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Today's
Stories
March 15, 2004
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik
to Organizer
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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
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March
15, 2004
Lessons from the Texas Primaries
Looking
for a Coalition with Legs
By GREG MOSES
Although pundits from right to left have been
magnetized into horserace election analysis, comparing man to
man, there is something else, and something more difficult to
consider. How are the people moving beneath it all? And what
are they trying to work out?
Last week they, the people, appeared
crisp in the morning and crumpled by afternoon, the smell of
cologne giving way to diesel, as election-day wore on. It was
a fair day for voting in Texas, and from what I witnessed as
a substitute election judge, Democrats were trying to get a movement
on.
Although Democrats in Texas managed to
top their turnout of four years ago, Republicans let their numbers
dip dramatically. And the regular staff of Republicans at one
South Austin polling place gave anecdotal evidence that the lopsided
Democratic turnout last week was a reversal of recent trends.
Signs of hope were produced. Liberal
Congressman Lloyd Doggett easily won the party vote in a new
Hispanic district that was drawn by Republicans to defeat him.
And liberal Congressman Ciro Rodriguez
also prevailed in a 126-vote squeaker against more conservative
Henry Cuellar, who campaigned on his ability to get along with
Republicans. We'll return to the Rodriguez example below.
As San Antonio columnist Carlos Guerra
summarized the local races, four Democratic incumbents of the
Texas legislature were turned out by angry voters for sins of
financial scandal or Republican collaboration. Most famously,
the iconoclastic Black Democrat Ron Wilson of Houston was retired
after three decades, because he had testified in favor of the
Republican redistricting plan.
Wilson's argument, by the way, that the
redistricting plan would yield more Black representation in Congress,
was actually verified by the election of Houston NAACP activist
Al Green, who beat a one-term white liberal incumbent, just as
Doggett was supposed to be defeated by Hispanics.
Finally, an exit poll by the Houston
Voice showed that a majority of Texans do not favor a Constitutional
definition of marriage.
So if you put the pieces of the puzzle
together, it would look like the Democrats are restless in Texas
and fighting mad. That was also the impression I got from hundreds
of Democrats who lined up to vote in South Austin. Some joked
loudly about being "Yellow Dog Democrats" who would
rather vote for yellow dogs than Republicans.
One Hispanic family and one Black family
filed in with three generations of voters each. Yes, they each
said, you may stamp my card Democrat.
At the Republican table, too, there were
signs of fierce party loyalty. "You can stamp my forehead
if you want to," was a line I heard more than once, from
both partisan camps.
The experience left me with an impression
that the choice between John Kerry and George Bush does not represent
what is really at stake in November. People on the ground are
tussling with each other over something else, not quite embodied
in either man.
Of course, the Bush machine has helped
to make Texas a foregone Republican state for the first time
since Reconstruction, and despite the compelling evidence that
I wanted to take from the polling place, I wonder if that machine
is not about to solidify the trend worldwide. Of course, I hope
not. But the Bush machine can't do what the people won't allow.
Although a recent Gallup Poll shows that
Kerry is a contender with the voters and that Bush is below 50
percent approval, the same pollsters report that Bush holds an
astounding 91 percent loyalty among Republicans (second only
to Eisenhower in 1956). If Bush is to be defeated, this loyalty
has to be somehow cracked and made vulnerable to facts. But this
will require taking our eyes off Bush in order to understand
where that loyalty is really based.
Furthermore, says Gallup, the issue of
terrorism still tops the list of "critical threats"
among all voters, ranking far above the much-vaunted issue of
unemployment. This makes the chore of deflating Bush loyalty
all the more daunting, since it requires national therapy for
the reactionary psychology so effectively implanted on Sept.
11, and perpetuated last week in Spain. Don't we fear what another
horrific massacre will do to the national mind?
Concerning the "jobs issue,"
it is instructive to witness up close how election-day voting
is crammed around the work day. Lines form before work, during
lunch, after the early shift, and especially after five o'clock.
Between these times come a few retirees and mothers with babies.
Campaigns that focus too much on unemployment might miss these
actual voters. By and large, it is working Americans who take
time to vote, or not.
And Americans who are caught up in the
work day have precious little time. To how many voters did we
explain, that this was a party primary? But why did they have
to pick a party, some asked? Or why couldn't they pull a straight
ticket? Later in news reports, these primary-party voters would
be lumped together as "activists," when it was clear
that political literacy was sometimes quite minimal.
Despite the passion that I saw on election
day in Texas, and despite the signs of hope, I worry about a
Bush victory. Yes, many Democrats are angry. But who else is
their anger convincing? If the playing field is all about anger
this year, then Bush wins. Republicans have long mastered the
anger card.
In the suburbs of Williamson, Collin,
and Montgomery counties--north of Austin, Dallas and Houston
respectively--new roads and subdivisions get built every day.
Homes in the 100's with new streets and no trees. People moving
into neighborhoods that chill you with tidiness. Fresh-waxed
cars that hustle to and from the office. In the midst of this
progress, people are angry and afraid. Bush's relationship to
this landscape is taproot to the Republican nation.
As Kelly Shannon pointed out in an Associated
Press analysis, these burgeoning suburban counties are bread
and butter to the Bush machine.
Lots of Democrats don't like it. There
is something scary about what counts for normal development.
Home building, Fox News, and the Pentagon add up to a curious
projection of national character that has made push-button warriors
of us all. Robocops are us. If the Kerry campaign can figure
out how so many Democrats have nevertheless managed to see through
it all, the grassroots may help to teach him how to project another
kind of America.
>From what I saw last week, a coalition
is waiting to be made: Black and Hispanic voters hanging tough
with their legacies of opportunity and civil rights; Liberal
white voters refusing to give up their ideals of fair play and
democratic participation; Independent voters looking for somebody
with a straight and sensible game.
And what about retirees, and mothers
with babies? Is it possible among such voters that issues of
human care can overcome the national psychology of fear and insecurity?
Returning to the example of Congressman
Ciro Rodriguez, instructive is the list of issues highlighted
at his web page. Although the contest between Rodriguez and Cuellar
was largely a tug of war between Laredo and San Antonio, here
are the issues that helped Rodriguez squeak out his victory:
strengthening national security, promoting better health, honoring
veterans, enhancing educational opportunities, developing economic
growth, preserving natural resources, and supporting working
men and women. Are these the issues that can help transform red
states to blue?
I asked one voter which party he'd like
to vote in, and he answered sincerely, Independent or possibly
Green. I think he was looking for Ralph Nader. I liked the guy.
He showed up during one of the alternative hours, not so closely
regulated by the work day, wearing black t-shirt and jeans. It
would have been good to give him the ballot he was looking for.
But he cast his vote on the Democrat side, perhaps joining me
in the point nine percent of Texans who went for Kucinich. If
the national ballot comes down to a squeaker, he can be a crucial
part of the coalition, too.
I think Democrats would be foolish to
cut Nader out. He's been shaking up Washington for more than
forty years. He is organized, informed, and no fool. As people
on the ground are looking for a way to go, Nader can help with
facts, strategies, and ideas. A day spent campaigning against
Nader is a day wasted by Democrats who should have better things
to do.
So I was pleased by news that the Kerry
campaign is in a fighting mood, rolling out a counter-spot late
last week, only one day after the Bush campaign attacked him.
That's what the emerging coalition wants to see--a fighting chance
to go somewhere else but through the Bushes again.
And yet, important questions remain widely
unasked. Who are the American people this year? In the difference
between Bush loyalists and the would-be Kerry coalition, what
aspirations are vying for leadership of these United States?
What is happening when all these feet hit the ground to vote,
or not to vote, on election day? These are the questions that
may guide what we most need to know. It can't be a horserace
if it takes millions of legs to win.
Greg Moses
writes for the Texas
Civil Rights Review. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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