|
April 21, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
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 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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
April 21, 2002
200,000
Protest the "War Without End"
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
By Mike Leon
Washington D.C. On September 11 an Al-Quida-led terrorist network
struck at the heart of American financial and political centers,
killing thousands, troubling a shaky economy, and for many, destroying
the notion that America is immune from the grim art of the terrorist.
Much of the American citizenry, shocked
and incensed by what Noam Chomsky called the "most devastating
instant toll in history outside of war," looked to an inarticulate,
Republican-led Supreme Court-installed president to implement
measures to prevent the atrocity from recurring.
President George W. Bush' s response--redeclared
a "war on international terrorism" that bequeathed
in a matter of weeks a death toll of innocent civilians in Afghanistan
surpassing the Al-Quida attack--prompted an estimated 200,000
people to march on Washington D.C. on April 20th to demand that
American foreign policy "stop the killing" of innocent
civilians, end the occupation of Palestine and pursue social
justice as an animating principle vis-a-vis an a ready administration
willingness to potentially brand any country or individual a
terrorist under the Bush Doctrine.
The marchers called for a domestic and
foreign policy animated by social justice, libertarian concerns,
with a heavy emphasis on immediately halting the offensive of
the Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied territories--a bloody
siege described in a widely-distributed pamphlet at the march
as a "macabre saga of violence and methodical repression
(Islamic Circle of North America)."
Organizers called the solidarity march
for Palestine the largest in U.S. history.
The first major national protest against
the war on terrorism, occurring some seven months after the September
11 attack, featured a wide coalition of citizen groups representing
organizations addressing specific issues such as the Israeli
"slaughter" of the Palestinians, the American war on
terrorism, the domestic erosion of civil liberties, corporate
domination of the global economic system and mass media, racism
and racial profiling, and halting military aid to Columbia.
The march was planned months in advance
and organizers claimed it represented an "unprecedented"
coalition of peace, labor, and justice groups.
In a scene paradigmatically reflecting
the apparent nature of the coalition, Wisconsin Green party organizer
Ben Manski delivered a fiery speech against the war on terrorism
through a bullhorn on a flatbed truck, sharing the horn and truck
with eight young Palestinians as protesters marched down Pennsylvania
Avenue.
Despite intense propaganda efforts by
the U.S. and Israeli governments and their military forces that
systemically prevented press access to Afghanistan and the occupied
territories, the stage-managed acts of American and Israeli aggression
have drawn wide public condemnation in the United States culminating
in the April 20th march displaying what marchers said is a common
sentiment--that innocent civilians not be harmed in the pursuit
of the Al-Quida network, and that U.S. foreign policy should
advance social justice.
A virtual black-out exists in mass-media
American reporting on popular opinion beyond carefully-framed
polling questions, but organizers hope the rally was so large
that their peace and justice message could be conveyed through
mass-media news reports.
"Not in my name," and "Peace
Is Patriotic" and "All War Is Terror" were common
signs at the march, as an exuberant and diverse crowd shouted
a variety of anti-war chants and slogans, with seemingly hundreds
of individuals distributing pamphlets and other literature.
"I'm here out of a desire for peace
and a belief that violence and revenge are not a way to peace.
As the world's only super power, we should be leading the way
toward peace and justice in the world, and not creating the circumstances
that lead to greater tension and terrorism," said Katherine
Kurtz, of Philadelphia, who is an Associate Director of American
Friends Service Committee.
"The war machine is about profit
not about security and we are not going to have peace without
justice. I believe that terrorism is terrorism whether it is
raining down from U.S war planes or if it's desperate people
blowing themselves up," said Jennifer Atienofifatar, who
is 29 years old and lives in Washington D.C.
Although the march seemed to be comprised
largely of people from the east coast--New England, Washington,
Philadelphia and New York--all regions of the United States appeared
well represented.
"People just kept coming and coming,
bus load after bus load," said Jackie Captain of Fitchburg,
Wisconsin. "I wonder where all of the Palestinians were
from, because there were just thousands of them, whole families."
"I met people form Illinois, Minnesota,
California--young and old. Palestinians and Midwesterners alike,
standing together for peace and justice. It was wonderful. Everybody
was talking to everyone, you had to be there to feel the atmosphere,
it was inspiring."
Ralliers mixed freely and openly with
each other in an often-festive environment. A common scene was
of Palestinians talking to a group of vocally supportive white
questioners. One veteran of Vietnam-era peace marches remarked
that the march was as open, community-oriented and good-natured,
as he had ever seen.
The crowd, which assembled on the southwest
side of the Washington Monument at Sylvan Theater on Saturday
morning, converged with the Palestinian solidarity rally from
the northwest side of the monument and by 3:00 p.m. with other
protesters joining the march, the crowd had swelled to an estimated
200,000 as they marched toward Pennsylvania Avenue and then on
toward the capitol, ending with a rally on the Mall.
Some press reports quoted D.C. officials
who put the crowd size at 75,000, but Washington, D.C. Police
Chief Charles H. Ramsey--smiling and joking with passersby in
a park off Pennsylvania Avenue--told this writer at approximately
3:30 p.m. that the crowd was well in excess of 100,000. Other
sources said the crowd exceeded a 250,000.
Ramsey agreed with activists' assessment
of the atmosphere and peaceful nature of the march, calling the
rally "an outstanding event."
Mike Leon
is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared
nationally in The Progressive, In These Times, and CounterPunch.
He can be reached at: maleon@terracom.net
|