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A Special Report on the Presidential Elections Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch How Progressive Challenges Have Been Killed Off Since LBJ; Gagging Fanny Lou Hamer; Eugene McCarthy on "a Peasants Rebellion;" Sabotaging McGovern; The Wreck of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition; Smearing Nader, Not Once But Three Times: by Alexander Cockburn; The Thieves of the Green Zone by Patrick Cockburn; Murder in Mississippi: Could John Doar Have Saved Cheney, Schwerner & Goodman by David Kotz. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Sex, Drugs & the Blues! Serpents in the Garden CounterPunch's Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available Click here to purchase Today's Stories July 15, 2004 Bill Christison Reorganize the CIA? Of Course, But...   July 14, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold: the Green Deceivers Neve Gordon Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall Diane Christian The Priesthood of Death Stefan Wray Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab? Josh Frank The Nader / Dean Debate Conn Hallinan Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War and Education Website of the Day Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire   July 13, 2004 Ray McGovern The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence Debacle...and Worse Mark Donham The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney Ben Tripp Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Electorates? Mark Gaffney Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel in Iraq Dave Lindorff Osama Wins! Election Postponed! Chris White Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine Indoctrination   July 10 / 12, 2004 Kathleen Christison The Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel Janine Pommy Vega Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against War Sherry Wolf From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen A Transfer of Power, Sort Of Michael Donnelly How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004 Stanton / Madsen Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda? Richard Lichtman The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology Gila Svirsky Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall Kurt Nimmo Clinton's Life Toni Solo Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means Ron Jacobs The Black Panthers and the Rest Camelo Ruiz Marrero Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize Omar Barghouti Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance Poets' Basement Curtis and Albert   July 9, 2004 Dave Zirin Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger Stands Up Against War Justin Delacour Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About Latin America Robert Fisk Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency Boris Kagarlitsky Two Congresses and a Funeral William S. Lind The October Surprises Sibel Edmonds Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth Ron Jacobs Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future Gary Leupp The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link   July 8, 2004 Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Inexplicable John McCain Toufic Haddad Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall: a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent Dave Lindorff Liberation as Martial Law Joshua Frank The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard Dean Christopher Brauchli Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card James Petras The Truth About Jimmy Carter   July 7, 2004 John Chuckman Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence of Meaning Virginia Tilley A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's Hunger Strike Susan Martinez A Letter to Bill Cosby Mickey Z Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade Michael Donnelly Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire Sean Donahue Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown Diane Christian Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq   July 6, 2004 Lisa Viscidi Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans Risk Lives to Reach El Norte Marc Norton The Felonious Five Ride Again: the Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants James Brooks Chemical Warfare on the West Bank? Ray McGovern Porter Goss as CIA Director? William Cook Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...   July 5, 2004 Forrest Hylton US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept. 11, July 4 and Systematic Torture Chris White A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning of Independence Day Joe Bageant Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July Robert Jensen Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire Kathy Kelly "Two Days an' a Wake-Up"   July 3 / 4, 2004 Elaine Cassel Bush's Police State and Independence Day Stan Goff ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive" Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti Snehal Shingavi "We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak Out Bruce Anderson The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens Sharon Smith Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush" Josh Frank Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates Robert Fisk Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing Joe Bageant Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite! Brian Cloughley Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine Justin Delacour The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons William S. Lind Saudi Spillover Linda S. Heard A Joke Called "Justice" Greg Moses "It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't Back Down Ron Jacobs "Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?" Toni Solo Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There Dan Nagengast Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It? Stew Albert Brando, a Personal Recollection Dave Zirin From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for Our Brando Patrick W. Gavin The Progressive Case for Dodgeball Steven Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911 Poets' Basement Kearney, Ford and Davies Website of the Day Global Peace Solution   July 2, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise of the Green Party Douglas Valentine Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism Gary Leupp "Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities Lee Ballinger Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights Robert Fisk Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly CounterPunch Wire "What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's Arraignment Christopher Brauchli Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right Saul Landau Buzz Words and Venezuela July 1, 2004 Katherine van Wormer Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in His Method Joe Bageant Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter? William James Martin The Dogma of Richard Perle Dave Lindorff Bush's Evacuation Moment Robert Fisk Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq Alan Maass Green Party in Reverse Website of the Day Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?   June 30, 2004 Kurt Nimmo Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush Tariq Ali Getting Away with Murder in Iraq Jennifer Van Bergen Bush and the Detainees Douglas Valentine Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen The Quiet American David Price Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass Roger Normand America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq Stan Cox Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's War on Art Henry David Thoreau On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming Ben Tripp Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof     June 29, 2004 Patrick Cockburn The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover Robert Fisk Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland Troy Selvaratnam New York Times Boosts Pet Developer Harry Browne Bush in Ireland Ray McGovern The CIA According to Anonymous Elaine Cassel Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really Won?   June 28, 2004 Patrick Cockburn / Leyla Linton Grisly Rituals in Iraq Amira Hass Confronting Myths and Deadly Power   June 26 / 27, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Venezuela: the Gang's All Here Patrick Cockburn Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge in Iraq Dennis Hans Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney, the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11 Ben Tripp Adventures in Fuel Efficiency Dave Lindorff That State Department Terrorism Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You Chris Floyd Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit Ali Tonak Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives, Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela Keith Rosenthal The Withering of the Anti-War Movement Bryan Sacks The Failure of the 9/11 Commission Wayne Madsen Another Case of Blowback Thomas St. John L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating in the Wizard of Oz Niranjan Ramakrishnan American Swadeshi     June 25, 2004 Stephen Gowans US to North Korea: "Trust Us" Saul Landau 2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction Amir Butler Iraq: the Deadly Embrace Jack McCarthy Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News? Greg Bates Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader       June 24, 2004 Gary Leupp John Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links Patrick Cockburn A Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing Death Threats Harry Browne On the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe Bill Kaufman Another Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli Bush, Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did They Tell? Rick Gioimbetti Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence? John Chuckman Call Center ID Hypocrisy Diana Johnstone Kerry and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"     June 23, 2004 Laura Carlsen Bush and Castro Face Off Dave Zirin Barry Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism" Kurt Nimmo From Saddam, With Love Patricia Wolff Foundation Wars Mahboob A. Khawaja "They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son" Patrick Cockburn The Pretense of an Independent Iraq Website of the Day The Road to Abu Ghraib   June 22, 2004 Dave Lindorff The Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption Ron Jacobs Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq? Vanessa Jones Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings Mickey Z An Open Letter to the People of Iraq John L. Hess Clinton Exhales Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity Committee for Pacho Cortés An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés Bruce Jackson Saying No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify Website of the Day From Boot Camp to Boot Hill   June 21, 2004 Gary Leupp Putin's Helpful Remarks Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos Upon Chaos Cockburn / Khan Saddam May Face Death Penalty Uri Avnery Irreversible Mental Damage     June 19 / 20, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid and Isolated Bruce Anderson Frozen Gringos Diane Christian Morality and Death: a Meditation on Bush and Blake Walter A. Davis Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib Josh Frank How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature Col. Dan Smith Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan Brian Cloughley A Profound Disruption of the Senses Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later Prudence Crowther Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me! Poets' Basement Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert Kathy Kelly Dying to See Their Kids     June 18, 2004 Chris Floyd Blood Victory Dave Zirin Danielle Green, Basketball Player & Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War Justin E.H. Smith The Christian Question in American Politics Gary Leupp The "Long-Established" Link?: Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi   June 17, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 18, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 16, 2004 Lenni Brenner A Question for Kerry Supporters Davey D Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan Daniel Wolff Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner Abuse? Bruce Jackson Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake Patrick Cockburn Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power Facilities Gary Handschumacher Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads JG Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop Mario Benedetti Obituary with Cheers Vicente Navarro Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato? Website of the Day Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch     June 15, 2004 Harry Browne Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe Neve Gordon The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited David Palmer Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI John Blair Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming Dave Lindorff God Wins in TKO Bill Quigley Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step In Patrick Cockburn Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast John Chuckman John Kerry, Political Placebo   Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

July 15, 2004 McMissing the Point Supersize Me Flies High at the Box Office, But Crashes on Message By HEATHER WILLIAMS So it's 2002, and urbane New York filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has an outrageous idea. He will go thirty days, count them (that's 30, fifteen times two, four weeks and change, or treinta días, as the nanny would say) eating nothing but food from that purveyor of slow death in a waxed paper bag, McDonalds. Never mind the fact that this feat is matched without fanfare every day of the year by the likes of long-haul truckers or day laborers or home care workers or that Salvadoran woman who watches the baby in the lovely three-story brownstone next door, Morgan Spurlock is out to investigate something long suspected by Whole Foods customers everywhere but never tested. Now it's on film and backed by science. So, take note, if you have a college degree from a fancy college, work out five times a week, and donate regularly to NPR, fast food will kill you in no time at all. Supersize Me, the feelbad hit of the Sundance Film Festival that earned Spurlock and award for Best Director has emerged as the sleeper success of the summer. Made on a shoestring budget of $75,000 and returning over $8 million to date, the film is billed as a satirical jab at America's weight problem. The film sets its mark high, but comes off as Jackass: The Movie reworked for the Utne Reader crowd. Complete with scenes of vomiting, farting, belching, and multiple references to the filmmaker/star's increasingly uncooperative penis, the film centers on Spurlock subjecting himself to thirty days of bingeing in the shadow of the Golden Arches on fries, double cheeseburgers, shakes, and apple pies. Spurlock's three rules: 1) he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!); 2) he had to order and consume in full Supersize portions when offered; 3) he had to eat every item on the menu at least once. Downing on average about 5,000 calories a day, the filmmaker comes to the startling conclusion that eating an enormous amount of food can make you put a lot of weight, like maybe twenty-five pounds in a month. You'll also trash your liver and make your tummy hurt something awful. Your annoyed vegan-chef wife may also begin publicly mocking your slack performance in the bedroom. "We still do it," she explains, "but I have to get on top now." Lest people worry that Spurlock might get hurt, the filmmaker wisely employs a team of top-notch New York health specialists, including three physicians, a nutritionist, and a physical trainer to do complete workups on him before, during, and after the thirty-day McStunt. Now, of course you may be thinking that those long-haul truck drivers and nannies and home care workers are walking the same tightrope without a net, but Spurlock is an artiste after all. And the appalling numbers that Spurlock racks up in a month on his liver and blood content are part of the thrill. What's superannoying about Supersize Me is not the topic but instead the easy BMW-class conclusions about what's expanding America' waistline. Unquestionably, the rise in rates of obesity nationally and globally indicates a genuine epidemic. The World Health Organization, for example, has served notice that the number of overweight people worldwide now matches the number of undernourished individuals, at about 1 billion each. In the United States, about 60 percent of the population is overweight, and the number of children classed as obese has more than doubled since the early 1970s. The implications of this are truly disturbing. The rates of nutrition-related disorders such as heart disease and Type II diabetes have as much as tripled in children as young as six to fifteen years of age, indicating a generation of young people who as relatively young adults will face side effects of serious medication, surgery, amputations, organ failure, and in many cases premature death because of poor diet. The problem, according to Spurlock, is that too many people are eating out at chain restaurants. Young people in particular are vulnerable because the food and the indoor spaces at fast food joints are kid-friendly. What's more, when kids are at school, they might as well be at McDonalds or Burger King because school cafeterias have become the new placement meccas for snack food manufacturers, as well as the dumping ground for USDA surpluses of highly-processed, empty-calorie foods. When it comes to corporate predation on kids, Spurlock unquestionably hits the money. Probably the best scene in the whole movie is an interview with a group of bright-eyed first graders who at one point are asked to name a series of famous faces on cards. A couple of them tentatively identify George Washington. None recognizes Jesus Christ. All of them enthusiastically say the correct answer when Ronald McDonald comes up in the stack. Eat your heart out, John Lennon. That stuff about kids is really good. Current opinion leaders on the nation's obesity epidemic also get screen time, including Marion Nestle (author of the illuminating recent title, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health), Kelly Brownell, head of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders and author of Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It), and Dr. David Satcher, former Surgeon General of the United States. They all say what you would expect in thirty-second sound bites: that the problem of obesity and poor nutrition have been ignored for too long, that children are getting bad information about food, that parental guidance and health education can't hope to keep up with the barrage of corporate messages about why they should eat Cocoa Pebbles and L'il Debbie Snack Cakes seven times a day. But what's wrong with the film is that Spurlock wants to suggest that the problem is more containable than it is. For all his upfront corporation-bashing, the filmmaker doesn't look beyond the issues of heavy-duty Washington lobbying and noxious advertising to kids to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, the epidemic of obesity might have to do with a global crisis of wage labor. Nutrition-related disorders don't plague the population evenly. There are real reasons why a lot of people, particularly working-class folks, are living in bloated, poisoned bodies. Foods full of transfats, cholesterol, sugars, and empty starches don't keep bodies strong in the long run, but they are frequently the only foods available for people who live in neighborhoods without grocery stores, or who work two or three minimum-wage jobs. Crappy food also goes down quick in a 15 minute lunch break, and it gets you through a long shift. It's crazy but true that McDonald's can retail a sandwich for less that it takes to purchase the ingredients and cook them. It's crazy but true that the unequal economies in the world (most of them in Latin America) are among the world's highest per capita consumers of sugared soft drinks. These economic realities, and not just corporate advertising, are really worth considering. What Spurlock never investigates is how many people who eat fast food actually know it's bad for them. The reasons people eat poorly are often rather complicated. The filmmaker actually has a chance to get at these subtleties in the film's McRoadtrip around the country. However, he squanders this opportunity and instead spends his time filming himself eating Big Macs and chocolate sundaes in Manhattan, now Anaheim, now Houston, now Illinois, now Minnesota. He might have made a better documentary by worrying less about the state of his liver and more about what people had to say about their lives, their bodies, their jobs, and their health. In general, however, only the pious food experts are taken seriously. Others, especially the workers in the fast food joints, get camera time as doltish poison-pushers. This is probably the film's worst transgression. The fatter the camera subjects, the worse their status in the film. The film is indifferent or even hostile to anyone in a uniform (after all, they are the ones who might ask Spurlock if he wants to supersize his meal, which, according to his own rules, he must do if asked). Most overweight people don't get to speak for themselves, but instead end up with their faces obscured and their bulky rear ends displayed. In one particularly pathetic scene, the camera zooms in on a mother and daughter at some sort of meet-and-greet for Jared Fogle, the Subway spokesman who lost some incredible amount of weight eating two sandwiches a day from that establishment. The mother thanks Jared for being such an inspiration to her overweight daughter. In fact, she says, the whole family fights a weight problem. "They had to bury her uncle in a piano box," she confides to Jared. After a few encouraging words, Jared the Subway Man moves on, and the camera focuses on the forlorn teen who privately doubts that she can be like Jared. "It's like, you have to eat all your meals at Subway, and I can't afford to do that." The camera angle and lack of follow-up, though, make it clear what the filmmaker is thinking, which is something like, Hey, girl genius, make your own sandwich! Gee whiz Okay, but is that fair game? Take the least articulate, least sightly fat person you can find and make her the poster-child for America's weight problem? In one of the film's prominent interviews with a (trim) food expert, a really nasty, class-tinged message leaks out. The expert makes an analogy between excessive weight and smoking, and blames the public for ignoring one crisis while taking action on the other. "I was at dinner the other night with friends," the expert says, "and this guy took out a cigarette. The other people at the table gave him a really hard time about it, and the smoker got really self-consciousWell, what I want to know," the expert continued, "is why it's still not acceptable at that same table to turn to some fat person and say 'why are you eating that? And don't you dare eat dessert!'" Sorry, but this reviewer isn't anxious to see the day when that kind of public upbraiding is acceptable. People with less than perfect bodies are not in need of scolding from thinner counterparts. In fact, the answer to the nation's nutrition crisis may not even be primarily about delivering messages to consumers about body consciousness. It may be instead about delivering real health care and decent jobs. What Spurlock misses on film, in fact, is what Eric Schlosser captures in print in Fast Food Nation. (Notably, Schlosser is nowhere in this film, despite his huge impact on public debate on the topic). If Spurlock had taken more time to talk with the people around him, he might not have concluded that fast food has the market share it does because of advertising and credulous audiences. A more serious exploration of the obesity epidemic would come to the conclusion that junk food anchors the agribusiness system through a logic of vertical integration, labor exploitation, and insane agricultural policy. In the simplest form, processed food sells at high marginal profits than unprepared whole food. A Domino's pizza made with a dollar's worth of labor and fifty cents worth of ingredients sells for ten bucks. A pound of dry rice and lentils retails for one dollar. It doesn't take a PhD to see what products companies are going to push. Corporations don't buy politicians just for the right to advertise and dump their stuff in school cafeterias. In fact, vertically integrated agribusiness corporations that control food from seed to table spend a whole lot more money ensuring their access to $180 billion in subsidies for the building blocks of the food system: namely the corn that becomes sweetener and animal protein, the wheat that makes the bread and cakes, the soy that makes the bulk and artificial colors, the canola that makes those fries so darn cheap to fry. Corporations also spend a lot of money at state and county levels savaging unions and driving independent farms into bankruptcy. Advertising is only part of the problem. Fixing America's waistline probably means guaranteeing a living wage for people, especially the seventeen percent of the workforce employed somewhere in the food system, like meatpacking or vegetable picking or food warehousing. It means unionizing Walmart, now the largest grocer to the nation. It means defending anti-corporate farm legislation in the heartland. In the final count, if people are sick from the food they eat, they might do better if they had access to a cleaned up global economy. Heather Williams is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. She can be reached at hwillliams@pomona.edu Weekend Edition Features for July 10 / 12, 2004 Kathleen Christison The Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel Janine Pommy Vega Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against War Sherry Wolf From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen A Transfer of Power, Sort Of Michael Donnelly How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004 Stanton / Madsen Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda? Richard Lichtman The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology Gila Svirsky Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall Kurt Nimmo Clinton's Life Toni Solo Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means Ron Jacobs The Black Panthers and the Rest Camelo Ruiz Marrero Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize Omar Barghouti Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance Poets' Basement Curtis and Albert WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /