Yoshie Furuhashi writes "

How did the David Cobb/Pat LaMarche ticket receive the Green Party nomination? And what does it mean for the Green Party in particular and American politics in general? My conclusion is that the so-called "red states" Greens, by rejecting Ralph Nader/Peter Camejo campaign, diminished the Green Party's own strength in the "safe state" of California, ironically without helping the pro-war Democratic Party candidate John Kerry (despite the hope of the Cobb/LaMarche faction) in the most crucial "swing states": Ohio (20 electors/3.6% victory margin in 2000), Florida (27/0.0%), Pennsylvania (21/4.1%), and Michigan (17/5.1%).

California Green Al Sheahen reported that "The geographic voting was striking. The big industrial states of MA, CA, MI, MD, NJ, NY, and PA cast a combined 181 votes for Nader and 91 for Cobb -- a 2-1 ratio. The southern states of AL, AR, GA, LA, MS, NC, OK, SC, TN, TX, and VA cast a combined 99 votes for Cobb, but only 13 for Nader -- a 9-1 ratio" (June 27, 2004, republished at GreenAllianceUSA@yahoogroups.com, June 28, 2004).

dr.woooo writes:

"Europe and the New Movements"

An Interview With Andre Grubacic

From what I can tell Europeans are pretty ignorant of
events in the U.S. left, but, even more so, the U.S.
left, including myself, is horrendously ignorant of
events in Europe. Maybe you can help us do something
about the latter problem. I would like to try to find
out some of the trends you see developing in movements
in Europe, and your view of their virtues and flaws.

Grubacic: You know, I was just reading one essay, a
rather old one, from Barbara and John Ehrenreich, the
pivotal essay for a most excellent book titled
Between Labor and Capital. In this essay, the
authors describe the relation of what they call the
"professional managerial class" to the movement of the
1960's. It strikes me as remarkable how simillar this
is to the main relevant trends of the 'new movement'
we have in Europe.

"A Dangerous Mind?"

Dan Oppenheimer, Hartford Advocate

The movie of The United States v. Steven Kurtz would be film noir. It would begin with an aerial shot of Buffalo photographed in the cool, dystopian, postindustrial blues of that city, and descend past the empty streets and abandoned buildings into the heart of downtown, through the windows of a home in the Allentown neighborhood, the Greenwich Village of Buffalo, where artists, professors and graduate students mingle with the poor and indigent. The camera would rest on a couple in their forties, Steve and Hope Kurtz, lying in bed.

Kurtz would awaken to discover that his wife, Hope Kurtz, wasn´t breathing. He would call 9-1-1. The ambulance would rush to the scene but paramedics would be unable to resuscitate her. The camera would track her body to the hospital, where a white-coated doctor, surrounded by pristine nurses and shadowed in the background by men in brown suits, would pronounce her dead, the cause to be determined later. We would follow the men in brown suits -- agents of the FBI´s Joint Terrorism Task Force -- back to the house, where they would consult, out of earshot, with the mustachioed officers of the Buffalo police department.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"These Colours Don't Run"

John Chuckman

Given its strutting brownshirt quality, here is a slogan that might well have been coined by America's most articulate political thug, Pat Buchanan.

But the slogan, with little waving-flag pictures, is being used for bumper stickers selling John Kerry. Good marketers know that you want an offering for every niche, so here's Kerry for the belly-over-the-belt, beer-belching, walrus-mustache set.

Frank Wallis writes:

"Bush, Torture, and American Values in Iraq"

Frank Wallis

The highest levels of the Bush government authorized torture. What is more astonishing is the active participation of religious Christians in policy-making which led to crimes against humanity. Bush warned Iraq about mistreating American POWs, and spoke of dignity, good vs. evil, morality, values, and compassion. This fully sourced article shows Bush to be a hypocrite: complaining about rape rooms under Saddam, while at US-administered Abu Ghraib captive Iraqis were tortured.

Full article here: http://www.powerskeptic.net/abu.htm. A 25 page report with 90 footnotes is also available for download from the same web page.

Sureyyya Evren writes:

"Torture and Its Show"

Sureyyya Evren

It is a known fact that children unable to feel pain tend to die early and require an extra diligent care. Painlessness is not a gift but a disguised curse for them.

On the other hand, the painless adult is usually imagined as a fantasy, a super power. In some adventure novels and movies, we see characters who went through a certain operation with their nerve system so that they do not feel pain anymore, they usually find themselves in most dreadful tasks and because they are painless, it is not possible to torture them. Painlessness is introduced as a kind of superhuman peculiarity. But even in these stargazing of painless superhumans, painless person has a sufferer side; for example 'they' use him as a hit man, a homicide, always on the front line in most difficult tasks, and then 'they' throw him away. When he gets kidnapped, 'enemies' operate new techniques to find his weak point. In a way, you feel like his humanity has gone with his sense of pain. You can be insensitive to him, as much as you are afraid of him. It is difficult to feel pity for him, his senselessness and dehumanization makes him away from good and bad. Painless hero is like a robot-man, far away as an android –and wasn't this tragedy, one of the strong themes of Blade Runner?

Anonymous Comrade writes

"Insanity in America"

John Chuckman

It's always satisfying to have a pet theory supported by new data. A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine, that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other advanced societies.

Remembering the Common Hood
Soweto and Runnymede
Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch

I flew from Detroit, with one stop, to the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to participate in an international conference, "The Promise of Freedom and its Practice: Global Perspectives on South Africa's Decade of Democracy."

I arrived on the heels of students protesting the cut in university 'bursaries' forcing many to terminate their studies, especially the poorer students. When the university responded by calling in armed police, helicopters, and 'bouncers' from neighborhood gangs, some faculty remonstrated, "this seems very much like Bantu education in a different guise," they wrote the Vice Chancellor, alluding to the apartheid system of education that prevailed during the third quarter of the 20th century. The difference now is that the IMF-imposed cutbacks, unlike apartheid, are truly pan-African, whose effect is the destruction of the independent university in the mother continent as a whole. (The Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa has been ringing this alarm for years.)

During a break in the conference I strolled down the hill from Wits (as they call the university), across Mandela Bridge, over the railway tracks (O so many!) and mini-bus yards, down the African street with its hawkers, colors, and fragrances, in order to meet the comrades of the Anti-Privatization Forum, the Landless People's Movement, Jubilee South Africa, and the Indymedia Center who were gathering at the Worker's Library in an anti-war coalition. They were to be evicted at the end of the month from that venue by the Johannesburg city council.

Berg Katse writes "From the archives: The best, most appropriate, and mysteriously prophetic comment about the late Ronald Reagan was made by J.G. Ballard in 1967, an innocent time when the idea of a lousy B-movie actors running for political office was still considered an utterly ridiculous idea

[At the 1980 Republican Convention in San Francisco a copy of the Reagan text, minus its title and the running sideheads, and furnished with the seal of the Republican Party, was distributed by some puckish pro-situationists to the RNC delegates. It was accepted for what it resembled: a psychological position paper on the candidate's subliminal appeal, commissioned by some maverick think-tank.]

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WHY I WANT TO FUCK RONALD REAGAN [1967] by JG Ballard [excerpt from "The Atrocity Exhibition" ]

RONALD REAGAN AND THE CONCEPTUAL AUTO DISASTER. Numerous studies have been conducted upon patients in terminal paresis (GPI), placing Reagan in a series of simulated auto crashes, e.g. multiple pileups, head-on collisions, motorcade attacks (fantasies of Presidential assassinations remained a continuing preoccupation, subject showing a marked polymorphic fixation on windshields and rear trunk assemblies). Powerful erotic fantasies of an anal-sadistic surrounded the image of the Presidential contender.

"Why The CIA Will Always Be A Costly Flop"
John Chuckman

The resignation of both the director and an important deputy director of any large organization is noteworthy, but when that organization is the CIA we have an event of global interest.

Several official, and likely-embarrassing, reports concerning CIA activities - including one dealing with the Agency's generous estimates of Iraq's non-existent weapons - are expected to appear soon. The timing of the resignations may well reflect these coming reports.

You might think the men who resigned, Director George Tenet and Deputy Director for Operations James Parvitt, should have been fired long ago. Never mind the nonexistent weapons in Iraq or phony invoices for uranium, the Agency's failure around the events leading to 9/11 was stunning, but the intelligence business is one of the few where job performance is almost unconnected with keeping your job.