|
Recent
Stories
April
18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
April
17, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in
the Patriot Missile System
Joanne
Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications
for the Pentagon
Issam
Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman
to Baghdad
Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism
Robert
Fisk
The Army of Occupation
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim
Biljana
Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where
is the Truth?
Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire
Stanley
Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like
Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation
Harold
A. Gould
Iraq After the War
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/17
April
16, 2003
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton's Bloody History: They'll
Work for Anyone
Kurt
Nimmo
The Destruction of Iraq: Hey, It's
Good for Business
Stephen
Green
Dancing to Sharon's Beat: the Road
to Unilateral Pre-emption
Diane
Christian
The Devil in Bush's Details
Carol
Norris
Mourning Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
They Call Themselves Economists?
Michael
Sells
Nero in Baghdad
Alexander
Cockburn
Contract with Iraq
Ninan Koshy
India's Devious Middle Path Through the Iraq War
Brenda
Norrell
Lakota Leader: World Must Resist
American Empire
Wallace
Gagne
End of History; More in a Moment
Stew
Albert
On the Road Again
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/16
Hot Stories
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
|
April 19,
2003
Wal-Mart and
Peace
What
is Their Problem? What More Do They Want from Us?
by
ADAM ENGEL
I'm all man and only man. I work and weep at Wal-Mart.
Our new "town hall." What was that poem from high school?
"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan yadda yadda yadda pleasure dome
decree..." Well I'd bet my bottom dollar that under that
pleasure dome was a bright, shiny Wal-Mart. We have no clue as
to why our boys are overseas again, but the President says they
must be to defend our freedoms. Smash those WMD's. Liberate the
downtrodden people starved half to death by Saddam's sanctions.
"It is springtime, and so all the
Wal-Marts around the country have plastic flowers in the crafts
aisle and chocolate eggs in the candy section. But it is also
wartime, and at Wal-Mart, which sometimes functions in its vastness
as a kind of substitute town square, the impact of the war in
Iraq is on display around the clock. For Wal-Mart, the country's
biggest company and employer of more people than any entity except
the government, only something like a war could force the kinds
of changes it has made since the fighting began. Computers normally
used for gift registry now send e-mail greetings to the military.
On the internal Wal-Mart television network, the usual loop of
giddy promotions for Mary Kate and Ashley apparel, garden tools
and DVD's is interrupted twice a day for live briefings from
the White House and the Pentagon."
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
We congregate on breaks to hear the latest.
About our boys, our fiances, our brothers. Over there, over there.
We tie yellow ribbons to our flags. Management gives us time
to grieve when the television spits bad news down on our muddled
heads. We can't put two and two together. But we can work the
register, it's computerized and self-correcting, in case we mess
up, or let greed get the best of us.
"In the beginning, someone at Wal-Mart
headquarters decided that it would be a good idea to broadcast
war coverage, via CNN, into its stores around the clock. The
monitors, which exist mainly to advertise Wal-Mart wares, are
everywhere, from the front of the stores to the infant, sporting
goods, electronics and grocery sections...The round-the-clock
coverage was not well received at stores where the American forces
represented real people, not just images on a screen. Under Wal-Mart
policy, stores are not allowed to turn the monitors off, and
because it is a closed system, they cannot change the channel
to something else. Before long, Ms. Stallings was on the phone
to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., asking the Wal-Mart
brass to do something about the broadcasts. By March 22, the
format was scaled back nationwide to include only the two daily
briefings." - New York Times, "Wartime Grief at Wal-Mart,"
April 4, 2003
Wal-Mart is good to us. We are allowed
to read emails during breaks, and when the television always
on delivered too much worry, Management agreed to keep it tuned
to CNN only some of the time, not all of the time, so as not
to upset us, but at the same time show the customers, or "guests"
as we refer to them, that Wal-Mart is as patriotic as the next
super store.
"At the store in Jacksonville, N.C.,
near Camp Lejeune, practically all the employees and customers
are related to someone in the Marines. Ms. Stallings spends her
days and nights on an emotional shore patrol, up and down the
aisles of her store, a 200,000-square-foot 'supercenter' that
sells everything from baby clothes to Bloody Mary mix. She and
her co-manager, Terry Branton, seek out the unusually quiet,
the drawn-looking and the people who are openly in tears - mostly
their employees, sometimes their customers, too. They console
them as best they can."
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
Some of us have read radical nonsense
about the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart and their being one
of the wealthiest families on the planet the top one tenth of
one percent of the population that owns 80 percent of everything.
But they give us work. Honest days work for an honest days pay.
Put food on our tables. Discounts on Wal-Mart items with company
scrip_ I mean, dollars, strong U.S. currency.
And if one of our boys makes the Ultimate
Sacrifice, why, we all pitch in, like one big family, we meet
and grieve together, in shifts, in the employee lounge, but only
for as much time as is necessary, we have guests to wait on,
we can't smoke cigarettes in there but we break out a box of
nicotine gum, courtesy the Pharmacy, this being war time, and
we console each other and the bereaved, and promise to be there
for each other always, we are family.
Yeah I once had my own business, a little
discount store the family owned since grandpa came to America,
a "general store" really, nothing much, it's better
this way. Wal-Mart has so much of everything to offer it's guests,
while we had so little and didn't even have the sense to call
em "guests" we called 'em "customers," what
hicks we were. But when Wal-Mart came in and the family business
tanked the Company was kind enough to give me a uniform and,
taking my years into consideration, make me a "greeter"
which is an easy gig, and I'm part of the Wal-Mart family here
in this shopper's paradise where the guests have everything available
for their purchasing needs.
"The stores' break rooms have become
repositories for sorrow, the places where Wal-Mart workers go
to cope privately. None of the store managers interviewed said
they had brought in extra grief counselors or other specialists.
'Fortunately, the military has very good counseling services,'
Mr.. Branton said. Although full-time employees can call a counseling
line for help as part of their benefits, others tend to rely
on their friends at work."
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
Really they've been good to us. And were
else can we go to support each other, the town going the way
of my old discount shop, and the boys off to war again?
We need Wal-Mart just like we need each
other, come business or pleasure, cause there's no place else
to go. And we have everything we need including Mexican, Chinese,
Pizza, Hamburgers and soda, and a pharmacy (sometimes the folks
with loved ones over THERE go in for sedatives: valium, Xanax
and whatnot. I see nothing wrong with that in stressful times
like this so long as it doesn't become a habit or anything illegal.
"Many of the employees, whom Wal-Mart
prefers to call associates, are wearing yellow ribbons to work."
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
That girl, what's her name, Stella, for
instance, lost her husband the first week.
If anyone needed medicating ... though
you're not supposed to drink on that stuff but oh, hell ...sometimes
anything to kill the pain. Chewed that nicotine gum 24/7, smoked
like a chimney too out in the parking lot.
Only 20 years old. Her husband 21, now,
for the ages. She had some problems not two months ago, miscarriage.
I suppose no kid left behind without a dad and for her a haunting
loving spitting image face. Maybe better this way, financially.
And she's still so very young, in a few years maybe someone else.
Start life new. She already used up her and personal days for
her pregnancy problems, but Management understands, what with
the stress of him being sent off maybe that's what caused the
abor_the miscarriage. Point I'm trying to make is when she got
the news from that nice Army chaplain she had no personal days
left. But as I said we're family, we pitched in, everyone a few
hours here and there. And Blanche, an older gal needed the money,
took extra shifts in Stella's place while she settled into the,
her new situation.
"There are two stages of major upset:
first, when e-mail messages and phone calls are cut off because
a military unit is heading into combat, and again when reports
of casualties come in and mention a military unit stationed nearby.
But people inside the Wal-Marts seem to share more general fears,
as well: about their children, and about the future."
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart, " April 4, 2003
One day Stella went in to talk to Management,
then hugged and kissed us all good-bye, said, "Nothing left
for me here, nothing." But she'll be taken care of. She
did good work here. I'm sure Management has only fine things
to say, and her being a war widow and all she'll find a position
in any town. Wal-Mart's a big chain all over the country nothing
bigger. And again she's a gold star widow. The higher ups in
the Central Office, wherever that is, will take that into account.
No problem anywhere she goes. A hard-working pretty girl; she's
young.
"Many workers also have pictures
of their husbands or wives stationed in the gulf pinned to their
smocks alongside the name tags adorned with smiley faces, a Wal-Mart
staple.... Some stores have organized collections of food, toiletries,
clothing and other items for the troops and their families left
back home. In Atlanta, contributions gathered with the help of
a radio appeal filled four 18-wheel tractor-trailers, and included
bottles of Listerine and boxes of Girl Scout cookies, on which
donors scribbled messages like 'Thanks for keeping us free.'"
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
This war will be over soon and most of
our boys will come home safe and sound. I've been in the Army
myself and I know they take care of their own. And we didn't
have smart bombs and computer cruise missiles to protect us,
only napalm. And now I hear they have a MOAB bomb to put Saddam
in his place once and for all. Goddam Saddam and all his crew,
when will they leave us alone? Why must we Americans be the only
people of conscience to take out these dictators and put this
crazy world in order?
All they know is force, the only language
they know. When I saw those towers in NYC,
though I've never been to that particular
city myself, when I saw them fall like mounds of gray snow, I
wept, oh yes, I wept and all I wanted was revenge. All I wanted
was to kill Saddam with my bare hands for doing that - wait,
it wasn't Saddam, it was that other guy - but hell I wanted to
kill 'em all for bringing their evil to this clean country, our
beautiful, free land.
"Back at the stores, the talk of
war continues, and employees get through their shifts hoping
for the best. Mr.. Branton, 36, said he had some experience with
his employees' feelings: his father spent 25 years in the military,
including lengthy tours in Vietnam. ``So I was a little boy on
the front steps waiting for Daddy to come home a couple of times,''
he said. His store is decorated for Easter, he added, and planning
to conduct business as usual. 'We have to carry on,' he said.
'That's important for our whole nation. That's one of the things
that makes America America.'"
New York Times, "Wartime Grief at
Wal-Mart," April 4, 2003
Those tall tales about how all our boys
are gonna die of depleted uranium and what
not: pure propaganda put out by the anti-war
crowd and the trouble-makers. I remember those parasites well.
In my day they were communists and hippie drug peaceniks not
terrorists. What, I ask you, WHAT is their problem? What do they
want from us hard-working, life-loving Americans who only want
to do what's right; who only want to feed our families; who only
want our children to make grandchildren; who only want to live
in peace?
Adam Engel
would rather scrape the blood, shit, vomit, teeth, hair and other
human matter from the torture chambers of Camp X-Ray with a tooth
brush than work for either Wal- Mart or The New York Times .
Flags, yellow ribbons and conjectures as to what excuse Bush
Inc. will use to bomb Syria can be sent to asengel@attglobal.net
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|