This Was the Week That was
March 8 – 14, #44

Howard J. Ehrlich


There’s no government like no government department..... Putin’s back, Aristide and Roh
are gone. President Roh Moo Hyuan of South Korea was impeached by the opposition-
dominated parliament after one year in office. It is too soon to know the full implications of this,
but the process and protest demonstrations have been relatively peaceful. Aristide’s departure
from Haiti, with a little help from his American friends, was the 15th change of governments in
18 years. The process was violent and insurrectionary. A socialist government was ousted in
Greece and elected in Spain. The Shrub administration in its irrational regard for Cuba stopped
about 70 American medical scientists from attending the Fourth International Symposium on
Coma and Death which was scheduled this week in Havana.

On the American front in Iraq....Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress,
according to a New York Times report, receive payments of $340,000 a month for supplying
“intelligence” to the US. According to the Times source in the Pentagon, “little of this
information...had any value.”

The big payoffs seem to be going to Halliburton. The company has received $5.8 billion
in federal contracts for its services in the Iraqi war. According to Rep. Henry Waxman of the
House Government Reform Committee, Halliburton has provided distorted and inaccurate
information about its services. Their contracts, Waxman noted, were marked by “waste, fraud
and abuse.” (Knight Ridder/Tribune)

Pass the potatoes.....Dr. Ali Mokdad and his associates reported in the current Journal of
the American Medical Association on the leading causes of death in the US in 2000. The three
leading causes were mainly preventable: tobacco (18% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical
inactivity (17%), and alcohol consumption (4%).

The reactor with a hole in its head......About one-and-one half-years ago, the Davis-Besse
nuclear power plant–southeast of Toledo and bordering Lake Erie–was shut down. It had almost
breeched its containment with only an estimated one-sixteenth of an inch of stainless steel
holding back a loss of coolant and a major death-dealing accident. This week the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission announced it will allow the plant to reopen under the same management
saying that they had “reasonable assurance” that the plant would be safe. (New York Times;
plant details at www.ucsusa.org)

On the Maryland scene.....According to The Sun, 460 patients at Maryland general
Hospital, most of whom were tested for HIV and Hepatitis C, may have been given erroneous
reports during a 14-month period ending August 2003. Lab workers apparently had failed to
follow the specs for the test equipment on a regular basis. At times, they changed the numbers
sending wrong reports to patients.
Poll watch.....The Gallup Organization presented a series of polls involving 3,029 adult
Americans who were asked about their political orientation. The responses: 16% say they are
liberal on economic issues while 24% call themselves liberal on social issues. Only 10%
consider themselves liberal on both social and economic issues. Not surprisingly, the Shrubbery
have already begun to attack Kerry as a “liberal.”

This week in history......Although International Woman’s Day goes back to 1909, it had its
current rebirth on March 8, 1967 by the actions of women students in Chicago. This week also
marked the anniversary of the famous “Bread and Roses” strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts led
by Jewish and Italian women and the IWW. Eugene Debs called it the most decisive strike “ever
won by organized workers.”