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   Issue #5 - October 2001 - Capitalism and War 9:33 PM 10/6/01 Fast Track backers use September 11th to renew free-trade push. By: John Nichols Moving to exploit a shifting political landscape in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush's Congressional point man on free trade issues has announced that he will attempt to ram a Fast Track bill through the Congress as soon as next week. 8:51 PM 10/6/01 By: Jerry White Corporate executives are using last month's tragic events to implement an assault on the jobs and living standards of airline workers that was in the making well before September 11. Several US carriers, including American, United, Northwest and US Airways - which together have announced 61,000 job cuts - have invoked a rarely used "force majeure" provision in their union contracts. This clause allows airlines to eliminate jobs in an emergency without giving the required notice, paying severance benefits or providing early-retirement incentives. Karen Watson, a spokesperson for American Airlines, which received $808 million from the government, said the company would save a "significant amount of cash involved in providing furlough pay". Ignoring the plight of the 506 pilots and 1,000 flight attendants laid off by American, she said, "What we're focusing on now is getting the airline back in the air, getting our customers back and building the best airline we can". 3:39 PM 10/6/01 By: Kevin Merida In the spirit of unrefined capitalism, we are now mass-producing the image of a man said to be responsible for killing thousands of our citizens. 3:18 PM 10/6/01 "I still believe the best thing we can do to help spur the economy is to include a deep and permanent cut in capital gains taxes." 2:01 PM 10/6/01 Too Hot For U.S. to Handle? By: Lucy Komisar A controversial European book that might help authorities track terrorist funding sources remains unpublished and relatively unknown in the United States. Entitled "Revelation$", it exposes a secret banking system that might be used by terrorists. At the center is a clearinghouse in Luxembourg called Clearstream, which transfers money for international banks and major companies. 11:41 AM 10/6/01 By: Smokey Sojac Imagine for a moment that you are lucky enough to have a father and brother who could make you President of the United States. Do you have what it takes to lead this great nation of ours during a crisis? Take this handy test and see. 9:15 PM 10/5/01 By: Paul Lutus Scene: In an artificial bubble on the surface of Ganymede (one of Jupiter's moons), an alien explorer describes his visit to Earth. 6:36 PM 10/5/01 By: William Rivers Pitt They are guilty. The facts are clear. You cannot hide from history. The Republicans are the real American traitors. They are the shame and the sorrow and the scourge of this nation. 12:42 PM 10/5/01
12:35 PM 10/5/01 "The best way to realize this country is to learn how to read and write." 8:35 AM 10/5/01 The Labor Department reported Thursday that for the work week ending September 29th. New jobless claims jumped by a seasonally adjusted 71,000 to 528,000. That came on top of a 64,000 increase in claims the week before, which pushed claims to levels not seen since 1992. The level of claims for this week and the week prior are at the highest point since July 25th, 1992. The four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes out week-to-week fluctuations, rose to 453,500, the highest level since Dec. 28th, 1991. The unemployment rate shot up to 4.9% in August from 4.5%, the biggest one-month jump in more than six years as businesses eliminated 113,000 jobs. With many economists predicting a recession this year is unavoidable, businesses will be reluctant to hire new workers in the months ahead, analysts say. Thank you George 'Dubya' Bushit! 1:06 AM 10/5/01 An Open Letter to Ann Coulter By: Bridget Gibson I see that your reign as the shrieking shill for the right has begun to lose its power. I have watched you denounce yourself through your denouncement of the intellect of the female gender, saying that "women do not have the capacity to understand the issues", and that you have denounced yourself by saying "you can tell the little people anything and they will eat it up" and other derogatory remarks that attempt to minimize the intelligence of the public. 10:22 PM 10/4/01 By: Michael Gabriel The national media has chosen to completely blow past what must be considered a critical factor in the rise of aggression against the United States. All through his presidential campaign, candidate George W. Bush repeatedly harped on the fact that our military was ill-prepared for a national emergency. 7:01 PM 10/4/01 You Must Be Prepared to Pay for It By: Al Martin Mainstream media is finally catching up to news published months ago on the Al Martin Raw website, specifically information about illegal weapons being shipped from Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. CNN finally reported on "Trucking Fraud; 20 Held, 17 Others Brought in for Hazardous Materials and Weapons Trucking Scheme from Huntsville, Alabama". They also reported that the "Department of Justice searches Huntsville, Alabama and other US military bases for Arab links to trucking companies which sought hazardous material licenses". Then CNN said "Credits website for news". I wonder whose website they're talking about... 6:40 PM 10/4/01 "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." 6:35 PM 10/4/01 From: Kevin Cunningham Subject: Unelected president polls at 90%! Pretty funny since prior to September 11th, he had the worst polls ever at below 50%. So when Bush Jr.'s polls were so low, America was looking at:
And today, Bush Jr. has a 90% rating. WOW!!! What did he do to erase all the negativity that gave him the lowest rating ever? Did he:
No... So then, what is SOOOooo different that his ratings uncharacteristically went up? What happened that drove up his deservedly low ratings to be so high in such a short time? What did he DO? What did he do? Nothing. What happened was that America was attacked. And now all of a sudden, Bush Jr.'s ratings are high. Those inflated ratings have zero to do with anything Bush Jr. did. Those ratings are for whoever happens to be president when America is attacked. The high ratings are for the office of the president and most certainly NOT the man. And obviously, it doesn't even matter that president wasn't really elected. Bush Jr. is enjoying high ratings through no actions of his own. He is just lucky that he was able to steal the election and be the president when America was attacked. And anyone that would credit Bush Jr. for his highs ratings is really crediting the terrorists. Because by attacking America, the terrorists, and NOT Bush, are responsible for Bush Jr.'s high ratings. 6:23 PM 10/4/01 "Religion is all bunk." 6:18 PM 10/4/01 By: Norman Solomon Much of the initial news coverage was poignant, grief-stricken and utterly appropriate. But many news analysts and pundits lost no time conveying - sometimes with great enthusiasm - their eagerness to see the United States use its military might in anger. Such impulses are extremely dangerous. 6:09 PM 10/4/01 CIA Reveals Secret Wepon in Fight Against Wacky Islamic Terrorists From: A Military source in Washington DC informed a gathering of Christian Pastors last week that America's armed forces have a secret weapon against Muslim terrorists. "Those who practice Islamic Fundamentalism are more terrified of pork than they are of bullets", he said. "If they get near even the oink from swine, they go straight to hell. We'd be fools not to use this against them in combat." 8:51 PM 10/3/01 
During the last elected president's administration. We miss you Bill. 3:48 PM 10/3/01 "The president deserves our support for acting swiftly and decisively. The military strikes he ordered against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan were appropriate. America's armed forces carried out their mission with skill and professionalism." 3:39 PM 10/3/01 By: Tally Briggs - Actress at Large What the hell is Bush waiting for? No, I am not referring to him launching all the 'Big Toys', I am talking about federalizing airport security. It seems he is doing almost everything else, ramping up the Air Marshall program, installing more secure cockpit doors, even deploying the National Guard to have a presence in the major airports. Ok, not bad. But what good are the National Guard really going to do standing around with automatic weapons when they aren't the ones who are sitting at the baggage scanners and looking for the "danger items"? 1:09 PM 10/3/01 By: David Podvin According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore's victory from the American people. 12:45 PM 10/3/01 "This Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." 6:50 AM 10/3/01  5:58 AM 10/3/01 "The truth is useless. You can't eat it. You can't deposit it in the bank. You can't pay your bills with the truth. It is only the lie which pays cash money." 8:25 AM 10/2/01 By: Dana Milbank House negotiators yesterday agreed to give the government new authority to investigate and detain terrorist suspects, a bipartisan compromise that denied the Bush administration some powers it sought but that was assailed by civil libertarians as a blow to American values. The 122-page House legislation, dubbed the "Patriot Act", is due to be considered by the committee Wednesday and by the entire House next week. 7:49 AM 10/2/01 By: Edmund Sanders Meeting in a windowless, bug-proof chamber deep inside the U.S. Justice Department, a secretive U.S. court wields extraordinary power to approve government requests to listen in on citizens' phone calls or to break in their homes to seize evidence. The court's seven judges just can't seem to say no. Since it was established in 1978, the court has approved thousands of government wiretap and warrant requests - and denied only one. And it's all done in proceedings so classified that even those Americans who are targeted for surveillance have no right to know about it, much less to challenge it. 7:40 AM 10/2/01 By: Laurence Zuckerman At the same time United Airlines was telling Congress two weeks ago that it might go bankrupt without a bailout, its parent, the UAL Corporation, was wiring $11.25 million to a French airplane manufacturer as a down payment on an order for 30 business jets. The luxury jets, built by Dassault Aviation at a cost of about $20 million apiece, are part of a new business for UAL, that of selling shares of business aircraft to corporations, celebrities and other wealthy individuals. 7:25 AM 10/2/01 "The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather the meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life." 8:35 PM 10/1/01 From: Karl Jordan Subject: Bush and Responsibility ...in the US navy when a Captain says "I relieve you", on board a ship then from that moment on he is responsible for every action that takes place on board. This idea is the idea of RESPONSIBILTY. If you attempt to place blame on the prior Commanding Officer it just shows your lack of being able to handle the job. Now if Bush is our commander-in-chief, (he did relieve Clinton) then how come he is blaming everything on the past administration? I guess he didn't learn anything from his hiding in the National Guard. 7:05 PM 10/1/01 By: Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan After two weeks of personal and political attacks from fellow citizens because of our antiwar writing, we have relearned how dissent is honored in the United States. Many Americans like dissent that is safely in the past, where it does not raise uncomfortable questions or challenge contemporary prejudices. But dissent in the present, about matters of the greatest public importance, well, that's quite another matter. 6:55 PM 10/1/01 By: Tom Robbins New York still awaits a final census of the dead and missing from the World Trade Center, but tallies so far indicate that most victims were people whose only offense was getting to work on time. At least 1000 of the victims belonged to labor unions. Among them were the firefighters, city and Port Authority police, and emergency medical technicians lost in the rescue efforts. Others were the kidnapped pilots and flight attendants. Union members also worked throughout the towers. At Windows on the World, the swank restaurant atop One World Trade Center, as many as 79 members of Local 100 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union perished. Twenty floors below them, at least 39 members of Public Employees Federation, most of them workers at the Department of Taxation and Finance on the 86th and 87th floors of the south tower, are missing. 5:02 PM 10/1/01
3:45 PM 10/1/01 "The real issue is that if the full weight of the govt. can be sent crashing down on me, no ordinary citizen is safe." 9:59 AM 10/1/01 a Tricky Battle By: Les Blumenthal With partisan tempers starting to flare, Washington state Democrats grew increasingly angry last week as Republican leaders in the House continued to block efforts to provide almost $3.8 billion in additional benefits to the up to 30,000 Boeing workers and 100,000 airline employees facing layoffs. While a separate, free-standing bill has been introduced, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and House Republican whip Tom DeLay, also from Texas, have rejected such an option. DeLay reportedly blocked efforts to include the workers' compensation in the airline bailout bill. 9:11 AM 10/1/01 By: Gina Holland When the Supreme Court gets down to business this week, one of the main subjects will be just that - business. Forget the high-minded constitutional questions that scholars like to see answered by the country's highest court. Justices will delve into many more basic matters, like what bosses have to do to accommodate an injured worker and when states can help patients fight their HMOs. 9:04 AM 10/1/01 Two world views result in smashed towers and torn-up freedoms. By: Bryan Zepp Jamieson Fundamentalism isn't a religion. It's a personality disorder. It gets associated with religion a lot, because religion, with its claim to be able to provide final answers to life's greatest mysteries, appeals to a mind-set that is fearful of uncertainty, antagonistic toward a world where trains don't run on time and other people might do things that the fundamentalist is afraid to try personally. 7:05 AM 10/1/01 By: Richard W. Stevenson Influential advisers and key members of Congress expressed opposition today (9/26), to two of the main Republican proposals for stimulating an already weakened economy as new figures suggested that the terrorist attacks would inflict heavy damage on jobs, spending and the business outlook. Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, and Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary, advised Congress against cutting the capital gains tax, the favored approach of many Republicans on Capitol Hill, or reducing corporate income taxes, the idea mentioned by the Bush administration. 6:41 AM 10/1/01 "Americans don't have the courage to come here [Afghanistan]." I surmize, the Mullah will be eating his own words very soon. 12:12 AM 10/1/01 "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."     - except wherein noted.All rights reserved. |
