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Recent
Stories
June
16, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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June
16, 2003
Is The Choice Really
That Difficult?
Candidate
Dem and Citizen Green
By PUBLIUS
We're getting close enough to the 2004 race to
smell the grease that moves it, and the issue of the Greens
is starting to be raised. Looking back the question is did they
or didn't they? Looking forward the question is should they
or shouldn't they? Should the Greens run a Presidential candidate
in 2004?
Commentators are beginning to weigh in.
For example, Steve Perry of BushWars,
a popular Internet weblog, recently took a poll of his readers
on the "should they" question and found the responses,
at least to him, surprising. In analyzing the results, he makes
two points worth discussing:
"The shocking thing, to me at least,
is that so many people seem to want the Greens to run someone
despite the threat of inadvertently helping Bush. Right here,
right now, I find that stunning. I don't think there is any
overestimating the disgust that Americans from across the political
spectrum have for the Democratic party."
and
"The modern Democratic party is
a wretched and cynical Republican-Lite beast. I have never once
bought or sold the lesser evil shibboleth. But for once, "wretched
and cynical" probably is a genuinely lesser evil."
About the first point -- while he's right
about the disgust many people feel toward the Dems, it's important
to put that on a rational basis (as opposed to an emotional
one). Are these people disgusted at the Democrat's failure to
mount an effective opposition? Or is the problem the underlying
reason for this failure?
One could easily argue that the Dems
do most of the same damage that the Repubs do; it's just done
more covertly, under cover of a few media-spotlighted leftish
victories.
Clinton, for example, saved more trees
than Reagan or Bush, but he also gave us the 1996 Anti-Terrorism
Act, the beta bill that prepared the way for Patriot 1.0. (Clinton
in its defense: "We can't be so fixated on our desire to
preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.") That bill
creates, among other things, an un-Constitutional national police
force. Clinton also fathered the Telecommunications Reform Act,
which set the stage in radio for the coming consolidation of
all media. And of course, big western ranchers got the same
sweet deal under Clinton for grazing on federal land as they
always get -- but because he dines with the Sierra Club, these
and a host of similar questions never come up. (Dining with
the Sierras buys a lot of forget-and-forgive.)
And then there's NAFTA. That's Clinton,
the supposed not-Bush.
In fact, it almost doesn't matter who
the president is, so this argument goes. Ford and Kissinger
gave Sukarno the go-ahead in East Timor and Carter carried through.
Carter supported the Shah of Iran, and got his hat handed to
him by the Ayatollah. But that hat could have gone to any of
his recent predecessors. Kennedy was involved in the assassination
of Diem, our installed president of "South Vietnam,"
the state illegally created by Eisenhower. (Jackie was later
famously dissed by Diem's widow when her own husband was assassinated.)
And Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima
in August 1945, even though the Japanese had been trying to
surrender since May. His goal -- to send a "message"
to Stalin, if Gore Vidal is to be believed. Message received,
at least at Ground Zero.
So I would guess that the Greens are
asking themselves, what do I get when I get a Democrat? It's
a serious question for many of them, I suspect, one that isn't
well captured by the easy phrases "Republican-Lite"
and "disgust." Nothing Lite about what gets done under
the Dems. And calling the reaction "disgust" glosses
over the underlying serious arguments.
Which brings me to the second point,
the "lesser of two evils." It could easily be argued
that the Dems may be the greater evil.
Look at it this way -- the Repubs are
"out there" -- really and truly out there. And it
will be very hard for them to pull back, to pretend they aren't
the party of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, DeLay and Robertson, O'Reilly
and Coulter, attack and control. Horrid people to be sure, vicious
people (their admirers admit the same); but their great virtue
is that they are undisguised horrid people, naked vicious people.
The Repubs have their cards on the table, and those cards must
now be played.
This serves two purposes:
1. It creates a world-wide public discussion
about the role of the U.S. relative to other nations, and also
relative to its proclaimed defense of real democracy, at home
and abroad. The world has needed such a discussion since Truman
gave us the National Security Act of 1947 and provoked Stalin
into blockading Berlin.
Under the Dems, that discussion will
never be had, since left-minded people will be so pleased with
this saved forest and that stalled pipeline that they'll never
notice the crushing defeats, like the constant political wasteland
we maintain in Latin America under all administrations.
In this view, the only way to avert the
next world war (we're watching the pre-game now) is for the
U.S. finally to understand itself and become the shining force
it wishes it were, but isn't. Only a world-wide public debate
can do that; only the world can bring that understanding --
domestic discussion has failed.
The alternative to that understanding
is a world like the Terminator future, a global fourth-generation
war, in William Lind's phrasing, that pits third world, then
second, then first world man against Pentagon killing machine.
It's a war that no one can win, and will be hard to stop once
fully started. To have that world-wide discussion, we need
the Repubs to create it, says this argument; the Dems will simmer
the pot well short of boiling, still cooking the meat.
(One could argue, by the way, that Big
Money really blew it when it backed Bush. With Gore they could
have had all the damage Clinton would have given, and in the
bargain a president who defends against charges of "softness."
Talk about misdirection -- a PR maestro's dream. In that sense,
the culture war is Big Money's Achilles heel; they can't stay
out of it even if it hurts them.)
2. Bush in 2004 serves as a referendum,
not on the candidates, but on the American people. Who are we?
What are our goals? Yes we're diverse, but not that diverse.
Every non-vote is a vote for the winner, and that will matter
much this time. By that measure, a vote for any Dem but Kucinich
(who seems to understand these things) says "I want to
pretend I don't know what's happening; please hide it better
next time." A non-vote says "I'll take Bush again."
By this logic, Bush didn't win in 2000
by a slim margin (5-4), but by a whopping lead (again, every
non-vote is a vote for the winner). If Bush wins again, the
people will have spoken and the world will get its discussion
in rather clear terms. (And if the big war comes, a horrid
un-hoped-for possibility, it will be fought on our shores as
well as theirs, and the people can't say they didn't choose
it.)
On this basis, Citizen Green might say
that Candidate Dem (unless it's Kucinich) is not the lesser
evil, but the greater one, wrapped in a delightful chocolate
sauce.
And as for Bush again, if you could ask
the disappeared of Chile, the dead of East Timor, the soon-to-be
homeless of any American town, the virtuous working poor, if
they prefer the Discussion to the Disguise, the answer might
be both surprising ... and obvious.
Your correspondent,
Publius
Publius
is a writer living in the United States. He can be reached at
gaius_publius@earthlink.net.
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
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