Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 15, 2003
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
Recent
Stories
September 12, 2003
Writers Bloc
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
15, 2003
The Obligations of
a New Generation
A
Message to the People of New York City
By CYNTHIA McKINNEY
Remarks at the WBAI September 11 Events,
Riverside Church, New York City September 12, 2003
I want to thank WBAI for holding this very important
and informative series of events and I thank them for including
me.
It is impossible to be in New York City
at this time and think about anything--business, politics, or
even life--as usual. And perhaps that's true all across America.
But particularly here in New York, it is very clear, that people
in this City are still very much in pain. And equally, nothing
that has happened to us as a nation since that day has been usual,
either.
Two years ago, what began as a normal
Tuesday morning for millions of Americans--some commuting to
work, others taking their children to school, and many others
opening their businesses--soon became a day that found thousands
of us plunged into chaos and agony by the criminal actions of
terrorists.
These attacks upon our citizens were
deeply felt by all the people of our great nation. We became
one, and grieved for the thousands who lost their lives that
day. Americans displayed their best and responded generously
and immediately to the calls for help from our brothers and sisters.
And as you here in New York certainly know, too many victims
and their families are still in need of help today.
I have thought long and hard about the
individuals who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. What
could I possibly say to those whose loved ones lost their lives
at the Trade Center, the Pentagon, or in a field in Pennsylvania?
My words are certainly insufficient.
It must be with this same feeling of
pain, emptiness, and inadequacy that Abraham Lincoln searched
for words of consolation for the families of those who lost loved
ones in the Civil War. In a letter to one such mother, a Mrs.
Bixby, who lost five sons in the war to save our Union, Abraham
Lincoln had this to say:
"I have been shown in the files
of the War Department, a statement that you are the mother of
five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I
feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from your grief for a loss so overwhelming,
but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation which
may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save."
[I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved
and the lost, the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid
so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."]
The thanks of a grateful nation. That's
what we have to give.
For on September 11th, New York City
was very much like a battlefield. The citizens were called upon
to display the kind of bravery, compassion, and sacrifice that
we generally only can read about in historic battles. But just
as many generations had done before them, Americans young and
old, black and white, Native American, Latino, Asian, gay and
straight, without regard to color, race, religion, ethnicity,
or economic condition, Americans responded heroically.
We know a lot about some of these heroes.
In New York City and in Washington, DC, we know of the courageous
actions by police, firefighters, civilians and military personnel
who all acted in the service of fellow Americans--knowing fully
well that their actions to save others would almost certainly
bring about their own deaths. But they acted selflessly anyway.
Including the clean up crews who worked
long hours day and night breathing the dust of the rubble and
who now may suffer serious health effects from their time at
Ground Zero.
The pain is far from over.
Every one of those lost from our country
and from the many other countries are as special as are the sons
which Abraham Lincoln wrote about in his letter to Mrs. Bixby.
Today, we need to talk about the thanks
of our grateful nation.
Now, how exactly should we show those
thanks and what are the challenges that lie before us?
Well, first of all, we must not allow
the tragedy of September 11 to create a climate of war and conflict
throughout the world. These attacks were the result of the actions
of a few. Certainly we can't plunge our country which we all
love, and the world that we all live in, into a never ending
cycle of war and violence and hate.
Two generations ago, a torch was passed
to a new generation. And the leadership of that generation challenged
our country to become better in medicine and space exploration,
civil rights and ending war.
How dare George W. Bush quote John F.
Kennedy today at Fort Stewart, Georgia in an effort to justify
his global militarism. John Kennedy specifically rejected pre-emptive
war; JFK rejected war against a smaller, weaker, poorer country;
he rejected Pax Americana imposed by American weapons of war,
and spoke instead of constructing a peace, not for our time,
but for all time.
And Bobby Kennedy, upon the announcement
of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked what kind
of country do we want. One divided by race? A country of violence,
motivated by hate?
And, perhaps, Martin Luther King, Jr.
himself explained our current dilemma best when in 1963 he said:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that. 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 reaction of evil--hate begetting
hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be
plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
So, as the families of the victims correctly
point out, the thanks of a grateful nation can't include a generation
of war. It can't include the use of depleted uranium or nuclear
weapons.
The thanks of a grateful nation must
include universal health care, full funding for a quality education
for all our children, especially the children of our reservations,
barrios, and ghettos.
The thanks of a grateful nation must
include tackling issues like poverty; unemployment, urban sprawl,
transportation; protecting Mother Earth; civil rights, the glass
ceiling, affirmative action, race relations; drug abuse, the
death penalty, prison reform; the way we treat our veterans.
Social justice, US standing in the world.
Protecting civil liberties. Ending war
and promoting peace. That's the thanks of a grateful nation.
The thanks of a grateful nation includes
remembering who we are.
We are America and we have unbounded
good to offer the world. The good that we saw deep in America's
heartland in the midst of tragedy on one particular day in September
two years ago.
We are the America that declared its
independence from tyranny and instituted the rule of law and
our Bill of Rights for all our citizens.
We are the America that sent its greatest
generation to fight on foreign soil so that others could be free.
But we are in danger of being that America
no more.
Everything we hold dear to us, as the
unique American character, the values that we struggled so hard
for and won in the civil rights movements of blacks, women and
gays, are all being threatened today by a small but powerful
group who want to silence you, yet speak and act for you.
We are America and we are family. And
yes, we can make gentle the life of this world.
Cynthia McKinney
served in Congress as a representative from Georgia.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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