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Today's
Stories
March 5 / 6,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Arnold
vs. the Nurses
March 4, 2005
Frederick Hudson
Caught
in a Cage
March 3, 2005
Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"
Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions
Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?
Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again
Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?
Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness
Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists
John Ross
Mexico's
Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
March 2, 2005
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
The
"Noble Liars" Attack Syria
Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental
Dissent
M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah
Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"
Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
February 28,
2005
Gary Leupp
Year
4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?
Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers
Mickey Z.
The
Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter
Thompson and the "Right to Die"
Paul de Rooij
Why
Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel
David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media
Mario Lamo
Jimenez
Maria
Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars
Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge
of Academia
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
March 5 / 6, 2005
CounterPunch Diary
Dr
Arnold's Diet: Take a Steroid, Kick A Woman; Flip-Flop Johnson:
Now He Doesn't Want to Nuke Syria; Coakley, Romero, and the King
of Nepal: Flip-Flop Johnson: Now He Doesn't Want to Nuke Syria
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Back in the early 1990s, the right-wing
taste of the year was Newt Gingrich. He led the Republican sweep
into Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections. His "Contract
With America" loomed in every headline. Liberals wailed
that Gingrichism was invincible.
The counterattack began right
in Gingrich's front yard, in Georgia. The Atlanta Central Labor
Council and Jobs with Justice staged a noisy sit-in in Gingrich's
local Congressional office and seized the headlines with stinging
descriptions of the Contract as a cruel assault on the poor and
the working class. For months, groups of union workers dogged
the Congressman at his every stop across the country. This noisy
guerrilla warfare rallied the faint-hearted and threw Gingrich,
then Speaker of the House, off balance. By 1995 a rattled Gingrich
had lost his touch, faltering badly in the famous budget face-off
with Clinton.
In the 2000 Democratic primary
campaign the AIDS coalition ACT UP (involved in the earlier Gingrich
protests) adopted the same tactic against Al Gore, showing up
wherever he made public appearances and shouting out protests
at the rotten AIDS policies he'd signed on to. There weren't
always many protesters, but they were always there, and they
had an effect. Gore changed his line, and so did the Clinton
Administration.
Now it's Arnold Schwarzenegger's
turn. California's nurses have got him rattled, and it's already
costing him. A February 23 Field Poll showed his approval ratings
declining ten points since last September, a significant drop.
One might have thought that it's a no-brainer to realize that
kicking Florence Nightingale's butt is not a sure-fire way to
the public's heart. But the Governor is so used to browbeating
the press that he thought he could do the same to the California
Nurses' Association (CNA), one of the most militant unions in
the country, with 60,000 members and representing registered
nurses at 171 health facilities throughout the state. Schwarzenegger
has been trying to roll back the union's gains on nurse/ patient
ratios, safety standards and kindred issues.
Schwarzenegger's version of
Howard Dean's scream came in December in Long Beach. As the nurses
barracked him during a speech, he denounced them as one of the
"special interests" and said, "I'm always kicking
their butt." This witty response from the breast-grabber
got plenty of play, and did the nurses nothing but good. At a
January Capitol protest in Sacramento the nurses carried coffins
and had a New Orleans jazz group play a death march. During the
Super Bowl they flew a small plane over the steroid-swollen Governor's
party at his Santa Monica home. When he was in Washington they
took out a full-page ad in Roll Call flaying his record. During
a Schwarzenegger speech in a Sacramento hotel, nurses held up
a banner saying RNs Say Stop the Power Grab.
On February 15, when Schwarzenegger
and his platoons of body guards and flunkies trooped into a screening
of Be Cool, 300 nurses demonstrated. Kelly DiGiacomo, 46 years
old and 5'2", a nurse at a Kaiser hospital near Sacramento,
had a ticket. She ensconced herself in the fourth row, wearing
her nurse's scrubs.
A bodyguard rushed up, and
under the pretext of a possible meeting with the governor, led
her to a room with a California Highway Patrol cop at the door
and began to grill DiGiacomo. A few days later a CHP investigator
called. DiGiacomo asked why she should be considered a threat.
The investigator replied, "Well, you were wearing a nurse's
uniform." "Oh, sure, the international terrorist uniform,"
DiGiacomo scoffed. Californians scoffed with her when they saw
the news stories. At least Bush and Cheney can claim they're
being targeted by hairy men from the dark side of Mecca. Here's
Arnold hiding behind his goons from the woman who cares for you
when you're in the hospital.
Schwarzenegger's strategy has
been to project an image-calculatedly fascistic in style-of irresistible
momentum, aiming to crush all opposition with threats to go directly
to the people with rallies backed by the mountains of corporate
cash he's been raising since he was elected.
It's no idle threat. Schwarzenegger
has a swollen war chest, albeit one that's also starting to get
him bad press. One of the reasons Gray Davis, his predecessor
in Sacramento, got recalled was his 24/7 addiction to fundraising.
If anything, Schwarzenegger is even more relentless, with a corporate
cash IV permanently stuck in his arm. Last year he raised $28.8
million, and this year he plans to raise at least another $50
million to promote his agenda.
Schwarzenegger's agenda is crudely simple: Attack and if possible
destroy social safety nets in health, pensions, insurance, workers'
comp, job security, education, etc., with a green light for business
to pillage, outsource jobs and not pay taxes.
He's already tripped. Near
the end of February Schwarzenegger was reportedly abandoning
his proposal to abolish the independent Board of Registered Nursing,
along with eighty-eight other regulatory and policy boards. But
he's still planning to roll California into DeLay-style redestricting
and to ramp up the use of "emergency" diktats to undercut
democratic opposition from the legislature. One such example
is in the area of healthcare: an emergency order by the Governor
in November to roll back patient safety standards in California
hospitals, reversing the intent of a 1999 law. A CNA lawsuit
challenging that order was just heard in Sacramento Superior
Court. Late Friday afternoon Judge Judy Holzer Hersher vacated
the emergency regulation by Gov. Schwarzenegger that suspended
key portions of the landmark law mandating minimum RN-to-patient
hospital ratios. Hersher's decision means California hospitals
must immediately restore safe staffing in emergency rooms and
implement ratios of no more than one RN for every five patients
in general medical units as they were supposed to do in January.
Judge Hersher also denied a request by the hospital industry
for a stay--to prevent the restoration of the ratios pending
an appeal.The CNA's is the first successful lawsuit against the
governor.
You might have thought Schwarzenegger
would have some sympathy for nurses, who incur long-term back
trauma from having to haul patients up in bed, a task equivalent,
on average, to lifting about 1.8 tons a day. No. The Governor
vetoed a bill requiring hospitals (heavy Schwarzenegger donors)
to install safe-lift policies and equipment. And yes, he vetoed
another bill to educate school coaches about the dangers of steroids
and performance-enhancing diet supplements.
As I said, political momentum
is the key to Schwarzenegger's game. But what happens when you
trip over a 5'2" woman in nurse's scrubs? You lose momentum.
What happens when you start screaming abuse at nurses and teachers?
What happens when you make working women your enemies? The humbled
president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, might want to have a
word with Governor Schwarzenegger on that one.
Flip-Flop Johnson: Now He Doesn't Want
to Nuke Syria
The Republican Congressman
who twice called for nuking Syria now contradicts what his chief
of staff told Roll Call, says he was 'kind of joking. Here's
the latest bulletin on The Nuke
'Em Rep, from Jackson Thoreau whose first piece ran on this
site last week.
After substantial public outcry
about twice saying he wants to "nuke" Syria, U.S. Rep.
Sam Johnson [R-Texas] is now back-pedaling and contradicting
what his chief of staff told Roll Call, the non-partisan Capitol
Hill publication that broke the story.
In a March 4 article in the
Dallas Morning News, one of numerous places I sent the Roll Call
report, Johnson claimed he was "kind of joking" about
the matter. The paper quoted Johnson as saying: "I was kind
of joking. You know. We were talking between veterans. We were
swapping sea stories - things that we'd done in the military."
Then Johnson added, "Syria actively opposes our allies'
efforts on terrorism, and they finance and harbor terrorists
in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. We're sure of that. They even
fought against us on the border during the Iraq incursion. So
I don't think they're a friend of the United States at all."
Johnson has said at least twice
he wanted to kill everyone in Syria in one nuclear swoop, just
because he has some unproven notion that weapons of mass destruction
are being hidden there. He has said this to a public gathering
in a speech in a church, no less, on Feb. 19, and privately to
Bush himself at the White House.
I don't buy that Johnson was
joking about wanting to nuke Syria. For one, when Roll Call asked
his chief of staff, Cody Lusk, about the remarks, Lusk failed
to say it was a joke. He simply reminded the Roll Call reporter
that Johnson had been a fighter pilot in Korea and Vietnam. "He
was just speaking to a crowd of veterans," Lusk said. A
week after the Roll Call report and a bunch of public outcry,
Lusk and Johnson suddenly decided that Johnson was "kind
of joking" about the nuke Syria remarks.
I don't think it was a joke,
and even if it was "kind of a joke," murdering so many
people in one act is not something a country's leader should
be joking about. And if it was supposedly a joke, why did the
tape played to Roll Call only depict people applauding after
he made the remarks, and not laughing? A lot of people in this
country agree with Johnson that Syria should be "nuked,"
that's why. Of course, former President Reagan made such a "joke"
about outlawing the former Soviet Union and beginning bombing
in "five minutes" during the 1980s. Bush also mocked
a Texas woman whose death sentence he signed.
Many people have emailed me
to express their disgust about Johnson's remarks after I wrote
the column that exposed what he said to more people.
One of them, Jim Abourezk,
a former member of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate from South
Dakota, wrote Johnson a letter highly critical of his comments.
Abourezk wrote that he has relatives in Syria, and he recalled
"a lot of idiocy when I served, but nothing as idiotic as
these latest ravings from Mr. Johnson. What I don't think he
understands is that when someone who is draped in a congressional
flag says something even as foolish as urging that nukes be dropped
on Syria, it gives it the imprimatur of authority. He's not much
of a role model, unless it would be for the arms industry."
Abourezk said he had never heard anyone threaten any country
like that, especially a "small harmless country like Syria."
He took a businessman friend of his from Sioux Falls on a trip
to Syria last summer, and his friend agreed the U.S. was picking
on a harmless country. "The Syrian government can barely
threaten their own people or the people of Lebanon, and certainly
not any country of any size or strength," Abourezk wrote.
Moawia Tayyarah, a congressional affairs officer with the Embassy
of the Syrian Arab Republic, also did not take Johnson's statements
lightly. She wrote a letter to Roll Call, pointing out how "this
kind of ignorance and warmongering can only worsen the terrible
image of the United States across the entire Middle East at a
time when America actually needs to re-establish itself as an
even-handed and fair world leader."
Johnson's remarks will only
incite Arabs into "greater anger toward the leadership of
the United States," Tayyarah wrote. "The fact remains
that neither Johnson nor any American intelligence agency has
a shred of evidence that these phantom and fictional Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction are in Syria. The reasons for this are simple.
First, these weapons do not exist. Second, anyone who understands
the Middle East knows that the ex-Iraqi regime and the Syrian
government never got along, and these kinds of relations did
not exist between the two countries.
"Does anyone remember
that Syria joined the United States against Saddam Hussein in
1991? I guess Rep. Sam Johnson does not." The American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee also pressured Johnson into back-pedaling
on the issue. In a letter faxed to Johnson, former U.S. Rep.
Mary Rose Oakar, president of the committee, wrote, "While
we recognize the current differences between the Bush Administration
and the Syrian Government, these differences should be addressed
in negotiations at the conference table, in coordination with
our international partners, rather than confrontation in the
battlefield by using nuclear weapons. We are sure that you would
not want to see any harm to any civilians, let alone to the tomb
of John the Baptist, St. Paul's Church where he converted to
Christianity, and the ancient icons of St. Luke, all of which
are historical treasures of significance to all faiths located
in Syria.
"Advocating for genocide
is completely unacceptable and contrary to our American values
and traditions. Indeed, it is a sad day when an elected member
of the United States Congress openly advocates for attacking
another country, any country, with nuclear weapons. The remarks
attributed to you demonstrate that you are an advocate for mass
destruction and genocide. These remarks have no place in the
United States Congress."
Martha Coakley
and the Amiraults
Last week I ran a letter here
from Martin White about Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts DA
who prosecuted Paul Shanley. Amid pertinent abuse of La Coakley
White remarked that all the Amiraults had been sent to prison
on false charges brought by Middlesex County DA Coakley.
Now Ralph McGaughey writes,
"As I recall Scott Harshbarger was DA over in Middlesex
when the Amiraults were persecuted. The case was defended by
the Middlesex DA during the 90s, Thomas Reilly, presently MA
AG and gubernatorial hopeful. The last several years the dirty
deed has been handled by Martha Coakley, presently Middlesex
DA and MA AG hopeful. In 1930s movies DAs act like this lot.
They all want to follow Bob Bradford's path to the corner office.
Bob, by the way, was a good man and a R. Guv '47 to '49. The
office has been infected ever since. Keep up the good work."
Where Was
Archbishop Romero Assassinated?
In his fine piece The D'Abuisson
Memorial Lawrence Reichard wrote that "according to
El Salvador's South Africa-style Truth Commission, D'Aubuisson
authored the hit on Romero, which was carried out in the middle
of Romero saying Mass to hundreds in the National Cathedral."
Reichard now tells us that "I now have it on good word that
Romero was shot while saying a small mass in the chapel adjacent
to his home, not in the National Cathedral before hundreds, as
stated in my piece. This from Mario Davila, a Salvadoran friend
of 20 years or so who works for AFSC in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
For Nepalese
Monarchism?
Elsewhere on our site this
weekend you'll find a trio of pieces about Nepal, one of them
markedly pro-King. Now I have my tendresse for Jacobinism, and
had a plaster of paris medallion of Robespierre (modeled on the
bust by David d'Angers), on my sitting room wall until it fell
and shattered in Petrolia's 7.9 earthquake in 1992. Another medallion,
of St Just, survived and hangs on an outside wall, but in truth
I was never so keen on St Just, unlike my maximalist comrade
in arms, Jeffrey St Clair, a far more ardent Jacobin than I.
Jeffrey murmured that maybe we might pass up Bhishma Kharki's
piece saying Nepal would be better served by a constitutional
monarch than by the Maoists, and that emergency requires ruthless
measures.
Let's give Bhishma Kharki the
benefit of the doubt, I urged, pointing out we have a couple
of other pieces on the site this weekend to flesh out the options
facing Nepal. After all, I am somewhat of a Carlist. Between
Tony Blair and Prince Charles I'd chose the latter any day. As
my dear friend Jack Finnegan, long since gone from this world,
used to say in his thick Glaswegian accent as he viewed the latest
turpitude of the Labor Party, "Alex, I'm a monarchist-Leninist".
Anyway, we did run Ron Jacobs' extremely generous review of Bob
Avakian's autobiography a few weeks ago. Nepal's Maoists will
just have to take their lumps from Bhishma, who did do hard time
for his beliefs and who now has to live in Lawrence, Kansas,
which is probably about as far from Nepal in contour and custom
as you can get.
[The Schwarzenegger item
in this column appeared in the print edition of The Nation that
went to press last week.]
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