Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
24, 2003
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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.
|
September
24, 2003
Politics for Bookies
Someone
Else for President
By DAVID VEST
2004 is still a few months away, but
it promises to be a doozy. Already a good friend of mine has
taped a home-made bumper sticker to her pickup truck: "Someone
else for president," it says.
Well, yes. Helen Thomas and others have
already called Bush "the worst president we've ever had,"
and there's a growing sentiment that anyone, anyone at all, even
someone randomly selected from a blind lottery, would be an improvement.
It's a feeling that's easy to share.
It's probably good for the country. But it could also be dangerous.
Unfortunately, the next president isn't
going to be selected randomly. Number 44 is going to be picked
the same way Bush was picked, by people looking for "someone
who can win."
Exactly how we got into this mess in
the first place.
When professional politicians and their
corporate masters sniff the wind and determine that it's time
to throw Bush overboard with the bilge, they're not going to
say, "Who's qualified?" And certainly not "Who'll
stand up to us?"
They're going to need someone who knows
his or her place. A new personality who won't shake up the system
too much.
That's what they'll be looking for: the
same thing we've got now, but without the "negatives."
Someone who would do the same things Bush is doing, but do them
"better."
If I'm right, they won't have far to
look.
On one hand, we have the Democrats, a
party that has drifted so far to the right that it regards Howard
Dean, a mainstream conservative who supports the death penalty
and opposes gun control, as a left-winger.
The corporate media have been debating
who Dr. Dean is for months now. At first they thought he was
Martin Sheen from The West Wing (governor from a New England
State, a professional, short guy, etc.). Only when he raised
big money and took the lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire polls
did he turn into McGovern. Having seized momentum, Dean began
moving aggressively rightward (or "toward the Center,"
to use the prevailing euphemism) and suddenly he was no longer
McGovern, he was the new McCain, a real "straight-shooter"
whose only problem was that he liked to start shooting before
even shaking hands.
The comparisons are instructive. Nixon,
of course, beat McGovern like a staked goat. Bush murdered McCain's
good name along with his candidacy in South Carolina.
To the real Left, Dean resembles neither
McGovern nor McCain. He looks more like the New Bush (fiesty,
combative former governor, tends to speak before thinking, signed
Civil Unions bill to show his compassionate conservatism, etc.).
And look how the party treats candidates
who actually want to bring our troops home from Iraq right now.
It can't wait for them to drop out and leave the debate stage
to candidates who "have a chance," the ones who either
voted for the war or think we just didn't do it right -- we didn't
"build a coalition." (The tendency of some of these
candidates to position themselves as the new George Bush the
First would be alarming if it weren't so predictable.)
Preferring a new Clinton to a new Bush
One, the Dems may wind up with Wesley Clark, famous rejected
Republican, who "thinks" he recalls voting for Nixon.
If Clark wins the White House, will Karl Rove return his phone
calls then? This assumes Rove will even be able to get phone
service in a Clark administration.
What would be Clark's campaign slogan
as the Democratic nominee? "Elect a real Republican"?
Which brings us to the other hand, where
we find not so much the Republicans as just George W. Bush and
a big wad of money and a lot of real quiet people. They know
Bush lied to them, they know we're in trouble in Iraq, they know
the economy's going down the tubes, but what the hey, they got
a tax cut, didn't they?
Never mind who's a new McGovern or a
new Eisenhower. The more telling fact is that (given the president's
nose-dive in the polls) there is no one in the Republican party
willing to be called a Eugene McCarthy. Money talks, yes, but
it also silences.
Funny how both "hands" of this
analogy are right hands.
The idea of Ralph Nader entering the
primaries as a Republican looks better every day. Why not, if
Clark's a Democrat?
Thank God we have California to entertain
us until the presidential primaries are underway.
"We have people from every planet
on the earth in this state," says embattled governor Gray
Davis.
"I think that gay marriage is something
that should be between a man and a woman," replies Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger is the embodiment of "someone
else for governor." Hell, so is the entire list of 135 candidates.
And to think, this is what we want to bring to Iraq.
Republicans voted for "someone who
can win" and wound up under fire in Tikrit. Never mind that
Bush didn't actually "win." Now it's the Democrats'
turn to find "someone who can win." Where will that
lead? North Korea? Iran? Some other country that would be glad
to have "somebody else for dictator"?
You don't like to see American troops
used for target practice in Baghdad? Wait until you see them
standing between Israeli tanks and Palestinian suicide bombers.
Someone else for president? You bet,
but not if it means "I don't care who." Let the bookies
pick winners. Let the people pick a president.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He and his band,
The Willing Victims, just released a scorching new CD, Way
Down Here.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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