home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Edition of CounterPunch

Kerry in Vietnam Part One: War Hero or War Criminal? by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; Why France Joined the US in the Coup in Haiti and the Despicable Role of Regis Debray, Le Running Dog Onctueux by Heather Williams; Ashcroft in Indonesia: Bloodshed and Terror with US Connivance by Ben Terrall. Last month, CounterPunch Online was read by 12.5 million viewers--by far our biggest month ever. But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Stew Albert in Berkeley

CounterPunch's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Order Now / Available in April

 

Today's Stories

April 3 / 5, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business Without Really Trying

April 2, 2004

Dave Lindorff
Barbaric Relativism: the Press and Fallujah

Kurt Nimmo
Wherever Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow

Emma Miller
The Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide

Dr. Susan Block
Same Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition

Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick

Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey

Christopher Brauchli
The Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee

Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.

 

April 1, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq

Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree

Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons

Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo

Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers

Laura Flanders
Elaine Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son


March 31, 2004

M. Junaid Alam
Israel: Suicide Nation?

John L. Hess
Condi Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?

Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq

Sofia Perez
Spain's U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action

David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath

Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination

Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge

Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI

Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great

Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and International Law

Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks

 

March 30, 2004

William S. Lind
An Occurrence in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't

Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail & Justice

Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"

Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination

Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way

John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi Rice's Idea of Democracy

Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order

Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power in Venezuela

Bill Christison
The 9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future

Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl


March 29, 2004

John Maxwell
Crisis in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold

J. Michael Springmann
Email Spying & Attorney Client Privilege

Robert Fisk / Severin Carrell
Coalition of the Mercenaries

The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror

Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made

David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Bargain

Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism

Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American Family

Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again

Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests

Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11

Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing

Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?

 

March 27 / 28, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts

Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria

William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the US

Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army

Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?

Larry Birns / Jessica Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America

John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"

John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus

Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?

Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists

Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy

Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids

Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?

The Kerry Quandry

Joel Wendland
Marxists for Kerry

Josh Frank
Scary, Scary John Kerry

Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer

 

 

March 26, 2004

Christopher Brauchli
There's a Chill Over the Country

Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal of Mordechai Vanunu

Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again

Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon

Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead

Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago

CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?

John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb

Website of the Day
Dick is a Killer

 

March 25, 2004

Lee Sustar
Who is to Blame for Lost Jobs?

Standard Schaefer
An Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers

Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins to Throw Off the Austerity Planners

Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"

Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups

Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela

Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded

Saul Landau
Is Venezuela Next?

Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway

 

 

March 24, 2004

Gary Leupp
General Musharraf's IOU

Richard Oxman
Shakespeare for Kerry

William Lind
The Beginning of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq

Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later

Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again

Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn

Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media in Cuba

John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke

Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"

Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela

Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only Fuel More Suicide Bombings

Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey

 

March 23, 2004

Phillip Cryan
The Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks

Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?

Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections

Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble

JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"

Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black CD

Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track

Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]

M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie

 

March 22, 2004

Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial Executions

Uri Avnery
The Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage

Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee

Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy Scam

Greg Moses
Stop Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March

Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation

Lenni Brenner
Report from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace

Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations

Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment

Website of the Day
Enviros Against War

 

 

March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election

 

March 19, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home

Ann Harrison
So Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?

William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"

Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote

Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup, Mr. Bush

Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future

John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs

Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend

Website of the War
Naming the Dead

 


March 18, 2004

Gila Svirsky
Rachel Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency

Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam

William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing

Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative

Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment

Josh Frank
The Nader Question

Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy

Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey

Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain

Gary Leupp
The Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost

Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key

 

March 17, 2004

Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on Terror or Civil Liberties?

David MacMichael
Untruth and Consequences

Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer

Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware

Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out

Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections

Peter Linebaugh
Bush: Blanc Blanc

 

March 16, 2004

Lenni Brenner
James Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights

Scott Boehm
Madrid Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days

Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History Behind the Spanish Elections

Sam Hamod and Alfredo Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way: Executing David Clayton Hill

Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran

Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War on Terror"

Bill Christison
The Aftershocks from Madrid

CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa

Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!

 

March 15, 2004

Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe

Mike Whitney
Justice Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism

Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation

Greg Moses
Lessons from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs

Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health

Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer

CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!

 

March 12 / 14, 2004

Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power

Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!

William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)

William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks

Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe

Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars

Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists

Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor

Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge

Helen Scott and Ashley Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?

Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy of the American Prison

Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On

Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding

Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith

Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier

 

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.

 

 

Subscribe Online


Search CounterPunch

 

Weekend Edition
April 3 / 5, 2004

Thoughts on the ANC and Leftists for Kerry

Communists for Capitalism

By STEPHEN GOWANS

Ten years ago this month, Agnes Sehole, a black South African cast a ballot for the first time. Like millions of others, she voted for the African National Congress, the ANC. "I had my hopes to live a better life [1]," she recalls.

Swept into power, the ANC, backed by the South African Communist Party and a coalition of trade unions, set out to fulfil Sehole's hopes. But in the end, the only hopes they fulfilled were those of South Africa's corporations, global investors, and the white minority. The dreams of the black majority for a better life were dashed.

"I curse the day that I voted on the 27th of April, 1994," Sehole says. "From the frying pan right into the fire. If I died now, I would spin in my coffin forever because I have left my children in this terrible place [2]."

"Democracy," she concludes, "has done nothing [3]."

You can hardly blame her for thinking that democracy--and the ANC--have been a bust. In June 1996, the ANC government adopted an economic strategy designed by the World Bank, a move that could be likened to putting Vlad the Impaler in charge of the Care Bears Nursery School.

The strategy, know as GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), promised six percent growth per annum by the year 2000, and 400,000 new jobs every year [4]. It didn't deliver.

Instead, unemployment soared. The official jobless rate grew from 16 percent in 1995 to 30 percent by 2003 [5]. And when discouraged job-seekers who had given up looking for work were factored in, the jobless rate was 43 percent, and over 80 percent in some rural areas [6].

The ANC government's privatization policies didn't help. Some 20,000 workers lost their jobs at the state-owned telecommunications company, Telkom, after it was placed on the auction block, while 30,000 workers were thrown on the scrap heap after a hurricane of privatization blew through the electricity industry [7].

With joblessness exploding, poverty deepened. From 1995 to 2000, the average income of black households sank 19 percent. Absolute poverty (the percentage of households earning less than $90 of real income) increased from 20 percent in 1995 to 28 percent in 2000 [8].

If that wasn't enough, the ANC government raised water and electricity rates and reduced cross-subsidies on telephone service. An estimated 10 million lost access to running water, 10 million lost their electricity, and 10 million lost their telephone service [9].

And while the ANC and its Communist Party junior were presiding over an economy that put the screws to the black majority, they were, in true World Bank fashion, indulging the private sector, slashing corporate taxes from 48 percent in 1994 to 30 percent in 1999 [10].

Meanwhile, as electricity, water and telephone services were priced beyond the reach of the progressively impoverished majority, the average income of white households grew 15 percent [11].

Critics dubbed the ANC policy "reverse GEAR," a fitting label for a harsh to the poor, indulgent to the rich demarche that was hardly producing growth, employment or redistribution, though as a policy of redistributing income upwards, it wasn't too shabby.

Not surprisingly, by late-2002, more than 60 percent of South Africans thought the country had been governed better by the white minority [12].

You would think that a government that has so conspicuously failed to distinguish itself from ordinary, run-of-the-mill governments of the sort that zealously cater to corporations and investors, would soon fall out of favor with the Left. And so it has, to a degree.

But the ANC and its Communist Party ally have so thoroughly established their left-wing credentials that they can behave just as right-wing as they like, while still drawing on enormous left-wing support. So it is that the latest issue of the Canadian Communist Party's newspaper, The People's Voice, can declare that "South African Communists urge massive ANC victory [13]," while assuring its readers that South African Communists have "ideas to improve the lives of workers and the poor [14]," without drawing forth a chorus of incredulous guffaws.

Why would anyone vote for the ANC? To do so would be like accepting a dinner invitation from a guy who's out on bail for tampering with the packaged goods at the local grocery store.

Perhaps recognizing that its urging a massive vote for the ANC may just possibly be met by more than a few sneers by the people who've spent the last 10 years falling further and further behind, the South African Communist Party has what any rascal should never leave home without: a good story.

Well, it has a story, anyway. It's titled, "The Bosses Are To Blame." It goes like this: "The bosses are still sabotaging our democracy." "We have rolled out democracy, but the bosses continually undermine it." "The bosses make solemn promises" they never keep [15].

The solution. Vote for the ANC, so it can fight the bosses it has been giving into for the last 10 years, a proposal that amounts to something like the Vichy government saying, "Support us, because we're the best alternative to fighting the Nazi occupation."

What's more, wailing "it's the bosses fault" is nothing but an admission that elections don't really matter. No matter what you do, no matter how many ideas you have to improve the lives of workers and the poor, the bosses win, because the bosses are left in place, even catered to, and the bosses run the place. Which invites the question, why bother voting for the ANC? Or more to the point, why waste your time on elections?

Joel Wendland, an American Communist who calls himself a Marxist for Kerry, thinks elections do matter. And he's planning to do all he can to get the likely Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry elected come November, even though Wendland says, "Kerry is a representative of the capitalist class and shares many of their interests," (actually, he's more than a representative; he's a member in good standing), "has voted incorrectly many times," "has taken centrist positions and has even mimicked some right-wing positions [16]."

Sounds like there are a number of reasons why any self-respecting leftist would steer clear of backing Kerry. So what's up with Wendland?

It seems there are a "relatively small handful of socialist sectarians [17]" that Wendland disagrees with. First among these splitists are those who "advocate boycotting the election [18]," which the Kerry-supporting Marxist calls "the complete abstention from participation in this crucial element of class struggle [19]." To Wendland's way of thinking, voting for a capitalist who's the candidate of a capitalist party that seeks to implement capitalist policies for capitalist gain is a crucial element of class struggle. That may be so, but exactly what class is Wendland thinking of?

Our Marxist for Kerry, who edits the US Communist Party magazine Political Affairs, also takes issue with "socialist sectarians" who sling the 'lesser evilism' line [20]. While their argument makes "a lot of sense [21]," he says, it doesn't make a lot of sense today. When it will make sense, is not clear, but if Wendland is like most US Communists it will make sense in some hard-to-glimpse, hazy future, when millions of Americans will have gone over to the Communist Party, though not as a result of any urging by Wendland and his like who've booked indefinite passage on the good ship Democrat, while urging as many other people as they can to come aboard.

Wendland's arguments aren't very convincing, but he's got plenty of others, each as convincing as the last. Consider this one: "Kerry and Bush aren't the same [22]."

I'll grant Wendland the point. Kerry and Bush aren't the same. In some respects, Kerry's worse. But that's not the question. The ANC and its apartheid predecessor weren't the same either. But that doesn't mean that the economic policies pursued by the ANC, with the backing of the South African Communist Party, weren't the same as the economic policies the apartheid regime would have pursued had it remained in power, or that countless other governments around the world of various political stripes have pursued since the ANC came to power 10 years ago.

Indeed, the policies of a group of people in power have a lot more do to with the constraints imposed by the dominant political and economic institutions, and who controls the strategic heights, than what political label the government happens to slap on itself. Or to put it another way: accept the capitalist game, and you play by its rules. This, it would have been imagined, would be fairly evident to a Marxist.

Still, says the Kerry-backing Wendland, "We should send a message to Bush--and to Kerry--that we won't tolerate [Bush's] kind of record [23]." So, cut Bush loose, for his militarism, for waging war on Afghanistan, for invading and occupying Iraq, to send a message to Kerry: We won't tolerate this.

But wait a moment. Didn't Kerry support the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq? Doesn't he support the occupations of both countries? Hasn't he said he'd spend more on the military than Bush? Wasn't it Kerry who said he'd add 40,000 troops to the Army? Didn't Kerry say he's prepared to use force unilaterally and pre-emptively? So how does voting for Kerry send a message that militarism, wars of conquest, the doctrine of pre-emptive war, the unilateral use of force and aggressive foreign policy, are intolerable? Doesn't it do the very opposite--say these things are acceptable because we voted for the candidate who promised them?

Somehow, Wendland calls to mind the story of Bill.

For four years Bill received regular kicks to the balls by Sam's right boot. At the end of the four years he was given a choice: four more years of getting booted in the groin by the right foot, or four years by the left. Bill could have said he'd accept neither. If he was going to get booted in the balls anyway, no matter which boot he chose, he wouldn't choose either. Why should he be a party to his own ball-crushing? Instead, so angry was he at Sam's right boot for four years of intolerable blows -- and charmed by the argument that the left boot was the only realistic alternative, and that the right boot really needed to be sent a message -- he decided he'd get even by choosing Sam's left boot this time. Maybe it would be marginally better. Today, crouched over in pain, he feebly raises his right fist in victory. "I showed that right boot a thing or two!"

I'm not saying a vote for Bush or for the ANC's opponents is the better choice. It isn't. But it's plain to see that elections within a capitalist milieu are a two, or three, or four boot system, one in which even Communists are prepared to wear one of the boots.

Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada. He can be reached at: sr.gowans@sympatico.ca

Notes

1. "Despite Deep Woes, Democracy Instils Hope," The Washington Post, March 31, 2004.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Patrick Bond, "South Africa's Frustrating Decade of Freedom: From Racial to Class Apartheid," Monthly Review, March, 2004.

5. Ibid.

6. Washington Post.

7. Bond.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Bond.

11. Bond, Washington Post.

12. Bond.

13. People's Voice, April 1-15, 2004, Volume 12, #6.

14. Ibid.

15. Highlights of South African Communist Party election statement, People's Voice.

16. Joel Wendland, "Marxists for Kerry,"

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.



Weekend Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts

Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria

William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the US

Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army

Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?

Larry Birns / Jessica Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America

John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"

John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus

Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?

Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy

Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids

Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?

The Kerry Quandry

Joel Wendland
Marxists for Kerry

Josh Frank
Scary, Scary John Kerry

Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer



Keep CounterPunch Alive:

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /