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Today's
Stories
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Website of the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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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September 2, 2004
"If
They Want to Vote Twice, Let Them"
Bush
and the Afghanistan Electoral Model
By
CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
Your every voter, as surely
as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
Grover Cleveland, Inaugural
Address
Now that the nominating conventions
have essentially concluded (except for a speech by Mr. Bush that
we all eagerly await) we can start focusing on November 2, the
day when a new president of the United States is elected. That
is a momentous day and one to which we all look forward. Given
the events of 2000, nothing is of greater concern to the citizenry
than that this election be unblemished by the sorts of irregularities
that caused the president in the last election to be selected
by 9 people in black robes. To see how a true democracy runs
elections and get ideas on how to run ours in 2004, we turn to
Afghanistan, a country we recently helped blow up and are now
helping rebuild (insofar as there is any money left over after
taking into account the cost of conquering Iraq.) Its presidential
election is scheduled for October 9, 2004 and it looks as though
it is going to succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
On August 17, United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council
that more than 9.9 million Afghans had registered to vote, a
fact that both the Afghan government and the United States hailed
as a demonstration of democracy in action in a country where
only a short time before there had been real question as to whether
or not a successful election could be held. When the election
date was first announced there was concern that the Taliban would
intimidate would-be voters and that conservatives would discourage
women from registering to vote. Although only 42% of eligible
women have registered, the high registration numbers among men
demonstrate that the Taliban was unable to prevent male citizens
from registering. The enthusiasm over the success of the Afghan
experiment in democracy was not dampened when it was pointed
out that the 9.9 million registered voters came out of a voting
population estimated to contain 9.5 million people.
In Afghanistan a person wanting
to vote obtains a registration card that enables the card holder
to vote. Some people have obtained more than one card. One man
obtained 10 cards that he proudly displayed to his friend, an
office manager in Kabul. A student living away from home registered
in the town he was attending school and then received a card
from his parents that they had obtained in their hometown.
Confronted with registered
voters outnumbering the eligible voters in the country, U.N.
officials in Kabul raised their estimate of eligible voters to
10.5 million hoping to eliminate the anomaly. U.N. officials
explained it by saying that since things are in a bit of a turmoil
in Afghanistan the census number of eligible voters could be
off by as much as a million. Whether it is off or not seems academic
since as of August 23 registration totaled 10.35 million and
the number of registered voters continued to rise. At the end
of August British Broadcasting Corporation reported that in the
Panjshir Valley, the number of registration cards that have been
issued is two and a half times the estimated number of eligible
voters thus suggesting that in that valley, at least, the problem
may lie in something other than poor census figures. On the bright
side, the over-enthusiastic response to voting put to rest early
concerns that the election would be a failure.
Given the United States 2000
election, we do not have the right to criticize a country where
participation in the electoral process promises to exceed 100
per cent. President Hamid Karzai, however, puts it all in perspective
for us. Commenting upon the fact that an awful lot of people
were getting multiple registration cards that would permit them
to vote more than once, Mr. Karzai said: "We are just beginning
an exercise; people are enthusiastic, they want to have cards.
In fact, it doesn't bother me if Afghans have two registration
cards. If they'd like to vote twice, well welcome, this is an
exercise in democracy, let them exercise it twice."
According to one report, not
all holders of more than one registration card intend to vote
repeatedly. Some plan to sell surplus cards for as much as $100
to persons eager to vote who without the cards would be unable
to do so. Thus voting becomes not simply an exercise in democracy
but an opportunity for entrepreneurs to make money in the best
American tradition.
It would surprise no one to
learn that the Bush administration was instrumental in setting
up the process in Afghanistan. It will surprise few if a slightly
modified form of the Afghan model is used to help George Bush
in his bid for reelection.
Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer. His
column appears weekly in the Daily
Camera. He can be reached at: brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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