Today's
Stories
April 26,2006
Sherry Wolf
Democrats, Their Apologists and Abortion:
the Jig is Up
Pratyush Chandra
Nepal: a Saga of Compromise and Struggle
Joshua Frank
Zig-Zagging Through the War With John
Kerry
Gary
Leupp
The Neo-Cons and Iran: No Negotiations
Bill
Quigley
Katrina: Eight Months Later
April
25, 2006
Paul
Craig Roberts
The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium
Linda
S. Heard
Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?: the Prophecy of Oded Yinon
Ralph
Nader
Political Science: Gingrich, "Futurism" and the Abolition
of the OTA
Mike
Whitney
Preparing for the Economic Typhoon
Michael
Donnelly
Lutherans Betray Michigan's Loon Lake Wetlands for Pieces of Silver
Sharon
Smith
Breathing New Life Into May Day
Website
of the Day
SDS Ver. 2
April
24, 2006
Tim
Wise
What Kind of Card is Race?
John
Stanton
Strike Iran, Watch Pakistan and Turkey Fall
Dave
Lindorff
Dangerous Times Ahead
Steve
Shore
Berlusconi Defeated: The Long Wait is Over ... Or Is It?
Amadou
Deme
Hotel Rwanda: Setting the Record Straight
Mickey
Z.
15 Minutes of Radical Fame: America Meets Bill Blum and Ward Churchill
Ralph Nader
Lee
Raymond's Unconscionable Platinum Parachute
Alexander
Cockburn
Obama's Game
Website
of the Day
Too Stupid to Be President?
April
22/23, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The General, GM and the Stryker
Jeff
Halper
SUMUD vs. Apartheid: the Elections in Palestine and Israel
Jeff
Klein
How to Manufacture a War Criminal: Saddam and Me, a True Story
Thomas
P. Healy
Out Now: an Interview with Anthony Arnove
David
Underhill
Stuck in Mobile with the Rev. Graham Blues Again
Lee
Sustar
"We are Going to Keep Marching": an Interview with Immigrant
Rights Organizer Martín Unzueta
Deb
Reich
The Little Mermaid on Highway Six: Rooting for Ordinary Israelis
to Wake Up
John
Chuckman
America's Gulag: Purge at the CIA
Fred
Gardner
More Suppression of Marijuana Research
Julian
Edney
Can Our Economy Run Without Fear?
Seth
Sandronsky
The GOP and California's Levees
Brynne
Keith-Jennings
The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli: Undermining Democracy in Nicaragua
Dave
Lindorff
Where are the Frogs?
Catherine
Ann Cullen and Harry Browne
Springsteen Polishes His Roots: First Impressions of "We Shall
Overcome"
Bill
Pahnelas
Bush Passes the Buck on Soaring Gas Prices
Jim
French
Time to Overhaul US Farm Policy
Ron
Jacobs
"I Know I'm Not Dreaming, Because I Can't Sleep Any More"
David
Krieger
The Courage of Sophie Scholl: Resisting Hitler
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Engel and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
Eye of the Storm
April
21, 2006
Jonathan
Cook
The Sinister Meaning of Olmert's "Hitkansut":
Deporting Hamas MPs
Lawrence
R. Velvel
Physical Courage, Moral Courage and American
Generals
Evelyn
Pringle
How to Out a CIA Agent
Christopher
Brauchli
The Rich are Different
Pratyush
Chandra
Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela
Michael
George Smith
This is What a Movement Looks Like
Missy
Comley Beattie
Serving at the Decider's Pleasure
Sarah
Hines
The Bracero Program: 1942-1964
Website
of the Day
Hunger Strike at U. of Miami
April 20, 2006
Chris
Kutalik
As Crisis Deepens, Is Labor Finally
Showing Signs of a Comeback?
Gary Leupp
Cheney, the Neocons and China
Joshua
Frank
Stop the War! Dump the Democrats!
Diane Christian
The Authority to Kill
William
S. Lind
Sweeping Up: the Real Problem Wasn't
the Execution of the War, But the Enterprise Itself
Ramzy
Baroud
A Case for the Palestinan Government
Justin
E.H. Smith
Doctors and Lethal Injection
April 19, 2006
P. Sainath
More Kids? Pay More for Your Water
Norman
Solomon
When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch
on Iran
Anthony Papa
When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards
for the Rich and Poor in New York
Mike
Ferner
Movement Blues
Stanley Heller
The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later:
Still No Justice
Rifundazione
"We Defeated Berlusconi"
Christopher
Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
Alexander
Cockburn
The Pulitzer Farce
Website of
the Day
Bunker
Busters: the Movie
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
26, 2006
Government Fraud, Despair and
Hope
Katrina: Eight Months
Later
By BILL QUIGLEY
On
Monday, April 17, 2006, two bodies were found buried beneath what
used to be a home in the Lower 9th Ward. Their discovery raised
to 17 the number of Hurricane Katrina fatalities that have been
discovered in New Orleans in the past month and a half. Katrina
is now directly blamed for the deaths of 1,282 Louisiana residents.
Eight months after Katrina, the state reports 987 people are still
missing.
Chief Steve Glynn, who oversees the New Orleans Fire Department
search effort that found the latest two bodies told CNN: “You
want to put it to rest at some point. You want to feel like it's
over and it's just not yet.”
Eight
months after Katrina, there are still nearly 300,000 people who
have not returned to New Orleans. While we can hope that our community
is nearing the end of finding bodies, the struggle for justice for
the hundreds of thousands of displaced people continues.
Election
Blues
The right to vote remains displaced from New Orleans.
In what was billed as “the most important election in the
history of New Orleans,” only 36 percent of those registered
voted in the recent city elections. Turnout was heavy and high in
the mostly prosperous and white areas of Uptown where little damage
occurred and exceptionally low in the heavily damaged and mostly
black areas of the New Orleans East, Gentilly and the Ninth Ward
– where some precincts reported as few as 15% voter participation.
The state refusal to set up satellite voting for those displaced
outside the state resulted in exactly the disenfranchisement predicted.
While
Iraqis who had not lived in Iraq in years were helped to vote in
the US by our government, people forced out of state by Katrina
for seven months were not allowed to vote where they are temporarily
living. This has national implications. The New Orleans Times-Picayune
reported that in the 2002 U.S. Senate seat runoff between incumbent
Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell, the
Orleans factor made the difference for Landrieu. The senator won
Orleans by 78,900 votes, compared with her statewide lead of 42,012.
In the 2003 gubernatorial runoff between Democrat Kathleen Blanco
and Republican Bobby Jindal, Blanco won statewide by 54,874 votes.
She won by a margin of 49,741 votes in New Orleans.
Worse,
the systematic exclusion of the displaced gives fuel to those who
do not want the poor to return and helps create a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Low turnout in poor neighborhoods where the displaced
could not drive back in to vote can now be taken as an indication
of lack of interest and an excuse to further silence their voices.
As the Washington Post noted: “How many people turned out
to vote in each precinct was being viewed as an indicator of which
neighborhoods are likely to be rebuilt; in many abandoned neighborhoods,
people fear that residents who have left for good would not vote,
revealing their lack of interest in the neighborhood and the city.
Turnout could offer clues to the future racial makeup of the city.”
Healthcare Crisis
New Orleans has lost 77% of its primary care doctors, 70% of its
dentists and 89% of its psychiatrists since Katrina.
National
Public Radio reported that the few hospitals in New Orleans are
dangerously overburdened, especially emergency rooms. Nationally,
it takes an average of 20 minutes to take a patient from an ambulance
waiting in front of hospital to emergency room. In the New Orleans
area, according to one surgeon at the East Jefferson Hospital, load
times are usually 2 hours, but sometimes more. The longest time
he’s seen is 6 hours, 40 minutes, of a patient waiting in
ER driveway to receive care.
Non-emergency
care in New Orleans is also in crisis. With the closure of Charity
Hospital and most public health clinics, it is very difficult to
get a child tested for lead poisoning or other toxins – even
though recent reports indicate there are 46 environmental “hot
spots” in the city. One corner, Magnolia and First in Central
City, showed lead levels of 3,960 parts per million – nearly
10 times the acceptable level. Dr. Howard Mielke of Xavier University
says 40 percent of the city soil has elevated lead levels.
Among
the displaced, the healthcare situation is much worse. The Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health surveyed hundreds of
the thousands of families living in FEMA trailers and found: Nearly
half of the parents surveyed reported that at least one of their
children had emotional or behavioral difficulties that the child
didn't have before the hurricane; More than half the women caregivers
showed evidence of clinically-diagnosed psychiatric problems, such
as depression or anxiety disorders; On average, households have
moved 3.5 times since the hurricane, some as many as nine times,
often across state lines; More than one-fifth of the school-age
children who were displaced were either not in school, or had missed
10 or more days of school in the past month.
Public
Education Phase Out
New Orleans has become the national experiment for charter schools.
Pre-Katrina 60,000 students attended over 115 New Orleans public
schools. Now about 12,000 students attend public school in New Orleans.
However, only four public schools are operated by the elected school
board – the rest are now privately operated public charter
schools or operated directly by the state. State authorities recently
approved opening 22 more charter schools in the fall. Still many
children in New Orleans are not in school at all because no schools
have opened in their neighborhoods.
Where Has All the Money Gone: Robin Hood in Reverse
People who visit New Orleans are amazed at how devastated it still
is. Where has all the money gone, they ask? Follow the money. “How
many contractors does it take to haul a pile of tree branches?”
asked the Washington Post. If it's government work, at least four:
a contractor, his subcontractor, the subcontractor's subcontractor,
and finally, the local man with a truck and chainsaw. The big contractors
typically receive between $28 to $30 a cubic yard for the debris.
By the time they subcontract the work out to smaller and smaller
companies, the guy in the truck receives about $6 to $8 per cubic
yard. The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver
of federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which
received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi
from Army Corps of Engineers. The paper reported that the company
does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract. Ashbritt,
however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour,
Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor
and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt
also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in
2004. Draw your own conclusions about where the money has gone.
Federal Housing Funds for Rehab of Private Housing
Unfortunately,
not a dime of the billions of federal housing reconstruction money
from the Community Development Block Grant has yet made it to New
Orleans. Seventy percent of CDBG money is usually targeted to low
and moderate income families. HUD has already lowered that to 50%
and for poorest among us, there will be little help at all.
Despite
the fact that New Orleans was over half renters and that 84,000
rental units were destroyed or damaged, only 6,000 low-income rental
units are part of state plan.
People
are already living in damaged houses all over the city, many without
electricity. A night trip through New Orleans neighborhoods shows
people on porches surrounded by candles.
Louisiana
calls its CDBG plan the “The Road Home.”
Obviously,
few of the working poor are going to be able to go on this road
trip.
Public Housing Closed
In 1996, New Orleans had 13,694 units of public housing. In August
2005, they reported 7,381. Now? Maybe 700. Residents returning to
New Orleans who want to move back in their apartments are being
told they forfeited their public housing apartments because they
abandoned them!
Abandoned
apartments which have been forcibly closed for months? Many apartments
are closed by locked metal shutters and surrounded by chain link
fence. The housing authority also has a secret list of 1407 units
of housing scheduled to be demolished. The housing authority let
go 290 employees, mostly maintenance. Does it sound like they are
planning to reopen?
In New Orleans, public housing was occupied by women, mostly working,
children and the elderly. How are they supposed to return when private
rents have skyrocketed?
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, whose agency is now running the
local housing authority, stated clearly that public housing residents
should not be allowed to return. In an interview with the Times-Picayune,
Jackson said: "Some of the people shouldn't return. The developments
were gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country.
People hid and took care of those persons because they took care
of them. Only the best residents should return. Those who paid rent
on time, those who held a job and those who worked." The blunt-spoken
Jackson, who is black, acknowledged his comments might be seen as
racially offensive. He told a white reporter, "If you said
this, they would say you were racist."
Signs of Hope
Despite
our very serious problems, there are also serious signs of hope.
For every campaign of injustice and ugliness, there are people struggling
despite the odds to create opportunities for justice and beauty.
The people of New Orleans, joined with allies from across the nation
and indeed the world, continue to resist the forces of injustice
and to create opportunities for decency, community and equity.
Here
are a few examples.
St.
Augustine’s Church, one of the oldest black catholic churches
in the nation, was abruptly closed by the Archdiocese of New Orleans
in the months after Katrina. St. Augustine was dedicated in 1842
by the free black citizens of New Orleans and welcomed both free
and slave as worshippers. It served both as a multiracial church
and a center of community activities. After continual petitions,
vigils and protests by community, neighborhood and church members,
including direct action where some young people locked themselves
inside the rectory, the Catholic hierarchy reversed itself. The
joyous reopening of St. Augustine is a great cultural, spiritual,
community and neighborhood victory.
Lower
Ninth Ward residents have had no public schools open since Katrina.
They wanted their neighborhood school, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
repaired and fixed up after it took in ten feet of water. Authorities
refused to fix it up. So the residents, joined by members of Common
Ground and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, decided to do it themselves.
They
started gutting the moldy parts and repairing and re-painting the
school. They continued until the State Superintendent of Education
called the police and stopped the work saying the neighbors were
doing more harm than good. After days of public outcry of support
of the volunteers, the State backed off. Volunteers went back to
work, creating a place for education in the neighborhood as well
as a symbol of resistance.
Mildred
Battle is 70 and gets around in a wheelchair. She is one of more
than 1000 families who been displaced from their apartment in the
St. Bernard Housing Development in New Orleans since Katrina. Despite
coming back three times, she was never allowed to go back to retrieve
her belongings. Her apartment has heavy metal sheets locked into
place over the windows and a new heavy metal door for which she
is not allowed a key. The ramp to her building that allowed her
to roll up to her apartment is blocked by a block-long chain link
fence to keep all residents out.
This
month, Ms. Battle’s wheelchair was the first one through the
gate in the chain link fence as dozens of residents past the lone
security guard and broke back into their own homes. Friends of Ms.
Battle helped her retrieve a picture of her dead son and a broken
glass Martin Luther King award she received in the 1990s. She clutched
them to her breast and cried saying, “This has been my home
for decades. I want to come home.” She and the other residents,
along with veteran public housing organizers and activists from
C3, a local anti-war organization, vow there will be more direct
actions to enforce the rights of public housing residents to return
home.
Before
this action, veteran organizer Endesha Jukali yelled through a bullhorn
to the crowd outside the St. Bernard Housing Development. “Those
who attack public housing refuse to understand that we are talking
about poor women and children, the poorest of the poor. Why attack
them? Some people say do not come back to New Orleans if you don’t
intend to work. We say something else. Don’t come back to
New Orleans if you don’t intend to fight! The only way that
we are going to be able to come back, is to fight for justice every
step of the way!” He then dropped the bullhorn and started
pushing Ms. Battle in her wheelchair across the street and through
the gate so she could break into her own home.
Bill
Quigley is a civil and human rights lawyer who teaches
at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. He can be reached
at: Quigley@loyno.edu
|