Whole Foods: The Wal-Mart of Natural Foods

I've always felt my money is better spent at a local food co-op than at Whole Foods, but my evidence was always anecdotal, gleaned from friends employed at natural foods markets: Whole Foods has national buying so store managers can't customize their product offerings to best serve their specific community. They're a huge 143-store chain, not local, not worker-owned, not cooperative. They have their own NASDAQ symbol. But add to that list this verified fact: they're fiercely anti-union.

According to The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, Whole Foods "has one of the most fiercely anti-union records of any retail conglomerate this side of Wal-Mart" and its CEO is "an old-school corporatist so determined to deny workers' rights and representation that he pens pamphlets, including one titled 'Beyond Unions,' that celebrate the anti-worker extremism of Ronald Reagan's economic guru: Milton Friedman." Since WF employees in Madison voted to become the nation's first unionized Whole Foods last year, management has done everything to stifle worker rights, from delaying negotiations to firing pro-union workers. It's happening across the country, according to WholeWorkersUnite.org: in Falls Church, Virginia, union organizers at a WF store have allegedly been illegally fired, surveilled, intimidated, polled, and physically assaulted. All this despite Whole Foods' core values that state the opposite: "community citizenship," "shared fate," "empowering work environments," and "integrity in all business dealings." Another core value that made me look twice--Stewardship. They don't use the familiar definition of nurturing sustainability in work and natural environments. Instead, they define the term this way: "We are stewards of our shareholders' investments and we take that responsibility very seriously." Apparently.

Mailer on war and the white male ego

Norman Mailer ponders why we really went to war in an excellent TimesOnline (UK) commentary: the white male ego has been taking a beating for 30 years, as the women's movement has made great strides and minorities have taken over most sports. White boys needed a boost. And who better to lead us than George W. Bush:

Be it said: the motives that lead to a nation’s major historical acts can probably rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of its leadership. While George W. may not know as much as he believes he knows about the dispositions of God’s blessing, he is driving us at high speed all the same. He is more of a white male by at least an order of magnitude than any other boyo in America, yes, we have this man at the wheel whose most legitimate boast might be that he knew how to parlay the part-ownership of a major-league baseball team into a gubernatorial win in Texas. And — shall we ever forget? — was catapulted, thereafter, into a mighty hymn: All Hail to the Chief!

Headlines

What ever happened to the fiscal conservative? The federal government will default on the national debt next month unless Congress raises its borrowing authority--now capped at an all-time high of $6.4 trillion. (As Hesiod blogs, Why is it that everything George W. Bush runs eventually goes bankrupt?) Still, Bush plows ahead with his campaign to sell tax cuts: he's one vote away from approving a $550 billion tax cut.

US fires on, kills more Iraqis:Two more Iraqis are killed and 14 injured as--just a day after American troops fired on a crowd of protesters killing 13--gunfire continues in Baghdad.

Hatemongers for Peace!The White House has nominated Daniel Pipes--often described as a "Muslim basher and Islamophobe" who has claimed that up to "15% of Muslims are potential killers" and that “Western...societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples...maintaining different standards of hygiene”--to the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Click here to learn more.

Dixie Chicks rise. You wouldn't guess it reading the anti-dissent harangues in the mainstream media about the Dixie Chicks, but this country band is still at the top of the charts (#3 on Billboard's country charts) and has sold out all but one of its 59-venue world tour. As Michael Moore, whose book "Stupid White Men" is still at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list after he made anti-Bush/anti-war statements at the Oscars, proves, we need not fear the free-speech "backlash."

Don't eat the lettuce. Two news studies have found rocket fuel residue in the nation's lettuce crops; the Bush administration's response: put a gag order on the EPA so they can't discuss it, and propose a bill in Congress "that would effectively exempt the Pentagon and defense industry from much of their potential liability for perchlorate cleanup."

Krugman!

Inimitable Times columnist/economist Paul Krugman, in a must-read commentary, asks:

Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions — not just about Iraq, but about ourselves.

First, why is our compassion so selective? In 2001 the World Health Organization — the same organization we now count on to protect us from SARS — called for a program to fight infectious diseases in poor countries, arguing that it would save the lives of millions of people every year. The U.S. share of the expenses would have been about $10 billion per year — a small fraction of what we will spend on war and occupation. Yet the Bush administration contemptuously dismissed the proposal.

Or consider one of America's first major postwar acts of diplomacy: blocking a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Ivory Coast (a former French colony) to enforce a truce in a vicious civil war. The U.S. complains that it will cost too much. And that must be true — we wouldn't let innocent people die just to spite the French, would we?

Read it all.

Pro-Israel Spin

From EI:

The Electronic Intifada has obtained, and today publishes in full, a document prepared for pro-Israel activists by the public relations firm The Luntz Research Companies and The Israel Project. The document spells out the tactics that Israel and its US advocates should use to maintain support for Israel and its hardline policies.

The document, entitled "Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003," counsels pro-Israel advocates to keep invoking the name of Saddam Hussein, and to stress that Israel "was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people." Despite his solid support for Israel and Ariel Sharon, the document warns pro-Israel advocates not to compliment or praise President Bush. At the same time it acknowledges that Yasser Arafat has been a great asset to Israel because "he looks the part" of a "terrorist." The installation of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister, and potential replacement for Arafat, comes "at the wrong time," because he has the potential to improve the image of the Palestinians, and that could put the onus on Israel to return to negotiations. The document advises supporters of Israel to appear to affect a "balanced" tone, but admits that in arguing for Israel's policies, the illegal "settlements are our Achilles heel," for which there is no good defense.

US war crimes in Iraq

A Brussels-based lawyer, acting on behalf of 10 Iraqis who witnessed atrocities by US troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom, is filing a war-crimes complaint against Gen. Tommy Franks in Belgian court.

In related news, US troops fire on anti-occupation protesters in Baghdad killing 13, including three boys under age 11.

Lying their way to Baghdad

The Independent reports that the road to war was paved with lies: plagiarism, tips from unnamed Iraqi "defectors," distorted intelligence briefings by the Bush administration, and info obtained from Iraqis who receive Pentagon paychecks.

Something hopeful

The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, writes about science and mindfulness in the Sunday New York Times:

The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too.

The other pentagon

Introducing the cast of neoconservative characters that have hijacked the White House, Michael Lind of The New Statesman writes that these "neo-con defense intellectuals" are at the "center of a metaphorical 'pentagon' of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think-tanks, foundations and media empires": conservative thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute; the Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; the Christian right; radical right media run by Rupert Murdoch (Fox News and The Weekly Standard), Conrad Black (The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, and Canada's Hollinger group), and Reverend Sun Myung Moon (UPI, The Washington Times), etc. A frightening article, because it suggests that the current reign in Washington is about something far more nefarious than oil, Bush, or capitalism. Read Lind's "The Weird Men Behind George W Bush's War."

Bush's grand ambition, and the Left's response

William Greider writes that Bush and Co. want to return to McKinley-era values of government:

Bush's governing strength is anchored in the long, hard-driving movement of the right that now owns all three branches of the federal government. Its unified ranks allow him to govern aggressively, despite slender GOP majorities in the House and Senate and the public's general indifference to the right's domestic program.

The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

* * *

Constructing an effective response requires a politics that goes right at the ideology, translates the meaning of Bush's governing agenda, lays out the implications for society and argues unabashedly for a more positive, inclusive, forward-looking vision. No need for scaremongering attacks; stick to the well-known facts. Pose some big questions: Do Americans want to get rid of the income tax altogether and its longstanding premise that the affluent should pay higher rates than the humble? For that matter, do Americans think capital incomes should be excused completely from taxation while labor incomes are taxed more heavily, perhaps through a stiff national sales tax? Do people want to give up on the concept of the "common school"--one of America's distinctive achievements? Should property rights be given precedence over human rights or society's need to protect nature? The recent battles over Social Security privatization are instructive: When the labor-left mounted a serious ideological rebuttal, well documented in fact and reason, Republicans scurried away from the issue (though they will doubtless try again).

To make this case convincing, however, the opposition must first have a coherent vision of its own. The Democratic Party, alas, is accustomed to playing defense and has become wary of "the vision thing," as Dubya's father called it. Most elected Democrats, I think, now see their role as managerial rather than big reform, and fear that even talking about ideology will stick them with the right's demon label: "liberal." If a new understanding of progressive purpose does get formed, one that connects to social reality and describes a more promising future, the vision will not originate in Washington but among those who see realities up close and are struggling now to change things on the ground. We are a very wealthy (and brutally powerful) nation, so why do people experience so much stress and confinement in their lives, a sense of loss and failure? The answers, I suggest, will lead to a new formulation of what progressives want.

The first place to inquire is not the failures of government but the malformed power relationships of American capitalism--the terms of employment that reduce many workers to powerless digits, the closely held decisions of finance capital that shape our society, the waste and destruction embedded in our system of mass consumption and production. The goal is, like the right's, to create greater self-fulfillment but as broadly as possible. Self-reliance and individualism can be made meaningful for all only by first reviving the power of collective action.

White House: War had nothing to do with WMD

After spooking Americans about Iraq's "likely" possession of weapons of mass destruction, the White House now admits nukes and bioterror agents had very little to do with it:

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

On March 17, here's what our "not lying" president had to say: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Anti-UN efforts

The anti-interventionist, neoconservative online publication The Federalist is sending around an e-mail petition calling for US withdrawal from the UN:

Date: 4/25/03 10:46 AM
From: The Federalist

(Please forward this invitation to fellow American patriots, especially families and friends of our armed forces.)

Terminate U.S. Membership in the UN

PatriotPetitions.US, the nation's leading public opinion advocate for U.S. national security and sovereignty, has released its newest campaign entreating President George Bush, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist "to terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, terminate any and all U.S. taxpayer funded support for the UN, and prohibit American Armed Forces from serving under the command of the United Nations anywhere in the world."

Something rotten in Baghdad?

How come Saddam didn't blow up any bridges, use any of his many airplanes, set major oil fires, or utilize the countless tanks, rounds of ammo and armored vehicles he had at his disposal? And how come the looters at the museum of antiquities had keys? How come every attempt to kill Saddam missed, but just barely? Sam Hamod says there's something fishy about this war: did Bush and Saddam cut a deal?

Regime-change playing cards

You've seen the Pentagton's deck of cards bearing the visages of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis, now check out the Trade Regulation Organization's "regime-change" deck featuring images of Dick Cheney, Tom Ridge, George Bush and others. Brought to you by the good people at gatt.org (the fake WTO website run by The Yes Men).

What's black and white and read (white and blue) all over?

Warning the British press of the dangers of becoming Americanised, BBC director general Greg Dyke laid into the American media for its "gung-ho" war coverage, warning that the U.S. has "no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against" the White House and Pentagon:

Personally, I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war... I think compared to the United States we see impartiality as giving a range of views, including those critical of our own Government's position. I think in the United States, particularly since 11 September, that would be seen as unpatriotic.

Of the US radio empire Clear Channel, he added:

We were genuinely shocked when we discovered that the largest radio group in the US was using its airwaves to organise pro-war rallies. We are even more shocked to discover that the same group wants to become a big player in radio in the UK.

Real life at Sinclair

Bryan Moore writes in response to my AlterNet story on Sinclair Broadcast Group:

I worked for Fox 22 in Raleigh, NC when Sinclair took over. They basically tore apart a credible and wonderful news organization and left it in shambles. A once thriving newsroom of some 40 people is now down to about 10. When Sinclair came in one of the first things they did was fire the Community Affairs Director and replace her Sunday morning public affairs show with an infomercial...

I hate what they've done to local news and I hate that the FCC seems to be fine with it all. The funniest thing is watching the "local" News Central weather person in Raleigh consistently mis-pronounce the names of the cities she's forecasting for. It's a joke and I hope people will realize it and turn it off.

The Fate of Local News

My story on "centralized news," media deregulation, and the death of the hometown news team is now online at AlterNet:

Tune into the evening news on Madison, Wisconsin's Fox TV affiliate and behold the future of local news. In the program's concluding segment, "The Point," Mark Hyman rants against peace activists ("wack-jobs"), the French ("cheese-eating surrender monkeys"), progressives ("loony left") and the so-called liberal media, usually referred to as the "hate-America crowd" or the "Axis of Drivel." Colorful, if creatively anemic, this is TV's version of talk radio, with the precisely tanned Hyman playing a second-string Limbaugh.

Fox 47's right-wing rants may be the future of hometown news, but – believe it or not – it's not the program's blatant ideological bias that is most worrisome. Here's the real problem: Hyman isn't the station manager, a local crank, or even a journalist. He is the Vice President of Corporate Communications for the station's owner, the Sinclair Broadcast Group. And this segment of the local news isn't exactly local. Hyman's commentary is piped in from the home office in Baltimore, MD, and mixed in with locally-produced news. Sinclair aptly calls its innovative strategy "NewsCentral" - it is very likely to spell the demise of local news as we know it.

Read the full story.

Men in Green

If Cheney can get rich off the Iraq war, why can't American GIs? Four members of the 4th Battalion of the 64th Armored Division got busted for trying to pocket nearly $1 million of the $700 million in cash found hidden on the grounds of several estates in Baghdad.

Some good news...

While the US government was so boneheaded (or, as some argue, devious) as to not prevent looting of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts from the Iraq National Museum, Iraq wasn't so dumb. According to The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov, the museum had the foresight to hide key treasures, including the kings' graves of Ur and the Assyrian bulls, in safe vaults. While ancient manuscripts were destroyed at the Iraq National Library and countless important objects were looted from the museum ("the sacral vase of Warqa, from Sumerian times, and the bronze statue of Basitqi, from the Accadian civilization"), it's heartening to know that some of the antiquities were spared.

Some bad news...

How low will Bush and Co. stoop to win the next election? Try leveraging grief around the 3rd anniversary of September 11th, for one. Especially appalling: they admit it freely.

President Bush's advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party's history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White
House say.

In addition, Mr. Bush's advisers say they are prepared to spend as much as $200 million Ð twice the amount of his first campaign Ð to finance television advertising and other campaign expenses through the primary season that leads up to the Republican convention in September 2004. That would be a record amount by a presidential candidate, and would be especially notable because Mr. Bush faces no serious opposition for his party's nomination.

The president is planning a sprint of a campaign that would start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, a speech now set for Sept. 2.

The convention, to be held in New York City, will be the latest since the Republican Party was founded in 1856, and Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a general election campaign that is being built around national security and Mr. Bush's role in combatting terrorism, Republicans said. Not incidentally, they said they hoped it would deprive the Democratic nominee of critical news coverage during the opening weeks of the general election campaign.

Read the full story.

Copycat Republicans

The grassroots website BetterMinnesota.org prominently features a quote by Republican former governor Elmer Andersen: "Taxes are the way people join hands to get good things done. That's the tradition of Minnesota." The Star Tribune's Doug Grow reports that the state's modern-day Republicans aren't so communal in their opinions on taxes. Created to provide an alternative to the harsh service-gutting "no new tax" budget of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, BetterMinnesota.org has some competition. Click on BetterMinnesota.com and you're directed to a Republican website on "DFL Budget Games" that bashes the viewpoints of those who are, as their lawn signs say, "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota." The state GOP communications director says of their copycat website, "We didn't want somebody hijacking the term 'betterminnesota.' We just wanted to expand the debate." As Grow writes, "It's odd how the GOP can 'expand' a debate."