Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and internationally acclaimed economist Paul Krugman decry undemocratic, unsound, and unethical corporate agenda
by James L. Phelan

It seems critics of corporate-led globalization have some new allies.

Recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, along with well-known economist Paul Krugman, have of late made a flurry of public statements critical of the policies and processes of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank / IMF, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — while leaving plenty of harsh words for the blatantly pro-corporate actions of the Bush Administration. Both economists point to the disruptive and distorting influence of large corporate entities through their dominance over both domestic and international institutions.

Stiglitz and Krugman have begun to voice their indignation more frequently in the press, raising many of the same concerns that social justice and environmental advocates have long made about the disproportionate influence of big business and the hypocrisy of "free market" dogma.

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by Naomi Klein

On Saturday night, I found myself at a party honoring Nelson Mandela and raising money for his children's fund. It was a lovely affair and only a very rude person would have pointed out that the party was packed with many of the banking and mining executives who refused to pull their investments out of apartheid-run South Africa for decades.

Similarly, only someone with no sense of timing would have mentioned that, as the Liberals were making Mr. Mandela an honorary Canadian citizen, they were also trying to ram through an anti-terrorism bill that would have sabotaged the anti-apartheid movement on several fronts had it been in place at the time.

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by Martin A. Lee

It’s a helluva war our government has gotten us into. A clever, determined enemy that uses the civilian population as a cover. It could go on for years, we’re told. There’s no end in sight.

I’m not talking about the war against terrorist networks in Afghanistan and beyond. I’m referring to another troubling conflict – the crusade against civil liberties on the domestic front, the jihad against dissent that’s taking shape in Anthrackistan, our anxious homeland.

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The Rout of the Taliban is Not Enough for the White House Hawks. They Have Saddam in Their Sights
by Jonathan Freedland

Inside the White House the president is pacing, demanding his late-night fix of apples and peanut butter. Downstairs in the mess, the staff are debating the hot questions: do Arab extremists hate Americans because of specific policies in the Middle East or just because Americans are democrats who allow women to fly spaceships? Along the corridor, the grizzled chief of staff is busy grilling an Arab-American colleague whom, he suspects, is a terrorist on an undercover mission to kill the president.

That's how it is inside the White House - the Bartlet White House as seen on TV's The West Wing, whose September 11 special aired on E4 last night. The scene inside today's White House is probably just as dramatic - even if the writing isn't quite as good. The debate raging among the Bush team centers instead on a two-word question: what next? Or, more precisely, where next?

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by Paul Knox

During the first couple of weeks after Sept. 11, we'd stand around the office and wonder about Osama bin Laden's eventual fate. Some said he'd never be taken alive. Others said a trial and a life sentence would be more favorable to U.S. interests than instant martyrdom.

I agreed with that. But I had trouble with the idea that U.S. President George W. Bush, who signed 152 death warrants as governor of Texas, would allow Mr. bin Laden a soapbox on U.S. soil, complete with the right to drag out a legal defense for years, the prospect of incarceration at public expense -- and the possibility, however faint, of an acquittal.

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by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- WHOA! The problem is the premise. We are having one of those circular arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the assumption - can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

Exactly what do we want to strike out of the US Constitution that we think would prevent terrorist attacks? Let's see, if civil liberties had been suspended before Sept. 11, would law enforcement have noticed Mohamed Atta? Would the FBI have opened an investigation of Zacarias Massoui, as Minneapolis agents wanted to do?

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by Kristine M. Holmgren

I had the dream again.

It is a Technicolor, not-ready-for-prime-time dream, spiced with foul language and blood-chilling foreboding.

In my dream, I am held captive in the front seat of a shabby sedan by a fat, dark haired man with a gun. I sit as far from him as I can, silent in my fear.

The nauseating foreshadow of death floats through the air of the grubby automobile. I squirm as my obese captor brags about how easy it was to trap me.

Piece of cake, he snorts. All he had to do was follow me for a week and study my predictable life. He knew where I went for coffee, where I bought my groceries, how often I take out my garbage.

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by Robyn Blumner

"Coy" is the best way to describe Attorney General John Ashcroft's performance at his Senate confirmation hearing in January.

The former one-term senator from Missouri, whose religion forbids him from smoking, drinking or dancing, arabesqued around his record as an opponent of school desegregation, an avowed gay-basher, a staunch opponent of abortion rights, and someone who has so little respect for the U.S. Supreme Court that he called the more liberal members and one middle-of-the-roader "five ruffians in robes."

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by Robert Scheer

Sadly, the old slander that a liberal is someone who has never been mugged is turning out to be true. The Sept. 11 attacks were so close to the center of the intelligentsia's power and consciousness that they have propelled many civil libertarians to abandon their long-held principles.

Congress passes, without due consideration, a draconian anti-terrorist bill that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft demands, and only one senator--Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)--dares to rise in opposition. The president doesn't even bother to consult Congress as he detains more than 1,000 prisoners without charges, approves wiretaps on lawyer-client conversations and issues an executive order implementing military trials for those accused of terrorism.

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by Harley Sorensen

Only Antonin Scalia can save us now.

From The New York Times, quoting Vice President Dick Cheney: "The basic proposition here is that somebody who comes into the United States of America illegally, who conducts a terrorist operation killing thousands of innocent Americans -- men, women and children -- is not a lawful combatant."

And, he added, "They don't deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war. They don't deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process."

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Mark Crispin Miller

What is your Department? It has to be Prevarication going back to Age of Pericles!!!!! You didn't go to Yale with your hero Clinton did you or maybe Harvard with Gore????
--from ERKTHE@aol.com, 6/13/01

I didn't go to Yale with Clinton--who is not my hero--OR with Bush, and I didn't go to Harvard with Gore OR Bush. I went to Northwestern.
Do you have a point to make, or a serious question to ask? Or would you rather just hurl insults? Is that your idea of rational debate?
--from mcm7@pop.nyu.edu, 6/13/01

Although it got much riskier on 9/11, the latter course of study was already pretty harrowing; I'd taken it (and without knowing it) when, in June, I started to promote The Bush Dyslexicon--a dark assessment of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the U.S. major media, based on meticulous analysis both of Bush's off-the-cuff remarks and of their treatment by the stalwarts of the media. Because the book got few reviews (no big surprise), I tried to do as Richard Nixon did in 1952: I "took my case directly to the people"--not, of course, through truculent prime-time asides about my dog, but by doing as much talk radio as possible, to tell the audience what, by studying his utterances, I had discovered deep in the heart of W, and at the top of our defunct democracy.

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