Now
Available from
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Today's
Stories
December 25, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year!
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
Last summer, CounterPunch hosted
the Duo Doloroso for a concert of extraordinary duets by these
professional singers, ranging from Handel to old Irish folksongs.
She's a Welsh/Punjabi soprano; he's an All-American counter-tenor.
They ended the concert in CounterPunch's ciderhouse with their
Carols for Palestine, now
available on CD. Savage adaptions of such familiar caroles
as: While Sheperds Watch Their Flocks at Night. In Occupied Palestine/Israelis
build their prison wall / a people to confine.
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Merry
Christmas
December 24, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year!
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
But first a word about Libya. Muammar Qaddafi
has announced he is abandoning his quest for nuclear potency.
Too bad. I think every country should have at least one nuclear
device. It evens things up and would do more for world peace
than a thousand pompous sessions of the UN General Assembly.
It's difficult to believe that the Libyan
pantomime will do much to help George and Tony's adventure come
quite to the conclusion they desire. But as Bruce Page remarks,
there is a certain cunning in getting people to abandon voluntarily
WMD they don't have, as against invading them to destroy WMD
that don't exist.
Now for "Happy Holidays". Can
we please deep-six this trite "non-denominational"
greeting, designed to alert the world that those uttering the
salutation "Happy Holidays" are sensitive people aware
that the recipients of the greeting might not be Christians,
might be Kwanzans, or Jews or Muslims who have a low opinion
of J. Christ and no desire to celebrate his birthday. The Muslims
think Christ was not divine and the Jewish sacred writings say
likewise, and that for the sin of getting ideas above his station
JC is being pickled in excrement for all eternity.
But my Jewish friends say "Happy
Hanukah", with no nonsense about saying "Happy Holidays"
out of sensitivity to the fact that the festival of Hanukah derives
from the Maccabbees' triumph over the bestial forces of Hellenism
in 165 B.C., said Hellenism being in its neo-Platonic guise one
of the central components of the Christian religion. An irony
is that there's no mention of Hanukah in the Torah, but only
in the Books of the Maccabees, an annexe to the Bible.
My friend and neighbor Joe Paff tells
me he heard Oregon Public Radio harshly criticize Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger for daring to utter the forbidden phrase "Merry
Christmas", even though he immediately made haste to light
a menorah to show that his "Merry Christmas" wasn't
an eruption of ur-Schwarzenegger, overture to a volley of Sieg
Heils and Aryan paeans to Wotan.
When I lived in an apartment building
on the Upper West side of New York, throughout December our elevator
rang with jovial cries of Happy Hanukah and Merry Christmas,
and Margot Adler who lived in the apartment right next to me
wasn't put out, even though she was a boisterous Wiccan and reserved
her enthusiasms for the festival of Beltane, which I vaguely
remember involved dancing round some sort of a Maypole. I One
time Margot, a radio broadcaster of the first quality, was up
for a big job at NPR but lost out because NPR was worried about
being trashed in the Nw York Post for hiring a Witch (though
a witch who was White in edvery sense of the term).
So, hear it from a unbaptised, unconfirmed
Protestant/atheist, born out of wedlock, albeit raised in a Christo-Commie
environment, MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR. And that's
from all all here at CounterPunch, Jeffrey St Clair, Becky Grant
asnd yrs truly. And now, a few deserving cases for those of you
with money in your pockets. It's from the latest edition of the
list Jeffrey St Clair and I draw up for our newsletter the CounterPunch
newsletter each year. They're all worthy and needy groups that
are putting up a good fight against long odds, never losing their
optimism that change can be wrought, from the ground up. These
groups don't act like subsidiaries of the Democratic Party and
aren't neutered by big foundations. So, of course, they mostly
operate on a shoestring and greatly value each contribution.
Give them what you can. We don't think you'll be disappointed
in the results.
Bring Them Home Now!
c/o Veterans for Peace
438 N Skinker Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63130
bringthemhomenow.org/
Bring Them Home Now! is a campaign of
military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists
and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq . Their mission
is to mobilize military families, veterans, and GIs to demand:
an end to the occupation of Iraq and other misguided military
adventures; an immediate return of all US troops to their home
duty stations.
Powder River Basin Resource Council
P.O. Box 1178,
Douglas, Wyoming 82633
http://www.powderriverbasin.org/
The biggest natural gas rush in history
is now going on in Wyoming, the way greased by Bush's Deputy
Secretary of the Interior Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for
the oil and gas industry, who still gets a paycheck from his
former clients. If Bush and Griles have their way, more than
51,000 new wells will be drilled in the Powder River Basin alone.
Along with the wells will come thousands of miles of roads and
pipelines, toxic holding ponds, and the depletion and contamination
of groundwater 80 percent of the people in northern Wyoming depend
on wells as their sole source of water.
Campaign To Stop Killer Coke
P.O. BOX 1004, Cooper Station,
New York, NY 10276-1004
http://www.killercoke.org/
The realization that U.S.-based multinational
corporations like Coca-Cola can get away with murder prompted
Corporate Campaign, Inc.(CCI), working closely with the International
Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), to organize the worldwide Campaign
to Stop Killer Coke. In July 2001, the ILRF co-sponsored a lawsuit
on behalf of the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL and its members,
charging that Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or otherwise
directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence
and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced
trade union leaders."
Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program,
POB 3401,
Park City, UT 84060
Phone: (435) 649-0535
http://www.anelder.org/
The Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program started
through the efforts of Linda Myers of Park City, Utah. In the
late 1980s Meyers, an artist, was stunned by the intricacies
of the patterns at a rug show displaying the weavings by the
Elders from the Big Reservation. Touched by the stories of the
Navajo people as told by Grace Smith Yellowhammer and Rose Hulligan
during that rug show, Meyers soon became very involved in gathering
donated food, clothing, firewood and simple medicines and was
driving to the reservation in Northern Arizona to deliver them
to Elders living traditionally on the Land. The Program supports
350 traditional Elders who live in the Northern portion of Arizona
and Southern Utah. The activities of the Program focus on helping
traditional Elders live on the Land in the ways of Dine', as
they have for thousands of years. This Program is assisted by
traditional Dine' people who serve as coordinators in various
parts of the reservation to help the organization determine the
needs of the Elders in their own culture and lifestyle.
Citizens United for Rehabilitation of
Errants
P.O. Box 2310 Washington, DC 20013-2310
202-789-2126
http://www.curenational.org/
In early December an 80-page report by
a group called Grassroots Leadership revealed that the nation's
largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America,
had used campaign contributions and intimate ties with conservative
politicians to legislate harsher prison sentences for nonviolent
crimes in order to boost demand for prisons. The same report
detailed how the CCA, which pays its largely untrained workers
and guards a pittance, bilks money off prisoners through outrageously
high phone charges and other incarceration fees. National CURE
(Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants) is a grassroots
organization of prisoners, families of prisoners, former prisoners
and concerned citizens working to reform the prison system .
The Kopkind Colony,
158 Kopkind Rd,
Guilford, Vt 05301
802-254-4859
john@afterstonewall.com
Above Weatherhead Hollow Pond, a few
miles from Brattleboro, Vermont, we find the Kopkind Colony,
a summer project begun as a living memorial to Andrew Kopkind,
whose standing as the best radical journalist of his generation
is lastingly set in Verso's collection of his writings, edited
by JoAnn Wypijewski, The Thirty Years' Wars . On the theory that
we can't act without thought and can't think without rest, the
Colony has, since 1999, been bringing left journalists and activists
together for a week of seminars, cross-generational exchange,
good food and fun. Colony is not geared for solitary work but
for collective engagement. It's free for all the participants.
Every year the colony holds summer sessions involving seven younger
journalists and activists and two to four veterans of the same
occupations. Every year someone says, "It changed my life".
Every year it holds public events for the community-free movies
and speakers and an annual small fundraising lunch with special
guests and, as always, vivid discussions. Speakers and mentors
to the colony have included Tariq Ali, Patricia Williams, Rabab
Abdul Hadi, Robin D. G. Kelley, Grace Paley, Robert Pollin, Makani
Themba Nixon, Ron Nixon, Mandy Carter, Doug Lummis, Kevin Alexander
Gray, Margaret Cerullo, Alisa Klein, Mike Marqusee, Nabil Abraham,
and Kopkind's close friend, CP coeditor Alexander Cockburn .
This past summer the themes were internationalism and resistance
and, in a special collaboration with the Eqbal Ahmad Initiative
at Hampshire College, the question of Palestine. Participants
hailed from Uganda and Pakistan, from Dearborn and the West Bank,
and from all over the US.
Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and
Justice
P.O. Box 12149
Olympia, WA 98508
http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org/
On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a young
activist from Evergreen College, was crushed to death by an Israel
Defense Forces bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition
of a Palestinian home in the town of Rafah, Gaza. Rachel's killers
have never been brought to justice. The US Congress has never
launched an investigation. The Bush administration bought the
Israeli line that Rachel was responsible for her own death. In
one frightful instant Rachel's parents, Cindi and Craig, had
their hearts broken and were transformed into human rights organizers.
Craig quit his job in North Carolina and he and Cindi moved back
to Olympia to campaign for justice for their daughter and for
the Palestinians living under the Occupation. The Rachel Corrie
Foundation funds their important work. "Rachel was not an
Israeli. She was, as a member of the International Solidarity
Movement, a member of the international civil society, as we
all are," says Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against
Home Demolitions. "In her actions she affirmed her responsibility
for upholding the inherent dignity and equal rights of all people,
including their right to a nationality. She opposed non-violently
the violence that occupation does the Palestinians. "The
threshold of what is outrageous has reached unimaginable heights
in the Occupied Territories. Little moves us anymore. The demolition
of 60 Palestinian homes in the Rafah section of Gaza where Rachel
worked made barely a ripple when it happened a year ago. 2400
Palestinians have died in the past two years, a quarter of them
children and youth, and 22,000 have been injured. Thirty percent
of Palestinian children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition.
500,000 olive and fruit trees have been uprooted or cut down.
Israel is today imprisoning the Palestinians behind a 500-mile
wall that is much longer, higher and more fortified than was
the Berlin Wall. It's all happening before our eyes and-who cares?
Rachel cared."
Peace Action New Mexico
226 Fiesta Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Peace Action New Mexico was founded in
1998 in the birthplace of the nuclear nightmare. They are committed
to abolishing nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction,
redirecting excessive military expenditures to domestic investment,
ending global weapons trafficking, preventing the erosion of
civil liberties both in this country and elsewhere, preventing
the militarization of space, and fostering non-military solutions
to international conflicts. It's a grassroots, member-supported
not-for-profit outfit . In 2003 Peace Action NM sponsored numerous
large rallies and protests against the war in Iraq and Bush domestic
policies, drawing 8,000 protesters to their February 15 rally.
"Responding to email alerts, our members made as many as
1100 calls daily to our representatives in Congress in the run
up to the vote on Iraq, resulting in Sen. Jeff Bingagam and Rep.
Tom Udall finally voting NO on the resolution," says Beryl
Schwartz. "As part of our educational program on our issues,
we brought many speakers to northern New Mexico, including Dr.
Helen Caldicott, Rahul Mahajan, , former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney,
Bruce Gagnon, David Barsamian, Mario Galvan, Damacio Lopez and
most recently CounterPunch co-editor, Jeffrey St. Clair."
In 2004, Peace Action NM will be campaigning for a new foreign
policy and for the use of verifiable voting machines.
Cascadia Wildlands Project
N.E.S.T.
POB 10455 Eugene, OR 97440
541.434.1463
Early this month Craig Beneville, a longtime
friend of the CounterPunch editors, fell from an old Douglas-fir
tree near the Molalla River in western Oregon. He died before
they got him to the hospital. Craig had been working on a project
to locate evidence of red tree voles and other endangered species
in forests slated for logging under the Clinton/Bush forest plans.
Last year, Craig and his colleagues at the Cascadia Wildlands
Project launched the Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team (NEST),
a group of forest watch experts committed to protecting the habitat
of rare species associated with late-successional forests. NEST
enforces environmental protections built into the Northwest Forest
Plan-specifically the Survey and Manage Strategy. The on-the-ground
information NEST develops will be critical to the CWP's work
to stop old-growth timber sales and protect habitat for lesser
known species. The Survey and Manage Strategy of the Northwest
Forest Plan requires the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management
to conduct surveys for certain rare and endemic wildlife species
that depend on old-growth habitat, and protect them where they
are found. NEST has been highly successful at using the Survey
and Manage Strategy to protect species. Habitat protection for
the Red Tree Vole (RTV), an arboreal mammal that lives in the
upper canopy of old-growth Douglas fir trees, has received considerable
attention. NEST climbing surveys have been far more effective
than agency surveys. For instance, NEST typically detects almost
75% more RTV nest sites. Recently, NEST surveys detected over
two dozen RTV nests at the Straw Devil timber Sale, located in
the Middle Fork District of the Willamette National Forest. Forest
Service surveys found zero nests. The timber sale has since been
halted.
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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