Now
Available!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Here!
Today's
Stories
August 30,
2004
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites of TheNaderbasher.com
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
|
August
30, 2004
Guess
Who's Taking Republican Money Now?
The
Hypocrites of TheNaderbasher.com
By
SHAUN JOSEPH
The Democratic Party's Nader bashers sunk to a new
low with a television ad attacking Republican financial support
for Ralph Nader's presidential campaign--which ends with the
Bush-Cheney campaign logo altered to read "Bush-Nader."
The ad was paid for by TheNaderFactor.com, one of several groups
connected to the Democrats that has frantically attacked Nader
for daring to offer a left-wing alternative to John Kerry's Republican
Lite campaign.
"[Nader] is now at a point
where his entire legacy may come down to him helping Bush stay
in office for another four years, and him cooperating with the
right-wing groups that he's opposed," Chris Kofnis, an adviser
to the group, snarled to the New York Times. Neither Kofnis nor
the Times bothered to mention that campaign contributions from
known Bush supporters constitute less than 5 percent of the $1
million that the Nader campaign has raised.
Still, given their sanctimonious
tone, you'd think that the Nader bashers would at least set a
squeaky-clean example. But you'd be wrong.
Seems TheNaderFactor.com needs
to listen to that old saying about stones and glass houses.
TheNaderFactor.com is the main
project of the National Progress Fund, one of the so-called "527
organizations" that emerged after the passage of the McCain-Feingold
campaign finance reform law to ensure that campaign financing
was not actually reformed.
The official purpose of the
National Progress Fund is "[t]o engage in election-related
activity for the purpose of supporting progressive issues."
To date, the only "progressive issue" associated with
the organization is the claim that Nader--after four decades
of liberal opposition to corporate power and political corruption--is
conspiring with right-wing Republicans to help Bush keep the
White House.
Does the National Progress
Fund live up to the standards it demands of Nader?
Not so much.
According to reports filed
with the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS, rather than the Federal
Election Commission is responsible for monitoring 527 groups),
the organization's largest donation from an individual is $25,000,
from Robert "Bobby" Savoie. Savoie was head of Science
and Engineering Associates, which recently merged to become Apogen
Technologies, where Savoie is vice chairman.
Savoie's company is a major
federal contractor, providing all manner of services to the Department
of Energy, the IRS and the Pentagon. Currently, Apogen is doing
an especially brisk business with the Department of Homeland
Security--designing databases to track the movements of foreign
visitors to the U.S.
Does it seem odd that someone
who has done well by Bush's "war on terror" would help
the Democrats? Actually, Savoie has a long record of keeping
his bread buttered on both sides.
About a month before his donation
to the National Progress Fund, he handed over $25,000 to the
Republican National Committee--and a month before that, he gave
$2,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. His
wife, Lori, by happy coincidence, gave equal amounts to the same
organizations on precisely the same days.
According to the New York Times,
TheNaderFactor.com's anti-Nader television ad cost $5,000 to
produce and $20,000 to run a dozen times in New Mexico and Wisconsin
at the end of August. Precisely the amount that Savoie gave to
the Nader bashers--and to the Republican National Committee the
month before.
Savoie isn't an exception.
Like plenty of other rich, politically connected executives,
he keeps thousands flowing to both major parties, so that millions
flow back to them, no matter who wins. The idea of a genuinely
independent alternative raised by Nader's campaign is naturally
terrifying--so Savoie joined right in with the liberal attack
on Nader.
The Democrats and Republicans
share the same corporate backers, and they share the same manual
of dirty tricks for political campaigns. We expect slander and
hypocrisy from the two parties of the Washington status quo.
But progressives who say they want to win real change ought to
know better.
Shaun Joseph writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|