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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The WEEK <BR>ending 3 October 2004</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>WHY NOT NADER?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>America's left is in a froth over the candidacy of
Ralph Nader, the veteran anti-corporate activist, who threatens to cost Democrat
John Kerry the election. The vitriol of the anti-Nader campaign is all the more
curious since many of those now urging him to stand down are his supporters from
the 2000 elections.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>More strikingly, Nader is the only candidate who
supports the left's goal of withdrawing from Iraq. While super-patriot John
Kerry has only committed himself to getting European support for the policing
action in Iraq, Nader consistently opposed the war.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The scorn Nader's candidacy is all about arithmetic
and nothing to do with principle. It is widely thought that Nader cost Al Gore
the election in 2000, and helped George Bush to the White House. Bush, say
American radicals, is the greater evil, against which you have to support the
lesser evil, Kerry. Nader says that Kerry is just as bad as Bush - a point that
it is hard to gainsay, especially on the core issues of the election. Kerry
loses more votes for Kerry than Nader does, says Nader.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The radical Kerry supporters point out that much of
Nader's platform - like keeping American jobs for American workers echoes key
parts of the right-wing platform of Pat Buchanan. And they say that Republicans
are surreptitiously supporting Nader.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Nader's platform is the reason not to vote for
Nader. It is backward-looking and hostile to economic progress. It is inwardly
nationalistic and insular. Even the opposition to the war comes as an expression
of a desire to withdraw from international connections and draw down the
shutters. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But Nader's platform was just as bad in 2000 as it
is in 2004. The difference for the radical Kerry supporters is that in 2000 they
learned that there is no such thing as a protest vote. They think that in
supporting Kerry they are using their votes to make a difference. But they are
not. They are giving up their independent influence on events to turn themselves
into Kerry's cheerleaders.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Better to abstain at the ballot box than to endorse
any of the three choices before the American people. Voting for someone you do
not support is the real abstention.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><BR>SCHOOLS DO NOT TEACH</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As the Labour Party looks around for a domestic policy education is back on
the agenda. But Labour's big spending on education turned out to have little to
do with teaching. Instead they opted for the symbolism of tarting up one or two
schools. Now the architecture magazine Prospect reports that one such
transformation, Kingsdale in South London, shows more signs of architectural
doodling than real change. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>'...the truth is that buildings do not teach children. Teachers do. The
building programme the Government began in 1998 substitutes architecture for
advances in education. Better buildings, by all means. But when future
generations look back on dRMM’s re-working of Kingsdale, it will strike them as
at least as stuck in its own time as Lesley Martin’s original.' </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.prospectmagazine.com/members/feature.php?id=4">http://www.prospectmagazine.com/members/feature.php?id=4</A>
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