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Today's
Stories
February 20 / 22, 2004
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
February 20 / 22, 2004
There are Bigger Problems
than Bush
Corporatism
and Single Party Politics
By CHARLES SULLIVAN
Like the threads of an intricate tapestry, a remarkable
homogeneity runs through the course of American history, regardless
of which political party has occupied the Whitehouse, or which
controls Congress. Either there is powerful collusion involved,
or American foreign policy has been forged by the same forces
that have gotten us into hundreds of military conflicts around
the world. Those forces have consistently enriched a select
few and impoverished multitudes. They have overseen the collapse
of the middle class and stealthily promoted class warfare in
America.
Whatever military conflicts we have been
embroiled in was not because of the differences inherent in
the Democratic and Republican Parties; it is because both parties
are under the control of the ruling class; and neither party
has adequately represented the interests of working class people.
While there are some minor differences between the two major
political parties, they are primarily cosmetic. Under the guise
of capitalism and so called free trade, the two parties long
ago merged into a single political force that is fueled by corporate
money. This single party system not only caters to the rich--it
exploits the shrinking middle class and especially harms the
working poor.
In this repressive substitution for democracy
only those who have amassed substantial wealth have a voice
in government. Those with the most wealth have the greatest
influence on how the country is run. In a corrupt political
system money equates to free speech. Those with money have a
voice; those without do not. The American form of corporate
governance allows the poor and the working class virtually no
voice in government. Nevertheless, this is a kind of representative
government--the kind in which the rich and powerful are represented
but the working poor are not. Under the rules of corporate governance,
the working poor and the eroding middle class--indeed more than
ninety-five percent of the population--are left out in the cold
to fend for themselves. The result is that the vast majority
of the people are left to feed upon the crumbs that fall under
the table from the incestuous players who are wealthy enough
to afford a seat at the table. This shameful deception is what
passes for democracy in the public mind.
As William Blum documents in his book
"Killing Hope," the United States government has been
directly involved in thirty-six foreign political assassination
attempts between 1949 and 1999 alone. These are the ones we
know about. There have been many more since then, some successful,
others not. We have permanent military bases in one hundred
and thirty countries and plans for many more; many of them in
the Middle East and Asia. There are fifty-four documented instances
of the U.S. military abroad between the dawn of the twentieth
century and the beginning of World War Two in 1941. U.S. military
actions have been sharply on the rise since the end of World
War Two in 1945.
These events coincide with the growth
of U.S. imperialism, hegemony and the pursuit of empire. The
Bush-led invasion of Iraq last year was only the latest incarnation
of the many instances of manifest destiny that have sullied
the reputation of the U.S. abroad for more than a century.
Coincidentally, this is why so much of the world hates us; and
this is why 9/11 happened. Those events are the manifestation
of cause and effect: a reaction to U.S.--Israeli Middle Eastern
policies.
Between 1900 and the year 2000 the United
States has sponsored or undertaken over a hundred military incursions
upon foreign soil. During that time we elected eighteen presidents:
eleven Republicans and seven Democrats. The second half of the
twentieth century was particularly bloody. Beginning with Harry
S. Truman and running through Bill Clinton, the United States
elected ten presidents: half of them Republicans, half Democrats.
Throughout most of the century the Democrats controlled both
houses of Congress. Recently, however, the Republicans have
gained the upper hand.
During the past century the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow numerous democratically
elected governments, including Salvador Allende in Chile and
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. These CIA initiated interventions,
assassinations and invasions have always occurred against leftist,
people-oriented governments, often with socialist leanings.
Thus the question arises: Why does the United States have a
long history of invading and destabilizing democratic countries
that do not embrace capitalism? The answer lies in capitalism's
top down distribution of wealth. Capitalism demands cheap resources--often
other people's resources (Iraqi oil for instance)--cheap labor
and unfettered access to global markets for the further spread
of capitalism. The mentality of the high priests of capitalism
is akin to the ideology of the cancer cell. The principle is
based upon unsustainable consumption and unrestrained growth.
With the realization that these military
actions occurred almost equally regardless of which party was
in power comes strong evidence that a single force is driving
those destructive policies--a force that clearly does not operate
in the public interest. That party unifying force is the ruling
class power structure of corporate governance. It is driven
by the economic engine of capitalism that concentrates wealth
at the top of the economic ladder. Capitalism makes the rich
richer by exploiting the poor much in the way that slave labor
built the pre-civil war south into an economic power--a power
that could not endure because it rested on the precarious underpinnings
of social injustice.
Since those who are conscripted to fight
and die in wars are disproportionately the poor (especially
the black poor), it follows that they could not have favored
these policies unless they are suicidal or deliberately deceived
by the ruling class with the aid of a complicit media. A trenchant
example of this kind of deception and public relations campaign
is the recent invasion and occupation of Iraq championed by
George Bush and his ilk in the oil industry. After all, t is
not the ruling class who are being ambushed, maimed and killed
in Iraq; it is the working poor; ordinary people like you and
I. Likewise, it is the working poor we are killing in Iraq,
not the likes of Saddam Hussein and George Bush--both of whom,
I suggest, have much in common. Would the working poor be over
there dying for the likes of Dick Chaney and Halliburton if
they understood this truth? Or would there be rebellion resulting
in the overthrow of King George or whoever happens to be president
when the truth is finally uncovered and acted upon by the huge
majority of Americans?
The fact is that the United States has
never intentionally furthered the cause of democracy anywhere
in the world, as it has so often claimed. In fact, the U.S.
has steadfastly opposed democratic governments. I know that
this sounds unduly harsh and critical; but understanding our
past leads to no other conclusion. Democracy is the avowed enemy
of fascism; just as it is the adversary of capitalism. The U.S.
has a troubling history of overthrowing democratically elected
governments. Why? By now the answer should be obvious.
So let us not waste too much time and
energy spitting hairs over who wins the next presidential election:
Bush or Kerry. In the grand scheme it makes little difference.
In a corrupt system like ours' the ruling class will win and
the working class will lose. At the outset the media winnows
real champions of Democracy such as Dennis Kucinich from the
field. In two short weeks it took former Democratic front runner
Howard Dean and relegated him to the scrap heap of obscurity--not
that Dean was ever very radical or particularly progressive
in his politics. When the system precludes all real and substantial
choices the outcome has already been decided. Although it would
be hard to imagine a worse president than George Bush, we have
bigger problems to contend with. Bush is a symptom of a disease
that is far more insidious and systemic--a political system
that is riddled with the cancer of special interest influence.
It is true that Bush must go--but so too must the despicable
system that spawned him.
Charles Sullivan
is a veteran wild forest activist, writer and cabinetmaker who
resides on twenty acres of land in the rural countryside of West
Virginia.
He can be reached at: cesullivan@stargate.net
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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