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Today's
Stories
January 10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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January
10 / 11, 2004
Why Curt Flood Belongs
in the Hall of Fame
An
Interview with Marvin Miller
By DAVE ZIRIN
Born in 1917, Marvin Miller never played the game,
but he may have had more influence on baseball than anyone else
in this half of the century. As executive director of the Players
Association from 1966-1982, he brought a wealth of experience
garnered in the tough steelworkers' union to bear on baseball
labor relations, and his knowledge, organizational ability, and
resolve completely overmatched the owners and their representatives.
During his tenure the average players salary increased from $19,000
to over $240,000. Today the Baseball Players Union is acknowledged
as one of the strongest labor organizations in the United States.
DZ: Who or what shaped your thinking
as a young man?
MM: Well, I guess a big part of what
shaped me was that I entered high school in February of 1929.
Several months later, boom, we have the Great Depression. All
through the early 1930s my father who was a retail store salesman
saw the businesses that employed him went downhill and all through
the Depression, my father got more and more anxious and concerned
and I was old enough to be aware of all of that.
DZ: How did the Depression affect
where you grew up?
MM: I grew up in New York City and in
that period, you couldn't help but observe the breadlines, the
increase of the number of people begging in the streets, the
people selling apples. The signs of economic hardship were easy
to see. I am reminded of a question I was asked a couple of years
ago. I was speaking to a group of young black students in New
York talking about the Depression, breadlines and so on and one
of the kids asked me if there were white people also on the breadlines
and selling apples in the streets. Of course! In fact most of
them! In the New York of the early 1930s there was a black population
but it was largely ghettoized in Harlem and unless you went to
Harlem, you didn't see black people on the breadlines.
DZ: How did the Depression move you
toward trade union politics?
MM: My father who had never been in a
union in his life, became active. He was a member in the wholesale
clothing workers union in lower Manhattan and I have a very early
memory of going to a store where he was working and finding him
on a picket line. Also my mother was a teacher in New York City
Public Schools and she became one of the early members of the
city's teachers' union. As the thirties progressed and the CIO
[Congress of Industrial Organizations] and industrial unions
formed, everybody was aware of the ferment of the labor movement.
All of these were influences.
DZ: When did you personally become
involved?
MM: I graduated college in 1938, and
in that period, a good part of the country was seemingly coming
out of the Depression. But New York City was not. New York just
kept dropping until April 1940 after the rest of the country
was moving. I can recall wondering if I was ever going to get
a job. Unlike some friends and neighbors, my father did not own
a business. I was in different straights. I had no affluent uncles.
In those days when you looked for a job you would go to employment
agencies and the situation was so bad you had to connive just
to get an application filled out and handed in. Eventually I
got some meaningless jobs here and there--a drugstore, a small
wholesale gift outfit, working for shipping broker a customs
broker down at the foot of Manhattan... I had other meaningless
jobs, and I kept taking civil service examinations. I finally
got appointed, working with relief populations which was an eye
opener, and an economist for the war production board, and eventually
I moved to a brand new agency called the war relations board,
and this was charged with a new function of hearing virtually
every labor management pursuit. This is how it formed. The labor
movement had been asked to make a no strike pledge for the duration
of the war and the Chamber of Commerce were asked to, in good
faith, make a no lock out pledge. The labor movement said ok
but we are still organizing and there are conditions all over
that haven't changed since the Depression, and how are we going
to solve disputes? And FDR created by executive order the war
labor board, I was a hearing officer. With the war labor board,
I dealt with arbitrating steel, auto, women in the work place,
and some time later I found a job first with the IAM [the International
Association of Machinists] and worked with them and I also had
a short stint with the UAW [United Auto Workers]an then the steel
workers starting in 1950 and I became chief economist and assistant
to the president and I was with them until 1966
DZ: Were you a baseball fan before
your work heading up the Players Union?
MM: Oh yes. I was an old Brooklyn Dodgers
fan and I was going to Ebbets field by myself by the time I was
10, when there was a Saturday double header! I was a huge fan
from way back.
DZ: How were you recruited to head
up the Baseball Players Union?
MM: The players had a search committee
made up of three or four players including Robin Roberts, Jim
Bunning [two pitchers in the Hall of Fame], and Harvey Kuenn.
Roberts was really the sparkplug of that committee and what he
did was call [former chairman of the war labor board] George
W Taylor and he recommended me.
DZ: What were the players looking
for in you?
MM: They had an organization--a fake
union--called the Players Association that had been formed by
the owners. This was a company union in every sense of the word,
the employers had formed it back in 1947 as basically a response
to two things. One there was a drive to organize players into
a union, and two, there had been an attempt by two wealthy Mexican
businessmen to start a major league in Mexico and they offered
larger salaries. That was also the year of Jackie Robinson coming
to the dodgers and the year of a man on his own trying to organize
the players. A man named Robert Murphy went from Spring Training
site to site--and the owners saw this and said we need to head
this off and form a company union.
DZ: Why were the conditions so ripe
for a strong union?
MM: I don't know that they wanted a real
union [at first]. If I had to make an educated guess, the one
thing the players had which they prized was their pension plan.
It was called a benefit plan, That had been put into effect also
in 1947 once again the owners saying, let's do something to prevent
the union here. 18 years later, two things, were concerning the
players. One was that the pension had not kept pace over 18 years
of progress, also they picked up strong rumors that the owners
were wanting to change it. Television by 1965 had grown tremendously.
[L.A. Dodgers owner] Walter O'Mally saw this and wanted to after
the benefit plan. But beyond that I was also learning that it
was like pulling teeth learning what else made them unhappy.
This was because they were a work force basically unschooled
in working conditions. They had all undergone a bunch of brainwashing
that being allowed to play major league baseball was a great
favor that they were the luckiest people in the world. They were
accustomed never to think, "This stinks. We need to change
this." You have to remember baseball players are very young
and with few exceptions have no experience in these matters.
DZ: Did the other movements of the
1960s, the Civil Rights Struggle, the anti-war struggle, had
on giving people the confidence to think union?
MM: There is no doubt there was a major
connection. You now had a great many black and Latin players.
You now had a much more diverse sampling of the American people
than in the 1940s. You now had at least some people who were
able to think in terms of what was wrong with the society, what
was wrong with the conditions, people much more accustomed to
think about these things. You have to remember before 1947, the
ballplayer came in tremendous proportion from rural areas rather
than from cities, from the south and southwest and not from big
urban areas. And by and large from anti-union areas.
DZ: Why was Curt Flood the player
who stepped forward to challenge the reserve clause?
MM: To me Flood epitomized the modern
player who began to think in terms of union, to ask questions
like "Why is baseball an exception to how labor is treated
in other industries? Why should we be treated like property?
Why should we agree to have a reserve clause?" Basic questions
that had gone unasked.
DZ: Was it related that it took a
Black player to challenge the reserve clause?
MM: It was definitely related. Black
and Latin players like Roberto Clemente were at the forefront.
This was not just the color of their skin. Flood for example
did not grow up in the south. He grew up in Oakland California.
He was an outstanding High School athlete, he was drafted to
play in the majors and was promptly sent to the south. He wasn't
old, but he wasn't a child. What I am about to say is not a fact
but I have always felt that when a player of his temperament
and pride was sent to the south not being able to stay in the
same hotels and motels, playing in Georgia and Mississippi, I
think it made a very big difference in his outlook on the world
DZ: How did Curt Flood come to decide
to file this lawsuit?
MM: Curt Flood came to me to discuss
the possibility of a lawsuit and I thought that it was a losing
case, the chance of winning was terrible. How was he going to
finance it? I felt that he would indeed need help, and I was
concerned how easy it was to make bad law with a bad case--and
I felt the union should back him. And I began to lobby his case
with the executive board and since we were going to meet in early
December 1969 in San Juan, I arranged with Curt to have him come
to the meeting, and have Curt be questioned, and when it came
time to bring Curt in, I had already briefed him, and maybe some
of them knew Flood but not in this context. I brought him into
the board meeting and turned it over. And finally a board member
asked Curt, 'The motivation here: why are you doing this? Was
it--to attack the reserve clause to stop the owners from trading
a player where he didn't want to go? Or was this a sign of 'black
power' and Curt looked at him and said 'I wish it was" but
we are dealing with an issue that affects every player. Color
has nothing to do it. We are all pieces of property.
DZ: Does Curt Flood belong in the
Hall of Fame?
MM: Absolutely. No doubt about it.
DZ: Is there still a need for a strong
union?
MM: YES! I have seen good conditions
go bad. I think in labor management relations there is no such
thing as standing still. You either move foreword or you go back.
There is no standing still. Are salaries wonderful? Yeah but
we must remember that it is unity and solidarity and the struggles
of the past that made them successful. There is no guarantee
that this will continue. And without a union as successful as
it has been, I would predict a downward spiral. The labor movement
never stands still.
For more information on Marvin Miller,
visit http://www.baseballlibrary.com
Dave Zirin
is the News Editor of the Prince George's Post, Prince George's
County's only black-owned paper. He can be reached at editor@pgpost.com.
He also is launching www.edgeofsports.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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