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June 24, 2002
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
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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Published March 15, 2002
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 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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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
June 24,
2002
Caught Between Borders in a
Borderless World:
Third
World Migrants Face Fortress Europe
by Behzad Yaghmaian
European leaders meet this weekend in Seville,
Spain to discuss a new EU policy against "illegal"
migration from the poor countries of the South. Migrants from
poor countries are presented as a threat to national security.
They are blamed for increased crime, decline in standard of living,
and increased social tension in Europe.
Ironically, the call to curb migration
is not led by the isolationist far-right parties. The liberal
parties and those embracing the idea of a European Union submerged
in the world economy are leading the move towards a fortress
Europe. Tony Blair, leader of the "third way," is charging
ahead to create a much tougher immigration policy. Using the
threat of cutting foreign aid to  Third World countries that fail to curb
migration to the North, Blair and his counterparts hope to push
the burden of border policing to migrant sending nations of the
South.
A dual border policy is emerging in Europe.
European states are aggressively pushing for the opening of borders
to the movement of goods and capital into the E.U. and the closing
of borders for labor from the Third World. In the meantime, for
nearly two decades, socialist and conservative administrations
across Europe have been retreating from the long-established
state commitment to the public and the provision of social safety
net. They push for cutbacks in social security; state support
for public education and healthcare, unemployment insurance;
and all that made European social democracy a reality in the
past.
Facing these developments, two distinct
responses emerged to by the public. Angered and disenchanted
by changes beyond their control, the youth, students, environmentalists,
the anarchists, and radical unionists joined a growing global
movement against the injustices of the new dominant paradigm.
They protested against globalization and its institutions: challenged
the use of child labor and slave-like production conditions in
the South, called for poverty eradication and debt forgiveness,
and demanded respect for the environment. The anti-globalization
protests in Prague and Genova were the open manifestations of
the response to the new policy by the youth.
Less idealist and impacted more directly
by the cutbacks, others responded differently. Helplessly observing
the erosion of their standard of living and their future, the
older members of the working class, the unemployed, and those
with no hope of a better future focused their anger on an easier
target_immigrants from the South. Attacks on foreigners increased,
anti-immigrant parties gained momentum, and people from the South
became new scapegoats for the demise of the old European social
contract.
Facing these reactions by their citizens_the
youth targeting globalization, and those demanding a curb on
migration_a new consensus emerged among European states. Continuing
to push for the policies of globalization, parties of all persuasions
moved towards controlling migration. A seemingly perfect formula
emerged. Conceding to the demands o,f the workers negatively
affected by cutbacks, states sought to create social peace by
targeting illegal migration. While continuing with their advocacy
of free trade and investment and deregulated borders, and cutback
in social services, they sought new alliances with supporters
of isolationism and the hatred of "others." The Seville
Conference is a manifestation of this dual policy.
Blair and others hope to find a new European-wide
social contract. While heading to the demands of increasingly
globalized European corporations, they seek to appease those
who, unlike the anti-globalization forces, find migrants as the
source of their despair. The dual border policy is hoped to help
states neutralize the anti-globalization movement amidst the
widening of social conflict in the continent. Migrants from the
South are targeted to carry the brunt of the burden caused by
the European social and economic policies of the past two decades:
the death of the old social contract.
But fortress Europe will not end migration.
The fortification of borders and the erection of new walls to
block the inflow of migrants will lead to the emergence of an
increasing population of 'illegal migrants,' trafficking in people,
and other forms of illegal border crossings. Facing the closing
of the borders, an increasing number of migrants will be forced
to turn to traffickers to bypass restrictive immigration policy
in Europe. For many migrants who are eager to escape poverty
or political and social insecurity, and who are unaware or unmindful
of the pitfalls of irregular migration, it seems worth paying
a fee to try their luck, thereby allowing their dream for a better
life to be exploited by traffickers.
Having escaped from economic and political
violence at home, an increasing number of migrants will be subjected
to new forms of violence. The Strait of Gibraltar, River Sava,
Adriatic Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea, will continue to be
the new graveyards of desperate migrants attempting to escape
the violence of everyday life and reach increasingly elusive
safety in Europe. A new policy is urgently needed to halt this
human tragedy.
Behzad Yaghmaian
is a Professor of Economics at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
He is the author of Social
Change in Iran: an eyewitness account of Dissent, Defiance and
a New Movement for Human Rights. He can be reached at:
behzad_yaghmaian@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
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Sex,
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