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June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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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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Reviews of Gore:
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Weekend
Edition
June 15/16, 2002
A Corporate (Crime) State
by Ralph Nader
What Business Week magazine calls "the corporate
crime wave" shows every sign of worsening, as more major
corporations scramble to admit massive deception of investors,
looting of pension funds, self-enrichment of top executives,
restatement of earnings and giant farewell compensations packages
to departing bosses who wrecked their companies to further their
own megagreed.
So much of these corporate cesspools
are oozing into the public's view that it is difficult to piece
them into an understandable reform movement for workers, consumers
and  investors to support. The sanitation
trucks can't begin to keep up with the spilling garbage of betrayed
trust, pillage and plunder of trillions of dollars.
"Is Wall Street Corrupt" headlined
Business Week? Inside the reporters showed the answer to be yes,
yes, yes! The founder of the giant Vanguard Mutual Fund, John
C. Bogle, declared "Our capitalistic system is in peril,"
and just started a shareholder-rights group with Warren E. Buffett.
What communism could not do, the big business bosses are doing
to the market system and the financial industry.
We are witnessing the corporate destruction
of capitalism in favor of a corporate state. The law can't save
it because the laws are controlled by politicians many of whom
are controlled in turn by these same business interests and campaign
cash. For every honest Congressman Henry Waxman and Senator Paul
Sarbanes, there are scores of Congressional and White House politicians
huddling with business lobbyists to stifle prosecutions, reforms
and investigations.
The lead culprit is the retiring and
shameless Senator Phil Gramm (Rep. Texas) whose wife just resigned
from the Enron Board and its audit committee. On May 16th, he
met with 30 corporate lobbyists to plan the surrender of Washington,
D.C.'s national government against the crookery of Wall Street.
In American history, reforms usually
followed scandals. Now over the past twenty years, scandals follow
scandals because there are no reforms.
Sometimes the Congressional reaction
is to weaken the existing laws and safeguards against corporate
crime, fraud and abuse a even after imposing massive taxpayer
bailouts of the culpable industries. Remember the S&L scandals
that are costing taxpayers half a trillion dollars in principal
and interest between 1990 and 2020.
Conflicts of interest are at epidemic
levels in Wall Street and trust is being destroyed a the key
confidence that investors must have in information and advice
directed their way. A devastating new report a that has received
little notice a by the only major non-conflicted ratings firm
left in the country (Weiss Ratings, Inc. from Palm Beach Gardens,
Florida) concludes:
1. "A deeper understanding of the
crisis can be achieved through an analysis of "buy,"
"sell," and "hold" ratings issued to companies
that went bankrupt in 2002: A total of 50 investment banking
and brokerage firms issued ratings to 19 companies that filed
for chapter 11 in the first four months of 2002.... 94% of the
50 firms continued to indicate that investors should buy or hold
shares in failing companies right up to the day these companies
filed for bankruptcy. Among the 19 bankrupt companies, 12 continued
to receive strictly "buy" or "hold" rating
on the date of bankruptcy filing."
Weiss Ratings receives no financial compensation
from the companies it rates, unlike S&P, Moodys, and Duff
& Phelps. Here are its unbiased ratings. "Among the
20 largest brokerage firms, 13 may be financially vulnerable
if their finances deteriorate further, while seven have the financial
wherewithal to withstand a severely adverse business environment."
Weiss Ratings gives low grades to JP
Morgan Chase & Co, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg
LLC, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. These
firms have millions of customers who relied on their highly self-advertised,
objective expertise. (For more details see http://www.weissratings.com)
There needs to be an aroused public to
take control of their government and direct their public servants,
before the November elections, to enact systemic action for reform,
not phony legislation that allows crooked business as usual.
For suggestions on what these reforms can be, log on to http://www.citizenworks.org
Ralph Nader
is the author of Crashing
the Party.
Weekend
Features
Alexander Cockburn
Tourism
in Ancient Rome
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
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