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July 8, 2002
Tariq Ali
How the
Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
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
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July
9, 2002
God the Capitalist
by John Stanton and
Wayne Madsen
God exists and God's a corporation.
The evidence is irrefutable. Whether
through one of "his" subsidiaries--Islam Catholicism
or Christian Evangelical--it's clear that God believes in one
world under capitalism and demands of his minions a healthy investment
portfolio of stocks and mutual funds, and an unquestioning faith
in the corporate purveyors of greed and corruption. God is extravagant
in tastes, paternal in his worldview, and relishes the publicity
he gets on US currency and in daily recitals of US Pledge of
Allegiance. He is thrilled at the building of palatial houses
of worship around the world at the expense of the hundreds of
millions of those who are impoverished and struggle to find food,
clothing and shelter. Is their any doubt that God favors the
ruthlessly powerful and wealthy: the Bushes and Bin Ladens, the
Murdochs and Alsauds, the Rumsfelds and Cheneys?
God has no problem with income disparity
and the brutal competition that is capitalism. In fact, he encourages
it, applauds it. His beloved imbecile, US President George Bush
II, spoke recently for God when he said that all matters political
come from God and that God should have a say in appointing judges
to America's courts. But there's more. The President owes God
because God helped him become a real capitalist by helping him
become a millionaire.
With so many poor, so many middle-income
households struggling to make ends meet, can their be any doubt
about where God's priorities are? Is it any surprise that God
is hard at work through his corporations lobbying the US Congress
for more tax breaks, manipulating world financial markets, changing
tax codes everywhere to favor his wealthy minions, and making
sure that corporate executives receive immunity from prosecution?
Saintly Investments
At Crown Financial Ministries "God's
Financial Principles" are taught to practitioners. According
to Crown, God suggests that disciplined financial management
comes from investing according to the financial advice in the
Bible. No econometric models here. "It is the blessing of
the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it" (Proverbs
10:22). With that advise, Crown provides religious leaders and
their flocks with the necessary tools to invest and manage money
for easy living and, of course, turning earnings into donations
back to the God's bureaucracy.
God invests through his various subsidiaries
making money on everything including hip replacement gear, video
games, soft drinks, genetic engineering and defense contracting.
Over at Christian Stewardship Funds, God's investment managers
are pretty picky about "evil doers" who might get their
hands on God's money. Christian scrubs its funds and shuns investments
in stocks or bonds of companies involved in abortion, alcohol,
gambling, pornography, and tobacco industries. Christian claims
that it is the only index mutual fund family with these screens.
But wait!
The Timothy Plan goes one step beyond
the Christian financial offering and claims that it is "is
a family of mutual funds offering individuals, like yourself,
a biblical choice when it comes to investing. If you are concerned
with the moral issues (abortion, pornography, anti-family entertainment,
non-married/same-sex lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling)
that are destroying children and families you have come to the
right place." Oddly though, one of Timothy's portfolios
includes investments in BioGen, a company that develops drugs
through genetic engineering and Electronic Arts, purveyors of
violent video games. Also in the mix is KPMG Consulting, the
firm with many US defense contracts and responsible for the flaky
audit of Xerox.
BusinessWeek reports that KPMG is under
investigation by the SEC here in the US and is getting hammered
in Germany. "On Apr. 24, KPMG Germany was forced to disavow
the financial reports of former client Comroad, a small software
maker based near Munich. The embarrassing reason: On Apr. 23,
a new auditor found that 97% of Comroad's reported sales in 2000
came from a nonexistent company. Former Comroad CEO Bodo A. Schnabel
is in jail, awaiting trial on fraud charges. In an attempt at
damage control, KPMG has said it will re-audit all 35 clients
whose stocks trade on Frankfurt's tech-heavy Neuer Market."
Nothing like some good old time Christian fraud. But it's the
return that counts, no matter whether it's tinkering with the
genetic code (obviously God's not concerned about that anymore)
or the linkage to malfeasance that many of Timothy's investments
have.
Show Me the
Money!
"In the Name of Allah, the Most
Gracious, the Most Merciful" reads the banner at the Islamic
Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1975, the
Bank's purpose is to promote "economic development and social
progress of member countries and Muslim communities individually
as well as jointly in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah
i.e., Islamic Law." The bank helped get the attention of
Wall Street and subsequently in 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic Market
index was created which contains roughly 1,862 Shari`ah-compliant
stocks from 34 countries with a market capitalization of US $11
trillion. The FTSE Islamic Market Index contains 660 Shari'acompliant
companies and includes notables such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
Islamic financial advice, like their
Christian counterparts at Crown, are laced with quotes from "holy"
works reminding the investor or borrower of the gravity of investing
with God or borrowing from God. "Be fearful of a day when
you shall be returned to Allah, then everybody shall be paid,
in full, what he has earned. And they shall not be wronged."
That admonishment appears on an Islamic-banking site after a
discussion of finance and borrowing. According to the Qur'an
and the Bible, messing around with God's money--not getting a
good return--can get one into a lot of trouble and cause problems
on judgement day.
Of course, no look at God's finances
would be complete without the Catholic Church. The Catholic Values
Investment Trust puts God's money into roughly 100 Blue Chip
stocks but the money can only be invested after the Church Magisterium
and the Trust's Board of Advisors reviews the stocks to make
sure that the companies represented by the stocks adhere to God's
teachings. The Board has as its members Margaret Heckler, a former
Congresswoman, Ambassador and US government bureaucrat, and two
former ambassadors to the Holy See in Rome. Investments include
defense contractors General Electric and ITT Industries, Alcoa
Aluminum, American Express, Coke, Pepsi and oil and energy conglomerates.
Put up US $ 1,000 and you can get in on the high yields of the
Catholic Trust.
In the immortal words of Pastor Simon
of Cheltenham, UK, "We see God - far from being averse to
money - gives power to get wealth. Power to get wealth is available
with God. So what do we need to do? We need to remember God and
recognize His plan for wealth in the hands of godly men and women."
So get out there and be the best capitalist
taskmaster you can. And remember when you put your soul up for
auction on E-Bay, drive a hard bargain with God. After all, he's
a capitalist too.
John Stanton
is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs and Wayne
Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist
who writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human
rights issues. They can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Today's Features
Tariq Ali
How the
Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
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