March 6th, 2004

Thomas Friedman hasn’t been this worked up about free trade since the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Back then, he told New York Times readers that the work environment in a Sri Lankan Victoria’s Secret factory was so terrific “that, in terms of conditions, I would let my own daughters work” there.

February 17th, 2004

It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Washington, who carried U.S. therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told Salon that, “when they didn’t find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated.”

February 6th, 2004

If you believe the White House, Iraq’s future government is being designed in Iraq. If you believe the Iraqi people, it is being designed at the White House. Technically, neither is true: Iraq’s future government is being engineered in an anonymous research park in suburban North Carolina.

January 22nd, 2004

“The people of Iraq are free,” declared U.S. President George W. Bush in Tuesday’s State of the Union. The day before, 100,000 Iraqis begged to differ. They took to the streets of Baghdad shouting “Yes, yes to elections. No, no to selection.”

January 9th, 2004

Don’t think and drive.

That was the message sent out by the FBI to roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies on Christmas Eve. The alert urged police pulling over drivers for traffic violations, and conducting other routine investigations, to keep their eyes open for people carrying almanacs. Why almanacs? Because they are filled with facts — population figures, weather predictions, diagrams of buildings and landmarks. And according to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, facts are dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists, who can use them to “to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.”

December 20th, 2003

Contrary to all predictions, the heavy doors of “Old Europe” weren’t slammed in James Baker’s face as he asked forgiveness for Iraq’s foreign debt. France and Germany appear to have signed on, and Russian is softening its line.

December 18th, 2003

It’s 8:40 am and the Sheraton Hotel ballroom thunders with the sound of plastic explosives pounding against metal. No, this is not the Sheraton in Baghdad, it’s the one in Arlington, Virginia. And it’s not a real terrorist attack, it’s a hypothetical one. The screen at the front of the room is playing an advertisement for “bomb resistant waste receptacles”: This trash can is so strong, we’re told, it can contain a C4 blast. And its manufacturer is convinced that given half a chance, these babies would sell like hotcakes in Baghdad — at bus stations, Army barracks and, yes, upscale hotels. Available in Hunter Green, Fortuneberry Purple and Windswept Copper.

November 25th, 2003

In December, 1990, U.S. President George Bush Sr. traveled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new dream: “a free trade system that links all of the Americas.” Addressing the Argentine Congress, he said that the plan, later to be named the “Free Trade Area of the Americas” would be “our hemisphere’s new declaration of interdependence ….. the brilliant new dawn of a splendid new world.

November 6th, 2003

Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.

Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations.

October 24th, 2003

When massive political protests forced Bolivia’s president to resign last week, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled to a place where he knew he would find a sympathetic ear. “I’m here in Miami trying to recover from the shock and shame,” the ex-president told reporters on Saturday, after being unseated by a revolt against his plan to sell the country’s gas to the U.S.

October 10th, 2003

Fighting AIDS was supposed to show George W. Bush’s softer side. “Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many,” he said in his State of the Union address this past January.

September 23rd, 2003

It used to be that if there was one thing you could count in matters of international trade, it was the desperation of the poor. No matter how bad the deal, it was always better than nothing.