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August 2, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
July 30, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Branding September 11
PS Burton
Financial
Journalism:
A Very Small Cog
Tom Stephens
Hypocrites in the House:
Fast Track After Midnight
Dave Marsh
Censorship
Goes Global
July 29, 2002
Linda Belanger
Why Do They Do It?
Alfredo Castro
Colombia's
Disappeared
Anne Brodsky
Inside Pakistan and
Afghanistan with RAWA
Andrew George
The Fires
of Summer:
Don't Blame the Greens
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
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
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Published March 15, 2002
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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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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
August
2, 2002
Moral
Maze
Bug-eyed Believers Balk Bagmen
on Bankruptcy
by Chris Floyd
Who says liberals never have anything nice to
say about the bug-eyed religious extremists who have taken over
the Republican Party and poisoned America's political discourse
with their frothing ignorance and Talibanic zeal for barbaric
repression? We dispute such vicious slander. In fact, when it
comes to their latest battle, we are proud to stand up and proclaim:
"Godspeed, you Christian soldiers!"
That's because a few Congressional Bug-Eyes--with
a bug up some other part of their anatomy about a woman's right
to control her own body--are the only thing now standing between
ordinary working people and the white-collar predators of the
"financial services industry," who aim to eat up the
lives of those they have already crippled with their "easy-money"
scams.
This week, anti-abortion extremists in
the House of Representatives forced a delay on a final vote on
the great googily-moogily "Bankruptcy Bill," the New
York Times reports. They're not worried about the countless families
that will be devastated by the bill, of course; they're in a
snit over an amendment that would curtail the ability of anti-abortion
terrorist groups to use bogus bankruptcies to dodge financial
penalties after they've been caught burning down clinics, stalking
nurses, harassing pregnant women or killing doctors.
Their reasoning may be repellent, but
there is some hope that these notorious mollycoddlers of domestic
terrorism might be able to mount enough procedural roadblocks
to, well, abort the bill altogether--even though the measure
enjoys, as the Times hastens to assure us, "broad bipartisan
support."
Of course, in mediaspeak, "broad
bipartisan support" usually just means that some shady outfit
has been throwing ungodly amounts of money at the ever-eager
courtesans in Washington. And there has sure enough been some
money thrown here--as you'd expect, when it's bankers and credit-card
companies coming to call.
The new bill--which was actually written
by "financial services" lobbyists--would "protect"
the little lambs of Wall Street from all the vicious single mothers,
unemployed fathers, ghetto scum and trailer-park trash out there
who have collapsed beneath the debt they've taken on at the frantic
urging of, er, Wall Street. For years, the "financial services
industry" has deliberately targeted the most vulnerable
people in American society--those on the economic margins, young
kids just starting out in life, working parents stretching to
pay the bills, sick people laden with medical costs, the luckless,
the desperate, the ill-educated, the naive--and plied them with
promises of "instant credit" and "pre-approved
loans" in slick advertising campaigns and junk-mail bombardments.
They operate like playground pushers:
"Hey, kid, the first bag is free." Once the habit of
life on credit is established, then the extortionate interest
rates, the "late charges" and "rollovers"
kick in. The promised good life is gone, siphoned away into the
coffers of credit giants like MBNA Corporation of Delaware, the
world's biggest peddler of plastic cash, and the great banking
houses, who use the profits they've plucked from the broken backs
of grubby proles to fuel their shell games with Enron, WorldCom,
Harken and the boys.
Millions of the Americans thus ruined
have fled to the slender and humiliating protections of personal
bankruptcy. In most cases, the existing laws do wipe away some
debts, particularly unsecured debt. But it leaves many others
on the books, while destroying the debtor's credit rating for
years to come, closing the door on dreams of buying a car or
house, or engaging in any of the innumerable transactions that
now require ID and surety in the form of--what else?--a credit
card. It's no "easy out;" it's a hard step, a desperate
measure, fraught with lingering doubts, agonizing decisions,
and irrevocable consequences no matter what you choose--much
like abortion, in fact.
Now, in the Herbert Hoover-like financial
nightmare that has engulfed America in the Second Coming of Bushonomics,
millions of people have been thrown out of work. Millions more
have seen their pensions, their nest eggs, their financial security
wiped out by the gargantuan frauds of Wall Street. But even this
has not stopped the "financial services industry" from
trying to gut the slim protections of the existing laws and force
bankrupts to pay off credit card debts and loans--sometimes before
paying for other trifles, such as alimony, medicine or groceries.
Well-heeled supporters of the bill--like
the insider-trading wastrel in the White House, who never risked
a dime of his own money while making millions in politically-connected
sweetheart deals--claim the strongarm measure is in fact a Godly
edict, forcing the rabble to face up to their "unhealthy
values" and "irresponsibility." Indeed, Senator
Charles Grassley, one of the bill's champions, says it will even
stem "the eroding moral values of some people."
Those would be the little people--the
unconnected people--of course. But not the kind of people
who rake in more than $300,000 in "hard money" contributions
to their presidential campaigns from MBNA--the largest single
corporate briber to the Bush team in 2000, outpointing even Kenny
Boy Lay. Or the kind of people who receive $447,000 low-interest
loans from MBNA just four days before becoming a chief sponsor
of the bill--like House Democrat James Moran of Virginia. Or
the hundreds of other congressmen who pocketed a total of $37.7
million in "financial services" baksheesh in 2000--and
God only knows how much since then. No, their "moral
values" are firm and uneroded.
Meanwhile, as always, the weakest go
to the wall--unless the Bug-Eyes stand fast for terrorism.
Murky old world, ain't it?
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times. He can be contacted at cfloyd72@hotmail.com
ANNOTATIONS
for "MORAL MAZE"
"Senate
Delays Final Vote on Bankruptcy Bill,"
New York Times, July 29, 2002
"Negotiators
Agree on Bill to Rewrite Bankruptcy Laws,"
New York Times, July 26, 2002
"White
House Hails Bankruptcy Bill,"
Associated Press, July 26, 2002
"Infectious
Fraud,"
Financial Times, July 29, 2002
"Bush's
Role in Corporate Fraud,"
Boston Globe, July 23, 2002
"Lobbyists
Near Bankruptcy Bill Goal,"
New York Times, March 13, 2001 (archive fee required)
"Let
the Hogfest Begin,"
Salon.com, March 12, 2001
"Citigroup
deals helped Enron to hide its debts,"
Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2002
"Soros:
Harken Sought Influence in Buying Bush Firm,"
Boston Globe, July 19, 2002
"Twice
as Bad as Hoover,"
Consortiumnews.com, July 23, 2002
"Influence
and Bailouts a Business Tradition in Bush Family,"
St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 29, 2000
Today's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
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