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(04/25/06 4:00am)
"WE'LL EITHER colonize Iraq for thirty years and commit even more sins or leave now," Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski told me in a phone interview following her visit to the University. After serving in the military since 1978, Kwiatkowski feels betrayed by an administration that prioritizes neoconservative objectives over the informed advice of military personnel. She should: The war in Iraq is a gruesome reminder of the idiocy of subordinating military expertise to messianic ideology. As veterans from Remarque to Vonnegut have reminded us, that military expertise most frequently comes in the form of reluctance to create wars.
(04/03/06 4:00am)
CHARLOTTESVILLE voters will go to the polls on May 2 in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. As housing prices rise, one in four Charlottesville residents live below the federal poverty line, which grossly underestimates the cost of living. Economic stress on working class citizens makes the May 2 City Council elections particularly important. On May 2, Charlottesville voters should elect Democrats Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro. Because only two percent of University students turned out in the last City Council election, a boost in turnout this year could catapult Norris and Taliaferro to power.
(03/28/06 5:00am)
IMAGINE an upper-middle class home in the Victorian era. The woman and the man have their separate spheres: The woman manages domestic life, ensuring the draperies are not faded and the food does not become cool before the man sits down at the table. She makes few decisions throughout the day. Tomorrow the man may decide to sell the house and move to another city where a better job awaits.
(03/23/06 5:00am)
GEORGE W. Bush consciously misled Congress and the public during the propaganda campaign preceding the war against Iraq, Pentagon and CIA veterans told a University audience last Monday. Lt. Col. Karen Kiatkowski and Army veteran and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern visited the University to discuss the war against Iraq. McGovern and Kiatowski, accompanied by several peace activists, testified that the government for which they worked consciously fabricated lies in order to rationalize the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
(03/23/06 5:00am)
GEORGE W. Bush consciously misled Congress and the public during the propaganda campaign preceding the war against Iraq, Pentagon and CIA veterans told a University audience last Monday. Lt. Col. Karen Kiatkowski and Army veteran and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern visited the University to discuss the war against Iraq. McGovern and Kiatowski, accompanied by several peace activists, testified that the government for which they worked consciously fabricated lies in order to rationalize the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
(02/20/06 5:00am)
ALL THREE candidates for Student Council president support the three most important current student initiatives: the living wage, on-Grounds production of green energy, and purchase of renewable energy credits. However, based on responses to an e-mail questionnaire I sent to them, Greg Jackson and Sam White demonstrated that they would be more aggressive advocates for student interests. Jackson's record is impeccable; White's membership in the College Republicans is the only blemish on an otherwise stellar candidacy.
(02/15/06 5:00am)
"CAPITALISM has changed," said Jack Bogle, "and it has not changed for the better." Bogle, founder and former CEO of one of the two largest mutual funds on earth, visited the University last Wednesday to warn about an impending crisis for capitalism. While he correctly identified the erosion of social norms that formerly mitigated the negative effects of capitalism, he failed to recognize that the problems he identifies are systemic. While those problems can be alleviated with liberal government intervention and powerful social norms, structural reform is a precondition for actually solving the problems Bogle identified.
(02/08/06 5:00am)
IN 1912 coal miners in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek fields of the Kanawha coal district went on strike for company recognition of the union. Coal operators responded by hiring paramilitary private guards from the Baldwin Felts company, which had a record of murdering miners and their families. When the usual Baldwin Felts terror failed to break the strikers' will, the coal operators outfitted a train dubbed the "Bull Moose Special" with armor and drove it past miner housing, guns blazing, killing miners as well as their wives and children.
(02/01/06 5:00am)
IN A distant nation the ruling party's corruption added to the misery of the impoverishedpopulace. This nation's leader won the praise of international elites who fund the state that is systematically exterminating the citizens of his own country. While the ruler has been sipping cocktails with the genocidal international elites, a minority party provided social services that were increasingly important as the people found themselves fenced off from their water sources and family farms.
(01/25/06 5:00am)
THIS PAST Sunday, Evo Morales was inaugurated as the first indigenous president in Bolivian history. Sixty percent of Bolivians are indigenous, mostly of Aymaran or Quechuan descent. His election represents a possible transition from a merely formal democracy in Bolivia to a functional democracy. This transition would not have been possible if tens of thousands of Bolivian citizens had not blockaded nearly every major road in the country this past summer. The Bolivian majority imposed its will through force, and only then was able to express itself peacefully through free elections. When the working people's interests are not represented in so-called democracies, it is incumbent upon the working people to impose our will on the elite and create a government that is truly representative.
(11/30/05 5:00am)
TWO DAYS before Thanksgiving the University administration fired Dena Bowers, senior recruiter of Human Resources, based on an e-mail Bowers sent to one colleague of hers on Oct. 11. The pink slip Bowers received states she was fired because she "knowingly used her University title in conjunction with a dissemination of information by use of her U.Va. email account." The dismissal notice also stated that Bowers "collaborated in the further dissemination" of the information in the email. This is incorrect, according to Jan Cornell, President of the Staff Union of U.Va. Given the administration's disproportionately severe punishment for a minor infraction and its allegedly inaccurate accusations about collaboration in further "dissemination of information," it is more likely that the administration seized upon Bowers' minor indiscretion in order to eliminate one of the principal staff critics of "charter," and a longtime proponent of workers' rights at the University.
(11/16/05 5:00am)
OUR TUITION dollars may be invested in corporations that do business with Sudan's genocidal government. We don't know if they are or not, because the administration and the University of Virginia Investment Management Corporation (UVIMCO) won't disclose the companies in which our money is invested. As students who pay tuition, we have the right to know in what our money is invested and to demand that it not be invested in companies that do business with genocidal governments. This is the problem with investing in companies that contract with the Sudanese government: Gulf Oil, for instance, pays the Sudanese government for the right to drill for oil. The government uses that money to bomb villages and arm the Janjaweed, a paramilitary force. With that money the government buys weapons from Russia and China to slaughter its citizens. Some of our tuition dollars may be among the $91 billion U.S. dollars invested in the genocide. Incredibly, because of the absolute absence of transparency in the administration and in the University's investment management company, there is no way to be certain.
(11/02/05 5:00am)
LAST WEEK I wrote that working-class citizens need to fight back in today's environment of class war. "How can they?" is a question that necessarily follows, and it is a challenging one when there are few apparent opportunities for economic transformation and the two dominant national political parties appear uninterested in economic reform. Fortunately, with the cooperation of local government bodies, who can be more responsive to local communities than national representatives, we can begin to transform our economy ourselves, by opening worker-owned and -managed cooperatives.
(10/26/05 4:00am)
FOR THE first time in recorded history, U.S. household incomes did not rise for the fifth year in a row, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, the poverty rate increased for the fourth straight year, to 12.7 percent. Median household income is at its lowest level, adjusted for inflation, since 1997. In the past year, median full-time wages fell two percent for males and one percent for females. Total income would have fallen except that cash-strapped workers compensated for falling wages by working more hours. Sensing the enemy's moment of weakness, the Republican junta now declares war on the American working classes.
(10/19/05 4:00am)
WE ARE all familiar with the history of western civilization. The Greeks invented democracy, and possibly reason itself. Standing on Greek shoulders, the Enlightenment thinkers contributed civil rights principles and the foundations of capitalism. America institutionalized these ideals in Constitutional government. Because we place ourselves within this historical lineage, we are unable to analyze it from without. Moreover, because by definition the western tradition is morally right, current societal problems we encounter can not be problems with the system but rather threats to the system. Thus, we are unable to understand the systemic nature of racism in our community or U.S. torture in the Middle East.
(10/12/05 4:00am)
IN A TUESDAY article about escalating violence in Baghdad's Green Zone, The New York Times continued to use the term "insurgent" to describe individuals who resist the U.S. and British occupation. Although there have been countless Bush administration speeches and press releases as well as media articles and editorials reporting "insurgent" attacks, the use of "insurgent" remains newsworthy as a propaganda phenomenon and as a barometer of popular support for our invasion of Iraq.
(10/05/05 4:00am)
THE POPULATION of Albemarle County grew from 30,000 in 1960 to nearly 80,000 in 2000. Because the Board of Supervisors has managed that growth much more responsibly than in many other counties in Virginia; we aren't living in a diminutive Loudoun County. With the exception of the 29 corridor, Albemarle is still a rural county. But with smart growth advocate Dave Bowerman retiring from his Rio District seat after 17 years of service to the county, Albemarle's rural legacy is in jeopardy.
(09/28/05 4:00am)
LAST WEEK University President John T. Casteen, III sent a letter to faculty members deploring recent racist slurs and graffiti. He condemned the racist acts in the strongest of language and suggested it would be appropriate to use class time to address the incidents.
(09/21/05 4:00am)
SINCE entering the Virginia House of Delegates in 2002, Rob Bell, (R) who represents all of Greene and parts of Albemarle, Fluvanna and Orange Counties, has consistently prioritized tax cuts at the expense of the University and our community. In 2004, Bell fought the tax reform package that eventually restored millions of dollars of University funding and nearly closed the base adequacy funding gap. During the last session, Bell championed "charter" legislation that could have sent tuition soaring to "market rates" while cutting employee pay and benefits. Bell's priorities represent a danger to the University, and we are fortunate to have Democrat Steve Koleszar challenging Bell this fall.
(09/14/05 4:00am)
BECAUSE of the rapid activist response to racial slurs and graffiti, it is clear that the University community will not tolerate this sort of bigotry. We have responded appropriately, as we must. However, we have expressed no such unified outrage to the working conditions of University employees, whose low pay is as serious a threat to an inclusive community as yelled insults. Currently, many University employees do not earn enough money to pay for child care or health care because the University administration refuses to set a minimum "living wage" for all direct and contract University employees. Because the staff receiving these poverty wages is disproportionately black and female, according to the University's own studies such as the Muddy Floor Report (which addresses racial income disparities) and current University employment data, this represents structural, de facto bigotry.