Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 15,
2005
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
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
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,
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February 15, 2005
Something to Think About When Taking Your Medicine
Fighting
Big Pharma in Little Digwal
By
STAN COX
Digwal,
India.
Maliamma waved a Coke bottle at the
government official. "Go ahead -- issue the permit! But
first I want to see you drink my well water!" Maliamma
and her neighbors had traveled the 25 miles from their village
of Digwal, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, to the district
capital Sangareddy for a public hearing. At the hearing, an
export-oriented pharmaceutical company was proposing to build
a factory only a couple of miles from Sangareddy.
The visitors from Digwal knew
firsthand what kind of neighbor a bulk-drug factory can be, and
they were determined that Sangareddy not suffer the same fate.
Joining forces with local residents and businesses, they made
it a pretty uncomfortable meeting for company representatives,
who eventually hightailed it from of the room after signing an
agreement to get out and stay out of the Sangareddy area.
That hearing, in March, 2001,
was one in a string of victories for the people of Digwal --
a winning streak that by 2005 may have halted further pollution
of their water and land by the factory across the road from their
village.
In this 50-mile-long stretch
of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest
city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals
are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress
the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against
the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own. Here,
the more typical experience is that of the Patancheru
industrial area about 30 miles east of Digwal, where toxic
effluents from a myriad of drug factories continue to plague
more than a dozen villages.
But nobody's celebrating in
Digwal. Residents and their legal representatives say that the
groundwater remains badly polluted and is ruining their crops
and their health. The factory's current owners say they are
currently using state-of-the-art technology to control pollution,
and that they have gone the extra mile to improve the lives of
Digwal's residents. Government authorities say that the factory
used to be a serious polluter, but, thanks to tough enforcement,
that's all in the past. What's past is past, say the factory
owners, and, as we will see, they may have excellent reasons
for feeling that way.
Sorting through all the claims
and counter-claims are the state's High Court, various blue-ribbon
committees, and even the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Digwal and
the world
"I'm no activist,"
says C. Shailaja, the Sangareddy attorney who has been representing
Digwal's residents for almost seven years. "But when the
people from Digwal first told me their story, I knew we had to
do something." Back in 1998, she and some colleagues set
up a one-day "camp" in Digwal to provide information
on legal services. Such camps are routine, but at this one,
Shailaja was thronged by more than 100 people who claimed that
Global Drugs Ltd., owner of a drug factory just across National
Highway 9 from their village, had contaminated their groundwater,
ruined their crops, and wrecked their health. Before long, Shailaja
and the villagers had filed a case against the factory's owners
-- a case that's currently before the state's High Court.
The village has 6000 or so
residents, most of them from the lowest rungs of India's caste
hierarchy. The pharmaceutical plant, now owned by Nicholas Piramal
India Ltd. (NPIL) of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), manufactures bulk
drugs -- technically, "active pharmaceutical ingredients"
-- that are used in producing pills, capsules, and other medical
products.
NPIL
is India's second-largest pharmaceutical company, with numerous
factories producing a complete line of finished products as well
as bulk drugs. Judging from its published "shareholding
pattern", between 21 and 30% of its stock is foreign-owned.
The company has a branch office in New York and joint ventures
with a wide range of Western drug companies in the U.S., the
U.K., Switzerland, and Italy. Approximately 70% of the Digwal
plant's production goes into export markets.
India's pharmaceutical manufacturers
will tell you that the best thing we in the West can do for the
environment in places like Digwal and Patancheru is to keep swallowing
our medicine. The more emphasis that India puts on exports,
the drugmakers say, the greater the scrutiny they receive from
Western regulators. But so far, in Digwal and the villages around
Patancheru, the progress made against pollution has been largely
the result of agitation and court action by local people who
can no longer swallow their own well water.
Rajarathnam, a native of Digwal,
was one of those who approached Shailaja for help at the legal
aid camp. He has been a thorn in the side of the factory's owners
since 1995, secretly videotaping the dumping of effluents (he's
a videographer by vocation), speaking out on Digwal's pollution
problem, and even helping organize a theatrical troupe to spread
the word to other villages. He says that a frustrated company
official once told him, "Stop complaining! We're saving
lives all over the world!" Another shouted, "What's
the problem? Your village is becoming world-famous. People are
saying, 'We're grateful to Digwal - that's where our medicines
come from!'"
The view from
the village
Digwal residents told me that
since it was built in the early 1990s, the drug plant has discharged
wastes into open streams during the monsoon season and has dumped
into deep, open wells years round. They claim to have seen barrels
of toxic waste buried, with trees planted over the top. They
say that chemical analyses have shown their groundwater to be
too contaminated for drinking, bathing, or even irrigation, and
that it's making them sick. Farmers told me they have had to
stop cropping large parts of their irrigated land because of
what they call the "chemical water".
(Pharmaceutical manufacturing
involves a host of hazardous inputs, solvents, and by-products.
For newly built drug factories in the United States, the Environmental
Protection Agency puts limits on concentrations of some 32 different
toxic compounds in their effluents.)
There is little question that
Global Drugs, which owned the plant until sometime in 2003, was
a big-time polluter. In 1998, a state court concluded that "allegations
to the effect that by reason of discharge of the industrial effluents,
the agricultural lands have been affected stands beyond reasonable
doubt." I saw one government analysis of water from a Digwal
well in that same year that concluded, "Sample is not suitable
for potable or irrigation purposes."
A district judge wrote in 1999,
"I have personally visited the premises of Global Drugs
. . . This is a highly polluting industry." He called on
the state Supreme Court to order compensation for the affected
farmers. A 1999 court order addressed to Global Drugs noted
that "effluents have formed a cesspool which is causing
surface and groundwater pollution, and your effluent treatment
capacity is not adequate."
An official of the Andhra Pradesh
Pollution Control Board, who asked not to be identified, told
me, "In those years, Global Drugs was allowed to discharge
its effluents on the land. But when NPIL took over the plant
a couple of years ago, that stopped. The Board would not allow
them to re-open the facility until its effluent treatment capacity
was upgraded and its wastes were disposed of properly."
He continued: "And these
days, as soon as anyone tries to dump wastes in this area, we
get a call, immediately, from a citizen. Everyone is very pollution-conscious
now."
NPIL: a white
knight?
Global Drugs was strictly minor
league: a small, unprofitable local outfit. The plant's new
owner, NPIL, is a billion-dollar-plus company that can afford
to invest ample resources in pollution control -- and they appear
to have done just that. Manoj Agarwalla, General Manager for
Finance for NPIL's Digwal operation, says that when it comes
to preventing pollution, his is a model company. "This
plant has an unconditional seal of approval from the FDA in the
United States. Last May, we received an award from the Pollution
Control Board. We're on the shortlist for an award from the
National Safety Council of India. Around 8 or 9% of our total
investment goes to safety, health, and environmental protection.
"Any day of the week,
we'll have foreign visitors coming in. Representatives of multinational
companies are a dime a dozen around here. Given that, how could
we be dumping toxic wastes?"
But Agarwalla goes further.
He says that his factory has never dumped its wastes -- not
even when it was owned by the notorious Global Drugs. In his
view, the villagers are simply putting the squeeze on a rich
corporation, and their very poverty gives them a big advantage:
"Look, these are people who have so little, they have nothing
to lose. So they file a case, see what they can get, and if
they come up with nothing in the end, it's no big deal -- for
them. But I am forced to spend a lot of time and money to prove
myself innocent."
He adds, "We have spent
close to $2 million on waste treatment, health and safety measures,
and supplying safe water to Digwal." In 2000, under a court
order, Global Drugs started hauling drinking water to Digwal
in tanker trucks. Now, for an hour each morning, NPIL pipes
water directly into the village from wells outside the allegedly
contaminated area, at a huge expense.
Agarwalla says the company
provides potable water even though -- he claims -- the courts
found the undrinkability of Digwal's groundwater to be "not
directly attributable" to the drug plant. "We do it
because we want to be a good neighbor. We do a lot for them.
Last Independence Day, we even distributed sweets to every single
schoolchild in Digwal."
(Shailaja notes dryly that
while NPIL was not legally compelled to pass out candy, the courts
do continue to require that it furnish clean water.)
I toured NPIL's Digwal installation
with Agarwalla and other managers. Their pollution-control infrastructure,
which includes three independent effluent treatment facilities,
is impressive indeed. Incineration is done at high temperature
with rapid cooling to prevent dioxin formation. Smokestacks
are all scrubber-equipped. Liquid effluents run through channels
and ponds lined with high-tech, impervious polymers.
Organic wastes go into large
tanks where they are broken down anaerobically by bacteria, producing
useful biogas fuel in the process. Heat, water, and steam are
all conserved and recycled. Both solid and liquid wastes are
hauled to government-approved facilities after treatment.1
S.R. Mittal, NPIL's General
Manager for Safety, Health, Hazards, and Environment, oversees
all this activity. He is absolutely fervent about pollution
control. He lives and breathes his profession (breathes, literally
-- the air that assaults the nostrils and lungs anywhere near
the effluent treatment facilities is strong stuff indeed.) Let
a single toxic molecule slip his grasp, and he'll take it as
a personal failure. The chief concern of other drug industry
people I have spoken with appears to be their corporate image,
but Mittal is different. He's precisely the kind of person I'd
want to hire were I in charge of a company truly committed to
environmental responsibility.
At the time of my visit in
January 2005, the management was preparing for a visit by FDA
officials from Washington, who would recommend whether or not
the plant's permit to export to the U.S. should be renewed.
I'm no expert, but from what I saw and heard at NPIL, I expected
the permit to be issued promptly.
A phantom report
... and a phantom company?
But what about the villagers,
and their ailments, and their crops? Is their water and soil
still polluted by past or even present-day dumping? Or, as Agarwalla
maintains, are they just greedy? Maybe they're victims of mass
paranoia?
There is a document that could
go a long way toward clearing up the controversy: a report by
a committee of experts appointed by the state High Court to study
the situation in 2002-2003. Almost everyone I spoke with, on
both sides of the dispute and in the middle, mentioned the report's
findings and leaned on it for support. But no one I spoke with
had a copy of the report or had ever even seen a copy.
Agarwalla says the report proves
that Digwal's water is no longer polluted, and it recommends
that the Court award no compensation to farmers.2 But neither
he nor his fellow NPIL managers have actually seen the report.
The folks at the state's Pollution Control Board office in Sangareddy
said they don't have a copy, and more senior officials at the
Board's headquarters couldn't provide one either. Shailaja hasn't
seen the report, but doubts its reliability because, she alleges,
committee members were too chummy with the company people. (NPIL
denies this.) In her capacity as a legal representative of the
villagers, she requested a copy, but never got one.3
And, of course, no one in Digwal
has seen the report. One farmer, Nagarathnam, told me, "People
come all the time and take water samples, but they never come
back to show us any results."
A Pollution Control Board official
in the area says the water supplies are fine now, but he could
show me no data. Completion and publication of a comprehensive
survey, with full chemical analyses of Digwal's water sources,
would answer many questions. Agarwalla would like to see such
a study, but he emphasizes, oddly, that it should be done only
after the court case is resolved.
In the villagers' view, present-day
water samples wouldn't tell the whole story anyway. They say
the company already owes them for their decade of hardship.
Here, a precedent -- far more ghastly but still a precedent --
comes to mind. Dow Chemical bought the Union Carbide Corporation
in the 1990s . Thousands of families still seeking compensation
for Carbide's deadly 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India claim that
Dow can't have acquired Carbide's assets without also taking
responsibility for the Bhopal carnage -- Carbide's biggest unresolved
liability by far. Does NPIL likewise owe the residents of Digwal
for what its predecessor did to them?
Clearly, Agarwalla's unconvincing
assertion that Global Drugs never dumped effluents is meant to
head off compensation demands based on pollution that occurred
before NPIL came on the scene. But the villagers say there's
a bigger reason for NPIL to want to forget the past. As Rajarathnam
puts it, "The name they put on the signs out front doesn't
matter. They keep changing the factory's name just to avoid
responsibility." That assertion may be inaccurate in a
legal sense, but there may also be some truth in it. It turns
out that the plant has changed hands more than once in its twelve-year
lifetime. Global Drugs was the third in a series of owners,
having acquired the plant from none other than Nicholas Piramal
India Ltd.4
It's tempting to speculate,
so let's do just that: Was Global Drugs created to supply NPIL
with bulk drugs while keeping the big company's good name untarnished
by pollution? (Some pharmaceutical companies in Patancheru have
been accused of such shell games.) And, faced with villagers'
protests and a government crackdown, did NPIL make a virtue of
necessity and convert the plant into clean, green facility that
can now freely export into regulated markets?5
At this point, it is left to
the High Court to weigh whatever evidence it has gathered and
decide whether NPIL is responsible for past pollution by the
plant -- whatever the past connection (or lack thereof) between
NPIL and Global Drugs.
When it comes to the cost of
patented prescription drugs in the United States, the sky's the
limit. But in the global bulk drug market, price competition
is fierce, and every dollar or rupee not spent on pollution control
gives a company a bit more room to maneuver. The people of Digwal
have fought hard to stop such corner-cutting in their own backyard,
and they appear to have succeeded. But they plan to keep pushing;
they're still seeking recompense for a decade's worth of poisoned
water.
So, when drug-company officials
tell Rajarathnam that drugs being made in Digwal are improving
the health of tens of millions of people, this is his retort:
"What? So are you doing this for free? And how many rupees
are the lives of 6000 people in Digwal worth to you?"
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer who
lives in Salina, Kansas. He lived in Hyderabad, India in 1980-82
and 1996-2000 and just completed a two-month trip there. Translation
by Priti Cox during interviews is deeply appreciated. He can
be reached at: t.stan@cox.net
***************
Notes
1. NPIL's daily output of
liquid effluents fills 14 or so tanker trucks, each with a 10,000
liter capacity. They transport those wastes 20 miles to a Common Effluent
Treatment Plant (CETP) in Patancheru that handles wastes
from all of the area's drugmakers. After treatment, NPIL management
says, pollutant concentrations in the liquid wastes are less
than half the legal upper limit. A 2003 court-ordered study
in which repeated samples were taken from tanker trucks arriving
at the CETP from 35 different factories confirms the claim that
NPIL's treated effluents have concentrations much lower than
the limit for raw sewage (the standard that applies to wastes
brought to the CETP). But a single sample of "treated effluent"
obtained during the study on a surprise visit to the factory
itself exceeded that upper limit.
2. Agarwalla said the committee
recommended no farmer compensation because records show that
the land in question had lain idle before Global Drugs allegedly
polluted it: "Those guys were producing zilch then, and
they are producing zilch now, and they want to be paid fo it."
Shailaja laughs off that argument: "The committee members
were looking at land that had been taken out of irrigated production
in the dry season precisely because the water was too polluted
to use. And they concluded that the farmers were just lazy."
She asks the obvious rhetorical question: How had more than
a thousand families in a village surrounded by nothing but open
countryside been surviving if they weren't farming?
3. One Pollution Control Board
official told me that the report is evidence in the pending court
action against NPIL and therefore unavailable. But as a foreigner
with no legaI standing here at all, I had little trouble obtaining
a 2004 report by a similar High-Court-designated committee that
had investigated the pollution situation in nearby Patancheru.
That case is also still pending.
4. I had read and had been
told that NPIL "acquired" Global Drugs two years previously,
and in the interview questions I put to Agarwalla, it would have
been obvious to him that I believed that NPIL's role in the Digwal
saga began only at that time. In his answers, Agarwalla said
nothing to cause me to doubt that assumption. Subsequently,
a person knowledgeable about the matter told me, "NPIL or
Global Drugs -- it's all the same thing." He told me that
it had been an NPIL plant, then they formed Global to take it
over, then they after a few years, they took it back over. When
I asked one Pollution Control Board official -- a vigorous defender
of NPIL who asked not to be named -- about it, he first asked,
"What was the name of the person who told you that?";
then, he said that, yes, NPIL had owned the plant in the mid-1990s,
and then he said, no, that was wrong, they didn't. I called
Agarwalla, and after another round of Twenty Questions, he confirmed
that, yes, NPIL did own the plant before Global Drugs.
5. Agarwalla told me he was
unsure about the legal technicalities of how Global Drugs had
come into being. He said Global Drugs had sold bulk ingredients
to a variety of companies, but said he didn't have the figures
to show whether or not the plant's bulk drug output during that
period had supplied NPIL primarily.
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