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June 6, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
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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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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Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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June 6, 2002
White House
vs. EPA
Political Hot Air & Global
Warming
by
Michael Colby
Forget the World Cup soccer matches. If you really
want some good sporting entertainment try tuning into the global
warming scrum going on between the White House and its Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).
Late last week the EPA joined the common
sense club by issuing a report to the United Nation's acknowledging
that global warming was, indeed, a reality and a problem. That
position, believe it or not, is out of step with the Bush White
House, which has been chirping the corporate tune that global
warming is a mere fantasy cooked up by starry-eyed greens.
So when the Bush brass saw the damage
this new report was doing to their relationship with its coveted
right wing, they sent Bush himself out to deliver one of his
snide comments and a smirk to boot.
"I read the report put out by the
bureaucracy," Bush declared -- with extra emphasis on "bureaucracy"
-- to reporters yesterday in an overly staged little exchange.
Then he gave his customary smirk, all but rolled his eyes, and
effectively cut the legs out from under the EPA's report.
The right wing cheered. The Wall Street
Journal, in fact, leads its editorial page with a bruising attack
on EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman for what it calls
another attempt to "sandbag her boss again." To read
how the Journal depicts Whitman you'd think she was Rachel Carson,
not a conservative who's towed the line on the Bush administration's
peripatetic attempts to dismantle the nation's environmental
laws.
"Whether it was sloppy language,
a runaway EPA, or truly a change in position," opines the
Journal, "you'd think the Administration would know better
than to hand the green lobby such an easy target."
Don't worry, fellas, the "green
lobby" has plenty of targets. This is about the reality
of the single biggest environmental problem plaguing the world.
In fact, while the Journal editorial writers were busy hacking
away at Whitman's EPA for merely hinting at the existence of
global warming, the Japanese government announced that it was
signing on to the Kyoto Protocols.
After months of debate and intense lobbying
by Japan's largest polluting corporations, Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi made this level-headed statement in support
of international action on global warming: "In order to
ensure the effectiveness of measures against global warming,
it is essential that all countries make efforts to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions."
Kiozumi also pledged to lobby the U.S.,
the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases and, currently,
the staunchest opponent of meaningful solutions to the problem.
Bush, for example, still advocates "voluntary" emissions
reductions for corporations.
The Bush administration's spokesman,
Ari Fleischer, gave the Japanese and the rest of the world a
sobering reminder of just how difficult it would be to convince
them to do anything on this issue. Fleischer fell back on the
administration's standard rhetoric on the issue by declaring
that "there is considerable uncertainty" with regards
to global warming. While considerable uncertainty may be the
case within the White House, the rest of the world has long since
come to grips with problem.
The more cynical among us may believe
that Bush was just trying to have it both ways with global warming.
First, his administration would release the EPA report acknowledging
its existence, thus giving greens something to cheer about and
at least momentarily quell the growing distaste for Bush abroad.
Then, the administration would flip the right wing a bone by
sending their main man out to throw water all over the cheering
greens.
If that was the plan, it was a clumsy
plan since Bush has now managed to alienate both side of the
debate. The more likely scenario is that, like the intelligence
snafus surrounding 9/11, the right hand of the Bush team didn't
know what the left hand was up to. Not exactly the buttoned-down
business style Bush promised to bring to the White House.
The New York Times reported that Rush
Limbaugh, the right wing's looniest and loudest mouth, spent
considerable time on the Bush team's handling of the global warming
issue during his show on Tuesday. Limbaugh sided with the cynical
theory and believed the Bush White House concocted the whole
affair to steal some green thunder from the Democrats.
"All of this takes Al Gore's No.
1 issue away from him," Limbaugh told his ditto-head audience.
Limbaugh also told his listeners that he thought the presidential
wannabe Democrats were "banging their heads against the
wall" because Bush stole an issue from them.
Other conservatives didn't see it the
Limbaugh way. Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise
Institute told the Times that he thought Bush's team realized
they were caught in a jam after the release of the report and
had to do something to correct the incongruities.
"It was obvious to him that it's
not tenable to say yes, we're aggressively killing the planet
and then not do something aggressive about it," Horner told
the Times. "Our fear was that he would have to take severe
action."
And what a fear that must have been.
Michael Colby
is the editor of Wild
Matters. He can be reached at mcolby@wildmatters.org.
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