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November 25, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
Harry Potter
and Terrorism
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 23, 2001
Phyllis
Pollack
Long
Live The Clash
Cockburn/St. Clair
The Press
and
the Patriot Act
November 22, 2001
Oscar
Gonzalez
A
Homeland Thanksgiving
November 21, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Rep. Chambliss
Calls for Arrest of Every Muslim That Enters Georgia
Tom Turnipseed
Broadcasting
and Bombing
David Price
Academia Under
Attack
Molly
Secours
Modern
Day Witch Trials
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Kalpana
Sharma
Flower
Power:
A Blow for Peace
Tony Mauro
The Quirin
Ruling:
FDR's Horrible Precedent for Bush's Terror Courts
C.G. Estabrook
American
Crusades
November 17, 2001
Zoltan Grossman
It Ain't
Over Til It's Over
November 16, 2001
Rick Giombetti
Rep.
McDermott and
the Decay of Liberalism
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
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 Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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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Reviews of Gore:
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November 25,
2001
The Crisis in Leadership
by Ralph Nader
President Bush is putting a big stake in the newly
formed Office of Homeland Security under the leadership of former
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. The rationale behind the formation
of the office is a belief that the coordination of the disparate
agencies with responsibility for security will provide the nation
with a more effective and focused net of protections in the wake
of the Sept. 11 attacks.
If the president sees coordination as
a means of focusing attention and action on security problems,
he should take a hard look at some domestic programs -- particularly
those that have an effect on inner-city neighborhoods and low-
and moderate-income families. Millions of citizens continue to
fall through holes in underfunded safety nets administered by
a multitude of departments and agencies scattered across the
federal landscape. Each agency manages to manufacture glowing
reports of their accomplishments, but no single official or department
has the authority or standing to pull together scattered efforts
and mobilize funding and public opinion behind efforts to rebuild
our inner-city neighborhoods.
As a result, efforts to develop inner
cities continue to lag far behind. The Clinton administration
was long on rhetoric but short on developing a coherent urban
policy that would have focused long-term congressional and broad
public concern about the needs of low-, moderate-income and minority
neighborhoods.
Housing is a good example of the federal
government's uncoordinated approach to the problems of the poor.
The nation is 5 million to 6 million units short of needed units
of affordable housing, and millions of existing units are dilapidated
and in need of major repair.
In the organizational manual, the Department
of Housing and Urban Development is listed as the lead agency
on housing, but in reality what housing gets built and where
is largely under the control of two heavily subsidized government
sponsored corporations -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- whose
political power has made them virtually untouchable.
The coordination between HUD and these
corporations is tenuous. The sad condition of many of our inner-city
neighborhoods suggests just how well this coordination is working.
Nearly 20 percent of the nation's children
live in poverty, most of them in inner-city neighborhoods and
depressed rural areas. By adding the children in the "near
poverty" category (below 200 percent of the poverty line),
the figure rises to 43 percent, according to the National Center
for Children in Poverty. The current rate of child poverty is
higher than in 1979 and is two to six times higher than in most
other major Western nations. For African Americans, the child
poverty rate is 33 percent and for Latinos, 30 percent.
High rates of infant mortality remain
a sad part of inner cities. Black mortality rates are nearly
15 for every 1,000 live births, nearly twice the average for
the rest of the population.
The Department of Labor and the Health
and Human Services Department have statutory responsibilities
for programs that bear on the health, welfare and job opportunities
of inner-city residents. How could these programs and authorities
be integrated in a coordinated assault on the ills that plague
many low- and moderate-income neighborhoods?
While the nation is focusing on homeland
security -- is anyone really concentrating on what the growing
economic downturns will mean to working families, the already
poor and the near poor? No one wants to reduce security to a
"hit or miss" approach.
But, unless there is an immediate effort
to repair and coordinate the safety nets, it is going to be just
that kind of chancy life for the millions who lose jobs.
A time-bomb is ticking on President Clinton's
1996 welfare bill, which set a five-year life- time limit on
continued welfare payments to needy families. Food stamps and
unemployment compensation cover only part of the growing number
of the needy as jobs are lost.
The Bush administration and the Congress
have demonstrated that they can move fast in an emergency. It
is an open secret that some of the speed has been generated by
an overanxious desire to take care of corporate interests and
wealthy taxpayers while the public is preoccupied with war in
Afghanistan and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Now let's see if they can get their act
together to launch and coordinate government resources in a new
effort to rectify an old problem -- the neglect of inner-city
neighborhoods and low- and moderate-income and minority citizens
who populate many of these communities.
The president has made an appeal for
pulling together all the government apparatus in a coordinated
effort to strengthen security. True security rests with the people.
The president should recognize that by assuring no one is left
behind, including those who have long suffered the neglect of
many inner-city neighborhoods. The nation will be stronger and
more secure for it.
But as the recent lead headline in the
Torrington (Conn.) Register-Citizen emblazoned -- "It's
Very Scary -- No Food For the Poor." The nature of our national
leadership's priorities remains seriously imbalanced.
Ralph Nader
is a consumer advocate and former presidential candidate. Readers
may write to him at: Congressional Accountability Project, P.O.
Box 1446, Washington, D.C. 20036.
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