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June 3, 2002
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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June 3, 2002
Greens
v. Liberal Democrats in Minnesota
The Future Wellstone Deserves
by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Greens running against Democrats, and maybe giving
Republicans the edge? Anyone who thinks we'll have to wait till
the Bush-Gore rematch in 2004 to get into that can of worms had
better look at Minnesota this year. Here's Senator Paul Wellstone
bidding for a third term, with the tiny Democratic majority in
the Senate as the stake. Writing in The Nation, John Nichols
sets the bar even higher. "His race," Nichols wrote
tremulously this spring, "is being read as a measure of
the potency of progressive politics in America."
Wellstone's opponent is Norm Coleman,
former mayor of St. Paul and enjoying all the endorsements and
swag the RNC can throw in his direction. The odds are against
Wellstone. Coleman is a lot tougher than the senile Rudy Boschwitz,
whom Wellstone beat in 1996, and many Minnesotans aren't enchanted
about his breach of a pledge that year to hold himself to two
terms.
But ignoring Wellstone's dubious future,
liberals are now screaming about "the spoiler," who
takes the form of Ed McGaa, a Sioux born on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
a Marine Corps vet of the wars in both Korea and Vietnam, an
attorney and author of numerous books on Native American religion.
The Minnesota Green Party picked him as its candidate on May
18 at a convention of some 600, a lively affair in which real
politics actually took place in the form of debates, resolutions,
nomination fights and the kindred impedimenta of democracy.
Aghast progressives are claiming that
even a handful of votes for McGaa could cost Wellstone the race.
Remember, in 2000 Ralph Nader got 127,000 in Minnesota, more
than 5 percent. Some national Greens, like Winona LaDuke, Nader's
vice-presidential running mate, didn't want a Green to run. Some
timid Greens in Minnesota are already having second thoughts,
backstabbing McGaa.
For his part, McGaa confronts the "you're
just helping the Republicans" charge forthrightly: "Let's
just let the cards fall where they're at," he recently told
Ruth Conniff of The Progressive. "It will be a shame if
the Republicans get in. On that I have to agree with you. I'm
not enamored by George Bush's policies." But McGaa says
he'll probably get a slice of Jesse Ventura's Independent Party
vote too: "So you Wellstone people can just calm down."
McGaa's own amiable stance contrasts markedly with liberal Democratic
hysteria. Wellstone is now being pitched as the last bulwark
against fascism, whose defeat would lead swiftly to back-alley
abortions, with the entire government in the permanent grip of
the Bush Republicans.
A sense of perspective, please. Start
with Wellstone. This was the guy, remember, who promised back
in 1991 that he'd go to Washington with his chief role as Senator
being to work "with a lot of people around the country-progressive
grassroots people, social-action activists-to extend the limits
of what's considered politically realistic."
So what happened? Steve Perry, a journalist
with a truly Minnesotan regard for gentility and good manners,
wrote in Mother Jones last year the following bleak assessment:
"10 years after he took his Senate seat, Wellstone has disappeared
from the national consciousness. He never emerged as the left's
national spokesman for reforms in health care, campaign finance,
or anything else."
Early on, Wellstone took a dive on the
biggest organizing issue for reformers in 1993. He abandoned
his support for single-payer health insurance in the face of
blandishments from Hillary Clinton. No need to go overboard here.
As with all liberal senators, Wellstone has had some lousy votes
(yes to an early crime bill, no on recognition of Vietnam) and
some honorable ones. He denounced the Gulf War in 1991 but in
2001 endorsed Ashcroft's war on terror, when Russell Feingold
was the only senator to vote no. Wellstone has been good on Colombia
but, in common with ninety-eight other senators, craven on Israel.
(McGaa has spoken up for justice for Palestinians and is now
being denounced as an anti-Semite for his pains. Imagine, a Sioux
having the nerve to find something in common with Palestinians!)
So one can dig and delve in Wellstone's
senatorial career across twelve years and find grounds for reproach
and applause, but one thing is plain enough; he's not shifted
the political idiom one centimeter to the left, even within his
own party, let alone on the overall national stage. In the Clinton
years, when he could have tried to build a national coalition
against the policies of the Democratic Leadership Council, he
mostly opted for a compliant insider role.
You don't have to be in the Senate as
long as Bobby Byrd to put together an impressive résumé.
There are examples of heroic one-term stints. Look at what Jim
Abourezk of South Dakota achieved in his one term, between 1972
and 1978. Within a year of getting into the Senate he was taking
on the oil cartel. In one of the most astounding efforts of that
decade, he pushed a bill to break up the oil companies to within
three votes of passage in the Senate. Abourezk and Howard Metzenbaum
of Ohio thwarted one boondoggle after another by all-night sentry
duty on the floor of the Senate in final sessions, when the barons
of pork tried to smuggle through such treats as a $3 billion
handout to the airline industry, which Abourezk killed. He and
Phil Burton managed an epoch-making expansion of Redwood National
Park. Abourezk worked with radical public interest groups and
was a lone, brave voice on Palestinian issues.
The suggestion that progressive politics
will now stand or fall in sync with Wellstone's future is offensive.
Suppose he were to lose of his own accord, without a Green Party
third candidate? Would it then be appropriate to sound the death
knell of progressive politics in America? Of course not. Even
the most ardent Wellstone supporters acknowledge that Minnesota's
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is moribund. Hence Ventura's triumph.
The Greens have every right to hold Wellstone accountable, and
if they have the capacity to send him into retirement, then it
will be a verdict on Wellstone's failures rather than some supposed
Green irresponsibility.
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