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in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Recent
Stories
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
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.
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August
21, 2003
No Child Left Behind...Unscarred?
Other
People's Kids
By MARY WALWORTH
What you do with other people's kids? Well, you
feed them, of course. You figure out what's in your fridge that
resembles what they're used to at home. You talk to them. You
find out if they would like to make a picture with paints or
magic markers (though you secretly hope they say magic markers
which are so much easier to deal with). You make them feel safe
and loved when they come up to you looking a little scared wondering
why mom hasn't picked them up yet, and you say she's almost here,
she just called as she was leaving work -- you're hoping that
accident on the Parkway isn't going to add another hour to this
kid's wait--and wouldn't you like to pick out a video: Magic
School Bus? Dora the Explorer? You find out if they want white
milk or chocolate milk, chicken nuggets or meatballs, a Power
Puff Girls cup or a Barbie cup.
These are what you do for other people's
kids.
One of the things you don't do to other
people's kids is bomb them and burn them alive. And blow the
limbs off their little sisters and blind their little brothers.
And send their mothers (stained with blood and stuck all over
with little pieces of broken glass) running away from flames,
shrieking with grief.
You just really don't do that.
And you don't kill their daddies. And
you don't steal their countries and their assets. And as for
how you act when a kid comes up to you and says he's thirsty,
well, you find out if he likes ice cubes or just plain water,
sippy cup or big boy cup or the Spiderman sports bottle or would
you rather have the last inch of apple juice from the bottle
in the fridge. You don't cut off their drinking water and make
them desperate with thirst and sick with cholera.
And let me tell you, you just do not
turn off their electricity! You're supposed to turn on the night-light
so they aren't scared. Why on earth would you cut off their electricity?!
And you certainly don't leave radioactive
containers lying around for them to drink out of. Or unexploded
bombs for them to play with. No, you just don't find that in
the baby-proofing manuals.
You don't make their moms afraid to go
out for fear of being robbed and raped. You don't break down
their door in the middle of the night and hold machine guns to
their older brothers' faces. These are just things you don't
do to other people's kids.
And your neighbor's grown kids? You ask
them if they could please feed your cat and water the lawn while
you're away. You need the money, we'll pay you $50 for the week,
that sound fair? You ask them what colleges they're thinking
of applying to. You nod approvingly when they say pre-med or
something to do with computers. You don't sit by and accept the
fact that their leader is sending your neighbors' kids off to
have the most unimaginably scary, sickening experience of their
lives for no just cause but simply to allow some rich people
in certain corporations to get even more obscenely rich. You
don't sit in front of the TV and allow yourself to be brainwashed
into thinking Saddam is connected to Osama and Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction (when the facts do not support this). You
don't just figure, well, my neighbor's kids are worth sacrificing
so we can all feel "safe from terrorists"--freedom
isn't free! -- they keep saying this on Fox News so it must be
true! You don't nudge these wonderful, almost-grown-up kids (you
have that picture of them at their high school graduation, arms
wrapped around each other--oh my gawd, check out those bangs...you
don't nudge these sweet, almost-grown-up-but-not-quite kids who
were rug rats not so long ago...you don't nudge these guys into
seeking self-worth by fighting in a war that will leave them
permanently shattered and terrorized and scarred-- fragile and
brittle from the horror--never fully able to stop hearing the
screams of scared children and the moans of a dying soldier--friends,
stinging with grief and guilt and trauma for the rest of their
days.
These are things you don't do to other
people's kids. Whether they live next door to you, down the street
from you, across the country or across the globe. You just don't
do these things to other people's kids.
Mary Walworth,
the author of this essay, is a speech-language therapist and
mother who lives in New Jersey. She can be reached at: mmwalworth@aol.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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