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Recent
Stories
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
July
17, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the
United States Has to Stand Naked
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance
Martin
Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation
Watchdogs
Heidi
Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced
Drugging and the Supreme Court
Norman
Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance
Conference
Pankaj
Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Hammond
Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited
Website
of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism
July
16, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
Dubious Uranium Claims
William
Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down
Elaine
Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
Must Not Be Obeyed
Jason
Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?
Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
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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July
22, 2003
The Greens Go to Washington
Greening the
Golden Triangle
By SAM SMITH
The Greens have gone home, returning the lobby
of the Mayflower Hotel to visiting corporate campaign contributors,
lawyers in town to consult with other lawyers, and tourists
who consider the Washington Hilton too déclassé.
The Mayflower brags that it is the "second
best address in Washington, D.C." The four-star, four-diamond
hotel has hosted presidential inaugural balls from Calvin Coolidge
to George W. Bush. It claims that "guest rooms and suites
feature opulent marble foyers and classic furnishings. Fine
touches include marble baths with phones and four-inch TVs,
complimentary overnight shoe shine, and morning newspaper and
coffee with a wake-up call."
The Mayflower is in a lawyer-lobbyist
heavy section of Washington appropriately known as the Golden
Triangle. The Golden Triangle is to politicians what Wal-Mart
is to Pampers. You go there to buy them cheap.
It's not that the Greens or the Mayflower
have gone soft, but it is a union hotel and in the wake of the
9/11, even besloganed t-shirts and beards look good to Washington
hoteliers. Thus it was last weekend that the national Green
Party conference gave the archaic elegance of the hotel something
of the visual asymmetry of GIs rummaging through Saddam's palace.
It was, to be sure, a far gentler, nobler, and more benign invasion,
yet still a reminder that things can change here as well.
It shouldn't be that much of a surprise.
Like a lot of other sacred traditions in the United States ranging
from major corporations to Arthur Anderson and the Catholic
Church, the two old parties are disintegrating into perversely
corrupt parodies of themselves. The Greens and the Libertarians
have become the two largest political parties in the country
without a criminal record. And the Green Party, unlike most
others, is also growing, reflecting the increase in those who
have noticed that it alone views the future as something to
protect and improve rather than to exploit viciously or treat
as a toy in an ultimately terminal game of ecological Russian
roulette. Other straws in the wind include the fact that even
Alabama now has a Green Party, the conference approved funding
efforts to recruit amongst black Democrats, and in California
Green Peter Camejo has a respectable 8% in the Field post-recall
poll, running only 12 points behind Arnold Schwartzenegger.
Greens tend to take their beliefs seriously
and not as bargaining chips to be traded for short-term gain.
This puts them outside of the mainstream of American politics
and can even be sometime exasperating for those who love them.
There are times when you yearn for the moral pragmatism, say,
of the mythical Quaker lady who confronted the robber in her
house with the words, "I do not intend to shoot thee, but
thee is standing where my gun is about to go off."
If you listen to Greens debating strategy
it becomes clear that they don't believe in it. Their strategy
is simply to be who they are, a sort of WYSIWYG politics that
drives more traditional politicians and much of the media to
distraction.
It can also be a problem for Greens because
most groups that venerate personal moral witness typically do
not, at the same time, run for president. They tend to avoid
the secular heights in favor of spreading the word among the
multitudes. They're not the sort of people you generally find
planning mass mailings.
But the moral individual can't run from
ambiguity and it was clear that the Greens had no intention
of doing so, cheerfully and vigorously declaring their enthusiasm
for another presidential race.
For several years they have been falsely
blamed for the election of George Bush by Democrats in deep
denial, much like a drunk driver blaming his accident on a curve
in the road. In fact, significantly more Democrats voted for
Bush than for Nader, an examination of changes in late polls
fails to show a correlation between the Nader and Gore vote,
and Gore was such a lousy candidate he couldn't even carry
his own state. There is further the carefully unspoken truth
that the Democratic Party went into the campaign still defending
a president who had become a late night TV joke for his dishonesty
and corruption and who had overseen the disintegration of his
own party's electoral position to a degree unknown since Grover
Cleveland.
But Washington is a town run by myths,
not facts--so much so that a silly NPR reporter at the Green
conference even implied that Nader was to blame for the Patriot
Act. Not only did this ignore the strong Democratic support
for the Patriot Act, it overlooked the fact that the voters
brought out by Greens in 2000 gave the Democrats the Senate
for two years until the next election when--with Nader nowhere
around--they blew it.
Still, regardless of the mythical nature
of the Democratic argument, it undoubtedly is out there, potent,
and unlikely to go away. Thus, the Greens enter the next presidential
campaign hampered not only by their actual political weakness
but by an overarching lie that they are simultaneously too strong
and dangerous.
Ironically, the real danger in this falsity
is not at the presidential level, but rather that those independents
and Democrats who might otherwise be willing to vote Green at
the state and local level will come to believe it and punish
the Greens wherever they are on the ballot. At least one leading
Green told me he thought this may have even happened in 2000.
The question that thus remains unanswered
is this: in what way will the Greens come out of the 2004 presidential
race stronger than when they went in? It certainly happened
in 2000, but a lot of things have changed. Will the Greens end
up with new power or a permanent stigmata?
While there is no real debate going on
as to whether to run a candidate, there is considerable question
of who and how to run. Ralph Nader, who did not attend the conference,
finds himself being challenged by more than one alternative
on both individual and tactical grounds. Nader has lost support
in some quarters by not joining the Green Party, being aloof
from its operations, and not sharing his mailing lists. He points
out, on the other hand, that he has appeared regularly with
Green candidates, raised money for them including attending
44 fundraisers in 30 states.
He clearly has support but there is also
ecological expert Lorna Saltzman; Carol Miller, who did extremely
well as a candidate in New Mexico, running as a favorite daughter;
a draft movement for popular activist Medea Benjamin; and stereotype-busting
party lawyer David Cobb, clearly genetically and grammatically
Texan, proposing an organic Green candidacy with a safe states
strategy in which he would run all out if Lieberman got the
nomination but restrict his efforts to the less contested states
should a more moderate Democrat be nominated.
Cobb's approach was easily the most sophisticated
proposed during the weekend conference. It leaves lots of room
to adjust to changing reality while emphasizing party building.
But the party convention is a year off and the debate between
the various candidates will undoubtedly also be a debate about
how the final candidate should run. If Nader were to adopt the
safe states strategy it could lessen Cobb's raison d'etre. On
the other hand, New Mexico favorite daughter Carole Miller is
a favorite plenty of places outside of the state, Cynthia McKinney
has not decided what to do, and if the war becomes increasingly
discredited, the arguments for Medea Benjamin increase.
Ultimately, and right up to election
day, the states-- ironically thanks to a court ruling during
Strom Thurmond's third party try--have a lot of flexibility
in deciding what happens. In the end, there may not be one Green
strategy at all, but several.
The Democrats might have had more luck
with the Greens had they not spend the past three years scolding,
dissing, and attempting to eradicate them. The Greens are the
only constituency in America whom the Democrats believe they
can convince by insult. I have frequently told censorious Democratic
friends that if they want my support they need to treat me at
least as well as a soccer mom or a corporate lobbyist. They
look befuddled, unable to comprehend why someone they chased
out of their party doesn't want to beg readmittance.
They believe, along with the media, that
the Greens are just wayward Democrats. In fact, the dominant
paradigm of the Democratic Party is far closer to that of the
Republicans that that of the Greens. Further, the Democrats
have spent the last decade in a masochistic effort to convince
people that they were really just nicer Republicans, expanding
the prison population and undermining social democracy to prove
it. They should not be surprised if those whom they convinced
included many Greens.
In the alternative, over the past three
years, the Democrats could have instituted instant runoff voting
in jurisdictions they control (thus eliminating the sort of
mess they ran into in Florida). They could have relaxed ballot
access laws so that Greens don't have to run for president just
to have a line. And they could have even, European fusion style,
offered the Greens state and national cabinet posts should
they win office.
None of that happen. Instead, when John
Eder won a seat in the Maine state legislature, the Democrats
not only redistricted him five months later but tried to increase
substantially the difficulty for the Greens to get on the ballot
at all. This sort of disreputable behavior is well known throughout
the Green Party--Eder was a speaker at the conference--and is
taken as a sign of the dangers of dealing with the Democrats.
Few things are more difficult in American
politics than the survival of strong third parties. The Greens
face two deeply corrupt yet clever major opponents dedicated
to preventing any erosion of their duopoly even if it means
the total eradication of a democratic republic. Every law is
stacked against the Greens; the media can't imagine why anyone
would want more than the two existing mobs; and increasing numbers
of Americans, disgusted by the whole thing, just stay home.
It is far too early to say whether the
Greens, in the face of these difficulties, will find a strategy
that doesn't prove masochistic for either themselves or the
country and that will make 2004 for them another year of progress.
One reason for this is that it is not clear what that strategy
should be. Further, many who presume to know what the Greens
should do also believe that it would be best if the Greens
went away entirely. This weakens the value of their advice.
Whether the Greens pull it off, one thing
is clear: they are trying, really trying, to do the right thing
for America and Americans. They're proud of their party and
proud of what they been able to do so far. And about how many
politicians and parties can you say that?
Sam Smith
is the editor of one of our favorite websites, The
Progressive Review, and the author of The
Great American Political Repair Manual. He lives in Washington,
DC.
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
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