Editor's Cut

Sweet Victory: United Methodist Church Calls For Withdrawal

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

It's one thing when former high-ranking members of your own Administration come out against your war. It's another thing when two-thirds of the country calls the invasion and occupation a mistake. It's really something when your own church issues a statement urging you to pull out the troops now.

Last week, the United Methodist Church Board of Church and Society--the social action committee of the church that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney belong to--resoundingly passed a resolution calling for withdrawal with only two 'no' votes and one abstention.

"As people of faith, we raise our voice in protest against the tragedy of the unjust war in Iraq," the statement read. "Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in a war the United States initiated and should never have fought.... We grieve for all those whose lives have been lost or destroyed in this needless and avoidable tragedy. Military families have suffered undue hardship from prolonged troop rotations in Iraq and loss of loved ones. It is time to bring them home."

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October 26, 2005

Dear Scooter, From Dick

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

October 28, 2005

MR. I. LEWIS LIBBY
c/o MR. JOSEPH A. TATE, ESQ.
DECHERT LLP

Dear Scooter,

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October 28, 2005

'For God And Country'

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Now that he's published a book about his Guantanamo ordeal, it's time to revisit the story of former Army chaplain James Yee. (I published a column about Yee in 2004 but much has happened since then and Yee's compelling narrative fills in many of the blanks.)

His book For God And Country is one decent person's account of his inhumane treatment by US military authorities. In short, the story happened like this: Yee was the only Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo's prison base, and he incurred his commanders' wrath when he told his superiors that Muslim prisoners were being abused and having their rights violated.

Prior to his arrest on bogus charges of sedition, mutiny and espionage, Yee, ironically, had received glowing commendations in reviews from his superiors. Nonetheless, armed with an arrest warrant from Guantanamo's second-in-command--but as we later found out, hardly a shred of evidence--the military put Yee in solitary confinement for 76 days. It dragged his name through the mud as officials leaked information to the media charging that Yee was a member of a Guantanamo spy ring that sympathized with Al Qaeda.

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October 24, 2005

Fitzgerald Must Broaden Investigation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

"The CIA leak issue is only the tip of the iceberg," Congressman Jerry Nadler told me when I ran into him on the street near our offices on Friday afternoon. He was quick to tell me of a call--led by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Nadler, along with 39 of their House colleagues--for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation to be expanded to examine whether the White House--President, Vice-President, and members of the WH's Iraq War Group--conspired to deliberately deceive Congress into authorizing the war. And, as Nadler reminded me, lying to Congress is a crime under several federal statutes.

This is the first call by members of Congress for an expansion of Fitzgerald's probe, amid mounting evidence that there was a well-orchestrated effort by what former State Department aide Larry Wilkerson dubbed last week, "the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis" to hijack US foreign policy and knowingly mislead the Congress in order to get its support for an unlawful war.

"We are no longer just talking about a Republican culture of corruption and cronyism," Nadler says. "We now have reason to believe that high crimes may have been committed at the highest level, wrongdoing that may have led us to war and imperiled our national security." For more on this important call for the investigation's expansion, click here, and then click here to ask your elected reps to support these calls.

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October 22, 2005

Sweet Victory Update: Cleaning Up Cosmetics

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Months ago, we celebrated the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics' impressive drive to eliminate toxic ingredients from beauty products. Due to an FDA loophole, which exempts personal care product manufacturers from government oversight, many of the cosmetics on shelves today may contain known or probable carcinogens (see Mark Schapiro's "A Makeover for the Cosmetics Industry.")

But by last Mother's Day, the campaign had successfully encouraged more than a hundred companies to sign a compact banning ingredients that are known or strongly suspected of causing cancer, genetic mutation or birth defects from their products.

Recently, the campaign scored an even bigger victory for consumer rights--this one on the legislative front. On October 8th, despite vigorous opposition from the cosmetics and chemical industries, the California Safe Cosmetics Bill was signed into law. The bill--which requires manufacturers to disclose to the California's Department of Health Services any product ingredients linked to cancer, mutations, or birth defects--is the first of its kind in America. After two years of coordinated efforts by the Breast Cancer Fund, Breast Cancer Action and the National Environmental Trust (NET), California residents will finally have the right to know what's behind their beauty products.

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October 21, 2005

Congress Rejects Raising Minium-Wage

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Today's edition of the New York Times devoted exactly one sentence (on page A18) to one of the most important news stories of the day. "No Rise in Minimum Wage," the headline read. The nation's minimum wage has, shockingly, been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. Yesterday, two proposals--from both Democrats and Republicans--were rejected in the House.

The Democrats' proposal, introduced by Edward Kennedy (MA), called for an increase to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican proposal provided the same $1.10 increase and added various tax incentives for small businesses. Both measures went down in flames as did the hopes of working people coast to coast that they might finally be more fairly compensated for their labor. Moreover, as Kennedy rightly insisted, it's "absolutely unconscionable" that in the same period that Congress has denied a minimum wage increase, lawmakers gave themselves seven pay raises worth $28,000.

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October 20, 2005

Owensboro (and Elizabethtown), Kentucky

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Maybe two people I met in Owensboro, Kentucky this past weekend knew who Judith Miller was. And on Sunday, when I left town, the local paper devoted far more space to listing the names and addresses of those filing for bankruptcy in the Owensboro-Daviess County area between September 30 and October 10 than to Miller, her case and her notes. (As the Messenger-Inquirer reported,"with new, tougher bankruptcy laws taking effect this week, the Owensboro region saw a record number of filings in the third quarter.")

I don't head to Kentucky often, but I set off for my third trip to my husband's hometown of Owensboro last Thursday. Once called Yellow Banks (the city's name was changed in 1817 in honor of Colonel Abraham Owen), it's a town of about 54,000 perched high above the Ohio River--with a WPA bridge, the International Bluegrass Music Museum and, possibly, the best BBQ (mutton) joint in America (the "Moonlite"). It's also the birthplace of Johnny Depp, whose photograph hangs in the Owensboro-Daviess Tourist Commission's Hall of Fame. (My husband Stephen Cohen's picture is also hanging there--right between a local diner and a horse who won the Kentucky Derby decades ago. The Hall also has several Nascar drivers, some local basketball players who went on to the NBA, and the actor Tom Ewell of The Seven Year Itch--best known for Marilyn Monroe's white dress. )

Another local boy is Terry Bisson, a true Southern boy turned radical in the '60s, who wrote a fascinating "alternate history" book in 1988 exploring what would have happened if Harriet Tubman had been able to join John Brown, as planned, in the Harper's Ferry raid, leading to a successful slave revolt that could have rippled through the South and led to an African-America led revolution. (Bisson dedicated the book to the Black Liberation Army.)

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October 17, 2005

Innocent Voices

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

When Oscar Torres saw a Venezuelan band perform the song "Casas de carton" ("cardboard houses") in 2001, he knew that he wanted to "write something about the song" that he remembered so well from his childhood days growing up in war-torn and impoverished El Salvador. Soon after, Torres started working on a screenplay that ultimately served as the basis for the film Innocent Voices which will begin playing in 11 US cities on October 14.

The film has received critical acclaim after being released in Latin America and shown at this year's Amnesty International Film Festival. It deserves a wide audience in the United States. Directed by the talented Mexican filmmaker Luis Mandoki, Innocent Voices tells the story of Torres' embattled youth. The narrative is exquisitely told through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy named Chava whose character is based on Torres' boyhood. (Chava, appropriately, is a nickname for "Salvador.") Innocent Voices depicts the horror of war and its impact on children caught in the middle of El Salvador's civil strife in the 1980s.

There are no "good guys" in this conflict (though it's fair to say that the government paramilitary militias are definitely the "worse guys.") The film shows the government's soldiers hunting down and conscripting all 12-year-old boys in the village to serve in the military. But the bullets of the rebel-led Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) kill children just as effectively as the guns of the right-wing government's forces. And then there are the US soldiers who train and arm the government's military and who come across as depraved and without remorse.

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October 11, 2005

What's The Matter With What's The Matter With Kansas

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

I'm a Tom Frank fan. I think he's a wonderful and passionate writer. But, now a respected political scientist is arguing that the "Great Backlash" Frank chronicled in his last book, in which "conservatives won the heart of America" and created a "dominant political coalition" by convincing Kansans and blue-collar, working-class people to vote against their own economic interests in order to defend traditional cultural values against bicoastal elites "isn't actually happening--at least, not in anything like the way Frank portrays." (Thanks to Doug Henwood--editor of the invaluable Left Business Observer and longtime Nation contributing editor--for turning me on to this new study.)

In a fascinating paper called "What's the Matter With What's the Matter with Kansas?", Princeton professor Larry Bartels uses data from National Election Study (NES) surveys to test Frank's thesis. He examines class-related patterns of issue preferences, partisanship, and voting over the past half-century. Bartels concludes that the white working class hasn't moved right and that "moral values" are not pushing them to vote Republican.

Moreover, for the most part, voters' economic and cultural attitudes are either both liberal or both conservative rather than the bifurcated split Frank sees. Bartels also disproves the argument that there's been a long-term decline in turnout.

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October 11, 2005

Sweet Victory: Cintas Workers Win Big

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

In 1999 Cintas Corp, the largest uniform rental provider in the country, signed a contract with Hayward, California to become the official launderer of the city's uniforms. As a condition in the contract, Cintas agreed to comply with Hayward's living wage ordinance. Problem was, Cintas didn't comply--in fact, for the next four years it paid workers far less than Hayward's requirement.

It was a long time coming, but Cintas employees have finally gotten their fair share. On September 23, an Alameda County judge ordered the uniform giant to pay 219 workers more than $1 million of back wages in what is being hailed as a landmark decision. Paul Sonn of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, called it "the first large scale enforcement effort involving a large group of workers in a class action suit."

When workers filed suit against Cintas in 2003, the company backed out of its contract with Hayward and refused to pay the back wages. Cintas, whose headquarters lie in Cincinnati, Ohio, argued that Hawyard's living wage ordinance carried no weight beyond city lines. But judge Steven Brick upheld the living wage law and allowed the case to proceed, stating "Just as cities have permissibly enacted requirements that city contractors have an affirmative action plan or provide equal benefits to employees' domestic partners, the city of Hayward can require that its service contractors pay their employees who perform work on a contract with the city to be paid at the rates set forth in the living wage ordinance."

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October 8, 2005