Nation Topics - Parties | The Nation

The article comments on current events and world politics. Socialist Party leader Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, is not expected to bring economic reform to the country. A quote from Al Gore focused on warrantless wiretapping in the United States. The Maryland legislature passed a bill that requires Wal-Mart to provide health insurance to their employees who have relied on Medicaid programs. Two economic studies, by Scott Wallsten of the Brookings Institution, and economist Joseph Stiglitz with Linda Bilmes of Harvard, indicate the costs of the Iraq War will be more than $1 trillion. An essay contest sponsored by "Nation" is mentioned.

Offers a look at a report called "The Politics of Polarization," by political strategists William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, regarding the steps the U.S. Democratic Party must take to win majority in the next elections. Advice that the Democratic Party focus on the opinions held by a majority of voters; Suggestion that Democrats focus their message on moderate voters; Statement that the report does not argue that the policies of a centrist strategy would actually be beneficial for the U.S. or the world; Criticism of Galston and Kamarck for scheming to win elections without providing a full-scale strategy for the Democratic Party.

The author presents fictitious letters written by the characters of George Orwell's "Animal Farm," commenting on the U.S. Republican Party's political platform.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article, "The Redistricting Wars," by Sasha Abramsky, which appeared in the December 29, 2003 issue of the magazine.

The author comments on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's speech at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, and his apparent dismissal of the concerns of the left wing of his party. As the Labour Party assembled for its annual conference here on Britain's Yiddish Riviera, the news looked grim. The final days of the Hutton Inquiry revealed that Blair had not only taken the country to war on the basis of "sexed-up" intelligence about the Iraqi threat, he had done so despite intelligence warnings that a war with Iraq might actually increase the danger of terrorist attacks. Leaks from the Iraq Survey Group made it clear that none of the weapons Blair cited in his speech to Parliament last year had been found.Yet the Tony Blair who spoke here barely even paid lip service to the damage done to his own--and his party's--credibility by the war. Given the Prime Minister's perfunctory nods at climate change and his commitment to "staying with" American policy on the Middle East, Blair doesn't seem to expect his policy of constructive engagement with the Bush Administration to bear fruit anytime soon. What Blair does expect is "a full third term" in power. As he reminded the delegates, Blair is the first Labour Prime Minister ever to reach six and a half continuous years in office. The terms of Blair's bargain couldn't be plainer: Stick with me, and you will remain in power through the end of the decade, or take your chances without me. Blair's great success has been to turn the Labour Party from a mass movement into a niche market. And at this rate, dissenters in Britain, whether on the war on Iraq or the dismantling of the welfare state, will have nowhere to go but into the streets.

William Kristol's April 7, 2003 editorial in 'The Weekly Standard' denouncing critics of the war on Iraq as anti-American is startlingly reminiscent of the menacing directives issued for decades by the Soviet Communist Party's Department of Ideology. Any literate person of Kristol's generation surely remembers the repressive charges of anti-Sovietism leveled by the Kremlin against domestic dissidents, including the great pro-democracy dissident Andrei Sakharov. Now Kristol lays down the line that all critics of the White House's war are guilty of holding anti-American opinions. No doubt Kristol, with his censorious, antidemocratic instincts, would have risen high in the apparat of the old Soviet Communist Party. But there may be a larger, more ominous parallel here: Once upon a time, the Kremlin also used force to try to remake the world in its own image.

In December, on the eve of the primaries for the upcoming Knesset elections, polls predicted that the Likud Party would get forty-one seats out of 120 and, together with the far right and Orthodox religious parties, would have a clear seventy-seat majority. Instead of providing a clear alternative to Ariel Sharon's inability to provide answers, the Labor Party spent the past two years compromising itself by participating in a paralyzing national-unity government that totally discredited the party leader, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who was defense minister, and Shimon Peres (foreign minister) as viable alternatives. This paved the way for Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna to challenge Ben-Eliezer for the party leadership. Ben-Eliezer in turn pulled Labor out of the government and forced new elections to shore up his position on the left in the upcoming party race; but he lost out to Mitzna, who became Labor's candidate for national leadership. As the campaign enters its final stages, Mitzna says Labor will refuse to serve in a unity government under Sharon--"the public has to choose"--while the surprise joker of these elections, the anti-clerical, neoliberal, centrist Shinui Party (polls predict a jump from six to sixteen seats) will serve only in a secular Likud-Labor-Shinui coalition. In any event, the pluralistic, left-wing Meretz Party, which will remain in opposition to a Sharon-led government in all circumstances, plans to form a new social democratic party after the elections, together with Yossi Beilin's breakaway Labor group, the left Russian Democratic Choice Party and elements from the Arab sector.

Presents information concerning U.S. politics and government as of September 2, 2002. Connection between the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and politicians in Venezuela who became involved in a coup there in April 2002; Case of Julius Scales, the only American imprisoned for being a member of the Communist Party; Topic of freedom to dissent in the U.S.

Politician Ignazio Silone was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1921. In 1927-the year of the defeat of the Left Opposition by Stalin-he returned from Moscow to Italy as a senior clandestine organizer for the PCI. From at least 1919, when he was a Socialist Party militant, until a definite cutoff date in 1930, Silone was an industrious and willing stool pigeon for the authorities, and consciously sent many Socialist and Communist workers to their death or to vile treatment and incarceration. In the post-1945 period, he was conspicuous among the anti-Communist ex-Communists who wrote for cultural magazines within the orbit of the CIA and its subsidized professorate. He also contributed an essay to the celebrated Arthur Koestler/ Richard Crossman anthology of "second thoughts."

On numerous crucial elements of Administration conduct from nuclear proliferation to human rights to free trade to national security to campaign finance, the footprint of Beijing, China is so large as to be unmissable. Born into a family that was well connected in Communist Party and People's Liberation Army circles, Wei Jingsheng, who is probably the most senior Chinese dissident, developed culpable doubts during the Cultural Revolution. He signed the poster with his name and address, and for this and other impertinences was sentenced to death in 1979. His sentence was later commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment, which he served in the most harrowing conditions.