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March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
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Cockburn
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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
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CounterPunch
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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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March 9, 2002
The Year of Living Dangerously
By Thomas W. Croft
In one of the more memorable television commercials
of the go-go nineties, a New Economy electricity industry spokesman
asked "why", when confronted by "stodgy old politicians
who were refusing to deregulate utilities--on the deluded and
elitist grounds--that they know what's best for them." The
now infamous Why ask Why? ads from Enron Corporation were
one of a series that propounded the "revolution" in
entrepreneurial thinking demanded by the new economy. "TV
commercials celebrating the subversive power of those who 'ask
why', which was said to be 'the chosen word of the nonconformist'"
(citation from One Market Under God).
Some 70-75 years ago, sociologist Thorsten
Veblen railed against the "commercial sabotage" of
a similar group of entrepreneurs, the "predator business
tycoons" that led the 1920s into the speculation and crash
of 1929, and a decade-long depression. Today's re-run of the
Teapot Dome scandal, replete with White House intrigue and oil
barons plotting the midnight drilling of public oil reserves,
destroying the lives of thousands of workers and robbing millions
of investors (including pension trusts) and energy consumers,
is but one viral strand of an mass epidemic of really evil
runs on the public trust.
Many of the nation's blue bloods and
business leaders have been hard at work in the middle of the
night, like little financial Jeffrey Dahmers, leaving their carnage
stored like partial bodies under floorboard. Con artists at
several other corporations such as Global Crossing have bilked
billions and devastated workers. Enron's "entrepreneurial"
auditor Arthur Anderson is busy scraping together hundreds of
millions of dollars to settle the rip-off of almost $700 million
from elderly church ladies in the Arizona Baptist Foundation
ponzi scheme, not so long after settlements on Waste Management
and Al Dunlap's Sunbeam. Brokers and bankers from Cleveland
to New Jersey have been shifting hundreds of millions offshore,
to a magical secret island where all of the bloodthirsty corporate
cannibals have been planning to rendezvous and party like it's
still 1999, in some devilish bacchanalian hootenanny.
But many of the "New Economy"
schemes were pulled off in broad daylight. Wall Street and New
Economy venture entrepreneurs have been behind many of the dot-com
bubble shake-downs, the emerging markets speculation, the mergers
that manufactured golden parachutes and gold-lined management
fees, the massive public dollars lifted in the derivative scams.
They learned much from the savings-and-loans swindlers and junk-bond
kings of the 1980s. The early century robber barons seem almost
paternalistic today; while richer in comparative terms, they
at least (a) produced products (b) produced most of their products
in the U.S., (c) developed, over time (if after long fights)
relationships with unions, and (d) opened libraries, hospitals
and universities. Maybe their actions were only a result of
laws and societal pressure. .
These guys today are making a run on
the piggy banks of our nation (private assets) and the candy
store (public treasury) that is massive in scope, and it has
only been building in intensity, sophistication and comprehensiveness
through the years. Federal regulators have been bought off
for so long they can put up only the flimsiest of inquiries.
Political leaders have been compromised. The investment houses
are complicit. Corporate boards are interlocked and locked-in
for ill-gotten profits. Who the hell is watching the store?
If writers have employed hyperbole to
embarrass the crooks, and yet their rhetoric seems to be falling
short, it may be because the system has been cooked for so long,
there is no shock value left. "Thousands screwed and laid
off" has been published so many times, it doesn't mean as
much to the public as it once did. As Arthur Levitt, the former
Chairman of the SEC said about the Enron situation, the capital
markets have failed.
And, partly due to the bursting of these
speculative bubbles, the global economy crashed in 2001, continuing
into 2002. Over two million workers have lost their jobs due
to the downturn, and a large numbers of industries have been
closed, seriously damaged or are in bankruptcy. Much of this
damage is permanent, with one-half of the steel industry in bankruptcy.
It adds hundreds of thousands of previously jovial new economy
sector people-including technology, communications, transportation
and services employees-- to the ranks of more sober blue-collar
workers, who have watched slow-motion de-industrialization for
years. Entire communities dependent on some of these industries
have lost their employment base, and replacing the jobs lost
is a long-term and uncertain prospect.
In other news, a war is being waged now
on four-five fronts, while the Congress is playing catch up to
stay "in the loop". Many innocent Americans and Afganis
have died since September.
While over 3,000 Americans died horribly
on September 11, the effects of increased dislocation on social
stress could lead to an increase of premature mortality rates
of 5.3% due to heart disease, and 3.1% due to stroke, for every
1% increase in the unemployment rate. Given the fact that the
rate increased at least 1.5% since the end of 2000, it is possible
that 20,000-30,000 additional deaths may result over a two-year
period. If this is a slow, jobless recovery, as predicted in
many quarters (and job loss continues after recovery), the additional
damage to health and the increase in predicted crime would be
considerable.
In the country, families are fearful
for their children who are stationed overseas in the creeping
mission that is the war on terror and the evil ones; insecure
both about their personal futures and about the direction of
the country, in many cases having had their retirement savings
reduced; worried about the wrecking of the environment and the
continuing erosion of sovereignty due to unfettered global trade
pacts; and, in some cases, upset and cautious about the increased
invasions of privacy and "politically correct" speech
and thought that characterizes the new Homeland Security measures
to ensure support for the war. Professors and journalists who
have asked questions have been censored or lost their jobs, and
activists have been detained and de-railed from travel plans.
The "capital markets" have
absolutely failed, Arthur, and the one thing that a new generation
of "predatory business tycoons" have been good at producing
is the extraction of assets from great colonies both domestic
and abroad. Whether it's the relatively miniscule proceeds from
a retired teacher's 401(k) or the prospect of oil in mid-south
Asia hunting grounds, the extraction schemes are steadily producing,
day and night.
Meanwhile, a whole new generation of
workers and families, too, are taking to the road, searching
out new hopes and leaving behind the lost dreams of their lives,
like the "New Poor" of dislocated blue-collar workers
in the '80s, and some of our grandparents and great grandparents
in the great depression. This time, its not just blue collar,
but also educated people who slaved away at their jobs in the
'90s, confident that their stock options and 401s gave them motivation
to work 60-80 hour weeks, and the chance to succeed like their
parents never imagined.
The optimistic jauntiness and entrepreneurial
hubris of the great gatsby '90s has given way to fear and loathing,
and a lot of uncertainty. Even if the feel-good media can convince
the public that the economy has recovered, it will be a long
time before people are convinced it's safe to come back out and
play. It has been, and is, indeed, the year of living dangerously.
© 2002 T.W. Croft
T.W. Croft
is Director of the Heartland Labor Capital Network, managed by
the SVA. Heartland has commissioned Working
Capital: The Power of Labor's Pensions, recently released
by Cornell University Press. Visit www.heartlandnetwork.org
for more information. He can be reached at: t.w.croft@att.net
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