Today's Stories

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or he Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

Subscribe Online

Abuse of Katrina Reconstruction Workers

Go to Work, Go to Jail

By RON JACOBS

Recently, more than 100 workers in Pascagoula, Mississippi walked off the job at a Mississippi shipyard last week to protest conditions similar to slavery.  The workers were protesting the conditions they have been living and working in since being hired from India after Hurricane Katrina. 

According to the lawsuit filed in the workers' behalf, the workers were offered jobs, green cards and permanent residency in exchange for as much as $20,000 each that they paid to recruiters working for a Northrop Grumman subsidiary in Bombay.  One of the organizers of the march was quoted in a press release put out by the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, saying "They promised us green cards and permanent residency,  and instead gave us 10-month visas and made us live like animals in company trailers, 24 to a room.  We were trapped between an ocean of debtat home and constant threats of deportation from our bosses in Mississippi." 

When workers attempted to organize against these conditions the organizers were fired.

This is but the tip of the iceberg. 

In what can only be termed circumstances similar to those of foreign workers hired by US and British companies to work on the ill-fated reconstruction of Iraq, the litany of abuses against those—both US-born and foreign—hired by various corporations to work in the reconstruction of New Orleans and the rest of the US southern coast hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  A recently released report by the  New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition is an ongoing litany of corporate corruption, worker abuse and outright illegal and immoral violation of human rights.

Also in Mississippi, beginning July 1st, 2008 it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job.  Anyone caught working without papers "shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both." Furthermore, anyone charged with the crime of working without papers will not be eligible for bail. 

In Iowa, federal ICE agents arrested hundreds of workers at the Agriprocessors, Inc. meat packing plant.  The reason given by law enforcement was that the workers were using false social security numbers.  Of course, the facts are that people can't work without a social security number and cannot get one unless they have been given some kind of legal status by the government—a status becoming more difficult to acquire by the day.  This is but one more Catch-22 in the life of an immigrant in the US.

Meanwhile, in Danbury, CT. a court upheld the use of undercover police acting as day-labor employers to arrest men and women looking for work in that city.  The workers were then deported.  In San Diego County, plans are underway to build two large detention centers that will hold immigrants without papers for indeterminate amounts of time.   Haliburton hopes to get the contract.  In South Carolina, Georgia and some other states, legislators have introduced laws forbidding the use of any language but English in the workplace. 

Now, imagine a country where some residents have more rights than others.  These residents can hold almost any job they desire.  They live in neighborhoods away from those of darker skin and lesser means.  The latter cannot hold any job they desire.  Part of the reason for this is because of the law and part of the reason is because of the nature of their education and social status.  Everyone must have identification that also signifies their social status, even though that status is primarily determined by the color of one's skin.  If one does not have such identification (especially if they are not white), they are arrested.

If they or their relatives can not produce identification, the arrestees once released are doomed to a life living in the shadows, always wondering if they will be turned in by their employer or enemies.
The country I am talking about was apartheid South Africa.  Now, since the advent of NAFTA and other so-called free trade agreements, the national boundaries between North and South America have been economically erased.  If one stretches their imagination just a bit, it is possible to perceive the southern lands of Mexico and Central America as the equivalent of bantustans with the United States as their Capetown. 

Furthermore, the identification legal immigrants to the United States are required to carry can be compared to the passes blacks in South Africa needed to get into different parts of the white-ruled South Africa.  If those passes were not in order or nonexistent, blacks were subject to arrest.  Likewise, if the various documents that the US government requires immigrants to carry and produce at will are not in order or nonexistent, those immigrants will be arrested.  Those immigrants without papers must live their lives in the shadows, always wondering if they will be turned in by their employer or enemies.  If they live in some parts of the United States, the discovery of their lack of documents might occur as the result of a roadblock set up by police to check people's identification. 

Of course, there are a multitude of ways that these historical instances are not similar, but it is the underlying consciousness of fear is distressingly similar. It is questionable whether or not most US citizens agree with the efforts listed above that target immigrants. 

However, the lack of outcry by those who disagree with these attempts to dehumanize undocumented immigrants provides those invested in destroying immigrants' lives with a voice hopefully well beyond their numbers.  So does the willingness of the US public to ignore the family-shattering raids and imprisonment of thousands of immigrants for no other reason than not having the approved documents. 

Implicit in this willingness is a sense that those being picked up and thrown in detention centers are not as human as “real Americans.”  If the lessons of authoritarian states have taught us anything, they should have taught us that we should be wary of those who would define a human being in ever-narrowing terms.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

 

 

 

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