Is the World Safer?
As has frequently been observed in this newspaper, the world has become a much less safe place since the demise of the Soviet Union. The gap left by the Soviet Union and the US strategy for being, and continuing to be, the dominant and only superpower on the globe have had terrible consequences.
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Don't Believe the Hype
'Bush Soars!' 'Republicans Are Ahead,' so went the news headlines and talking heads in post-Republican convention America. But don’t believe the hype. According to recent polls the Republican convention gave George W. Bush a big lift. The race for the White House is much tighter than the public is being led to believe.
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The Latino and Asian Vote
As election 2004 approaches, impact at the voting booth of the nation's two largest immigrant-dominated populations—Latinos and Asians—is increasing. But, Urban Institute analysis underscores that voting levels among Latinos and Asians lag well behind the groups' population growth, largely because many new immigrants are not yet citizens and their children are still too young to vote. As a result, the full political force of ongoing demographic change will be felt over decades, not years.
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Unlocking the Language Room of War
The late poet Allen Ginsberg, who was a teacher and friend, knew that issues of media and language were crucial to our prospects for building a real and humane democracy in America. Allen was an avid reader of the alternative press, and an enthusiastic supporter of the group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
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Two Forces Battling in the United States
The Republican Convention in New York apart from being a mediatic spectacle full of choreographed movements destined to attract the attention of voters, collect the ballots of those who are indifferent and neutralize the actions of the adversary reveals the presence of two opposite forces in the United States' society and the development of a political struggle that tends to characterize a whole period of the world's most powerful imperialist country.
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Reinventing Democracy
Elections are due soon in the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq and Indonesia. Democracy, the creation of the Greeks, remains the least bad political system. But it has to work properly: it must remain accountable to ordinary people and not suborn power.
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Workers' Pay and the Election
An AFL-CIO official discussing union organization recently stated (on CSPAN 9/6/04) that about one third of union members typically vote Republican. If union members are the most class conscious workers what does this say about the voting habits of the vast majority of working people who are not unionized?
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Halliburton’s Murky Path
The fact that the transnational Halliburton is involved in more obscure dealings, many of which have been exposed but never condemned, is no longer news. The all-powerful company (headed by the Richard Cheney, current U.S. vice president, from 1995-2000, when he became George W. Bush’s running mate) has now been involved in dirty dealings on more than 12 occasions.
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Putting the Right under a Microscope: An Interview with Chip Berlet
You can probably divide up the right into three broad categories: the secular right, the Christian right, and the xenophobic right. Everyone to the right of the Republican Party is sometimes lumped together in a variety of ways. And although they overlap, they really make up different sectors that sometimes can agree on an agenda and sometimes can’t. So coalition-building is crucial to their success.
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Abolish the Electoral College
The election of 2000 illustrated how, with the EC, only a tiny amount of fraud in one state could turn an election. If Bush had been required to win the popular vote, over a half million ballots would have to have been fraudulently altered or disregarded for him to be inaugurated. But with the EC changing several hundred votes in one state can change the outcome.
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