|
|
home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
Bush's Worst Appointment Yet? Read Jeffrey St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee , Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than Watt, fouler than Fall? More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein blazes a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! 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 donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
|
Today's Stories May 16, 2006 Ted Honderich May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn William Blum Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker Dave Lindorff Debra Schaffer
Hubert Patrick Cockburn Tom Turnipseed Ken Livingstone Gideon Levy Mickey Z. Jeff Faux Website of the Day
May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
Day
May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Subscribe Online
|
May 16, 200 Bush and Co.'s Immigration Policy Circling the Wagons and Building Walls By RON JACOBS So Bush and company want to put thousands of armed troops on the border between the United States and Mexico. The supposed reason for this move is to stem the flow of immigrants coming into the US from the south. I have a feeling that this move will be somewhat popular in Congress and amongst many US citizens who have fallen for the propaganda that it is the men and women looking for work without papers in the United States that are to blame for their falling earning power and growing debt. Of course, this is not the case, but trying to convince people of that is an uphill struggle. Instead of looking at the robbing of the national treasury by rich and powerful US corporations and citizens, most of us look at our fellow worker who just happens to be Lation and blame them. Instead of asking how those tax cuts for the rich can be good for the economy or how a trillion dollar war is helping pay our bills, we look at our paychecks and their earning power and blame the immigrant, who has less earning power than us. My understanding of the economics of immigration is this. The increased globalization of capital has created a situation where goods and money flow at a greater rate than ever to wherever it is cheapest to make more of both. Until so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA were signed this meant that corporations moved their production centers to countries where labor could be had for a few dollars a day per worker. After the free trade agreements began to have an effect on less-industrialized countries--primarily by making the goods produced in these previously agrarian parts of the world not worth producing locally because the same goods now imported into the country were cheaper--the people living in these countries needed money. Like capitalism has always done( especially when it enters a new phase), it disrupted the lives of the small farmers in Mexico, etc. and forced them to the cities for work. Since there is not enough work in the cities in the workers' home countries, they went (and continue to go) to the US, where corporations welcome them in order to keep wages low for all workers. In the wake of this development, there are some that want to turn off the supply of workers and use the laws that forbid foreign workers from becoming citizens to create an anti-immigrant hysteria. US-born workers fall for the game, blaming undocumented workers from other countries for the fact that corporations have played a shell game on them by encouraging immigration to the North in order to keep a cheap labor source available. This labor pool means that even US-born workers will work for slave wages just to have a job. The free trade agreements only created freedom for the big corporations. Everyone else, especially workers on both sides of the borders, have less freedom and less security. If workers on both sides of the borders organized together for livable wage jobs, it may become more profitable for the corporations to create work in the immigrants' homelands. However, as long as immigration is considered the problem and not the rapacity of the corporations, big business will continue to laugh at our ignorance all the way to the bank. Once they get there, the bank will laugh with them. To paraphrase James McMurtry and his song "We Can't Make It Here": "Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin/Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in/Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today/No I hate the men sent the jobs away" Even if it was only to LA. Many people insist that they are not against immigration, just illegal immigration. This is the line put forth by many members of the Minutemen vigilante group. From conversations with some folks that hold this view, it becomes clear that for some this is just a politically proper way to say that they don't like immigrants. Others, however, don't seem to have any particular prejudice against immigrants yet still fail to see how the fact of one's legality or illegality is a completely arbitrary status. If the government in Washington wished, all those immigrants in the US illegally could be made legal tomorrow. Likewise, all of those here legally could be made illegal just as easily. All it takes is a new law or a presidential mandate. The creation of statuses like that of enemy combatant after 9-11 is a good example of the arbitrary nature of the status any of us hold. Just recently in Israel, several dozen Sudanese refugees had their official refugee status canceled and were reclassified as illegal workers. Now, they must leave the country or be deported. Once again, I bring up this example only to emphasize the transient and arbitrary nature of anyone's status vis-a-vis any government in the world. As for those Minutemen. Despite their protests to the contrary, their fundamental philosophy is nativist bordering on outright racist. At their recent rally in Washington, many of the few dozen in attendance carried signs calling immigrants invaders and made speeches opposing amnesty for undocumented workers and urging that they be sent back to their home countries. It seems to me that if the Minutemen were truly only opposed to illegal immigrants then they would be in favor of a law that ended these immigrants' illegality. Instead, their position is even more reactionary than that of Mr. Bush, who prefers a guest-worker program that benefits his business cronies by keeping the cheap immigrant labor pool transient and at the mercy of the government--not just the corporations. Besides all this, there is the money involved in creating and maintaining illegal immigrants. This money goes from the taxpayers' pockets to the bank accounts of those corporations that build and maintain detention centers and the growing wall along the United States' southern border. Besides the detention centers already in existence, the Haliburton Corporation was just given a $385 million contract to build more of these jails. On top of the construction profits, the maintenance of these centers costs taxpayers' more than 200 million a year (2002 figures). As for the human cost--let me cite a couple statistics. Most of the detainees are legal immigrants that get picked up for minor offenses after being stopped by police. Often, they are deported to countries that they have not even visited for decades. While in jail they are paid a dollar a day to work and are separated from their families, who may not know where they are. As for that wall. Although it is currently only about twenty miles long, there is pressure to have it run the entire length of the US-Mexico border. Estimated costs of this construction run from $851 million to over $2 billion. Of course, there would be ongoing maintenance cost as well and innumerable other charges as yet unmentioned. Besides the costs associated with the wall, the hypocrisy of the so-called leader of the free world building a wall to keep out others is only too obvious. I recall the uproar against the Soviets and their wall in Germany when I was a child. That was a wall built for political and economic reasons, too. Where is the comparable outcry from US citizens about the wall their government is building? Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |