Naomi Klein writes about how indigenous movements are redrawing the map of Latin America, David Corn explains why Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald cannot tell the truth about the CIA leak scandal and Stuart Klawans reviews Shopgirl and Breakfast on Pluto.
Liza Featherstone : As the nation's wealthiest family, the Waltons could be a force for social good. But when they choose to spend their fortune lobbying for pet projects, tax cuts and charter schools instead of providing a living wage for their workers, they are dangerous (and costly) to the nation.
Elizabeth Grossman : Recycling electronics using US prison labor is a booming business, with a captive workforce paid pennies per hour for dangerous work that is largely unregulated. The human and environmental consequences of negligent handling and disposal of electronic waste are considerable.
David L. Kirp
:
San Francisco recently launched universal preschool,
designed to make young participants higher earners and better citizens
when they reach adulthood. If successful, San Francisco's initiative
could make preschool as commonplace as kindergarten.
William Greider : The scandals suffocating the Bush Administration seem less like Nixon and Watergate and more like Louis XV and pre-Revolutionary France. They are harbingers of a potent cultural event that may jolt the public out of complacency.
: The nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court forces the debate the President and the Senate have tried so mightily to avoid: whether the Court should shift decisively and radically to the right.
David Corn
:
The CIA leak scandal has revealed the Bush crew's dishonesty and
hypocrisy. But don't expect the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
or Bush to ever explain what really happened.
David Cole : If the US is to prevail in the war on terror, we must do it by distinguishing ourselves from the enemy. Torture and degrading treatment are as morally evil as terrorism, because they brutally disregard the value of human life.
David Hirst
:
The Baathist regime is the most opaque on earth, and Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad must develop a strategy to save himself and his regime,
as the UN investigation of the assasination of Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafiq Hariri unfolds.
Jonathan Schell : The fictional world created by the Bush Administration over its five years in power is falling to pieces, with the blood-soaked folly in Iraq, a ruined environment, massive corruption and a basic failure to govern. Yet the faith-based President continues to fashion lies, and believe them.
Robin Blackburn
:
Vincent Carretta's Equiano, the African is the complex narrative of a Carolina
slave who bought his freedom, married an English woman and published a
memoir on his life as a seafarer and gentleman.
Russell Shorto
:
Jill Lepore's New York Burning paints a realistic portrait of a
purported slave rebellion in 1741 and the hysteria that followed, a
harrowing lesson of how abusers of power become haunted by the
nightmare of retribution.
Michael Gorra : Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost plumbs the mysteries of losing oneself and finding oneself in the realm of the utter unknown.
Stuart Klawans : Breakfast for Pluto is the upbeat and whimsical fable of a girl in a boy's body. Watching Claire Danes in Shopgirl will make you forget for a while that other actresses exist.
Calvin Trillin
:
Catching small fry, letting the big fish go.
Patricia J. Williams : The right has ushered in a moment of cult celebrity for the pre-born. But let's not be seduced by this idea of personhood. Remember the poor and not-so-perfect post-born children of America? Aren't they persons, too?
Eric Alterman : Liberals need to find a means to bridge the gap between Americans' belief in liberal solutions and their willingness to trust liberals to enact them.
Naomi Klein : Across Latin America indigenous movements redrawing the continent's political map, demanding not just "rights" but a reinvention of the state along deeply democratic lines.
Robert Scheer : A newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document discrediting reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq disproves the Bush Administration's claim that they went to war using the best available intelligence.
Robert Scheer : The lesson of the defeat in California of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's referendum revolution is this: The American people will not forever be fooled. The negative message of the Republican right has lost its power to terrorize voters.
Ari Berman : Top oil execs were asked numerous questions at a Senate hearing on spectacular profits earned in the wake of tropical storms. But they had no real answers about how to ease the burden on ordinary Americans.
Eric Alterman : As Democrats gloat over two gubernatorial wins and the defeat in California of Gov. Arnold's intiatives, the GOP approaches off-year elections weighed down by Bush's baggage.
David Corn
:
Democrats celebrate electoral victories in Virginia, New Jersey and
California, they shouldn't waste time gloating. They need to find
effective candidates like Tim Kaine and Jon Corzine who will build
momentum.
Our Readers : Nation online readers write back on Senate Democrats, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes.
Sam Graham-Felsen : What motivated director Robert Greenwald to spend a year on a documentary detailing Wal-Mart's impact on American life, culture and commerce?
Dave Zirin : Who is Diego Maradona, and how did a former Argentinian soccer star become the nemesis of an American President?
Nicholas von Hoffman : As the Senate opens hearings this week calling energy execs to account for their windfall profits on gasoline and natural gas, the question must be asked: Is this price-gouging or just good old-fashioned capitalism?
: Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel takes on the role of publisher and general partner at the magazine, and Victor Navasky becomes publisher emeritus and a member of the magazine's editorial board.
Jordana Timerman : Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona led thousands in a massive rebuke of George W. Bush, his trade policies and his neoconservative agenda at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata Argentina. Despite some sporadic violence, the protest focused on developing indigenous alternatives to US-led trade initiatives policies.
Max Blumenthal : Republican candidates in Virginia do a lot of posturing on being tough on crime--but behind their self-righteous political ads, there is a hidden history of racism, questionable funding and sexual misconduct.
Dave Zirin : WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes has just come out of the closet. But why didn't anyone care?
Liza Featherstone : A hard-hitting documentary, an embarrassing leaked memo on healthcare and abandonment by customers who don't like its politics. It's getting harder these days for Wal-Mart to put on a happy public face.
Cover art by Robert Grossman, cover design by Gene Case & Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels
