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A Seven
Part Special Report
by Douglas Valentine, Author of The Phoenix Program
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
by Douglas Valentine
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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November 10,
2001
Anatomy of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
By Bruce Kyle
Bangor Daily News
There are two things you need to know about Nancy
Oden. She always laughs. She never gives an inch.
I've known those things for more than
a dozen years. So when the story broke last week that someone
had been rousted out of Bangor International Airport for not
being sufficiently compliant with the new airline security regime
it was no surprise that this happy warrior for the environment
and social justice was that someone.
The story goes something like this. Jonesboro's
leading organic farmer/peace activist is on her way to Chicago
Thursday before last to attend a meeting of Green Party USA,
of which she is an officer. She's flagged for an enhanced search
by security personnel - she suspects it's because of her political
views, they won't say precisely what causes one person to be
scrutinized more closely than someone else.
There's a tussle over a carry-on bag
- she says she was trying to help with a stuck zipper, they
say she was being difficult. Attempts to scan her with the
metal-detection wand do not go well. The passive resistor is
surrounded by armed National Guard troops, she is turned away
from the gate and ends the day not in Chicago but back in Jonesboro.
The story, by BDN reporter Jeff Tuttle,
was published last Saturday. It was picked up by The Associated
Press and ran throughout the country the next day. By Monday,
word of this story had spread beyond the newspaper-reading world
and it registered more than 2,800 Web site hits, pretty much
a single-day record, according to our Web site guy. E-mail requests
for reprints have been nonstop. My conversation with Oden the
other day - a hilarious account of soldiers locking and loading
in the face of a "woman of a certain age" - was interrupted
when she had to take a call from CNN. The episode was the subject
of a Seattle Post-Intelligencer political cartoon Wednesday,
with a trampled Bill of Rights as the punch line.
With that much coverage, there's going
to be a lot of comment. For starters, I went to As Maine Goes,
a Web site where Maine's right-wingers meet to chat (I visit
weekly so I know how I'll be thinking when I'm 92 if I don't
get myself a good hobby) and the result was enlightening. Sure,
there was a fair amount of "it couldn't have happened
to a more deserving Leftie," but the overall consensus
was that this civil liberties thing is pretty darned important.
The shocking comment - a bareknuckle
pounding of Oden - comes from the Left. In particular, from
the Greens.
This isn't all that much of a shock to
those who know the Left - they are notoriously tough on like-minded
individuals who aren't quite like-minded enough. But this goes
deeper. There are, you see, two Green parties in this country
and the two shades clash like checked pants with a striped shirt.
There's Oden's Green Party USA (which
we'll call GPUSA because of space constraints) and there's
the Green Party of the United States (which we'll call GPUS
because it's the really awful acronym they chose for their Web
address). The two used to be one, but at an ugly convention
last summer GPUS broke away from GPUSA.
The GPUS press release on the Oden incident
is a marvel. They want their piece of the civil liberties outrage.
Mostly, though, they want to slam GPUSA as a mere splinter
group (does the group that split, even if bigger, get to call
the other a splinter?), a disgruntled faction of malcontents.
They also want to correct "erroneous press reports"
that misidentified Oden as a member of GPUS. Nancy Allen, GPUS'
media coordinator here in Maine, asks us directly for a correction
and thoughtfully sends along a charming little essay by a GPUS
member with "Leader of Green Splinter Group Fibs"
as the title.
Since those press reports originated
in this building, and especially since they were not in the
least bit erroneous (Oden is precisely identified as a GPUSA
member in both the story and the photo caption, GPUS is nowhere
even mentioned), I ask Allen and Scott McLarty, GPUS' media
coordinator in D.C., why they would play the "that darn
press" card. Allen replied she didn't care if we corrected
the (already correct) story or not. McLarty conceded "in
hindsight that the wording is sloppy."
Apparently not so sloppy that it needs
tidying up, though. The "erroneous press reports"
business is still on their Web site. (Incidentally, here's a
tip for you kids who want to be media coordinators when you
grow up - don't say nasty things about people and then come
back later to say it was off the record. That's backward.)
And from GPUS members across the land,
we've received many helpful little notes advising us that Nancy
Oden is pushy and rude. Of course, if Nancy Oden was a GPUS
member, she'd be resolute and straightforward.
Knowing her, I have no doubt that Nancy
Oden could be an enormous pain to work with. The laughing alone
can be unnerving. But it's a shame that GPUS, if it is the
true Green Party, doesn't have room for her. Here's why.
A lot of Greens talk about being activists.
Nancy Oden's the only one I know who went beyond talking and
actually did something that truly helped real people. Remember
Township 30 - the big plan back in the late '80s to build a
gigantic dump in Washington County for incinerated garbage from
all over the Northeast? Remember how the entire county - back-to-the-land
hippies, crusty old busters, hard-nosed businessmen and sweet
little garden club ladies - rose up in amazing unity and told
the state and the developers that Washington County was poor,
but not that poor? A lot of people helped make that happen,
but no one deserves more credit than Nancy Oden. Not that the
proven ability to organize and inspire would be of any interest
to a political party.
This is not to suggest that the current
Green leadership doesn't have its own record of accomplishment.
I covered as a reporter the state Green Party convention after
the 1994 gubernatorial election when they first gained ballot
status in Maine, and I heard the leaders, now the GPUS crowd,
swear that the very next step was to get Greens in the Legislature.
Seven years later, they've yet to crack that elite 186-member
body. They did, however, just this Tuesday get two Greens elected
to a local school committee and a board of selectmen, so the
juggernaut's rolling.
And if you worried that something had
gone wrong in the 1998 election when the Greens had to go out
and hire a Democrat to run for governor, worry no more. There
may be two candidates in 2002, which means a contested primary.
John Rensenbrink, the Bowdoin professor
known as the father of Maine Greens and a devoted GPUSer, said
the other day this is a sign the party is maturing and that
he doesn't think the Greens will succumb to the bitterness
and divisiveness that often afflicts Democrats and Republicans
when they have contested primaries.
Don't laugh.
Bruce Kyle
is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor
Daily News.
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