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Today's
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March 15, 2004
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik
to Organizer
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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
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March
15, 2004
Depraved Indifference
Caesareans,
Patriarchy and Women's Health
By MICKEY Z
Melissa Ann Rowland, 28, of Salt Lake City was
pregnant with twins. Her doctors claim they warned her about
complications requiring a Caesarean section. Without the procedure,
they believed the unborn twins might not survive. According to
a nurse, Rowland refused the C-section because she didn't want
scars.
Rowland's attorney, Michael Sikora, says
his client has a long history of mental illness. He called a
C-section major surgery and explained, "It would come as
no surprise that a woman with major mental illness would fear
it."
Only one of the twins survived childbirth.
Melissa Ann Rowland, 28, of Salt Lake
City was arrested and charged with one first-degree felony count
of criminal homicide: "depraved indifference to human life."
If convicted, she faces between five years and life in prison.
As of this writing, many things are unclear,
i.e. whether Rowland was warned, how she was warned, if and why
she ignored the warning, along with any useful details about
her mental state. The media has dutifully run photos of Rowland
in an pinkish prison jumpsuit; hair splayed out in all directions...fulfilling
any spectator's notion of what a mother with "depraved indifference
to human life" might look like. One source is now reporting
she was convicted of child endangerment in Pittsburgh nearly
four years ago.
Unexamined in the press reports is the
efficacy of the C-section and the state of women's health care
in America. We'll get to those in a moment. One tangential issue
raised in an Associated Press article involved "the prosecution
of mothers who smoke or don't follow their obstetrician's diet."
"It's very troubling to have somebody
come in and say we're going to charge this mother for murder
because we don't like the choices she made," said Marguerite
Driessen, a law professor at Brigham Young University.
I'm no fan of taxpayer subsidized lung
cancer, but we're talking about arresting women for smoking...not
because they might hurt themselves but all in the name of protecting
the unborn (sound familiar?). If you really wanna go the police
state route, what about potential fathers who knowingly engage
in unhealthy habits? It takes two...as they say. As for the obstetrician's
dietary suggestions, well, I've written plenty about that topic
so I'll remind readers that the typical American doctor sits
through only two to four classroom hours of nutrition during
medical school ...and leave it at that.
Ruth Hubbard is professor emerita of
biology at Harvard and the first woman to be given a tenured
biology professorship there. "The so-called war on drugs
has produced a situation in which a single blood test on a pregnant
woman or a newborn is sufficient to label that woman a drug abuser
and call in the state," she says. "I suppose most people
would agree that it is not a good thing for pregnant women to
drink excessive amounts of alcohol or to smoke or use drugs.
But if the state wants to protect a fetus, the way to do that
is make it possible for pregnant women-and women in general-to
have access to proper housing, food, jobs, a decent living environment,
and good prenatal care."
What qualifies as good prenatal care,
however, is not so easily defined...which brings us back to the
C-section procedure.
"Our birth practices are crazy,"
says author and health advocate, John Robbins. "We have
a Caesarean rate of 23 percent, which means that nearly a quarter
of our newcomers is surgically extracted from their mothers'
wombs." This is not so shocking when one takes a look at
the male- and profit-driven world of Western medicine. "Natural
birth can take place anytime, day or night," says Robbins.
"There's no telling how long the labor will last, and there's
no predicting when the baby will emerge. Caesareans, on the other
hand, can be arranged to take place at the convenience of the
hospital and the obstetrician."
Since the advent of direct tests of fetal
health in the 1960s, the process of birthing has become progressively
more medicalized and the role of the obstetrician (typically
male) has dramatically increased. The man in the white coat has
been transformed into an expert needed by women who are made
to feel incapable. If that omnipotent obstetrician attended medical
school in the 1970s, he may have used the textbook, "Obstetrics
and Gynecology," which includes this appraisal of the women
they will be treating: "The traits that compose the core
of the female personality are feminine narcissism, masochism,
and passivity." If he got his degree anytime from the 80s
on, his text could have been "Medical, Surgical, and Gynecological
Complications of Pregnancy," which warns future doctors
how "dangerous" those patients "who consider themselves
'socially aware'" are. That type of woman is "not necessarily
more mature but are trying, by their active interest in everything
'avant garde,' socially as well as medically, to persuade themselves
and other that they are...This is the patient who is interested
in such methods as 'natural childbirth,' hypnosis, of using childbirth
as an 'experience'."
Recalling the example of Melissa Ann
Rowland, the text concludes that such a woman "requires
close and constant psychiatric support."
In his book, "Reclaiming Our Health,"
John Robbins points out a delicious judgment of the standard
obstetrical text, "Williams Obstetrics": "The
15th edition is 923 pages long. In the index there appears an
entry that was apparently slipped in unnoticed by some brave
soul who, faced with the tedious task of preparing the index,
wanted to voice his or her opinion about the book. The line reads:
'Chauvinism, male, pages 1-923'."
There's more than chauvinism at work
in the C-section issue when obstetricians and hospitals are more
highly reimbursed for surgical births than for vaginal births.
"In the state of Washington," Robbins explains, "the
Caesarean rate in nonprofit hospitals is 20%, while the rate
in for-profit hospitals is 36%. A few years ago a Kansas health
maintenance organization (HMO) changed its policies and began
to reimburse doctors equally for Caesarean and normal deliveries,
so there was no longer a financial incentive to do Caesareans.
The Caesarean rate dropped from 28.7% to 13.5% in one year."
Upon closer examination, one will find
that the entire system of medical research is tainted by patriarchy
and profit. "Biologists and physicians have traditionally
been men and have thought of males as the norm," says Ruth
Hubbard. "And they have taught us to think of the ways in
which women's bodies are different from men's as deviations from
this norm."
Conditions that affect men and women
equally-heart disease, certain cancers, etc.-are heavily researched,
for sure. But they are studied "almost exclusively in men,"
says Hubbard. "Little research has been done on lupus, rheumatoid
arthritis, scleroderma, and other conditions that affect primarily
women. No one even understands why their incidence is skewed."
Melissa Ann Rowland, 28, of Salt Lake
City may or may not have received sound medical advice and she
may or may not have ignored it and this may or may not have contributed
to the death of her child. We can only hope the truth is found
amidst the scapegoating and hysteria. However, what we can focus
on now is how demonizing Rowland and criminalizing her choices
is yet another episode in a long, sad history of male- and profit-dominated
medicine.
"To be both useful and benign,"
concludes Hubbard, "science needs to draw on the experience
of people who are usually disqualified fro making science, like
women." In his book, Robbins offers examples of many women
who are "beginning to stand up to this exploitation...They
are saying no to unnecessary drugs and surgery, and using safe
and natural methods...Their lives are messages to us all, male
and female, of hope and inspiration."
Our job is to make sure that hope and
inspiration is transformed into widespread awareness and tangible
action.
Suggested reading: "Profitable Promises:
Essays on Women, Science, and Health," by Ruth Hubbard (Common
Courage Press) "Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical
Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing," by John
Robbins (HJ Kramer)
Mickey Z.
is the author of two upcoming books: "A Gigantic Mistake:
Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense"
(Prime Books) and "Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies
Behind War Propaganda" (Common Courage Press). He can be
reached at mzx2@earthlink.net.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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