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July 18, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith-based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al-Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
July 12, 2002
Sean Donahue
The Other
Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia
Walt Brasch
Sin Tax
Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How 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
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
|
July
18, 2002
Reality
Check
It's
Still Business as Usual
by Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman
The predominant view in Washington right now is
that the corporate reformers are in control.
President Bush's Wall Street speech last
week was a bomb, immediately discarded in Washington circles
as containing proposals that were too weak to constitute serious
reform.
The Senate has passed an accounting reform
bill that actually contains provisions that would at least partially
address some of the worst abuses of the Enron, WorldCom and other
 corporate scandals. Last week,
it passed amendments that would strengthen criminal penalties
for securities fraud, and that require company executives to
take responsibility for the information appearing in their financial
statements.
Conservative economist Jude Wanniski
says the Senate is making "it a crime to do business in
the United States."
Representative Michael Oxley, R-Ohio,
says "summary executions [for CEOs committing fraud] would
get 85 votes in the Senate right now."
Intel CEO Andy Grove complains in the
Washington Post that he and other CEOs feel like "class
aliens," victims of "social stigma" and unfairly
labeled "as a group of untrustworthy, venal individuals."
Sometimes, the emotional peaks get so
high in Washington that people lose their ability to think clearly.
The microscopic, snapshot focus on a particular matter at a particular
moment in time causes politicians and commentators alike to lose
all perspective.
In fact, Congress and the Bush administration
continue as never before to shower benefits and perquisites on
Big Business.
Consider the president's Wall Street
speech and a follow up earlier this week in Alabama.
Bush reminded his audiences that he and
the Congress "passed the biggest tax cut in a generation,"
and urged that the 10-year tax cuts be made permanent. That tax
cut dropped corporate tax payments to historic lows as a percentage
of gross domestic product, and heaped more than half of its benefits
on the richest 1 percent of the U.S. population.
Bush asked "Congress to join me
to promote free trade" -- meaning that Congress should support
fast-track trade authority for negotiation of new trade deals,
including one for all of North, Central and South America, modeled
on NAFTA. Both houses of Congress have approved fast-track trade
authority, but still have to reconcile their bills in a complicated
process which may yet falter. Fast-track -- which establishes
in law the priority of commercial interests over health, safety,
environmental and other citizen protections -- is atop the Chamber
of Commerce's legislative wish list, and opposed by labor unions,
environmentalists, consumer groups, human rights organizations
and citizen groups.
Bush further requested the provision
of terrorism insurance, which is by and large unneeded. The administration-favored
plan would constitute a massive giveaway to the insurance industry,
which would receive a giant subsidy from the federal government
at no charge.
And it is not as if this administration
and Congress have not already been exceedingly generous to Big
Business.
Both houses have passed versions of an
energy bill that will sweep aside the federal energy regulatory
regime, freeing energy utilities to consolidate and enter other
industries -- an approach strikingly similar to the financial
deregulation and integration that helped precipitate the current
financial crisis.
The two major parties have engaged in
a grotesque competition to pour more and more money into the
Pentagon. An emergency supplemental appropriations bill lavished
billions more onto a bloated defense budget that is approaching
$400 billion annually. What a gift for Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon
and Northrop Grumman.
Earlier this month, the Congress acted
to enable plans to ship radioactive waste through towns and cities
across the country, for disposal at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada.
This deadly gamble -- risking the accidental release of radioactive
waste en route (prompting critics to call the scheme "Mobile
Chernobyl"), or leakage into water supplies at Yucca Mountain
-- is vital to the hopes of the nuclear industry not just to
continue, but to expand operations.
And the pending appropriations bills
will shower on large corporations a wide array of subsidies and
benefits totaling tens of billions of dollars.
Apocalyptic rhetoric notwithstanding,
Washington continues to coddle the corporate elite. Only beginning
with campaign contributions, the corrupting influence of corporate
money and power seeps into every pore of Washington.
Washington policymakers by and large
are not acting to restrain corporate abuses, they are continuing
to aid and abet them.
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, and co-director of Essential Action. 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
Today's Features
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
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