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June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Steve Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
June
4, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Federal Judge Blinks; Rosenthal
Walks
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
The Isaiah Crowd: The Threat of Neo-Christianity
Jason
Leopold
Manufacturing the Iraq War
John Chuckman
Blackmail as Policy
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Summit: Peace or Pretense?
Issam Nashashibi
Sharon's Sword of Damocles
Steve
Perry
Wolfowitz of Arabia: the VF interview transcript
June
3, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Copycat Killers: Bush, Jakarta and
the Slaughter in Aceh
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Tells All
Elaine
Cassel
We Interrupt Your Normal Show to Bring You an Important Message
from Michael Powell: "Go to Hell, Americans!"
Tom
Crumpacker
The Politics of US Cuba Policy
William
S. Lind
Fourth Generation Warfare in Iraq
Sam
Hamod
The Final Brick in the Wall
Uri
Avnery
The Altalena Affair
Hammond
Guthrie
Stepping into Some Deep DARPA
Steve
Perry
The WashTimes'
al-Qaeda nuke "exclusive"
June
2, 2003
Arundhati
Roy
Day of the Jackals
Norman
Madarasz
Behind the Neo-Con Curtain: Plato,
Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom
Alain
Frachon and Daniel Vernet
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Strauss and Wohlstetter
Anthony
Gancarski
Anti-Imperialism, Then & Now
Standard
Schaefer
Wasted at the Pentagon
Jason
Leopold
Rocky's Advice to the Dems
Guthrie
& Albert
HUAC 58 Years Letter
Steve
Perry
The Politics of Terror Alerts
May
31, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
A Whiner Called Horowitz
Gary Leupp
The Frauds of War
Dave
Lindorff
Clinton, Bush, Lies and Impeachment
Tom Stephens
Does It Matter that the Bush Administration Lied?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Who Is Next?
Joanne
Mariner
Trivializing Terrorism
Wayne
Madsen
Ayatollah Ashcroft's Busy Week
Larry Magnuson
Is a Television a Radio or a Billboard?
Elaine
Cassel
Wake Up, America!
Gila Svirsky
Waiting for the Lament to End
Susan
Davis
Kitchen Dreams
Chris Clarke
Barbra Streisand: Environmental Hypocrite
Chris
Floyd
Bush Locates Source of World Evil: God
Adam Engel
Gravity's End Zone
Poets'
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Reiss, Guthrie, Orloski, Albert
May
30, 2003
Ben
Tripp
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda
Neve
Gordon
The Bad Fence
Todd
Steiner
Endangered Ocean
Robert
Freeman
Bush's Tax Cuts: a Form of National Insanity
Sean
Carter
Utah Gets Fired Up for Executions
Daniel
Bacher
How Bush's War Violated International Laws
Tariq
Ali
Re-Colonizing Iraq
Steve
Perry
Bush Wars
Web Log
May
29, 2003
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
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Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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June
9, 2003
Equatorial Guinea
A
Few Rich, Many Poor
By Agustin Velloso
Last Wednesday, in fact pick any day, in the capital
of a small country in Central Africa, a student was about to
take a Latin exam, three young lawyers were talking in an office,
a boy was drinking water from a public fountain and a public
servant was answering the visitor's question by telling him that
he had no data on what he wanted to know. What do such random
actions have in common? For one, none of them was doing what
he seemed to be doing; also, the cause of their actions was very
far from where they were taking place; and finally, their consequences,
just as their own acts and lives, were out of their control.
Maybe by chance they also had in common that they took place
in a small Central-African country where a lot of oil has recently
been discovered.
The civil servant said that he had no
data to answer a simply formulated question: is the income obtained
from oil extraction reflected in the national public budget?
His response, delivered with an expression of fear while he was
making sure that nobody around was listening to this conversation,
was first that he did not know, and later that the person who
would know was not available. This took place in the Public Relations
and Information Department Office of this country's PNUD, a UN
organization, in a developing country that seems to be floating
on a pool of oil similar or maybe larger than that
of Kuwait. Since the organization responsible for knowing the
answer could not respond, the visitor's only resort was attempting
to find out the answer on his own. In a case like this, nothing
is better than a stroll around the city.
He knew that there probably existed
as much oil as was suggested. This was self-evident, there is
data to prove it. The city in question has doubled in size in
a few months. It can be divided into two halves of equal extension
separated by less than three kilometers. In one half there are
50,000 inhabitants. In the other, barely 500. The difference
in population per square meter derives from the fact that in
the first half there live the original inhabitants, together
with some foreign old-timers, while the people who work in the
oil business, the newly arrived foreigners who come from the
most powerful country in the planet, live on the other side.
That the latter live in one-family houses separated by large
green spaces, protected by various security measures, communicated
by paved roads with street lights, and that they have all kinds
of services available is striking when one knows that in most
of the other half the sewers run free on the streets carrying
infectious waters, the roads are not paved but filled with mud,
the houses are made largely of plywood and zinc-plank roofs that
burn under the scorching sun, that the average house for eight
people has two and a half rooms, and that there are no public
services such as garbage collection, public transportation or
any such thing.
The visitor thought that, should the
income from oil be reflected on public accounts, wealth would
be visible in other economic areas. The best building in the
city is the site of a great bank. Seating near the entrance,
the visitor was watching how some foreigners and very few natives
entered. Curiously enough, the vast majority of the latter only
go in because they have to clean the floors, watch the entrances
or are the drivers of the former. On the other hand, the foreigners
who go to the city's only hospital do go to work; they are doctors
and medical personnel who cooperate with this country. The patients
are only natives, since the foreigners go back to their country
when they need medical care. The hospital, unlike the bank, is
gravely affected by power outages since, although there is a
generator, nobody has bothered to turn it on since the day it
was bought with international aid funds.
However, as long as the locals don't
become sick, maybe they can have fun, that is, by checking in
one of the new hotels proliferating in the city or by riding
the luxury cars running on the streets. That, thought the visitor,
would be a way to verify that oil dividends are reaching the
entire population. With this in mind he stood at the entrance
of one of the hotels. Again, the natives who enter do it to clean
the rooms, to serve food or to take care of the garden. This
is not shocking if you take into account that the price of a
single room per night is equal to the average monthly salary
of many people there. The incessant traffic of luxurious cars
does, however, affect all of the city's inhabitants. Foreigners
or their autochthonous drivers drive them, the natives
dodge them, children and elders fear them, since they are not
used to living surrounded by cars on paved roads with traffic
lights, much less with traffic jams, and don't manage this intense
road activity very well.
Suddenly the visitor sees a public fountain,
a most simple block of cement with an even humbler spout. A boy
drinks, another one waits, a girl carries a plastic container
and another one a bucket. Here is, finally, a modest but evident
contribution derived from the oil business. Well not quite; a
more attentive look reveals an inscription by the author whose
work palliates the inexistence of running potable water: "Fountain
No. 5, Terrasa City Hall, Spain." He continues down the
street and finds the same thing a little further "Fountain
No. 7, Alcorcón City Hall, Spain." And he continues
finding them. Who has convinced these city halls that the government
of the country in question does not have the resources to provide
even a simple spout out of its own pocket? What do we understand
by international cooperation: paying some of the public services
bills so that private pockets can place the country's money in
safe heavens abroad? Why is it that the most foreign-indebted
countries, the ones with higher poverty rates enjoying more international
cooperation and financial aid, are governed by dictators and
have their upper classes settled, together with their money,
in the richest and most developed countries?
The sight of streets covered in mud,
the filth of residual water running out in the open, garbage
scattered everywhere, the absence of sidewalks barely lit by
scarce street lights, the lack of public transportation, banks,
road signs or leisure spaces, not to mention libraries, civic
centers, book stores, not a sign of urban or any other planning,makes
one think that the 500,000 crude oil barrels that are pumped
daily (that is assuming that it is not one million barrels, since
there are no official figures) in a country with a population
below 500,000, do not remain in the country even for a minute;
instead they leave the country to enrich someone else.
That is why the visitor went in search
of a different kind of information: what happened to human rights
in this place? In the building that hosts the Human Rights Center,
he is received by three people, three chairs and a table comprising
all the furniture. When asked what they do there, they answer
"little so far" since they have no electric outlets
or telephone lines and, clearly, without any funding, they can
only look at the future hoping for better times.
The visitor does not give credit to this
display of good will and ingenuity, so he heads for the site
of the Lawyers Guild in order to obtain more information; maybe
by chance it is financed by the Madrid Lawyers Guild. What he
sees is a piece of empty real estate with a placard explaining
just such association. No trace of anything else. >From there,
he walks to the Palace of Justice to find out that it has electricity
but no phone that is a phone line, since they do have the
appliance and that the most modern piece of equipment available
is a mechanical typewriter.
It seems, then, that the moment has arrived
for the formulation of the first law of national economy in Africa:
the largest the natural wealth of a country, the lower is the
probability that its population is going to enjoy it. Angola
and old Zaire are only two egregious examples of this law. The
second law states that the larger the foreign intervention in
an African country, mainly via international cooperation, the
lower the probability of a sustained development.
Unfortunately, although protagonists
themselves, not even the few university students in this country
can perceive this. That is why that student was making huge efforts
to pass a subject that is forgotten and relegated to a few specialized
centers of higher education in the West, without suspecting that
he will never be able to make use of what he has learned, unless
it is to exclaim, as the classics did: Homo homini lupus.
Agustín Velloso Santisteban teaches at the UNED in Madrid. He can be reached
at: avelloso@edu.uned.es
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
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