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April 24, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Resources:
100s of Links
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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
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The
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Al Gore:
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April 24, 2002
The French Elections
Code Bleu
By David Vest
The French presidential election can be variously
construed.
One could argue that fragmentation on
the Left caused Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister,
to miss the run-off, leaving France to choose between Jacques
Chirac, an incumbent already rejected by over 80% of voters,
and Far Right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, a sort of French David
Duke without the phony polish.
Others will argue that the fact that
all the candidates on the Left together carried less than 44%
of the vote suggests that Jospin himself is to blame for the
situation. His personality is uninspiring, he ran a dreadful
campaign, etc.
However, the most significant fact of
the French election is that with sixteen candidates to choose
from, almost a quarter of the votes cast were for what you and
I would call right-wing nut candidates (including Le Pen).
So here are the important totals: Left,
44%, Right 32%, Extreme Right, 24%.
The Right, led by incumbent President
Jacques Chirac, will distance itself nobly from the Far Right
in the run-off election, in the interests of preserving national
"honor." But the fact is that Chirac will owe his presidency
to the Far Right no less than does George W. Bush. Take the extreme
Right out of the equation and the Left outnumbers the Right.
As for the French Left, is there another
democracy in which three different Trotskyist candidates for
president could combine to pull 11% of the vote, as they did
in France? Two of them outpolled the Communist candidate, Robert
Hue, who got 3.5%.
The French Greens significantly bettered
all previous performances in French presidential elections. They
had never broken 4% before, and Noel Mamere, the Green standard
bearer, got 5.4%.
On the one hand, that's great. On the
other, it was only good enough for a sixth place finish, behind
Arlette Laguiller, one of the Trotskyists. Not particularly encouraging
in an election in which everyone made the Greens' case for them
by complaining about the blandness and lack of differentiation
between the two top candidates, Chirac and Jospin, an election
in which 64% of the voters clearly wanted someone else, not to
say anyone else.
Chirac will win the run-off in a landslide.
The Greens and other Left-leaning parties have thrown their support
to him to "stop" Le Pen. The only suspense lies in
whether Le Pen will pick up or lose support. Only if he draws
more than 25% of the vote can it be argued that the Far Right
is really on the rise in France. Best guesses put him at around
22%.
Following the run-off election France
will enjoy seven more years of being governed by a man 4 out
of 5 voters did not want, a candidate seen as the lesser of sixteen
evils, a man whose re-election only serves to postpone the indictment
on corruption charges widely regarded as inevitable when he leaves
office, assuming he ever does (if Le Pen is the French David
Duke, Jacques Chirac may be the French Edwin Edwards).
Suppose Jospin and not Chirac had been
the survivor? Few people in France would feel significantly happier
about the outcome. The two men's policies were indistinguishable
for the most part.
From an American perspective all this
may look like nothing more than the predictable perils of a multi-party
system. Or so we may tell ourselves from time to time. Yet our
two-party system offered George W. Bush and Al Gore, if anything
an even more boring pair than Chirac and Jospin.
I shall sit under the wych elm and ponder
three questions tonight:
Is the chief virtue of our "two-party"
system the fact that it obscures the extent to which our own
political life is dominated by the Far Right?
Is the French election emblematic of
things to come in American elections?
What is there about the current state
of democracy, in whatever form, with however many parties, that
continues to render significant change unlikely, when such large
majorities clearly want it?
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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