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Today's
Stories
October 14,
2004
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
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.
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October 14, 2004
The Other Progressive
Candidate
The
Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
By
DARCY G. RICHARDSON
While Ralph Nader has been preoccupied
fending off the disruptive tactics, legal challenges and other
chicanery cooked up by mean-spirited Democrats desperately trying
to keep the longtime consumer advocate off the ballot in state
after state this autumn, and while the Green Party's David Cobb
- behaving more like some sort of namby-pamby apologist for the
Democratic Party than a serious third-party challenger - has
been waging an almost laughable "safe state" strategy
implicitly designed to facilitate Democrat John Kerry's candidacy
in the crucial battleground states, at least one other progressive
third-party aspirant for the nation's highest office has been
quietly canvassing the country in search of support on November
2. Lacking Nader's considerable cachet and the Green Party's
relatively substantial organizational strength, the Socialist
Party's Walter F. "Walt" Brown - the darkest of dark-horse
candidates - is arguably the most impressive third-party candidate
in this year's race for the White House.
Most Americans, of course,
probably don't even realize that the venerable Socialist Party
USA - a party that once boasted 1,200 public officials in the
United States, including a couple of congressmen and dozens of
state legislators and mayors sprinkled across the country - is
actually fielding a presidential ticket this year. This proud
but withering party, whose rich and colorful history has included
such influential American icons as labor leader and five-time
presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, poet and Lincoln biographer
Carl Sandburg, authors Jack London and Upton Sinclair, the courageous
"Mother" Jones, Helen Keller, the gifted deaf and blind
lecturer, physicist Albert Einstein, African-American trade unionist
A. Phillip Randolph and the urbane and dignified Norman M. Thomas,
is waging its seventh presidential campaign since 1976 and hopes
to surpass the relatively modest 10,000-vote mark in a presidential
election for the first time in more than half a century, when
Darlington Hoopes, a former Socialist state legislator from Reading,
Pennsylvania, garnered 20,065 votes during the 1952 Eisenhower
landslide.
If experience and qualifications
really mattered to the American electorate, Walt Brown would
win in a landslide. He is arguably the most qualified and intriguing
presidential candidate nominated by the Socialists since the
party's glory days of the late Norman Thomas. Like Nader - one
of the few honest men left in American politics - Brown's remarkable
life story and long record of public service to his country are
worth a glance. A former three-term state senator from Lake
Oswego, Oregon, the 78-year-old Harvard and USC-educated lawyer
wasn't joking when he told a reporter from a small college newspaper
in Portland shortly after winning his party's nomination last
year that he has "been everywhere and done everything."
And that's putting it modestly.
Among other things, this ex-state
legislator and former deputy district attorney of Malheur County
has rubbed shoulders with Norman Thomas, ridden an elephant into
a hidden city in India, dug canals in Third World countries,
traveled up French mountains in a tram car, climbed Mount Shasta,
ran for Congress twice - garnering more than 10,000 votes in
1998 - and was treated to tea and crumpets in the House of Lords
in London. He also taught criminal law at Northwestern University
and holds four degrees, including post-graduate degrees in government
and library sciences from Boston University and the University
of Oregon, respectively.
A Rhodes Scholar nominee in
1949, the Oregon tree farmer and public interest lawyer cuts
a somewhat incongruous figure for a Socialist Party candidate,
particularly given his long and distinguished military career.
Born in Los Angeles three years before the stock market crash
of 1929 and the deepening decade-long economic depression that
followed, Brown enlisted in the Navy during World War II when
he was barely eighteen, serving in the Pacific and China. Having
served in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, his military
record is by far the most impressive of any presidential candidate
this year, especially in light of all of the controversies surrounding
the military records of his major-party rivals, one whose heroism
during the Vietnam War has been seriously questioned and the
other whose service in keeping Texas and Alabama safe during
that quagmire can't be fully substantiated. Unlike his Democratic
and Republican opponents, Brown served in the U.S. Navy for more
than twenty-five years, rising from the enlisted ranks to a commissioned
officer - including serving as a special prosecutor in Vietnam
- before retiring as a judge advocate general in 1970.
Given his distinguished military record, Brown doesn't consider
himself a pacifist. He is, however, staunchly opposed to the
war in Iraq and has been highly critical of the Bush administration's
handling of that conflict. "We're supposed to have a defense
department", he says, "not a war department."
A lifelong Unitarian, he is
also highly critical of what he describes as President Bush's
racist war on Islam.
A passionate and persuasive
advocate for the underdog, the avuncular Brown, whose white hair,
merry blue eyes and cheery disposition belie his feisty nature,
initially joined the Socialist Party in 1948, when he first became
eligible to vote. That year, he actively stumped for Norman
Thomas, the respectable rebel who was then waging his sixth and
final campaign for the presidency. Dubbed the "American
Isaiah," Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister who served
as the nation's public conscience for more than four decades,
carried the Socialist Party's tattered banner in six consecutive
presidential campaigns between 1928 and 1948, garnering nearly
a million votes during the Great Depression in 1932.
Brown's record on the environment
is virtually unmatched by any of his rivals. As a member of
the Oregon Senate, the self-described "hardcore environmentalist"
and lifelong member of the Sierra Club sponsored the first
legislation in the United States outlawing dangerous chlorofluorocarbons
in aerosol cans in 1975 - a full year before the National Academy
of Sciences issued its ominous warning about the harmful effects
of CFC's on the ozone layer. Brown, who owns a 185-acre tree
farm, characteristically, took little personal satisfaction in
being so prescient, saying at the time that he felt much like
a physician who was proven correct in giving a grim diagnosis
to one of his favorite patients. "Politically, I'm glad
I was right," he said. "But I wish I was wrong."
Like consumer activist Ralph Nader, the amiable public interest
lawyer also has a strong record on consumer protection and has
served on the board of the Oregon Consumer League since 1971.
Despite his advanced years, the tireless civic watchdog also
continues to serve as a volunteer attorney for the Oregon Consumer
Justice Alliance in Portland, giving generously of his time and
resources.
Brown's lifelong commitment
to civil rights also sets him apart from most of his rivals this
year. As a young teenager, he wrote letters-to-the-editor protesting
FDR's unconstitutional incarceration of Japanese-Americans during
WWII when few others dared to speak out on that issue. He also
took part in the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
Four years ago, the gutsy Oregon
lawyer traveled to war-ravaged East Timor to rescue two female
medical students who had been expelled from Indonesian medical
schools in the wake of that nation's UN-sponsored independence
election in August 1999. With the help of Nobel Peace laureate
Jose Ramos-Horta, the celebrated resistance leader and founder
of that island-nation's Social Democratic Party, Brown obtained
U.S. visas for the two women and took them to a Yale Medical
School teaching hospital. The two women, Telma de Oliverira
and Aida Goncalves, later enrolled in the International University
of the Health Sciences of Medicine, a school accredited by the
government of St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.
Like Norman Thomas, who became
a social worker in a blighted Manhattan neighborhood shortly
after graduating from Princeton University in 1905, Brown has
spent almost a lifetime working to improve the living conditions
of the less fortunate. Despite his busy schedule, he continues
to volunteer in a Portland soup kitchen once a week when he's
not on the road.
The campaign has been a difficult one for the ex-Naval commander.
Earlier this year, he barely survived an attempt by the party's
feminist faction to dump him from the ticket on the grounds that
he is personally opposed to abortion. His candidacy was also
dealt a blow when he failed to capture the ballot-qualified Peace
& Freedom Party's presidential nomination in vote-heavy California.
Though falling short of his
goal of obtaining ballot status in fifteen states, the former
three-term Oregon legislator will appear on the ballot in eight
states next month, including the battleground states of Colorado,
Florida, Michigan, New Jersey and Wisconsin. He is listed on
the ballot as a Socialist in only half those states. His candidacy,
to borrow a phrase from one of country music's legendary songwriters,
is truly "a coat of many colors." In Delaware and
Michigan, for instance, Brown - largely through his own efforts
- will appear on the ballot as the nominee of the Natural Law
Party, a now nationally defunct party founded in 1992 by Harvard-educated
physicist John Hagelin, the party's nominee in the past three
presidential elections.
Moreover, Brown and his vice-presidential
running mate, Mary Alice Herbert, an aging one-time Republican
housewife and perennial Liberty Union Party candidate from Vermont
who had been radicalized during the war in Vietnam, will appear
on the left-leaning United Citizens Party line in South Carolina,
a multiracial party founded in 1969, and under the "Protecting
Working Families" label in Louisiana. They also hope to
qualify as official write-in candidates in more than a dozen
other states, including North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and California
- where Brown polled more than forty percent of the vote in the
Peace & Freedom Party's presidential primary on March 2.
Brown, who's doubling as his
tiny party's candidate for Congress in Oregon's third congressional
district, estimates that he will spend less than $100,000 on
his long-shot quest for the presidency, most of it coming out
of his own pocket. He has taken out a second mortgage on his
home to keep up with the campaign's mounting bills, including
$20,000 in legal fees when the Colorado Secretary of State tried
unsuccessfully to keep him off the ballot. His largest contribution
is a $2,000 check from the witty and lettered J. Quinn Brisben,
a retired Chicago public schoolteacher and poet who ran for president
on the Socialist ticket a dozen years ago. One of Brown's three
sons, a self-made multi-millionaire before he was thirty, has
also helped underwrite his father's campaign.
Brown likes to remind his audiences
- usually a small mix of party members and curiosity seekers
- that it was the Socialist Party that first advocated the abolition
of child labor, the creation of a Social Security system and
Medicare, a 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, collective
bargaining and federal minimum wage laws. "Do not be afraid
to vote your hopes and dreams instead of your fears," he
tells anyone willing to listen. He particularly relishes the
opportunity to talk about the party's current platform, which
calls for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and
Afghanistan, a 50% cut in military spending, the disbanding of
NATO and other "aggressive military alliances," the
abolition of the CIA and the National Security Agency and an
end to U.S. arms sales around the world. In addition to abolishing
the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorist measures, the Socialists
also want to end all U.S. military subsidies to Israel and fervently
support self-determination for the Palestinian people.
Staunchly opposed to NAFTA,
the IMF, the World Trade Organization and other corporate-sponsored
"free trade" agreements, the party's platform also
includes planks advocating a single-payer health care program;
a graduated income tax; full employment and the creation of a
"Superfund for Workers" that would not only pay full
wages and health care benefits for the unemployed, but would
also provide necessary training if that worker lost his or her
job as a result of "environmental transition, downsizing,
corporate dismantlement, or capital flight." The Socialist
agenda also favors a moratorium on new prison construction and
calls for fairer ballot access laws and proportional representation
at all levels of government.
While acknowledging that the
Bush administration is one of the most nefarious and deceitful
in U.S. history, the Socialist standard-bearer concedes that
the country might be marginally better off under a Kerry administration,
but insists that a Democratic victory would mean little in terms
of ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the curtailment of
civil liberties at home. Nor, he says, would a Kerry presidency
stem the rising tide of corporate domination of American life,
particularly its growing influence in government and politics.
Despite the long odds against
him and other left-wing challengers to the two-party system,
Walt Brown remains optimistic about the future of American politics.
"Time is on the side of democracy," he maintains.
"Time is running out for stupidity."
Darcy G. Richardson is the author of a four-volume history
on independent and third-party politics in the United States.
The first volume, Others:
Third-Party Politics From the Nation's Founding to the Rise and
Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, was published this
past spring. Richardson can be reached at: darcy_richardson@ml.com
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
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