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July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
June 27, 2002
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahul Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
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
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 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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July
1, 2002
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
Real Fireworks or Just Bombs Again?
by Leah C. Wells
As Interdependence Day approaches, the United
States humbly admitted error in bombing a wedding party in Afghanistan,
killing around 40 people and injuring more than 60. Bombs and
rockets in our country symbolize a celebration of freedom, but
in other parts of the world, these explosions are all too real,
bringing carnage, death and grueling efforts to survive destruction
of homes and livelihood.
This error, undoubtedly labeled 'collateral
damage', stands next to a smattering of misguided bombs which
have inadvertently and regrettably killed hundreds of civilians
in numerous countries over the past few years. As reported by
the BBC, during the current Bush administration's war on terror
in Afghanistan, U.S. planes accidentally killed four Canadians
in April, bombed the town of Hazar Qadam in January, fired at
a caravan of tribal elders en route to the inauguration ceremony
for Hamid Karzai and last October hit a residential area in Kabul
rather than the intended helicopter at the airport. Oops.
For the pilots and American citizens,
these mistakes are akin to losses while playing a video game.
From afar, with targets merely illuminated points on a screen,
the people who die are unreal, just numbers and statistics. When
we kill by remote control, our hands are theoretically clean.
The computer won't show blood and won't cry; it's a machine,
an abstraction.
The people affected by our ubiquitous
blunders, however, are terribly real, as is their pain. In February
of 199, during the Gulf War, U.S. planes bombed a women's and
children's shelter in Baghdad called al-Amiriya. Hundreds of
civilians died as a result of the two bombs hitting this supposed-safe
haven. The U.S. apologized after realizing what happened, but
still continues to bomb the country, even in the past week.
The rhetoric about a "new war"
with Iraq is a farce. We are already at war informally with them.
Friday June 28th we dropped bombs in the South of Iraq. Wednesday
the 26th of June as well. On Thursday the 20th of June four people
in Iraq were killed when U.S. planes bombed them. Eighteen people
were wounded when bombs fell on Iraq on the 25th of May. And
another four were killed when we bombed Iraq on February 6th.
I'd imagine that Iraqis feel attacked and besieged as bombs continue
to fall in an undeclared, ongoing, indefinite war that inevitably
targets civilians.
When I tell people this, they invariably
say, "Where'd you hear this? Why didn't I know about it?"
It's in the news, alright, but it's just hard to find. These
statistics get buried in the middle of stories about deposing
Saddam Hussein and vilifying his evil acts.
"But Saddam kills his own people!"
He did this in the 1980's as well when he was our friend. We
just turned a blind eye then. Besides, we kill our own people,
executing hundreds of people since the death penalty was reinstated
in 1976. The crime of a state murdering its own civilians looks
different when it's on our own soil.
Incidentally, these bombs that rain down
on Iraq are illegal under international law. They were not approved
by Congress nor by the United Nations. The United States justifies
dropping bombs as we unlawfully patrol Iraqi borders enforcing
the bogus "no fly zones." Iraqis have become sadly
accustomed to the noisy air raid sirens.
You cannot achieve peace through war.
The United States cannot continue to be proud guardians of weapons
of mass destruction and deify their usage, apologize for their
errors and claim that we are the land of the free and the home
of the brave. Do these mistakes which take innocent lives make
us safer or prove our strength or our liberty? Is it righteous
or noble to kill unarmed guests at a wedding? Moreover, to what
end are we still bombing Afghanistan - has it brought us closer
to capturing Osama bin Laden? Has enough justice not been rendered
on the citizens of Afghanistan to make up for the loss of lives
on September 11th?
We are not alone on this small planet,
a fact that ought to be in the hearts and minds of all Americans
as the nationally celebrated holiday approaches. We drive automobiles
made in Japan, drink coffee from South America, wear clothes
made in Southeast Asia, buy oil from the Middle East and Africa
and import furniture from Sweden. Even our fireworks are made
in China!
On July 4th, millions of American children
will be lighting sparklers and tracing their names in the night
sky. They should also trace the names of any of the thousands
of displaced Afghani children, due to the bombings, who are still
refugees on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They should
trace the names of the Iraqi children who are their same-age
counterparts, held captive under the sanctions and threatened
almost daily by U.S. bombs. On Interdependence Day, each and
every one of us is affected by an errant bomb.
Leah C. Wells
serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation. She may be contacted at education@napf.org.
Today's
Feature
Dave Marsh
John Entwistle's
Heaven and Hell
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
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