Today's Stories

October 13, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Putting the Spine Back in the Commonwealth

October 12, 2009

Pam Martens
Secret Deal Between Wall Street and Washington Shines a Harsh Light on Federal Housing Agency

Mike Whitney
A Dollar Rout or More Bernanke Trickery?

Martha Rosenberg
Yale Lab Tech Causes Two Problems for Animal Researchers

Jessica Arents
The Price of Peace: Our Arrest at the White House

Eamonn McCann
Massacre in Ireland, Massacre in Iraq

Bill Hatch
Dairy Industry Goes Down the Tubes

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time for a Timetable in Afghanistan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Siren Song of World Praise

Gideon Levy
Obama's Betrayed Mission in the Middle East

Iyad Burnat
Why Does Obama Get a Prize and Bush Got Shoes?

Alan Cabal
Why Obama Deserves the Nobel

Dan Bacher
The Astroturf Method

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help

October 9-11, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
War and Peace

James Bovard
Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

Kathleen and Bill Christison
New Crisis Developing in Palestine

Andy Worthington
Congressional Depravity on Gitmo

Marc Levy
Talking Dirty to the Kids

Tariq Ali
Ahmed Rashid's War

Mike Whitney
The Securitization Boondoggle

Paul Craig Roberts
Warmonger Wins Peace Prize

Alan Nasser
Cockeyed Economics

Jack Z. Bratich
The Twitterest Pill: Policing Dissent in the Information Age

Steve Breyman
Time for a War Tax

David Michael Green
A Hapless Presidency

Dave Lindorff
The WTF Prize

Paul Buchheit
Fear of the Rich

Jim Goodman
Feedlots and E. Coli

Missy Beattie
Theater of the Absurd

Michael Leonardi
Ships of Poison

Nadia Hijab
The Plight of the Right of Return

Mel Packer
The Crackdown on Pittsburgh

David Macaray
The Raiding Game

James T. Phillips
Getting Burned

Charles R. Larson
One Man's Walk Through Hell

Michael Donnelly
Behind the Capitalist Curtain

David Yearsley
The Biggest Blot on Mel Gibson's Rap Sheet

Lorenzo Wolff
Rap That Threatens ... and Endures

Poets' Basement
Heyen, Ames and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Jobs Conference

October 8, 2009

Saul Landau
A Late September Morning With Fidel

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Dark Omens for the US in Afghanistan

Linn Washington, Jr.
Pot and Perversion: Judicial Antics Expose Drug War Insanity

Marshall Auerback
Neo-Classical Economics Misses What Matters

Dave Lindorff
A Nation of Snoops

David Rosen
Bankrupt Morality: the Staying Power of Republican Sinners

Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee
The Bear Essentials: New Thinking Needed to Save BC's Salmon and Grizzlies

John V. Walsh
Remembering Hinton's Fanshen

Stewart Lawrence
The Edwards / Hunter Affair Reconsidered

Charles R. Larson
Conservatives in the Sandbox

Website of the Day
Et Tu, Code Pink?

October 7, 2009

Brendan Cooney
Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

Paul Craig Roberts
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Recovery: Unemployment Up, Wages Down (But the Banks Have Been Saved ... Sort Of)

Jonathan Cook
A Third Intifada?

John Stanton
HTS: Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harms Way

Joanne Mariner
Tortured Language

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cherry Blossoms

Stephen Lendman
The Gaza War's Effect on Women

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time to Draw Down in Afghanistan

Mary Lynn Cramer
Doublespeak on Health Care

Website of the Day
How to Bag a Wolf by Aerial Assault

October 6, 2009

Mike Whitney
Dollar Hysteria: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Rift in the IAEA: Leaked Paper Based on Disputed Intel

Jonathan Cook
How Israel Buried the UN's War Crime Probe

Boris Kagarlitsky
My Hour as Talking Head in Moscow

Iain Boal
The New Crisis at Pacifica

Ron Jacobs
Why Are We in Afghanistan?

John Ross
Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

Michael Dickinson
Panic in Istanbul: Smoke, Mayhem and the World Bank

Stephen Fleischman
Beware the Predator

Ira Glunts
The Audacity of Nope

Missy Beattie
Outside Looking In

Website of the Day
Round Up the Usual Suspects

October 5, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering with a Federal Agency

Mike Whitney
Dead Man Walking: Welcome to the US Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

Harry Browne
Ireland Says, "Yes, Please"

Sara Mann
My Little Town: Nothin' But the Dead and Dyin'

Omar Barghouti
Dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Shamus Cooke
A Jobless Recovery?

Brenda Norrell
A Dirty New Low for Peabody Coal

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML: Reconciling Medical Pot Use and Legalization

Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap

Website of the Day
In Goldman Sachs We Trust?

October 2-4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Geezer Renditions

Saul Landau
News From Raul Castro

Diana Johnstone
After the German Elections: Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?

Greg Moses
Cramming for the Downside

William Blum
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Another Cold War Myth

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Nuclear Program: Where's the Proof?

Russell Mokhiber
Welcome Back, Michael Moore

John Ross
Chomsky in Mexico

Ellen Brown
IMF Catapults From Shunned Agency to Global Central Bank

David Ker Thomson
Cop Shocks

David Macaray
The Audacity of Toyota

Gary Engler
Unions in a Rut

Robert Fantina
Meet the New Boss (Same as the Old Boss)

Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer
Pittsburgh: Still a (Coal) Company Town

Anthony Papa
Here is Your Chance to Help End the Failed War on Drugs

Joe Allen
The Good Wife: Bad View of a Corrupt System

Harry Browne
Tarantino Scalps His Audience

Ron Jacobs
Collective Fiction

Charles R. Larson
Cultural Warriors: Austrialian Aboriginal Art Triennial

David Yearsley
Hanns Eisler's Great National Anthem for East Germany is Available: Make It America's

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Gardner and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Wrongful Convictions of Youth

October 1, 2009

Andy Worthington
A Truly Shocking Gitmo Story

Carl Ginsburg
The Great Marginalization

Mary Lynn Cramer
Seniors on the Chopping Block

Col. Douglas Macgregor
The Bog of History in Afghanistan

Brian M. Downing
The Paradox of Financial Disorder

John V. Walsh
Mao's China at 60

Ramzy Baroud
The Big Diversion

Norman Solomon
Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan

Dan Bacher
Undamming the Klamath

Brenda Norrell
Lazy Journalists are the Darlings of the Corporations

Website of the Day
Neoliberalism as Water Balloon

September 30, 2009

Vijay Prashad
McChrystal's Afghan Desolation

Gareth Porter
U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

Andy Thayer
The Fiasco Behind Chicago's Olympics Bid

Paul Craig Roberts
Another War in the Works

Dean Baker
Medicare Buy-In: What's Wrong With Giving People a Choice?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Mission Impossible

Laura Flanders
Punch in the Streets, But Not in the Suites

Dave Lindorff
The Baucus Excuse

Seumas Milne
Why British Workers Are Angry

Martha Rosenberg
What Integrity Means to Pfizer

Website of the Day
Why You Should Boycott Hyatt Hotels

September 29, 2009

Marshall Auerback
A Neoliberal Hijacking

Alan Farago
Recovery Without Feeling

Jeff Sher
Shopping for Health Care

Bruce Jackson
60 Minutes and the General

Gareth Porter
Fears of Defeat in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians in the Israeli Army

Bouthaina Shaaban
Arabs in the International Balance

Dave Lindorff
Looking Under the TARP

Stephen Soldz
Spreading Hysteria About Swine Flu "Hysteria"

Sara Mann
The Party of No Meets the Island of No

Website of the Day
Cosmos, Autotuned

September 28, 2009

Laura Carlsen
The Sound and Fury of the Honduran Coup

Anthony DiMaggio
The U.S., Iran and Nuclear Terror

Paul Craig Roberts
More Lies, More Deceptions

Neve Gordon
On Palestinian Civil Disobedience

Bill Quigley
Street Report From the G20

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's LBJ Moment

Nicola Nasser
Stuck Between Two Failures

Ben Rosenfeld Murder in New Orleans: Remembering Kirsten Brydum

Website of the Day
The Short March

September 25-7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ruin of His Presidency

Daniel Wolff
Speculating on Education

Rev. William E. Alberts
How "White Magic" Makes the Ism of Race Disappear

Mike Roselle
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

Saul Landau
Covert Memories From Miami

Eshan Azari
Why Afghan Intellectuals Live in National Despair

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Pentagon Feedlot

Robert Jensen
Is Obama a Socialist?

Jonathan Cook
Sleeping with the Enemy

Nelson P Valdés
Cuba, Hurricanes and the Internet

David Michael Green
Dumping Dubya

Ramzy Baroud
The Goldstone Report and Israeli Impunity

John V. Whitbeck
The Partition Straightjacket

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trial Delayed ... Again

David Ker Thomson
The Lady Vanishes

Seth Sandronsky
Obama and Race Management

Jim Goodman
Why are Farmers Afraid of Michael Pollen?

Charles R. Larson
From Oppression to Opportunity

David Yearsley
Froberger's Travels

Kim Nicolini
Hardcore Capitalism

Lorenzo Wolff
Transparent Pink

Website of the Weekend
An Emergency Appeal in the Fight Against Big Coal

September 24, 2009

Steven Higgs
Even in Indiana, Doctors Support National Health Insurance

Christopher Brauchli
Death Pays

Marshall Auerback
The Shortfall at the FDIC

Stephanie Westbrook
Italy's Fallen Soldiers

Nadia Hijab
Know Your Dictator

Sen. Russell Feingold
Fixing the Patriot Act, Restoring the Constitution

David Macaray
Goodbye "Norma Rae"

Binoy Kampmark
Curry Bashings in Oz

Joe Allen
Dancing With the Hammer

Website of the Day
The Most Corrupt Members of Congress

September 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Economy is a Lie, Too

Gabriel Kolko
The United States in Afghanistan: Eight Years Later

Uri Avnery
The Waldorf-Astoria Summit

Shamus Cooke
The First Shots of the Trade War

Missy Beattie
The Sound of Money

Gareth Porter
Taliban Rising

Mark Weisbrot
How Much Repression Will Hillary Clinton Support in Honduras?

Dr. Susan Block
The Murder of Annie Le

Norm Kent
Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness

Richard Neville
Apocalypse Porno

Website of the Day
In Carver Country

September 22, 2009

Franklin C. Spinney The Huge Hole in Gen. McChrystal's Afghan Counterinsurgency Strategy

Russell Mokhiber
Who's the Pimp?

Greg Grandin
Zelaya's Brazilian Gambit

Nikolas Kozloff
Salvaging Democracy in Honduras Will Be Tricky

John Ross
Mexico Convulsed by Paranoia

Ron Jacobs
Gen. McChrystal's Salespitch

Tariq Ali
The Afghan Folly

Dave Lindorff
NYT Trashes Single-Payer

Harvey Wasserman
Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

Vijay Prashad
Is Anything Better Than Nothing?

Kareem Shora
After the CIA Torture Report

Website of the Day
Did a State Dept Official Sell Nuclear Secrets?

September 21, 2009

JoAnn Wypijewski
Will Trumka or the Steelworkers Push Labor Into Battle?

Carl Finamore
Backstage at the AFL-CIO Convention

Uri Avnery
Sliming Goldstone and His Report

Nikolas Kozloff
Joe Wilson's Immigration Hypocrisy

Paul Simpson, M.D.
Why Your Doctor May Have PTSD

Alan Nasser
New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

Ray McGovern
CIA Torturers Running Scared

Dave Lindorff
Thoughts on Saving an Old Barn

Lina Thorne
Women, War and Afghanistan

Jeb Sprague
Confronting the G20

Website of the Day
Petition: Save the Yellowstone Grizzly

September 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
When Gossip Came Back and Our Modern Age was Born

Russell Mokhiber
Meet the Real Death Panels

Mike Whitney
The Post-Bubble Malaise

David Michael Green
Can America be Salvaged?

Jonathan Cook
Boycott Derails Jerusalem Rail Line

Nadia Hijab
Sinking the Goldstone Report

Mark Weisbrot
Recession, Recovery and Reform: Will Anything Change?

Michael Winship
Let's Make a Deal, Beltway Edition

Michael Leonardi
The Nuclear Dump in the Mediterranean Sea

Andy Worthington
The Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden

Fred Gardner
The Prohibitionists' Manifesto

David Macaray
What Happens in Congress Stays in Congress

David Rosen
System Failure and the Garrido Case

Jason Mark
Hacking the Sky

Mike Ferner
In Praise of Senator Baucus

Farzana Versey
The Great Indian Rope Trick

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Faustus: an Interview with Marc Estrin

elin o'Hara slavick
Flags for Hiroshima: Artist's Statement

Gilad Aztmon
Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

David Yearsley
Mendelssohn as Organ Maestro

Charles R. Larson
Darkness, Dignity and Hope in Liberia

Lorenzo Wolff
Dialing Up The Clash

Website of the Weekend
Meet Your Conservative Movement

September 17, 2009

Joshua Frank
Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler

Brenda Norrell
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis, One Year Later

Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists

Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: An Insult to Humanity

Jed Bickman
Drone War Over Pakistan

Alan Farago
The Mayor of Coconut Creek Gets Butterflies

Website of the Day
C.R.O.C.

September 16, 2009

Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability

Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate

Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?

Dean Baker
Short Sellers: the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: The Unheard Call

Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action

Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?

Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence

James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down

Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill

September 15, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall

Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe

Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem

Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration

Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers

Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux? IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls

Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork

Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror

Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret

David Macaray
Government Cheese

Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer

Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

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

Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier

Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland

Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care

John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History

Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money

Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee

Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist

Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?

Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries

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

October 13, 2009

"Get Your Rosaries Out of Our Ovaries!"

War on Mexican Women

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

"Sacan Sus Rosarios De Nuestras Ovarios!" The women, some of them bare-breasted, linked arms and chanted at the men in suits who were dashing towards the barricaded doors of the colonial edifice that houses the local congress in the central Mexican city of Queretero.

Indeed, some of the men were so eager to get to their desks on the floor of the state legislature that they squeezed through basement windows, risking wrinkles to duds that had been freshly pressed for the occasion.  

By 9 AM September 1, in a classic "madruguete" (early morning vote behind locked doors to exclude dissenters), all 21 members of the all-male Queretero congress had unanimously passed a bill criminalizing abortions for all women with the exception of rape victims (but not victims of incest) and those whose lives would be put at risk for carrying to full term.  Any other woman who so much as inquired about the availability of abortion at a hospital or clinic could now be imprisoned for up to a year.

According to news reports, a week after the law was passed and signed off on by the rightist Queretero governor, one unfortunate and unidentified woman was in fact arrested for soliciting an abortion, held in jail overnight, and forced to pay a 4000 peso fine.

Queretero was the 15 Mexican state to criminalize abortion.  Days later, the conflictive southern state of Oaxaca became the 16th entity in the Mexican union to ratify what pro-choice organizations label "La Ley Machista" that defines life as beginning at fertilization and imposes prison sentences on women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies.  As in Queretero, the measure was vociferously dissed by pro-choice advocates and the legislature was forced to relocate to a secure alternative site to vote the Oaxaca version of "The Macho Law" up.

Criminalization of abortion bills are also pending in Michoacan, Sinaloa, Veracruz, and Mexico state.  With half of Mexico's 31 states plus one now on record, the machos are assured that a constitutional amendment criminalizing abortion can be passed and such legislation is expected to be introduced in a coming session of the new Mexican congress.

Criminalization of abortion is turning Mexico into "a totalitarian state", opines Diego Valades, a former attorney general and dean of the National Autonomous University (UNAM) law faculty - such legislation "cedes control of a woman's body to the state and is itself unconstitutional."  Valades proposes instead a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a woman's reproductive rights. 

The anti-abortion putsch is being orchestrated by the ruling right-wing PAN party in connivance with the Princes of the Catholic hierarchy. One goal is to force repeal of Mexico City's free abortion-on-demand law.  Since the pro-choice legislation was deemed constitutional by a ten to one vote of the nation's Supreme Court two Septembers ago after the law had been challenged by then-attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora, a proxy for President Felipe Calderon, and the National Human Rights Commission ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, an Opus Dei intimate, the city has provided free interruptions of unwanted pregnancies during the first 12 weeks of gestation to more than 30,000 women, an average of 41 a day, according to the Mexico City Womens' Institute. 

Abortion on demand has incurred the fierce wrath of Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the most powerful Churchman (there are no Churchwomen) in the land, who ordered all church bells in the capital rung in mourning to mark the court's decision.  The Mexico City archdiocese has since bought a plot in the Dolores Cemetery where it stages funerals for aborted fetuses.

The 102-member Mexican Bishops' Conference (CEM) is equally as obstreperous in its condemnation of Mexico City's free abortion services, even those few liberationist bishops who have a voice and vote oppose the leftist capital government's pro-choice initiative - San Cristobal de las Casas bishop emeritus, an apostle of liberation theology, once exhibited gory blow-ups of aborted fetuses on the esplanade outside the "Cathedral of Peace" in that Chiapas city.

"I am appalled by the CEM's position.  The separation of Church and State is the foundation of the Mexican constitution," an indignant Diego Valades reminded attendees at a recent National University academic conference.

The campaign to criminalize abortion is only one front in the war on women being waged by the PAN, the Roman Catholic Church, and their political allies.  Last month (September), the Mexican Senate confirmed Arturo Chavez Chavez, Calderon's handpicked designee, as the country's new attorney general over the intense objections of feminists and human rights activists.  As chief prosecutor in the northern state of Chihuahua during the mid to late 1990s, Chavez Chavez was charged with investigating the murders and disappearances of 192 women in the gritty border city of Juarez.  Mothers of the dead women - "Las Muertas" - accuse Chavez Chavez of gross negligence.

In testimony at his confirmation hearing, the future attorney general insisted that he had cleared 60 murders during his years as Chihuahua's chief prosecutor but the truth is more diffuse - Chavez Chavez prosecuted one suspect, an Egyptian chemist Omar Latif Sharif, for 60 killings.  Sharif, however, was convicted of only one murder, that of a sometimes girlfriend, and is currently serving a 30 year sentence in a Chihuahua penitentiary.

Paula Flores, whose murdered 17 year-old daughter Maria Sagrario has become an icon for the mothers of Las Muertas, recalls a less than empathetic Chavez.  When 11 years ago she went down on her knees before him to plead for justice for Sagrario, the aspiring attorney general just walked around her as if she didn't exist.  Later, Chavez Chavez's investigators mistook Sagrario's tomb and opened up an adjoining gravesite, carrying off the remains of another Muerta for an autopsy.

Such confusion tainted the Calderon nominee's years at the helm of the investigation.  In 1999, United Nations rapporteur for extra-judicial killings Asma Jahangir denounced Chavez Chavez's "arrogance" when she sought to question him about the investigations.  A second UN rapporteur  on judges and judicial processes, Dato Parran, who visited Juarez in 2002, doubted that any of the more than 100 remaining cases had even been investigated.  In 2003, Amnesty International found "intolerable negligence" in the investigations of the dead women's murders carried out by Chavez Chavez and his successors - autopsies did not meet international legal standards and inquiries were only initiated after pressure from grieving families.  Many of the disappeared women were dismissed as runaways.

Jurist Eduardo Buscalgia, who headed a UN commission that reviewed the violent deaths of 258 women in Juarez between 1993 and 2003, uncovered what he recently described as "procedural horrors" in the investigations of the deaths of Las Muertas.  Many of the victims had apparently been tortured and some of their bodies burnt.  Eight women had one breast cut off and were bitten by their attacker(s) and their remains thrown out on the same desert lot, evidence that suggested a serial killer was at large yet no serious investigation was ever launched by Mexican authorities.  Instead, Chavez Chavez blamed the women for their own grisly murders, intimating that they had provoked their killers by wearing mini-skirts.  "Only bad women go out at night," he concluded  - many of the victims like Maria Sagrario Flores had been working late night shifts at Juarez maquiladoras and were still wearing their "batas" (work smocks) when their bodies were discovered.

Despite overwhelming evidence of Arturo Chavez Chavez's inept, misogynist investigation into the deaths of Las Muertas, he was confirmed September 24 by the Mexican Senate as the nation's top law enforcement officer.  When, in protest, the mothers of the dead women painted 106 pink crosses (the number of unsolved cases) on the walls of the prosecutor's offices in Juarez, they were investigated for the destruction of federal property.      

In another notorious case of violence against women, 11 victims of sexual abuse during police raids in the farming village of San Salvador Atenco May 3-4, 2006 have once again been denied justice.  This September, the Special Prosecutor for Violence Against Women (FEMIMTRA), which operates under Chavez Chavez's jurisdiction, rejected their claims that they had been sexually manhandled and penetrated during their arrests and turned the cases back to Mexico state authorities that had already vindicated the police. Charges against 22 state cops were dropped, five are pending while the accused are out on bail (if previous accusations of sexual battery against the police are any precedent, they will never be prosecuted), and one police agent who was sentenced to three years imprisonment paid a $400 USD fine and is now reportedly back on the Mexico state police payroll. 

Violence against women is spiraling in Mexico.  On the day Arturo Chavez Chavez was confirmed (September 24th), five women were shot and killed in the Sierra of Petatlan in Guerrero state where army troops have been pursuing purported guerrillas for months.  One week later, four women - one a police domestic violence investigator - and a little girl who was playing nearby were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez.  According to a grim roster held by the group "Justice For Our Daughters", 67 women have been murdered or disappeared in Juarez in the first nine months of 2009 - 28 bodies remain unclaimed in the city morgue.

From July 2007 thru June 2008, 227 "feminicides" were recorded in 13 northern Mexican states by the private Citizens Observatory on Feminicides and 1014 counted nationally.  60per cent of the killings occurred in and around the womens' homes. 

Despite the on-going slaughter, the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, which has long been under the thumb of the Catholic Church and the PAN, is the only one of Mexico's 31 states that has not enacted a law to protect women from domestic violence.  Guanajuato is home to the extreme right-wing "El Yunque" (The Anvil), a secret organization with roots in the 1926-29 Cristero uprising against the anti-clerical president Plutarco Elias Calles, founder of the modern PRI party that ruled Mexico for 71 years until displaced by the PAN's Vicente Fox, a Guanajuato native, in 2000 - three members of Fox's cabinet were reportedly affiliated with El Yunque. 

When the school term began this fall in Guanajuato, first year high school students found themselves without biology text books because books published by the federal Secretary of Public Education (SEP) had been withdrawn under orders from PANista governor Juan Manuel Oliva who adjudged that they contained "perversions" - the biology books included anatomically-correct reproductions of human genitalia and addressed birth control, even daring to use the two dread words "condom" and "abortion." 

Instead, the Guanajuato Education Secretariat (SEG) distributed 114,000 of their own biology textbooks that demonized masturbation and homosexuality, skipped any mention of AIDS prevention, and advocated abstinence as the only method of avoiding unwanted pregnancies. 

When the federal SEP (ironically controlled by the PAN) insisted on teaching the original biology texts, a group of women in Leon, the state capital, headed by a local rightist councilwomen burnt hundreds of the SEP books in the central plaza of the city.  "They want to make my son wear a condom," explained the councilwoman Hortencia Orozco.

The PAN is hardly alone in its pogrom against women.  The Chavez Chavez nomination was voted up by the PRI and the Mexican Green Environmental Party (sic) that together hold an absolute majority in the Mexican congress.  Eight of the 16 states that have criminalized abortion are governed by the PRI whose party president is a woman. 

600,000 abortions are performed in Mexico each year according to the Secretary of Public Health, 100,000 of them under dangerous, clandestine circumstances.  The prohibition of legal abortion stirs the specter of the dark ages of back alley butchers scraping women with clothes hangers. In six of the 16 states that have criminalized the interruption of unwanted pregnancies, maternal mortality is five times the national average.

Both local and national legislatures in Mexico are male dominated.  The number of women holding congressional office (27 per cent) is well below Cuba (43 per cent), Argentina (40 per cent), Costa Rica (39per cent) and African nations such as Mozambique, Tanzania, and Rwanda (49 per cent.) Only 15 per cent of high echelon executives in the Calderon government are women in a country where women (52per cent) are the majority - in Ecuador 35 per cent of all executive positions are held by women and Argentina and Chile have women presidents.

Two years ago, Mexico revised its electoral code to insure that women would comprise 40per cent of the federal congress but this September 2nd when the recently elected Chamber of Deputies met for the first time, eight recently elected women rose from their desks one by one and asked for permanent leaves of absence.  Their seats were then delegated to their all-male substitutes ("suplentes"), at least one of who was the husband of an electee.  Denouncing violation of the so-called "Equanimity of Gender" clause of the reformed code, feminist Gabriela Rodriguez, writing in the left daily La Jornada, blasted the flimflam as "nothing less than electoral fraud against women."       

John Ross's "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City, "a love letter" to the most contaminated, corrupt, and conflictive city in the Americas (Kirkus Reviews), will be published next month by Nation Books. His "Iraqigirl" (Haymarket), the diary of a teenager growing up under U.S. occupation is now in the stores.  The author is scouting venues for a 2009-2010 book tour. Any ideas? Contact johnross@igc.org

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