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January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
January
22, 2002
Brendan
Cooney
Moby-Dick
and the Hunt
for Osama bin Laden
Rick Giombetti
Progressive
Pols for Enron?
Judith
Resnik
Invading
the Courts?
Kevin
Alexander Gray
The
Crisis in Black Leadership
January
21, 2002
Marjorie
Cohn
Will
Walker's Words
Be Used Against Him?
Ahmad
Faruqui
MLK
Jr. and the Palestinians
January
19. 2002
Jordan
Green
Enron
Stole Our Future
January
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The
Enron Model
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Group Says Guantanamo Prisoners Must
Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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!)
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EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
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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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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January
27, 2002
The Dream of Martin Luther King
Distorted Into a Nightmare of Moderation and Militarism
By Tom Turnipseed
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words expressing
his dream of love, peace, and justice that could transform a
suffering world filled with hate, violence, and injustice became
awesomely authentic for me as I did research for a talk I made
at our King Day at the Dome 2002 Celebration at the South Carolina
State House on January 21. Tears welled in my eyes as Dr. King's
prophetic phrases seemed to speak truth to power - today as
much as or even more than when he expressed them in the 1960's.
Sponsored by the NAACP and the Legislative Black Caucus, the
annual march and rally was for freedom, unity and economic and
social justice and to protest the flying of the Confederate flag
in front of the State House.
At our initial King Day at the Dome in
January 2000, over 50,000 of us gathered to protest the Confederate
flag, then flown atop the State House. Jim Hodges, our flaming
"moderate" Democratic Governor, and "moderate"
business leaders, emphatically endorsed a legislative "compromise"
which moved the flag to a position directly in front of our Capitol
later that year. They declared an end to the "flag debate"
over Dixie's most visible symbol of white privilege and racial
oppression and division and are highly critical of the NAACP
for encouraging a tourism boycott of South Carolina in protest
of the racist symbol at the State House.
Poor whites in the South have suffered
greatly from inadequate educational and economic opportunity
and inferior housing and health care, but they've been taught
to blame all their problems on African-Americans who are even
greater victims of racist division. The "moderate"
business leaders and their political minions like Hodges actually
benefit from the racial divide between poor and working class
blacks and whites. It keeps them from organizing and working
together as a labor and/or political force. Alex Sanders, the
announced choice of the Democratic establishment for Strom Thurmond's
U.S. Senate seat, is critical of the NAACP's boycott and tells
the media about his membership in the Sons of the Confederate
Veterans. The "moderate" Democratic establishment
takes the black vote for granted because the "conservative"
Republicans are more overt in their appeal to white racial fears.
In my remarks at the rally I quoted Dr.
King's 1963 "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" in which
he wrote, " I must confess that over the past few years
I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I
have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's
great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the
White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who
prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice: who constantly
says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree
with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes
he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives
by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the
Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding
from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding
from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering
than outright rejection."
While we were rallying in Columbia, President
Bush was escorting Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King and family
members in the White House for the unveiling of Dr. King's portrait
there. Bush extolled the memory of the martyred civil rights
leader, but conveniently chose to ignore King's recurrent condemnation
of war and militarism. On January 24, Bush announced a 14% increase
- $48 billion dollars - in his defense budget, the most since
the Reagan Cold War military build-up. The next day Bush announced
a proposed doubling of "homeland security" spending
to $38 billion to fight a "two front' war.
On January 24, the Pentagon suspended
the transport of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to the
Guantanamo navy base in Cuba after a firestorm of protests
from human rights groups and our European allies about the United
States' inhumane treatment of prisoners already "caged"
there. The International Committee if the Red Cross said the
treatment appeared to violate the Geneva Convention. The catalyst
for the criticism were Pentagon photographs in the international
media showing bound, shackled prisoners, their heads and eyes
covered, kneeling before American soldiers. Dr. King said, "We
can no longer afford to worship the god of hate, or bow before
the alter of retaliation".
President Bush has said the war against
world-wide terrorism could last for years. Given the global
proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry, engaging
in war becomes sheer lunacy. The U.S. Army's School of the Americas
at Fort Benning, Georgia (http://www.soaw.org/index.html) has
trained terrorists from Latin America for 55 years and the difference
between terrorist and freedom fighter throughout the world is
largely in the eye of the beholder. Dr. King said the options
for humanity are "nonviolence or nonexistence" and
if he were alive he would have probably gone to jail along with
the two sibling Franciscan nuns who were among those jailed in
2000 for
protesting the terrorist school in Georgia.
In 1963, Dr. King said, "Hate cannot
drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate,
violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness
in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain of evil-hate
begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we
shall be plunged into the abyss of annihilation." In 1967,
he said, "man must evolve for all human conflict a method
which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation
of such a method is love." We must emulate Dr. King's non-violent
activism to end world hunger, poverty and oppression that are
root causes of mortal combat. It's our best hope to compel the
moderates and militarists to heed Dr. King's words of wisdom
and fulfill his dream.
Tom Turnipseed
is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
South Carolina. http://www.turnipseed.net
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