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February
18, 2002
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
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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8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
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:
Nuke 'Em
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:
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February 18,
2002
Iraq Roadtrip:
Caught
in the DMZ
By Ramzi Kysia
The drive from Basra to Safwan, Iraq, is eerily
apocalyptic. In the Demilitarised Zone, the Iraqi desert is
an odd mix of greenhouse farms competing for space with decrepit
and bombed-out concrete factories and mills. To the east run
a series of rebuilt plastics factories whose stackfires bellow
acrid, black smoke over the whole landscape. Burned, rusting
cars dot the sides of the road on this, the northern tip of the
infamous "highway of death". This is the road along
which the US massacred thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers
after an armistice had been signed at the end of "Desert
Storm".
A stone's throw from the Kuwaiti border,
Safwan was once a large farming town that traded with the whole
Gulf. Today, the sight of strangers is enough to bring out seemingly
every child for miles around to chase after our car and beg
for money. Throughout Iraq, war and drought and sanctions have
resulted in a 30 per cent drop in crop production. After the
destruction of Iraq's vaccine facilities by UN weapons inspectors,
hoof and mouth disease ran rampant, killing over 1 million cattle.
Since 1980, half the date trees - over
15 million trees - have died. There are 14 new crop diseases,
and, since 1998, the screw worm parasite, which is not native
to the Middle East, has suddenly appeared in Iraq to devastate
the remaining farms.
Mohason Mehsen's home and farm in Safwan
could almost be beautiful. His courtyard boasts a garden surrounded
by old brickwork standing under a huge and stunning sky. But
the bricks are patched with cheap concrete, and Mohason is an
angry and depressed man. His wife refuses to leave the house,
and spends her days crying.
Their son, Nadham, is dying.
Born just after "Desert Storm,"
Nadham has been seriously ill since he was a year old. It could
have been exposure to war pollutants or depleted uranium while
he was in the womb. It may simply be bad luck.
Nadham's been diagnosed with Xeroderma
Pigmentosum, a rare genetic disease that causes extreme sensitivity
to the UV radiation in sunlight. He only has partial vision
left in one eye. His face is a pockmarked ruin of open, bloody
sores. His nose has rotted away. When he comes out of the house,
he must hide from the sun under the black robes of his grandmother's
abaya.
Nadham's condition is treatable, but
not in Safwan.
There is medication that can help, but
the family cannot afford it. Mohason has been to the Iraqi Ministry
of Health, the Red Cross, ICRC, UNIKOM, UNOHCI, and others,
but to no avail. Nadham's story has been told on Iraqi and French
TV. NBC did a segment on him for American viewers. No help came.
Mohason has no message to take to the
rest of the world. He made no plea to me. Through our translator,
he told me: "What are you going to do? Nothing. There's
no help in America. There's no help anywhere. We are Muslim.
We believe in God more than American people, more than European
people. Only God can help us."
As we left the Mehsen's home, their neighbour
Hussein Sultan ran to our car carrying his baby daughter, Barah.
She has a heart defect. She needs corrective surgery. When we
told him we weren't doctors, his face fell.
"Can't you help my child?"
he quietly asked us.
Our driver grimly informed us as we drove
back to Basra that he was certain whatever homes we visited
in Safwan, every one of them would have a Nadham, a Barah.
Once, once upon a time, there was and
was not a people on whom catastrophe after catastrophe were
driven, and no help came.
Ramzi Kysia
is a Muslim-American peace activist who serves on the board of
directors for the Education for Peace in Iraq Centre. He recently
spent two months in Iraq as part of a Voices
in the Wilderness peace mission trying to stop the war.
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