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May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
May 10, 2002
Lisa Taraki
In Defense
of Sanctions
Against Israel
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United State
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
May 9, 2002
Alex Lynch
American
Mainstream Media:
Institutionalized Subjectivity
Alexander Cockburn
The Armey Plan:
Palestine to Ft. Worth?
May 8, 2002
James
Masterson
Hysteria
and Panic
About France
Robert Fisk
The Solution to this Filthy War: Foreign
Occupation
Edward
Hammond
and Jan van Aken
Pentagon
Pushed for Offensive BioWeapons Development
David Vest
From Ground Zero to the Bronx
May 7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Bone
Apart:
The Graveyard of Napoleon's Defeated Army
Philip
Farruggio
Muffler
Shop Medicine
Norman
Madarasz
French
Elections:
Pandora's Ballot
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
May 6, 2002
Fran Schor
Invasion
of Iraq:
Coming Soon
Dave Marsh
Love Hurts
John Chuckman
The
Paradoxes of Israel
Rep. Ron Paul
End Corporate Welfare, Pull
the Plug on the Ex-Im Bank
Hussein
Ibish
Devastation
Only Feeds Resistance to Israeli Rule
May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
May 3, 2002
Arundhati Roy
Democracy and
Religious Fascism
Wayne
Madsen
Dispatch
from Paris:
Le Pen's Strange Coalition
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
Food/Tobacco/Booze
Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 2, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Rep.
Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians
Rami Kaplan
Israeli Soldiers Resisting
the Occupation:
Why We Refuse to Fight
Carol
Norris
Subterranean
Mini-Nuke Blues
Bernard Weiner
A Peek Inside Colin Powell's Personal
Diary
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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May
11, 2002
American Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
By Nelson P. Valdés
On the 22nd of April of this year USAID announced
its yearly cycle of seeking proposals for its "Outreach
to the Cuban People" Program for 2002. (M/OP-02-916). Since
1996, USAID has awarded more than $15 million "to support
Cuba's transition to democracy." The United States government
has been so concerned with "democracy" in the island
that it has spent over $1.00 for each Cuban child, adolescent
and adult in the island.
The "successful applicants"--says
the request for proposals- is expected to "increase the
flow of accurate information on democracy, human rights and free
enterprise to, from, and within Cuba." Each applicant can
received anywhere from $400,000 to even one million dollars.
Although the taxpayers' money ends up
in the pockets of Cuban exiles, we have decided to write this
piece and publish it in a Cuban newspaper, without charging anyone.
We certainly hope that this piece will contribute to a thorough
understanding on the part of the Cubans on how "democracy"
operates in the United States, where I live. Moreover, maybe
the US Interests Section in Havana will distribute this information
to all those Cubans who visit them in order to learn about the
American democratic system and "free market economics"
(i.e. capitalism)--which is a stated goal of American policy.
A fundamental aspect of democracy is
elections. You should know that in our democratic system presidential
contenders have a limit on how much they can spend--if they receive
federal funding. Yes, the federal government can finance candidates
(but only if they obtained a certain % of the votes on a previous
election. You might think that such practice is not fair for
new political parties, but as President Jimmy Carter stated,
the world is not fair.)
In the 2000 presidential election the
Federal Elections Commission (it writes the rules on expenditures)
established that if a candidate for president accepted funding
from the government, the candidate could spend $40.5 million
in order to obtain the nomination for his respective party (Democrat
or Republican). In the United States the political party does
not select a candidate, rather candidates propose themselves
to the party--and that costs money. Once the political party
selects someone as its candidate, then the party candidate can
spend up to $67.5 million during the presidential election.
Moreover, each of the two political parties is also allowed to
spend up to $13.6 million for its respective nominee.
Each party can spend as well as $13.5 million on each
of the two party conventions. Overall each candidate has a spending
limit of about $122 million. If one agrees to public funding
you then get another $122 million for each candidate from the
federal government.
In other words, each candidate could
spend the modest amount of $244 million to become president
of the United States. You might think that is a lot of money,
but as W. C. Fields said once, we in the United States get the
best presidents that money can buy. However, you should know
that spending limits are not applicable if a candidate decides
not to accept federal funding, then the sky is the limit on how
much you can spend on your campaign.
Although this is a fascinating aspect
of market democracy, it is not the fundamental concern of this
report. Nor do I want to discuss the "inefficiencies"
of counting votes. You probably heard about that during the last
presidential elections. Let me just note that besides uncounted
votes, in the last election 5 million votes actually disappeared.
This is one of those unexplained phenomena that our scientists
have not been able to comprehend or explain, it just happens.
We know though that it is easier to trace the path of neutrinos
than to capture the invisible hand of democracy.
This report, however, is going to discuss
demographics. And we are going to concentrate on voter registration
and voting in the presidential elections of two years ago (2000).
For those who might doubt the information provided here it should
be noted that the material comes from the US Census Bureau report
issued on February 2002, entitled Voting and Registration in
the Election of November 2000: Population Characteristics.
In the year 2000 there were 203 million Americans of voting age
(Over age 18). Of those, 186 million were US citizens and had
the right to vote, only 130 million registered to vote.
Yes, in the US it is not an automatic
right to vote, you have to activively do the necessary paperwork
in order to become a "registered voter." So, 56 million
never registered to vote. Of those who registered to vote (130
million), 19 million did not vote either. Thus, 56 million plus
19 million= 75 million people who can vote just did not do so.
Out of 186 million Americans who can vote, 111 million do --although
5 million votes magically disappear. In as sense they vote
but are not counted, so we end with 80 million Americans who
are not a part of the American democratic experience.
In the last presidential election only
27.5% of "Hispanics" (Cuban Americans are included
here) who were citizens voted. Out of every 100 Hispanos 42
were not registered. Sixty percent of all the U.S. unemployed
who had the age to vote did not do so, and only 51% of the employed
decided to participate. In our market democracy, voter participation
closely follows income. The more income you earn, the more people
vote. 72% of those with incomes of $50,000 or more voted. But,
if income was less than $10,000 then 62% just did not vote.
There is a correlation between income
level and registration as well as voter participation. The poorer
Americans are, the less they are involved in the democratic process.
Moreover, you should know that the rate of participation in elections
in the US consistently has dropped since the 1960s. So we have
80 million Americans that should be involved in elections but
are not. They are United States citizens. In fact, in the last
presidential election only 49% of the American who could vote
did so.
So, the question that you might wish
to consider is this: How come the U.S. federal government is
so concerned with democracy and elections in Cuba? After all,
Cubans are not American citizens. Why spend about $1.00 for each
Cuban, regardless of age, to promote "democracy"? I
guess less than 6 million Cubans are more important than 80 million
American citizens.
You are lucky, we are not.
Nelson Valdes
is a professor of sociology specializing in Latin America at
the University of New Mexico. He can be reached at: nvaldes@unm.edu
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