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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 6, 2005 Gary Leupp Accusing Ahmadinejad July 5, 2005 Behrooz Ghamari What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency Elaine Cassel Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor Ron Jacobs Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice Bob Libal The Right's Assault on Academia Dr. Peter Rost Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO Mark Engler The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee? Gideon Levy They Broke the Public's Heart Dave Zirin The Great Olympics Scam Sameer Dossani The Trouble with Gleneagles   July 2 / 4, 2005 Alexander Cockburn "Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi? Lenni Brenner Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July Laura Carlsen Zapatista's Red Alert James Petras The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment William A. Cook Kings of Serpents Brian Cloughley Quagmire of the Vanities Saul Landau The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership Tom Crumpacker Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles? Greg Moses Dylan's America Dr. Susan Block My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service Fran Shor Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land Fred Gardner Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer Moshe Adler The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs David Model The Downing Street Memo: So What's New? Seth Sandronsky California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style Ramzy Baroud Managed Democracy in the Middle East Suzan Mazur Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton Ben Tripp Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap Justin Taylor Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint" Brendan Bailey Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Radical Reference July 1, 2005 Christopher Brauchli With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf Pat Williams What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver Gary Leupp Summer Surprise? John Stauber Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie John Chuckman The Blessings of Canada Justicia y Paz Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least! Cockburn / St. Clair It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court   June 30, 2005 Kathy Kelly An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis John Stauber Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America Virginia Rodino All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement Jason Leopold Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy Dave Lindorff What Was Bush Thinking? Greg Moses Racism at Cape Cod Norman Solomon Memo to the Iraq War Joshua Frank Israel's Theocrats Alexander Cockburn The Political Function of PBS   June 29, 2005 Mike Schaefer How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq Sharon Smith Democrats Shift into Reverse Sam Husseini A Quick Way to End the Insurgency John Stauber Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton Ahmad Faruqui Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan? Linda S. Heard Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo Stew Albert Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero Ray McGovern Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course   June 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts A Defeat Bred in Deceit Landau / Hassen Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics John A. Murphy Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania Mike Whitney More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents CounterPunch News Service JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook? Dave Zirin Pining for the Pistons Dave Lindorff Showtime in Washington Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Bloody Mess   June 27, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans Mike Marqusee G8: Who are the Hijackers? Mark Scaramella When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz Leigh Saavedra Press Apologists for Torture Kathy Kelly Where is the UN? June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander Cockburn The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals Jennifer Van Bergen America's Parallel Legal Systems George Corsetti This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo Kevin Zeese Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids P. Sainath Russian Roulette in Vidharbha John Stauber How to Bury a Mad Cow Scott Handleman Gay in the Third World Tom Barry The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists John Walsh Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places Justin E.H. Smith The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution Alan Wallis The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood Ben Tripp Negative Space: an Artful Lesson Frederick B. Hudson Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock Poets' Basement Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert     June 24, 2005 Ray McGovern The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed" Jorge Mariscal "They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq Desiree Hellegers Portland vs. the FBI Zeynep Toufe What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It? Joshua Frank Call Him Senator Con Job David Lindorff Which Flag Would Jesus Burn? Michael Neumann Victory and Recruitment Website of the Day Gagging Dr. Dean June 23, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge Clay Conrad Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform Standard Schaefer A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism P. Sainath Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks Mark Engler CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death Norman Solomon Voluntary Amnesia in America Cockburn / St. Clair Frank Calzon Kathy Kelly Where You Stand Determines What You See   June 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner William S. Lind Afghanistan: the Other War Arsalan Iftikhar Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act Dan Nagengast Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas David Krieger To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World Kathleen & Bill Christison Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making     June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Destroy the Unbelievers! Mike Whitney President Disconnect Dave Lindorff Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway? Mark Weisbrot Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez Matthew R. Simmons The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis Dave Zirin The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man" Virginia Rodino The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment Paul Craig Roberts A War Waged by Liars and Morons   June 20, 2005 Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Tariq Ali To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel! Mickey Z. WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo William Blum Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends Gary Leupp Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq Jason Leopold Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War Dave Lindorff Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Uri Avnery Condi and Hamas Website of the Day Crimes Against Poetry                                                                               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.     Subscribe Online

July 6, 2005 Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor Building Without a Foundation By SEAN DONAHUE Achualinca sprawls out from the edge of the dump on the shores of Lake Managua, a barrio of improbably well cared for houses thrown together from whatever materials people could scavenge--tin, plywood, tar paper, cardboard, plywood. In the all but forgotten language of the first people who lived here, Achualinca means sunflower. Today scattered banana trees grow out of the mercury-laden soil, contaminated by a U.S. battery company that dumped its waste into the lake for decades. This is the last stopping place for people with nowhere else to go in a country where farmers are losing their land as the prices for their crops fall on the global market and where massive unemployment creates fierce competition for a handful of jobs in textile factories that barely pay their workers enough money to feed a family a meager diet of rice, beans, tortillas, and the occasional vegetable. According to the United Nations Development Program, 79.9% of the population of Nicaragua lives on less than $2 a day. 45% live on less than $1 a day. Most of the residents of Acuhalinca are part of the informal economy--salvaging and washing plastic from the dump for recycling, washing windshields at stop lights, panhandling, selling fruit and water and pastries on the street. This is the kind of community that the leaders of the G-8, the world's most powerful nations, say they are trying to help by writing off the debt that Nicaragua and the rest of the world's 18 poorest nations owe to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. But the devil is in the details, and the debt forgiveness plan will actually lock in place many of the conditions that created this poverty, and put conditions on the Nicaraguan government that will make it virtually impossible to use any of the savings from debt payments to help the poor. For over a decade, Nicaragua has labored under "structural adjustment" plans imposed by the IMF and the World Bank designed to insure that it would pay off its debts. Nicaragua will have to continue to comply with IMF dictates to qualify for debt forgiveness. Under "structural adjustment" the government was pressured to cut spending across the board and privatize public services, leading to the collapse of the nation's public sector and a growing gap between rich and poor. According to sociologist Cirilo Otero "Structural adjustment has produced greater inequality in our society--there are less people with more wealth. In the 1970's there still existed in Nicaragua an upper class and a middle class, but effectively that whole section of the middle class has disappeared, so now there are a very few people in the upper class and a very large lower class. One of the elements that has determined this is that various sectors have lost their access to essentials--electricity, potable water, health care, and education." Many in Achualinca only have access to pirated electricity. Earlier this decade, international lenders successfully pressed the Nicaraguan government to privatize the country's electrical system in a move intended to reduce electric rates, eliminate inefficiency, and cut government spending. But the process was flawed from the start. The Nicaraguan government hired the Spanish company Union FENOSA to assess the nation's electric grid and assess a fair selling price for the state-owned electric company. Nicaragua then sold the electric company to Union FENOSA for less than the Spanish company said the utility was worth. Since privatization, electric rates have increased dramatically, and service to many poor areas has gotten worse. Promised expansions of the power grid into poorer communities never materialized. Activists succeeded in blocking a similar effort to privatize the nation's water system last year, but institutions like the World Trade Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank have been increasing pressure for privatization, and many Nicaraguans fear that the prospect of debt forgiveness may actually mean the government will feel more pressure to go along with the wishes of wealthy nations and big lenders. Consumer activist Gonzalo Sagaldo Soza warns that "In general the G-8 agreement will probably mean more pressure from the outside for Nicaragua to put the public services up for sale because all of these agreements have conditions. The policies of the U.S. have the most impact on the country, but the European companies are putting the most pressure to privatize and sell off these resources. We don't doubt that this debt forgiveness comes in that framework." The health care system is in shambles due to budget cuts and partial privatization. In Achualinca, a woman named Yamoleth runs a small health clinic from her kitchen with support from the Ministry of Health and a womens'health group. She dispenses malaria medicines and birth control and health information. But the clinic can't afford most other basic medicines and neither can its patients. Malaria and typhoid run rampant through the barrio. And there is little help available at the public hospitals where the wait is nearly endless, the conditions are unsanitary, and patients have to pay for everything from rubber gloves to antibiotics. Private clinics charge exorbitant rates, the equivalent of a week's pay for a factory worker. Government spending on health care now amounts to about $47 per person each year. The number of doctors in the public sector has plummeted from 4,500 in 1990 to just under 1,200 this year. For many in Achualinca and throughout Nicaragua, education is an unaffordable luxury. The country's education system has been hit especially hard by the financial constraints imposed by international lenders. In the early 1980's, following the country's Sandinista revolution, a massive literacy campaign led by teenage volunteers succeeded in reducing the country's illiteracy rate from nearly fifty percent to less than twelve percent. Structural adjustment led to dramatic budget cuts. Rather than actually closing schools or firing teachers, the government shifted the costs of school supplies and school maintenance to parents. Parents pay an average of $30 at the beginning of each school year for uniforms and basic supplies alone--a sum roughly equivalent to a farming family's monthly wages, or two weeks'pay for a factory worker. For a family recycling plastic or selling food on the streets, the costs of education are completely out of reach, and the children Parents continue to pay to maintain school facilities and replace pens and notebooks throughout the year. As a result, there are over a million Nicaraguan children between the ages of eight and eighteen who don't go to school at all, and many more who can only afford to go to school for part of the year. The illiteracy rate has more than doubled in recent years--its now at 35% and climbing. Fr. Fernando Cardenal, the Jesuit priest who designed the literacy campaign of the 1980's, fears that the collapse of the country's education system will lock the majority of the country's population into poverty. "There is no country on the planet that has achieved development without education," he says "We cannot expect that our country will become developed if we do not invest in education. Our future will be nothing more than a future of campesinos who will be poor and illiterate, who will come to the point where they will be so poor that they will have to come to Managua to work in sweatshop factories."--The growth of barrios like Achualinca attests to the fact that that future is already becoming a reality. Debt forgiveness and other forms of foreign aid won't make a difference for the poorest people Nicaragua unless there is a dramatic shift toward targeting aid to ensure that is used to bring about real investment in education, housing, agriculture, and public health--a focus that is sorely lacking in the G-8 debt cancellation plan. In prescient comments a few days before the G-8 deal was announced, Cardenal said that trying to spur development without investing in human needs is "like a building without a foundation. It will fall." Sean Donahue is a freelance journalist based in Massachusetts. He recently led a Witness for Peace Delegation to Nicaragua. Much of his work can be found online at http://www.seandonahue.org. He can be reached at wrldhealer@yahoo.com.