[Marxism] excellent advice

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

September 25 / 6, 2004
Go  to Baghdad; Then Visit the West Bank
C'mon Ralph, You've Got Nothing to Lose
By  ALEXANDER COCKBURN
If  I were Ralph Nader, (and given the number of people screaming at me about
 stabbing Kerry in the back I sometimes think I am) I'd get on the plane to
Palestine, and Baghdad and spend less time on ballot access fights with
lawyers  working for the Democrats.
There's about six weeks left to run in this  campaign, and Nader, the
outsider candidate, needs to finish off with a bang,  not a whimper. The 
Democrats
have got him stuck in the trenches, running from  one courtroom to another. It's
the only campaign they know how to fight. They  can't sell Kerry. Their
hearts aren't really in it anyway, but when it comes to  stopping people from 
being
able to vote for Nader, they're firing on all  cylinders.
Organized labor can't get Kerry to promise working  people more than a hike
in the minimum wage to $7, but here's the SEIU putting  $65 million of its
members' dues into the Kerry campaign and deploying hundreds  of organizers 
across
the country, working 24 hours a day to keep Nader off the  ballot. It's tying
Nader down. He's fighting 21 legal cases in 17 states, and as  Nader himself
concedes, "The ballot access has drained our time and our  resources".
Next will be battles over Nader's exclusion from  the debates (along with
other candidates like the libertarian, Michael  Badnarik). At the end of the day
Nader will be looking at a vote for him on  November 2 in the low single
digits and that'll be that. The way things look in  mid-September the Democrats
won't be able to blame him if their man goes down,  because the person 
sabotaging
John Kerry is manifestly and unarguably John  Kerry, but a more important
fact about the way things look in mid-September is  that History's tempo is
picking up. If ever there was an opportunity to seize  the hour, it's now.
Even as America's reach in Iraq contracts to a few  acres in downtown
Baghdad, George Bush goes to the UN and says of the US  occupying force in Iraq 
"The
proper response to difficulty is not to retreat. It  is to prevail." John
Kerry visits NYU, says he'd have done it all different and  then, by way of
constructive ideas, and mumbles absurdly about the need to  involve America's 
allies
in the occupation, which sounds like General Custer  wiring the Canadians to
come help him turn the tide at the battle of the Little  Bighorn.
At home there's been a sharp escalation in anger  and resistance to the war
from the people press-ganged to fight it. Soldiers  from a Fort Carson combat
unit tell reporters angrily they've been issued an  ultimatum: re-enlist for
three more years or get transferred to units scheduled  for deployment in Iraq.
In Fort Dix, New Jersey, 635 soldiers from the South  Carolina National Guard
scheduled to depart for a year or more in Iraq were  under a disciplinary
lockdown in their barracks for two weeks. On September 22  the Army disclosed 
Only
about 60 percent of reservists ordered to report to Fort  Jackson have
reported so far.
During Laura Bush's speech in New Jersey last  Monday, Susan Niederer was
arrested for demanding toknow why her son was killed  in Iraq. Niederer
interrupted Laura to ask, "If this war is so righteous, why  don't you send your
children?" She was escorted out and started talking to  reporters --which was 
when
she was handcuffed and led away. Niederer was wearing  a shirt with her dead
son's picture and the words, "President Bush, you killed  my son". The official
White House transcript of the speech notes applause 39  times, laughter once
and four chants of 'Four more years,' but not the  interruption.
Meanwhile in the Bay Area an Army veteran  represented by attorneys Michael
S. Sorgen and Joshua Sondheimer, in association  with the Military Law Task
Force of the National Lawyers Guild is bringing suit  against the "stop loss"
retention of 40,000 service members forced to serve  beyond the expiration of
their enlistment terms since the war in Iraq  began.
Here are ripe opportunities for candidate Nader to  remind people that on the
number one issue on the election agenda--the war in  Iraq-- between Bush and
Kerr the electorate is offered no choice. He should give  press conferences
with the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq, file suit on  behalf of Ms Niederer
for wrongful arrest, array himself with those dragooned  into the war on
Iraq.
Here too are opportunities to break through the  iron ceiling maintained by
the two parties on discussion of Israel's crimes  against Palestinians, a topic
on which Nader has already expressed himself with  some force. He should
travel to Palestine, stand in front of the illegal  apartheid wall and denounce
it, speak as a Arab-American on behalf of the  Palestinians beleagured by
US-subsidized Israeli terror.
>From there he could travel on to Baghdad, have  parleys with all relevant
parties, denounce the needless sacrifice of American  and Iraqi blood, the 
Allawi
puppet government, the theft of Iraqi national  assets, the enrichment of
Halliburton and the rest, and call for immediate US  withdrawal and elections.
In other words, across the next few weeks, Nader  needs to show just how
different he is, just how much is off the agenda in this  miserable joke of an
election. He needs to go into the South (surrendered by  Kerry to the
Republicans)and Florida to talk to disenfranchised voters, many of  them kicked 
off the
voter rolls because of drug offenses. In Cleveland or Akron  he should stand
with welfare moms pushed off the rolls by Clinton with Kerry's  vote, (the same
Kerry who told women's leaders he would treat them at arms  length because
they are a "special interest").
As Robin Blackburn stressed recently in our  CounterPunch newsletter, Nader
and Camejo have nothing to lose so they should  embrace every radical and
progressive cause they can think of. On Robin's list,  the outlawing of factory
farming, $30,000 for every American reaching the age of  18, an end to the laws
against drug use, amnesty for all those convicted of drug  offenses, an end to
the death penalty, a contiguous Palestinian state with half  the land and a
port in the north, evacuation of all US bases abroad, not just  those in Iraq.
They could come forward with a plan to restore the employers'  contributions to
health and retirement programs by requiring companies to  finance a network
of state trust finds dedicated to this purpose.
At the moment the Nader campaign is mired in legal  procedure. The way Nader
can counteract his former supporters signing an ad  telling him to step aside
is to remind the world forcefully of the need to  contest the prime function
of presidential contests in our age, which is to keep  every important issue
off the  table.
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