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Today's
Stories
July
1, 2004
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
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
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July
1, 2004
A
Report from Milwaukee
Green
Party Shifts Into Reverse
By
ALAN MAASS
The Green Party rejected the independent campaign
of Ralph Nader at its convention last weekend. Instead, the Greens
nominated a little-known attorney and activist from California,
David Cobb, as their presidential candidate.
Cobb won the party's presidential
nomination by a narrow majority of the nearly 800 delegates voting
at the convention, heading off a further vote that could have
led to an endorsement of Nader's independent campaign. Nader
and his vice presidential running mate, Peter Camejo--a Green
Party veteran who ran twice for governor of California, winning
more votes in these elections than any Green candidate in the
U.S. other than Nader--had asked for an endorsement of their
independent presidential campaign, rather than the party's nomination.
As close as the outcome was,
the contrast between Cobb and Nader-Camejo--and what these campaigns
mean for the future of the Green Party--was stark.
The most important issue is
that Cobb and his supporters represent a so-called "safe-states"
strategy. The idea is that the Green Party presidential candidate
should help defeat George Bush in the November election by not
running an all-out campaign in "battleground states"
where the Greens could do well enough to tip the balance to Bush--as
Nader is accused of doing in the 2000 election.
An online columnist for a
newspaper in nearby Racine, Wis., summed up the implications
when he suggested that Kerry supporters should "put on a
Cobb button" to show Greens coming to the Milwaukee convention
"where you stand." "If you want John Kerry to
be president, you should hope David Cobb wins big in Milwaukee,"
wrote the columnist.
Medea Benjamin, a leader of
Global Exchange and the Green Party's U.S. Senate candidate in
California in 2000, says explicitly that Greens are  justified in supporting a
vote for Kerry, even though he is opposed to most everything
on the Green Party agenda. "In the swing states, where this
election's going to be determined, [Greens should] recognize
that we owe it to the global community to get rid of George Bush,"
Benjamin says. "And if people in those swing states support
that strategy of getting rid of George Bush, then voting for
Kerry might be the strategic vote for them."
Supporters of Nader and Camejo
at the convention rejected this argument. "We're the Green
Party," Gloria Mattera, co-chair of the New York state Green
Party, told a Nader-Camejo rally. "It's not our job to elect
a pro-war Democrat into the White House."
As Jason West, the Green Party
mayor of New Paltz, N.Y., who came to national prominence by
defying state law to marry gay and lesbian couples, put it: "I've
been asking Democrats all over the country how the world would
be a better place under President Kerry then President Bush,
and no one's been able to give me a good answer. The problem
with the 'safe states' strategy is it leaves unchallenged the
illusion that John Kerry is a progressive who is going to do
something very different from what Bush is doing now."
At a time when even mainstream
commentators are recognizing that the differences between the
Republican and the Democrat in the 2004 presidential election
are tiny compared to the policies they share in common, Cobb's
nomination represents a retreat by the Green Party from offering
a clear and uncompromised left-wing alternative to two parties
of the status quo.
* *
*
Cobb himself left it to supporters
like Benjamin and New Jersey Green Ted Glick to push the "safe-states"
strategy. In his convention speech on Saturday, for example,
Cobb didn't even raise the issue of the Greens' attitude toward
Kerry and the Democrats, though it was the decisive political
question. Instead, his campaign made Nader the main issue--criticizing
the party's 2000 presidential candidate for seeking only an endorsement
and not the Green nomination.
This was a play for support
among what Green Party national co-chair Ben Manski estimated
was "a majority of Greens [who] would prefer to see a Green
presidential nominee, but running in all states unflinchingly."
It's understandable that Greens
would want to have Nader as their party's candidate, rather than
simply endorse his campaign. What was surprising, though, was
the number who spoke about Nader with the kind of venom normally
associated with the Democratic Party's anti-Nader attack dogs.
Complaints about Nader--that he's aloof and egotistical, that
he won't join the Green Party, that he has refused to fundraise
for the Greens--circulated throughout the convention.
Actually, Nader's 1996 and
2000 presidential campaigns are, by most accounts, primarily
responsible for quadrupling the number of organized state Green
Parties and guaranteed ballot lines in the last eight years.
Nader wasn't a Green Party member in either campaign, but he
promoted the party at every appearance. And since the 2000 elections,
Nader raised more money than any Green at the national, state
and local levels, according to his campaign's estimates.
It's impossible to square
the image of Nader as an egoist who hasn't lifted a finger to
"build the Green Party" with the man who campaigned
in all 50 states as a Green in 2000 and won 2.7 million votes
in the best showing for a left-wing presidential candidate in
half a century.
But Cobb's vice presidential
running mate, Pat LaMarche of Maine, doesn't seem to care. As
she told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "[Nader] walked
away and said afterward, 'Oh, by the way, if you want to throw
flowers at me, go ahead.'"
The contempt for Nader contained
in this comment is typical among a layer of Greens and dates
back to the aftermath of the 2000 election, when--even as Nader
was being savaged for "throwing" the election to George
Bush--leading Greens privately and sometimes publicly vented
their complaints. Early on, Cobb associated himself with the
attacks on Nader and used it to lay the basis for his campaign
for the nomination.
Last year, when Nader was
making his decision about whether to run for president again,
17 well-known Greens, among them Ted Glick, issued an open letter
calling on Nader not to run. Now, many of these figures are outspokenly
critical of Nader for seeking the endorsement of the Green Party,
rather than the nomination. In other words, their gripe with
Nader isn't his relationship to the Green Party, but the fact
that he ran at all.
* *
*
Ross Mirkarimi, a cofounder
of the California state Green Party, says he fears that the rejection
of Nader because he isn't a Green Party member "may have
been two steps backward." Mirkarimi pointed to European
countries where left parties typically come together in alliances
and coalitions to run common electoral campaigns. "I was
a little bit turned off by this purist, insular attitude from
other Greens saying, 'No hand holding with somebody from another
party, you have to be a Green,'" he said. "That to
me was strategically short-sighted.
Donna Warren, a Green from
Los Angeles and leader of the party's Black caucus, is blunt.
"What I think took place is that some small-minded Greens
failed to see the big picture," said Warren, who won hundreds
of thousands of votes as the party's candidate for lieutenant
governor of California in 2002. "When they got to the convention
and they saw an opportunity for our voice to be heard over a
national stage, they decided that they wanted to keep it within
their own confines."
The Greens' venting about
Nader is especially cruel coming as the Democratic Party has
stepped up its attack. As the Green convention was getting underway,
the Congressional Black Caucus lured Nader to a meeting where
members tried to browbeat him into withdrawing from the race.
Every effort of Nader's to
get on the ballot is being challenged with all the resources
that the Democrats can bring to bear. In the run-up to a Nader
rally in Oregon last weekend--where the campaign hoped to draw
more than 1,000 people to meet a requirement for getting ballot
access--the Democrats even brought out Howard Dean to attack
Nader.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have
openly intervened within the Greens, sponsoring the formation
of a "Greens for Kerry" organization. But the Democrats
haven't needed to devote their own operatives. Left-wing writers--including
former Nader supporters like columnist Norman Solomon--have devoted
numerous articles to making the case against Nader, and for a
vote for Kerry to defeat Bush.
Peter Camejo believes the
Democrats' attacks on Nader set the stage for Cobb's challenge
within the Green Party. "What's behind all of this is that
they have friends who say that they'll be angry if the Greens
support Nader," he says. "It's the pressure from the
Democrats. They don't want to defend Nader. They want to hide.
That's their policy. We're going to be the exact opposite."
* *
*
Cobb's campaign to win the
Green Party nomination has been years in the making. He was able
to take advantage of a delegate structure, based partly on the
undemocratic Electoral College, which gives disproportionate
weight to small states with weak state parties.
Thus, Cobb won about 5,000
votes in the California Green Party primary, for less than 12
percent of the total. Fewer people than that voted for him in
all of the other state caucuses and primaries combined leading
up to the convention. Yet Cobb came to Milwaukee with nearly
one-third of delegates already committed to him. Camejo, who
won 33,000 votes in the California primary alone, had less than
half the number of delegates that Cobb did.
Camejo says that he and Nader
have support from a majority of Greens at the grassroots. But
this wasn't organized into representation or support at the convention.
So the Nader-Camejo forces were fighting an uphill battle from
the start.
Camejo proposed a unity resolution
that would have produced endorsements for both Nader-Camejo and
the Cobb campaign, leaving it up to state parties to decide which
campaign would get the Green ballot lines. But Cobb rejected
the compromise.
At a meeting of supporters
after the convention vote, Camejo said that one battle ahead
was to "organize those Greens who agree with us to make
sure our voice gets heard."
Ross Mirkarimi says that "what's
really at play here for the Green Party's long-term survivability
is what happens on the local level. For the Green Party, concentrating
hard on local partisan and non-partisan races is where our bread
and butter is." Still, the prominence of Nader's 2000 campaign
was an undeniable asset to the Greens in local and state races--and
catapulted the party into the national political debate.
As for what happens next,
don't expect to hear much about the Cobb campaign--whether you're
in a "safe" state or not. As one Green put it, "This
campaign is a zero. It doesn't matter whether he campaigns in
a safe state or a battleground state, because no one's going
to pay any attention."
The nomination of Cobb is
a step backward, away from an uncompromising challenge to the
two-party "duopoly" and away from the prominence that
the Greens have achieved, thanks in good part to Nader's 2000
campaign.
For the Nader-Camejo campaign,
losing the Green Party endorsement means further difficulties
getting on the ballot. Campaign officials say they have the resources
to qualify as an independent campaign in most of the 22 states
and the District of Columbia where the Green Party could have
helped with its endorsement. California will present the biggest
obstacle in terms of the number of signatures that need to be
gathered.
In 2000, the Nader presidential
campaign that won 2.7 million votes was much more than a Green
Party operation. It drew supporters and volunteers from a much
wider milieu--activists from the global justice movement and
other struggles, alongside people new to any political activity
who questioned corporate domination of the Washington status
quo.
This time--despite the abuse
heaped on him by Democrats and the pull of the "Anybody
But Bush" syndrome--Nader continues to score more than 5
percent support in opinion polls as an antiwar, anti-corporate,
pro-worker candidate. "I think that what happened here was
a setback," Donna Warren said after the convention vote,
"but I don't think that it's going to stop this campaign.
It can't stop this campaign."
Alan Maass is editor of Socialist Worker and
author of the new volume from Haymarket Books, The
Case for Socialism. He can be reached at: alanmaass@sbcglobal.net
Weekend Edition
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