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January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
January
22, 2002
Brendan
Cooney
Moby-Dick
and the Hunt
for Osama bin Laden
Rick Giombetti
Progressive
Pols for Enron?
Judith
Resnik
Invading
the Courts?
Kevin
Alexander Gray
The
Crisis in Black Leadership
January
21, 2002
Marjorie
Cohn
Will
Walker's Words
Be Used Against Him?
Ahmad
Faruqui
MLK
Jr. and the Palestinians
January
19. 2002
Jordan
Green
Enron
Stole Our Future
January
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The
Enron Model
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Group Says Guantanamo Prisoners Must
Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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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Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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January
28, 2002
Kandahar Relishes
Its New Freedom
By Alexander Cockburn
Further evidence of the bright era now dawning
in Afghanistan: life is returning to normalcy in Kandahar after
the grim supervision of the Taleban clerics. On accounts by Tim
Reed in the London Times and more recently John Lee Anderson
in the New Yorker, joyful sons of sodom are to be seen driving
along the boulevards of the ancient city, their catamites demurely
installed in the passenger seat. Reid knowledgeably discloses
that Kandahar has long been fabled as the San Francisco of South
Asia. So delirious are the peculiar enthusiasms of the Pashtun
that local wisdom has it that birds fly over the city using only
one wing, the other covering their posterior.
It seems that the rape of young boys
by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising
the Taleban, in yet another manifestation of that intolerance
that has so aroused the indignation of many liberals, prompting
them to cheer on the B-52s. There was a famous fracas in 1994
when two warlords faced off in a dispute over which of them would
have the right to rape an attractive young fellow who had fallen
into their clutches. There was gunplay in which civilians were
killed. Eventually the lad was freed by Mullah Omar's group and
the one-eyed zealot was promptly inundated with requests to help
in other such disputes.
The inhabitants of Kabul, who had seen
their city devastated and thousands killed in the war between
muj warlords similarly yearned for the security, albeit puritanical,
offered by the Taleban. Farmers and poor city dwellers who had
seen mass rapes of their daughters by the warlords' armed rabble,
strongly supported the Taleban, reckoning that the compulsory
burkas were no bad thing if it betokened the safety of women
going out in public.
One of Omar's first decrees when the
Taleban took power in 1994 was the suppression of homosexuality.
Accused sodomites endured Trial by Wall Push. Reid offers the
example of one such trial in February of 1998 when "three
men sentenced to death for sodomy in Kandahar were taken to the
base of a huge mud and brick wall, which was pushed over by tank."
Two of them died, but in an instructive example of how the Taleban
tempered its stern ways with a acknowledgement of the captious
workings of Allah, one crawled away to live and love another
day.
But now pre-Taleban normalcy is now returning
to Kandahar, just as it is to the rest of Afghanistan, where
tens of thousands are fleeing to Pakistan to escape banditry
and starvation. "One can see the pairs returning",
Reid reports. "Usually a heavily bearded man, seated next
to, or walking with, a clean-shaven, fresh faced youth."
He adds that "it is usually a terrible fate for the boys
concerned" but that they accede out of poverty. "Once
the boy falls into the man's clutches - nearly always men with
a wife and family - he is marked for life, although the Kandaharis
accept these relationships as part of their culture."
"They say birds flew with both wings
with the Taleban," Muhammad tells Reid. "But not any
more." Is it not stirring to learn of such fruits of Pax
Americana!
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