Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 7, 2004
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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.
|
January
7, 2004
Hystrionics About
Howard
Dean
and His Democratic Detractors
By DAVE LINDORFF
As one who has been extremely cynical and suspicious
about the candidacy of Howard Dean for the Democratic Party's
presidential nomination, I have to confess that the more I hear
the other candidates criticize him, and the more I hear him respond
to their vapid and treacherous charges, the better he looks.
Take the recent criticism of Dean's comment
concerning Osama Bin Laden. At the nationally televised debate
last weekend sponsored by the Des Moines Register newspaper,
John Kerry, supposedly one of the more liberal of the Democratic
presidential wannabes, tried to make Dean look like a limp-wristed
liberal criminal coddler by recalling Dean's recent observation
that Bin Laden, if captured, would have the presumption of innocence.
Well, wouldn't he? Or was Kerry suggesting
that such legal niceties as a fair trial could be dispensed with
in this particular instance in favor of a good old fashioned
public lynching?
Dean, who could have given the yahoos
in the television audience the red meat some are looking for,
instead said simply that as president he would be bound to protect
the rule of law, and that while he assumed Bin Laden would be
convicted and sentenced to death for his alleged crime of masterminding
the attack on the World Trade Center towers, he would also have
to be tried in accordance with the law, which includes giving
him the presumption of innocence.
That solid defense of the Constitutional
right to a fair trial stands at once in stark contrast with the
position of the current occupant of the White House, who has
locked several American citizens up indefinitely without charges,
without trial, and without access to a lawyer or even contact
with family members. It stands in equally stark contrast to Kerry
and the other candidates, none of whom jumped to Dean's defense.
Dean got the same kind of unprincipled
criticism from Kerry and Lieberman a few weeks ago when he made
the rather obvious observation that the much ballyhooed capture
of Saddam Hussein had done nothing to make the U.S. safer or
more secure--a point that was underlined readily by the continued
slaughter of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and by the elevation of the
Homeland Security Department's risk index, as well as by a series
of high-level threats to U.S. bound airliners, necessitating,
in some cases, F-16 escorts to some flights and cancellations
of others.
Dean's earlier comment about wanting
to be the candidate of the guys who drive pickups decked out
with confederate flags prompted a similar attack from his rivals.
For saying that he does not want to write off the South in the
election, and wants to challenge the Republicans' so-called "Southern
Strategy" of using racial code words to pry Southern working
class whites away from their traditional support of the Democratic
New Deal coalition, Dean was attacked by candidates Lieberman,
Kerry, John Edwards and even by Al Sharpton, all of whom accused
him both of racial insensititivy to the supposed hurt feelings
of blacks and of paternalism towards whites.
Excuse me, but just how does it hurt
black feelings to say that working class people --black and white--are
being screwed by a Republican strategy of tricking whites into
voting against their own class interest by appealing to their
racial fears? And how is it paternalistic to point out to the
guys who put confederate flags on their pickup trucks--and there
certainly are a lot of them in the Southland, most of them really
decent folks at heart, who do exactly that--that they have been
duped and used by the Republican Party? It's a fact, and it's
high time that someone among the Democrats had the huevos to
point it out. Dean has been taken to task by his Democratic
rivals too for calling for a repeal of the entire Bush tax cut
package, with Kerry in the lead saying that he would preserve
the portion of the tax cuts that went to the middle class.
Has anyone looked at those alleged middle-class
tax cuts Kerry and Lieberman want to save? They are so small
as to be insulting. Few would miss them if they were gone, and
they weren't across the board in any case. Dean is right. It
would be far better to wipe them off the boards and start from
scratch. Far fairer, and far better for the economy, would be
a one-time cut in the social security FICA tax, which would go
disproportionately to those at the lower end of the economic
scale, and which would be spent immediately back into the economy.
While Dean hasn't had the guts to join
Congressman Dennis Kucinich in calling for a slashing of the
military budget--the only way the U.S. government will ever truly
be able to fund all the real needs of the American public--or
for making the tax code more progressive, it was still bracing
to hear him tell Kerry, and by inference most of the other candidates
at a debate hosted Tuesday by National Public Radio, that Kerry's
call for keeping much of the Bush tax cut in place while proposing
a host of new funding initiatives was "hogwash," as
indeed most of the human services spending promises made by Democratic
presidential candidates in the past several decades have been.
Further, Dean gets points for explaining that any benefits middle
class families may have thought they were receiving from the
Bush tax cuts have long since been gobbled up by higher property
taxes and state sales and income taxes necessitated by Bush cuts
in federal aid for schools, police, roads, etc. Not to mention
the higher energy prices and interest rates that have been the
result of Bush administration policies. Senator Lieberman blasted
Dean saying that no Democrat has been elected president who ran
on a call for higher taxes, but this criticism coming from a
guy who, with Al Gore, blew the 2000 election while shamelessly
promising program after program to every wedge group a pollster
could identify didn't carry much weight.
Dean is far from perfect, and he shows
a worrying tendency to back away from some good statements and
positions when confronted (especially when compared to candidate
Dennis Kucinich, who has stood solidly by all his positions and
who is helping to keep Dean honest with regard to his opposition
to the Iraq war). But not always. It was refreshing to see him
stand firm for the Constitutional right to a presumption of innocence
and the right to a fair trial. It has been refreshing to hear
him call the Republicans' Southern Strategy for what it is--a
racist gambit that has hoodwinked a generation of white stars-and-bars
waving Southerners (as well as a large cohort of northern white
suburbanites, who keep their own confederate flags neatly hidden
away in their racially frightened hearts).
Dean may not be a progressive candidate.
His position on the death penalty is indefensible, his record
as governor could hardly be called liberal, and his position
on globalization and trade agreements, not to mention the military,
is pretty wishy-washy.
But I have to confess, listening to the
treacherous and petty Republican-style attacks of his weasily
rivals for the nomination, and watching him stand his ground
for (the most part), with humor and dignity, is exhilarating,
after years of the likes of Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton
and Gore.
If nothing else, a Bush-Dean match-up
would, for the first time in a generation, offer us the spectacle
of a genuine political street fight, with real punches thrown
and real blood on the pavement.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|