stirs the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that
a free people cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time.
With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed
in the unity of the United States. That implicate in the union
of our country is the union of all people. That all people are
essentially one. That the world is interconnected not only
on the material level of economics, trade, communication, and
transportation, but interconnected through human consciousness,
through the human heart, through the heart of the world, through
the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe
free. I offer this prayer for America.
Let us pray that our nation will remember
that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation
paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must
challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act.
We must ask why should America put aside
guarantees of constitutional justice?
How can we justify in effect canceling
the First Amendment and the right
of free speech, the right to peaceably
assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling
the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against
unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling
the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for
indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling
the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling
the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual
punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps
and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let
alone with it. We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to
designate domestic terror groups. We cannot justify giving
the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in
any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the
ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our
right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a
right to total secrecy. The Attorney General recently covered
up a statue of Lady Justice showing her bosom as if to underscore
there is no danger of justice exposing herself at this time,
before this administration.
Let us pray that our nation's leaders
will not be overcome with fear. Because today there is great
fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood before
we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current
environment. The great fear began when we had to evacuate the
Capitol on September 11. It continued when we had to leave the
Capitol again when a bomb scare occurred as members were pressing
the CIA during a secret briefing. It continued when we abandoned
Washington when anthrax, possibly from a government lab, arrived
in the mail. It continued when the Attorney General declared
a nationwide terror alert and then the Administration brought
the destructive Patriot Bill to the floor of the House. It
continued in the release of the Bin Laden tapes at the same
time the President was announcing the withdrawal from the ABM
treaty. It remains present in the cordoning off of the Capitol.
It is present in the camouflaged armed national guardsmen who
greet members of Congress each day we enter the Capitol campus.
It is present in the labyrinth of concrete barriers through
which we must pass each time we go to vote. The trappings of
a state of siege trap us in a state of fear, ill equipped to
deal with the Patriot Games, the Mind Games, the War Games
of an unelected President and his unelected Vice President.
Let us pray that our country will stop
this war. "To promote the common defense" is one of
the formational principles of America. Our Congress gave the
President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September
the Eleventh. We licensed a response to those who helped bring
the terror of September the Eleventh. But we the people and
our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure
the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the
response, and to correct the response.
Because we did not authorize the invasion
of Iraq. We did not authorize the invasion of Iran. We did
not authorize the invasion of North Korea. We did not authorize
the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan. We did not authorize
permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
We did not authorize the withdrawal from
the Geneva Convention. We did not authorize military tribunals
suspending due process and habeas corpus.
We did not authorize assassination squads.
We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO. We did
not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights. We did not authorize
the revocation of the Constitution. We did not authorize national
identity cards. We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother
to peer from cameras throughout our cities.
We did not authorize an eye for an eye.
Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished
on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers
in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize the administration
to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not
authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent
war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war
economy. The President has requested a $45.6 billion increase
in military spending. All defense-related programs will cost
close to $400 billion. Consider that the Department of Defense
has never passed an independent audit. Consider that the Inspector
General has notified Congress that the Pentagon cannot properly
account for $1.2 trillion in transactions.
Consider that in recent years the Dept.
of Defense could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures
to the items it purchased, wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars
worth of in-transit inventory and stored nearly $30 billion
worth of spare parts it did not need. Yet the defense budget
grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war
which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create
new wars. This has nothing to do with fighting terror. This
has everything to do with fueling a military industrial machine
with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our nation,
risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought
which follows the militarization of the budget.
Let us pray for our children. Our children
deserve a world without end. Not a war without end. Our children
deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror
of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free
of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness,
free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world
view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people,
not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate
for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the
survival of the world.
Let us pray that we have the courage
and the will as a people and as a nation to shore ourselves
up, to reclaim from the ruins of September the Eleventh our
democratic traditions. Let us declare our love for democracy.
Let us declare our intent for peace. Let us work to make nonviolence
an organizing principle in our own society. Let us recommit
ourselves to the slow and painstaking work of statecraft, which
sees peace, not war as being inevitable. Let us work for a world
where someday war becomes archaic. That is the vision which
the proposal to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three
members of congress are now cosponsoring the legislation. Let
us work for a world where nuclear disarmament is an imperative.
That is why we must begin by insisting on the commitments of
the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for nonproliferation.
Let us work for a world where America
can lead the way in banning weapons of mass destruction not
only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space itself.
That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where
we can look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite
wisdom, infinite peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite
war, because we are taught that the kingdom will come on earth
as it is in heaven.
Let us pray that we have the courage
to replace the images of death which haunt us, the layers of
images of September the Eleventh, faded into images of patriotism,
spliced into images of military mobilization, jump cut into
images of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New
Year's Eve, the Superbowl, the Olympics, the strobic flashes
which touch our deepest fears, let us replace those images with
the work of human relations, reaching out to people, helping
our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor
everywhere. That is the America which has the ability to rally
the support of the world. That is the America which stands not
in pursuit of an axis of evil, but which is itself at the axis
of hope and faith and peace and freedom.
America, America. God shed grace on thee.
Crown thy good, America.
Not with weapons of mass destruction.
Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not through breaking
international treaties. Not through establishing America as
king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good America.
America, America. Let us pray for our
country. Let us love our country. Let us defend our country
not only from the threats without but from the threats within.
Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and
sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint
and forbearance and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to
economic justice here at home and throughout the world. Crown
thy good,
America. Crown thy good America. Crown
thy good.
Dennis Kucinich
is a US congressman representing the 10th District of Ohio.
He can be reached at:Dkucinich@aol.com
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