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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.


CounterPunch: Complete Coverage of 9/11 and the War on Afghanistan

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Occupied Ramallah Close Up: Large and Small Change in a State of Siege; Feed Your Goats, Maybe Get Shot; Snipers on Main Street; Hiding in Your Back Room for Three Days; Humor, Heroism and Bravado Amid Bullets; Occupied DC: Legislators' Daily Gauntlet of Searches; Only in America: His Dad Was CIA; He Hated Blacks; He Robbed Banks, and Liked to Dress Up Like a Woman; A Tribute to Billy Wilder. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

April 12, 2002

John Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Fabrications

April 11, 2002

Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo

Jeff Halper
After the Invasion:
Now What?

Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster

Steve Perry
The Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson

Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism

Alexander Cockburn
From the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond

April 10, 2002

M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians

George Monbiot
World Bank to West Bank

Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror

David Vest
Political Color Schemes

Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again

Doreen Miller
A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians

April 9, 2002

Bernard Weiner
Colin Powell's Table Talk

Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer

Ron Jacobs
Buyer Beware

Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian

Vijay Prashad
Memories of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September

Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable

April 8, 2002

David Vest
From Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette

Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science

Dr. Neve Gordon
Letter to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?

Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs

Jordy Cummings
Not in My Name Anymore

Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut

Edward Said
The Future of Palestine

April 7, 2002

Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem

Nancy Stohlman
After the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins

Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses

Tariq Ali
Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

April 6, 2002

Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses

Viktor Litovkin
Russian Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan

Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack

Walt Brasch
Oil Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment

Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham

Sam Bahour
The Blind Leading the Criminal

Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East

April 5, 2002

Charmaine Seitz
In Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On

Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work

Beth Daoud
The Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"

Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran

Mokhiber / Weissman
Philip Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"

Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife

Alexander Cockburn
Sharon's Wars: How the
News Gets Through

April 4, 2002

Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church of the Nativity

Mike Leon
Rightwing Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires

Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!

Nancy Stohlman
An American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp

Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?

M. Shahid Alam
The Lies of Thomas Friedman

April 3, 2002

Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks

Bernard Weiner
An American Jew Talks
About His Shame

David Vest
Sting of Stings

Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest

John Chuckman
Of War, Islam and Israel

Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem

Alexander Cockburn
The Sins of the Church

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

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Published March 15, 2002

  • Facing Down Rehnquist and Scalia:
  • Jennifer Harbury at the Supreme Court;
  • ADL Throws in Towel, Pays Up:
  • How They Worked for Apartheid Regime and Spied on NAACP:
  • Cockburn on America the Bully:
  • From Teddy Roosevelt to George W.
  • St. Clair on Musicians Against the Death Penalty & The Legacy of the Mekons.


    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 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


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

April 12, 2002

Why I Didn't Organize a Seder This Year

The Curses of Nationalism

By Anne Winkler-Morey

To those of you who would call me a self-hating Jew because I oppose the Israeli government's policy of terrorism and apartheid against the Palestinian people, let me say this right away before you do: I do not go to synagogue. I would like my daughter to have the experience, but I have not ever found one that does not advocate support for Israel.

While I usually celebrate Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, and I say the Kaddish for my father, I do so in a non-tradition manner, changing words and rites to suit my internationalist ideology. Yet this year the matzo and the horseradish I bought a month ago are unopened. When I hear growing Israeli terror justified by biblical references, I could not bring myself to organize a Seder, even with all the good ideas and Web sites providing alternative services.

I am not going to pretend that I spend my days reading the Torah or that my kitchen is a Kosher one, as do many who oppose Israeli policy. And it is none of your business what I think about God.

Yet I am Jewish. I am Jewish because I am the child of a Holocaust survivor, the grandchild and great-grandchild of survivors of countless pogroms. Like many, I cannot trace exactly where my ancestors come from because they were proverbial wandering Jews. This history, this heritage, explains much about who I am. Like many, it has led me to look at the world in such a way that I could not possibly support the Israeli government.

My grandparents and great-grandparents, who had no country of origin when they came to the United States, had one fewer dividing -ism to overcome. Some adopted Judaism as their nation, some the United States and others became internationalists.

The experience of the Holocaust--my father's experience--makes it impossible for me to embrace nationalism of any sort. I know the (non-Jewish) German people are made of the same stuff as all other humans, and that it was nationalism, a belief in the Fatherland over all that led so many to Nazi collaboration. I also know the German people felt like a besieged people, an oppressed people, as a result of World War I, when they voted for Hitler in 1933.

Nationalism is a handmaiden of racism. True, it can be liberating for an oppressed people, but it is an ideology that is not easily tempered. The Jewish experience should serve as a lesson for all.

Most Israelis of my middle age are the children of the oppressed, and a significant percentage of them support their government's oppression of a people. Nationalism is racism when it defines a good American as a flag-waving American and it is racism when it defines a good Jew as a one who stands by Israel right or wrong.

"Never Again" is a powerful idea, an idea echoed by holocaust survivors and their progeny. For some, it means "Never Again" for my people, e.g., Jews. For me and for many others, it is a powerful commitment: a calling to fight against oppression of any person anywhere. It mandates my support for Palestinian sovereignty--not because their nationalism is potentially any less dangerous than Jewish nationalism, but because in this case, they are the oppressed people.

I don't always live up to my ideals. I wish I had combated my fear of you and written this earlier instead of using my embrace of internationalism as an excuse to let you define who is a Jew.

In the United States and around the world, there is a Jewish tradition of internationalism, of radical dissent. It is a tradition born of the experience of oppression and often made tenable by access to educational and other material resources. For Jews like me looking for footsteps to follow, these ancestors provide a strong, viable, and self-loving alternative to the myopic ethnocentric tradition that has led so many Jews to support Israel "Uber Alles."

We are all products of our history, but we do have choices. Let's follow the ancestors who have struggled for all humanity.

Anne Winkler-Morey teaches history and Chicano studies at the University and Macalester College. This article originally appeared in the Daily Minnesotan, the campus newspaper of the University of Minnesota.