21 Senators = the saving remnant? God help us all.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mr. Liberal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 3:50 PM
Subject: [July30] More reasons to vote Nader/Seattle Times
July 30 in Philly - www.unity2000.com
Guest columnist
More reasons to vote for Nader? Nine Democrats point the way
by Alexander Cockburn
Special to the Seattle Times
Here's a number that offers telling reasons for voting for Ralph Nader
in the fall. Nine Democrats. Not even double digits. Last week, the
U.S. Senate finally voted $934 million to wage war in Colombia. The
House voted earlier this year to provide $1.7 billion in
anti-narcotics aid for Colombia over a two-year period. The Senate
bill only covers the first year.
So where does the "nine Democrats" number figure in this picture? The
sum total of puissant legislators who voted for Minnesota Sen. Paul
Wellstone's amendment, which would have taken $225 million from the
$934 million and spent it instead on domestic drug treatment programs,
consisted of nine Democrats and two Republicans. Here they are: Boxer,
D-Calif. (co-sponsor); Grams, R-Minn.; (Patty) Murray, D-Wash.; Byrd,
D-W.Va.; Harkin, D-Iowa; Specter, R-Pa.; Dorgan, D-N.D.; Leahy, D-Vt.;
Wellstone, D-Minn.; Feingold, D-Wis.; Mikulski, D-Md.
Notice how closely the numbers mimic the few co-sponsors of Feingold's
bill to slap a moratorium on the federal death penalty. And where were
those supposed liberals like Kennedy, Kerry, Bayh, Feinstein, Schumer,
Torricelli, Levin or Sarbanes? If this is how they behave in
opposition, why do we need the Democrats to recapture Congress?
Here's another number: 19. That's the number of senators who voted in
favor of Washington Republican Slade Gorton's amendment slashing the
Colombia package from nearly $1 billion down to $200 million in order
to pay down the national debt: Gorton, Murray, Allard, R-Colo.; Kohl,
D-Wis.; Boxer, D-Calif.; Gramm, R-Texas; Leahy, D-Vt.; Collins,
R-Maine; Grams, R-Minn.; Mikulski, D-Md.; Craig, R-Idaho; Gregg,
R-N.H.; Crapo, R-Idaho; Harkin, D-Iowa; Specter, R-Pa.; Enzi, R-Wyo.;
Hutchinson, R-Ark.; Thomas, R-Wyo.; Fitzgerald, R-Ill.
So, here we have the alliance against folly in Colombia, cemented
between Republican fiscal conservatives and the radical Democratic
faction. If you toss in Feingold and Wellstone, who didn't vote for
Gorton's amendment, we reach a grand total of 21 senators unpersuaded
by the administration's arguments that the way to win the war on drugs
here is to throw money into the bank accounts of Colombian military
officers and Pentagon contractors.
The administration is fighting a counterinsurgency war under the
pretext of drug interdiction, as George W. Bush accurately notes. What
of the dreaded "narco-guerrillas''? As the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs in Washington sensibly pointed out last week, "The FARC,
founded by Marxist guerrillas decades before the emergence of cocaine
production in Colombia, imposes taxes on drug lords and coca farmers
to fund their multimillion-dollar military operations; its militants
are rarely involved in the actual cultivation and trafficking of
drugs.
"In fact, the right-wing paramilitary, which both the Colombian and
U.S. governments acknowledge is responsible for 78 percent of the
nation's human rights violations, is known to be far more deeply
involved in narco-trafficking than their leftist counterparts. While
the U.S. aid package will undoubtedly reduce drug production, the
paramilitary groups' deep ties to the Colombian armed forces and
large-scale dependence on the drug trade will invariably lead to
selective eradication efforts."
But all this commotion over the Senate vote obscures the fact that the
United States is already waging a major bio-war in Colombia, evoking
the bio-war waged with Agent Orange against Vietnam 35 years ago. The
Colombian national police force is already busy spraying from the air,
with the financial backing of the United States, Colombia is getting
$330 million during this year and the next, irrespective of the new
Senate legislation.
As in Vietnam, aerial spraying has indiscriminately doused people,
fields and livestock with poison. International observers say that the
toxic effects of this spraying have destroyed vegetable crops and
fruit orchards and contaminated streams and lakes, killing fish and
farm animals. Several children have reportedly died after being doused
by the spraying. Thus far, the hardy coca plant has been resistant to
these poisons, flourishing in contaminated soil.
McCaffrey's triumph could be to wipe out all agriculture other than
coca-growing. His next stroke (disclosed in the latest edition of
CounterPunch, the newsletter I co-edit) is to launch a fungus
developed by U.S. bio-warriors, designed to attack the coca plant and
opium poppy. This fungus will, so to speak, jump the tracks and
further devastate Colombian crops. Meanwhile, if conditions in
Colombia prove too arduous, the drug lords will simply shift
operations to Ecuador or Peru, just as they shifted from Bolivia to
Colombia.
Back to the halls of Congress, and yet another number for you. In a
363-56 vote, representatives of we-the-people defeated a motion that
would have withdrawn the approval of Congress from the agreement
establishing the World Trade Organization. Under the 1994 laws
authorizing U.S. entry in the WTO, the administration has to submit a
report on the costs and benefits of membership. After the report is
filed, any member of Congress can sponsor a resolution to withdraw
from WTO.
Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian Republican, duly did so, arguing that
U.S. entry in the WTO is illegal and unconstitutional. Paul said, "It
is the U.S. Congress that has the authority to regulate foreign
commerce. Nobody else.'' As with the Senate resolution on Colombia put
forward by Gorton, Paul and such Republican legislators as Bob Barr of
Georgia formed common cause with anti-WTO radical Democrats.
So there's the math for you. A bipartisan coalition of about 30
senators and 56 representatives can be relied upon to do the right
thing on big-ticket items like wars abroad and the WTO. Against them
are ranged the massed legislators of the Permanent Government, which
is presently exerting itself mightily to keep Ralph Nader out of any
debating venue for presidential candidates where he might have an
opportunity to lay out these realities.
Copyright � 2000 The Seattle Times Company
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