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Today's
Stories
February 19,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Paying
Insurgents Not to Fight
February 18,
2008
Wajahat Ali
Free
Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan
Diana Johnstone
NATO's
Kosovo Colony
Paul Craig Roberts
What Do We Stand For?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along"
Debbie Nathan
Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes
Anthony DiMaggio
Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business
of Elections
Bill Simpich
Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq
Eva Liddell
A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash
Christopher Brauchli
The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans
Stephen Soldz
Wikileaks is Under Attack!
Johann Rossouw
The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism
Website of
the Day
Sick of It Day!
February 16
/ 17, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan
Ralph Nader
We
the Corporations ...
David Macaray
The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin?
William J.
Peace
Wheelchair Dumping
Ron Jacobs
War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption
Diane Christian
War Corrupts
Alan Maass
Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen
(and Beyond)
Ramzy Baroud
Iraq and the US Elections
Michael Donnelly
Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Art of Finding Whalers
James L. Secor
China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008
Eve Bachrach
Bush Returns to Africa
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army
Stephen Gowans
Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian
Missy Beattie
To Vote or Not to Vote?
David Michael
Green
Warming Slowly to Obama
Wajahat Ali
Attack of the Info-tainment Circus
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther
Website of the Day
Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!
February 15,
2008
George Szamuely
The
Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability
to Baghdad?
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban,
Bin Laden and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg
Alan Farago
God and the Democrats
Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush
Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams
February 14,
2008
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Palestine
in the Mind of America
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO
Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter
George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?
John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border
Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can
Whack Anyone
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein
Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It
Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes
Website of
the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us
February 13,
2008
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet
John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America
Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line
Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America
Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries
Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour
Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most
David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends
Roderick Frazier
Nash
Celebrating Wilderness
Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT
Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases
Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted
by Politicians
Website of
the Day
John He Is
February 12,
2008
Frank J. Menetrez
The
Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Paul Craig
Roberts
War Without End
Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the
Torture?
Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?
Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Ralph Nader
Open the Government
John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered
Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms
the Candidate
Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules
Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"
Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide
Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown
February 11,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Lessons
for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?
Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby
Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country
Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta
Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?
Chris Floyd
American
Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech
Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows
Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics
Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope
Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation
Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President
Christopher
Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker
Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels
February 8
/ 10, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Does
the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?
Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?
Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08
Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding
Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering
and Deaths of the Great Whales
Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association
Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy
Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ...
Then What?
P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors
Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land
Fred Gardner
/
Pebbles Trippet
"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the
Law!"
Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death
Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr
David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves
Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?
Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence
Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?
Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen
Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski
February 7,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Baghdad Will Explode Again
Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians
David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for
the Sake of Ratings
Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing
Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation
Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden
Dave Zirin
Instep Intifada
Saul Landau
The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln
Susie Day
Our Blob in the White House
Website of the Day
George Carlin on Voting
February 6,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Super
Tuesday's Vote for Chaos
Ben Rosenfeld
Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters
Vijay Prashad
An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out
Joe Bageant
Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned
Michael Donnelly
What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths
Allan Nairn
Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion?
Kathryn Gray
Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit
Ray McGovern
Powell's UN Fiasco
Sheldon Richman
The Whining Empire
Paul Cantor
/ Roger Sparks
A
Presidential Aptitude Examination
John Chuckman
Political Bits and Pieces
Website of
the Day
Save the Albatross
February 5,
2008
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The
Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget
Tariq Ali
Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair
Stephen Soldz
The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize
War Crimes?
Chris Floyd
Strange
Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War
William S. Lind
Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win
Martha Rosenberg
Live From the Killing Floor
Heather Gray
Conversations with Georgia Voters
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics
David Macaray
Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice
Eliza Ernshire
Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run
Brenda Norrell
Hated Nation
Website of
the Day
The Things I Used to Do
February 4,
2008
Marc Levy
Winter
in America
Patrick Cockburn
The Bird Market Bombings
Saree Makdisi
Strangling Gaza
Uri Avnery
From Stalingrad to Winograd
Alan Farago
Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer
Ben Tripp
Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter
Paul Wolf
Civil Wars North and South
Paul Craig
Roberts
Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?
Joshua Frank
MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change
John Halle
Whither Progressive Democrats?
Website of the Day
How to Cheat in School
February 2
/ 3, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Hot
Democratic Properties
Pam Martens
Bankers
Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense
Ralph Nader
The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked
John Ross
Hilaria
vs. "El Moreno"
Wajahat Ali
Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with
Imam Zaid Shakir
Robert Fantina
A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American
Empire
B. R. Gowani
Not All Veils and Guns
James L. Secor
China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow
John V. Walsh
The Invisible Green Primary
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble
Dave Zirin
Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul?
Jeremy Scahill
Blackwater and Blood
Fidel Castro
Reflections on Lula
Joe Allen
Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War
Stephen Lendman
Life in Occupied Gaza
Patrick Irelan
What Happened to the Streetcars?
Andrej Grubacic
Ziga Vodovnik
Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo
Josh Karpoff
Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement
Ron Jacobs
Carl Oglesby's War
Paul Krassner
Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel
Website of the Weekend
Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart
February 1,
2008
Ray McGovern
The
Iniquities and Inequalities of War
Diane Farsetta
The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman
Patrick Cockburn
The
Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists
Tariq Ali
Et
Tu, New York Times?
Allan Nairn
Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti
Rannie Amiri
Collective Punishment in Beirut
Ramzy Baroud
People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It
Kenneth Couesbouc
The Mother of All Snowballs
Peter Morici
Recession Looms
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro
Rosemary Jackowski
27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President
Scott Campbell
Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges
Website of the Day
Betes et Hommes
January 31,
2008
Saul Landau
Return
to Afghanistan
Andy Worthington
Horror at Guantánamo
Mike Whitney
Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System
Jeff Ballinger
Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the
"Suharto of the Steppe"
Tiffany Ten
Eyck
The Saga of the Freightliner Five
William Loren
Katz
Waterboarding:
Torure or Mystery?
Alan Farago
Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble
Col. Dan Smith
Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget?
China Hand
Slouching Toward Islamabad
Dave Lindorff
The Usual Suspects Once Again
Wadner Pierre
Fake Democracy in Haiti
Website of the Day
One Big Union
January 30,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
McCain
vs. Clinton?
Christopher
Ketcham
The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex
Robert Weissman
America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union
Neve Gordon
An Experiment in Famine
Paul Craig Roberts
Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse?
Joanne Mariner
How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech
David Macaray
Labor's Only Real Weapon
Liaquat Ali
Khan
Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan?
Raymond J. Lawrence
Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication
Dan Bacher
The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon
Website of the Day
Onward Through the Fog
January 29,
2008
Franklin C.
Spinney
Bush's
New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off
Mike Whitney
The Great Credit Unwind of 2008
Alan Farago
Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders
Association
Patrick Cockburn
"The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction"
Gary Leupp
"We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel
Edmonds Timeline
R. F. Blader
A
World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania
Ahmad Faruqui
Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect
Fran Shor
Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In"
Jeremy Scahill
Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater
Protesters
Allan Nairn
Bush's
SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All
Website of the Day
The Ghost of Rambo
January 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Return
to Fallujah
Paul Craig
Roberts
The End of American Liberty
Allan Nairn
The Breaking of the Gaza Wall
Eyad al-Sarraj
/ Sara Roy
Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza
Martha Rosenberg
Obit for the "Front Page" City
Corporate Crime
Reporter
How They Rip Us Off
David Michael Green
Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War
Jennifer Van
Bergen
What's Left?
Nancy Oden
Survival Tips for Hard Times
Divya Karnad
Saving India's Sea Turtles
James L. Secor
Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp
Website of
the Day
Yellow Journalism?
January 26
/ 27, 2008
Uri Avnery
Worse
Than a Crime
JoAnn Wypijewski
How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina
Ralph Nader
Ambition, Power and the Clintons
Paul Craig
Roberts
How Bush Destroyed the Dollar
Paul Watson
I'm Proud to be a Pirate!
John Ross
Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico
Fred Gardner
Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred
by California Supreme Court
Allan Nairn
Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death
Joshua Frank
Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey
Binoy Kampmark
Société Générale and the Economic
Meltdown
James T. Phillips
America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home
Stan Cox
The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants
Eamonn McCann
Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland"
Ron Jacobs
The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia
Seth Sandronsky
California's Health Care Crisis
Ben Terrall
The Future is Unwritten
Poets' Basement
Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
City of Immigrants
January 25,
2008
Douglas Valentine
Operation
Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA
Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari
JoAnn Wypijewski
Down to the Wire in South Carolina
Heather Gray
Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with
South Carolina Voters
Marjorie Cohn
Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA
Erica Rosenberg
Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear
Robert Weissman
Reclaiming Economic Freedom
Laura Carlsen
Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada
Stephen Lendman
Israeli Repression in the Hebron
Website of the Day
The FIX is In
January 24,
2008
JoAnn Wypijewski
Obama
as Anthologist of Uplift
Paul Craig
Roberts
President Hillary
Alexander Cockburn
Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her
Nursing Home Scam?
Kathleen Christison
One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus
Jeff Halper
Power to the (Palestinian) People!
Stanley Heller
The Siege of Gaza is Broken
George Wuerthner
The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands
Patrick Cockburn
Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium
Jeff Sher
Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance?
Patrick Irelan
Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally?
Charles Modiano
Restoring the Anti-War King
Website of
the Day
An Illustrated History of Trepanation
January 23,
2008
David Rosen
The
Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics
of Sex
David Isenberg
Is
It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons
Program?
Farzana Versey
Hillary's
Harem
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Empire That Must Be Obeyed
Alan Farago
Where Did All the Good Times Go?
Allan Nairn
Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights
Activist
Kenneth Couesbouc
Another Turn of the Screw
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
How the West was Re-Sold
Michael Donnelly
Obama Strikes Back
Norman Solomon
The Power of Love
Website of the Day
Rafah Today
January 22,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Farewell
to Old Economic Nostrums
JoAnn Wypijewski
King Day in Columbia, South Carolina
Al Giordano
Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a
Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada
Felice Pace
Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon
Paul Wolf
Bolívar's Sword
Robert Weissman
Deregulation and the Financial Crisis
Dave Lindorff
The Bush Dollar Trap
Marjorie Cohn
Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction
Richard Neville
Keeping Shakespeare in a Box
Don Fitz /
Zaki Baruti
St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform
Ben Terrall
Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness
Sam Husseini
Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr.
Website of
the Day
Defend the Mapuche!
January 21,
2008
Kevin Alexander
Gray
Playing
the Race Card
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy
Pam Martens
How Wall Street Blew Itself Up
David Macaray
Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party?
Uri Avnery
Look Who's Talking
Omar Barghouti
Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide
Joe DeRaymond
Protest and Trial in D.C.
B.R. Gowani
Why Islam Should Tolerate Images
Shepherd Bliss
The False U.S. Economy
Jean-Guy Allard
Philip Agee Versus the CIA
Dan Bacher
Leaping Steelhead!
Website of
the Day
Destroyed
By a Rising Flood
January 19
/ 20, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Campaign in Black and White
Saul Landau
Good Time Charlie's War
China Hand
Endgame for Pakistan?
Conn Hallinan
Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About?
Ron Jacobs
No Retreat
Dave Lindorff
A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess
Andy Worthington
Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture
Paul Armentano
What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think
Seth Sandronsky
High Crimes and Economics
Michael Donnelly
Dodging Ecocide
Patrick Irelan
The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki
Martha Rosenberg
The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit
Sherwood Ross
Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade
David Michael
Green
So You Want to be My President, Eh?
James Rothenberg
Unimpeachable: Under House Protection
Daniel Gross
Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King
Peter N. Carroll
In Memory of Milton Wolff
Susie Day
Croakin' on Hudson
Paul Krassner
Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu
Poets' Basement
Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski
Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain
Blues
January 18,
2008
Allan Nairn
Killing
Civilians, Carefully
Ralph Nader
When
the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill?
Joanne Mariner
Terrorism and Preventative Detention
Alan Farago
The Stimulus and the Meltdown
P. Sainath
Pity the Brahmins
R.F. Blader
Beyond Steinem's Feminism
Andy Worthington
A Letter from Guantánamo
John Jonik
Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health
Brian McKenna
Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan
Women's Prison
Daoud Kuttab
This Time Next Year?
Website of the Day
Those South Carolina Voting Machines
January 17,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Leader
and Vassal
Christopher
Brauchli
The FBI's Bills Come Due
Robert Fantina
Leadership, Bush and the New York Times
Patrick Irelan
Eternal War
Paul A. Moore
When the Rich Pay No Taxes
Stephen Lendman
Institutionalized Spying on Americans
Beena Sarwar
Bhutto and the "State Within a State"
Walter Brasch
Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment
Brenda Norrell
Bush Legacy in Texas Sours
Adam Federman
End of the Left?
Website of the Day
Democrats for Romney
January 16,
2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Return
of the Native
Franklin Lamb
The Bombing at Qarantina
Julian Sanchez
David Weigel
Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?
Sharon Smith
Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope?
Allan Nairn
Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation
Andy Worthington
A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo
Richard Behan
Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach!
Website of the Day
Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!
January 15,
2008
Andrea Peacock
Breach
of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing
Poison Into Libby's Wounds
Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy
and the Prospects of War with Iran
Joe Bageant
Getting Out the Bling Vote
Ralph Nader
The Candidate Taboos
John Ross
Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified?
Peter Morici
The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy
Beena Sarwar
Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade
Robert Weissman
Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought
Binoy Kampmark
Going Tata in India
Dave Zirin
Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame
Website of
the Day
David Lynch on the iPhone
January 14,
2008
Ishmael Reed
Ma
and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man
Roger Morris
Burials in the Sind
Uri Avnery
The
Hands of Esau
Mike Whitney
Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package
Allan Nairn
General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million
Corpses
William Blum
Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us
Alan Farago
A Subprime Wake Up Call
David Macaray
Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time?
Eva Liddell
Getting Drunk with Obama
Zoe Blunt
Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons
Website of the Day
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies
January 12
/ 13, 2008
Andrew Cockburn
How
the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian
Deaths
Saul Landau
60
Years of Empire
Corey D. B. Walker
Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual
Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot
Eric Toussaint
The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global
Ron Jacobs
Television, Murder and Vietnam
Fred Gardner
The People vs. Christopher James Chakos
Stan Cox
Don't Take That Pill!
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Warfare State
Ramzy Baroud
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Joseph Grosso
The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites
David Díaz-Arias
Imagining An/Other Latin American Left
Stacey Warde
Before We Move On ...
Dan Bacher
Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt
Michael Dickinson
Georgie in Jesusland
Website of
Weekend
CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices
January 11,
2008
Dave Lindorff
Did
Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold
Voting Machines
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Escape from War and Unemployment
Andy Worthington
Six Years of Guantánamo
Kenneth Couesbouc
Banking on Thin Ice
Jeff Ballinger
Inside the Vienna Consensus
Christopher
Brauchli
Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns
Andrew Silverstein
Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem
Marwan Bishara
Bush in the Middle East
Robert Weissman
The First Amendment Gone Wild
Patrick Irelan
Damn the Small Boats!
Website of
the Day
Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She
Loses
January 10,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Now
Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards
Bob Wing
Marqueece Harris-Dawson
Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom
Bradley
Michael Donnelly
White Women Gone Wild?
David Macaray
Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions
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|
February
19, 2008
The Story of the
Freightliner Five
Union-Busting
at Freightliner
By LEE SUSTAR
The Freightliner management in Cleveland,
N.C., must be breathing a sigh of relief.
Five terminated members of
the union's bargaining committee who helped lead a one-day strike
last year have been denied union membership by their local union
president in what experts say is a violation of their union's
constitution.
One of the five, Allen Bradley,
was arrested February 16, even as he, along with the other terminated
members, were complying with a police order to leave a union
meeting. His "crime?" Taking a photo of a police officer
who was confronting a fellow worker.
To an outsider, it may appear
that United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 3520 is simply beset by
factional rivalry. Certainly, such a conclusion would be convenient
for Freightliner executives, who benefit from any diversion from
the heart of the matter--the unjustified firing of five local
union officers who led a walkout from their plant after their
contract expired and management broke off negotiations.
Since then, the workers, now
known as the Freightliner Five--Bradley, Robert Whiteside, Glenna
Swinford, Franklin Torrence and David Crisco--have been fighting
to regain their jobs. A January letter from an official at the
UAW International's office in Detroit stated that the union would
press the workers' case at arbitration hearings that have yet
to be scheduled.
In recent weeks, the five have
mounted a solidarity effort that has raised money from unionists
and sympathizers around the country to keep them in the fight.
The response has been positive and growing--not only because
labor activists recognize the justice of their cause, but because
the outcome of this struggle will have an impact on labor's long-delayed
efforts to organize the South.
If a company can get away with
terminating a union's elected officers--Whiteside, Swinford and
Torrence are members of the local's executive committee, and
the others also hold several elected union positions--organizing
in what is already hostile territory will become even more difficult.
As has been the case historically
in the South, the struggle for racial justice is intertwined
with workers' rights. Whiteside and Torrence are African American
and have been at the forefront of the effort to fight discrimination
in the Cleveland plant. They, as well as Swinford and Bradley,
are all active members of the NAACP.
"Corporations continue
to flock to the South, where they can take advantage of 'right-to-work'
laws and intimidate workers," said Donna DeWitt, president
of the South Carolina AFL-CIO. "It is incidents such as
the termination of the five Cleveland Freightliner union members
that impedes the ability of unions to organize successfully in
the South.
"When workers see what
happens to union members--union leaders--they will choose not
to be a part of a union. In the end, the corporations win, and
workers lose."
Yet in this struggle, the Freightliner
Five have repeatedly found themselves up against UAW Local 3520
President George Drexel. It was Drexel who called off the strike
hours after it began on April 2, 2007. It was Drexel who tried
to suspend the five from union office and put them on a weeklong
internal union trial last November, which failed.
And it was Drexel who informed
the five that they were no longer members in good standing, and
would henceforth be barred from union meetings, even though in
the UAW such determinations rest with a local's financial secretary.
In fact, Local 3520's financial secretary, Shayne Brown, accepted
back dues from the five just days before the union meeting.
Drexel did not return messages
seeking comment on these developments. Whatever his motivations,
a campaign to remove the five from union office, and now membership,
can only benefit management. And as a look at Freightliner shows,
the company--recently renamed Daimler Trucks North America after
its German parent corporation--has long pursued an anti-union
agenda.
* *
*
Of course, corporate public
relations specialists gave Freightliner's "human resources
management" a different spin. On June 1, 2006, Dieter Zetsche,
chair of Freightliner's parent company, then known as DaimlerChrysler,
visited the truck maker's flagship plant in Portland, Ore., to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of Daimler's purchase of Freightliner.
"Today, Freightliner is
not only an integral part of the DaimlerChrysler Truck Group
and the pillar of our North American commercial vehicle operations,
it is also the group sales leader for our entire truck business,"
Zetsche told an audience of factory workers, praising them as
"dedicated employees."
Eight months later, 900 of
those "dedicated employees" were laid off as Freightliner
transferred work to plants in North Carolina and Santiago Tianguistenco,
outside Mexico City.
By July, production workers
at the Portland plant, which builds the Western Star brand trucks
and military vehicles, had had enough. Some 670 members of International
Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 1050 walked out, preventing
the plant from re-opening after a maintenance shutdown.
Three other unions at the plant--the
Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union and the
Painters--had already reached tentative agreements. But they
honored the IAM's picket lines and kept the plant shut down.
According to union officials,
the IAM won improvements in job security and severance pay--key
demands in view of the fact that Freightliner is building a big
new plant in Saltillo, Mexico, which is scheduled to produce
30,000 Freightliner and Sterling brand trucks when production
begins next year.
Daimler's hard-line approach
to Freightliner unions in the U.S. bears little resemblance to
the employee-worker "co-management" mandated by German
law. The UAW fought a long battle to organize Freightliner's
Mt. Holly, N.C., plant, finally gaining recognition in 1990,
and carried out a 16-day unfair labor practices strike to win
a contract the following year. But as Freightliner expanded production
in the region, it did its best to keep the union out.
After Daimler's merger with
Chrysler in 1998, the UAW tried to leverage its relationship
with Chrysler to push for the company's neutrality in union organizing
drives. Instead, the company dug in.
A key factor was the arrival
of Daimler's Rainer Schmueckle as president and CEO of Freightliner.
His heavy-handed tactics created an opening for UAW organizers.
At the Gastonia, N.C., truck parts plant, for example, workers
were upset over a 5 percent wage cut and higher health insurance
costs.
But just a day before an NLRB-supervised
election, Gastonia management threatened workers with job loss
if they voted to bring in the UAW. The UAW lost the vote, with
322 in favor of union representation and 346 against. The NLRB,
which has taken a decidedly pro-management tilt under the Bush
administration, nevertheless ordered a new election because of
management intimidation.
In the end, the Gastonia plant
was unionized--not through an NLRB election, but through a "card
check" agreement in which DaimlerChrysler agreed that its
nonunion operations would recognize the union if and when a majority
of workers signed union cards. Nate Gooden, then director of
the UAW's Chrysler and heavy truck department, predicted that
DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa County, Ala.,
would be organized "very, very soon, I think in less than
a year."
Nearly five years later, the
Alabama plant remains nonunion after the UAW failed to win sufficient
support. (The union hasn't succeeded in organizing any foreign-owned
plants that aren't part of joint ventures with U.S. companies.)
In 2006, the IAM launched its own attempt to organize the Alabama
Mercedes plant, which has yet to yield results.
At the Freightliner plants
in North Carolina, however, the UAW was able to score a success.
In late 2003, workers in the Gastonia plant supported unionization
via card check. Their counterparts in Cleveland, where a $1.15
wage cut had been imposed, also got organized through card check.
In 2004, the UAW won through
card check at the Thomas Built Bus plant in High Point, N.C.,
but a complaint by an anti-union worker led the NLRB to overturn
the recognition. A year later, the UAW narrowly won again, with
714 signing cards for the union out of a total of 1,300.
But if Freightliner couldn't
stop unionization, it was able to impose conditions on the UAW.
In August 2002, management met with union officials to discuss
a "framework" for card check procedures. The details
of the agreement were revealed in a lawsuit by anti-union workers
supported by the anti-labor National Right to Work Legal Defense
Fund.
In a document signed by the
UAW's Gooden, the union agreed, among other things, that there
would be "no wage adjustments provided at any newly organized
plant prior to mid-2003." A memo from Freightliner human
resources manager Scott Evitt also revealed that Freightliner
insisted on canceling a wage increase for the unionized Mount
Holly plant in December 2002, cancellation of a profit-sharing
bonus and benefit "cost-sharing" by employees.
Other aspects of the pre-agreement,
which was to be in effect for five years, included a ban on guaranteed
employee transfer between Freightliner business units; no additional
limits on overtime scheduling; company control over production
standards and job qualifications; a ban on strikes during the
life of the contract other than health and safety issues; and
"no future expectations that any Freightliner business unit
will be required to meet 'UAW pattern' agreements."
* *
*
Whatever the agreement reached
by the UAW and Freightliner, a network of activists in the Cleveland
plant were already building a union from the bottom up.
Allen Bradley, an electrical
contractor with multiple licenses, joined the UAW Voluntary Organizing
Committee (VOC) to organize among his fellow skilled trades employees.
Also on the VOC was Glenna Swinford, who had worked at Daimler's
Mercedes truck plant in Hampton, Va., from 1980 until it closed
in 1990, before transferring to Freightliner.
Robert Whiteside, who had been
part of unsuccessful union drives in previous jobs, threw himself
into the VOC, as did Franklin Torrence, who had been working
at the plant for the previous decade. The activism of these and
other VOC members helped the UAW overcome the resistance that
management had mounted in Gastonia and High Point.
The first contract in the plant
was ratified in 2003. But there were still plenty of issues in
which the workers clashed with management, with health and safety
among the most important. David Crisco, who had been working
for an insurance company before starting at the Cleveland plant
soon after the contract was ratified, agreed to run for a union
committeeman (shop steward) position just a couple of days after
he was eligible to do so.
What spurred Crisco to get
involved was the number of injuries he saw--a man whose leg was
run over by a truck, another killed because he stepped around
a parked truck into the path of another, and a woman whose arm
was twisted out of her shoulder socket because her wedding ring
was caught in a machine. She had never used the machine before,
and had no training, Crisco said. "I saw many things that
could have been avoided that management just overlooked,"
he said.
Crisco soon piled up more grievances
than any other member of the shop committee, and he won a good
deal more than he lost. "I was fired a couple of times and
walked out of the plant a couple of times," he said. "I
always changed out of my UAW shirt first, because I didn't want
to give them the satisfaction of seeing someone in a union shirt
taken out of the plant."
It wasn't until the 2006 local
union election that Crisco teamed up with the others who would
become the Freightliner Five. "I didn't vote for Robert
Whiteside for shop committee chair because I didn't know him,"
Crisco said. Soon, the two men were working closely, writing
grievances and addressing issues on the shop floor.
"Robert Whiteside is the
epitome of a labor leader," said Crisco, recalling Whiteside's
working 16- to 18-hour days despite a paycheck based on a regular
workweek. "He's polite and professional, but when you stepped
on his peoples' toes, you unleashed a lion."
Management immediately made
it clear what it thought of Whiteside, the union's leading African
American official. "The previous shop committee chair had
a nice office, with a secretary paid by the company," Crisco
said. "But when Robert was elected, they put the office
in a metal hole in the back of the plant and took the secretary
away. I asked him, 'Brother, do you think you're the wrong color
for this company?' He said, 'It sure looks that way."
There were three other "thorns
in the side" of management, Crisco says. One was Franklin
Torrence, chair of the local's civil and human rights committee,
which regularly investigated management for violations of racial
and gender discrimination. Torrence, an activist in the NAACP,
is also active in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the
A. Philip Randolph Institute and serves as his local's delegation
to the Charlotte-area labor council.
Asked at a Chicago solidarity
meeting February 2 about the connection between union and racial
justice issues, he replied simply, "Workers' rights and
civil rights walk down the same road."
Torrence's co-chair on the
civil rights committee was Glenna Swinford, who earned management's
ire during the 2003 contract talks for opposing mandatory random
drug testing.
"They called me the drug
queen after that," she said. "But we had a series of
terminations for substance abuse. I don't take drugs or even
drink, but I think everyone has the right to be protected from
false-positive tests," she said. She succeeded in getting
testing at an off-site, licensed facility included in the 2007
contract.
Another thorn in management's
side was Bradley, who was skilled trades chair and an expert
on the plant's equipment, and the health and safety risks it
posed, Crisco said.
* *
*
With the election of the five
to the bargaining committee, health and safety took center stage
in negotiations. The contract expired on March 31, 2007. The
next day, the company presented its final offer, with 22 articles
still to be negotiated and 86 unresolved issues on health and
safety.
Management informed the bargaining
committee that there would be no contract extension--therefore,
a scheduled Good Friday holiday was cancelled. Workers also reported
that they were told that their health insurance was cancelled.
Thus, on April 2, the bargaining
committee voted 12 to 0, with four abstentions, to call a strike.
Local 3520 President George
Drexel promised to support the bargaining committee. But a few
hours into the strike, Drexel sent a recorded telephone message
to union members calling off the strike on the basis that it
had not been sanctioned by the UAW International.
Eleven members of the bargaining
committee were terminated by Freightliner. Six were rehired later
after signing a "last chance" agreement and a statement
that they had been misled by Whiteside, Swinford, Torrence, Bradley
and Crisco into calling the strike. Contrary to the impression
given by some UAW officials, the remaining five terminated workers
received no offer to return to work at all.
The Freightliner Five successfully
fought to get unemployment compensation. But rather than defend
them, Drexel sought to suspend them from office and put them
on trial for alleged violations of union rules. That effort failed
when the elected trial commission ruled against Drexel.
At a subsequent meeting, rank-and-file
members of Local 3520 initially rejected the contract offer that
had spurred the strike, but Drexel arranged a second vote, held
inside the plant, from which the five terminated workers were
banned. This time, it passed.
Drexel's efforts to remove
the Freightliner Five from the union have complicated the fight
for the workers' jobs. But the battle is far from over. According
to Ellis Boal, a labor lawyer specializing in defending UAW members,
the local has no basis for denying them union membership. "Indeed,
they must have been in good standing to even be allowed a trial,"
he wrote in an e-mail message about the issue.
And so the struggle continues.
"This issue affects us all--it affects unions everywhere,"
Whiteside said at the Chicago meeting. "It affects the future
organizing in the South."
Bradley added, "What we
want is justice from our employer. And what we would like to
achieve is solidarity from our international union and our brothers
and sisters all over the world."
Lee Sustar is a regular contributor to CounterPunch
and the Socialist Worker.
He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
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