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Today's Stories January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH   January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) Russell Mokhiber The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative Robert Fantina The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz Dave Zirin Butts on Parade Shamako Nobel I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop John Ross Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves Brenda Norrell Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security Laura Carlsen Why Bolivia Matters Patrick Irelan Remember the Maine! Evelyn J. Pringle The Holes in Bush's FDA Jonathan M. Feldman After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace Movement Michael Dickinson Playing Soldier Website of the Day Sean Hannity on the Run!   January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest   January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor The Left and Ron Paul M. Shahid Alam The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy Gary Leupp Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan Paul Craig Roberts Criminals with Badges Heather Gray Georgia's Racist Death Penalty Fred Gardner and Shobhit Arora Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis David Macaray Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley Benjamin Dangl Fear and Loathing in Bolivia     January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal City of Disappearances B. R. Gowani Benazir's Death in Crisistan Shahid Mahmood Bhutto and the Press Linn Washington, Jr. Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling Harvey Wasserman Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton Era John Ross 2008, Already a Year to Forget Website of the Day The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys   December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Goodbye 2007 and Good Riddance! Tariq Ali Pakistan, the Aftermath Liaquat Ali Khan The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers Wajahat Ali After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan? Robert Fisk Who Killed Bhutto? Ajai Sahni Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark Future Marwan Bishara You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential Election Campaigns Uri Avnery The Beilin Syndrome Mark T. Harris Does This Happen in Canada? Brenda Norrell Resistance and Censorship Website of the Day A People United Will Never Be Defeated   December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Options in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby Tariq Ali Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan Fawzia Afzal-Khan My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto Gary Leupp The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance China Hand Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss Jacob Hornberger Stop Medddling in Pakistan John Chuckman Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics Missy Beattie Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard Ralph Nader Who Will Take the Next Step? Fidel Castro There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something Robert Fantina The Sham of Homeland Security Greg Moses Beauty from the Heart of Texas Catherine Lutz What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing Kristin Van Tassel Seeing in the Dark Kim Nicolini Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage Phyllis Pollack Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More Poets' Basement Landau, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan   December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey The Complex Electra Wajahat Ali A Pakistani Requiem Binoy Kampmark Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy Ayesha Ijaz Khan Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives Anthony DiMaggio Turkey's Bombing of Iraq Ray McGovern Creeping Fascism Jim Goodman Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going Ron Jacobs Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted Russell Hoffman Mini-Nukes by Toshiba John Murphy Greens Gone Wild Website of the Day Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"   December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party? Murtaza Shibli Who Killed Bhutto? Stephen Soldz Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda Bill Quigley Locked Outside the Gates Paul Craig Roberts The Great American Lock-Up Omer Subhani Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan? Marjorie Cohn The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go? Allan Nairn Cataclysm By Money Whim Jacob G. Hornberger Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT Norman Solomon Channeling Suze Orman Patrick Irelan Rumsfeld Spills the Ink Ben Tripp Pass the Razor Blades Website of the Day Quagmire, For What It's Worth   December 26, 2007 Charles Tripp From One Saddam to Fifty Paul Armentano No-Knock, You're Dead Rannie Amiri Lebanon in Search of a Government Stanley Heller Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War John Walsh Two Unreasonable Men Martha Rosenberg The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb Norman Madarasz Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within Website of the Day Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas   December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Conscience and Empire December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock A Dark Ride on the Border Tariq Ali Thinking of Edward Said Uri Avnery Help! A Ceasefire! Jill Jameson Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot Steve Melendez Russell Means Goes to Washington Mike Whitney The Big Fix Chuck Munson Not Getting It About New Orleans John Walsh Clueless Crusaders Farzana Versey Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion Richard Neville Dreaming of a White House Christmas Website of the Day Back in the USSR December 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot Ralph Nader Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way Andy Worthington Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan Ahmad Faruqui The Comedian of Pakistan Bill Moyers Society on Steroids Rev. William E. Alberts Blessed are the Peacemakers Timothy J. Freeman From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over? Anthony DiMaggio Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq Fred Gardner Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol Paul Krassner Enhanced Hazing Techniques Seth Sandronsky 17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law William Loren Katz Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee Michael Dickinson In the Dungeon of the Zabita Ron Jacobs Why Leon Russell Still Matters David Vest Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?" Poets' Basement Orloski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend George W. Hates Santa   December 21, 2007 John Ross New Massacres Loom in Mexico Jacob Hornberger Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq Dick J. Reavis A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes Peter Morici Business as Usual as Recession Looms Jack McCarthy Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik) Raúl Zibechi Sex and Revolution Steve Early How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist David Macaray Union Aftermath Patrick Bond Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa Lakota Freedom Delegation A Declaration of Independence from the USA Website of the Day Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape   December 20, 2007 David Rosen Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer Alan Farago The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Laura Carlsen Standing Up to NAFTA Ashley Dawson The Return of the Bread Riot Wayne Smith and Jennifer Schuett Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates Website of the Day How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter   December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Is the NIE Bush's Watergate? Paul W. Lovinger Hillary the Hawk Norman Solomon The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck Dave Zirin George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice Marjorie Cohn Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes Sen. Russell Feingold The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation Sonja Karkar A Christmas Reflection on Palestine Anthony Papa Open the Drug Gulags Christopher Ketcham Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions Davey D Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop? Website of the Day When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV   December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader The Politics of Teen Pregnancy George Wuerthner Gunning for Wolves in Idaho Steven Higgs Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped? Vijay Prashad Encounters with Ghadar David Macaray The Free Rider Problem Ralph Nader Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays Eva Liddell Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home Martha Rosenberg While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters Dave Lindorff When Impeachment is Out of Print Peter Morici The Consequences the Trade Deficit Website of the Day Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America   December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Staring Into the Abyss Tom Barry Planning the War on Immigrants Uri Avnery A Gaza Masada? Greg Moses Crossing the Line in Texas Allan Nairn Terrorism; Counter- Terrorism: Excuses for Murder Patrick Bond South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers Stephen Lendman Police State America Charles Jonkel Grizzly Right of Way Laray Polk An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza Stephen Fleischman Pawns in Their Game December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A People's Penny for the Magna Carta Howard Zinn Bomb After Bomb Standard Schaefer The Greening of Big Tobacco Raymond J. Lawrence Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas Alan Farago Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine Saul Landau Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists Jenna Orkin Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up Ahmad Samih Khalidi Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct Robert Fantina Politics By Photo-Op Missy Comley Beattie Resistance Amid the Ruins Ramzy Baroud Of Mormons and Muslims James L. Secor A Vision for China's Future Elijah Wald Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten Website of the Weekend The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support   December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax Jacob Hornberger Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? Allan Nairn "Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes Dave Zirin The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners Dave Lindorff The First Cut is the Deepest Misty MacDuffee Toxic Grizzlies Ben Terrall What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine? Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi Prerequisites for Peace Website of the Day Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"   December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs                 Subscribe Online

January 15, 2008 Dispatch from Kibby's Cool Spot in Belize Getting Out the Bling Vote By JOE BAGEANT HOPKINS VILLAGE, BELIZE. I know it's unpatriotic as hell, but I just cannot get a hard-on about the '08 American presidential elections. As in, I haven't read or heard a word about them in a couple of weeks and could care less whether Hillary showed publicly some emotion, which was the big news when I left the States. The will just isn't there. And it's even more difficult from here in this Central American village where so many people have real problems. The kind that that come with being born under one empire, the British one, and living in the shadow of the present American living in the shadow of its walled fortress of armed privilege. One of those problems is who to sell your vote to and for how much. "I wan too hunred an feefty dollah for my vote," Marie declares as she chops up bananas to make tapo for dinner. I got feefty for my vote las' time, but some people got two feefty." "Well you're not gonna get any more than fifty, babe," I tell her. "You gotta be more important to get two fifty for your vote. Did you bring anyone else to the polls?" "No. Le' dem get dey own money." "End of story then. If you'd brought along some other voters, you might have been up to two fifty by now" "Den I no vote jus to spite dem." Belizean politics works that way. Next February 7 Belizeans will cast their ballots in the national election for candidate of either the liberal People's United Party (PUP) or the conservative United Democratic Party (UDP). Between now then the People's United Party will hand out a lot of cash and pay off a lot of voter's outstanding bills. Once every five years it's payday for the poor, who consider their ballot a net cash asset worth $50-100 Belizean dollars (USD$$25-50) or more. Here in Hopkins, fifty Belizean dollars pays the village utilities water bill for a year. Then too, voters here often feel that their "vote money" is likely to be all they'll ever get from what they consider an unresponsive government. It's hard to argue against this "one in the hand is worth two in the bush" reasoning if you live their lives. There's certain pragmatism, even ironic fairness in vote bribery here. On the other hand, it's a sorry system in which the actual voters are monetarily corrupted by the politicians. I'm more accustomed to the American system, where voters are corrupted morally and intellectually by media. In either case, free market politics is the handful of corruptive mud thrown into the fishbowl. We cannot see a damned thing but what is closest to out noses, usually put there by a politician. It ain't the Mayo Clinic, but the needles are clean Indeed, the Belizean government is fucked up, misled, inefficient and corrupt. All things taken into accord however, in some respects Belizeans get back more than Americans get in return from their government, considering how much Americans work and pay (15 times more than Belizeans), beginning with health care. Belizeans at least have free health clinics in the cities and villages, and dirt cheap higher education, about USD$15 a credit hour. These systems may not be as glossy as their profiteering American equivalent, especially the public hospitals here. But it ain't China, where hospitals do blood transfusions out of Pepsi bottles (according to American media, anyway) and it's not rural India where poorer patients often sleep under the beds of more heeled patients. In any case Belize does not have 47 million people with no access to health care at all, and a not-so-good hospital beats no hospital. In fact, a not-so-good hospital beats even Johns Hopkins if Johns Hopkins won't let you in because you cannot pay the freight. Same goes for public schools. The school system is a wreck. But so is the American system. Both graduate kids who can't find their own country on a map, the main difference being that Belizean kids don't demonstrate it on YouTube. As an underdeveloped country, we are also way behind in school shootings, and sexual assaults, and have yet to install a metal detector anywhere, so far as I know, even in airports, much less schools. Hope remains of catching up: U.S. Bloods and Crips moved into Belize City last year and have been shooting up the joint. As for the Belizean trade school and higher educational system, my wife and I are helping a Garifuna boy through one, and I cannot say it is inferior to ours, just less plushly equipped. In fact, I'd say on the average the Belizean kids work much harder once they are in college, simply because it's harder to get there in the first place. Our guy in trade school over in Dangriga Town, James, is making perfect grades, while working uphill against hardships such as an arduous daily bus ride and seldom even having lunch money. In the end though, American or Belizean, it all depends on the young person's grasp of reality. James grasps that studying computer science has removed him from the village streets where so many of his peers now languish, and probably will for the rest of their lives ­ or at least until the gringo resorts hire them as slave wage gardeners and maids. Meanwhile, his mom's $50 vote bribe buys a fair slug of lunch supplies. Once every five years during national elections. Buy mi vote, but don't tief it, mon The people's democratic voice may be bought and sold at the voter level, but on the other hand, as a Garifuna friend Harry pointed out yesterday, "This is not the United States. It is impossible to "tief" (steal) an election here." Which is sure enough true. Combined forces of international and party monitors intensely watch the utterly countable and recountable paper balloting process like frigate birds circling over a pile of fish guts. Voters may arrive at the polls for less than savory reasons, but the vote count, at least until Diebold gets into Belize, is secure as hell. Until then the only way to undermine the power of the vote is to buy it. When Belize gained independence in 1981 optimism ran high; Election Day was a jubilant one of national pride. Vote bribery was rare if at all, and politics, though yeasty with its own intrigues, was fairly uncorrupted and diverse as hell. Crazy, yes, but straight up as the sick game of politics goes. Before the International Monetary Fund, the DEA, the foreign "investors," foreign banks, cruise ship lines, and everybody else got Belize by the short hair, there was a leftist vitality not possible today. You had political activists declaring solidarity with the American Black Panthers, indigenous peoples of the planet, human rights and Cuba. Malcolm X and Che were not yet media trivialized into $10 posters and $19 tee shirts. Most of that days' young Belizean radicals are now silver-haired PUP politicos buying votes today. But back in 1968, even current prime minister Said Musa (a Palestinian blooded Belizean native) was a young firebrand lawyer organizing protests against American imperialism, capitalist exploitation and the Vietnam War. Along with Assad Shoman, who would later become foreign minister, he struck blows for black nationalism in a wary, conservative, British colonial Belize. Which is why it is so disheartening today to hear that over seven million is missing from the passport receipts, which are directly under Mr. Musa. Both of Belize's main parties are crooked as a dog's hind leg. The only difference is where they toss the swag they do not mismanage or steal. A billion dollars seems to be missing from the national kitty as the shadier elements of both parties in the government scam Belize's oil, tourism and retirement/leisure condo development bucks. (To give some idea of scale, a billion dollars would every household in this tiny country $100 a day for over 140 years.) The PUP party tosses more money to the people, recently instituting a social security program worth about USD$40 a month, and most of all, schools. When it comes to throwing money at the nation's education problems, PUP gets no better results than the U.S. Democrats. After building 1,100 classrooms and improving teacher training, and funding college education for teachers, the country's student failure rate has jumped to an all time high -- 65%. The dropout rate keeps climbing. The conservative UDP, which resists money for education doesn't miss the opportunity to say "I told you so." Meanwhile, word is the UDP is coming up with a No Child Left Behind clone. Left behind whom? Where are these public school children who are ahead? As with the U.S. Democratic Party, PUP is the party of immigrants, and presently that party is rushing to naturalize as many Latin migrants as possible so they can vote PUP. Among the shit storm of problems involved here is that the HIV rate is high among these immigrants, many of whom are single young men of migrant labor. They constitute an increasing strain on the nation's rickety health care system, which is fighting, rather successfully so far, to stave off a full blown epidemic. Many also feel the immigrants take away too many Belizean jobs. Moreover, immigration issues stew the same as in America, and like America, it's politics as usual, but with a few different twists. One twist is that Belize has some fighting, if partisan, newspapers such as America or Great Britain has not seen in at least 60 years, if then. The newspapers, however partisan, are loaded with the voices of common citizens, not made up of quotes from powerful officialdom like U.S. papers. Whatever can be said about the lack of libel laws here, it enables citizens to name the bastards out loud. And they do. Sadly though, little comes of it unless some big dog in the government wants it to. But the bastards have not yet worn all of the people down. Whoa hoss, this just in! Marie's shot at that $250 just got better. Hugo Chavez has dumped $10 million into the PUP government, ostensibly for development, but much of which is being passed out to voters as I write this. That's a lotta lunch money and water bills. When choosing between such political bullies, best to go with the one who gives you lunch money instead of beating you up and taking it. Go Hugo! Not being the majority party at the moment, the UDP cannot get its hands into the coffers deep enough to spread around the geet even if it wanted to (nor is Uncle Hugo likely to open his wallet for them in an act of solidarity with their hard liner capitalism). Which makes them somewhat less corrupt for the moment than PUP. This makes some poor voters see them as being more honest. Many poor people vote the same way working class Americans vote Republican, and see the UDP as a force for stability, evidently, like their North American counterparts, mistaking meanness and transference of wealth for stability. The bad news here is that much of the fiscal talent and administrative skill rests in the UDP, a party in which, in violation of Belizean law, every elected member flat out refuses to declare his or her assets and business connections and gets away with it­ now that's solidarity.) In any case, the UDP is counting on high powered U.S. style media paid for by the Bush administration to do the job on February 7. All TV and radio are owned by the parties or party interests, and while biased, between the two camps you get the real dirt on everybody if you can sift it. Nearly all electronic media here is owned by the parties or their associate interests. Thus the UDP's Channel 7 mouthpiece has been showing news footage of voters lined up at PUP representative's offices to get their vote money. Strangely, they do not show the nationwide burst of road improvements, free televisions, deeds and even a few trucks that get distributed. In all likelihood, if they showed the free refrigerators, the PUP lines would stretch from here to the Mexican border. The news footage of the vote bribe lines flickers on the TV screen at Kibby's Cool Spot (taverns are "cool spots" here) where I am sucking down Beliken Stout with a small group of older Garifuna plus a few mixed race Creoles and Mayans ­ Belizeans all. Some for damned sure are paying for drinks with vote money, given that they said so. Yet they are incensed at the vote bribery the lines shown on the screen. The Belizean TV anchor person looks piously concerned as she delivers her script. Now call it a cultural bias if you want, but I have a hard time taking seriously black women with brightly bleached and straightened blonde hair cut like Katie Couric and wearing heels in these soft sandy palmetto scrub lands. But it seems to work for Belizeans. Anyway, the drinkers are indignant about the news of such widespread vote bribery. Am I missing something here? "Huh? You sell your votes, right?" I ask. "Jah." "Then why is it so bad they do?" They just laugh knowingly. "So are you going to vote PUP?" "Jah." "Why?" "Because dey paid de moneh for my vote." Thus followed an absolutely serious discussion regarding how it is every person's patriotic obligation to vote, for the sake of the nation and our village. "In wi hans de fuchah." Something like that. Caribbean and Creole syntax comes hard for me. Do these people know something I don't know? Do they care to know anything at all, at least in the way I think I know things?' Obviously not. Outside the open doorway of Kibby's, silhouetted against the glaring subtropical light, three Garifuna girls float by, tall and crane like, a mirage of brilliant headscarves and parasols, all Giachometti elbows and necks, seemingly without feet. They nod and bob, as if in suspension over the deep purple black spots that are their noon shadows. The oldest cannot be more than 18, and already they are as inscrutably African as the Mother Continent herself. From Malcolm X to MasterCard Looking back on earlier visits to Belize, I think it's safe to say there was a time here when a common man's vote directly affected national policy, what there was of it, and directed the nation's finances, what little there were. Perhaps in America too. Almost nobody believes that today. Not in Belize or America. Oh sure, "national progress" has been made here, roads are sort of better, folks are healthier, there are more "jobs." The people are swimming in knockoff symbols of affluence, Chinese made duds, styrene plastic washing machines that fly apart after a couple of months, crappy cell phones that sort of work and. In fact, for most Belizean citizens, everything is "sort of." There is a sort of middle class emerging, based mostly on the Chinese bling and sort of usurious home loans. But the majority of citizens are poorer today in real quality of life terms. Most of the housing stock, especially in Belize City, consists of the rotting structures of the British slave era. Bank credit cards, hawked night and day in the media, are causing people to lose the free land granted to them as citizens of Belize ­ particularly if it has beachfront. The kids are getting dumber, quick payday loan offices are springing up everywhere, and even with gas now at $12 a gallon, more people are driving. We are all Americans now. In Belize or in the U.S., the business of local and state politics is the business of turning virgins into whores. The business of national politics is polishing up whores to look like virgins. Of course some whores are nicer than others, but in the high stakes back room poker game of power politics one does not get to play by being nice. One comes to the table with a lot of dough, a good cover story and a knife stashed in the boot. And even if you win, the really big guys running the game still own the country where it is being played. In Belize it's the shadow governments such as land development, tourism and drug trafficking. In the U.S. it's the financial corporations, Big Pharma, the war making industries, energy companies, etc, who don't even have to do the shadow government act; they run the joint openly and if you don't like it and refuse to pay taxes to support them, well, they are in the privatized prison business too, buddy! Hence, while a guy like Obama, who presumably does not take corporate campaign dough, may win, you'll never hear him call for the complete dismantling of the rapacious big health care or financial corporations, or big media corporations who own our consciousness and awareness of our nation and the world, and upon which he must ultimately depend to gain access to the public at all. In America every player has some smaller player by the balls under the table. In Belize they just divvy the money up without even dealing the cards. "In America, there is food to eat, No more runnin' through the jungle scuffin' up your feet -- Randy Newman, Sail Away Belizeans love the hell out of Obama, mostly because he is black, or somewhat so. When I remind them that nearly all their own politicians are black, they are not impressed. Poor Belizeans follow the U.S. presidential race more as entertainment than anything else. And so as long as Obama can buy TV ads and deliver greeting card platitudes that have a sort of righteous sound, he has entertainment, emotional and dramatic value here, as well as to liberal couch taters up there in the Nembutal Republic. As for Hillary, entertaining she ain't. ("A hard an' sour wooman," agree the Kibby's drinkers, "like de green orange.") Frankly, I'd like to see Clinton wear Lewinsky's blue dress on American Idol and sing "A Man Ain't Nothin' But A Man" as a campaign ad, or maybe deliver Lady Macbeth's "Out damned spot!" lines in an episode of American Housewives. But I suppose that's asking too much, even from the rancid freak show of American politics. As Lady Macbeth quipped, "Hell is a murky place." Politics is even more so. The capability for any president to make big progressive changes has become nil in the U.S., and maybe here too, although the capability to fuck things up remains boundless -- to wit, Sparky the Chimp. If all of the U.S. Congress cannot effect change because they are owned men, no candidate sucking down corn soup on the Iowa campaign trail is gonna either. And besides, America is dead broke and in hock up to her eyeballs. Even little changes in America country cost big money because there must be big profit in it for Big Corp or big dough to slosh around inside the gullet of big government bureaucracy. For instance, a Katrina victim reader of mine, who happens to be a cost accountant, tells me that it cost the U.S. government $38,000 NOT to get his family into one of those emergency FEMA trailer homes, hundreds of which are still sitting in storage areas unoccupied. He moved to Panama and swears the quality of life there is much cheaper and far better, and that despite inefficiencies and fixes, it is more bearable. Which is rather the way I feel about this tiny country. I dunno. Come November '08, assuming I can find the stomach for it, I will vote. My choices are not even as good as in Belize, where the candidates are flesh and blood people, not holographic media illusions. In November I can cast a vote for the manufactured candidate of my manufactured choice, vote Democratic as they vote PUP, on the grounds that at least some of the national swag will land in poor people's laps, after it passes through the innards of bureaucratic waste, the fraud of government contractors and privatization. I can write-in vote my conscience as I have traditionally done, which would necessarily mean Kucinich. That's assuming I don't get cut from the voter list through fraudulent voter caging tactics (not too likely, since I am white and few felons are likely to be named Bageant). I'll be punching a touch screen voting machine with no accountability because no recount possible. And my vote will legally be reduced a set of digits that instantly become the undisclosed intellectual property of Diebold. Neither a Ron Paul, nor a McCain nor a Huckabee nor Obama or anybody else going to blow the trumpet and have the walls of Jericho's corporate gulag/surveillance state fall down. They'll fall down as the walls of empires always do, when the rot inside them becomes too great, when it is stretched too thin and runs its course. Until then, if a single righteous candidate ever does make it through the bullshit to get close enough to throw a Molotov cocktail over the walls of power, I'll light the goddamned wick. But maybe it's the sub-tropical heat. Maybe it's the distance from the fray. But right now, when it comes to voting, I'd take five hundred for my vote and head back to Kibby's Cool Spot. Joe Bageant is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, from Random House/Crown about working class America. Bageant is also a contributer to Red State Rebels: Resistance in the Heartland edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, forthcoming this spring from AK Press. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.     Your Ad Here

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