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May 29, 2002
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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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 New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
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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Reviews of Gore:
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May
29, 2002
The Age of Inequality
by Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman
Here's the latest evidence of the startling growth
of income and wealth inequality, in the United States and around
the world:
The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly reports
this week on the development of a new innovation in healthcare
delivery:  "boutique" or "concierge"
coverage for the world's super-elite.
Leading medical providers like the Cleveland
Clinic and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore are establishing special
programs to give platinum service to the well-heeled. Depending
on the program, the super-rich customers may receive massages
and sauna time along with their physical, housecalls, and step-to-the-front-of-the-line
service in testing facilities.
Using these services are a worldwide
elite class of business executives and royalty -- the "winners"
in a system of corporate globalization that is generating morally
repugnant economic disparities.
Here are some other measures of the gains
of the wealthy:
* Executive pay at top U.S. corporations
climbed 571 percent from 1990 to 2000.
* There are presently nearly 500 billionaires
worldwide.
* U.S. corporate tax payments are slated
to drop to historic lows as a result of the tax bill enacted
into law earlier this year. According to Citizens for Tax Justice,
corporate taxes will plummet to only 1.3 percent of U.S. gross
domestic product this year, the lowest since fiscal 1983, and
the second lowest level in the last 60 years.
* More than half of the tax cuts enacted
last year that are scheduled to take effect after 2002 will go
to the best-off 1 percent of all U.S. taxpayers.
Even in the United States -- the nation
that is supposed to be the biggest winner from globalization
-- the average person has watched skyrocketing executive compensation
and wealth accumulation, but has not been able to climb even
a few steps up the economic ladder. Average real wages in the
United States are at or below the wage rate of 1973.
Meanwhile, poverty remains pervasive
in both the United States and around the world.
* One in six children in the United States
live in poverty.
* In 2000, a full quarter of the U.S.
population was earning poverty-level wages, according to the
Economics Policy Institute.
* Around the world, 1.2 billion persons
live on a dollar a day, or less.
* Tens of millions of children worldwide
are locked out of school because their parents are unable to
afford school fees.
* More than a million children die a
year form diarrhea, because their families lack access to clean
drinking water.
The Institute for Policy Studies has
sought to put these disparities into perspective. The 497 billionaires
in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, according
to IPS, well over the combined gross national products of all
the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of
the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34
trillion). "This collective wealth of the 497 is also greater
than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity,"
IPS concludes.
It's not very easy to wrap one's mind
around the inhumanity of these numbers.
That is why it is so important to highlight
anecdotes that put the problem in focus: the juxtaposition of
concierge healthcare with the more than 40 million people in
the United States who have no health insurance coverage at all,
the contrast between the boutique care and the more than a million
children dying each year because they don't have clean water
to drink.
Sometimes, we need to recognize obscene
social arrangements for what they are, and demand something different.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational
Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999.)
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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