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CounterPunch
December
21, 2002
American Journal
Bad Days at
Nordstroms; Hard Times at Hardees; Conditional Amnesty for Meleagris
Gallopavo
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
We can reckon what the White House tacticians
were telling the boss earlier in the month as they gazed down
the tunnel towards 2003, hoping for brighter economic prospects.
No light at the end. Such grim economic tidings required a sacrifice
to please the gods, so they led Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill
to the vice president's office, where Cheney axed Bono's weeping
friend on the spot.
The gods weren't propitiated. On the
front lines of capitalism here in Fortress America the news is
bad. For these past three years a young Friend of CounterPunch
has been a champion salesperson in the Nordstrom retail chain
in the Pacific North West, selling fashionable garments to the
younger crowd. This year she elected to do battle for the economy
in a prime Nordstrom outlet in downtown Portland, Oregon. Her
dispatches from the trenches were bleak from the start, and have
been getting bleaker as the holiday season progresses. The parking
lots are half empty, the consumers fretful and flighty. For the
first time in her Nordstrom career she failed to meet her quotas.
It was a bust.
At the other end of the country I spoke
to my old friend Wilbur, car junker and owner of a small trailer
park in South Carolina. "Alex," he hollered down the
phone, "this morning I went down to McDonald's for breakfast
and the place was empty. So was Hardees next door. People are
scared."
If Nordstroms and McDonalds are both
doing badly, you know you've got problems. The signs are everywhere.
Here in California, a state with an economy that ranks in the
world's top ten, the governor is facing a huge deficit in the
state budget and the two major public university systems have
just announced fierce fee hikes for students. 2002 saw small
investors savagely reminded that Wall Street is a cruel place
where minnows die. 2003 is shaping up as a year when the real
meaning of recession may bite home.
Mind you, only a fool says he knows for
sure which way the economy is going to jump, but we've had eight
straight quarters of decline and the markets don't look so good.
It could be we're headed into a double dip recession.
The Democrats have no plan and much of
the time manage to stand to the right of the Republicans on matters
such as balancing the budget. Amid almost weekly examples of
corporate looting and executive criminality unrivaled in the
fragrant history of American capitalism, the Democrats have been
unable to seize the initiative, which is scarcely surprising
since the party has been soundly bribed into complaisance by
these same corporate criminals.
No Turkey
Shoot
A flock of wild turkeys strutted into
my front yard here in Humboldt county, displaying the same faulty
sense of timing that brought their forebears to this same yard
three years ago on the eve of Thanksgiving. They like to jump
up and down under my holly tree trying to get what berries have
been spared by the robins. Talk about a turkey shoot! This could
have been Ground Zero for Meleagris gallopavo but as I was leveling
my 12-gauge I remembered I was scheduled to pick up a 24-lb turkey
raised by a 4-H kid in Hydesville which I bought at the Humboldt
county fair, plus my yearly batch of two dozen pheasants from
a friend in Rohnerville. How much poultry can a man, even a CounterPuncher,
have in the freezer?
Also the wild turkeys looked a bit bedraggled,
as well they might, considering they'd been weathering some of
the worst storms ever seen on our storm-lashed chunk of coastline
below Cape Mendocino. We've been without power for a week now,
the exclusive print edition of CounterPunch (yes,
subscribe NOW, and it's NOT TOO LATE to buy your friends their
subs for Christmas) coaxed into life between Petrolia
and Jeffrey St Clair's bunker in Oregon City with the help of
my Onan generator (yes, that's its name, one to conjure within
the generator business) then sent on its way via email to our
printer in Skokie, Illinois.
Not like the old days, I told our youthful
business manager Becky Grant and our friend Scott Handleman and
then held forth to them on the production of newsletters and
kindred radical periodicals back in the Sixties.
As the storm winds rattled the window
panes and the lamps guttered low, warming the room to the tints
of a LaTour painting, and as Becky's youngest, Oliver, gamboled
with Jasper the Wonderdog I sang of the ancient days of 7 Days,
a weekly I was involved with at the end of the Sixties in London.
There were about 20 people in the collective, with all decisions,
down to the refinenements of punctuation and the proper use of
the semi-colon, settled by debate and democratic vote, 50 per
cent men, 50 per cent women. Democracy at that level is very
tiring.
Late one night as I labored over the
photographs with our design team I heard a crackling on the aged
stairs of the old building on Shavers Place, a hundred yards
from Piccadilly Circus, where we were perched on the top floor.
I pulled open the door, to be confronted by a sheet of flame.
It later turned out that some group of Ulster-based Orangemen
had taken exception to our measured posture on the Irish question
and had decided to torch the building.
We decided to abandon ship. Carrying
boxes of valuable prints from Magnum we walked the narrow catwalk
that led to the next building, and kicked in the window. There
was a screech of alarm as a couple of Palestinians who were working
late on their magazine saw the window burst in and thought the
Israeli commandos were about to follow. By dawn we had the pages
made up and then it was a rush to the train station, then an
hour down to the printers. So different now; so much easier,
so much cheaper. Who says there isn't progress in human affairs,
though I do miss the inky excitement of those old hot type days.
Out of my yard strutted Meleagris gallopavo,
spared for the nonce. I'll be brining the 24-pounder for 24 hours
and then maybe spit roasting the portly bird.
Yesterday's
Features
Sean Carter
The Bush
Rape Story
Why is the Media Ignoring Zippergate 2?
Francis Boyle
What Are
Bush's Intentions Toward Palestine?
David Vest
Meet the
New Southern Strategy
Same as the Old Southern Strategy
Sayed Moustafa Al-qazwini
Will Bush Betray Iraqis Once Again?
Mahbubul Karin (Sohel)
Is This
Really Happening?
Mass Arrests of Muslim and Jewish Immigrants
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
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December 10,
2002
Carol Norris
Help Wanted:
US Government Looking for a Few Qualified Applicants
Tom Gorman
With Liberators
Like These, Who Needs Conquerors?
Linda Heard
Spies,
Snitches and Eyes in the Sky
Josh Ruebner
Striking
with Impunity
Joanne Mariner
You Have
No Right to Remain Silent
December 9,
2002
Adam Engel
Great Expectations:
an Immodest Proposal
Roldan Tomasz
Suárez
What Really
Happened in Altamira Plaza?
Robert Jensen
Bob Woodward's
Bush Hagiography
William Hughes
Berrigan's
Final Warning
Uri Avnery
Why Does
the Leopard Change His Spots?
Netanyahu and Likud
Gary Leupp
Religious
Intolerance Then and Now
Hammond Guthrie
In a
Moment's Time
(for Philip Berrigan)
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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
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