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Special Print Edition of CounterPunch: The 2004 Election The Wreckage: Labor, God and Turnout; Was Gay Marriage Really "the" Issue; Can These Democrats Ever Win Again?; Blame It on the Smart-Assed White Boys by JoAnn Wypijewski; Political Diary: They Didn't Believe Him: What Really Happened in Ohio; How to Lose a County Hit By 30% Unemployment; David Cobb: Apex Vote Suppressor; Hope From Montana? by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! 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! CounterPunch Books a Holiday Gift They Won't Put Down! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Read Why It Happened! Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils Order Here! Today's Stories December 10, 2004 Kathy Kelly From Haiti to Iraq: Burying Water December 9, 2004 Greg Moses Ask Not Who Bankrolled Fallujah Joshua Frank Cobb and the Ohio Recount: Vote Fraud as Fundraiser! Ralph Nader An Open Letter to Bush: It's Time to Disclose the Real Casualty Figures Lee Sustar Bhopal: the Making of a Disaster Tom Barry Restrictionist Resurgence Mickey Z. Sander Hicks and the 9/11 Truth Movement Christopher Brauchli Bush in the Bubble Mark Donham Why are House Democrats Trying to Deny Cynthia McKinney Seniority? Gary Corseri On the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death, 2012 Paul de Rooij The Voices of Sharon's Little Helpers   December 8, 2004 Ralph Nader Will the Real Michael Moore Ever Re-Emerge? Ann Harrison The Ohio Recount: Reluctant Officials and Few Rules Paul Craig Roberts War Crime Dave Lindorff They've Got a Secret: Inside the $40 Billion Black Budget for Spying Patrick Cockburn / Andrew Buncombe CIA Warning on Iraq: Fallujah Did Not Break the Back of the Insurgency Col. Dan Smith Rules of Engagement in Iraq Emily Alves / Michael Johnson Paradise Lost: Corruption and Clientelism in Costa Rica Richard Oxman The Dylan Bob Wouldn't Mention: Up With Dylan Thomas Ron Jacobs In Fallujah, Freedom Isn't Free   December 7, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Running Battles in Baghdad Behrooz Ghamari Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent Dave Lindorff American Fantasies: Psst! Hey Buddy, Did You Hear How Well the War's Going? Joshua Frank Dean at the DNC? Richard Oxman Down with Dylan: the Insufferable Interview Ray McGovern All Mosquitoes, No Swamp John Chuckman The Invasion of Hallifax: The Imperial Wizard Visits Canada James Petras Latin America: the Empire Changes Gears Website of the Day ToxMap: Who's Poisoning You     December 6, 2004 Paul Craig Roberts Paranoia and Pre-emption: Is the Bush Administration Certifiable? December 4 / 6, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Politicize the CIA? You've Got to be Kidding Joe Bageant Dining with the Rhinos Alan Maass Reporting from the Ground in Iraq: an Interview with Patrick Cockburn Brian Cloughley Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf Laura Carlsen Latin America Shifts Left Lenni Brenner Jefferson, Madison, Bush and Religion Anna Ioakimedes Brazil's Haitian Mission: Doing God's Work or Washington's? Uri Avnery Widow of Opportunity? Fred Gardner Supreme Court Hears Medical Pot Case Dave Zirin Steroids to Heaven Jackie Corr Mining Camp Blues: the Red State Variation Don Fitz Will Greens Abandon IRV? Lucy Herschel "Art can be a Weapon of the Oppressed": an Interview with Artist Anthony Papa Richard Oxman No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play Ron Jacobs Holiday Greeting Card Poets' Basement Collins, Albert, LaMorticella   December 3, 2004 Dave Lindorff Lie Then Escalate Ben Tripp Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a Time of Crisis Joe Allen Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer Gilberto Soto Matthew B. Riley Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson Meir Shalev In the End, It is the Violin that Wins Bob Wing The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004 Christopher Brauchli When McCain Bit His Tongue Sasan Fayazmanesh The EU, the US, Israel and Iran   December 2, 2004 Tito Tricot No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free Behzad Yaghmaian The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration Dr. Susan Block Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes Frank / Chowkwanyun Liberalism and Its Bounds Lee Sustar Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt Patrick Cockburn Another Grim Record in Iraq Mark Engler Seattle at Five Michael Donnelly Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham Nate Collins The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds Saul Landau The Assassination of Danilo Anderson   December 1, 2004 Phillip Cryan Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias in Wire Coverage of Colombia Dave Zirin What's the Matter with "Leon"?: Budweiser's Racist Commercial Ghali Hassan Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation: 200 Children Die Every Day Donna J. Volatile Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy" Patrick Cockburn How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency Nick Meo Chemical War Over Afghanistan Mike Ferner The Battle of Toledo Mokhiber / Weissman Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising Kathy Kelly Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes of the UN in Iraq   November 30, 2004 Jennifer Van Bergen The Veil of Secrecy Toni Nelson Herrera Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime Paul Craig Roberts The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence Patrick Cockburn The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq Chuck Munson WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization Movement Adam Williams Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana Gregory Elich A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for North Korea Website of the Day Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!   November 29, 2004 Dave Lindorff Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of the CIA? Omar Barghouti "The Pianist" of Palestine: Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint Mike Whitney The US Media and Fallujah: How to Market a Siege Uri Avnery The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me Some Credit!" Matt Vidal Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers Patrick Cockburn An Interview with Iraq's Foreign Minister Alan Farago Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters Justin Huggler Bhopal 20 Years Later Antony Loewenstein How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy Gary Leupp Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real Issue Website of the Day Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone     November 27 / 28, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Torture & Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq Alexander Cockburn What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa? Fred Gardner Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court Kathy Kelly What We Can Control Diane Christian The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts" Gary Leupp One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea Lenni Brenner Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York Times Ron Jacobs Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of the AMS Clerics Joshua Frank An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd Toni Solo The Murder of Danilo Anderson Saul Landau Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica JoAnn Wypijewski Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are No Cure for Homophobia Justin Taylor Empire's Lawless Opportunities Amos Harel The Case of Captain R. Walter A. Davis Tabloid Justice Stephen Hendricks God's Kind of Men Poets' Basement Albert, LaMorticella and Ford     November 26, 2004 Peter Feng Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine? Greg Moses It's the White Vote, Stupid Liaquat Ali Khan The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments Michael Mandel / Gail Davidson Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry of Immigration Dave Lindorff Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the Way Gary Corseri When Black Friday Comes... Paul Craig Roberts Whatever Happened to Conservatives? Website of the Day Iraq Pipeline Watch     November 25, 2004 Willliam Loren Katz Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today" Mitchel Cohen Why I Hate Thanksgiving Mike Ferner An Uncommon Mom     November 24, 2004 Gila Svirsky License to Kill: the Example of Violence is Set by the State Winslow T. Wheeler The Other Mess in Congress Christopher Brauchli The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay Dave Lindorff Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony Ron Jacobs The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem Ken Sengupta Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah Diana Barahona The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader John L. Hess Safire the Shameless Jason Leopold Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal? Jeffrey St. Clair The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War Map of the Day Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860   November 23, 2004 Forrest Hylton Bush and Uribe at the Beach         November 22, 2004 Dave Zirin Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage in Detroit Paul Craig Roberts On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again? Michael Mandel / Gail Davidson Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada Kathie Helmkamp Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill Ken Sengupta The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place in Iraq" Mike Whitney Greenspan's Hammer Roger Burbach Why They Hate Bush in Chile Website of the Day Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?     November 20 / 21, 2004 Alexander Cockburn The Poisoned Chalice Todd May Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear Abbas Ahmed Ibrahim The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account Kevin Zeese Mishandling Nader Landau / Hassen After Arafat Tom Barry The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley Fred Gardner Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd Justin E.H. Smith Triumph of the Will: the Sequel Carl Estabrook Where We Are Now Gary Leupp Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue Dave Lindorff Apocalypse Soon Jenna Michelle Liut Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower and Lives Mickey Z. The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William Blum Greg Moses The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America Sharon Smith Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now? Ron Jacobs Sandwiches and Car Bombs Ben Tripp Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days Richard Oxman Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules! Gilad Atzmon Politics and Jazz Poets' Basement LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon. Website of the Day Voice of the Forest                                         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

Weekend Edition December 11 / 12, 2004 Is It Running Out? Bush's Capital By GARY LEUPP "I earned capital in the campaign---political capital---and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened after the 2000 election: I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election, and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on." President Bush, November 4, 2004 "As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital." Marx, Capital, Chapter 10 President Bush is not known for his extensive vocabulary. But occasionally he employs a term outside the eighth-grade lexicon, like "historical revisionism," although he always misuses that term. Or "contiguous borders," but having said he wants a Palestinian state with such borders he appears to misunderstand the meaning of that term too. Bush's latest favorite phrase is "political capital." Maybe Dick Cheney, who keeps calling the victory a "mandate," also told Bush it was political capital. Perhaps Karl Rove informed him, late on the night of the election. "You've won a great victory, sir, and earned a lot of political capital," and that's why a relieved and exuberant Dubya immediately announced this to the people. A week later on November 12 Bush explained that he would spend his capital "to establish a Palestinian state." In Santiago, on November 21, he assured the Mexican president he would use his "political capital" to grant guest-worker status to millions of Mexican immigrants to the U.S.. In Canada December 1 he assured the Canadians, too, that he had political capital relevant to their interests. The president likes that phrase.   What Is Capital? Capital, of course, refers to money or other forms of wealth that are intended to make more wealth. Money assigned not to buy a shirt or a sandwich or a house but to make more money. Capital like everything has a history. The feudal lord in medieval Europe was content to bind his serfs to the land, force them to work his fields and fork over a share of their crops; the system wasn't based upon money, investment and wage-labor, but on different principles that kept the nobles fat and happy through many generations. When the accumulation of capital, as opposed to the mere collection of tribute, became the driving force in economic life, capitalism was born. Karl Marx, the man who popularized this term, was the first to examine capitalism as a mode of production specific to the modern age. Marx, who has influenced historical thought more than any other figure in the last 200 years, asked "when did capitalism start?" and concluded that whereas aspects of it occurred here and there from ancient times, it only took off from the sixteenth century in western Europe before spreading elsewhere. For capitalism to emerge there had to be, simultaneously, a class of people with money to invest (including persons born into wealthy families with a long history of brutal treatment of the common people), and people with no property willing and able to work for the wealthier for money wages, and a market for commodities that wage-earners could produce. There'd always been wealthy merchants of one kind or another, if only to service the needs of noble courts. But merchants whose income derives mainly from collecting and employing workers who produce goods or services for the general market are a particular feature of capitalism. Many members of those early workforces were uprooted peasants apprehended for "vagrancy" and "vagabondage" and forced into productive labor as an alternative to forfeiting an ear or nose. "If money," Marx declares, " . . . 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt."   Bush as Capital Personified The capitalist, Marx wrote over a century ago about men like Bush, "is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital" (Capital, Chapter 10). The capitalist must always think about how much money he can make from his connections to other people; the desire for profit distorts his human relationships. Capitalism has "pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' andleft no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.'" Capital, wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto, cheapens culture: it has "drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom-Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers." Into this world of capital was the current president born, and he has always been comfortable with the power it has conferred on him, even through repeated business failures. His family name and capital assured him gentlemanly Cs from his father's alma mater, Yale, where he majored in history. No doubt his understanding of the subject matter is accurately reflected in press conferences, debates and speeches. Dad's busy, helpful friends gave him a non-demanding National Guard post during the Vietnam War, and shelter from scandal, while enrolling him in the Harvard Business School where one professor recalls him as "lazy" and "unprepared." He told Professor Yoshi Tsurumi that he had avoided the draft through the efforts of "Dad's friends." He also told Tsurumi, "The government doesn't have to help poor people--- because they are lazy." The soul of capital, indeed. After Harvard, of course, Bush became governor of Texas, presiding over 152 judicial executions. The next natural step was the White House. How does Bush intend to use this latest capital to enhance his power? He wants to press on with his Christian right social agenda, using the halo-stripped preachers among his religious base, and lawyers and scientists embracing his "faith based" agenda, to promote even more "naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." He also wants to build empire, and as his new cabinet appointments show, he remains committed to the neocons' "regime change" program in Southwest Asia, and would like to leave office having established pro-U.S., Israel-friendly client states controlled by foreign capital throughout the region. Bush's nominations of Alberto Gonzalez, famous for his dismissal of the "obsolete" and "quaint" provisions of the Geneva Accords, as the nation's top law officer; and of Bernard Kerik as Homeland Security director, suggest a preference for more thuggery as policy (although Kerik was forced to withdraw under the cover of another nannygate issue). None of the scandal-dogged neocons have been removed from power, and some (notably, diehard Ahmad Chalabi advocate Danielle Pletka) will likely be promoted. Donald Rumsfeld, criticized by some neocons for an inadequately vicious assault on the Iraqi insurgency, has been confirmed as Defense Secretary. Maybe this is because Congress wouldn't likely confirm Paul Wolfowitz as Secretary of Defense. Maybe Rumsfeld's argued that were the position pass to Wolfowitz, the "war on terror" might get out of hand and make a draft essential. Rumsfeld's been an opponent of conscription (on practical and political rather than moral grounds) since the 1970s, and seems to hope for an end to the "all-volunteer" deployment in Iraq by 2008. In any case, it looks like Washington will continue to confront Syria and Iran as well as the bourgeoning Iraqi resistance in the expectation that all this will ultimately increase American capital in the New American Century.   Political Capital Might Run Out But this means confronting other advanced capitalist nations, imperialist nations, whose interests may conflict with those of the Bush administration. Russia for one has not been happy with Washington's colonization of Iraq, a former trade partner, and its demands that foreign creditors cancel Iraq's outstanding debts. It's even more unhappy about U.S. plans to expand NATO right up to Ukraine's border with Russia. Let's say President Putin, miffed by U.S. behavior and wooed by "Old Europe," takes the perfectly legal measure of pricing Russian oil exports in euros rather than dollars, producing an immediate precipitous decline in the already plummeting dollar and a sudden withdrawal of Chinese and Japanese capital from U.S. banks. Let's say this happens just as the Iraqi elections, disrupted by the Iraqi insurgents, aggravate the ongoing Iraqi crisis and lead to civil war. Meanwhile Israel, judging the time right, and arguing an "existential threat" to the Jewish state, lobs missiles at a dozen Iranian nuclear installations, causing Iran forces assuming U.S. complicity in the attack to engage U.S. troops in Iraq. President Bush appears on TV, announcing, "We were attacked, and now the U.S. and Iran are at war." The sudden, unexpected, frightening circumstances cause Bush to declare, with a heavy heart, that a return to the draft is necessary to protect "our freedoms" against Iraqi and Iranian Islamic-terrorist foes. Public opinion polls immediately show the country divided, with a narrow majority favoring the president and conscription. Large-scale antiwar rallies, some violent, in major cities. Much discussion of the linkages between capital and imperialist war. That's just one possible scenario that might test the limits of the president's political capital. You might think that no competent leader of an advanced imperialist country could allow such a scenario to unfold, but Bush's record as a capitalist has been one of general ineptitude, not withstanding the assistance from his dad's Texas and Saudi cronies. His handling of what he imagines to be his current political capital may be similarly incompetent, producing political bankruptcy, in which case the world, including the American people with no stake in imperialist war, might actually profit. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu Weekend Edition Features for November 27 / 28, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Torture & Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq Alexander Cockburn What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa? Fred Gardner Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court Kathy Kelly What We Can Control Diane Christian The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts" Gary Leupp One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea Lenni Brenner Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York Times Ron Jacobs Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of the AMS Clerics Joshua Frank An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd Toni Solo The Murder of Danilo Anderson Saul Landau Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica JoAnn Wypijewski Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are No Cure for Homophobia Justin Taylor Empire's Lawless Opportunities Amos Harel The Case of Captain R. Walter A. Davis Tabloid Justice Stephen Hendricks God's Kind of Men Poets' Basement Albert, LaMorticella and Ford WWW http://www.counterpunch.org