|
Today's
Stories
November 5
/ 6, 2005
Lawrence R.
Velvel
Lying,
Law Schools and Executive Power: What Senators Should Ask Alito
Roosa / Nevins
The
Mass Killlings in Indonesia, 40 Years Later
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Missing
the Bus: When Conscience Bows to Calculation
John Ross
The Zapatistas' Otra Campaign for Mexico's Presidential Elections
Mark Engler
Will Big Business Turn On Bush?: the Economic Nightmare Unfolds
Mitchel Cohen
People of the Dome, Revisited
Charles Sullivan
When Courage Fails: a White Southerner on Rosa Parks
November 4,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blood
on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda: Losing ANWR
Dave Lindorff
A Majority Now Favors Impeachment: If He Lied, He Must Be Tried
Phillip Cryan
Crackdown
in Colombia
Christopher Brauchli
Katrina and Tax Breaks for the Very Rich
William S.
Lind
Exit Strategy: You Can't Stay the Course in a Lost War
Daryl G. Kimball
Of Madmen and Nukes
George Beres
Laurels for Negroponte?
Peter Montague
Why We Can't Prevent Cancer
November 3,
2005
James Petras
The
Libby Affair and the Internal War
Saul Landau
Torn
Families and Shot Down Planes: a Cuba Story
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge
Michael Dickinson
Bang! Bang! You're Deaf! Sonic Weapons Over Palestine
Joshua Frank
Sham Behind Closed Doors
Remi Kanazi
Dancing with Perseverance
Reza Fiyouzat
Taxation or Racketeering?
Website of the Day
CIA Leak Investigation: Bigger Fish, Deeper Water?
November 2,
2005
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Holy
Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad
Robert Oscar Lopez
Saving Rosa Parks from American Hypocrisy
John Walsh
The Philosophy of Mendacity: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby
Brian J. Foley
Why Most Americans Don't Care About Gitmo (and Why They Should)
Ramzy Baroud
Rolling Back Syria
M. Junaid Alam
What Moral Values?
Todd Chretien
Judgment Day for the Governator
Bruce K. Gagnon
The Democrats' Slap Happy Day
Website of the Day
Hands Off Dave!
November 1,
2005
Ron Jacobs
An
Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart
Gary Leupp
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome
John Ross
Days
of the Dead on the Border
Bill Quigley
Why
Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town?
Joseph Nevins
From a Boundary of Death to One of Life
Dave Lindorff
Thinking About Impeachment
Linda S. Heard
Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN?
Heather Gray
Thank You, Mrs. Parks
Michael Dickinson
To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond
Jeffrey St. Clair
Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off
October 31,
2005
Elaine Cassel
Libby's
Lies
Mark Weisbrot
Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed
Mike Whitney
Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald
Norman Solomon
After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself
Farooq Sulehria
Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns
Nicole Colson
Scapegoating Immigrants
Madis Senner
Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights
Paul Craig
Roberts
Scooter
and the Neocons
October 29 / 30, 2005
Cockburn /
St. Clair
The
Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?
Peter Linebaugh
The
Wedges of Hephaestus
Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media
John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words
Steven Higgs
Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland
Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War
M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness
Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State
Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives
Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?
Joshua Frank
Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter?
Laura Santina
Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder?
Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer
Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country
Ron Jacobs
Autumn in America
Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting
Vanessa S. Jones
Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Red State Update
October 28,
2005
Jared Bernstein
Inflation
Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record
Virginia Tilley
Embracing
the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine
Phil Gasper
The
Race to Execute Tookie Williams
Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!
Manual Garcia,
Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?
Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice
Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald
Focuses on the Forgeries
Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials
Otober 27, 2005
Saul Landau
The
Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War
Stuart Hodkinson
Bono
and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!
Ingmar Lee
Stop
the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq
Lila Rajiva
License
to Bill: Gates Does India
Ilan Pappe
The
Last Moment of Hope
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald
Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury
Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo
Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown
October 26,
2005
Kathy Kelly
For
Whom They Toll
Gary Leupp
Dialectics
of the Plame Affair
Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial
Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation
Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check
J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks
Website of
the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index
October 25,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?
Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel
Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings
Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros
Robert Day
Talk to Strangers
John Sugg
Judith
Miller and Me
October 24,
2005
Dave Lindorff
Revoke
Judy Miller's Pulitzer
Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra
Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial
Mike Whitney
Apres Rove
Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Palestine
October 22
/ 23, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
When
Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller
Billy Sothern
Letter
from the Circle Bar, New Orleans
Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment
Ralph Nader
An
Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers
Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?
Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?
Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union
Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!
Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About
Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer
Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake
James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness
Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Disasters are Us
Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal
Missy Comley
Beattie
CSI: Iraq
Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun
Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week
Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel
Website of
the Day
Indictment Watch
October 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
The
Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy
Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense
Budget
Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard
Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph
Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina
Michael Donnelly
Richard
Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots
October 20, 2005
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment
Comes to NYC
Ray McGovern
16
Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost
Jeremy Brecher
/
Brendan Smith
Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court
Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?
Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment
Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton
Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory
After Lucas
Cranach
Judy and Holofernes
Joe Allen
The
Scandalous History of the Red Cross
October 19,
2005
Christopher Reed
Koizumi and the Rape of Nanking
Stephen Soldz
Bush
and Avian Flu: the Excuses Begin to Fly
Chet Richards
War
and Intelligence
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam on Trial
Scott Richard
Lyons
Multicultural
Columbus?
Ralph Nader
An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin
Website of
the Day
Shocking Video: Why Birds May Be Taking Viral Vengeance on Humans
October 18,
2005
Chet Flippo
Merle
Haggard: "Let's Get Out of Iraq"
Ron Jacobs
Dual Devotions: the Catholic Church and the US Flag
Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor
A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo
Dave Lindorff
Judy Miller: Little Miss Run Amok
Virginia Rodino
A Winter Patriot: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement
Thomas Healy
The Weather in Goshen: Still Radical After All These Years
Ralph Nader
A New New Orleans
Stephen Lendman
The Sorrows of Haiti
Patrick Cockburn
On the Eve of Saddam's Trial: a Divided Iraq
October 17,
2005
Peter Linebaugh
Spinoza
and the Black Limos
Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
Cockburn /
Sengupta
"If
the Sunnis Don't Like It, That's Their Problem"
Mike Whitney
Miller's Confession: Last Gasp Before Indictments?
Uri Avnery
Iraq Now: What Awaits Samira?
Harold Pinter
Torture & Misery in the Name of Freedom
Website of
the Day
Al Joudi v. Bush
October 15
/ 16, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ayatollahs
of the Apocalypse
Patrick Cockburn
"This Constitution Won't Get Me a Job"
Saul Landau
Two Terrorists and a Lush: Osama, Posada and Bush's Drinking
Neve Gordon
"Beyond Chutzpah": Exposing Grave Moral Distortions
Moshe Adler
Poverty in New York City
Christopher Brauchli
Lynndie England's Burden
Diane Farsetta
The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: the Fight Against Fake News
Sam Husseini
Notes on Current Reporting About Judith Miller
Monica Benderman
From Chaos to Conscience to Peace
Mickey Z.
POW Abuse by US: Nothing New Going On Here
Douglas C.
Smyth
George W. Bush, the Honorius of Our Time
Lee Sustar
Will Delphi Bust the UAW?
Fred Gardner
Cannabinoids Arrive in Realm of Established Fact
Elizabeth Schulte
A Former Panther's Georgia Campaign: an Interview with Elaine
Brown
Joshua Frank
Will the Democrats Save Harriet Miers?
David Vest
Down with Formalism! Up with Values!
Ben Tripp
Epistle II: the Reawakenign
Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, Ford and Louise
Website of
the Weekend
The
Hidden Canyon
October 14,
2005
Farrah Hassen
A
Somber Ramadan in Syria
Ron Jacobs
The
Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We
Sasha Kramer
USAID
and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism?
Katrina Yeaw
The Student Struggle in Italy
Nicole Colson
Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care
Raúl Zibechi
Survival and Existence in El Alto
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo
Chávez and the Politics of Race
Website of the Day
LA Filmmakers Cooperative
October 13, 2005
Jeremy Scahill
Mr.
Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of)
Jeff Birkenstein
A
Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters
Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher
Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution?
Stan Cox
Did You Know This About Iraq?
Anis Memon
The Curious Case of Russ Feingold
Gary Leupp
Miller, Libby and the June Notes
Dave Zirin
A Tribute to August Wilson
Matthew Koehler
America's Endangered Forests
Werther
The
Two-Headed Monster
Website of
the Day
Hurricane Song
October 12, 2005
Omar Waraich
Britain
and the Quake: Mean and Stingy
William Cook
Voices
Behind the Entombment Wall
Phil Gasper
Countdown
to a Legal Lynching
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls
Matt Vidal
Capital, Power and Class
John Gautreaux
New Orleans will Never be the Same
Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica
Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War
Mark Weisbrot
The IMF Has Lost Its Influence
Brian J. Foley
Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety
Website of
the Day
Columbus Day Lies
October 11,
2005
Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt
Strategic
Demands of the 21st Century
Lila Rajiva
Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib
Bill Quigley
New
Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again
Paul Craig Roberts
Natural Born Liars
Dave Lindorff
Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Suspect Thy Neighbor
Mitchel Cohen
Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese
Tariq Ali
Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror
Website of
the Day
L'Heure Americaine
October 10,
2005
Cindy and Craig
Corrie
Rachel's
Words Live
Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems
Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat
Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square
Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars
CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Police State is Closer Than You Think
Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles
October 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric
and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People
Ralph Nader
Katrina
and the Growls of Greed
Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case
Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream
Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas
Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism
Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush
Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq
Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?
John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country
Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach
M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard
Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine
Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George
Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan
Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford
October 7,
2005
Larry Johnson
The
Plame Case: the Real Issues
Will Youmans
Why
Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus
Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison
Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle
Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs
Jennifer Van
Bergen
New
American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir
Website of
the Day
FBI Witchhunt
October 6, 2005
P. Sainath
"Take
That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal
Idol Again
Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged
Paul Craig
Roberts
Blundering
into Syria
Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion
Dave Lindorff
Easy
Money in the Big Easy
Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell
M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason
Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot
Robert Pollin
Is
the Dollar Still Falling?
October 5,
2005
Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for
Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines
Robert Jensen
Is
Bush a Racist?
Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or
the Empire
Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything
is Bad"
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds Laughs Last
Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons
Took Over
Alan Maass
Doing
the Right Wing's Dirty Work
October 4, 2005
Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System:
a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.
Mike Roselle
Houston,
You've Got a Problem
Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers
John Chuckman
War
Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say
Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers,
Hurricanes and the Keys
Mickey Z.
An
Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski
Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims
Gary Leupp
An
Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History
Website of the Day
Rodney
Crowell on Bob Dylan
October 3,
2005
Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
Rice: Gunslinger
Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan
Seth Sandronsky
The
Hiring Crisis for Black Teens
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare
|
More
Than Half Way Home !
Annual Fundraising Appeal
We interrupt your regular reading
habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch
needs your financial support!
We're not in the habit of making
idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising
goal of $60,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced
to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near
the end of our year and the wolf is at the door.
CounterPunch's website is supported
almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter.
We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried
getting money out of Google, but they  gave
us the boot. We aren't on the receiving end of six-figure grants
from big foundations. George Soros doesn't have us on retainer.
And we don't sell tickets on cruiseliners.
The continued existence of
CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of
our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands
of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000
visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course,
all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money.
Through the Iraq war, the daily
traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, earthquakes and
the disappearance of the Democrats, many of you have found a
refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us
that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you
find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We
appreciate the support and prepared for the fierce battles to
come as the Bush administration expands its wars abroad and at
home.
Unlike many other outfits,
we don't hit you up for money every month...or even every quarter.
We only ask for your support once a year. But we when ask, we
mean it. Please, make a donation
to CounterPunch today or purchase a gift
subscription or a crate
of books as holiday presents. To contribute by phone you
can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683
Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November 5 / 6, 2005
Signs
of Life or Last Gasp?
Structural Problems
of the Democratic Party
By REZA FIYOUZAT
The Democratic Party USA, in its latest
act to close the U.S. Senate to the public, is showing belated
signs of some sort of life. The sort of life being shown, however,
may be the last gasps of an irrelevant organism.
One cannot forget that Senators
belonging to the Democratic Party played a willing part in helping
along the imperial agenda of the so-called neo-conservatives.
Under Bill Clinton's presidency, the Democrats helped in bleeding
the Iraqi nation of all ability to defend itself, in the process
mass murdering at least half a million innocent children through
their support of the sanctions imposed on Iraq.
Democrats actively helped to
maintain a situation in which Iraqi infrastructure including
roads, bridges, sewage systems, hospitals and schools were bombarded
at will, while essential medical and educational goods were denied
the ordinary people. To this day, there are people being prosecuted
in the United States for acting "illegally" against
those barbaric sanctions in order to bring much needed medicine
and school materials to Iraqi people.
You may also remember that
in 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry was advocating
a war policy as ferocious in intent as that of George W. Bush's,
and was indeed chiding the President for not doing enough in
Iraq, more specifically not doing enough in Fallujah! After the
elections, of course, George W. Bush did "do enough"
in Fallujah.
But, even if those ghastly
episodes are forgotten, we should not forget that Democrats have
helped undermine severely civil liberties in the U.S., by their
willing approval of characters like Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza
Rice to two of the highest cabinet posts under the current Bush
administration, at a time that both were (and are) on record
supporting the policy of systematic torture and detention-without-charge,
not to mention their approval of doctrine of preemptive war-making
in which the decision to wage war is handed to the executive
branch.
As pointed out by Ron Jacobs,
"Like the [neo-cons'] Project for a New American Century
document, the Democrats' paper [Progressive Internationalism:
A Democratic National Security Strategy] uses the tragedy of
911 as a starting point. It continues by supporting the wars
on Afghanistan and Iraq while decrying the fact that no other
capitalist country except for Britain is paying the same price
for those adventures as the United States is. As it rambles on,
the paper emphasizes repeatedly the Democratic Party's tradition
of aggressive military intervention throughout the Twentieth
Century: Korea, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Vietnam, the former
Yugoslavia, and so on. The intention of this litany is to prove
that the Democrats are just as warlike as the so-called GOP neo-cons,"
(Is It a State of Crisis Yet? Alternative Press Review, October
29, 2005).
Do not forget that this same
Democratic Party USA was responsible for the extreme escalation
in the invasion of Vietnam. Under President Johnson, the U.S.
troop presence in Vietnam shot up to half a million soldiers.
As a result of which military escalation between three and five
million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians were murdered. Back
then, too, you see, they had to stay the course.
There are concrete and analyzable
reasons for the lack of true oppositional sentiment on the part
of the Democrats, if not for the treachery required of the pundits
paid to portray them as something they are not. There are likewise
deep, structural reasons for the fact that some Democrats feel
that they should be more Republican than thou, and, exactly at
a time when the Iraq war/occupation is starting to be increasingly
perceived as a disaster for the interests of the ordinary U.S.
citizens, they propose to send 80,000 more troops to Iraq!
There are also deep reasons
why the official opposition being expressed to the Iraq war/occupation,
or, as the case may be, to judicial nominees, is increasingly
from the ranks of those historically allied to the Republicans,
in fact, and not the Democrats, unless we are talking about the
extreme left wing of the Democratic Party; i.e., about three
or four people in the Congress! Three or four people vociferously
opposing the war in the Congress, in a country in which, according
to the latest polls, merely something like a third of the population
supports the President's war/occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How is this a democracy?
But, due to the diligent efforts
of the punditry classes, we are invited to be blinded to the
fact that the Democrats are not able to formulate anything, much
less a viable opposition, because they really are redundant for
the time being. Of course, they have to pretend they are relevant,
that they are a real party with a real constituency; such behavior
is part of their social function.
To be effective political representatives
of the status quo, their function is, partly, one of keeping
the people at the officially designated political trough and
keeping them there only. They have played this function well,
and as a result throughout the twentieth century any and all
oppositional sentiments were absorbed into the Democratic Party,
where they subsequently suffered premature deaths. Now, the Democrats
are at it again; right after the Libby indictment, seeing that
it is safe to say something, they are play-acting as 'opposition'
in the lead up to next years' congressional elections.
[Of course, as it turned out,
and as Jeffrey St. Clair exposed in Counterpunch (see, Blood
on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda; November 4, 2005), in
that closed session the Democrats capitulated on yet another
front that had been a 'Democrats' Pet Issue', which was to concede
to the oil industry drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge.]
But, let's step back and see
what some of the structural reasons are for the Democrats becoming
increasingly redundant. Take one of the traditional strongholds
of the Democrats: organized labor. As Steve Zeltzer (among others)
has pointed out, since the dawn of NAFTA, for whose passage the
Democrats played a key and energetic role, the party has essentially
had its base dismantled.
As Zeltzer points out in his
article, Business Unionism & the AFL-CIO's Crisis, "US
capitalists, and the Democrats and Republicans whom they control
no longer need their alliance with the trade union bureaucracy.
They have shifted production out of the United States using NAFTA
and the WTO and they have instituted a tough-going deregulation
and privatization program supported by the Democrats that has
destroyed or whipsawed heavily unionized sectors from trucking,
airlines, rail and communication," (Labor Action Coalition,
February 2005).
In other words, the union base
of the Democrats has disintegrated due to the improved conditions
for a higher degree of mobility for capital; at the earliest
signs of diminishing returns on profits, the U.S. capital can
(with little cost that can in turn be recovered quickly) take
flight, if they so desire, to a mere six feet south of the border
into Mexico, and enjoy a far higher rate of profit.
Further, now thanks to CAFTA,
again passed with great help from the Democrats, capital can
now take a slightly more distant flight and go, say, to Nicaragua
or El Salvador, countries the CIA helped to ruin, and enjoy even
bigger rates of profit, exactly due to the devastation (and the
desperation that comes with it) brought on them by the U.S.
This higher mobility has not
only eroded the life conditions of the organized labor, but has
also undermined the middle classes, resulting in an unprecedented
gap between the upper and the lower classes in the U.S. In short,
the Democrats have undone almost the entirety of their social
base.
At the same time that they
have helped the U.S. capital-owning classes along the path of
more mobility -- thereby destroying the historical social conditions
for the long-term survival of their own base -- Democrats have
had to raise increasing percentages of the money needed for their
political campaigning from the rich and the corporations; as
opposed to from a popular social base.
In doing this, they naturally
are more overtly beholden to the corporations, at the same time
that they have helped to hand over the political campaigning,
i.e., the 'getting out the vote' process, to advertising agencies;
as opposed to allowing the real issues of concern to people to
find their way into the public discourse that matters most to
the lives of the citizens of the United States.
There is also another component
involved here, which runs deeper and goes beyond the Democratic
Party's specific trajectory. Historically, from about early twentieth
century, the function of policy writing started a migration from
inside the actual political parties to think thanks and foundations.
In other words, the writing of the political parties' platforms
was no longer a bottom-up transfer (through different mediations)
of the needs and demands of the party base dictated to the party
leadership (which should be the case in any classically defined
political party). The writing of the platform was turned, instead,
into a technical task that had to be done by experts with detailed
knowledge of economics, political structures and social research,
etc.
According to a University of
Massachusetts/Boston professor, Thomas Ferguson, lecturing us
in late 1980s, the decoupling of the task of 'policy writing'
from the task of 'getting out the vote' started as a conscious
effort by the U.S. ruling classes, beginning toward the end of
the nineteenth century, in response to too many voters turning
out to vote; due to the prolonged and successful agitation by
the Populist Movement. In other words, the ruling classes watched
in horror, as the voter turnout peaked in the 1880 presidential
elections as something like 85% of the eligible voters showed
up to vote! The voter turnout remained high until the1896 elections
(about 80%), and started its steady decline ever since.
So, the rulers saw how close
they came to getting licked by real democracy, and they didn't
like it. As a result, they started introducing all manner of
qualifications for voting, in effect starting a "legal"
process of disenfranchisement by other means; by introducing
arbitrarily whatever measures that guaranteed them a lower voter
turnout; English literacy tests, poll taxes, strict registration
requirements, to name a few.
By the time women's voting
rights were granted in 1920, thereby expanding the suffrage,
the process of disenfranchisement by other means had found some
sophistication. The so-called Progressive Era had had successes
in, among other areas, 'de-politicizing' the bureaucracy and
the policy writing function of the political parties was well
on its way to the desks of the so-called experts and technicians.
So, in effect a long process
of decoupling people from politics has been taking place in the
US for a long time now, and on two fronts. First, the working
people (not the capitalists) have been taken out of politics
in the sense that their demands are no longer the real stuff
out of which platforms for political parties are constructed,
and based on whose needs political campaigns find any meaning.
Second, people are taken further out of politics in the sense
that each election year, false menus of "issues" are
presented as the only relevant topics worth discussing; menus,
which in reality, are put together by corporations, who pay the
bills for politicians' political road shows, when their campaign
seasons are in full swing.
So, political campaigns have
effectively been turned into road shows, yet the pundits are
astounded at the level of "apathy" among the voters!!
Voters are not apathetic! They are very realistic in fact. They
are the wiser for not showing up at this phony circus that presents
itself as "democracy". The truly apathetic, in fact,
are the ones who show up to vote for more of the same.
At this historical moment,
Democrats are so ideologically bankrupt that they simply cannot
formulate any new ways that would further the interests of their
ultimate paymasters, the ruling capitalist classes in the U.S.
And corporate owners know this. The U.S. corporations know that
one of the best ways to beat the "diminishing returns"
game is to acquire monopolies, and the only way to get monopolies
is to act through the state (including the armed forces of the
state). And the political party that represents this stance least
ambiguously and most forcefully right now is the Republican Party.
That, and only that, can explain
why it is that Republicans (in the executive branch as well as
in the legislature, and in the punditry circles) are more creative,
more confident, which allows some of them to show independence
of thought and enough agility to bring to the attention of their
brothers and fellow travelers that, hey, maybe they are giving
the game away too overtly! As in, they have such a large political
field of maneuver that they can present even the opposition side
of the political topics of importance, for example, war in Iraq.
It should be remembered that
at some point in the 1960s, the Republicans' presence in the
U.S. Congress was limited to one third of the Senate and to about
one quarter to a third of the House. We can set that as a benchmark,
if you like, to the limits of the shrinkage possible for the
Democratic Party USA. At the rate they are stampeding over to
Republican ideals, however, the Democrats may well break that
record!
Now, here is the clincher as
far as the real Left is concerned: Pity any 'progressives' who
still pin their hopes on the Democrats, those true asses of this
miserable U.S. political scene! If there ever was a time ripe
enough for a third party to form and present a clear platform
and seize the day in the USA, now is it!
In case some object that there
already exist at least a few third parties, it should be pointed
out that what is needed is for all these smaller parties to unite.
We ALL need to unite!
We must pose this question
to ourselves every morning as we wake, and every night as we
go to bed: Why is it that the political representatives of capital,
in all their myriad opinions and colorings, from open fascists
in the Republican Party all the way to the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party can peacefully sit in the same legislature and
get along and pass legislation that tastes delicious to their
capitalist paymasters, and we cannot unite among ourselves?
Are we not screaming bloody
murder at how they are carving up Iraq by divide-and-conquer
ways and means? Well? Who's dividing us other than ourselves?
Can the hundreds of thousands of people, who marched on Washington
DC on September 24, and the hundreds of thousands in the Million
More Movement afford not to sit together in the same political
party; a big, national party of a real, pluralistic Left?
A pluralist left is the only
way forward, and the only way out of this splintered, divisive,
sectarian, backbiting situation that we on the Left are in now.
Let us unite and seize the day now!
Reza Fiyouzat is a freelance writer and analyst.
He keeps a blog at Revolutionary
Flowerpot Society, and may be reached at rfiyouzat@yahoo.com.
What
You're Missing in the Special Expanded Print Edition
The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam
by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
"The need
for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because
it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest
disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because
the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater."
Get
the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition
of CounterPunch
...
CounterPunch Online is
read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are
funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please
support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible. Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Get CounterPunch's Print Edition By
Email!
Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch,
PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558
|
Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
WHAT'S
INSIDE
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
|
