Today's Stories

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better

September 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric

JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO

Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center

Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel

Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies

Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation

John Berger
In Search of Antonello

Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment

Felice Pace
NPR's Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza

Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans

Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan

David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts

David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union

Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills

Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom

Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement

Charles R. Larson
Deracination

Kim Nicolini
"Extract:" An Exercise in Economic Realism

David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence

Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder

Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice

September 10, 2009

Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money

Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security

Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal

Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo

Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums

Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics

Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System

Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform

Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma

Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?

Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike

Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer

James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?

Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates

Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors

Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

August 31, 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the SEC's Revolving Door

Anthony DiMaggio
What Obama Isn't Telling You About Afghanistan

Bouthaina Shaaban
Israeli Bodysnatchers

Ray McGovern
The Press and Torture: Covering for Cheney?

Joseph Shansky
Scenes of Resistance in Honduras

Greg Moses
The Dying Dillos of Austin

Brian McKenna
Pig Sacrifice and Swine Flu Panic

David Macaray
The Tender Trap

Brenda Norrell
Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon

Paul Craig Roberts
The Environment Loses a Champion

Beth Sherouse
Why I'm Going to the Big Gay March in Washington

Website of the Day
The Failure of the Left Antiwar Movement

August 28-30, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion

Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
From the Ledge to the Edge: How Tre Arrow Became America's Most Wanted Environmental "Terrorist"

Steve Early
Kennedy's Sins Against Labor

Michael Hudson
Learning About Financialization the Hard Way

Carl Ginsburg
Bernanke in Obamatime

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

Dave Marsh
Trapped Again: Michael Jackson's Crossover Dream

Mike Whitney
Band-Aids for the Recession

Dave Lindorff
Obama's War

José Pertierra
A Decision in the Posada Case

Joe Bageant
Obama's Fake Fight for Reform

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Spies Without Espionage

Lee Sustar
On Strike for Health Care Justice

David Ker Thomson
Life in the 'Shed

David Rosen
The Silent Slaughter: Sex Wars and Nation-Building in Iraq

Alison Weir
Israeli Organ Harvesting

Ron Jacobs
Will There be Free Speech in Pittsburgh?

David Swanson
Bush Tortured

Udi Aloni
An Appeal to Israeli Filmmakers

Charles R. Larson
Children During Wartime

Kim Nicolini
District 9: Science Fiction of the Now

David Yearsley
The Wagner Cult in Seattle

Lorenzo Wolff
Riding the Rails with King Curtis

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Marc Beaudin

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden History of Katrina

August 27, 2009

Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

September 14, 2009

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bicentennial

Mexico Loses Its History

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City

On the eve of the Bicentennial of its Independence from the Spanish Crown and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, this republic is awash with patriotic colors. The official countdown to the twin Centennials begins on Mexican Independence Day September 16, the nation's maximum patriotic holiday that celebrates the uprising of the country priest Miguel Hidalgo in Guanajuato on that day in 1810.

Although Hidalgo's rebellion was a flop, uncorking a geyser of blood (the priest himself was dragged before the Holy Inquisition, gunned down by a firing squad, beheaded, and his head hung from a public building), Mexico finally won its liberation from Spanish domination 11 arduous years later in 1821.  Thousands of local and national events over the next year will commemorate Hidalgo's flawed insurrection (at least 100,000 killed) and the even more bloody  Mexican revolution a hundred years later in 1910, which is thought to have cost more than a million lives.

But a funny thing has happened to Mexico on its way to the dueling Centennials: it seems to have lost its history.

This August 24 when sixth graders returned to their classrooms, many were stunned to discover that nearly 30 pages (pgs 147-173) had disappeared from their history textbooks.  The missing pages discussed the European Conquest of Mexico and three centuries of colonial rule.

The textbook revision has generated an uproar in this history-obsessed country.  Mexico is largely mestizo, genetically mixing the Indigenous with the European, and the elimination of teaching the Conquest and the Colony "mutilates our identity" in the words of  Olac Fuentes Molinar, the former under-secretary of basic education for the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP.) 

Diminished attention to the conquest of between 12.5 and 25 million indigenous peoples (only 1.5 million survived to be counted in the first census taken by the Crown a hundred years later) is seen as a blow at Mexico's pluri-cultural roots.  The disappearance of colonial history and the cruel indignities the indigenas suffered under the Spanish yoke further depreciates the role of Mexico's Indians and flies in the face of the country's traditional anti-colonial trajectory.

Such revisionist history is "Eurocentric," says Hugo Casanova of the National Autonomous University's (UNAM) Educational Investigation Institute.  "Our children will never know the complex, painful origins of our nation."    

The Secretariat of Public Education insists that it's all a big confusion.  Only 7,000,000 revised history books (out of a total of 27,000,000) will be distributed to primary school students this year, explains sub-secretary Francisco Gonzalez Sanchez who, as the SEP's point man on basic education was charged with overseeing the text book revisions.  Sections on the Conquest and the Colony were previously incorporated in fourth grade text books but now are being rewritten and moved to sixth grade curriculum and will be ready by 2011 - just in time to miss the twin centennials. 

Nonetheless, when the revisions are in place, Gonzalez Sanchez promises that Mexico will have "the best text books in history" (sic.)  Historians are aghast at the SEP's gaffe.  But the loudest protests have come from students who have not yet received their eviscerated books three weeks into the new term.

Sub-secretary Gonzalez Sanchez acquired his sinecure in 2006 through flagrant political nepotism - he is the son-in-law of National Education Workers Union (SNTE) Czarina Elba Esther Gordillo.  With 1.3 million members, the SNTE is the largest labor organization in Latin America and Gordillo has considerable clout in the administration of rightist president Felipe Calderon of the National Action or PAN party.  A former honcho of the once and future ruling party, the PRI, Gordillo broke with her old cronies in crime in a power squabble prior to the 2000 presidential election and threw her weight to Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox.  From her satrapy at the SNTE, "La Maestra" (sometimes known as "La Ticher") mobilized her followers to commit wholesale ballot box fraud in the much-questioned 2006 elections that boosted Calderon to power.  In return, Gordillo was handed the SEP to run as a semi-feudal family enterprise. 

Under her son-in-law's "Integral Basic Education Reform" (RIEB), history now plays second fiddle to math, science, and technology.  But even the teaching of science has been tampered with, charges UNAM biologist Edna Suarez who is writing up a "report card" on the revised textbooks.  One example: Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution marks its 150th anniversary this year, is assigned just two paragraphs in grade school science texts, the same as ascribed to an explanation of daylight savings time.  Suarez observes that Darwin's theory is downgraded to just one possible explanation for the origins of the human race, a supposition that invites the teaching of creationism. 

The Calderon administration's focus on math and science runs contrary to the national character.  Mexicans are addicts of their nation's history.  Sometimes it seems as if the past is more present than the present here and the future is just a word bandied about by politicos to plant false hopes in the hearts of their constituents.  "History is the foundation of our collective memory," writes anthropologist Manuel Hermann. The revised history books are an exercise in "disremembering."

Arnaldo Cordoba, an historic leader of the Mexican Communist Party, isn’t surprised by the PAN-fried history texts.  "History has no value for the right," he wrote in a recent La Jornada (a left daily) op-ed.  "The Conquest and the Colony should be the PAN's favorite epochs but they've discarded them…probably because of printing costs." By removing accounts of these two vital periods, "the PAN wants us to believe that our history began with Iturbide," counters Alfonso Suarez Del Real, a leftist ex-deputy affiliated with Calderon's fiercest critic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), himself a history buff. 

Agustin Iturbide was a "criollo" (Spaniard born in Mexico) who led the Army of Three Guarantees that finally won liberation from the Crown in 1821 and promptly crowned himself emperor. He was hung by a furious mob three years later.

Mexicans of all walks of life, from senators to street sweepers are constantly revisiting and revising their country's history, sliding it under the microscope, examining little known texts and debating their most arcane clauses.  Antiquarian bookstores clustered in the old quarter of the city do a land office business in dog-eared volumes that record the nuances of the Conquest and the Colony.  Each Friday night, dozens gather at a crumbling building on Tacuba Street in the Centro Historico to discuss history's lessons for the current political imbroglio.  Such study circles, inspired by partisans of Lopez Obrador, have spread into neighbors throughout this megalopolis.

On a recent rainy evening, Edna Orozco, a National Autonomous University history professor was elucidating the exploits of Francisco Villa when he overran Mexico City at the apogee of the revolution in 1914-15.  "My papa put me up on his shoulders so that I could see Pancho Villa when he rode in with his Dorados," 95 year-old Melesio Escobar told the gathering.  "Villa was a giant! The presidents now are dwarves!" (Felipe Calderon barely stands five feet.)  

Felipe Calderon and his co-religionists are the lineal descendants of 19th century Conservatives who aligned themselves with the Catholic Church, the Crown, and the land-owning class and squared off against Zapotec Indian Benito Juarez and his secular Liberals.  Now the neo-conservatives are charged with teaching a history that lionizes their traditional enemies like Juarez and the wild-haired Hidalgo and those ruffian bandits Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.  "The PAN wants to get rid of Hidalgo and his leprous, naked Indians," comments Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a writer who approaches Mexican history from the left. 

As if to confirm Taibo's thesis, arch-rightist philosopher-historian Gabriel Zaid recently wrote a daily Reforma (a PANista paper) op ed entitled "The Assassins Who Gave Us A Fatherland" which depicts Hidalgo and his confederate Jose Maria Morelos, also a defrocked priest, as a pair of killers. 

Under Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox, a similarly traumatic revision of secondary education textbooks was undertaken and in classic neo-liberal style publication was privatized.  Santillana, the publishing arm of the Spanish media conglomerate Grupo Prisa (publishers of El Pais), marketed a popular seventh grade text, "The History of Mexico" in which the European invaders were pictured as bringing civilization to the natives. The book also champions the Catholic Church and its missionaries for delivering the heathens to Christ. 

Fox's fans at Santillana and the SEP even included a chapter on his own place in history that concludes abruptly: "his crucial six years in office came to an end with the development of incipient democracy and so Vicente Fox passed into histo---" (sic.)

History is, of course, written by the victors and in Mexico this means whichever party won the last election. "Every time a new party comes to power, it wants to change history," complains Patricia Espinosa, the ex-director of the General Archives of the Nation and a devout PRIista who rejects the PAN's skew on Mexican history.  Indeed, the PRI used free government textbooks to burnish its own image during seven decades at the helm of state, extolling its contributions to the nation's development and well-being. 

But like the PAN, the ex-official party was sometimes blindsided by the arrogance of power. In 1992, Secretary of Education Ernesto Zedillo, later president, was forced to recall and shred 10,000,000 revised grade school history texts because the re-write suggested that the military had played a role in the massacre of hundreds of Mexico City students in 1968. Subsequent revelations have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Army engineered the slaughter. In the revision of the revised text, Mexican history ended in 1967.

Paco Taibo protests the political manipulation of history by the SEP.  Schoolbooks are often assembled by bureaucrats and bourgeois historians for whom history is an abstract in which the people don't count.  Taibo advocates "secularization" and  "democratization" of the writing process that would involve teachers and parents and social activists.

Not only the Left is up in arms over the SEP's revision of Mexican history.  The Catholic Church has a rich history of conflicts with the Mexican government over its depiction in history texts.  Under depression-era president Lazaro Cardenas, "socialist" education flourished, to the Church’s and the nascent PAN's enormous displeasure. Indeed the PAN gained political relevance in its successful battle to have the word "socialism" expunged from the text books.

The Church fiercely opposes sex education and textbooks that speak of abortion and birth control are burned by anti-abortion zealots like Pro-Vida. Now the Episcopal Council of Bishops (CEM) is furious because public school textbooks allege that Hildago and Morelos were excommunicated by the Catholic Church, a well-documented turn of events.  But Father Hugo Valdemar, spokesperson for the Mexico City diocese, argues that both defrocked priests confessed their sins and accepted the Host before they were put before a firing squad and decapitated. 

Besides denouncing the SEP for kidnapping the Father of the Country from the bosom of Holy Mother Church, Valdemar kvetches that the Catholic Church is being excluded from the celebration of the Bi-centennial. 

Taibo insists that, like the textbooks, the Bi-centennial is being "deMexicanized."  The popular author has unearthed a catalogue of 1800 projects scheduled for the celebration, about three and a half events a day - although the deep economic crisis that has left 80,000,000 Mexicans below the poverty line may modify extravagance warns Calderon's current Bicentennial CEO Juan Manuel Villalpando.

The preamble to 2010 unfolded this September 5 with the lighting of the Bicentennial Torch.  In a schlocky knock-off of the Olympic Games, athletes carried the flame from the Monument of the Independence up the elegant Paseo de Reforma to the National Palace where it was blessed by the President. Now the Flame of the Bicentennial will travel to 31 states before it returns to the capital in September 201. The twin celebrations will be most intense between Independence Day September 15th-16th and November 20th, the 100th anniversary of the declaration of the Mexican revolution. 

Amongst the events scheduled for this patriotic orgy are multiple military parades, the refurbishment of historical buildings, the re-naming of streets and parks for the Heroes of the Fatherland, and the construction of a safe site for the General Archives of the Nation which are currently moldering in an old prison of ill-repute, the Lecumberri Black Palace, built by dictator Porfirio Diaz on the eve of the revolution to house his political prisoners.      

Many of the Bi-centennial projects listed seem to have more to do with commercial opportunism than the celebration of the Patria.  Nayarit state resorts will sponsor a beach volleyball championship.  Nayarit will also be the site of a Guinness Book of Records gathering of country brass bands ("Bandas de Guerra.")  The state of Tamaulipas is planning a potato festival and Chiapas a graffiti competition.  The Secretary of Labor will issue a coffee table-sized book "The History of Labor" and the Secretary of Finances will hold a "fiscal fair."  Manzanillo will do its part with the inauguration of a cruise ship port and Mexico City is building a "bi-centennial" Metro line.  Neighboring Mexico state will hold a world frontennis tournament and Chihuahua is hosting an NBA exhibition game to celebrate the War of Independence and the Mexican revolution.

Some of the events seem wildly out of sync with what the Centennials are all about.  The state of Oaxaca will hold a yearlong celebration of the tyrant Porfirio Diaz, a native son, whose iron-fisted 34 year-long rule ignited the revolution.  Chihuahua will honor the Creel dynasty that controlled Indian lands the size of the kingdom of Belgium.  The Catholic Church will illuminate a giant Christ in Torreon Coahuila and publish a book on the miracles of Our Lady of Ocotlan Jalisco to celebrate the Bicentennial.

At the nadir of the worst economic plunge since the Great Depression with millions out of work, Felipe Calderon is spending billions of pesos on the big fiesta.  Villalpando is reportedly negotiating with SpecTak, an Australian entertainment juggernaut that bedazzled the world with its costly fireworks display at the Sidney Olympics, to supply world-class pyrotechnics. 

Last spring, Calderon laid the cornerstone for a monumental Bicentennial Arch at the foot of the Paseo de la Reforma, a boulevard in which Porfirio Diaz invested heavily for the 1900 centennial.  In fact, Diaz spent so much on fireworks and monuments and new pants for the poor that social budgets were depleted and the dissatisfaction of the downtrodden at being excluded from the party triggered a revolution. 

Today, a hundred and two hundred years later, the misery of the people has never been alleviated and social unrest is similarly stewing.

So goes the old song and dance: Those who do not know their own history are doomed to repeat it.  

John Ross's 500-page "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books this November.  "Iraqigirl" (Haymarket), a diary of a teenager coming of age under U.S. occupation that has been called "an Anne Frank for our times", is in the stores.  Ross will be touring with both books this fall and next spring.  For possible venues write johnross@igc.org 

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