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Today's
Stories
December 10, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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December
10, 2003
Al Gore's Judas Kiss
Dean
Joins the Party
By DAVID LINDORFF
Pity Howard Dean.
Just when it looked like he was getting
somewhere, with the polls showing him moving decisively ahead
in New Hampshire and Iowa, and starting to climb out of the cellar
in South Carolina, in steps Al Gore with his endorsement.
The Judas-like electoral kiss of death.
What on earth does Howard Dean, the self-styled
opponent of the Democratic Party powerbrokers, want with this
sell-out has been?
The New York Times opines that Gore would
somehow bring blacks into Dean's camp.
Excuse me, but wasn't Gore the guy who,
when running for the Democratic nomination, chose to trash black
voters in the New York primary in 1988, with the help of Mayor
Ed Koch? This guy, who couldn't stand up and demand a Florida
recount based upon the blatant disenfranchisement last election
of hundreds of thousands of black voters, is the African American's
friend?
Others suggested that as a southerner
(while he was raised mostly in Washington, D.C. by his senator
father, he was born in Tennessee and resides there sometimes)
he would help Yankee Dean there, forgetting that Gore in fact
lost every single state in the Old South, unless you count the
stolen state of Florida (though Florida, with its right-wing
Cubans and its relatively liberal population of northern retirees,
hardly fits the Old South demographic).
Still others suggest that Gore's endorsement
will suck union votes away from Dick Gephardt? But whoa! Isn't
this the same Al Gore who so ardently backed and continues to
back President Clinton's crooked NAAFTA job destruction treaty?
So far, nobody's been so silly as to
suggest that Gore--whose spouse Tipper has made a career of trying
to promote censorship of rock and roll--will help lure young
people back into the Democratic fold. He had no success in that
area in 2000, and is unlikely to be much help this time either.
And we won't even talk about environmentalists, since Gore sold
out on that issue so long ago it's an old story.
So what does this ardent militarist bring
to the anti-Iraq war Dean campaign?
Arguably what Gore brings to the table
is the one thing that Dean doesn't need: a link to the Democratic
Leadership Council--that group of Republicans in Democratic clothing
who brought us the Clinton presidency, welfare "reform,"
the Effective Death Penalty Act, NAAFTA, deregulation of the
power industry, the concept of pre-emptive strikes (remember
the illegal bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan?), etc., etc.
The proof of what is really going on
is the widespread observation among the punditry that the Gore
endorsement primarily hurts the candidacy of Joe Liberman, Gore's
2000 running mate. Why this concensus? Because the lackluster
Lieberman has been the favored candidate of the DLC. By endorsing
Dean, Gore is taking that mantel off of Lieberman, and draping
it on Dean. Dean has plenty of problems--a record, as Vermont's
governor, of backing cuts in Medicare, and supporting the death
penalty for example--but up to now he has shown one characteristic
that made him stand out from the rest of the so-called Democratic
"front-runners" -- John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt
and Joe Lieberman, Put simply, he has not been the candidate
of big corporate interests. There was even the hope that, by
sticking with a populist campaign and relying on his burgeoning
network of small contributors, Dean could battle his way to the
nomination and then on to the White House without becoming beholden
to those interests.
Gore's endorsement betrays, and probably
ultimately dashes those hopes.
A corporate whore of the first order,
Gore's 2000 presidential campaign took money from pretty much
all of the same powerful groups that bankrolled the Bush campaign--oil
companies, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, hospital companies,
the insurance industry, the communications and power industries.
Indeed, the difference between the two campaign contributor lists
of Bush and Gore was really a matter of emphasis, not substance.
Bush got the big oil bucks, Gore got the big medical bucks. They
both got big defense industry bucks. More generally, they both
got big contributions from big business, which is the main point.
Dean can still refuse this Judas kiss and the purse of silver
coins that will follow, but he hasn't done so yet (and indeed
as Josh Frank noted in this space yesterday, he has already started
collecting some of those tarnished coins, from the likes of corporate
outsourcing providers IBM and Hewlett-Packard and recently-SEC-sanctioned
Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Indeed, the Gore endorsement, more than anything else, has to
be seen as a coded message to the big corporate interests, which
have no doubt been watching the Dean bandwagon in some dismay,
that it's okay to back the former governor of Vermont; that despite
his occasionally anti-corporate rhetoric, he's "one of us."
One has to wonder why else the Dean campaign
would have turned to Al Gore. If the Dean campaign to date has
stood for the "real" Democratic party (a highly questionable
assertion in the first place, since Dennis Kucinich already had
that spot pretty well occupied), Al Gore, throughout his political
career, has willingly stood among the usurpers, the fake Democrats,
the posers who toss off a few populist lines during campaigns
and then do the bidding of corporate interests while in office.
It will be interesting to see how Dean's
enthusiastic minions, the youthful activists and 30-somethings
who see in their candidate someone who is outside the corruption
of the Democratic Party apparatus, react to seeing him slowly
sucked into its greasy clutches.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
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