SNICKERSNEE
Ralph who?
A recent Counterpunch article featured Ralph Nader on the rampage against Israel. Despite the belief of leftists that this was a logical development due to his Lebanese ancestry, the fact is that Nader's family is Christian and he was born in this country. More likely, Nader started hanging out with pro-Palestinians during his US Green Party presidential candidacy in 2000.
I personally supported his candidacies in 2000 and 2004, based on his anti-corporate, pro-consumer and anti-nuclear credentials. In the 1970s his Public Citizen organization sponsored annual conferences for the anti-nuke movement entitled Critical Mass. Thousands of activists attended to network, exchange information and hear leading experts in the fields of economics, health and safety, the environment, and the law.
But Nader's presidential campaigns sidestepped both energy and environment as well as foreign policy issues. His focus turned, with good reason, to the obstacles placed by Republicans and Democrats to third party candidates. The Democrats succeeded in throwing him off the Ohio ballot. And ultimately the US Green Party, recognizing a leftist mole among them, conspired in 2004 to trash him on the internet and eventually subvert its nominating convention to keep him out. Their concern: in 2000 Nader got nearly three million votes nationwide.
The US Green Party, now controlled by Democratic Party ringers such as Medea Benjamin, America's leading aficionado of Hamas, who were determined to de-fang any challenge to their candidates, feared that Nader as their presidential candidate would attract millions of "radicals" and undermine their plans to retain the US Green Party as the "leftist" wing of the DP. Instead they nominated their own toady, David Cobb, through a corrupt nominating process. Cobb failed to obtain enough votes in eleven states for the state Green parties and they lost their ballot lines. In other states almost no one would carry Cobb petitions. He got about 50,000 votes nationwide. (I also sought the USGP nomination along with two other candidates but we were also squashed because we favored Nader and his running mate, the late Peter Camejo).
When Nader talks in his Counterpunch article about prohibitions on aiding countries which commit aggression, he overlooks the hundreds of millions of dollars that the EU gives to Hamas every year, most of which is used to buy weapons from Iran so as to bombard Israel. And he repeats, carelessly, insinuations about possible misuse of US weapons by Israel. This kind of unsubstantiated slur shows he has hit a new low, repeating pro Palestine propaganda without verifying it himself or quoting credible sources. And he manifests the same moral double standard of the Loony Left regarding Israel and Hamas, ignoring the confirmed use of Gazan civilians as shields and the storage of weapons and ammunition in residential buildings, hospitals and mosques.
But then, who cares about Nader's opinions any more? He has lost all credibility. Counterpunch lost that a long time ago as you can see from its bloggers: Paul Craig Roberts (ex neo con hawk), Uri Avnery, Gareth Porter and Alexander Cockburn, the voices of the totalitarian left....but who else would publish them? (except Countercurrents, the evil twin of Counterpunch). But the loss of Nader to the cause of democracy is far worse. The late mourned National Lampoon once joked about a fictional Nader piece of legislation, the "Federal Dumb Consumer Protection Act". Perhaps it is time for Nader to revive it and work on an issue he actually knows something about.
Lorna Salzman