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Coming Soon! From Common Courage Press Recent Stories July 16, 2003 Jeffrey St. Clair Back to the Future in Guatemala: The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt   July 15, 2003 Kathleen and Bill Christison Why We Resigned from VIPS Elaine Cassel Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack Chris Floyd Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries Jason Leopold CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries Gaius Publius Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please John Troyer The Niger Syndrome Becky Gillette No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David Orrr Uri Avnery The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb Website of the Day Cost of Iraq War   July 14, 2003 Lisa Taraki Hot Days in Ramallah Walter Brasch Bush: the Pretend Captain SOA Watch Training Colombia's Killers in the US Dan Bacher Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Intelligence Unglued Website of the Day Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties July 12 / 13, 2003 Arthur Mitzman The Double Wall Before the Future Standard Schaefer The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson John Feffer A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang Ron Jacobs Shades of Gray in Iran Elaine Cassel Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights Tom Stephens Civil Liberties After 9/11 David Lindorff New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On" Jason Leopold The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11 Lee Sustar What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia? Mickey Z. AIDS Dissent and Africa Sam Hamod Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group Ramzy Baroud Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket Jeffrey St. Clair Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller Adam Engel Parable of the Lobbyist Robert Sanders A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream Poets' Basement Albert, Witherup, Guthrie   July 11, 2003 Conn Hallinan The Coin of Empire Tim Wise God Responds to Bush Mokhiber / Weissman The Two Faces of Bush in Africa Edward S. Herman Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor David Orr Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation? David Lindorff An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary Website of the Day Dead Malls   July 10, 2003 Ron Jacobs Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody Profits of General Dynamics Sean Donahue Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia Yemi Toure Who Outted Bush in Afrika? Robert Jensen Politics and Sustainability: an Interview with Wes Jackson Ali Abunimah US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated Joanne Mariner Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions Website of the Day Electronic Iraq   July 9, 2003 David Lindorff Is the Media Finally Turning on Bush? David Krieger and Angela McCracken 10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons Mickey Z. Why Speak Out? Lee Sustar The Great Medicare Fraud John Chuckman The Worst Kind of Lie Gary Leupp "Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq Website of the Day Hail to the Thief: Songs for the Bush Years   July 8, 2003 Elaine Cassel Bully on the Bench: the Pathological Dissents of Scalia Alan Maass Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor Chris Floyd Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag Linda S. Heard America's Kangaroo Justice Brian Cloughley They Tell Lies to Nodders Charles Sullivan Bush the Christian? Saul Landau The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age Website of the Day Occupation Watch   July 7, 2003 William Blum The Anti-Empire Report Harvey Wasserman The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head Ramzy Baroud Peace for All the Wrong Reasons Simon Jones What Progressives Should Think About Iran Lesley McCulloch Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh Uri Avnery The Draw Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3   July 4 / 6, 2003 Patrick Cockburn Dead on the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass What is Freedom to a Slave? Martha Honey Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation and Neglect Jeffrey St. Clair The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture Standard Schaefer Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004 Lenni Brenner Jefferson is for Today Elaine Cassel Fucking Furious on the Fourth Ben Tripp How Free Are We? Wayne Madsen A Sad Independence Day John Stanton Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War Jim Lobe Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment John Blair Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke Lisa Walsh Thomas Heavy Reckoning at Qaim David Vest Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite Adam Engel Queer as Grass Poets' Basement Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair Website of the Weekend The Lipstick Librarian   July 3, 2003 Patrick W. Gavin The Meaning of Gettysburg Thomas W. Croft There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy David Lindorff Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong and the US John Chuckman Lessons from the American Revolution Jackson Thoreau New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices Stan Goff "Bring 'Em On?": a Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3 July 2, 2003 Diane Christian Good Killing and Bad Killing Richard Falk After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future? Mokhiber / Weissman Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress Justin Podur Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia Reuven Kaviner Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2 July 1, 2003 Sasan Fayamanesh Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and Iran Elaine Cassel Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia and the Sodomy Cops Susan Block A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong to Ourselves Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: No, No Bono David Lindorff Weapons in Search of a Name Gary Leupp Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1   June 30, 2003 Karyn Strickler The Do-Nothings: an Exposé of Progressive Politics in America Col. Dan Smith The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire Tim Wise Race and Destruction in Black and White Neve Gordon The Roadmap and the Wall Chris Floyd The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam" Elaine Cassel Kentucky Woman Uri Avnery Hope in Dark Times Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30 Website of the Day Bush El Hombre   June 28 / 29, 2003 M. Shahid Alam Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry? Jeffrey St. Clair Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside Man Laura Carlsen Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace? Alan Maass You Call These Democrats an Alternative? C.Y. Gopinath Bush and Kindergarten Noah Leavitt Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law Joanne Mariner Rehnquist Family Values Ignacio Chapela Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley Bob Scowcroft Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers Jon Brown Tom Delay: "I am the Government" Kam Zarrabi Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please! Ron Jacobs Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues Julie Hilden Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment Adrien Rain Burke The Anarchists' Wedding Guide Adam Engel US Troops Outta Times Square Poets' Basement Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod   June 27, 2003 Jason Leopold CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq Posed No Threat to US David Vest Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker David Lindorff The Catch and Release of "Comical Ali" Ray McGovern Cheney, Forgery and the CIA Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26 Website of the Day John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy June 26, 2003 Sen. Robert Byrd The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin Jason Leopold Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate Hans Blix Paul de Rooij Ambient Death in Palestine Chris Floyd Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq Elaine Cassel Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner CounterPunch Wire Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops Sheldon Hull Squatting in Mansions Ben Tripp A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone Uri Avnery The Best Show in Town Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25 Website of the Day Ordinary Vistas: The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo   June 25, 2003 Bruce Jackson Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers Mickey Z. The New Dark Ages David Lindorff Indonesia's War on Journalists Dan Bacher Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops Adam Federman "Success is Not the Issue Here" Elaine Cassel "Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing Guidelines Bill Kauffman My America vs. the Empire Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25 Website of the Day You Are Being Watched: Elevator Moods   June 24, 2003 Elaine Cassel Supreme Indemnity Holocaust Denial at the High Court Roya Monajem A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth It to Risk One's Life? John Chuckman The Real Clash of Civilizations David Lindorff WMD Damage Control at the Times Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24   June 23, 2003 Marc Pritzke Washington Lied: an Interview with Ray McGovern Conn Hallinan The Consistency of Sharon Wayne Madsen Commercials, Disney & Amistad Edward Said The Meaning of Rachel Corrie Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23 June 21 / 22, 2003 Alexander Cockburn My Life as a Rabbi William A. Cook The Scourge of Hopelessness Standard Schaefer The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor Ron Jacobs US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets Harry Browne The Pitstop Ploughshares Lawrence Magnuson WMD: The Most Dangerous Game Harold Gould Saddam and the WMD Mystery David Krieger 10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Avia Pasternak The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories CounterPunch Summer Reading: Our Favorite Novels Todd Chretien Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension Maria Tomchick Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids Adam Engel The Fat Man in Little Boy Poets' Basement Guthrie, Albert & Hamod June 20, 2003 Walter Brasch Down on Our Knees Robert Meeropol The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Grannies and Baby Bells Norman Madarasz Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a Quebec Radical Gary Leupp Bush on "Revisionist Historians" Steve Perry Bush's Lies Marathon: the Finale   Hot Stories 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 Elaine Cassel Civil Liberties Watch Michel Guerrin Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" Uzma Aslam Khan The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go Paul de Rooij Arrogant Propaganda Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

July 17, 2003 Third Ways and Worlds Lula at the Progressive Governance Conference By NORMAN MADARASZ On the weekend of July 11-13, London was host to the most recent conference on "Progressive Governance"--better known as the 'third way'. The meeting gathered five hundred political leaders, diplomats and intellectuals to discuss the state of the center-left in European politics mainly. To distinguish itself, its organizers invited the international socialist's man of the year, Brazil's President Lula da Silva. The 'third way' was forged by British sociologist, Anthony Giddens, lead thinker behind Tony Blair's formerly recast New Labour Party. "Advocates of the third way desire a market economy without wanting the values of a market society" is how the British Prime Minister put it at the November 1999 meeting in Florence. It was a brighter time for the movement. Social democratic parties were governing in most of Western Europe and North America. Where Giddens actually built a theoretical edifice exalting the notion, Blair's spin doctors used it as the main marketing device to boost him to power. Its catchy bisexual-hip coated the transformed and gutted 'Old' Labour with the legitimacy of contemporary pertinence. During Blair's first term, international meetings on the matter were held in Europe, with Bill Clinton, Holland's Wim Kok and Portugual's Antonio Guterres all attending. Even France's Lionel Jospin got himself an invitation despite being snubbed by Blair at a photo-op for the 1997 European Union meeting. It seems that the former French Prime Minister was too leftwing for Mr. Blair's taste. Given the setbacks of the past two years, speakers were bound to trade hopes amidst much talk on what is possible and desirable. Denials also abound about the extent to which the current American government expects submission of the center-left when it is actually governing, and subjection when not. Its protagonists have taken the opportunity to tell the world that nothing had changed in the conception, though very much has changed in the world. When times are down, optimism is often a virtue. Even were Blair not under attack, it's questionable whether anyone was really listening. The fact remains that the center-left is on the retreat. European leaders today are mainly center or rightwing conservatives, with Aznar and Berlusconi clearly tugging toward the extreme. How Blair escapes being called anything but their counterpart can be thanked to the English's legendary politeness. POPULATIONS ARE DEMANDING Electoral defeats have seen the center-left drawing back from two directions. It has yielded to conservatism just at the moment when the right has surged forth to accomplish its interest-group policies, both domestically and internationally. Meanwhile the center-left has frantically reversed motion from its own populations. In countless countries, the establishment is confronted with populations striving for greater representation, more equitable policies and fuller governance in their own name. February 15, 2003 is not a date center-left leaders shall soon forget. In confrontation to this recent popular push, the cynicism of the third way agenda is particularly blaring. Local and grassroots socialist leaders are quickly dismissed as 'populists' showing little regard for the rule of law and democracy. Yet wherever third way leaders govern in the G7, they have catered to satisfying high finance first and foremost. Throughout the 1990s, the doctrine of globalization was replete with the idiom of inevitability. Still, some conference guests, like Goren Persson from Progressive Europe, maintain that "the world has probably never been a better place to live in than it is today. The average citizen is richer, more people live in democracies, and peoples' life chances are greater than ever before." If this is the third way dictum, what do we observe from the record? That reality proveS otherwise. More people are unemployed proportionately than 30 years ago. The average G7 citizen is barely as rich as then, while concentration of wealth has skyrocketed in most countries, foremost among them the US and UK. As for the self-proclaimed glories of the education system: tuition fees are up everywhere and position hiring dramatically sparse in any field. Contract work and the freelancer rule the day with their job insecurity and over-employed stress. When professional ambitions are other than being a MBA manager or systems analyst, then few are those who may comfortably assert that life chances are greater. All this occurs in the context of today's sacrosanct democracies. As for those most defending this social system, life expectancy has certainly risen, which in turn has made the elderly generation the consumer society's jackpot. At the same time, this silent majority of the increasingly elderly has cast their vote for the disappearance of the welfare state. In that measure, conference participant Gøsta Esping-Andersen surprises no one when observing that "the bulk of redistribution [of welfare states] is geared towards the elderly whilst little is invested in children and young people." As long as the stock market and 401(k) plans worked well as repositories for savings, who would or could avoid using them? Amidst the conflicting messages that just don't make good TV, the big secret is that the Developing World, after a decade of being preached at to adopt financial and fiscal policies of center-left "globalization" principles is tilting with tremors. Last week, the United Nations Human Development Index reminded the interested of the circumstances: poverty has risen throughout the decade explosively in its reality and in the violence it has wrought. GUEST OF HONOUR This is why the progressive governance conference could not miss out having Brazilian President Lula da Silva lend it a light of legitimacy. For the President, it signaled yet another true turn. He had to publish his speech in The Guardian to insist that "political realism must not be taken as a justification to abandon the dreams that lie at the foundation of the thinking of the left." Yet the Brazilian PT has no excuse about not understanding the conformist pressure awaiting it upon reaching power. Regarding the ideological fantasies of the third way, one of the Brazilian Workers' Party's most illustrious philosophers and activists, Marilena Chaui had already delivered a decisive critique in 1999. Chaui's target was then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and post-Seattle Northern protectionist trade policies. The third way had merely legitimated the inevitability of local politics and social issues taking second place to international trade and capital flow. Observing the third way refrain on the end of the class struggle, she hammered in how its advocates mistook the "geopolitics of the Cold War with the class division established by capitalism, inferring that just because the first has ended, the latter must come to pass". Chaui, moreover, uncovered the dubious history of the term. Far from being an offshoot of the 'left', it was "used by fascism to indicate an economic, social and political project and program that sought to be equally distant from liberalism and socialism/communism." From its founding texts, the aims of the third way were crystal clear. Do away with the worker. Bid farewell to classes. Call for individual self-initiative and the streamlining of the State to basically rid it of individual and collective responsibility. Promote a 'mixed' economy through the privatization of collective wealth. Despite the position his party held when in the opposition, Lula chose to attend the meeting. Yet even before his appearance on July 13, and then on July 14 at the London School of Economics, London's brightest and best were trying to redeem their fallen idol, Blair, by crowning Lula as the head of an absurd derivation: the "New PT (Workers Party)". Brazilians are famed for their sense of humor, but back home the appellation exudes the distinctive smell of a set-up. In the 1990s, the third way sought legitimacy by outreaching to the developing world. The only representative of a so-called emerging market then was Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He stood as the perfect example of the soundness of its principles as he drove his country into financial crisis. It was done perhaps naively, but given the nature of the beast, Brazil, it resulted most likely from a calculation that no matter what change could be fostered, dire consequences would follow. Follow they did: shortly after Brazil's 2002 World Cup victory, the second economic crisis under Cardoso's tenure tore the value of the national currency down even more dramatically than what had occurred in January 1998, at the beginning of his second term in office. Newer progressive voices, however, have sought damage control. Bill Clinton seems to be pressuring the IMF to alter its austerity parameters. Peter Hain, the increasingly outspoken leader of the Commons, stated to BBC2 that "we've got to be much clearer that we really are committed to social justice and redistribution of wealth and income." One wonders what has kept this from being the message all along. Whatever the reason for the communication breakdown, the lack of trade union representation seemed to reinforce the point. Old labor, deemed by Hain as "economically unsuccessful" might not attract dreary old rock stars to give promotional sound bytes, but it's the voice of the people. And it's the voice that the third way's legitimizing of capitalism's tender side has done nothing but beat into exclusion. In that sense, Giddens is being facile when suggesting that "in Europe, the right has been opportunistically propelled back to government largely on the back of a wave of far-right populism." As in France, the right returned due to the center-left's hindering of the popular will to accomplish its broader ambitions for reform. Most third way States within the European Union have remained aristocratic institutions. The 'worker' is a category that has been erased from third way-like discourses. Decades ago, Westerners were told they were a huge middle class. Nowadays, the only type of worker around is a white collar office worker: a 'knowledge worker'. It is no small irony that in the age of State abandonment of its commitment to public education, knowledge has become such a hot commodity. Evidently, knowledge has been trickled down to information as if it were yet another cartel property. President Lula may have no option but to confront this situation. But for the record, the third way is the European Union protectionist way itself where it hurts countries like Brazil most: agriculture and manufacturing. Lula let this clearly be known. So it's hasty to misunderstand the nature of Lula's political s pin--in a class of liars, the honest man is only a victim. He knows full well that no invitations would be forthcoming from the North were he to stumble like Venezuela's Chavez. Meanwhile, the Conference and London School of Economics have elected him to be their icon. DISTORTING THE PT AGENDA Anthony Hall, professor at the Social Policy Department of the London School, tried to jump the gun by citing Lula's adoption of market standards as indicative of a general movement within the PT --akin to what gave British Labour a new skin. The PT is dead, long live the New PT. If this strikes readers as the worst case of short-sighted British intellectualism, they are not the only ones. Back home, any basis for the claim has been hotly denied by Lula's main advisors. If it's style that dictates trends, a buzzword is known to be short-lasting. As the Folha de Sao Paulo reported on July 6, Professor Francisco Panizza of the London School's Department of Government, maintains that "Lula may not like it, but he has been converted into the third way's biggest poster boy." To Panizza's credit, Lula has certainly demonstrated a versatility making him unique on the world's political stage. He's able to talk to ordinary people, as well as venture through some of Capital's tallest doors. Yet it does not serve Panizza to don the Straussian garb when suggesting that Lula has to teach Brazilians to accept patience as change concretely bides its time. Back in Brazil, the mood is ironic, heavy. Historical repetition of well-packaged capitalism is not what voters sought with the PT. So far there have been but tawdry signs of real gestures. In The Guardian, Lula spoke of the "courage needed to implement an ambitious reform programme". The population awaits for the Executive to demonstrate it. Lacking political direction and entertaining confused social and economic policies is what characterizes the European Union. Lula has too much work at home to be the European Court jester --let alone its joker in a power play against Washington. What can the third way ensure Brazil's President when his peace and love attitude switches to policies that are fair in love as in war? Norman Madarasz, Ph.D. in French philosophy, teaches and writes on philosophy and international relations in Rio de Janeiro. He welcomes comments at nmphdiol2@yahoo.ca Weekend Edition Features for July 12/13, 2003 Arthur Mitzman The Double Wall Before the Future Standard Schaefer The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson John Feffer A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang Ron Jacobs Shades of Gray in Iran Elaine Cassel Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights Tom Stephens Civil Liberties After 9/11 David Lindorff New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On" Jason Leopold The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11 Lee Sustar What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia? Mickey Z. AIDS Dissent and Africa Sam Hamod Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group Ramzy Baroud Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket Jeffrey St. Clair Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller Adam Engel Parable of the Lobbyist Robert Sanders A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream Poets' Basement Albert, Witherup, Guthrie   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /