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November 6, 2001
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
October 30, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
War on Terror
Bad as War on Drugs
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flying
Blind:
The Predator's Problem
Ali Abunimah
Dear Colin
Powell
St. Clair/Cockburn
Atomic
Trains Grounded
Maud Hurd
We Need a Real
Stimulus Package
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
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
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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
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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
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November
6, 2001
Direct Democracy
Darkness Before Dawn
By Evan Ravitz
On April 4, 1967, exactly a year before
he was assassinated, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King summed
up what many feel provoked the September 11 attacks: "the
greatest purveyor of violence on the planet -my own government."
But we should not feel guilty! The government's
militarism does not represent the people! From Howard Zinn's
"A People's History of the United States", pages 545
and 558: "By 1975, public opinion polls showed that '65
percent of Americans oppose military aid abroad because they
feel it allows dictatorships to maintain control over their population.'"
But Congress has given military aid to the Afghans since 1980
and as recently as May of this year sent the Taliban $43 million
to "fight drugs."
The 1975 polls quantify what President
Eisenhower stated: "The people want peace; indeed, I believe
they want peace so badly that the governments will just have
to step aside and let them have it." The government's military
policies are in the control of the weapons manufacturers, the
biggest business on earth according to the UN Research Institute.
They can buy the most congressmen, who then vote to keep them
number one. Eisenhower warned, in his farewell address to the
nation: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist."
The week following the 9/11 events the
stock market suffered its worst decline since 1940, but if you
owned stock in weapons manufacturers you'd have made a killing:
the seven top gaining stocks (by percentage and by points) that
week were all military (details on request).
There is a serious and comprehensive
proposal to rectify this and other failures of the government
to represent us. It was developed by one of the key people who
brought peace in Vietnam. U.S. Senator Mike Gravel in 1971 single-handedly
filibustered the Senate until they agreed to end the draft after
2 more years. At great personal and professional risk, he officially
released the Pentagon Papers which exposed the lies and duplicity
bulwarking our Vietnam policy. He was the first to oppose nuclear
power. His organization Philadelphia II is preparing an amendment
to the Constitution to permit We the People to propose and vote
for the laws we want, in parallel to existing legislative bodies.
Then we can vote to change the government's wicked military
policies which arm our enemies and make us all the target of
the oxymoronic "holy war."
This is not going to be "instant
democracy" or even the "fast-track" which the
President wants from Congress for trade issues. Our proposal
includes extensive hearings, deliberations by randomly-selected
"citizen juries" and public information. Claims by
Washington Post uber-pundit David Broder that the initiative
process in 24 US States is in the pockets of big money are largely
false. The only academic studies of this show quite the opposite.
See http://Vote.org/gerber.
Most problems with initiatives are caused by the limitations
imposed by the legislatures, which our proposal addresses.
We're not going to beg Congress for this
amendment making them share power with us! (Gravel and others
tried that in 1977, to no avail.) We're going to put the Democracy
Amendment in the Constitution the way We the People originally
ratified the Constitution -ourselves. This is called First Principles,
known to few besides constitutional lawyers. We are convening
a symposium to address this and other matters on February 16-18
in historic Williamsburg, Virginia. All details are on our web
site at http://ni4d.org.
There are many other reasons for us sharing
law-making power with politicians. This way we learn responsibility
instead of being treated like children --abused children. It
gives us an incentive to educate ourselves. It gives politicians
some competition and incentive to do better. 100 years of state
initiatives show an excellent track record of legislation; much
was later adopted by Congress (see http://Vote.org).
The 9/11 attacks give us a new reason: If the plane which crashed
in Pennsylvania had hit the US Capitol as the hijackers apparently
planned, the US would now be without a legislative branch of
government. The "Legislature of the People" we propose
would be everywhere, impossible to target.
Don't hate the government, become the
government!
Evan Ravitz
is an advisor to Philadelphia II and spearheaded Boulder's 1993
Voting by Phone ballot initiative. You can reach him at evan@vote.org
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