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Anonymous Comrade writes:
"The Government You Deserve"
John Chuckman
It has been said that people pretty much get the government they deserve. There is more than a little justice in the observation.
Pat Buchanan, long my choice as symbol for all that is wrong with America, has given a last-minute endorsement to George Bush's re-election. One is tempted to class his words, qualified as they are, with the grovelings of John McCain at Bush rallies.
After spending a couple of years successfully peddling columns attacking Bush for repeating the bloody stupidity of Vietnam, Pat has come to the conclusion that Bush isn't so bad after all. He says that while Bush is wrong on the war, he is right on just about everything else.
Beyond Voting
Howard Zinn, 1976
from The Zinn Reader
Seven Stories Press
Gossip is the opium of the American public. We lie back, close our eyes and happily inhale the stories about Roosevelt's and Kennedy's affairs, Lyndon Johnson's nude swims with unnamed partners and, now, Nixon's pathetic "final days" in office.
The latest fix is administered by reporters Woodward and Bernstein and the stuff is Nixon's sex life with Pat, Nixon drunk and weeping, Nixon cradled in the arms of Kissinger (who did it, we presume, for national security).
"Is It Cause I’m Cool?"
Global Project, Invisibili, Ya Basta
A Discussion After London for the Autonomous Movement Networks About the ESF and the N/Europa Challenge
What follows is a rethinking, a balance (also if we are more interested in desires than calculations), an open letter for the European movement networks on the contradictory days of London. It is a partial contribution, a taking up of words searching for discussion. Hopefully a single phrase in a wider compositional discussion, to share with all groups, singularities, and the collective "bodies" with whom we passed through the ESF last weekend.
"Moments of Excess"
Leeds Mayday Group
We want to talk about ‘moments of excess’. We think this idea is
timely because the tactics of militant protest have recently
spread to the Countryside Alliance and Fathers 4 Justice, and this
can make it seem as if the direct action movement of the 1990s
and the anti-globalisation movement of the 21st century have
been usurped or hijacked. By considering moments of excess we
can see that, perhaps, what’s really happened is that our global
anti-capitalist movement has kept its participants one step
ahead. These days we are no longer satisfied with symbolic
protest – which can almost be seen as militant lobbying. Our
movement is leaning towards a more constitutive politics. People
are beginning to work out what they want, what they are for, not only what they are against. What is more, people are actually
‘acting’ for what they want: practice not just theory. Realising
that ‘we live in a world of our own making’ and attempting to
consciously (re)make it.
A Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian Child
"Did You Two Squabble?"
By YITZHAK LAOR
This trenchant essay by Israeli novelist Yitzhak Laor was originally submitted to the London Review of Books, which in the past has frequently published Laor's writing. But they refused to run this skewering of the Israeli Left with the LRB's editor chiding Laor that "in my editorial judgment (to be pompous) this piece won't help anyone." CounterPunch is honored to publish it. AC / JSC
One of the times I was detained (it was after a demonstration), I shared a cell with a young burglar, all blood and broken teeth, beaten twice. The first time was when he tried to escape, as detectives came to arrest him, since attempted escapes had become a sort of free license for police violence. The second time was a bit later when he was taken to hospital to stop his bleeding. Handcuffed he entered the ER, chained to a cop, and the doctor asked them both: "Did you two squabble?" The burglar did what he had to do: he spat his blood right into the face of the enlightened MD, and of course was beaten again, right there, still handcuffed, under the indifferent eyes of the medical staff. I liked my cellmate, I cannot forget his story, nor his pride. From that day on, June the 8th 1982, the question "did you two squabble?" became for me the image of the real description for the bystander.
"Flu Troubles a Symptom of What Ails U.S."
André Picard, Toronto Globe and Mail
How refreshing to hear the word "vaccine" uttered, again and again, in
an election campaign. U.S. President George W. Bush and Senator John
Kerry have been sparring in recent days about the flu-vaccine shortage
that has sent a wave of panic across the United States.
Unfortunately, the shots the two presidential contenders exchanged have
had little to do with the sorry state of the U.S. public-health system,
and plenty to do with jingoistic, partisan politics.
nolympics writes:
"James Baker's Double Life"
Naomi Klein, The Nation
When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts owed to them by Iraq. Of particular concern was his relationship with merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where Baker is senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake.
"A Brief Recent History of Venezuela's Labor Movement"
Jonah Gindin, Venezuelanalysis.com
When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was elected in
1998, inaugurating a process of radical political and
social changes, it looked as though labor might be left
behind. The main labor central, the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV) was one of his most avid
critics, and Chávez in turn lashed out verbally against
the CTV on a regular basis. But the image of Chávez vs
Labor, repeatedly thrown at the unsuspecting casual
observer by the mainstream media, is precisely intended
to mislead. The unpleasant truth is that the CTV has
not adequately represented Venezuelan workers since the
1970s, if not before. The reality of Chávez vs the
CTV, then, does not exclude the active and enthusiastic
participation of a large proportion of Venezuelan
workers in his Bolívarian revolution (named after Latin
American Independence leader Simón Bolívar).
"From Municipalities and Social Movements:
Roads and Suggestions for a New Europe"
Toni Negri
[A call from July 7, 2003]
I think that this assembly must organize itself form now on into a constitutive assembly. We have in front of us deadlines that have been determined in a short period. They are the approval of the convention on the part of the governments under the direction of Berlusconi and the European Social Forum.
We need, today, to organize ourselves in every situation of the movement in Italy, and wherever, a capacity of reasoning in the terms of federalism, of the rights tied to work and immigration, which is to say to the citizenship of work and universal citizenship, that can meet in the forms of multitude expressions that we have begun to know on the since the movement of Seattle.
"Giving Kerry a Free Ride:
The Left and the 2004 Election"
Stanley Aronowitz, Portside
There is an old saw of political forecasting: "it's the
economy, stupid". Bill Clinton popularized it in his
campaign to unseat George H.W Bush and it seemed to
work, despite Bush's swift and apparently painless
victory in the Gulf War (in retrospect it was not
nearly as smooth as was initially reported). According
to most assessments, the senior Bush was defeated by
his failure to address the 1991-93 recession with bold
interventions that appeared to recognize the issue, let
alone make a real difference. A decade later the
incumbent national administration led by senior Bush's
son, George, is presiding over a stubbornly flagging
economy. More particularly, if many Americans are
experiencing declining living standards — whether they
have a full-time job or not —, according to
conventional wisdom the prospects for returning the
president to a second term are said to be grim. If the
perceive that the government is indifferent to their
plight, they surely will not support another four years
of pain and suffering. Upon taking office the second
Bush administration was confronted with a largely
inherited incipient recession. True to the neo-
liberal, supply-side tradition its chief strategy was
to take trickle down measures to stimulate private
investment. At the same time, after September 11, 2001
military spending soared, largely on the basis of
borrowed money, even as the economy stagnated.
Despite enacting two huge tax cuts, mostly for the very
wealthy, and reducing the prime interest rate to almost
the vanishing point — 1% — George W. Bush's first term
has been marked by job losses due to falling industrial
production amid technological displacement, income
stagnation and overproduction.
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