The Nation back issues from August 2004:
AD Nauseam.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... An ad for pleasevote.com on the back cover of our July 5 issue upset many readers, some of whom threatened to cancel their subscriptions if we repeat the ad. In it, sculptor Richard Serra has taken Goya's Saturn Devouring One of His Sons and substituted George W. Bush's face for Saturn's ....
And why the sea is boiling hot ...(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Norwalk, Conn. * In his review of The Day After Tomorrow ["Films," June 21], Stuart Klawans criticizes MoveOn.org for opportunistically seizing upon the film's release to publicize global warming. As the editor of Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate ...
Just say no to drug cards?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Los Angeles * On Trudy Lieberman's "Dealing the Drug Cards" [June 21]: I recently went to my pharmacy to refill a prescription and presented my new drug card for a discount. The pharmacist told me that if I used the card, I would pay more (but refused ...
A clean machine ...(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... New Paltz, NY * Thanks for endorsing Clean Elections and calling attention to the Arizona Keep It Clean campaign ["The Big Money Election," June 14]. You are correct in noting that the campaign finance solution lies not in half-measures like the presidential matching funds or ...
Left in the lurch by the church.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Chapel Hill, NC * Re John Nichols's "Kerry and Communion" [June 14]. What America feared most when JFK ran for President in 1960 has come to pass: The Pope and his minions are interfering with social and political issues. As a recovering Catholic, I say that today more than ...
How Kerry can win.(Articles)
Aug 02, 2004; ... John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican "unbase"--the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or ...
The Liberal State: in Kerry's Massachusetts, established power meets the reform impulse.
Aug 02, 2004; ... Boston Well, it's nice to be back, I must say, we liberals of the Commonwealth (God save it!). Nice of you all to have us back, too, since your last experience with one of us as a Democratic presidential candidate didn't work out that well. You'll be happy to know that Mike ...
A People's Democratic platform.(Biography)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Howard Dean Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, is the founder and honorary chair of Democracy for America. The Democrats need to stand up for universal healthcare and get it passed. We are the last industrialized country in the world that doesn't have it ....
Victory in 2004--and beyond.
Aug 02, 2004; ... The prospect of hanging, Dr. Johnson said, concentrates the mind wonderfully. The threat posed by George W. Bush's right-wing reaction has organized the left for Kerry, just as Clinton galvanized the right for Bush. As a referendum on Bush's failed agenda, Election 2004 can ...
The Rainbow's Gravity: twenty years after Jesse Jackson's historic run for president, what does it all mean?
Aug 02, 2004; ... Last December, when the smart money was on Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination, when long-shot bettors were talking about Al Sharpton pulling a surprise in the South Carolina primary, when nobody but the Democratic leadership believed John Kerry was "electable," Jesse Jackson was ...
Uncle Sam wants you (maybe).(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Silver Spring, Md. * Katha Pollitt's "Do You Feel a Draft?" provides welcome criticism of Representative Charles Rangel's conscription bill ["Subject to Debate," June 7]. The bill includes a step backward for conscientious objectors. Under current law, COs are diverted to ...
Emendation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 02, 2004 ... * Naomi Klein reported in her last "Lookout" column [July 12] that Aegis CEO Tim Spicer helped put down rebels and stage a military coup in Papua New Guinea. Actually, although ...
Living to tell the tale.(My Life by Bill Clinton)(Book Review)
Aug 02, 2004; ... By Bill Clinton. Knopf. 957 pp. $35. Former Presidents have a difficult, even awkward, role. They cope in different ways, but if the past half-century is any guide, we can be certain of one thing: They write their memoirs. Usually, these are variants of campaign biographies, ...
Laughter in the dark.(Monumental Propaganda )(Book Review)
Aug 02, 2004; ... Monumental Propaganda. By Vladimir Voinovich. Knopf. 365 pp. $25. Stalin has had a rough time at the hands of Russian novelists in recent years. Though polls continue to show he is venerated by nearly half of his countrymen, the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, in his 1999 novel ...
His majesty.(Prince)(Biography)
Aug 02, 2004; ... Prince This past February's forty-sixth annual Grammy Awards ceremony began with a surprise performance by the pop virtuoso who is once again calling himself Prince. The occasion was the twentieth anniversary of the career-making album and film Purple Rain, and it was strange to ...
Brief encounter.(Before Sunset; Spider-man 2)(Movie Review)
Aug 02, 2004; ... Before Sunset * Spider-man 2 Like many intelligent women of advanced political beliefs, Celine detests the ideology of the soulmate. She says as much, with torso-twisting vehemence, about three-quarters of the way through Before Sunset, shouting the word "evil" at the notion of ...
Lead balloons.(American politics, terrorism and civil liberties)
Aug 02, 2004; ... I'm riding an elevator in downtown Boston. There is a sign warning of travel restrictions during the last week of July. A woman gets on. We both stare ahead as per elevator etiquette. She reads the sign, raises an elegant hand and brushes the words gently. "Nothing's worth this ...," she ...
Wrong again.(the Bush Administration and Iraq)
Aug 02, 2004; ... Nearly every day brings fresh evidence that the Bush Administration deliberately undermined the security of this nation by misleading us into a costly and potentially ruinous war in Iraq. If Republicans were not in control of Congress, these would be impeachable offenses--far worse than ...
Freedom's trail.(Editorials - Boston has been the crucible of struggles for freedom)(Editorial)
Aug 02, 2004 ... As Democrats prepare for their convention in Boston, they should ponder the city's catalytic role in American history. If they venture outside their hospitality suites for a walk on the Freedom Trail, they'll see historic places associated with the American Revolution and be reminded that ...
Election postponed to preserve democracy.(Comment)(Transcript)
Aug 02, 2004; ... American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call "alarming" intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, Newsweek ...
On the web.(Brief Article)
Aug 02, 2004 ... Check out www.thenation.com during the week of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 26-29, for a host of special features--updated many times daily. There'll be new weblogs, an events calendar, archival selections, RadioNation audio commentary and exclusive online ...
A platform for the timid.(Comment)
Aug 02, 2004; ... Rosa DeLauro, the savvy Connecticut Congresswoman whom Democratic leaders and the Kerry for President campaign put in charge of drafting the party's 2004 platform, says, "It reflects John Kerry. It reinforces who John Kerry is." Unfortunately, DeLauro is right. ...
Kerry: no w. (& no bill).(John Kerry)
Aug 02, 2004; ... A friend of mine in Los Angeles reports listening to a radio station that caters to middle-class African-Americans and hearing repeatedly from hosts and callers that there's little difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry. "People keep saying they're both Skull and Bones guys," she ...
Slow-gear democrats.(John Kerry)
Aug 02, 2004; ... In many ways, Senator John Kerry is the perfect candidate for the Democratic Party--handsome and serious, well regarded if not widely loved, deeply experienced in governing policy and sincerely committed to advancing the public good. Above all, Kerry can be counted on not to disturb the ...
For the day Ralph Nader shuffles off this mortal coil.(Brief Article)
Aug 02, 2004; ... In canned obits that papers keep, The second graf relates The fact that Nader gave us Bush, Through votes in several ...
Healing the law.(Letter from Ground Zero)
Aug 02, 2004; ... The Supreme Court of the United States has had two historic encounters with George W. Bush. The first was its decision to stop the recount of the presidential vote in Florida in December 2000 and, in effect, to put Bush in the White House. The second was the series of decisions rendered in ...
Que serra serra.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Minneapolis * To all the indignant readers who complained about the Richard Serra ad for pleasevote.com ["Letters," Aug. 2/9]: Lighten up! Serra's update of Goya's horrifying Saturn Devouring One of His Sons illustrates the nightmarish implications of George W. Bush's domestic ...
Certainly not 'virtually ignored'.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Washington, DC * Scott Sherman's June 7 "The Rebirth of the NYRB," begins with a compelling evocation of the eloquent antiwar protest written by US diplomat John Brady Kiesling as he resigned three weeks before the Iraq war began. Sherman continues, "Greek newspapers were quick ...
Sherman replies.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Brooklyn, NY * Felicity Barringer did indeed break the story of Kiesling's resignation, a commendable scoop. But her editors failed to acknowledge its significance--giving the story only 404 words on page A13 and relegating the full text of Kiesling's stirring, courageous and ...
Patriots--throw off your chains!(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Crozet, Va. * William Greider surmises the existence of a phenomenon I've been hoping for ["'Embedded Patriots,'" July 12]. Having worked at high levels of both the Israeli and US governments, I am about as cynical as they come. But when this unwarranted war became a reality, ...
The weakly standard.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Wallingford, Pa. * Last week I borrowed a friend's van. I was cleaning things out before returning it and discovered an issue of The Weekly Standard under the seat. I began reading a feature titled "Scrapbook ... The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers," which mocked various ...
Emendation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 16, 2004 ... * In "The Jewish Divide on Israel" [July 12], Esther Kaplan referred to two Hillel program directors who resigned after being reprimanded for their articles supporting Israeli and Palestinian peace activism. In fact, one of the two, Aron Gutman of Ithaca College, was ...
How they could steal the election this time.
Aug 16, 2004; ... On November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes ...
Boiling point: nature doesn't compromise on global climate change; activists must not either.
Aug 16, 2004; ... Climate change is not just another issue. It is the overriding threat facing human civilization in the twenty-first century, and so far our institutions are doing dangerously little to address it. Americans in particular are still in denial, thanks largely to the efforts of the fossil-fuel ...
Bush zones go national: in the undeclared war against dissent, disagreement has become a crime.
Aug 16, 2004; ... At the 2000 GOP nominating convention in Philadelphia, candidate Bush created a fenced-in, out-of-sight protest zone that could only hold barely 1,500 people at a time. So citizens who wished to give voice to their many grievances with the Powers That Be had to: (1) Schedule ...
Latin America's longest war.("More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia," "Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia," "Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy and War," "Loyal Soldiers in the Cocaine Kingdom: Tales of Drugs, Mules and Gunmen," "Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia")(Book Review)
Aug 16, 2004; ... In May, Jan Egeland, the United Nations Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, called a news conference in New York to declare publicly what he had been warning people about for some time: that the nation of Colombia had become "by far the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the Western ...
Holy water.("Walden Pond: A History")(Book Review)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Walden Pond: A History. By W. Barksdale Maynard. Oxford. 404 pp. $35. Walden Pond is America's environmental holy land, the naturalist's sacred site and Concord's local swimming pool. The iconic image of living in solitude amid nature's wildness, immortalized in Henry David ...
Shadows and smog.("I, Robot," "The Bourne Supremacy")(Movie Review)
Aug 16, 2004; ... I, ROBOT * LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF * THE BOURNE SUPREMACY I paid to see Will Smith fight legions of robots, and what I got was a trip back to Wabash Street. Rear entrance to the fine department stores of my youth, front portal to respectable lunchrooms, Wabash always seemed to ...
He's the (any)one.
Aug 16, 2004; ... Can someone win the presidency entirely on the basis of a negative asset? I wouldn't have thought so, but here's John Kerry, three months shy of election day, promoting himself as a man of presidential caliber entirely on the basis that he's the Anyone in "Anyone But Bush." Come next ...
Let's not devalue ourselves.
Aug 16, 2004; ... It says something about the iron grip of the culture wars on our politics that no less a liberal than John Kerry--with his 100 percent ratings from NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP--recently claimed that he represents "conservative values." There may even be a sense ...
Ditch the distraction in chief.
Aug 16, 2004; ... Last month, I reluctantly joined the Anybody But Bush camp. It was "Bush in a Box" that finally got me, a gag gift my brother gave my father on his sixty-sixth birthday. Bush in a Box is a cardboard cutout of President 43 with a set of adhesive speech balloons featuring the usual Bushisms: ...
Counting every vote.(Editorials)(Editorial)
Aug 16, 2004 ... The Democratic platform approved this week by convention delegates in Boston contains strong language regarding the party's commitment to protect the right of Americans to vote--and have their votes counted. "We will call for legislative action that will fully protect and enforce the ...
The real story in Boston.(Comment)
Aug 16, 2004; ... Everyone agrees. The story is that there is no story. The candidates have already been chosen. The platform has been written to avoid controversy. That's why the early focus has been on the sideshows (since everyone knows that politicians get booed at baseball games, was it wise of Kerry ...
A social occasion.(Comment)
Aug 16, 2004; ... When organizers were planning the Boston Social Forum, they envisioned a gathering that would counter the Democratic National Convention in every way. Whereas the DNC would be a tightly scripted and essentially private affair (locals refer to the convention's site, the FleetCenter, as the ...
The 9/11 report.(Comment)
Aug 16, 2004; ... While George W. Bush has been President, we've had two of the biggest intelligence screw-ups in US history. The intelligence community overstated the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Iraq (and Bush overstated the exaggerations), and the national security and law enforcement ...
Nation notes.(Brief Article)
Aug 16, 2004 ... It is rare enough when a book of poetry appears on the New York Times Best Seller List, but when it is by The Nation's own Deadline Poet, Calvin Trillin, attention must be paid. On the July 25 nonfiction list Trillin's Obliviously On He Sails (Random House), containing poems first ...
A White House Response to the 9/11 Commission's Finding that Iran Had More Contact With the Hijackers than Iraq Did.(Brief Article)(Poem)
Aug 16, 2004; ... <Pre> A WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO THE 9/11 COMMISSION'S FINDING THAT IRAN HAD MORE CONTACT WITH THE HIJACKERS THAN IRAQ DID The little error that we may have madeIn picking out a country ...
Strong and wrong.(Letter from Ground Zero)
Aug 16, 2004; ... "During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current President, the Vice President and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going, too. But instead he said, 'Send me.' "When they sent those Swift ...
Time's up.(Comment)
Aug 16, 2004; ... It's been four years since the International AIDS Conference was first held in the developing world, in Durban, South Africa, and activists' demand for universal treatment access was catapulted onto the world stage. Then, the idea of treating the millions of HIV-infected people worldwide ...
Wake me up--please!(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Amherst, NH * I keep expecting to awaken and discover that this has all been a surreal Through the Looking Glass dream [Jeff Gillenkirk, "Election Postponed to Preserve Democracy," Aug. 2/9]. We have Der Vaterland Fuhrer Tom Ridge telling us that Al Qaeda may be planning a major ...
McPrisons.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Philadelphia * Re: Sasha Abramsky's "Incarceration, Inc." [July 19/26]: The prison privatization trend seems Wal-Mart-like in its concern for bottom lines and political agendas over social responsibility or ethics. With privatization comes the blurring of chains of command and ...
Sudan's long war.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Saint Paul * Re: Salih Booker and Ann-Louise Colgan's "Genocide in Darfur" [July 12]: I have been reading about the civil war in Sudan and am puzzled when the reporters talk about the ten-year or twenty-year civil war. It was a relief to see your statement that Sudan "has ...
Our bullets, ourselves.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Los Angeles * "Hey, shootin' guys is aw-right! If y'all are a woman op-pressed by patriarchal domination, y'all jes whip out yawr .38 and spling splang there you go, a man's brain spattered on the wall, and y'all are free, Free, FREE!" Claire Dederer, in her review of SCUM ...
Jocks in left field.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Bryn Mawr, Pa. * Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier's "Where Are the Jocks for Justice?" [June 28] was excellent. But instead of asking, "Why aren't sports stars aligned with progressive causes?" perhaps the question should be, Why don't progressive outlets like The Nation cover ...
Trickle-down that didn't.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Jersey City, NJ * Thanks to William Greider for his masterful review of the economics of the Reagan years ["The Gipper's Economy," June 28]. I worked as a social worker in the first Reagan term and saw my clients lose their Social Security disability benefits in a purge of the ...
His brush with war ...(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Los Angeles * In Alexander Cockburn's excellent "Reagan in Truth and Fiction" ["Beat the Devil," June 28], there's one nit to pick regarding Ronald Reagan's war. Having lived in the area since 1930 (when my ...
The Latino menace.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... New York City * Daniel Lazare, reviewing Samuel Huntington's Who Are We? ["Diversity and Its Discontents," June 14], calls it "Huntington's best book in decades." The problem is that this book is based on factually incorrect and prejudiced assumptions about the main object of ...
Closing the 'religion gap'.(Cover Story)
Aug 30, 2004; ... At last month's Democratic convention, few words were uttered more frequently than the one that seems to roll most easily off the tongue of George W. Bush: faith. "Let me say it plainly," announced John Kerry in his acceptance speech. "In this campaign, we welcome people of faith." John ...
Fables of the reconstruction: the effort to rebuild Iraq looks less like an aid mission than a criminal racket.
Aug 30, 2004; ... As we speed down the Tigris River under a brilliant sun in a fiberglass skiff, Iraq almost seems like Vacationland--but only for a moment. Soon we're dodging the half-submerged barges and ferries sunk in last year's bombing. Then two Black Hawk helicopters dash low overhead, their menacing ...
Devolve this! Progressives urgently need a strategy to take back the states from the GOP.
Aug 30, 2004; ... In American politics, who controls the states controls the nation. The right understands this, and for a generation has waged an unrelenting war to take over state government in America. It has substantially succeeded, in large part because it hasn't faced any serious progressive ...
Global fights go local.
Aug 30, 2004; ... Missouri Governor Bob Holden learned how volatile globalization issues have become when his Democratic primary challenger, Claire McCaskill, started banging away on him for offshoring the state's call center for food stamp and welfare recipients to India. Holden, a labor-friendly Democrat, ...
Letter from Uganda.
Aug 30, 2004; ... On December 22, 2002, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni paid a ceremonial visit to a textile plant in Kampala, his country's capital city. That day, shoppers in faraway America were streaming down the aisles of malls and department stores in crazed search of last-minute Christmas gifts ....
Lazare replies.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 30, 2004; ... New York City * No, give me a break. Angelo Falcon accuses Samuel Huntington of playing fast and loose with the facts without citing a specific example. He tosses around phrases like "factually incorrect" and "shoddy scholarship" yet provides nothing to back them up. This is ...
November song.(Letters)(Poem)
Aug 30, 2004; ... Tucson * I'm not much of a poet, but I'm a World War II vet who cares what is happening: ...
The lost steps.(The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace; The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement, 1996-2004)(Book Review)
Aug 30, 2004; ... The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace. By Dennis Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 840 pp. $35. The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement, 1996-2004. By Yossi Beilin. Akashic. 377 pp. $22.95. American ...