Radical media, politics and culture.

"The Limits of Electoral Politics"

Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":

(1) Unrestricted freedom

(2) Direct democracy

(3) Delegate democracy

(4) Representative democracy

(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt
minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token
democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would
progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

"The Vote Fallacy:

Strategically Advancing Radical Politics in the 2004
Elections"

Ben Grosscup

While election seasons are widely seen as times when the polity
practices politics, this is an illusion; electoralism that accepts the
premises of representative democracy is conceptually distinct and
incompatible with practicing true politics. Politics involves public
debate on the issues of a self-manging political community that leads to
social policy. Voting is no political act in that it has nothing to do
with this.

"Gays Ponder Bush Victory:

President Takes One Quarter of Gay Vote, Stunning Some Activists"

Lou Chibarro Jr., Washington Blade

Gay rights leaders pored over the numbers behind President Bush's
victory over Senator John Kerry in Tuesday's election to assess
whether gay marriage provided the president with the hot-button
social issue he needed to propel him to a second term in the White House.

"Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked"

Thom Hartmann


When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.

"Anti War Video"

Knife Party

Knife Party's anti-war video maybe found here.

"The New Historical Simultaneity:

The End of Modernization and the Beginning of Another World History"

Robert Kurz

The globalisation debate seems to have reached a state of exhaustion. This is not due to a weakening of the underlying process, but to the lack of air for new interpretive ideas. Almost nobody dares to speak of the end of the history of the modernization. It is certain that, meanwhile, whole libraries were already written on the fact of the globalisation of capital (the transnational dispersion of the economic functions) and the separation between the national economy and the world market, and the whole previous referential framework remains diluted. But the consequences to take out of that recognition were delayed most of the times up to now. The old concepts still go to tow, although they no longer correspond to the new reality.

"Dead Party Walking"

Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch>

"Mister Kurtz, he dead." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Buried in the ossuary of roadkill from the November election you will find all that remains of the once brawny Green Party, now splattered into a micro-stain on the electoral scorecard with evidence of its passing barely detectable by even the most expert political forensic scientist.


The Green Party, notorious spoiler of Democratic aspirations in 2000, not only wasn't a factor in this election; its very existence was scarcely mentioned by the press ... or by anyone else.

"The Liberal Waterloo"
(Or, Finally Some Good News from Washington!)
Slavoj Zizek, In These Times


The first reaction of progressives to Bush’s second victory was that of despair, even fear: The last four years were not just a bad dream. The nightmarish coalition of big business and fundamentalist populism will roll on, as Bush pursues his agenda with new gusto, nominating conservative judges to the Supreme Court, invading the next country after Iraq, and pushing liberalism in the United States one step closer to extinction. However, this emotional reaction is precisely what we should resist—it only bears witness to the extent liberals have succeeded in imposing their worldview upon us. If we keep a cool head and calmly analyze the results, the 2004 election appears in a totally different light.

"Why They Won"

Thomas Frank, NY Times



The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.


And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on NAFTA and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.

"Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?"

Thom Hartmann, AlterNet

The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all — it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?

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