|
March 21, 2002
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
March
19, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Nuke
Iraq?
Phyllis
Pollack
Roger
Daltrey's LA Surprise
Amir Ahmadi
War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
Ben White
Bomber
Blair
Fran Shor
Child-Murderers
and Madmen
March
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Crazy
is Cool
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
What's Playing At My House
Armen
Khanbabyan
The
Pentagon in the Caucasus:
Georgia Is Only the Beginning
Gabriel
Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
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 New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
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
|
March 21, 2002
Why are We in Ukraine?
By Rep. Ron Paul
I strongly oppose H. Res. 339, a bill by the United
States Congress which seeks to tell a sovereign nation how to
hold its own elections. It seems the height of arrogance for
us to sit here and lecture the people and government of Ukraine
on what they should do and should not do in their own election
process. One would have thought after our own election debacle
in November 2000, that we would have learned how counterproductive
and hypocritical it is to lecture other democratic countries
on their electoral processes. How would members of this body
- or any American - react if countries like Ukraine demanded
that our elections here in the United States conform to their
criteria? So I think we can guess how Ukrainians feel about
this piece of legislation.
Ukraine has been the recipient of hundreds
of millions of dollars in foreign aid from the United States.
In fiscal year 2002 alone, Ukraine was provided $154 million.
Yet after all this money - which we were told was to promote
democracy - and more than ten years after the end of the Soviet
Union, we are told in this legislation that Ukraine has made
little if any progress in establishing a democratic political
system.
Far from getting more involved in Ukraine's
electoral process, which is where this legislation leads us,
the United States is already much too involved in the Ukrainian
elections. The U.S. government has sent some $4.7 million dollars
to Ukraine for monitoring and assistance programs, including
to train their electoral commission members and domestic monitoring
organizations. There have been numerous reports of <U.S.-funded>
non-governmental organizations in Ukraine being involved in
pushing one or another political party. This makes it look like
the United States is taking sides in the Ukrainian elections.
The legislation calls for the full access
of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
monitors to all aspects of the parliamentary elections, but
that organization has time and time again, from Slovakia to
Russia and elsewhere, shown itself to be unreliable and politically
biased. Yet the United States continues to fund and participate
in OSCE activities. As British writer John Laughland observed
this week in The Guardian newspaper, "Western election
monitoring has become the political equivalent of an Arthur
Andersen audit. This supposedly technical process is now so
corrupted by political bias that it would be better to abandon
it. Only then will countries be able to elect their leaders
freely.'' I think this is advice we would be wise to heed.
Other aspects of this bill are likewise
troubling. This bill seeks, from thousands of miles away and
without any of the facts, to demand that the Ukrainian government
solve crimes within Ukraine that have absolutely nothing to
do with the United States. No one knows what happened to journalist
Heorhiy Gongadze or any of the alleged murdered Ukrainian journalists,
yet by adding it into this ill-advised piece of legislation
we are sitting here suggesting that the government has something
to do with the alleged murders. This meddling into the Ukrainian
judicial system is inappropriate and counter-productive.
We are legislators in the United States
Congress. We are not in Ukraine. We have no right to interfere
in the internal affairs of that country and no business telling
them how to conduct their elections. A far better policy toward
Ukraine would be to eliminate any U.S.-government imposed barrier
to free trade between Americans and Ukrainians.
Ron Paul, M.D.,
represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas in the United
States House of Representatives.
|