Notes & Sources

5. How to Stop Terrorism? Stop Being Terrorists!

William Blum's Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II offers accounts of the U.S.-engineered coups in Chile, Guatemala, and Indonesia. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated is an important collection of essays by Gore Vidal (as a bonus, get a handy twenty-page chart chronicling U.S. military interventions around the world since 1948). For a critical look at current U.S. foreign policy log onto Foreign Policy In Focus' Web site: www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org.

Israel is one of the United States's largest arms importers. In the last decade, the United States has sold Israel $7.2 billion in weaponry and military equipment, $762 million through Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), more than $6.5 billion through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program (William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan "An Arms Trade Resource Center Fact Sheet," May 2002). The Middle East Research and Information Project has a primer on the current uprising in Palestine and a primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: www.merip.org. Peace Now, the Israeli peace organization, believes that "only peace will bring security to Israel and ensure the future of our people." It presses the Israeli government to seek peace through negotiations and mutual compromise with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinian people (www.peacenow.org). The Arab Association for Human Rights (www.arabhra.org) works to promote and protect the political, civil, economic, and cultural rights of the Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel.

The U.S. energy consumption figures come from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration and the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report. For a critical look at U.S. consumption habits, read Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor & David Horsey. There are many guides to turning good intentions into everyday actions: Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge and Why We Must, by Kalle Lasn; The Complete Idiot's Guide to Simple Living, by Georgene Lockwood; 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, by The Earth Works Group; and The Better World Handbook by Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler and Brett Johnson.

The figures on clean water come from the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Health Organization. Join Public Citizen's campaign to protect universal access to clean and affordable drinking water by keeping it in public hands (www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/).

The stories about sweatshop workers come from the watchdog group National Labor Committee and UNITE!, the union that represents garment workers in the U.S. and Canada. Hook up with them (www.nlcnet.org and www.behindthelabel.org) or with one of the many antisweatshop campaigns on the web: Sweatshopwatch; Maquila Solidarity Network; and United Students Against Sweatshops.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries at least 120 million on a full-time basis. The Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch documents the plight of forced and bonded child labor. Global March Against Child Labor is trying to eradicate child labor. Order your free anti-child-labor poster for hanging in your classroom, community center, or office here. You can also sign an anti-child-labor petition.

The site www.iraqbodycount.org maintains a database of civilian deaths in the war on Iraq. "Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports," it says. "Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication."

The statistic on smart bombs in the Iraq war are taken from Jim Krane's report in the Associated Press, "U.S. Precision Weapons Not Foolproof," April 4, 2003.

According to Peace Action, the U.S. has more than 10,500 nuclear warheads in its stockpile. Log onto their Web site to learn more and campaign for a safer world: www.peace-action.org. The Plowshares movement has long used nonviolent civil disobedience to disarm our country, www.plowsharesactions.org. The Chemical Weapons Working Group is organizing to ensure the safe disposal of munitions and other chemical warfare and toxic material around the U.S.: www.cwwg.org.

If you would like to learn more about America's illustrious history of upending democracy and protecting cruel dictators, there is perhaps no better place to start in terms of declassified government documents than the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Their Web site address is: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.