Today's Stories

January 7, 2009

Saree Makdisi
What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

January 6, 2009

Pam Martens
It's All One Big Lie

Victoria Buch
Real Estate War in Gaza: the History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing

Neve Gordon
Israel's New War Ethic

Tami Sarfatti /
Yonatan Mendel
What Silence Says: Gaza is Still Waiting on Obama

Mike Whitney
The Gaza Bloodbath

Alan Farago
After the Fall

Gary Leupp
A Hamas Coup d'Etat in 2007?

Larry Everest
Silent Partner: the US-Backed War on Gaza

Ron Jacobs
The New Iraqi Sovereignty

David Macaray
Union-Busting is Alive and Well

Stephanie Basile
Where's Anna's Money?

Stacey Warde
An Uncle's Unrest

Website of the Day
Israeli Refusenik on Gaza

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

Sousan Hammad
Phoning Home to Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Flying While Brown

Mats Svensson
Longing in Gaza

Jen Marlowe
Abeer's Baby

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Gaza Phone Tag

Brian Cloughley
Israel is Immune From Criticism

Faheem Hussain
Gaza and India: a View From Pakistan

William Cook
Consider the Realities of Gaza

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Madness Among Us

Christopher Ketcham
The Revenge of the Blogger at the National Press Club: a Rotten Washington Interlude

Steve Early
Who Rules SEIU?

Dave Lindorff
When It Comes to Terrorism and POW Cases, Equal Justice Under Law is a Joke

Website of the Day
The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River Basin

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

January 7, 2009

Defend Democracy in the Labor Movement

Now is the Hour! Stand Up for UHW!

By CAL WINSLOW

"We will have to destroy UHW to save it” This, it seems, is the objective of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in its campaig against its California affiliate, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW).

In the past year, SEIU national leaders have orchestrated a multi-fronted assault on the 150,000 member California health care workers union – all designed to break the union. The intention, it is clear, is to seize control of UHW, remove the elected leaders and relegate its members to other jurisdictions, or to altogether new organizations. This, formally, is called “trusteeship,” an action labor journalist Steve Early has described as the trade union equivalent of “martial law.” There are indeed new organizations on the drawing boards. Others, yet to be created, remain in the imaginations of the union’s central staff, but once in place, they will have this in common: all are certain to be managed directly from the SEIU national headquarters in Washington, DC.

This SEIU campaign, combining organizational, political and legal attacks, as well as formal charges against leaders and harassment of members has involved a year-long onslaught against UHW and its members. Outsiders might consider it all a sort of trade union theater of the absurd, but for UHW staff and members it has been a long nightmare, a conflict imposed with no reasonable justification whatsoever, yet one that now amounts to a life and death struggle, presenting, as well, the threat of a colossal tragedy. The destruction of UHW, it is clear, will produce disastrous consequences both in California and in the labor movement nationally. On January 8, the SEIU International Executive Committee, meeting, grotesquely, in teleconference, is expected to take steps that will ultimately dismantle UHW – a union that is a powerful force for rank-and-file working people in California, one that has emerged as, perhaps, the single strongest voice for militant action and trade union reform within the US labor movement today. Staff from SEIU – charged with commandeering UHW - are expected to arrive in California no later than the end of this week.

The complaint of the SEIU’s top officials came in a March 24, 2008 letter, charging UHW with violations of the national union’s constitution. In addition, it alleged a conspiracy to “sabotage” SEIU, with UHW somehow in league with the American Federation of Labor– Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and SEIU’s bitter rival the California Nurse Association CNA). More specifically, and the charge that has been the basis of its case for trusteeship, SEIU is said to be guilty of financial malfeasance.  This, of course is strongly contested by UHW. In 2007, SEIU alleges, UHW set up an education trust fund – some $6 million to be set aside for the purpose of campaigning on health care issues.  The news of this fund set off alarms in the inner chambers of SEIU.  It reacted by charging UHW with essentially setting up a self defense fund, the basis, it suspected, of a possible union within the union (not a bad idea given the circumstances).  UHW obligingly retreated, disbanding the fund. SEIU, nevertheless, took UHW to court, only to have a District judge dismiss all charges, finding nothing amiss and denying as without merit SEIU’s solicitations.

The issues were first made public when the San Francisco Chronicle disclosed the SEIU’s charges: “SEIU Leader moves To Oust West Coast Dissident.” The dissident, Sal Rosselli, President of UHW, had resigned from the SEIU’s International Executive Committee, citing conflicts with the majority on issues including membership rights, union democracy, corruption and the SEIU’s “alliance” strategy – its “low road” approach to settling with nursing homes managements. The SEIU retort – massive retaliation and collective punishment.

Sal Rosselli is a widely known and popular figure in the Bay Area. The UHW is one of California’s most powerful unions. Protests quickly followed, including from labor councils throughout California and including, notably, Mike Casey, President of UNITE-HERE, Local 2, San Francisco.  A May Day open letter to SEIU President, Andy Stern, urging caution, was signed by more than 100 labor educators, writers and intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, David Montgomery, Mike Davis, Elaine Bernard, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Jennifer Klein, Robin D.G. Kelley and Nelson Lichtenstein. In response SEIU denied any threat to place UHW in trusteeship – “the only talk of trusteeship has come from UHW-W itself.” SEIU Vice-presidents Eliseo Medina and Gerry Hudson personally chastised the concerned labor educators. As late as mid-July SEIU spokesman Stephen Lerner called the threat of trusteeship a “myth.”

The dust on this front had barely settled, however, when down came a new gauntlet. UHW was informed that 65,000 southern California home care workers - nearly half the UHW membership - were arbitrarily to be removed and reassigned to Tyrone Freeman’s Los Angeles based local 6434. Freeman, then a Stern’s appointee and favorites, spoiled this plan. In a series of extraordinary exposes, Paul Pringle of the LA Times revealed massive corruption within 6434  - a million dollars  paid out to relatives, lavish golf tournaments, Ford Explorers for the staff –  second cars some. Freeman, facing federal criminal charges, was quickly removed; 6434 now is itself in trusteeship. Associated scandals were exposed in Michigan, then again in California where Anna Grajeda, Chair of SEIU’s California State Council, also a Stern appointee, was forced to resign, charged with funneling union funds to a boyfriend. Collapse in southern California demanded strategic retreat; the “implosion” plan was shelved, temporarily.

Bill Fletcher, Jr, speaking to Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! described the SEIU maneuvers as “absurd.”  “It’s ironic… in the Spring, there were many of us that were concerned that when UHW started raising issues and differences with the Stern leadership, that they were going to be trusteed, and we were told, “No, no, no. You’re paranoid. This is ridiculous!” What did they do a few weeks ago? Announce that they were going to have trusteeship hearings with the intention of taking over the local.”

SEIU did in fact return to trusteeship, notifying UHW of hearings, to be held in San Mateo, California, on September 26 and 27, hearings to be chaired by 80 year old Ray Marshall, the Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter, now titular director of a Texas think-tank. These hearings – heavily weighted with the trappings of the courtroom and legality, were in fact bought and paid for by SEIU – even Marshall’s attorneys and staff were on the SEIU payroll. The San Mateo hearings lasted two days, adjourned, reconvened in San Jose in November, and promising findings in January. At the same time, SEIU went to court again, filing charges against individual UHW leaders, charges that could lead to these leaders being banned from membership for life.
Marshall’s hearing concluded in November, but its outcomes could not be absolutely guaranteed. Consequently, SEIU’s apparently paranoid brain trust advanced on yet another front. Quite literally before the conclusion of the Marshall hearings, SEIU mailed ballots to all its California health care workers members with a ballot – an election (“advisory only”!) was to be held, the purpose of which would be to somehow justify the reorganization of SEIUs entire statewide healthcare operations. The Marshall hearings ended Saturday November 15; UHW members learned of the election the following Monday morning. Ballots were to be returned no later than December 11 – that is in less than four weeks time.

This ballot – the “Catch 22” ballot, according to UHW  - offered members two choices: If you are now confused, imagine getting this in the mail:

Option A: Option A would create a new statewide local union with jurisdiction including all California long-term care workers who are currently represented by UHW, Local 6434, Local 521 (South Bay). They would be united in a new long-term care union, and existing local’s charters would be revoked.

Option B: Option B would create a new California statewide local with jurisdiction for all healthcare workers currently represented by Local 6434 and UHW, and long-term care workers currently in Local 521. Under this option, these healthcare workers would be united in a new SEIU Healthcare local, and the charters of Local 6434 and UHW would be revoked.

In each case, UHW would disappear as we know it.  In option “B” it would be disbanded altogether; in option “A” UHW would be dramatically reduced in preparation for the inevitable next battle. In each case the new entities will be led by appointees, selected in Washington, DC by SEIU’s President, Andy Stern.

UHW, certainly, faces great odds. Amassed against it is the largest, fastest growing union in the country (actually second largest, far behind the 3 million plus National Education Association). It commands great financial and organizational resources and spends freely. It is reported to have expended $85 million supporting Obama and the Democrats in this past election. Its leadership is highly centralized. The Stern group consolidated its already daunting control at its June Convention in Puerto Rico. Still, SEIU’s leaders are by no means invulnerable. Just this past week, in a stunning rejection of Andy Stern, the international leadership, and Stern’s appointee, Kristy Sermershiem, 11,000 Santa Clara County public workers in SEIU local 521, in divisional elections, returned independent candidates committed to a democratic and accountable union. There are, in fact, sparks of dissent throughout the union, increasingly connected by SMART (SEIU Members for Reform Today) and there is no doubt that the desire for a clean sweep will grow.

Despite months of mailings, robo calls, personal visits, threats and offers, in a spectacular counter-offensive, tens of thousands of UHW members and supporters have taken to the streets, packed meetings, and petitioned, written letters, sent emails and made phone calls, all in defense not just of UHW but also demanding membership participation in democratic unions, membership participation in bargaining, membership rule in the union. They have opposed the SEIU’s mindless centralism, its sweet heart contracts with employers and its backroom deals with politicians.

The UHW response has been extraordinary, involving rank-and-file mobilization unparalleled in this period. This uprising, involving tens of thousands of rank-and-file members, erupted first in March in reaction to the Stern trusteeship letter; UHW members packed the local’s Oakland headquarters. In July, in Manhattan Beach (southern California), 6000 members overwhelmed “jurisdictional hearings” that might have removed 65,000 members from UHW membership. On September 6, following the UHW’s rank-and-file leadership conference, 5,000 members marched rebelliously through San Jose’s center, chanting “Hands off Our Union!” Then, September 26, trusteeship hearings in San Mateo were greeted by 8,000 members. Inside the hearing room – in fact a grim exhibition hall - more than 1000 members sat for hours, enduring a day of tedious pseudo-legal wrangling in sweltering heat, to have their say. In the hour allotted – seventy members spoke in defense of their union, often with emotion, all with dignity and great strength in their beliefs.

The result of December’s sham election was an unqualified repudiation of the SEIU leadership. Out of 309,000 eligible voters, approximately 24,000 SEIU members cast ballots. This means that 91% of eligible members boycotted the election. Perhaps just as important, union members presented the Election Officer with petitions protesting the election signed by 80,000 members.  These were accompanied by 40,000 formal letters of protest. UHW members presented these letters and petitions in sacks weighing hundreds of pounds. It was an astonishing outpouring of opposition, organized in less than one month.

SEIU, on the other hand, has referred to the election results as “a celebration of union democracy.” It plans, we have learned, to present the results – 20,000 yes votes, out of 300,000 - of this election to the Executive Board on January 8 as evidence in favor of “Plan A.” Just how Stern expects to manage these workers remains a mystery. \ Sworn testimony before Ray Marshall revealed that as early as November 2007, top SEIU officials including Stern, Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, Stephen Lerner and others held a “War Council” where plans were developed to dismantle UHW.

The UHW is a powerful organization in its own right. Its 150,000 members make it larger than many national unions – it has 100 executive board members, 85 of whom are working members. The union has deep roots, in particular in Northern California. It began there in 1934, one offshoot of the San Francisco General Strike, when San Francisco longshoremen, “the lords of docks”, inspired a transformation of industrial relations on the Pacific Coast. In the aftermath of a strike at San Francisco General Hospital, SEIU local 250 was organized, the first hospital union in the country.

In 2005, Local 250 merged with southern California healthcare workers local 399 to form UHW. UHW is an industrial union that represents all classifications of health care workers in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, home health agencies as well as homecare workers. It is one of the fastest growing unions in the nation. In the run up to merger, locals 250 and 399 added more than 65,000 new members, chiefly in hospitals, more than any other SEIU local. The majority of UHW members are women, mostly people of color; its members speak more than 50 languages.

UHW has long been a force for reform, it has opposed war and supported social  justice. Its support for universal health care dates back to the 1980s, when it supported Proposition 186, the single payer healthcare initiative. It was a founding member of US labor Against the War (USLAW) in Iraq. It led, with the California teachers, the trade union fight against proposition 8, the anti-same sex marriage referendum, narrowly passed in November. Sal Rosselli is a past Grand Marshall of San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride Parade.

UHW leaders submit that its hospital members have the highest standards in the industry in the nation – wages, benefits, rights in staffing, workplace safety and patient care standards. Its contract with Kaiser is referred to as the “gold standard.” A beginning UHW housekeeper, I am told, brings home $19 an hour with full, employer paid, benefits. This year, in spite of SEIU, UHW has begun a campaign to bring hospital standards into what John Borsos, UHW administrative Vice-President, calls the “Sweatshops of the twenty-first century,” the nursing homes.

At the same time, even in the midst of this storm, UHW has won dramatic victories, including successful negotiations with Catholic Healthcare West. UHW has also won elections at O’Connor Woods, Stanford, Marian Medical Center, Sacramento Medical Foundation Clinic, and St. Francis Center – winning more hospital workers than the rest of SEIU combined.  In late December UHW ratified contracts at ten nursing homes operated by Kindred Healthcare. The Kindred settlement was the fourth major breakthrough contract in the nursing home industry, part of a decades’ long campaign to line up contracts to make significant gains in the nursing home and hospital sectors. UHW was in bargaining for 75,000 people in 2008.

The healthcare industry has been, and remains, harshly-contested industrial terrain; near minimum wages are commonplace in non-union settings. Unions frequently face fiercely antiunion employers and victories rarely come easily. UHW campaigns routinely rely on the threat of action, strikes and the threat of the strike.   UHW’s 2005 triumph at Sutter in San Francisco was a result of a knock-down, hard-fought, sixty day strike. UHW has led hospital strikes at Catholic Healthcare West, Daughters of Charity, HCA (formerly Hospital Corporation of America) and against numerous nursing home chains.

Stern, however, sees the strike as archaic, counterproductive: “It’s not good for America when people fight,” he told the wall Street Journal. Interviewed on National Public Radio, he confessed, “I don’t think anymore the power of unions comes from its ability to strike.” “I think it comes from its ability to participate in the political process and to change America in issues that we’ve been talking about, like healthcare.” The full irony of this position became apparent in Chicago in December. Just as the workers at Republic Windows and Doors emerged triumphant from their magnificent sit-in strike, facing down, among others, the Bank of America, SEIU was revealed to be in bed with the disgraced Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. The political process indeed!

Similarly, Stern and his supporters belittle the very idea of union democracy, above all workplace democracy. Hence, SEIU’s policy, just now being set in place across the country, of “call centers” as an alternative to shop stewards – that is, a system of centralized phone centers, where professional problem solvers handle workers’ grievances. Again, in contrast, UHW prides itself in workplace organization and member involvement. The structure of the union is thoroughly democratic – from its universal system of shop stewards, stewards’ councils, divisional bodies to its executive committee that is numerically dominated by working members. UHW, interestingly, will hold, if allowed, elections in February, of all officers, including Rosselli.  Under trusteeship there will be no elections.

As often as not, a first obstacle to workers who want to fight back is their own union leadership. This is true on the shop-floor; it is also a fact of American labor history.  The America Federation of Labor (AFL), conspired with the FBI to destroy the I.W.W. Samuel Gompers, founder of the Federation, not only opposed the Seattle General Strike, but took credit for ending it, dismissing contemptuously “this brief industrial disturbance in the Northwest.”  The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) flourished only in defiance of the AFL – even then its successes were marred by a civil war that lasted into the 1950s. Black workers have fought for inclusion and representation since the inception of the labor movement, as have women, Latinos and others. The most recent working class uprisings in the US, the rank-and-file rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s – the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the Miners for Democracy,  Teamsters for Democracy, The Steelworkers Fightback – were defined, as much as anything, by unofficial, direct action, wildcat strikes and opposition to existing leadership. The failure of this last round of rebellions to transform US labor tells us a good deal about the roots of the current debacle.

SEIU largely missed out on the 1960s and 1970. It moved center-stage in 1995, however, leading the “New Voice” team that successfully forced Lane Kirkland, President of the AFL-CIO, to step down, then defeated his nominee, Secretary-Treasurer, Thomas Donahue, electing in his place, John Sweeney of SEIU. This was an important achievement but one with few memorable results. It might be noted that Justice for Janitors, the great triumph of SEIU, came on Kirkland’s watch. Andy Stern followed Sweeney as President of SEIU, and then challenged Sweeney in 2005. This time the result was not a new leadership but a new Federation, “Change to Win,” an unlikely coalition of SEIU, the Teamsters Union, UNITE-HERE and the United Food and Commercial Workers, with very foggy program: “United to Win: 21st Century Plan to Build New Strength for Working People.”  Change to Win, claiming 6 million members, anointed itself the vanguard of change, promising reorganization, centralization and, above all, growth.

Sweeney, the current President of the AFL-CIO, is a middle-of-the road labor leader, a man who, if anything, looks nostalgically back to the big labor days of fifties business unionism. Stern brought business unionism up to date. The Wall Street Journal finds “Mr. Stern at ease with CEOs and in the media limelight. His sentences come seasoned with business phrases.” The new federation would “grow the labor movement” through increased “market share” and “value added integration.” “Partnership” is a watchword and class collaboration is a badge of honor.

Kim Moody, in US Labor in Trouble and Transition, calls the SEIU “bureaucratic corporate unionism,” a union a run not just as a business but according to the norms of a modern corporation. A largely appointed group of national officers are at its core; a small army of full time staffers carry out the line. It has been centralized with a vengeance; 1199, the New York hospital workers union, is now the 240,000 member 1199 Eastern District, representing workers as far afield as Baltimore. SEIU, to its credit, has grown, though most often in mergers and with the mass induction of home healthcare workers.

Central to SEIU’s strategy of “growth at any cost” is what Moody describes as “the politics of the deal.” The “deal” is hardly new in US labor history; the old barons were quite good at it – “Punish your enemies, reward your friends,” admonished the late Samuel Gompers. The recent history of the SEIU, however, is truly mind-boggling. Examples:

In 2007, The Seattle Times exposed a secret agreement between SEIU Local 775 and operators of for-profit nursing homes. The companies involved pledged to “bless” the union’s organizing efforts in exchange for a 10-year agreement, in which the union promised no strikes and agreed to let the nursing-home operators, not the union or workers — decide which homes are offered up for organizing. The union also agreed not to try organizing more than half of a particular company's nonunion homes. This agreement is still in effect.

In 2007, also in California, Andy Stern personally intervened in the state’s debate on healthcare reform. He brushed aside the wishes of the entire California section of the SEIU, as well as political supporters of a universal system and engaged in direct talks with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, joining the Governor in promoting a bill backed by business and the insurance industry.

This is no way to run a union.

Today, in the midst of a deepening recession, millions of workers face catastrophe -- foreclosure, the loss of healthcare coverage, unemployment - the great majority of them with no economic or political protection whatsoever. They need unions, good unions. I am quite prepared to recognize that there are legions of good union members within SEIU, doing, no doubt, wonderful work. I am certain also that UHW is far from perfect. The fact remains, however, that UHW is a militant, democratic, growing union is under attack. And UHW is, according to Nelson Lichtenstein, labor historian at UC Santa Barbara, testifying in the Marshall hearings  “…a local in which there is no self-interested strata of leaders who seek to perpetuate their leadership for criminal or self-serving purposes. Instead, it’s a democratic union – in some ways a model union. I wish there were more like United Healthcare West.”

UHW deserves support, but, frankly, for the most part, it still stands almost alone. The voice of labor has largely been absent, observing its self-imposed silence in deference to the ancient AFL principle of non-interference in other union’s affairs. And the friends of labor, the left, the intellectuals, the labor educators, they are mostly quiet as well. Why is this? SEIU systematically pursued the signers of the May Day letter, arm-twisting, contesting, cajoling, mixing promises with threats, and, regrettably, the truth is that many have run for cover.

As for the employers, SEIU (again) has made their day. “We’re going to make SEIU the poster child for the Employee Free Choice Act,” says Sarah Longwell, spokeswoman for the Center for Union Facts, a right-wing, pro-corporate think tank. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), heavily supported by organized labor, is now before Congress. It is intended to facilitate union organizing. Perhaps it needs a clause protecting the free- choice of workers to choose their union!

 “Which Side are you on?” was the old miners’ slogan; it was a powerful appeal for solidarity. Which side are you on in this dispute – one Sal Rosselli calls a battle for the “soul” of the labor? It certainly is a battle for labor’s soul, but I might ask which soul? There have always been two souls in labor – very roughly, these are: one authoritarian, top-down, bureaucratic and committed to the national interest – business unionism. The other - the empowering of workers, building independent working class institutions, democratizing society and internationalism – social unionism.

There remains, of course, the possibility of compromise; there have been innumerable calls for mediation, but time is short. The fact is that few outside SEIU really want a civil war, but if war comes, there will be no quick victory here; this will be no cake-walk for SEIU. In fact, I suspect that an UHW defeat is not even an option. The members, for a start, will not allow it. The struggle, then, will continue, whatever happens this week.

UHW’s John Borsos sums ups it this way: “The dispute is about how we accomplish /our/…goals and what kind of a labor movement we are building in the process. To put it simply, will the labor movement be a movement of workers, by workers and for workers, driven from the bottom up? Or will it be a centralized, top-down advocacy organization where workers pay membership fees in exchange for professional services?”

Cal Winslow is co-editor, with Aaron Brenner and Robert Brenner of “Rebel Rank and File, Labor Militancy and the Revolt from Below in the Long Seventies,” forthcoming, Verso. He is a Fellow in Environmental Politics at UC Berkeley and Director of the Mendocino Institute. He can be reached at cwinslow@mcn.org

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