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April 19, 2002
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
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April 19, 2002
Advice from a Gulf
War Vet
A Message to Troops, Would-be Troops,
and Other Youth
By Jeff Paterson
Do you know anyone in the military, or thinking
about signing up soon? Pass this along to them. They may or may
not appreciate it, but they deserve a heads up.
In August of 1990, I was an active duty
U.S. Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East;
we were on the verge of the Gulf War. Four years prior, thinking
I had nothing better to do with my life, I had walked into the
Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put
me where I was most needed."
"What am I going to do with my life?"
has always been a huge question for young people. Today, in the
wake of the horror and tragedy of September 11th, this question
has increased in importance for millions of young people.
No one who has seen the images will ever
forget them. In a scene as unreal as the Matrix, a conflict reached
into American reality in an unthinkable way. From copy clerks
to administrative assistants, restaurant workers to firefighters,
thousands of lives were ripped away from friends and family as
those hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. Now the
television shouts, "revenge," "infinite justice,"
and "something must be done!" America continues to
wave red, white and blue flag to ease the sorrow; to declare,
"We're not going to take it."
If it weren't for those four years in
the Marine Corps, I might be like the youth who are walking to
the U.S. military recruiters right now, wanting to fight for
their country. During my four years, most of the time my unit
trained to fight a war against peasants who dared struggle against
"American interests" in their homelands, specifically
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
I saw dire poverty in the Philippines;
U.S. government-sanctioned prostitution rings to service the
U.S. Armed Forces in South Korea; and unbridled racism towards
the people of Okinawa and Japan, where the standard response
to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers
was "yea, ha, ha; two bombs little gook."
I began to understand why billions of
people around the world really do hate the United States - specifically
its war machine, covert "contra" wars, and the whole
system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour
days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA"
exports.
Faced with this reality, I began the
process of becoming un-American; meaning, the interests of the
people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest.
When the U.S. launched the Gulf War,
I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop
deployment. Although they did not look much like me, I found
that I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle
East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them.
My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes
wrong we'll nuke the rag-heads until they all glow" was
not reassuring.
Up against that, I publicly stated I
would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil,
and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and I
pledged that if I were dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would
refuse to fight.
A few weeks later, I sat down on an airstrip
as hundreds of Marines, many of whom I had lived with for years,
filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from
a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped
spring me, we fought the war in the streets.
But back then we failed to stop the war.
Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died, not mainly
from the massive U.S. bombing which continues from the sky, but
from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the U.S. government
has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are "worth it"
in order to achieve strategic regional objectives. So today,
as the U.S. government demands the world mourn with us for our
loss, we in turn are expected to ignore the suffering that this
nation produces.
Every time the U.S. war machine is kicked
into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes"
such as: Gulf War sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam,
massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure
guinea pigs after World War II, internment camps for Japanese-Americans
during World War II. Yet after this acknowledgement comes: "Trust
us, this time it will be different." But it never is.
One need not be a pacifist, a communist,
a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this current "War on Terrorism."
However, it certainly helps to be an internationalist, realizing
that our collective future is bound up with the majority of humanity,
and not with those who are taking this horrific opportunity to
wage war.
For the women and men in uniform, you
have to make a choice. Silence is what your "superiors"
expect of you, but the interests of humanity expect more. Think.
Speak out. And if you make the choice to resist, there are hundreds
of thousands who will support you - many of whom have already
taken to the streets to oppose this war.
Like his father before him, Bush Jr.
has drawn a line in the sand: "Either you are with us, or
you are with the terrorists." Simply put, the rulers of
the U.S. see much unfinished business for their "New World
Order." While we grieve, they announce that "the normal
rules no longer apply" (translation: now is the time to
settle our scores), and we have "a blank check to act, the
nation is united" (translation: dissent will be ignored,
or suppressed, as required). Now, more than ever, the people
of the world, along with American citizens, are not safe from
the U.S. government.
I will not wave the red, white and blue
flag; instead, I will wear a green ribbon in solidarity with
immigrants and Arab-Americans facing increased racist attacks.
Stop the War. Support U.S. troops who
refuse to fight.
Let's dedicate our live to changing this
situation.
Jeff Paterson
is a columnist for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: USrefusenik@yahoo.com
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