Today's Stories

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

Subscribe Online

Reflections on Campaign 2008

From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

By MATT REICHEL

I did something which no self-respecting radical, philosophizer, or independent mind should ever do: I volunteered my services for a presidential campaign beginning late last year.

This all started on a regularly slow December evening, ending over a delightful rouge from the affordable Petite Récolte series from “Nicolas.” When you live as I do, with little to no money to your name, you know how to fine treasures at 3 Euros a bottle. For American budget travelers to France: remember the Petite Récolte . Anyways, this night was winding down in much the same fashion as any other: discourse about how the “enlightened” Europeans were being rapidly led into the neo-liberal waste bin by the “ignorant” Americans. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown and even Sweden had swung to the right! At the time, Italy and Spain were the only significant hold outs, and the former’s fragile lefty coalition was quite clearly falling apart.

So the only hope seemed to be that the French still knew how to take to the streets. They elect horrendous leaders, but they handle their social movement business far better than any other country on Earth.

Before going to bed alongside my goût du moment, I quickly checked my e-mail. And there was a message from the Kucinich for President Campaign, wherein he mentioned their need for interns. I responded, half jokingly.

One week later, I received an e-mail from a juvenile-in-charge, who told me to choose between New Hampshire and Nevada for campaigning purposes. This was the biggest no-brainer of my life, as a few days later I was airborne en route to an all-expense paid for vacation in Vegas.

One could say that it’s a bit peculiar to be campaigning for a progressive-leaning candidate in the city of material greed. The majority hippie contingent in the campaign seemed to find the place quite awful, repeating over and over that they were stuck in the “belly of the beast.” Not me! I adore Vegas, because it’s honest capitalism: it breaks the market system down to its most fundamental and comprehensible components, so that every jerk in the universe can understand that they only have a chance in a million at ever doing anything great with their life.

Besides, where else can you be working on a presidential campaign, find yourself rolling around at night jet-lagged, and then just jump up, walk down the hall and buy a slushie margarita for $2 and start playing video poker?

They put us up at the “Palace Station:” a middle of the road joint on the west side of I-15, made famous by the Juice’s latest incursion with the law. I arrive at 4 in the afternoon a few days after New Years, only to find that the person at the front desk had never heard of Kucinich despite the fact that dozens of campaigners were staying there. I try unsuccessfully to get a hold of my contacts, and irritated I decide to check into one of the casino bars. I went with the Irish theme establishment, as little would quench the thirst built up over a marathon day of travel better than a few pints of Guinness.

I soaked down the famous stout over Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise,” his premiere and most revealing novel. He had only just lost his innocence as he recounts the life of Amory Blaine, a child of privilege who ultimately derides the American caste system and hints at a conversion to Socialism. Blaine’s metamorphosis is quite contrived, but perhaps purposely so. I think Fitzgerald is critiquing a bit more than the Princeton elite in this novel; I believe he is also taking a poke at the Gauche Caviar: those who wash their hands of society’s inequalities by artificially cheerleading movements for justice.

While it exists all over the Western world, the American “left” is particularly plagued by this dynamic. Take the Obama campaign for instance:  white suburbanites get to feel fuzzy and “open-minded” by voting for this frat boy of a politician. Furthermore, they are inspired into thinking that they are part of an immense moment of change, wherein all the “cool” people are uniting against the forces of evil. Meanwhile, the outside observer scratches his head wondering why this war monger is any different than all of the other psychopaths in Washington. Vote for Obama and he will open the floodgates to social movements, I’m told, even though he derided the ’68 movements in his spirituality-laced load of crap entitled “The Audacity of Hope.”

Unfortunately, this Kucinich campaign was no exception to the rule of the “hip” do-gooder pretending to care. The vast majority of kids involved were so proud of doing something “helpful for humanity” that they lost track of what exactly was going on: they were selling their souls to work for a guy who was part of an imperialist party that excels in selling out votes of the working class to Wall Street.

Dennis and his young English Belle loved the attention: ambitious minds willing to be subservient to their political idols. They could seemingly sense that while still quite young, I am neither ambitious nor subservient,  and so Elizabeth, in particular, treated me quite disparagingly from the beginning. I wasn’t there to stroke their ego, and I needed them for nothing. I was doing this because I think that Dennis is the best American legislator, which is far from being any sort of compliment. And I wouldn’t have done it at all if I didn’t get to go to Vegas.

In general, the campaign was made up of kids pasting together their C.V.’s, with hopes of becoming full-fledged political hacks some day. This might explain why Dennis did worse in 2008 than in 2004, and lost nearly 100% of the country’s anti-war sentiment to a Republican (Ron Paul) and an imperialist Democrat (Barack Obama).

But the problem with Dennis’s presidential run goes deeper than Dennis, and goes to the heart of why there is no real “left” in the United States. I feel silly even referring to the “left,” since it’s rare to find an American under 50 that even understands the left-right distinction with any sort of clarity. So instead I will refer to “progressives,” though sometimes I am unsure that I am progressive myself, given some of the nonsense espoused by people identifying themselves as such. What I ran into with Dennis, as with nearly every progressive non-profit in the country, is a swarm of politically correct droids who really scared me shit-less with their remarkable ability to have no sincere emotion and very little original thought. You figure that on occasion you could have a few beers and a real heart-to-heart with someone about what brings them to this candidacy or what they think about the bigger picture and so on, but these campaign goons never lose their plastic façade. It is scarily remarkable! That fake smile I saw plastered over everyone’s young and soul-less face had me wanting to bring Dennis into custody for destroying what could have been ambitious, unique and creative people.

But then I realized that this wasn’t Dennis’s fault; this is a societal problem. Americans never learn how to socialize, since there are very few cultural mores directing social behavior. You add to this the grossly consumerist society bombarded with ads on every ounce of public space, and people find it quite normal to pretend to live. It’s rare to find an American, especially among those under about 50 years old, who ever demonstrate the remotest interest in what you think or believe. They will often show this fake, passing interest in what you say, and, for the sake of being politically correct, will over-exaggerate their enthusiasm for your ideas, but rarely anything sincere.

There was never a moment where I felt that the campaign train wasn’t completely de-railed. There wasn’t even a day that passed where I felt that I had anything meaningful to do. In a state where Ron Paul’s anti-war candidacy finished 2nd, ahead of John McCain, Kucinich was entirely off the map. When I did finally find the occasion to leaflet and talk to potential voters, I found that almost no one had ever heard of him.

It was announced to campaign staff that the ship had sunk as soon as he was denied entry to the last Vegas debate. Meanwhile, he felt so bad for dragging so many “stellar” interns into this pathetic campaign that he decided to invite us to Cleveland to work on the congressional re-election campaign. Normally by this point I would have taken the next Airbus to Paris, but I had gotten myself romantically entangled.  While sipping $2 slushie margaritas at the whirlpool, I met an Alaskan delight who was equally fed up as me with the loser-culture around us. Despite the old saying about what happens in Vegas, we decided that we may as well take the free room and board in Cleveland and get to know each other a little better.

Dennis put us up in apartments across from his office on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland Ward 19. These were basic lodgings with basic amenities, though certainly sufficient for their purpose. His part of town, rich in its Irish workingman tradition, has recently become increasingly Middle Eastern in flavor, as markets and restaurants reflecting this trend have popped up throughout. Cleveland, infamous for its inflamed river and rampant poverty, has all sorts of hidden treasures. Furthermore, it is culturally what I am used to, being a native of Chicago: no-nonsense working class Catholics. Because of the early Lenten schedule this year, we were campaigning right in the middle of fish fry time: marching into people’s Friday evening suppers with the famous yellow “Dennis!” placards, stickers and buttons, most often to cheers by his avid supporters.

Dennis is certainly not just another congressman. It is rare in the United States to find an elected official who is so well-known and appreciated by his constituency. Almost everyone you would talk to at labor rallies or church picnics would have some touching Dennis story, or know someone who knew one of his brothers or some third degree of connection to Cleveland’s populist hero.

This is to say that for how backwards and absent-minded his presidential campaign was, his local grassroots effort was on track. Much of the reason for this has to do with the work of his labor-friendly campaign staff, including the alpha male and former MUNY Light union head, Greg Somerville. Greg’s connection with Dennis goes back to the former Boy Mayor’s unsuccessful attempt to save the public utility system, as the local banking elite forced the city into default to damn his efforts. Among labor leaders and movement makers, Dennis became a hero, and it is this connection that has cemented his seat in the congress as the nation’s most principled legislator.

I was like a pig in shit working with these blue collar Midwesterners. Greg would make fun of the holdovers from the presidential race, calling them “wa-hoos” and “wackos.” He referred to that campaign as “the biggest drum circle on Earth.” He was the first person I had met in weeks who was saying exactly what was on his mind. For the first time since passing customs, I felt like I was in a free country, and that I wouldn’t be hauled into P.C.-prison for expressing an emotion or heart-felt sentiment.

It is of little surprise that this is the culture that has actually elevated Dennis to power. It is built of real people looking out for their own interest. This isn’t people pretending to care about the world because it’s a la mode. This is a movement of people in the heartland making sure that their man in Washington is, indeed, one of their own.

It should also be of no surprise that the best legislator in the country comes from the Midwest and not from one of the trendy west coast cities. Instead, the west coast has given us this tragic culture of politically correct, which destroys any semblance of intelligent debate in the Land of the Free. The P.C.-industry has grown to silly proportions. Rather than attack societal ills with actual change in the direction of racial and class equality, we pretend to by watching what we say and keeping data on what races are applying for what jobs.

That is what these bourgeois movements for “change” have produced in the United States: “nonsense upon stilts.” These are the words used by Jeremy Bentham to describe a similar phenomenon of his day: giving people “rights” rather than guaranteeing them liberty and equality. The Rights discourse and the culture of politically correct are both adaptations made for idiot societies in order that the government can continue to persecute with only a small minority realizing it. You convince everybody that they live in a free country by telling them that they have the right to free speech, whilst you do everything in your power to treat the words of dissenters as disparagingly as possible. This is easy to do when only the top .1% of the wealth has access to the air waves.

In the end, March 4th, the Ohio primary, came with expectations of victory by the incumbent over the pro-business punk of an Alderman, Mr. Joe Cimperman. In the end, the vote total for Dennis was a bit worrisome, as he barely eclipsed the 50% threshold in a 5-way race (there were three small candidacies in addition to Dennis and Cimperman).  Nonetheless, he hung on to his seat for another two years, fending off the fate faced by his friend Cynthia McKinney on two occasions.

I wobbled out of Cleveland alongside my new goût du moment, still caught in Vegas mode, and headed to her abode in Alaska. On the outskirts of Fairbanks, I was able to only passively listen to the ongoing charade of an election. Friends and family throughout the nation were caught in heated discussion over the Obama vs. Clinton drama. Me? I could care less if Obama wins in November, or if Hillary found a way to steal the Democratic nomination. It’s of little consequence to anybody. Until we build a movement, get out of the paralysis of politically correct thinking, and take to the streets like our brothers and sisters in France, Americans will continue to live as droids. People need to stop blinding themselves with the fog of this damn election and start taking their country back from the pits of this neo-liberal hell.

Matt Reichel normally teaches English to French businessmen, though he is currently teaching French to Americans in the great Northwest. He can be reached at: reichel_matt@yahoo.fr

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont