City Lights Books ("Home" to the Beat Generation of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, 261 Columbus Avenue, North Beach, San Francisco, California) and Freedom Voices invite you to celebrate the release of a new book, September 11 and the US War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke, at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday 24 March 2002. Editors Roger Burbach and Ben Clarke will be present, as will several contributing writers, including syndicated media critic Norman Solomon and poet Aurora Levins Morales. They will exchange information and ideas and celebrate creative resistance to the new "war on terrorism".
September 11 and the US War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke is a collection of essays by activists, journalists, historians and political theorists, which outlines the US policies that contributed to the tragedy of 11 September 2001, the consequences of the new war and suggestions for options and alternatives, such as grassroots organizing linked to the anti-globalization movement and the strengthening of institutions like the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.
Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! calls this powerful collection "the best anthology of essays on September 11".
You may purchase the book via the internet by clicking here. For further information, you may email here.
The US is no closer to ending the internecine conflict in Afghanistan than it was over two decades ago when Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser of Jimmy Carter, jump-started the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by sending in US arms and agents.
A few days ago, on 19 March 2002, US troops in Afghanistan were attacked from several directions with mortars, small arms and rocket-propelled grenades just 20 miles from the border with Pakistan. According to General Hagenbeck in a Pentagon briefing, "our forces returned fire, with B-1s and AC-130 gunships". The New York Times reported that Hegenbeck wasn't "clear whether the Americans were caught in fighting between Afghan factions or had come under attack from Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters". He made no mention of civilian casualties caused by the deadly US firepower, which now number well over 4,000 since the US air war began.
Bush has declared, the "war on terror" will go on indefinitely. US bases are being set up in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, all unstable post-Soviet republics that possess or border on enormous petroleum reserves. The FARC guerrillas in Colombia, who have been fighting for over three decades, are now labelled "narco-terrorists", requiring US intervention. And at least 660 US soldiers are now in the southern Muslim region of the Philippines, facing what Walden Bello calls a "witches' brew of insurgents, terrorists, bandits, warring communities and inhospitable jungle" (see The Nation, 18 March 2002).
Meanwhile, the pro-petro vice-president of the US, Dick Cheney, returned to Washington (or his designated "secure bunker") after failing completely in his efforts to get the Middle Eastern Gulf countries to support a US war against Iraq and the "axis of evil". Instead, he was forced to deal with a deadly crisis in the Middle East - the Israeli occupation of Palestine. (The 30,000 US dollar defibrillator he needs to keep what must be a petroleum-like lubricant flowing in his veins probably faced its most strenuous challenge.) Confronting the real world, Cheney, on behalf of the Bush administration, retreated from his ridiculous rhetoric that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority were responsible for the violence in the region, even stating that he, Cheney, would risk his heart and health by meeting Arafat after repeated disclaimers by the Bush administration that it would never do so as long as the Palestinians used "terror" to resist Israeli occupation.
There is a growing and vociferous minority in the US opposed to the infinite war of George W. (Perhaps the W stands for wicked, similar to the E word that he is so prone to bandy about.) The huge audiences and lack of standing room whenever Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky speak around the country, even in small Midwestern communities, bear testimony to the growing disenchantment of the US public with George W. and Petro Cheney. We will soon be the majority, confronting an imbecile and bellicose clique that stole the US presidency in the Supreme Court after losing the popular election by over a million votes.
*Roger Burbach is director of Global Alternatives, Center for the Study of the Americas (Censa), Berkeley, USA.