The Nation back issues from March 2002:
LETTERS.
Mar 04, 2002 ... PIERRE BOURDIEU Chicago * I must say that Katha Pollitt's exquisite and moving memorial to Pierre Bourdieu ["Subject to Debate," Feb. 18] brought a little warmth to this soul, calloused and made cynical by the current state of things in the world. As a ...
ENRON'S GLOBAL CRUSADE.(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 04, 2002; ... The mandarins of corporate capital continued to preach the gospel of free markets and economic globalization at the World Economic Forum in New York, but a more traditional preacher reminded them that the burgeoning Enron scandal ought to give the shapers of the new world economic order ...
A Naked Emperor Disrobed: Or, How Enron Did Texas -- ENRON, WHICH MADE TEXAS-SIZE PROMISES ALONG WITH ITS POLITICAL DONATIONS, NOW STANDS REVEALED AS A FOUR-FLUSHER. VOTERS MAY TAKE OUT THEIR DISMAY ON THE GOP.(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 04, 2002; ... In the spring of 1991 Texas State Representative Kevin Bailey killed an Enron bill. The freshman Democrat from Houston had been advised by his veteran campaign manager to play ball with the company, which at that point was still just a natural-gas-pipeline concern. But Bailey didn't ...
Reflections on 'Containment' : BUSH WILL HAVE TROUBLE IN THE LONG RUN SELLING THE 'AXIS OF EVIL' AND OTHER MYTHS.
Mar 04, 2002; ... When Bush the Younger adds a new phrase to the English language, questions assault the mind: Did he mean to say it? Does he understand what he said? Is an allusion intended, or just plucked from the flotsam and jetsam floating around in his head? By the time the United States finally got ...
Letter From China.
Mar 04, 2002; ... Causing the raising of an eyebrow is an easy enough feat nowadays in China. Last July, in a speech to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, President Jiang Zemin lifted restrictions on China's capitalists that kept them from becoming party ...
Lost in America.(Healing Earthquakes, A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet)
Mar 04, 2002; ... <Pre> A PLACE TO STAND: The Making of a Poet. By Jimmy Santiago Baca. Grove. 264 pp. $24. HEALING EARTHQUAKES. By Jimmy Santiago Baca. Grove. 338 pp. Paper $15. </Pre> "When I write, I bid farewell to myself," Jimmy Santiago Baca said in 1992. "I leave most of what I know ...
Our Last Laugh.
Mar 04, 2002 ... <Pre> JEWS FOR BUCHANAN. By John Nichols. New Press. 226 pp. Paper $14.95. </Pre> "Did you hear the one about the theft of the American presidency?" teases The Nation's Washington correspondent, John Nichols, at the start of his entertaining recounting of the 2000 election, Jews ...
Following Doctors' Orders.(Bodies and Souls: Politics and the Professionalization of Nursing in France, No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home care in the United Sates, Devices and Desires: Gender, Technology, and American Nursing)
Mar 04, 2002; ... <Pre> BODIES AND SOULS: Politics and the Professionalization of Nursing in France, 1880-1922. By Katrin Schultheiss. Harvard. 248 pp. $52.50. NO PLACE LIKE HOME: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States. By Karen Buhler-Wilkerson. Johns Hopkins. 293 pp. $45. ...
Ellison Unbound.(Ralph Ellison: An American Journey)
Mar 04, 2002; ... RALPH ELLISON: An American Journey. Tuesday, February 19, PBS. "I remind myself that much of television is now comic strip," Ralph Ellison told TV Guide in 1988. It is not surprising that the author of Invisible Man would be uncomfortable with the cool medium. After all, ...
A Crowbar to the Face.(Domestic Violence)
Mar 04, 2002; ... DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Frederick Wiseman has spent a lifetime piecing together sounds and images captured from the daily flow. These patchwork projections of our common life play across the screen without voiceovers, written texts or talking heads--with no explanation at all, except ...
Sauk Centre's Finest.
Mar 04, 2002 ... <Pre> SINCLAIR LEWIS: Rebel from Main street. By Richard Lingeman. Random House. 554 pp. $35. </Pre> "Everyone ought to have a home to get away from," said Sinclair Lewis--and Nation senior editor Richard Lingeman demonstrates how amply Lewis followed his own advice. Ever restless, ...
Black Mischief.(racist slurs)(Brief Article)
Mar 04, 2002; ... On East Capitol Street a few years ago, I was in a taxi when a car pulled suddenly and dangerously across our bow. My driver was white, with a hunter's cap and earmuffs and an indefinable rosy hue about his neck. The offending motorist was black. Both vehicles had to stop sharply. My ...
Egg on the Brain.(religion and politics)(Brief Article)
Mar 04, 2002; ... It may look as if domestic politics no longer exists in the new America--the one in which there is no money for anything besides guns and prisons but we don't care because we are all bowling together against the Axis of Evil. But that's not true. As long as there is a fertilized egg ...
Real Reform Post-Enron.(Statistical Data Included)(Brief Article)
Mar 04, 2002 ... As the House of Representatives was about to begin debating a modest campaign finance reform bill, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was taking the Fifth before the Senate commerce committee. As the disgraced exec sat grim-faced at the witness table, Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings, chairman ...
NYC Campaign Reform.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 04, 2002; ... The success of Michael Bloomberg's $69 million race for Mayor of New York against Mark Green was widely seen as a setback for campaign finance reform. But the Bloomberg campaign demonstrated the limits of campaign finance reform under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, ...
Listening In on the WEF.(World Economic Forum)
Mar 04, 2002; ... As January turned into February, the most important people in the world gathered themselves together in midtown Manhattan for the annual World Economic Forum. Normally held in Davos--the Swiss ski resort previously famous for being the site of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain--the meeting ...
Bush's China Opening.(George W. Bush)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 04, 2002; ... In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, China has undergone a dramatic makeover: from the most outspoken adversary of the United States to a highly appreciated ally. The bitter spy-plane episode is all but forgotten. Relations between the two countries continue to warm, and ...
NATION NOTES.(Brief Article)
Mar 04, 2002 ... On page 8 you'll see a new monthly feature by Jim Hightower, "Going Down the Road." Jim's been called America's favorite populist. He's been editor of The Texas Observer, president of the Texas Consumer Association, Texas Agriculture Commissioner, host of a radio show. Nowadays he ...
Kenny Boy.(Poem)
Mar 04, 2002; ... (A Houston version of the Irish folk song) <Pre>Oh, Kenny Boy, your friends are disappearing.They don't know you, much less your kvetchy wife.Yes, it's sad when pols that you've been shmeeringNow hope that ...
GOING DOWN THE ROAD : Wal-Mart Warriors.(Brief Article)
Mar 04, 2002; ... In my Texas politicking period, I was able to score a couple of underdog victories for statewide office simply by going down the road. Instead of another high-tech, made-for-television campaign, I crisscrossed this far-flung state with high-touch populist politics, visiting with folks in ...
FROM PROTEST TO POLITICS : A Report from Porto Alegre.(Another World is Possible, Brazil)
Mar 11, 2002; ... Porto Alegre, Brazil On a balmy evening, under a sky streaked pink with the dying sun, the fiery leftist governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul set the loftiest of goals for the second annual World Social Forum, which convened here at the end of January. On the forum's ...
Reformer From Goldman Sachs : SENATOR CORZINE SPEAKS FROM KNOWLEDGE WHEN HE CALLS FOR REGULATORY REFORM.(Jon S. Corzine)(Interview)
Mar 11, 2002; ... Jon Corzine, the freshman senator from New Jersey, is uniquely positioned to deal with the swirling scandals of Enron and other related malpractices in high finance. He was a Wall Street insider himself and, indeed, did some deals for Enron. In 1994 Corzine rose to become chairman of ...
Parallax and Palestine : THE DIVERGENCE IN BRITISH AND US VIEWS ON THE MIDDLE EAST HAS BECOME ACUTE.(media coverage analysis)
Mar 11, 2002; ... London Burhan Himouni was still in diapers when his mother sent him out with his father and uncle to buy dessert. As their car stopped at a busy intersection in downtown Hebron during the evening rush hour, the Israeli Air Force fired two missiles. The intended target was ...
Denmark Vesey: A New Verdict -- A HISTORIAN QUESTIONS WHETHER HE LED A SLAVE REVOLT, BUT HIS HEROISM STANDS.(Charleston, South Carolina history)
Mar 11, 2002; ... After a long fight, black activists in Charleston, South Carolina, succeeded in persuading the city to approve a monument honoring Denmark Vesey for planning a slave rebellion in 1822. Originally, opposition to the monument came mainly from a group of local whites, who protested that Vesey ...
The Base Camp of Christendom.(The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization)
Mar 11, 2002; ... <Pre> The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. By Patrick J. Buchanan. St. Martin's. 308 pp. $25.95. </Pre> Pat Buchanan surely holds the record for the greatest impact on a presidential election with the fewest ...
Not Betsy Rosses.(The Weather/Cunt-Ups/Darling)
Mar 11, 2002; ... <Pre> The Weather. By Lisa Robertson. New Star. 78 pp. Paper $12. Cunt-Ups. By Dodie Bellamy. Tender Buttons. 65 pp. Paper $12.95. Darling. By Honor Moore. Grove Atlantic. 65 pp. Paper $13. </Pre> For a while I thought about designing a flag. Something bigger, blurrier than "nation." ...
Seeking 'Convulsive Beauty'.(Surrealist exhibitions in retrospect)
Mar 11, 2002; ... SURREALISM: Desire Unbound The legendary Surrealist exhibitions of the late 1930s and early 1940s were Surrealist in spirit and secondarily Surrealist in content. In 1942, for example, an exhibition called "The First Papers of Surrealism" was installed at the Whitelaw Reid ...
Look There.(Poem)
Mar 11, 2002; ... <Pre>Fields past harvest, stalks, stubble--how quicklyThey absorb what's left. Pumpkins Broken in two, rain-flattened, eaten. SeedsWhose memory is roots. Vines. And of a thousand One--consumed, excreted--germinates; who knowsHow far from here?A house, ...
Kings and Klimt at NYRB.(Stephen King and Gustav Klimt reviews in New York Review of Books)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002; ... Some magazines have an identity problem, and some don't. The New York Review of Books doesn't, as you may have noticed. It's relentlessly highbrow, which is how we like it. For the most part. But every once in a while, a little bit of pop culture creeps in, hooray, and then the editors do ...
Evil: The Quadruple Axel.(confinement of sexually violent predators)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002; ... The hoofprints of Lucifer are everywhere. And since this is America, eternally at war with the darker forces, the foremost Enemy Within is sex, no quarter given. Here are some bulletins from the battlefront, drawn from a smart essay on "Sex & Empire" in the March issue of The Guide ...
Better Safe...?(profiling as security measure)(Brief Article)(Column)
Mar 11, 2002; ... In my last column, I called the expansion of profiling that has occurred since September 11 "equal opportunity." I meant it ironically, but a surprising number of people took me literally. So I want to make clear that I don't consider this upgraded frisking any kind of opportunity, nor do ...
Unhappy Anniversary.(political commentary on McLaughlin Group)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002; ... The McLaughlin Group is about to "celebrate" its twentieth anniversary. We might as well "celebrate" the discovery of anthrax. The show flatters itself--and its corporate sponsor, GE--that it is providing some kind of public service. It's even offered on PBS in many cities, and ...
Endless War Budget.(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002 ... The President's military budget is 30 percent higher than last year's, the biggest budget hike since the Vietnam War. It's 15 percent higher in constant dollars than the nation spent on average during the cold war, according to Lawrence Korb in testimony before the House Budget Committee ....
Iran/Contra Rehab.(scandal's participants land government appointments)
Mar 11, 2002; ... The Bush Administration is turning into one big rehab center for the Iran/contra schemers of the Reagan/Bush White House. The latest case involves retired Adm. John Poindexter, who's been hired by the Pentagon to head a new agency, the Information Awareness Office. Created after September ...
Saudis: US Go Home?(American military presence in Saudi Arabia point of contention)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002; ... It is now widely acknowledged that what sparked the most devastating attack on the American mainland in history was the continued presence of US troops on Saudi Arabian soil after the Gulf War--which, in 1991, prompted the disaffection of Osama bin Laden, until then part of the Saudi ...
Campaign Finance Reform.
Mar 11, 2002; ... <Pre>We're told that this campaign reform is notThe end-all of the sleaziness we've got ....
VICTORY FOR LOW-POWER RADIO OPERATORS.(character provision in station licensing deemed unconstitutional)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002 ... * The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has given an important boost to the cause of low-power FM radio--those small, limited-range, noncommercial stations that give voice to community concerns ignored by remote, conglomerate-owned broadcasters. The court held unconstitutional a ...
GIULIANI'S PAPERS GRAB.(Rudy Giuliani takes control of mayoral papers)(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002 ... * After finishing his term as New York mayor in a glow of post-September 11 glory, Rudy Giuliani reverted to his old control-freak self. He made a quickie arrangement transferring all his mayoral papers to a private storage facility under his control. He says they'll be available but ...
THE LATE HARVEY MATUSOW.(witness for Un-American Affairs Commission)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
Mar 11, 2002 ... * Back in McCarthyite times, Harvey Matusow was the young ex-Communist who specialized in naming former Communist folksingers before various inquisitorial tribunals. Not only folksingers, though. He once reported that there were 126 Communists in the Sunday Department of the New York Times ...
White Must Go.(Brief Article)
Mar 11, 2002; ... Thomas White, the former Enron vice chairman appointed by George W. Bush to be Secretary of the Army, should resign immediately. The case against White is self-evident. Touted as "one of the most outstanding managers in corporate America" by Enron's favorite senator, Phil Gramm, he was ...
'New Mideast Approach': Flawed?
Mar 18, 2002 ... Elkhorn, Neb. * There are many grave problems with Jerome M. Segal's "A New Middle East Approach" [Jan. 28]. I will discuss two. The first is Segal's repeated insistence that the United Nations and any government of a state of Palestine recognize Israel's right to exist "as a ...
TULSA'S SHAME : RACE RIOT VICTIMS STILL WAIT FOR PROMISED REPARATIONS.
Mar 18, 2002; ... Sitting in a small meeting room in a Unitarian Universalist church slightly north of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, people of different races and age groups have gathered. Between bites of doughnuts and sips of coffee, they strategize about their next move, every now and then scribbling ideas ...
The Anthrax Fumble : BUREAUCRATIC TIMIDITY AND TURF BATTLES NEEDLESSLY PUT MANY AMERICANS AT RISK.
Mar 18, 2002; ... Did the FBI's customary secrecy and turf-consciousness cause innocent people to die of bioterror? In October, when the first anthrax-laden envelopes were received, the FBI froze the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out of the high-profile investigation, according to CDC ...
A 'Second Front' in the Philippines : AMERICA CALLED ON ITS FORMER COLONY TO FILL THE BILL FOR A SEQUEL TO AL QAEDA.
Mar 18, 2002; ... Manila The Bush Administration's opening of a so-called second front against terrorism in the Philippines has stunned people here with its swiftness. Less than three weeks after the decision was jointly announced by Washington and Manila in early January, the first wave of US ...
Mayor Jerry Brown, Take II : HE'S CREATED NEW PROJECTS, MADE NEW FRIENDS--AND SOME BITTER ENEMIES.
Mar 18, 2002; ... Oakland As I get into Mayor Jerry Brown's city-owned black Town Car, he scrambles to move a folded red and black flag on the front seat out of my way. "You know what this is?" he asks as he puts it in the back seat. "It looks like an original flag from Castro's July ...
H. Rap Brown/Jamil Al-Amin: A Profoundly American Story.
Mar 18, 2002; ... Die Nigger Die!, the autobiographical political memoir by H. Rap Brown, is a vital American historical document--historical almost in the sense of a message found in a time capsule, a missive from another age. But it remains of considerable interest for what it tells us about social and ...
'Monsoon' Season.(Rollerball, Hart's War, Monsoon Wedding, Esther Kahn)
Mar 18, 2002; ... ROLLERBALL * HART'S WAR * MONSOON WEDDING * ESTHER KAHN Why, asked my friends and my baffled wife. Why, piped my son. Even the movie critics sitting next to me wanted to know: What perversity drove me to see Hart's War and Rollerball? Did I need to make February seem any longer? ...
MESSENGER.(Poem)
Mar 18, 2002; ... <Pre>MESSENGER The birds stopped coming after the annuals died.I didn't realize how much I missed them until the bluebird Returned, lured by the burgundy haze of the fall pansiesPouring from the window boxes. I was too slow finding The camera and then I ...
Condolences to Musharraf.(Pervez Musharraf)(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002; ... Those who ritually slaughtered Daniel Pearl, said the President in a prepared statement, "need to know that their crimes only hurt their cause." Pearl's publisher at the Wall Street Journal, Peter Kann, added that the murder "was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything ...
Justice, Not So Swift.(Jane Swift )(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002; ... On October 31 Governor Jane Swift of Massachusetts pardoned five women who had been convicted and executed in the Salem witch trials in 1692. Well, better late than never--what's a few centuries one way or another? Once you're dead you have all the time in the world. It's the living for ...
Big Media, Little Media.(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002 ... The nation's largest media corporations are now poised to gain dramatically greater control over what Americans watch, listen to and read. A February 19decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit nullified two longstanding government regulations ...
Two Cheers for Our Side.(good works of Bill Moyers and Norman Lear considered)(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002 ... One of the pitfalls of publishing a weekly journal of critical opinion at a moment when the political culture has drifted to the right is that there is so much of which to be critical that we often don't take time out to count our blessings, hail our heroes and salute our comrades in arms ....
Biowar--Are We Ready?(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002 ... Remember anthrax? The investigation into the anthrax attacks that killed five people and infected eighteen others this past fall drags on, and the FBI says it has not identified any firm suspects. The whodunit question aside, the Bush Administration has announced it will spend more than ...
Fighting Pickering.(civil rights record of judicial nominee Charles Pickering questioned)(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002; ... Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson says it's like this: If judicial nominee Charles Pickering is confirmed by a Democratic Senate, the Bush Administration will have a green light to pack the federal courts with judges openly hostile to basic principles of equal justice under the law ....
How to Honor Pearl.(slain journalist Daniel Pearl; US government's attempts to keep information from the press criticized)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 18, 2002; ... Watching the investigation into the abduction of Daniel Pearl, I felt uneasy about the endless public statements put out by Pakistani authorities. They seemed hopelessly confusing and contradictory: Pearl's body had just been found, we were told one day; he was about to be freed, we heard ...
Vouchers--Phony Choice.(Cleveland case revolves around endorsement of religion in schools by state)(Brief Article)
Mar 18, 2002; ... Ever since the 1954 Brown decision outlawing "separate but equal" schools, various popular movements have upheld a vision of public schools as essential to democracy and have demanded legal protections for those previously marginalized--from Title IX prohibitions against gender-based ...
ON THE PENTAGON'S OFFICE OF STRATEGIC INFLUENCE.(Poem)
Mar 18, 2002; ... <Pre>The OSI's intent to disinformReceived responses that were less than warm.The Pentagon now says it doesn't needAn office ...
THIS WEEK ON THE WEB.
Mar 18, 2002 ... * Representative Dennis Kucinich takes off the gloves and challenges the way the Administration is trampling on civil liberties ...
Phonics Rises From the Ashes.
Mar 25, 2002 ... Morris, Minn. * Thanks to Stephen Metcalf for his informed article "Reading Between the Lines" [Jan. 28]. There is another winner from Bush's education act: Ignite! Learning, which promotes an "innovative approach to standards-based middle school subject matter." In other ...
THE SENATE'S FIGHTING LIBERAL : KENNEDY AT 70.(Ted Kennedy)
Mar 25, 2002; ... When Ted Kennedy arrived in Washington at the close of 1962 as the freshman senator from Massachusetts, he was welcomed with derision and low expectations. Just 30 years old, the President's kid brother, he had accomplished nothing in his life to earn the prize of a seat in the US Senate ....
Colin Powell's List : THE TARGETING OF 'TERRORIST' GROUPS HARKS BACK TO EARLIER REPRESSION OF DISSENT.
Mar 25, 2002; ... Colin Powell has a list. And, trust me--you don't want to be on it. Of course, you might already be on the list, but you won't find that out until a reporter calls to ask about it, or until the FBI shows up at your house at 4 am. The list in question, or rather the ...
Terror in the Pyrenees : ETA IS LOSING LEGITIMACY, BUT MANY BASQUES STILL FEEL UNABLE TO CONDEMN IT.(Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Homeland and Liberty, Spain)
Mar 25, 2002; ... With a leg on each side of the Pyrenees, the Basque Country ranges from the gentle mountain slopes of southern France and the rough Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic coast to the sophisticated cities of Bilbao--home to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum--and San Sebastian. This is also the last ...
Central Asia's Heroin Problem : FROM AFGHAN FARMS INTO THE TAJIK MOUNTAINS, THE DRUG TRADE CUTS A WIDE SWATH.(Statistical Data Included)
Mar 25, 2002; ... In Khujand, Tajikistan, when someone shows up with a new Mercedes or Audi or Jaguar, the joke on the street is that people don't ask how much money it cost. They ask how many kilos it cost. As the drug trade has saturated Afghanistan over the past decade, trafficking routes have ...
Tree-Huggers No Longer!(The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World)
Mar 25, 2002; ... <Pre> The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. By Bjorn Lomborg. Cambridge. 515 pp. Paper $28. </Pre> It's official now: The United States has a policy on climate change. President Bush announced it on Valentine's Day at a government climate and ...
The Marvel of the Obvious.
Mar 25, 2002; ... <Pre> George Oppen: New Collected Poems. Edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Davidson. New Directions. 433 pp. $37.95. </Pre> "There are things/We live among 'and to see them/Is to know ourselves.'" These three lines are among the most stirring written by George Oppen, ...