Campusantiwar.net
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Latest Release: Monday, November 29, 2004
U.S. Hiring Increases, But Slow Job Growth Continues
Seth Sandronsky
Despite the apparent resolution of the presidential race, the U.S. economy still faces many problems. One is slow job growth. This, and not abortion and gay marriage, is the social issue of the day, determining for the majority in blue and red states who does get by and who falls by the wayside.
In October, the U.S. economy added 337,000 new, nonfarm jobs, the highest total since March. The creation of new jobs, as revised by the Labor Department, was 139,000 in September and 198,000 in August. Policy makers with the Federal Reserve Bank issued cheery comments concerning recent U.S. job growth on November 10.
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His Own Fault: John Kerry's Failure
Igor Volsky
John Kerry has lost his bid for the presidency. To most Democrats who, expecting a Kerry victory, were confirming their celebration-party catering, the loss was a major disappointment. But President Bush had been confident all along. When asked if he had any doubts about winning a second term, Bush would fiercely shake his head from side to side with the conviction of a two-year-old refusing to eat his broccoli.
Throughout the election, I had been quick to dismiss the president's confidence as arrogance; convinced that his policies had alienated so many Americans that his defeat was inevitable. But this election was not decided by the issues. Instead, the vote turned into a referendum on gay marriage and Kerry's service in Vietnam.
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Latest Release: Friday, November 26, 2004
The Horse's Head Is in the Demo-Liberal Bed:
Time to Start Digging In
Richard Moreno
With the highly touted historical mandate of a little more than a quarter of the eligible vote, the incumbent President has made no secret of his plans to start spending his newly acquired "political capital." In this context, the neoconservative disciples of Leo Strauss are being strategically placed in key positions within the current administration. Indeed, headlines are filled daily with fresh news of "resignations," from top CIA officials to State Department heads, alongside of their concomitant replacements by failed ultra-conservative ideologues.
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Latest Release: Monday, November 22, 2004
Bush in Ottawa, Criminality in Fallujah
Samer Elatrash
The video footage, which a news cameraman shot in Fallujah, Iraq, showed
wounded Iraqi prisoners spread on the rubble-strewn floor of a mosque.
American marines had captured the mosque a few days before, but the
soldiers who were inspecting the prisoners had just entered the mosque.
One prisoner lay flat on his stomach, his face turned from the camera.
He would have looked like a corpse, but he convulsed as he hopelessly
sucked air and dust into his dying body. A marine walked to him. "He's
fucking faking he's dead", said the marine, who now stood at the dying
man's feet. He aimed his assault rifle and pressed the trigger, sending
a bullet into the prisoner's head and splattering the wall of the mosque with blood. Another marine consoled the murderer: "He's
dead now."
When told that the American television station MSNBC had the footage,
the American army disclosed that it had launched an investigation into
the murder. Iraqis who stayed in Fallujah--males between the ages of
sixteen and seventy weren't allowed to leave the city in the days before
the American assault--say that the execution was not an isolated act.
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France's Fallujah: The Battle of Cote D'Ivoire
Matt Reichel
In a marked display of ignorance, the mainstream American press and analysts from both sides of the political spectrum have effectively painted a rosy picture of France this election season: making the country out to be pacifistically opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq. Undoubtedly, the French citizenry is overwhelmingly opposed to what Bush has done in Iraq, and simultaneously supported his defeat this election season. But have no illusions about the French government: from Napolean to Chiraq, this is a land of empire.
Likewise, where there is empire, there is violence by definition. As the 50th anniversary of the infamous massacre of Algiers passes, the French have embroiled themselves in a re-birth of colonial war in the Ivory Coast (Cote D'Ivoire). This is the same narrative that has been re-told many times through imperial history: a native population being resentful of foreign occupation. Like the U.S. in Falluja, the French government is proving slow to learn that subjects of colonialism never desire their subjugation.
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GI News Briefing #3: Left Hook Readers, Show Your Support for this Antiwar Marine!
Compiled by Derek Seidman
I was going to put together some stories about the resentment brewing amongst soldiers, ex-soldiers, and members of the National Guard over what many are calling "a back door draft"-the implementation of the "a stop-loss" program, where soldiers are ordered to serve beyond their discharge date or are called up out of their civilian lives to go to Iraq. In the past few weeks, thousands of members of the Army Reserve and National Guard have been called up this way.
But something came up that seems more urgent (though to read more about the "stop-loss" program, read this article and this one. There is an article circulating around the internet written by a mother of a marine whose son is trying to achieve conscientious objector's status because he's against the war and doesn't want to be sent to kill anyone. Because of his effort, he's been the victim of harassment and physical violence from within the military.
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Face the Music: Time to Oppose Our Troops' Actions
By Joshua Frank
At what point will the left have to face the music and admit that in order to fully oppose the Iraq war, we have to also oppose our troops' actions?
On Saturday November 6, US forces pounded Fallujah, and razed a civilian hospital. "Witnesses said only a facade remained of a small Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city," reported the BBC News on the day of the bombing. "A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were also damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault."
...Clearly no warning was put forth by the US military prior to the bombing of this hospital. And now that the troops have hit the ground running, more war crimes have been committed, and in fact captured on film.
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Latest Release: Thursday, November 18, 2004
American Occupation: Think Rampaging Elephants
Joe Ramsey
Most reasonably informed people by now will concede that the US invasion of Iraq was something between a mistake and a crime, and that the case for war in Iraq was made based upon mis-information, if not outright lies. There were no WMDs or active WMD programs in Iraq. There were no Saddam-Al Queda terror links. The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the recent reports of US soldiers executing unarmed Iraqis in Falluja cast doubt on whether American forces are (capable of) respecting Iraqis human rights. The war in Iraq has made the US more hated and less secure, and is sucking up US tax dollars that could be much better spent elsewhere. All, or most, of this, for most people in my neck of the woods (Tufts University), is more or less uncontroversial.
Thus the most common defense of the occupation I get today is a metaphorical one:-Iraq is a pot in a store, they say-"'We' broke it, so now we've bought it." "Iraq is now ours to fix." I hear it again and again. "We can't just leave it broken."
In this article, I would like to offer a radical revision of this ubiquitous clich�.
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Democrats Commit Suicide: Harry Reid, Wrong Choice for Senate Minority Leader
Joshua Frank
The Democrats, obviously still mourning John Kerry's embarrassing loss to George W. Bush just two weeks prior, have drawn up a new game-plan in hopes that it will help them challenge their purported rivals in elections to come.
Well, it isn't really a new plan, just a fresh spin on an old failing strategy. The Democrats again believe, even after Kerry's stubborn loss, the only way to beat the neocons is to outflank them to the right. Take on their "values" and surpass their fanaticism.
The saga began to unfold following Democratic Senate minority leader Tom Daschle's horrific defeat to Republican John Thume in the South Dakotan Senate race on November 2. After Daschle's loss Democratic National Committee chair, Terry McAuliffe, was on the phone rallying support behind one of his favorite Senators, Nevada's own, Harry Reid.
Reid, an admitted friend of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, was being tapped for the position well before Daschle's loss, and quickly gained enough support to assure his appointment and upcoming confirmation. A conservative Mormon, Reid, who was born and raised in Nevada, could just as well have ran as a Republican when he chose to do so in 1982.
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Latest Release: Friday, November 12, 2004
The Irony of Arafat
Sylvia Shihadeh and Robert Jensen
Yasser Arafat died as the leader of a country that does not yet exist, and therein lies the tragic nature of the former leader and the ongoing tragedy of the people of Palestine.
Arafat's passion and commitment helped forge a Palestinian independence movement, putting the dispossession of his people on the political map in a way the world couldn't ignore. Pundits are talking of him as merely a "symbol," a strategy not only to ignore his real contributions but also to denigrate the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for justice.
Arafat had long carried those aspirations, for which he will be remembered. But at a crucial turn, he betrayed both principle and pragmatic politics by accepting the 1993 Oslo agreements, which left him not an independent leader of an emerging state but a subordinate to Israel in charge of policing his own people but with few other powers. The irony of the tragedy is that this fatal mistake is the one thing for which he is lauded in the halls of power in the United States.
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Forget the Democrats, Build The Mass Movements!
Roy Rollin
In the aftermath of the elections, much of the mainstream left remains in a
state of despair or disbelief over Bush's victory. Many are hoping against
hope that some scandal of epic proportions will emerge out of Ohio. Others
contemplate packing their bags and moving to Canada. Not a few of the
liberal literati have taken to writing off most of America's population as a
bunch of religious rednecks who got the government they deserved by not
heeding their enlightened advice on who to vote for. However, the real
tragedy was not the defeat of pro-war and pro-globalization
John Kerry, but the demobilization and demoralization
of the anti-war and global justice movements that the liberal left's
perspective of Anybody But Bush (ABB) was predicated upon.
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The Reelection of George W. Bush: A Possible Bright Side?
Joshua Frank
We are nearing the end of 2004. And if there has been one lesson that we should have all learned this year it is that the U.S. electoral system sets all challenges to the power-elite up for a horrifying defeat. Hence the reason so many liberal and progressive voters deemed John Kerry our only hope for defeating George W. Bush this November. Faulty logic indeed.
They said, and still say, that Kerry was at least marginally better than Bush. After all, who in his or her right (or left) mind did not support the Kerry campaign? Bush, we were told, was (and now again is) the worst president in history. An Adolf in the making.
Or is he? Bush is bad, no doubt. But he has yet to drop an A-bomb on a civilian population. Only Democrat Harry Truman did that. Okay, so maybe Bush is the second worst president.
No progressive would defend Dubya's doings, though. He lacks any redeeming qualities. But has Bush really been the greater evil during the past four years? Has he done a worse job than Bill Clinton did? Sure, we have eight years by which to judge Clinton, compared to Bush's four, but let's give it a quick whirl.
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Dear America, Thank You
Macdonald Stainsby
Dear United States: I want to thank you. Don't get me wrong. I don't think you had a real choice. But the fact is, you are going along with this. No, I don't mean that no one is challenging the vote. I was unable to figure out which side I was thinking would be better in helping the movement for a better world. I suppose there is a part of me that is choosing to believe that we have been granted the best option possible, whatever the outcome, we are stuck with it anyhow. For the last couple of weeks, I was trying to determine for myself which of the various options available would be best for those of us on the planet-- you know us, the other six billion, give or take-- engaged in one form or another of resisting your government.
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Why Did Bush Win? And What Do We Do Now?
Pham Binh
This is the question that 55 million Americans who voted for Democrat John Kerry asked themselves when they awoke November 3rd to find that George W. Bush had - for the first time in his life - won a national election fair and square. Bush won the popular vote with 59 million votes, and the Republicans picked up 3 Senate seats and 5 seats in the House of Representatives. Bans on gay marriage won in all eleven states where they were on the ballot.
What happened?
One view is that the country has moved to the right politically, and the majority of working-class Americans in the "red states" or "middle America" are too conservative, apathic, stupid, or some combination of the three to see that Bush has been one of the most terrible presidents in history. Yet this view doesn't square with the facts.
The first fact is that turnout of eligible voters was only about 55 percent, which means only a minority of the country supported Bush. When broken down by education, Bush voters tended to have more education indicating that Kerry's support tended to be working-class, while Bush's tended to be from the middle and upper classes. The class breakdown of the vote becomes even more stark when looking at income: 36 percent of people making under $15,000 voted for Bush, 55 percent of those making $75,000-$100,000 voted for him, and 63 percent of those making over $200,000 voted for him.
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Latest Release: Monday November 08, 2004
The ABB Logic of Retreat Has Been Discredited: Now We Must Advance
M. Junaid Alam
This past election found the American left split into two antagonistic groups: a majority camp which insisted Bush represented so unique and unprecedented a threat that all other considerations be subordinated to the goal of a Democratic victory, and a minority camp which deemed the broader two-party dynamic itself to be the real threat and urged a clean break from the Democrats in favor of more leftist alternatives. History, usually slow and often ambiguous in its judgment, spoke with rare and resounding authority on this question on November 2nd. The convincing defeat handed to the Democrats and their cowed supporters by Bush and his militant base has completely demolished and discredited the majority camp's lesser-evil logic of acquiescing to the Right. To reorient ourselves and move our struggles forward, radicals must first take stock of this fact and soberly assess its meaning and consequences.
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Suburban Bravado and the Global Consequences of Regional Failures:
A Muslim View
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The young zealot sitting in front of me at this small mosque in Glasgow was trying unsuccessfully to convince his humble and polite friends on positive consequences of the 9-11 tragedy for Muslims. He argued that Muslims and Christians had gotten too comfortable with each other, and due to the subsequent polarization, Muslims have a better understanding of their identity and have grown stronger as a community. My attempts at refuting this version of the absurd, yet ubiquitous notion of a 'clash of civilizations' were quite unsuccessful, since I realized that we were speaking two different languages. While I was employing logic and reason to present my case, it failed to penetrate the defensive wall of my adversary as he was used to only the language of Manichean rhetoric peppered with emotional symbolism. However, the irony of this encounter only manifested itself the next day, while I was up watching C-Span's online coverage of the Election. Roughly half the callers spoke in those very terms, invoking the upholding of 'moral values', defense of 'freedom' and support for 'our troops' as the mandate for reinstating a clearly incompetent incumbent. Orwellian double-think could not have been more vividly exemplified as those very areas best demonstrate W's failures.
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GI News Briefing #2: "All we are doing here is treading water"
Derek Seidman
The election's over. Now there's not going to be anything to regularly overshadow the reality of the catastrophe in Iraq.
Two Saturdays ago, eight marines were killed and nine others wounded from the explosion of a car bomb outside of Fallujah (there was also a ninth combat death that doesn't seem to be related to this). It was the deadliest single day for US troops in six months. As of November 1, at least 1,122 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war.
The group that claimed responsibility for the bombing, calling themselves the 1920 Brigade, said that its members are "Americanized spies speaking in Arabic tongue." This assertion comes right before a November 1st AP article entitled "U.S. Marines Can't Easily ID Enemy in Iraq." It reports of a situation for soldiers where "people smile by day - and launch deadly projectiles by night."
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What is Canada Doing in the Arctic North?
Macdonald Stainsby
Well, now it appears to be official. On October Seventh, 2004 Imperial Oil (otherwise known as Esso) has submitted an application to build the single largest mega project of industrialization in the history of the settler state of Canada. Along with several Inuit and many other Dene Nations, the Deh Cho (Dene) Nations of the Mackenzie Valley are among those whose land will be traversed by a 1700 kilometere long natural gas pipeline. It has taken many years for oil and gas giants to breakdown the resistance of local indigenous nations to such a project. In the 1970's, The Canadian Government carried out an inquiry-- the Berger Inquiry-- to examine the benefits and costs of the proposed pipeline. The various Nations and the Metis would be decimated by such a proposal, according to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline review written by Thomas R Berger in 1977 at the behest of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's government.
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Post-Election Views: Friday November 5, 2004
Putting Things in Perspective: 1968 and Now
Jonah Birch
I think that an a useful comparison for leftists today to use when
talking to people about Bush is the election of Richard Nixon in
1968. The election that year took place in a context of growing
social polarization and anger around the Vietnam War. In the
spring of 1968, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam had demonstrated the
incredible unpopularity and weakness of the U.S. occupation in that
country...
In the end, Nixon defeated Humphrey by less than 1 million votes in
one of the closest election in American history. Many on the left
were of course devastated, believing that the election had
demonstrated a new rightward shift in American popular
consciousness.
They were totally wrong.
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A Message to American Liberals Upon Bush's Victory
Asad Haider
I was walking around campus as the news of Bush's victory was still sinking in. A preacher is paid to stand in front of a building to spew fundamentalist drivel, and as I walked past he was responding to a question from a student as to whether a less aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East might reduce the threat of terrorism. He said, more or less: "These people have a religion and an ideology which will always lead to violence against us. They're not good people. Islam will always preach hate against the US."
I couldn't ignore him this time...
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Bush is Not Invincible
Ramin Bajoghli
Now that the dust has settled and our lame duck President has been re-elected, it is not only vital but essential to reflect over this past election and move forward. A couple of lessons can be learned from this past year that will definitely galvanize the youth and the disenfranchised citizens of the U.S. The most important fact to remember is that John Kerry is not a savior to the problems caused by the Bush administration. At most he brings a sense of relief and hope- that in the midst of the current debacle (both domestically and internationally) caused by Bush and his group of bandits- there stands a candidate that has the possibility of triggering the start of a new era in the U.S. state of political affairs. By no means is Kerry the answer to all our problems.
The most important lesson to be learned from this election is the success of mobilization by both sides of the political spectrum. Republican or Democrat, Nader or No Nader, and Left of Right, everyone is talking politics. Conversations in and around Boston revolved around the incredible Red Sox comeback against the Yankees (sorry New York!), their ensuing victory of St. Louis, and over the presidential election. It is now cool to talk politics.
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Election Tricks - And An Interclass Alliance of Ignorance?
Y. Kleftis
The 2004 election was stolen, but how? We need to do the research to establish the fix and undermine the sham victory at the level of ideas. We know that the Republicans have whipped the population into a paranoid frenzy, but that does not explain everything, and certainly not this sack of DU-tainted elephant dung sold as the US election. A brief outline and a few places to start looking:
After the disaster of 2000, which exposed the ruling class's vulgar arrangement of power, the plan was set to insure a popular, not just electoral, victory, and remove the taint of illegitimacy. As long as the Republicans could remain within the margin of error, manipulation would be hard to detect. A comfortable 2% popular vote margin lowers the chances of a Democratic challenge, but over 4% or so would be too obvious. How to do it? Add votes to states that you own, through various tricks, so that the popular margin comes out large, but prevent an embarrassingly suspicious percentage. Many of these "uncontested" states were not heavily polled. Coupled with the fact that most pollsters overestimate the Republican advantage, the current 3% or so "popular" margin is perfect.
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Special Pre-Election Release: Monday, November 1, 2004
Observations on Election Day
Mark Yu
Regardless of the final outcome, the latest presidential election has already revealed the sad state of American politics. The idea of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" remains an unfulfilled promise more than one hundred and forty years after it was articulated by Abraham Lincoln. The small amounts of popular sovereignty won through the struggles and bloodshed of working people are continually threatened by ruling class interests. Democracy is being slowly poisoned by the corrupting power of corporate money and violently pummeled by political gangsters working to deny large numbers of people their most basic democratic right, the right to vote.
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Kerry Advisor is a Real Dick: Richard Holbrooke and East Timor
Merlin Chowkwanyun and Joshua Frank
Soon the tallies will be rolling in, and those that cast a vote for John Kerry in hopes of altering the US foreign policy paradigm, will have wasted their energy. What the mainstream media and others have failed to disclose this election season is that one of Senator Kerry's key policy advisors, Richard Holbrooke, happened to play a significant role in perhaps the largest US backed genocide of the twentieth-century. As Kerry insiders have said recently, Mr. Holbrooke along with Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, is in the top running for Secretary of State if Kerry wins on Tuesday, and is assured another spot in Kerry's cabinet if not Secretary.
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Got International Stability? Not with Bush
Jeff Barger
Americans are not safe, the United States is not secure, freedom is under attack and civilization itself is in peril! Have no fear, the white knight from Texas is here to continue leading America and the free world to victory against 'evil doers'. World opinion and international agreements are nonsense and merely an obstacle to saving civilization from the terrorist apocalypse. We will lead even if nobody follows because real leaders don't need followers. So we must do the patriotic thing and put are unambiguous trust in George Bush and follow his oily foot prints to victory and security. Right? Wrong! George W. Bush's handling of foreign policy during his term has made America and the world far less secure.
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Latest Release: Saturday, October 30, 2004
Progressive as Pawns:
Cannon Fodder for Kerry's War on Nader
Stephen Conn
The progressives and peace activists who are helping to stop Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo don't realize it but they are being used by people who represent the corporate interests, especially the military-industrial complex, of the two major parties.
After months of fund raising, research and development of a detailed attack plan, anti-Nader Democrats hatched a much publicized two pronged attack on the Nader campaign in meetings with party leaders from Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere during the Democratic Convention (David Postman, "Nader foes seek funding from Democratic donors," Seattle Times. July 28, 2004).
The first prong was a nationwide preemptive attack on voters who might choose Nader. The Democratic Party would field law firms to challenge Nader's access to state ballots with ubiquitous law suits to deplete his resources and limit his candidacy. Nader's grassroots campaign would be sued to death. The second prong was a campaign to insinuate and perpetuate a lie found effective by polling and focus groups, that Ralph Nader was a tool of right wing Republicans.
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Latest Release: Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Kerry and the Environment: Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Joshua Frank
Despite John Kerry's cozy relationship with big green organizations like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, the Senator should not be mistaken as a friend of the environment.
For example, Kerry, who voted against the Kyoto Protocol, told Grist Magazine in an interview last year: "[The Kyoto agreement] doesn't ask enough of developing nations, the nations that are going to be producing much greater emissions and which we need to get on the right course now through technology transfer." Perhaps someone should clue Senator Kerry into the awful truth-that although the US accounts for only 4% of the world's population, we still emit over a quarter of the globe's CO2. Shouldn't we, then, be setting an example?
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Memo To Liberals: Attack the Corporate Parties, Not Fellow Progressives
Carl Mayer
Over the last several months a cottage industry has developed of progressives who, in concert with the corporate Democratic Party, spend an inordinate amount of time attacking the Nader for President campaign. They have become professional Stop Nader Liberals.
The ringleaders of this effort have been Norman Solomon, Jeff Cohen, and to a lesser extent, Micah Sifry.
These gentlemen might better spend their time defending democracy and the one candidate in the race who has fought his entire career for democracy and for the progressive issues they profess to believe in: ending the war, stopping trade deals and opposing the Patriot Act. Ralph Nader is on the right side of all these issues; Kerry and Bush are not.
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Latest Release: Friday, October 22, 2004
Left Hook GI News Briefing #1:
"All we are doing around here is getting blown up"
Derek Seidman
What really contributed to ending the war in Vietnam (besides the resistance of the Vietnamese, which was probably the biggest factor), was the widespread antiwar activity and sentiment amongst GIs. Left Hook would like to start posting more material relating to the situation of the troops in Iraq and vets coming home. Besides publishing articles around this, we'll try to regularly gather various stories, information, and links circulating around the internet and pull them together into a "column", however messy. It's becoming increasingly important to get the word out and emphasize this stuff. Here is our first report.
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Open Letter to America's Unions on the Elections
Michael Yates
Dear Brother and Sisters,
As it does every four years, organized labor is pumping tens of
millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours into electing the
Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States. Four
years ago it was Al Gore; this year it is John Kerry...
And yet, much as I understand the desire to unseat Bush, something
bothers me about labor�s support of Kerry. It seems to me that when so
much money and time are given to a candidate, something ought to be
demanded of that candidate in return and it ought to be clear in
listening to the candidate speak that he or she understands that debts
are owed and will be paid. Perhaps I have missed something, but I have
not seen this.
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The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Jack Random
When a platoon of soldiers out of Jackson, Mississippi, the 343rd Quartermaster Company, refused to carry out an order to transport contaminated fuel along a dangerous corridor north of Baghdad, it was not an act of courage or conscientious objection. It was an act military prudence in keeping with every soldier's first obligation to his fellows and himself: survival.
As much as we would like to embrace their cause, we can only offer our sympathy and support. This act of defiance does nothing to indict the war; it indicts the incompetence of those charged with carrying it out. It does instruct us to ask: Why are we in Iraq? It instructs us to ask: Where has all the money gone if not to protect the troops? We have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $130 billion and committed $70 billion more, yet our soldiers remain ill-equipped and we are further from victory now than we were on the day of Shock and Awe.
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Latest Release: Sunday, October 17, 2004
The Million Worker March
Pankaj Mehta
If the labor movement and the radical left more generally is able to revitalize itself in the next forty years, October 17, 2004 may be a date that perceptive historians point to as marking a turning point in American politics. This date will not be significant because the march on Washingoton will be particularly large. I do not expect more than a hundred thousand workers to be in Washington. Nor will it be significant because the march will result in immediate, significant changes. I do not expect free higher education and universal health care to suddenly become a reality. Nor do I expect that the troops will suddenly be brought home. Instead, the significance of the date will lie in the message and its medium.
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Leaving So Soon? A Response to Josh Frank
Peter LaVenia
I usually have no desire to polemicize against Joshua Frank, because his analysis is usually excellent. Yet I find that his leaving the Green Party saddens me as much as the joining of opportunists like Normon Solomon disgusts me. His is an overreaction to events, one that can be explained, and hopefully corrected.
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Amnesty International: A False Beacon
Paul de Rooij
Given the current escalation of Israeli depredations in Gaza and the daily US bombings of Falluja, it is interesting to examine Amnesty International’s (AI) statements on the situation. AI is widely viewed as an authority on human rights issues, and thus it is of interest to analyze its output on these recent events. Careful scrutiny of AI’s record reveals that, its typical response to the daily obscene deeds by either Israeli or US armies is a few barely audible ruminations with an occasional lame rebuke. The impotence of these responses raises many questions.
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Shooting From the Hip: Kerry Out-Hawks Bush
Joshua Frank
It may seem inconceivable to some, but John Kerry is indeed out-hawking George W. Bush this election season. No doubt we should have seen it coming as the Democratic National Convention was nothing more than a glorified war parade, where Kerry floated on by and reprehensibly announced that he was �reporting for duty.�
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John Kerry and the Democrats' Project for a New American Century
Roy Rollin
Many of those on the liberal "left" who have jumped on board the "Anybody But Bush" bandwagon cite the current administration's non-stop saber-rattling and war-mongering as a justification for their doing so - as if such behavior was the private preserve of the Republican right. In particular, they point to the "neo-cons", who serve as Bush's brain trust, and whose "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) for "maintaining global US pre-eminence and shaping the international security order in line with American principals and interests" has served as Bush's blue-print for further imperial expansion. But when it comes to defending and extending the empire, the Democrats are no slouches either. Nor have they ever been - something their own spokesmen don't hesitate to reiterate whenever they get the chance.
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Latest Release: Saturday, October 09, 2004
In Defense of Ralph Nader
Toby Shepherd
In 1848 Zachary Taylor, running on the ticket of the Whig party, had an interesting campaign strategy: avoidance. Instead of adopting a stance on the hot topic of the day - whether or not slavery ought to be permitted in the recently acquired territories - he focused his campaign on his military heroism and the 40 impressive years of killing Indians and Mexicans he had under his belt. Sure, "Old Rough and Ready" owned 200 slaves of his own, but he had something his opponents lacked: charisma.
Taylor ran against two opponents; the first was Democratic candidate Lewis Cass. Cass had adopted an ambiguous position on slavery, toting a lukewarm proposal of allowing each state to decide for itself whether or not to institutionalize the practice. The third opponent was aging politician Martin Van Buren who ran on the ticket of the anti-slavery, "free soil" party. Angry northerners, disappointed with Cass's hand-wringing and Taylor's calculated silence, voted for Van Buren, giving him a respectable if not overwhelming 10%. In the end, Taylor narrowly won the election over Cass, which in turn sent the Democrats reeling. How could Van Buren be so belligerent, no, so egotistical as to run for President? Didn't he know he'd siphon potential votes away from Cass, who was quite obviously the lesser of two evils? What the hell was Van Buren's problem?
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Captain David Cobb abets the Collapse of the Left
Joshua Frank
I officially changed my voter registration and left the Green Party this past week. Or, more aptly put, the Green Party left me. Actually, they abandoned many of us last summer when they decided not to run a candidate for president.
Oh, I know what you are thinking: "They are running a candidate. His name's David Cobb. Give the guy some respect!" My rejoinder: If David Cobb is a presidential candidate, then why have an oppositional party that is supposed to challenge the Democrats and Republicans at all? What good is it? For me, it is not that the legitimacy of Cobb's nomination is suspect -- although it is; Rather, what I find bothersome is the way that Cobb has chosen to run his insipid campaign and the cultish drones within the Green Party who refuse to acknowledge that Cobb's bid is actually hurting the Party --
and the Left -- while aiding George W. Bush's re-election in the process. Ignorance must be bliss.
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Beyond American Bravado: Iraqi Suffering Matters
Mirza A. Beg
If destruction was the objective, the United States could have destroyed Iraq in one fell swoop. Destroying Iraq was not the stated objective. Destroying it slowly with a promise to rebuild is proving to be excruciatingly expensive, in American reputation, lives and material. Winning means achieving the objectives of the war.
The aim of removing Saddam from power was achieved, but the reasons for the war -- WMD, imminent threat of nuclear weapons, and collusion between Al Qaida and Saddam -- were false and contrived, as proven by the 9/11 commission and congressional and independent inquiries as well as the CIA. Though Wolfowitz conceded in 2003 that creating democracy would not have been a sufficient reason to invade Iraq, Bush nevertheless, has settled on the war objective of bringing democracy to Iraq and being the "best friend" of Iraqis.
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The Only Thing We Have to Fear...:
A Century of Waiting for the Fascists to Arrive
Mickey Z.
Election 2004 will be decided by fear.
President (sic) George W. Bush and company have scared half the voters to death with stories about terrorists...so they�ll vote for him.
Senator John F. Kerry (JFK2) and his surrogates on the soft left have scared the other half to death with stories about creeping fascism...so they�ll vote for him.
Of course, anyone with an iota of objectivity left realizes the terror threat is laughably exaggerated...and there�s infinitely more danger in operating a motor vehicle than all the �evildoers� in the world combined.
But what should we make of the claims of the Democrats (and the disturbing number of lefties who support them)? What about all the yarns spun about liberties lost...solely due, we hear, to one inarticulate puppet from Texas?
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Latest Release: Wednesday, October 06, 2004
It's Not a Debate When They Agree
Mark Yu
The presidential debate last Thursday night did not offer any new perspectives on the November election. Kerry criticized Bush for mishandling the invasion and occupation of Iraq while Bush continued the effort to portray Kerry as a flip-flopper. They repeated words and phrases that had been carefully selected by their professional public-relations teams and designed for maximum impact on the voting population. The whole setup seemed more like a fusion of two expensive campaign commercials than a dialogue fit for a truly democratic society.
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Elections, Debates, and "Diverting Forces"
Richard Moreno
During Thursday night's presidential debate, Senator Kerry referred to Bush's failed Iraqi invasion and occupation as diverting forces, a diversion ostensibly from the so-called war on terror. Once again, however, the Massachusetts senator has verbally achieved the inconceivable. With all the flair and contortions of a professional carnie acrobat, he has managed to flip the truth and turn it inside out. For it is precisely the whole presidential election with its phony debates that is the great diversion.
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Last Release: Friday, October 01, 2004
Disrupting America's Fateful Non-Debate on the Roots of Terror
M. Junaid Alam
On September 11th, nineteen hijackers commandeered four airliners and guided three of them into important symbols of American power with lethal precision. An unsuspecting citizenry, quite unaware of events outside the national purview, suddenly found 3,000 of its countrymen killed at the hands of a few fanatics from a far off part of the world. One would expect that, in a democratic country which prides itself on freedom of speech and press, wide-ranging diversity of opinions, and quality of intellectual debate and scholarship, one of the responses to the horrific attacks would be a rigorous and reflective discussion of why they happened. Three years on, what we have instead is the ceaseless, unchallenged mass production - and consumption - of a core set of noxious lies about September 11th that form the foundation of a perpetual, bloody, boundless, and winless war.
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Nuclear Realities and Iran
Troy Pickard
Despite the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran hasn't agreed to dismantle its nuclear program. And, why should it? Even in a worst-case scenario in which it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, it is preposterous to suggest that Iran lacks the same right to "the bomb" now held by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel.
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When You Have Breast Cancer in Gaza
Gideon Levy
One out of every nine women gets breast cancer. There are doctors who say that statistic has worsened lately and now stands at one out of every eight. The disease is particularly violent in younger women and the primary growth in the breast spreads rapidly to the liver, the lungs, the bones and the brain. Is there anything worse than being a young woman with cancer whose chances are slim? It turns out that there is - being a young Palestinian woman with cancer whose chances are slim.
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Last Release: Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Whether it's AVP or ABB, Whoever Wins, We Lose
Roy Rollin
A formerly much maligned fellow by the name of Karl Marx once wrote that under capitalist "democracy" the people were given the opportunity by the ruling class of deciding which member of that same class was to rule over them every four years. However apt that observation may have been, the promoters of the sci-fi flick "Alien vs. Predator" were more on the money with their "whoever wins, we lose" ad. For in spite of the "Anybody But Bush" (ABB) liberal-left's dire warnings that this is the most important election since Hitler ran against von Hindenburg in Germany in 1932 (or since Bush ran against Gore in 2000), this year's campaign is no exception to those rules.
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Telling the Truth About the Election: A Different Viewpoint
Asad Haider
The left needs to come to its senses about the 2004 election. Some thoughtful analysis has appeared on ZNet and elsewhere, but it seems that too much commentary is coming to reflect the regrettable polarization into a "more-radical-than-thou" camp and a "more-sensible-than-thou" camp, one of the most unfortunate setbacks for the left since the fall of Barcelona. It's a real shame, because there is a great need for serious strategic analysis today, and the often dogmatic and sectarian quibbling over Kerry is a real obstacle to creating the kind of unified left that is so necessary in the United States. Last year, we were able to unite into the strongest anti-war movement in human history; what the hell happened?
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Lesser Evilism and Mandates
Richard Moreno
In the run-up to the November presidential election,
some of America's most renowned social critics--from
Noam Chomsky to Howard Zinn--have lent their leftist
credentials in the service of the Democratic
presidential nominee, John Kerry. To be sure, some of
these former radicals have qualified their moral
capitulation with the nuance of supporting Kerry only
in swing states. Yet, in essence, their fundamental
goal, i.e., getting Kerry elected, is identical to that of
the typical pro-Kerry Democrat. According to this
quasi-leftist thinking, Anybody but Bush, however
similar, deserves the people's mandate.
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Last Release: Friday, September 24, 2004
From Clinton to Bush: Bi-Partisan Arrogance and Imperial Forays
Joshua Frank
Despite what John Kerry may say along the campaign trail, the Democratic Party is largely to blame for laying the groundwork the Republican hawks needed to justify attacking Iraq and waging Bush's greater "war on terror."
As Democratic Leadership Council kingpins and proponents of Bush's war Al
From and Bruce Reed wrote in the July issue of Blueprint magazine, "In the
1990s, Bill Clinton showed Americans once and for all that Democrats could make the economy grow again, make government work again, and make America safe again. As a tough-minded internationalist and decorated war hero, Kerry has a chance to make his own mark, and complete the transformation of the Democratic Party as the one Americans can trust to make the nation stronger both at home and abroad."
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The Naomi Klein Doctrine:
Stick to the Surface, Avoid the Foundations
Macdonald Stainsby
Naomi Klein has played no small part in making it so these union struggles, against the behemoth of the fast food franchise mega corporation, have more than simply a fighting chance. Workers and their allies owe a debt to such service provided. However, since her notoriety has escalated, Klein has felt it necessary to delve into all manner of political writing, and her scribblings on international relations and the "War on Terror"-- well, they aren't No Logo, that's for sure.
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How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American
M. Junaid Alam
A specter is haunting America - the specter of anti-Americanism. All the powers of patriotic America have entered into a corporate alliance to exorcise this specter: draft-deferrers and women-gropers, grammar-challenged and duel-challengers, oil diggers and grave diggers. It is the duty of all upstanding American citizens to fully understand and identify the leading symptoms of anti-Americanism, so that our homes, homeless shelters, reading chambers, torture chambers, chocolate refineries, weapons factories, and places of worship, such as churches, temples, and Wall Street, are completely free from the poison of anti-war sentiment. The patriotic American must save both himself and others from becoming an anti-American American by learning to be an active, honorable, anti-anti-American American. It is with this pressing obligation in mind that the following signs of anti-Americanism have been compiled and exposed.
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�If You Harbor Terrorists, You Are a Terrorist�
William Marina
While delegates to the GOP convention were congratulating themselves for their candidate�s tough stand against terrorism, the Bush administration was creating an international incident�little publicized in the United States�by harboring a notorious group of international terrorists on U.S. soil.
Earlier this month, three anti-Castro Cuban exiles flew to Miami from Panama after serving four years in prison for �endangering public safety.� They were arrested in 2000 for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro by planting explosives at a meeting the Cuban dictator planned to hold with university students in Panama.
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Last Release: Monday, September 20, 2004
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned:
The Real Story of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Joe Allen
Vietnam Veterans are "quite different from veterans of earlier wars," observed Ralph Nader in 1973--then at the height of his fame as a consumer advocate. No prior war, Nader pointed out, had "witnessed such a moral dissent by soldiers and new veterans." What was it about the Vietnam War that produced this high level of opposition within the military? And what role did this resistance and organizations like VVAW play in ending the war in Vietnam?
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Last Release: Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Too Many Cameras and Not Enough Truth: John Kerry Dodges the Press
Joshua Frank
Democratic Presidential nominee John F. Kerry seems to be evading any confrontation with the media. According to journalists who have been tracking Kerry along the campaign trail, the senator has not held a formal press conference since August 9, some two weeks before the last time President Bush met with the press.
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Labor Gets no Love from Bush
Michelle Chen
This past week, America's workers went back to work after a weekend of celebrating their contribution to society. Upon returning to their cubicles, counters, stalls and stations, these millions might have felt a bit strange, like things have changed. No wonder. Thanks to subtle tweaks in national labor laws-part of Bush's plan for economic growth-Americans now indeed find their jobs growing: that is, working more hours and getting nothing in return.
For the rest of the workforce who don't have jobs, it just got a little tougher to find one, and the weeks of scanning job boards and biting nails just got a little more frustrating.
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Last Release: Friday, September 10, 2004
One Thousand Soldiers Dead - And the Left Lies Paralyzed
Pham Binh
Larry Syverson, whose son Bryce is a tank gunner in the 1st Armored Division stationed in Baghdad, told me: "I asked my son what do they talk about over there, you know, on their down time when they're not patrolling or doing raids. My son said, 'we try to guess the number of dead soldiers that's going to make the American people wake up and turn against the war.'" Larry and his son thought that 1,000 military deaths in Iraq might do it.
That tragic milestone has come faster than anyone expected. As of this writing, 1,003 American military personnel have died in Iraq, and over 7,000 have been wounded. No one knows how many Iraqis have died, but estimates range up to 30,000.
Make no mistake, the outrage against the war is there - among active-duty service people, military families, and working-class communities all over the country. It was in the theatres, where tens of millions lined up to see "Fahrenheit 9/11," and in the streets of New York when half a million marched against Bush's billionaire bash disguised as a respectable political convention.
Despite all this, it is hard to tell that there is an ongoing anti-war movement here.
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Last Release: Sunday, September 5, 2004
Taking on Dangerous Lies:A Response to Zell Miller's Speech
M. Junaid Alam
On September 1st Democratic Senator Zell Miller delivered a speech to the Republican National Convention gushing with praise for the president and venom for his own party's nominee. He exalted the Republican Party as the only force that can best protect and preserve the future of his "most precious possession" - his family - because of its aggressive stance in the international "war on terror," and derided the Democrats for making the country "weaker" with their "manic obsession" to unseat Bush. What strikes the conscious American as most disgraceful about the senator is not his betrayal of the party to which he belongs, but his allegiance to the most dishonest set of positions to which justice and reason have never belonged. The promulgation of poisonous myths about the war abroad, like the eagerness of a nervous public to eat up those myths, is the greatest danger confronting America today.
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Debunking the Republican-Nader Connection
Forrest Hill
Democrats are infuriated by recent reports of a vast conspiracy by Republicans to help Ralph Nader. After trying every tactic in the book to keep Nader off state ballots, including harassing signature gathers, hiring corporate law firms to scrutinize ballot access efforts and find legal technicalities, and sending threatening letters to volunteer petitioners, the Democratic Party is now accusing Republicans of covertly working to bolster the Nader campaign.
Such accusations have lead to cries of foul by Kerry supporters and are causing "Anyone But Bush" voters to go ballistic. Yet are the Republicans really engaged in a full out effort to help Nader or is there some other hidden agenda behind this so-called Republican plot?
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Last Release: Thursday, September 2, 2004
The War on Terror is a Fraud:Unraveling the Logic of a Lie
M. Junaid Alam
Recently the president of the United States was asked if the "war on terror" could be won. His response was markedly free from the aggressive and self-righteous rhetoric that usually defines the outlook of his administration: "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." What happened to the swaggering Texan? Had he suddenly slumped out of a depressing meeting with advisers informing him that Iraq was slipping deviously out of American hands and into the arms of Iraqi nationalists? Was he caught in a rare moment of honest reflection about the true nature of a war he has so zealously advocated? An unlikely prospect, no doubt. But just in case Bush did have an epiphany, the ever-reliable warmongers of the Democratic Party galloped onto the scene to remind America that now was the time for killing, not questioning.
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Trial By Fire: The SHAC 7 and the Future of Democracy
Steven Best and Richard Kahn
Since 1999, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) activists in the UK and US have waged an aggressive direct action campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), an insidious animal testing company notorious for extreme animal abuse (torturing and killing 500 animals a day) and manipulated research data. SHAC roared onto the historical stage by combining a shrewd knowledge of the law, no nonsense direct action tactics, and a singular focus on one corporation that represents the evils of the entire vivisection industry. From email and phone blockades to raucous home demonstrations, SHACtivists have attacked HLS and pressured over 100 companies to abandon financial ties to the vivisection firm. By 2001, the SHAC movement drove down HLS stock values from $15/share to less than $1/share. Smelling profit emanating from animal bloodshed, investment banking firm Stephens Inc. stepped in to save HLS from bankruptcy. But, as happened to so many companies before them, eventually Stephens too could not withstand the intense political heat and so fled the SHAC kitchen. Today, as HLS struggles for solvency, SHAC predicts its immanent demise.
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Last Release: Monday, August 30, 2004
Significance of Chavez's Victory for Latin America
Yves Engler
People who support democracy and equality should take hope from the victory of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Sunday�s referendum.
Why did millions of ordinary Venezuelans vote to support their president despite his vilification by the wealthy elite, the mainstream media and the USA? I would argue the primary reason is because Chavez has acted to expand democracy and reduce the drastic inequality that plagues most citizens of that and every other Latin American country.
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Last Release: Thursday, August 26, 2004
"They're as bad as Walmart": Starbucks Workers get Organized!
Derek Seidman
Two days after workers at the 36th and Madison Starbucks in New York City turned in their union cards to the NLRB for a certification election, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, sent them a little voice message. In this dispatch from the corporate tower, Schultz-who personally brought in 17 million dollars last year-tried to appeal to the $7.75-per-hour upstarts in words that would impress George Orwell.
The multi-millionaire CEO began his message by referring to his poverty-wage employees as "partners", and stressed how Starbucks and its workers "have built great trust in one another." He went on to explain that he viewed "treating everyone with dignity and respect as our highest priority", and stressed the "caring and supportive culture" of the company. He ended with this note of pure authenticity: "I want to conclude by simply thanking you for everything you do each day, and for being the real heart and soul of Starbucks."
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Last Release: Monday, August 23, 2004
The Green Party and Independent Politics
Adam Levenstein
The 1990s have seen many attempts by progressives to break the
stranglehold the Democrats and Republicans have over electoral
politics. The New Party, the Labor Party, the Green Party, and a myriad
of local parties all have been pushes to drive an independent wedge in
the duopoly of the super-rich. The most successful of these, of course,
has been the Green Party.
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Six Grim Consequences of the Anybody But Bush Plague
M. Junaid Alam
The Anybody But Bush plague has infected the American left with ruthless speed and efficiency. Descrying how, why, and under what circumstances this or that particular leftist figure has fallen victim to it is a rather cumbersome and tedious task best left to the coroners of history. It seems far more prudent now to identify, in concrete terms, the most salient consequences the ABB epidemic will produce on our attempts to reshape society along more just and rational lines. Below, I outline six of them.
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Ralph Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants you to Think so
Josh Frank
On Thursday August 20th, the Washington Post reported that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has branded Ralph Nader a "bigot", which is a furtive way of saying they think the independent candidate for president is a vile anti-Semite. Nader has come under attack from the ADL and their executive director Abe Foxman for suggesting that the US should proceed in a new direction regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
"The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced. The Washington Puppet Show should be replaced." Nader said in Washington DC forum titled "The Muslim Vote -- Election 2004".
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Last Release: Monday, August 16, 2004
The Left's Rotten Rallying Cry of Retreat: Cowardice is Not a Strategy
M. Junaid Alam
Bracing against a German assault that swiftly and brutally tore through western Russia in the summer of 1941, Josef Stalin remarked, "In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance." Today many radicals have joined the liberals and chattering classes in imagining themselves as partaking in an equally epic struggle with similar tactics; the Bush regime is Hitlerism reborn, an evil menace that can only be swept away by first retreating from many of the values and causes which they once rallied around in defense of the oppressed and downtrodden.
But whereas the Red Army only ceded ground to reorganize and make a stronger stand around defensible positions, the battle cry of 'Anybody But Bush' sends its adherents scurrying towards a candidate and party which have - in no uncertain terms - fully endorsed and vowed to continue perpetrating the two most morally indefensible and politically disastrous tragedies of our time: the occupation of Iraq and Palestine. This hardly concerns our ABB intelligentsia: so entranced by their fanatical fear, zealous hatred, and personal demonization of George Bush, they have decided that removing him from power justifies abandoning any actual political position.
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Electoral Pains and Movement Gains: Why the 2004 Election Pretty Much Sucks
Joshua Frank
The stench is dizzying. It�s almost too much to bear. Progressive voters are having a more than difficult time justifying their support for the rot we call the Democratic Party -- as the John-John ticket has few redeeming qualities, if any.
Then again this George W. Bush boob is pretty fricken scary, isn't he? He lied, and drove our country into an unnecessary war. He hates minorities and despises gays. He cares little for the environment (unless it can turn him and his pals an oily buck of course). He believes the government has the right to spy on its citizens. He thinks the poor and working class deserve their wretched poverty. And the list goes on.
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Where the Killing Starts: Reporting for Duty
Media Lens
The statistics of death in Baghdad are now �beyond shame,� Robert Fisk writes in the Independent. In the first three weeks of July there were 506 violent deaths in Baghdad alone: �Even the Iraqi officials here shake their heads in disbelief.� (Fisk, �Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the dead,� The Independent, July 28, 2004)
Before last year�s invasion, Baghdad�s morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June 2003, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. (Jeffrey Fleishman, �Baghdad's Packed Morgue Marks a City's Descent Into Lawlessness,� Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2003)
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Last Release: Tuesday, August 10, 2004
The Liberals Reveal Their True Nature:
Florida Comes to California
Todd Chretien
Having spent the last month helping organize the petition drive to get Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo on the ballot in California, I'd like to make two observations and some comments.
1. There are an appalling number of "liberals" or "progressives" who are willing to scream and spit in your face (literally) when you ask them if they'd like to sign a petition so that people who want to vote for a candidate who opposes the occupation of Iraq and the Patriot Act will have that right.
Here's a typical conversation:
Petitioner: "Excuse me, are you a registered voter in California?
We're trying to get Ralph Nader on the ballot."
Liberal Yuppie: "No, no, no!!! You cost Gore the election! Fuck you, bitch!"
Petitioner: "We're not asking you to vote for him, just help us get on the ballot, so that people who would like to vote for him will have that right."
Liberal Yuppie: "I don't care about your rights. You're going to hell!"
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The Situation in Haiti and Canada's Role
Yves Engler
Four and a half months ago the Liberal government sent troops to a foreign country without the legally elected host government's permission. Since February 29, Haiti has been occupied by foreign troops and a pro-U.S. government has been installed. The Canadian media, and the rest of us, have been nearly silent.
At the end of February, Haiti was front-page news. The Globe and Mail's Paul Knox was there and CanWest's 11 daily papers ran stories from the Montreal Gazette's once-progressive Sue Montgomery. Both reported on President Jean-Bernard Aristide's authoritarianism, drug connections and "thuggish" supporters, known as the chim�res. Neither gave much credence to other side of the story and now that Aristide is in exile in South Africa, the Canadian media have lost all interest.
So, what's going on?
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Scientists as Modern Colonialists: The Ancient One and Jack Metcalf
Macdonald Stainsby
A recent ruling on the "Kennewick man" bones has deep implications as yet another in a long line of scientific attacks on indigenous sovereignty. The recent court decision that the local Indians do not control the bones despite the non-ambiguous nature of laws passed on agreements between the nation and the American state is one more salt-grinding demonstration that sovereignty of First Nations is not something that a North American government is bound to respect. Not only is the ruling a legal blast to the existing treaties and legislation, it is proof that the "above politics" nature of "honest scientific inquiry" is a total hoax. Before we know it, this will allow a tidal wave of racist reaction from first-to-fifth generation settlers about First Nations not really being "first".
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Last Release: Thurdsay, August 05, 2004
Logging is not Restoration: Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Joshua Frank
Ancient public forests out West are under attack as usual this year. Thankfully, courageous activists in Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest are attempting to fend off the worst of the pillage.
On July 16 the US Forest Service placed 1900 acres of public land on the auction block. And by the end of the day the bids were in; 1160 of the 1900 acres were mapped out for demolition. The venture, titled the "Biscuit Fire Recovery Project", is the largest forest service sale in modern US history. When all is said and done 30 square miles of federal land could be handed over to chainsaw happy timber barons.
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Last Release: Thursday, July 29, 2004
Black Power(less): The Decline of Black Politics in America
Norman Kelley
Politics, like capitalism, abhors a vacuum, which is what George W. Bush created for John Kerry weeks before the Democratic National Convention. President Bush declined an invitation to speak before the 95th NAACP convention in Philadelphia, allowing Kerry to waltz in and tell the African-American audience what it wanted to hear. (Bush chose a friendlier convocation hosted by the Urban League.)
In what CNN called a �politically significant speech,� Kerry said he�d be a �uniter� and would not divide the nation �by race or riches or by any other label.� The Kerry campaign also promised to send in teams of lawyers and observers to watch for Election Day problems like the funny business that kept thousands of black votes from being counted in Florida four years ago.
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Last Release: Sunday, July 25, 2004
Sleeping with the Enemy?
Let's Be Fair
Joshua Frank
Democrats and liberal defenders of John Kerry are throwing tantrums over Ralph Nader's new found affinity for conservatives who are aiding his ballot efforts in swing states. According to a Detroit News report, Greg McNeilly the Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party said, "We are absolutely interested in having Ralph Nader on the ballot." Indeed these Republicans hope Nader will siphon votes away from Kerry, and tally the state's 17 electoral points on George Bush's score card come election day.
Right-wing organizations are also putting their efforts behind Nader out West. Citizens for a Sound Economy, an anti-tax, anti-government group run by Republican powerhouse Dick Armey, wants Nader on the Oregon ballot. A rigid Christian anti-gay group, known as Oregon Family Council, also believes voters should have a chance to pull the lever for Ralph in the fall. As you can imagine, Democrats aren't the least bit pleased with these recent developments. And they are the first to happily point out Nader's new bedfellows.
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Last Release: Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Ten Ways to Become a Better Democrat
M. Junaid Alam
Fellow radicals: recent events have made it clear that the primary task facing good people everywhere is unconditional support for the Democratic Party, the only party capable not only of removing a very, very bad man from office, but also increasing the pay envelope of starving and desperate Nation, Salon, MoveOn, and Sierra Club coffee-coolata-warriors across America. I submit my humble contribution to this effort by offering a list of ten virtues to cultivate in your personal journey towards becoming a better Democrat.
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Cuts in Government Housing Subsidies
Adam Ritscher
According to the U.S. Census Bureau almost 40 million Americans live below the poverty line. And as hundreds of thousands of workers get laid off from closing plants, downsizing and outsourcing, that number is likely to climb.
But despite the massive levels of poverty that pervade this country, the powers that be have decided that now is the time to cut federal housing subsidies that millions of low income people depend upon to pay their rent each month.
This past April, the federal government, announced that it would be retroactively changing the way it funds housing vouchers. As a result of this major change, many local housing authorities are finding themselves dangerously short of funds. Nationally, the shortfall is estimated at $1.6 billion, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
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Last Release: Sunday, July 12, 2004
Can the Iraqis Fight for Sovereignty?
M. Junaid Alam
The much-touted official handover of Iraq by American occupation authorities to Iraqi officials handpicked by American occupation authorities has come to pass. A new phase in the liberation process, in which the task of securing and stabilizing Iraq must now be largely carried out by Iraqis themselves, has been declared. Now is the time to "let freedom reign" as President Bush enthusiastically scribbled down on a note to the new Iraqi Prime Minister. Of course, it has been stressed that the handover ceremony itself was to be mostly symbolic, a sign of things to come more than any concrete achievement in and of itself. It symbolized quite a bit, though nothing positive for the "coalition".
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God Must Be Watching
By Derek Seidman
How fortuitous! Just when you thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was dishing out anti-Bush conversions by the thousands (amidst the din of Yankee-fan boos directed at Dick Cheney), Bush's team has come to the rescue with a vengeance.
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Beware the Liberal War on Terror
Dave Stratman
Many people who oppose the war in Iraq are living under a
dangerous illusion: that the war is the work of a cabal of fundamentalist
Christians and Jewish neo-conservatives who have hijacked the government for
their own purposes -- that the war,
in other words, represents not the policies of the core American
Establishment but the zany doings of some interlopers.
There have been plenty of indications that this view is
mere wishful thinking. The war in Iraq had resounding support at its
inception from both Democratic and Republican politicians and the media.
Only now that the situation in Iraq has dramatically deteriorated have some
politicians and editorial writers begun to backpedal. Even so John Kerry,
the presumptive Democratic nominee, has continued to give the war vigorous
support, calling for 40,000 more troops.
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Last Release: Friday, July 2, 2004
Iraq: The Limits of Empire
Mark Yu
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is running into serious obstacles on several fronts. Photos documenting the use of torture at Abu Ghraib prison have torn the mask of legitimacy from the face of the civilian-military occupying force. While the torture itself could be treated as a mere aberration by U.S. politicians and commentators--overlooking the violence of the entire colonial enterprise in Iraq and ignoring similar abuse in prisons at home--the political impact of the photographs could not be so easily disregarded. The prison scandal, scandalous only because the perpetrators were caught in the act, has permanently disarmed the public relations effort to "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people.
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Take Me Out to the Antiwar Ballgame
Derek Seidman
Dick Cheney was able to score a hot ticket to see the biggest rivalry in baseball when he attended the Yankees-Red Sox game on Wednesday. The Vice-President even made his way into the locker room before the game to mumble at a few players. It was a proud moment for Yankee coach Joe Torre, who told the press, "It's great any time a dignitary like that visits. It slaps you with pride."
Come the seventh inning stretch, it was Cheney's turn to get slapped.
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Last Release: Thursday, June 24, 2004
Forging Alliances: How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Josh Frank
George W. Bush�s environmental record can be dummied down to one simple word: devastating.
Not only has President Bush gutted numerous environmental laws--including the Clean Air and Water Acts--he has also set a new precedence by disregarding the world�s top scientists and the Pentagon, as their concerns about the rate of Global Warming grow graver by the day.
As Mark Townsend and Paul Harris reported for the Observer in the UK in February of 2004, �[The Pentagon report] predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.�
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Last Release: Sunday, June 13, 2004
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
Paul de Rooij
The media usually focuses on the latest casualty and quickly forgets those who died even a few days before. The American media in particular has a Dracula-like predilection for warm bodies, and no interest in cases where blood has already dried. Unfortunately this ahistoric focus on the last victim hides the scale of mass crimes and the responsibility of various perpetrators. Whether in Iraq, Palestine, Colombia, or Haiti, it is necessary to locate human rights abuses in a wider context to appreciate the scale of what is occurring on the ground.
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John Kerry, Cheerleader for Israeli Brutality
Josh Frank
Even if he turns out to be the second worst president in US history, John F. Kerry will still be better than our sitting president. At least many liberal and progressive Americans are stating as much in order to justify their support for the leading Democrat. However, such rationale does not dilute the fact that most people in the world will not be able to sense any tangible variation between either, Bush or Kerry.
Just ask the Palestinians who, as the Washington Post reported, suffered 19 (other estimates range between 25-30) deaths in the last nine days (prior to the May 19 attack by the Israeli military on a Palestinian demonstration in Rafah that killed at least 19 more people) due to hostile Israeli military aggression in Rafah, a Palestinian refugee camp located in the Gaza Strip.
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Last Release: Saturday, June 06, 2004
A Fool's Fate: Ahmed Chalabi
Michael Dempsey
Even before the first Daisy Cutter fell from its B-52, The Iraqi National Congress, headed by the unfailingly disastrous Ahmed Chalabi, was readying itself for the assumption of power. The plan was for Chalabi to be airdropped from an American F-15, piloted by co-conspirators Christopher Hitchens and Kanan Makiyaya, into downtown Baghdad, where the three were then to pull down the statue of Saddam together, thus saving the Americans the trouble of having to pay the Iraqi�s to do it.
As is sometimes said here in Boston: not quite.
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Confronting The Anybody But Bush Offensive:
Don't Back Down
Josh Frank
On May 3rd the Village Voice stooped to a new low and published an article by Harry G. Levine, titled, �Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber.� The title itself, in its racist conjecture (Nader is an Arab-American), exemplifies the fear beating in hearts of many Americans regarding the upcoming election. The majority of these liberals are willing to sideline any progressive tendencies in order to solidify George W. Bush�s defeat in November. Some even go as far as attacking Ralph Nader�s character, as they believe he is the largest hurdle to a Kerry triumph.
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Coming Soon:
The Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production
Jacob Levich
Barring a sudden reversal in the direction of US foreign policy, a strong bipartisan push to reinstate the draft can be expected soon after the November elections. Whether or not Bush wins is irrelevant. The logic of empire requires more boots on the ground, and conscription looks like the only way to get them.
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Last Release: Saturday, May 22, 2004
The time to act is now: A look at today's anti-war movement
Nikki Marterre
The torture photos that have been released from Abu Ghraib surprise few on the left and others that have remained active against the occupation of Iraq. We are familiar with the brutality of the United States and its imperialist adventures. However, the photos have meant something very different for American politics in general and the potential to build the anti-war movement. The anti-war movement has been suffering from stagnation - if not decline- ever since the war began on March 20th, 2003 with the exception of a few important events.
Suddenly this May, hundreds of photos were released to the media (too big a story to cover up or ignore) showing torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, a known prison under Saddam which had obviously changed little under its new leadership. The pictures were disgusting, showing physical, mental and sexual abuse of prisoners. Even Congress got a slide show. Suddenly the very last reasoning that American troops should be there - liberation - came crashing down. Now according to Gallup polls over 30 percent of Americans want all US troops withdrawn from Iraq. Eighteen percent more at least want some troops withdrawn.
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Kerry's "Image" Problem
Michael Dempsey
John Kerry's got a problem with the image thing. This even his fans confirm. Eric Alterman, while reflecting on a private meeting he and a few other liberal scribblers had attended with Senator Kerry, reported that although the Senator would make an able president he lacked savor faire so crucial in connecting with American voters. As a remedy to this, The New York Times reported with no small amount of elation that Kerry will be unleashing a barrage of million dollar television ads to acquaint the American people with him. The worrisome impression is that the voters don't know (or don't care to know) anything about John Kerry. By funneling snippets of his St. Alban's childhood into living rooms across America, people will begin to identify with the Senators program, whatever it happens to be on that particular day, or so the hope is.
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Last Release: Sunday, May 9, 2004
Drafting the Empire
Jeff Morgan
Not since January 2003, when US House of Representatives member Charles Rangel introduced a bill calling to reinstate the military draft, has the issue of conscription been more talked about than now. Rangel ostensibly proposed the bill in large part to address the problems of the economic draft, in which, due to disparities in income, social position, and educational opportunities, members of the all-volunteer US military are disproportionately working class, African-American, and Latino.1 Unsurprisingly, few politicians supported Rangel's proposal and the debate soon died down.
But on April 20 of this year Republican Senator Chuck Hagel once again brought the issue of the draft back into mainstream political debate. While Hagel also cited the socioeconomic imbalance of volunteer forces, he emphasized the deteriorating course of the occupation in Iraq. He stated that the growing crisis "is a steam engine coming right down the track at us" unless the US government acts to do something about it.2 As lawmakers like Hagel know, the endless "war on terrorism" promises continued occupations, interventions, and, hence, resistance by those occupied. This will undoubtedly require more troops - or at least a constant number - and if problems of retention and recruitment manifest themselves, the issue of a new draft will be more than speculation or hollow warnings.
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The Enemy is Within
M. Junaid Alam
Sharpened on racial and religious hatreds, the dagger of imperialism has thrust itself into the heart of the Iraqi people with vicious force. Our professional liberals, who have moved heaven and earth to not only produce this dagger but supply it a sheath woven of fine phrases about American moral supremacy, now recoil in horror at events in Iraq and propose a thousand solutions to "secure" it and avoid "chaos." Their minor and meek criticisms of the occupation separate them from the war planners to the same degree that the handle of this dagger is separated from its blade.
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Glossary of the Iraq Occupation
Paulo de Rooij
Any time there is war or an occupation of another country, propagandists or their media surrogates require language that mollifies, exculpates and hides the grim reality or sordid deeds. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of what is really happening in Iraq, this glossary elucidates the terminology commonly used in the media. Its aim is to enable us to peer through the linguistic fog.
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Last Release: Wednesday, April 28, 2004
"No Democrat is going to beat Bushism":
An interview with Green Party activist Howie Hawkins
Derek Seidman
As the 2004 presidential election approaches, the pressure is mounting on advocates of independent politics to go ABB (Anybody But Bush), which in practice means supporting pro-war, pro-occupation, pro-corporation, pro-troop increase, pro-PATRIOT Act candidate John Kerry. Recently Left Hook's Derek Seidman caught up with Howie Hawkins, a longtime activist-leader of the Green Party and an outspoken voice for the need to fully break from the Democrats and the practice of lesser-evilism.
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Lesser-Evilism and the Fight for Gay Marriage: The Politics of Self-Defeat
Keith Rosenthal
The movement for gay marriages that has emerged spontaneously all across the country is clearly beginning to reach a crossroads. On the one hand, a wide collection of city councils and mayors have been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples over the past several weeks despite Bush's bigoted threats to amend the federal constitution to ban same-sex marriages. These mayors and city councilors have stood up to do what's right with the help of grassroots pushes by gay rights activists, from New Paltz to Seattle to San Francisco.
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Last Release: Thursday, April 22, 2004
Conservatives: A Brake on Human Progress
Morgan Southwood
The strict definition of a conservative is one who holds to traditional methods or views, or a cautious or discreet person. If the good old days were actually good, I'd be more inclined to give traditional conservatives a bit more credit, but they were not, so I can't. Other hallmarks of conservative thinking include pseudo-Christian zealotry and proud neurotic selfishness - myguns, my tax dollars, my standard of living.
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Last Release: Saturday, April 17, 2004
We Are the Barbarians: Consequences of Colonialism in Iraq
M. Junaid Alam
Jaw agape and fangs unsheathed, American colonialism has lashed out with severe brutality against the newly-unified Iraqi resistance, counting on its military might to crush the aspirations of Iraqis who seek to liberate their country from foreign control. Relying so heavily on the force of arms against a people it claims to liberate, the US has inverted Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means; our policy now is politics as a continuation of war by other means.
But it so happens that this is a double-edged sword - with both edges thrust firmly into the heart of the occupation.
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Last Release: Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair
...This is one reason we are important to the movement not just against the war, but the movement to overthrow a system that breeds war, why veterans and military families and dissident soldiers are so important in this crucial period. In this period when the old tricks no longer work, and the depredations of this global system have once again consumed the very bases of that system - its subordinated people and its wrecked environment - the essence of that system, its true essence, the gun and the bomb and the rape and the prison, are being unmasked by the necessity to use these colonizers' tools openly to preserve power.
This was a war to transcend all wars - a war fought not for crass interests or crude motives, but for freedom and democracy. Or so we were told. Once this grand narrative was felled by reality, however, the story of its basic actors was twisted to meet new requirements: since it could not possibly be that the war aims were themselves corrupt, it must be the Iraqis - the supposed recipients of liberation, and the American soldiers - the deliverers of that liberation - who were flawed. This twist was to serve as punishment for those Iraqis who interpreted "freedom" to mean not only freedom from Saddam but freedom from US control, and as a smear job against those US soldiers who interpreted "defending the country" to mean something other than killing innocents and creating more hatred for America...
As right-wing forces consolidate their control over the commanding heights of national power, reaping the fruits of both their mobilization and liberals' demobilization, it has become increasingly urgent for serious progressives to examine the outstanding contradictions which mark many of the Right's main political positions. For as conservatism gains more power and prominence, it becomes increasingly difficult for it to sustain momentum by merely blaming its favorite boogeyman - the now marginalized "left" - as causing all America's ills. Stripped of this crucial crutch, conservatism's bold advance regresses into a limping gait - a fact of some consequence - but only if we are willing to expose and attack the Right's weaknesses and inconsistencies.