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January
4, 2002
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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!)
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TO
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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January
4, 2002
Anti-War = Anti-Globalization
By C.G. Estabrook
Not the least of the services that the September
11 attackers rendered to the Bush administration (and the business
interests that back it) was to provide a basis for propaganda
against the anti-globalization movement. From the point of view
of Bush and his backers, the anti-globalization movement was
a serious threat, but after September 11, US government propaganda
could associate it with terrorism. The point was made explicit
by the transfer of this month's meeting of the World Economic
Forum from its accustomed place in Davos, Switzerland, to New
York City. It is a conscious juxtaposition of the ruins of the
World Trade Center and the masters of world trade, the working
people who died in those office buildings obscenely translated
into cover for the exploitation of poor people around the world.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
were not overstating when they chose as the title of their recent
book about the demonstrations in Seattle two years ago, FIVE
DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD. The events in that city in
November of 1999 brought to view the breadth and depth of opposition
to business dominance of the world -- what became in the next
months and years, through successive demonstrations in Washington,
Quebec, Sweden, and Genoa -- the largest world-wide mass movement
in history.
Corporate media did their best to reduce
it to "Teamsters and turtles" and focus attention on
"black bloc" diversions. (By the meeting of the G8
governments in Genoa last July, many of these so-called anarchists
seem to have been police spies and provocateurs). But the executive
committee of the ownership class knew who these people were,
and just how dangerous they were. At Genoa a fascist police
attack was engineered -- not against the black bloc, but against
the mainstream peaceful protesters, who were savagely beaten
and jailed.
These are the people whom the captains
of industry and finance fear. The media, which they own, said
that the protesters had no plans -- ignoring their serious and
extensive critique of "neoliberalism," the fashionable
name for business-control of the world and the exclusion of democratic
limitation of business through government.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, the
most thoughtful member of this administration (frighteningly
enough), occasionally blurts out the truth. He sees the situation
but not the contradictions: "We're selling a product,"
he says. "That product we are selling is democracy. It's
the free enterprise system, the American value system."
He seems to think those three things
are identical. But democracy and "the free enterprise system"
-- capitalism -- are contradictories. The former presumes equality
-- one person, one vote; but the latter depends on inequality
-- your influence in society depends on how much wealth you command.
And "the American value system"
is thoroughly ambiguous. It should presumably mean the Enlightenment
ideals that were said to animate the revolution of 1776 and are
expressed in (parts of) the Declaration of Independence and the
Bill of Rights. The history of the US should be written in terms
of the attempts of those few with wealth and power to make sure
that the implications of those ideals (e.g., "all men are
created equal") are not extended to people other than themselves,
and in the struggles of poor and working people, of minorities
and women, to see that they are -- a contest far from over, or
even clear in the direction of its outcome.
Actual American values, the values that
animate our public discourse and culture, were described early
in the last century by William James as "the exclusive worship
of the bitch-goddess success. That -- with the squalid cash
interpretation put on the word success -- is our national disease."
Of course we salve our troubled conscience
by calling it "meritocracy," but, as one contemporary
commentator puts it, "Instead of the comforting rationale
that merit breeds success and the successful have merit, a more
rational approach would be to speculate that in our society wealth
and power tend to accrue to those who are ruthless, cunning,
avaricious, self-seeking, lacking in sympathy and compassion,
subservient to authority and willing to abandon principle for
material gain..."
As John Pilger recently wrote in the
NEW STATESMAN, "Since 11 September, the 'war on terrorism'
has provided a pretext for the rich countries, led by the United
States, to further their dominance over world affairs. By spreading
'fear and respect,' as a WASHINGTON POST reporter put it, America
intends to see off challenges to its uncertain ability to control
and manage the 'global economy,' the euphemism for the progressive
seizure of markets and resources by the G8 rich nations. This,
not the hunt for a man in a cave in Afghanistan, is the aim behind
US Vice-President Dick Cheney's threats to '40 to 50 countries.'
It has little to do with terrorism and much to do with maintaining
the divisions that underpin 'globalization.'"
Carl Estabrook
teaches at the University of Illinois and is the host of News
From Neptune, a weekly radio show on politics and the media.
He writes a regular column for CounterPunch.
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