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Today's
Stories
February 26, 2004
Virginia Tilly
The Deeper Meaning of the Wall
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
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
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February
26, 2004
Reaching Out to Those
Who Have Been Abandoned
Is
Ralph Nader on to Something?
By BRANDY BAKER
If the American mainstream media had given Ralph
Nader the coverage throughout 2000 that they gave him this past
weekend, we would today have a strong, federally funded Green
Party and President Gore would be seeking re-election this November.
The widespread belief that those who
voted Green in 2000 were mostly registered Democrats is a myth.
Only 38% of the 2.7 million votes that Ralph Nader garnered
in 2000 were from Democrats; 25% were from Republicans; the
rest were from Independents and others who would not have voted
at all. And as correctly stated on Nader's website: "there
are 100 million people in this country who do not vote. There
are plenty of nonvoters for all candidates to attract."
There are many who voted for Bush in
2000 that would have instead voted for Ralph Nader if they could
have had access to Nader's ideas. This time around, Nader has
been able to get his message across in interviews that he has
done in the past several days: a feat that corporate media would
not allow in 2000.
Let's face it: the few enthusiastic voters
in America, regardless of political affiliation, are mostly
the few with the money. Nader realizes something that the liberal
intelligentsia does not: that the continuous, extreme class
polarization in this country has created greater anger than
ever at the Washington establishment from millions of poor
and working people, regardless of where they see themselves
politically, and regardless of whether or not they are political
at all. This class consciousness, if nurtured, could in the
future lead to greater civic engagement, and possibly, the expansion
and diversification of the too white, too middle-class progressive
movement in the United States.
In their open letter to Nader encouraging
him not to run for President this year, the editors of The Nation
asserted, "--[In the past], your appeal stretched across
the political spectrum. No longer, alas." They go on to
dismiss the idea that Nader can bring in new blood to the progressive
movement: "Such relationships take time to build and can't
be conjured out of thin air in the midst of a presidential campaign."
I don't know where the editors of The
Nation have been, but for the past few years, Ralph Nader has
been all over this country in his Democracy Rising tour (DR
is one of four civic organizations that he has started since
2000). Not only did he speak at the usual progressive venues,
but he spoke to those in various US cities who have been hit
hardest economically by Bush's policies. Here in Baltimore
last June 26, we had our Democracy Rising event at Johns Hopkins
University. Two hours before this event began, Ralph spoke at
the Steelworkers Hall in East Baltimore County. His message
resonated so well with this audience that he was nearly two
hours late to the JHU event; the waiting audience was forgiving,
of course, because we all know what is missing from the American
progressive movement.
We progressives, as well meaning and
hard working as we have been, have done a poor job in attracting
our country's most vulnerable citizens to the fight for economic
and social justice. There was some success with the current
anti-war movement, but we have a long way to go to truly diversify
the progressive arena; we need new strategies. We need to hear
how bad Wal-Mart is from people who work there; we need a new
feminist movement led by working women, welfare mothers, and
women of color; we need to hear about the effects of racism
more often from those who are actually of color.
The only time there is a wide range of
people working for progressive ideals is once every four years
when we all get together and work to elect someone who is not
progressive, which is what Bruce Jackson wants us to do-again.
In his February 23 Counterpunch
article, Jackson maliciously attacks Nader, claiming that
civil rights, women's rights, education, or jobs, "don't
seem to matter or exist for [Nader]--He does not live in our
world."
In our world Mr. Jackson, the
majority of low wage jobs are held by women and people of color
who do not have equal access to educational opportunities. Corporatization
of our society hurts these people the most, and though racism
and sexism are not solely economic struggles, money does play
a large (if not the largest) part in oppression. But I do agree
that you and Ralph Nader do not live in the same world.
Ralph, initially disappointed that you
did not run as a Green, I now understand where your nephew Tarek
Milleron is coming from: "What Nader has done by walking
away from the Green umbrella this year is that he has boldly
left the shelter of the vote he could most rely on." You
see the need to draw new people; to bring in those who are most
affected by the Bush administration's horrendous policies and
by the Democrats' inaction.
Obviously, change in the structure of
the US Left will not occur between now and Election Day: it
is a long-term project which will take a vast effort from lots
of people in many places. But change will not stem from working
to elect a candidate from the Democratic Party: the party that
works to build its base every four years only to ignore it after
the election is over.
Many have been asking you Ralph if you
will drop out in the last days before the General Election if
the Democratic nominee is at risk of losing. The real question
is: Will you stick around and continue this effort AFTER the
General Election? If so, then you sir, may very well be on to
something. And we all need to start paying attention.
Brandy Baker
can be reached at: bbaker@ubalt.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
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