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My abortion, their political ploy

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:36:00 +0000

Last month, while President Obama quietly signed an executive order reaffirming that no federal funds can be used for abortion, I was alone in bed, waking from a fitful, 18-hour sleep, if you can even call it that. There were dried and fresh tears on my face. I was wearing a Maxi-pad that felt like a diaper and was spotted with blood. My breasts were swollen, painful to the touch. The sharp cramps in my uterus were crippling and unrelenting. I was nauseated, dry-heaving despite an empty stomach, nearly incapable of taking the medication and antibiotics necessary to quell the pain and stave off infection.

The day before, on Tuesday, March 23, I had an abortion.

The procedure was not cheap, $450. A financially devastating sum for a freelance writer whose earning potential has been decimated by bloggers and budget cuts. I have health insurance. It's egregiously expensive, all that I can afford, with a high deductible that renders the plan useless unless I get hit by a bus. Filing for reimbursement was not an option.

“Last year, the police Maced the whole hallway”

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:10:00 +0000

On Sept. 24, Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old junior at Chicago’s Christian Fenger Academy, was beaten to death in a brawl near the high school. A cellphone video of the killing found its way to the Internet and was aired on news broadcasts around the world. The scenes of violence in the streets of Chicago were partly blamed for the city’s elimination in the first round of voting for the Olympics.

The fight that killed Derrion began as a dispute between boys from the Ville, the neighborhood surrounding Fenger, and Altgeld Gardens, the housing project where President Obama worked as a community organizer in the mid-1980s. Traditionally, students from Altgeld attended Carver High School, a five- to 10-minute walk away. The school is now a military academy, which draws students from all over the city and the suburbs. To make room, students from Altgeld were shifted to Fenger. That decision was made by Arne Duncan, who was then CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and is now Obama’s secretary of education.

Tehran dispatch: Basijis hang around, do nothing

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:03:00 +0000

And on the 13th day Michael Jackson died. Voice of America and BBC Persian are back up, if intermittently, and we crowd around like the rest of the world for the latest news. It is almost a relief. Being a full-time revolutionary is hard work, difficult to sustain. Seeing the non-stop coverage, the obvious distraction of his passing, we grimly joke that Michael was a martyr for the cause. At least he had the decency to delay his death until the worst violence had already passed.

Things are going back to their regular marks. In the afternoons the parks fill up again with old ladies and young couples. There's badminton and soccer for kids to play at night. Well-dressed men in jackets and dress pants exercise on the cardio equipment provided by the city. The scenes around the squares, lately the places of so much celebration and trouble, are almost back to normal. Traffic is back. A car flies towards Ariashahr Square, a young man with slicked back hair and aviator glasses leans out of the passenger window chest first. He removes his shades and turns his palms upwards, beseeching the ladies in the car next to him to pull over. Unimpressed, or maybe they're being coy, the girls pull away and race ahead of their pursuers. The two boys give chase. Cops and basijis hang around the circle but do nothing, what do they care...?

Tehran dispatch: The regime shows us movies

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:25:00 +0000

(For Neda.)

In Tehran, state television's Channel Two is putting on a "Lord of the Rings" marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it's two or three films a day. The message is "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Let's watch, forget about what's happened, never mind. Stop dwelling in the past. Look ahead.

Frodo: "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish that none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

On the news, it's more of the same. The state-run media is trying to tell us that life needs to go on, that politics is a nasty business, but now it's over. Except for that first night, the news broadcasts have not shied away from the violence outside. Instead they've found a way to turn it inside out, make it about the protesters and not the curious mathematics of the election. At least nothing is hidden or subtle. When they want to make a point they lay it on, 10 minutes at a time, sometimes close to 15. It's like a friend says -- this is not news, it's interpretation, spin.

Tehran dispatch: The crackdown

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:23:00 +0000

Saturday afternoon in Tehran. I come out of the Internet cafe and the first thing I see is the row of green and white police trucks lined up perpendicular to the square. In the square itself is an impressive sight: row after row of cops in riot gear. The four roads that lead in and out are marked at their corners by uniformed police wearing dark green. In the stone and grass plaza at the center of the square, a place where just a week ago Mousavi supporters had nightly gathered to chant and cheer, there are police in Robocop riot gear standing, waiting, looking, watching the perimeter of the traffic circle.

"Az enqelab mirisim be azadi!" "From Revolution we'll get to Freedom!" A kid in the Internet cafe had, minutes earlier, made a clever pun, referring to today's march from Revolution Square to Freedom Square. Saturday afternoon was to be a repeat of last Monday's massed millions but after the most recent Friday Prayers and the supreme leader's injunctions, the march had been called into doubt. Around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, there came word that another warning not to come had just been issued, that the regime's "patience" had run out. The kid was putting on a strong, defiant face.

Tehran dispatch: Remembering the fallen

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:20:00 +0000

The Metro Ride

The crowd pushes in. I think of those scenes from the Tokyo subway, where the officers with the white gloves squeeze and pack with all their might. On the Tehran Metro on Thursday afternoon, we are all arms, legs, elbows. Even for a country with no notion of personal space the compression on the train is incredible. Anyone who was in D.C. for Obama's inauguration will remember the scenes at the Capitol Hill metro stations. This tudeh, or mass, is as dense, maybe denser. These days every day is Inauguration Day in Tehran.

Someone in my packed car jokes, "Today Hashemi carries us to victory!" He's referring to the fact that the metro system, a notorious cash cow, a hole in the ground where money disappears, is run by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani's son.

Spirits are good. It's after 4 in the afternoon, cellphones are completely down, but everyone already knows where to go and what to do. Today we wear green and we wear black -- black for those who have died during the past week.

Tehran dispatch: Supreme Leader speaks

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:20:00 +0000

It is Friday prayers, and the venue is the open-air mosque at Tehran University, but the event looks more like the old Red Square May Day parades. All of Iran, watching in person, or on television, takes careful note of who is there, and who is not. Supreme Leader Khamanei is there, as is President Ahmadinejad as are Larajani and Haddad Adel. So is Mohsen Rezai, former commander of the Revolutionary Guard and one-time electoral foe of Ahmadinejad, sitting in the back of the VIP section. Karroubi, Mousavi, Rafsanjani and Khatami are not.

Supreme Leader Khamanei starts speaking. He emphasizes that difference in opinion, difference in program between candidates is normal, natural. But beware, he says, for months the enemy had been laying the groundwork to label these elections a fraud. "The enemies of Iran are targeting the Islamic establishment's legitimacy by questioning the election. ... After street protests, some foreign powers started to interfere." With the exception of the vote for the Islamic Republic in spring of 1979, Supreme Leader insists, this election was without rival. Iran represents a third way, between dictatorships and the false democracies of the rest of the world.

Dispatch from Tehran: Blood and defiance in Azadi Square

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:17:00 +0000

Monday afternoon in Tehran. Under slate skies and despite official warnings that the permit to march had been denied, against rumors that orders had been given to shoot to kill, they come. They come by the tens if not hundreds of thousands, marching east to west along the many kilometers of Enqelab Street to Azadi, or Freedom, Square. "It would be dishonorable, na mardi, to not go," a young couple explains. "We have to go." Another man asks, "Who is going? What is going on?" He is told that the "Mousavi-chiha" are marching starting at 4 p.m.. He laughs, "Mousavi-chiha nadarim, hame ye Iran hastand!" We don't have Mousavi supporters, he's saying, "it's now all of Iran...

That they are coming to Azadi, a place where 30 years ago the Revolution pivoted towards victory, was fitting, for as much as the election campaign had been about who best represented the revolutionary values of Iran, Islam, and the late Imam, the push and pull of the past few days between opposition and Ahmadinejad forces has been a struggle to lay claim to authenticity. Authenticity that lies in the imagined and lived past, places and practices of the Islamic Republic. It is as if whomever can get to the important places and rituals first and stay there, hang onto them, will win. So at night, beginning at 9 p.m., we hear shouts of "Allah Akbar!" from the rooftops, just like in the fall and winter of 1978-1979. We have marches to sacred spots like Azadi and appeals by all sides to the memory of Khomeini.

The street protests mount

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:16:00 +0000

Now, three days after the election, a pattern is emerging. There is unstructured protest on the streets beginning in the late afternoon. Then, at night, it escalates.

In my own apartment complex on Monday morning we were woken up to screams and shouts. Kids from the building and elsewhere had been engaging in political rock fights in the adjoining street and had run into the complex (a typical urban apartment "tower" found in almost all of the developing world). Families went out to the fire escape to look down to see what had happened. It turned out that special police had rushed into the complex, followed by "basijis" or paramilitary forces, basically thugs on motorbikes with helmets and batons. It also turned out that they had electric rods and, to the shock of many, machetes. Several people were wounded and taken away and much of the first floor and entrance of the complex was destroyed.

After two hours there was a dramatic standoff. The gate was locked, and the elders of the complex engaged in a heated discussion with representatives of the basiji forces. "If you're chasing after someone," asked the elders, "why have you come into our homes and beaten women and children? Why have you broken all of our glass and busted the windshields on the cars in the underground parking?" The basijis left. The elders had done their best to mediate, to speak rationally to resolve the problem. That is unlikely to last as the situation in Tehran becomes more and more about force.

Letter from Tehran: The day after

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:15:00 +0000

It's becoming increasingly clear that this was a palace coup, a palace coup in the style of Peru's Fujimori. The Guardian Council has to accept the election results. All eyes are now on Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has apparently just resigned as chairman of the Expediency Council. He was the sole member of the original "yaran" of Khomeini, or Khomeini's original team, with power and influence. Hossein Mousavi is under house arrest.

In the streets, the mood is incredibly tense and eminently explosive. In Vali Asr square Saturday afternoon, under darkening skies, crowds had gathered as well as cops. It was as if each side knew that a fight had to occur but were uncertain when to start. Cops made the first move by occasionally running into the crowd with batons swinging, telling them to leave the area. People would bolt then rush back, cat and mouse, cat and mouse. They weren't just running away, though. I personally witnessed a cop fall to the ground after he swung his baton. Immediately two young men jumped on top of him and began pounding on him, then ran away. Trash cans are being set on fire, folks are busting windows, chanting "death to the dictator." The chants have not yet escalated beyond this point -- the demand is that their vote be respected.

The State Department’s extreme makeover

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:22:00 +0000

Secretary of State Colin Powell is not staying for a second Bush term. When he goes, the last bulwark against complete neoconservative control of U.S. foreign policy goes with him. The implications are enormous, yet the American electorate appears to be blinded by the Bush campaign's deliberate manipulations of 9/11.

Powell has served both as the reasoned voice of career diplomats and the experienced voice of career U.S. military in the Bush administration. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored military advice and excluded Department of State career professionals from Iraq planning. Power was concentrated in the hands of a clique of neocon ideologues he placed in key policy positions, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In the first term of George W. Bush, protégés of now disgraced former Defense Policy Board member and neocon godfather Richard Perle achieved control or subordination of every executive branch foreign-policymaking body -- except the Department of State.

Impeachment diary II

Wed, 13 Jan 1999 20:00:00 +0000

Friday's historic bipartisan closed Senate caucus was by all accounts one of the few times in memory that senators put aside their egos and their press flacks and attempted to do the right thing for the American people. My boss, no simp, called it one of the greatest moments of his Senate career.

But as senators basked in the glow of bipartisan accommodation, most insiders knew it marked a pleasant calm before a storm of partisan warfare returns to Washington.

Senators who were friends on Friday are already plotting against one another. And this time, there doesn't seem much that can save either side. Friday, we were all on Noah's Ark singing happily, wearing our raincoats. But by Monday it was clear: This is one leaky boat, and there aren't any bipartisan life preservers.

The devil is in the details, they always say. Upon further reflection, both sides now have to view the details as a map to the river of no return. We should have known. When Ted Kennedy and Phil Gramm are crafting bipartisan treaties, the apocalypse is upon us.

Impeachment diary

Thu, 07 Jan 1999 20:00:00 +0000

From time to time during the impeachment trial, Salon will publish this impeachment diary by a senior aide to a U.S. senator who must remain anonymous.

Tuesday, Jan. 5

8 a.m.: Talk till you die

My boss gets a call from Sen. X, a well-known windbag who is pretending he has the clout to work a deal. Sen. X expounds on the virtues and history of the Senate, the chamber of honor and caution, aka the "talk till you die and still do nothing" chamber. Everybody knows that two-thirds of the Senate will not vote to remove the president. But in time-honored Senate tradition, we're going to talk about it until we bore to death every voter in America.

Sen. X, though, holds out some hope that right-thinking men like he and my boss can work out a deal to spare the country death-by-impeachment. Conversations like this are taking place all over the Senate. Sens. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., came up with a workable compromise to shorten a trial to just a few days and then have a preliminary vote to see, even if all the charges were proven, if there were enough votes to remove the president. If not, we'd move to a quick censure deal.