Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
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 for More Stories.
|
May
19, 2004
For Whom the
Polls Toll
The Indian Elections
of 2004
By VIJAY PRASHAD
Nobody expected these results. Across
the country, the hundreds of millions of Indian voters rejected
the economic "reforms" associated with IMFundamentalism.
The most dramatic repudiation of these "reforms" came
in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where the Chief Minister
and leader of the Telugu Desam Party, Chandrababu Naidu, fashioned
himself as the state's CEO. The people refused to allow the TDP
any representation in the lower house of the Parliament, the
Lok Sabha. The international media, by which we mean everything
owned by Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch, anointed Naidu as the favored
child of the new world order, being ruthless against small farmers
and generous toward information technology. He thought he had
renamed Andhra Pradesh's capital, Hyderabad, to Cyberabad. Nothing
of the sort.
The right-wing Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which led the coalition government (in which Naidu's
party played a crucial role), also felt the wrath of the voters.
The BJP had relied upon its politics of cruel cultural nationalism
against Christians, Muslims and the Left. This did not play well
with voters who denied victories to the BJP's most virulently
cruel cultural ideologues, including the former Minister for
Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi. In Gujarat, where
the BJP's Sangh/Jang Parivar had engineered a pogrom against
Muslims in 2002 (in retaliation for the murder of fifty-eight
of its activists), the BJP could only win half the seats. In
Uttar Pradesh, where it played its strongest chauvinist card,
all its heavyweights could not win.
But did the people reject the
BJP mainly for its cruel cultural nationalism? That might have
been the case in some regions, but as far as exit polls and other
evidence suggests, what was most on the minds of the voters across
the country was the BJP's enthusiastic embrace of IMFundamentalism,
the rights of global corporations and the arrogance of the new
middle class in the metropolitan areas. Its campaign slogan,
India Shining, reflected its craven  disregard for the suicides
of farmers, the decrease in wages for day workers, the sufferings
of the survivors of the Gujarat pogrom, the hardship of the millions
who have been put out of work by the "disinvestment"
policy to sell the public sector to the most corrupt bidder,
and much else. The slogan irked the voter, who saw the reality
of their lives mocked by the shallowness of the PR blitz.
The Congress Party is not immune
to criticism for these economic "reforms." Indeed,
it was the Congress that initiated them, first in the late 1970s
and again, with the collusion of the IMF, in 1991. The man who
leads the Congress, Manmohan Singh, was the Finance Minister
when the Indian government turned to the IMF to conduct the structural
adjustment of its relatively self-reliant economy. But, people
also remember that the Congress once came to the voters, even
if cynically, with the slogan, Garibi Hatao - Remove Poverty.
In the main, however, the voters did not so much vote for the
Congress as they voted against the BJP and its allies.
That is clear across the country.
The Congress benefited from a vote against the last six years
of economic harshness. Despite this transparent fact, Manmohan
Singh quickly announced that as far as economic policy is concerned,
the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress would alter
nothing. Such words portend the suicide of the Congress Party.
Even after these reassurances, the gangster brokers at Dalal
Street scuttled the stock market so that it registered an incredible
decline, and terrified the middle class. This was Big Money's
undemocratic way to tell the Congress not to mess with the "reforms"
which benefit it, even as it runs the country into the ground.
The main beneficiary of the
elections has been the Left. The major Communist Parties won
more seats than ever before and will play an important role in
the next period. They have decided not to join the government
because the Congress has failed to learn the lesson of this election.
The Left will support the government from outside, which means
that it will be able to offer opposition to the economic policies
that the Congress will pursue, give support to the liberal cultural
policy that the Congress alliance will most likely implement
(given its allies, such as the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya
Janata Dal), and continue to fight against any tacit agreements
that opportunists within the Congress might make with the BJP
and it allies.
The real lesson of this election
is that the BJP faced defeat not just because of its policies,
but crucially because the Communists and the social movements
generated mass struggles across the country on a number of issues.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Communist Parties fought the rise in electricity
rates and the starvation of farmers since 2000. In late August
2000, the parties organized a massive demonstration against the
Naidu government, put the issues of inequity on the table and
faced a barrage of bullets from the police. Two activists lost
their lives. Then, the Communists set up gruel centers in the
areas where the farmers had been hardest hit by the entry of
global agro-businesses, as well as by the rise in prices of fertilizer,
water and power. At these centers, the left provided free food
as well as analysis of the situation in the state. Such actions
pushed the generally turgid Congress Party to get into the act,
and because they have a much broader organization, they were
able to capitalize on the Left's efforts.
Much the same thing will have
to be reproduced across the country. There is no substitute for
sustained political struggle to build mass movements. Only a
politicized population that backs a progressive government with
a genuine program written in the people's interest can make Indian
shine. Not the glibness of a PR firm hired to rewrite the ghastly
reality of the BJP's six years in office.
2004 is a historic year for
the ballot box. Up to May, thirty-three countries have held elections,
including El Salvador, Georgia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan. The right has been defeated
in many of these countries, but for Russia, which has an electoral
system that is the envy of most authoritarian politicians. India
joined Spain in rejecting a political party that slavishly wanted
to follow George Bush into the valley of Armageddon. One can
only hope that when we go to the polls in 2004, we'll learn from
the Indian voters, and we'll landscape the White House and get
rid of the Bushes.
Vijay Prashad teaches at Trinity College, Hartford,
CT. His latest book is Keeping Up with the Dow
Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare (Boston: South End Press).
Weekend
Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
|