With the Bill Clinton adiministration drawing to a close, it should be painfully obvious that Clinton, Al Gore, and the Democratic Party are no different than the Republicans. We find it amazing that many progressives have recently come to Gore's defense during his campaign. They aren't defending him from George Bush, rather the Nader campaign.

Your webmaster predicted back during the 1992 Presidential race that under a Clinton administration, human rights would be violated around the world, the police state would increase, censorship would increase, the pace that the environment is being ruined would remain the same, and that Bill Clinton is, above all else, a friend of capitalists and an enemy of labor.

This page if for those radicals, progressives, and activists who still believe in the illusion that Clinton and Gore are somehow the lesser of two evils. Anarchists say there are alternatives and it's high time that freedom-loving progressives join the rest of us who don't vote. Join us as we engage in direct action to improve our communities and our planet.

"The anarchists' electoral abstentionism implies not only a conception that is opposed to the principle of representation (which is totally rejected by anarchism), it implies above all an absolute lack of confidence in the State. And this distrust, which is instinctive in the working masses, is for the anarchists the result of their historical experience with the State and its function, which has, at all times and in all places, resulted in a selfish and exclusive protection of the ruling classes and their privileges. Anarchist abstentionism strips the State of the constitutional fraud with which it presents itself to the gullible as the true representative of the whole nation, and, in so doing, exposes its essential character as representative, procurer, and protector of the ruling classes."
-- Luigi Galleani, The End of Anarchism?

The Record / The Damage So Far

Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier
Clinton promised to pardon this famous Native American activist who has been in prison for over 20 years for a crime that he didn't commit. Peltier is recognized around the world as America's "Nelson Mandela." There has been no action so far from Clinton, nor any public comments.

The Rich get Richer
Despite all of the hype about the economic boom benefiting all Americans, it has helped one group at the expense of all others: the rich. The level of income disparity has grown obscenely during the Clinton administration. Most people's wages, when adjusted for inflation, are at the same level they were at 20 years ago.

Indigenous Rights
We've all heard about Al Gore's investments in Occidental Petroleum, which wants to drill on U'Wa lands. Clinton has done nothing to stop the Big Mountain relocation.

War Crimes
Clinton has been accused of committing war crimes on numerous occasions in Iraq, specifically a bombing strike that killed civilians, incuding a prominent Iraqi artists. Engaged in sanctions against the civilian population that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Launched cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan, killing workers at a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. The facts show that the plant was not being used for the purposes which the U.S. claimed. Bill Clinton has now been charged with war crimes in Yugoslavia, as well as other NATO leaders.

NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO

Digital Milennium Copyright Act

The 1996 Telecommunications Act
This act loosened up regulation of the telecommunication and media industries, a goal of both Reagan/Bush and the corporations. After the bill was signed, media mergers blossomed all over the media landscape. Media corporations were free to buy up as many TV and radio stations as they wanted.

Waco
Incinerated dozens of adults and children at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX.

Welfare Reform

Queer Rights
Clinton has doe a few things for gay people--rich and middle class gay people. Clinton may think he is taking a risk by going to the HRC banquets, but his politics on gay/queer issues are solidly middle-of-the-road.

Trade with China
Lobbied for Permanent Most Favored Trading Status (PNTR) with China, a country which enages in horrible human rights abuses. Clinton's normalization of trade relations with China gave a big green light to all countries that they could get away with human rights violations without suffering economically.

Universal Health Care

Closing the East Liverpool Incinerator

Signing the Workplace Fairness Act

Repealing Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act

Increased the Police State
Instituted a program to put 100,000 cops on the street at a time when the crime rates were already going down. His program only hired 45,000 cops, many of whom were so incompetent that they had to be fired. This build-up of the police state has ha th direct effect of increasing the amount of police brutality around the country. It's no accident that the Diallo shooting happened on Clinton's watch. The police have also undergone a "peace dividend" during the past decade, with the result that most police departments are fully militarized. You only need to look at how much gear the cops wore at this year's anti-capitalist actions. The Battle of Seattle last year was a good example of what happens when you turn municipal police into Robocops.

Increased the Gulag
The number of people in prisons, especially for nonviolent offenses, rose to an all time high under the Clinton administration. The number of those jailed is over 2 million. The U.S. is #2 in prison population and will be #1 when Russia carries out its amnesty program. Most of the people in prison are there for nonviolent offenses, with most of them for drug use and possession. The rate of new prison construction has increased under Clinton, to the point where in some states the money being spent on prisons outpaces the money being spent on schools.

Stop the Killing Machine
The rate of capital punshment has greatly increased during Clinton's term. Remember, this is the guy who flew back to Arkansas during his 1992 campaign to preside over the execution of a retarded black man. Clinton and Gore were silent on this issue, even in light of the news about death row inmates beign released after DNA tests proved their innocence.

Poor Record on Women's Rights
When he isn't raping women or fondling them, Clinton lets his women friends twist in the political wind. Witness his reaction to the heat that forced Jocelyn Elders to resign. Clinton has also done little to stop the re-criminalization of abortion under the guise of "partial birth" abortion. The threat of the Supreme Court reversing Roe vs. Wade has been used by many Gore-supporters to scold Nader supporters into voting for Gore. This ignores the fact that abortion rights have been steadily eroded under the Clinton adminstration.

For Internet Censorship
Actively promoted the Communications Decency Act, which would have dramatically curtailed free speech on the Internet. Signed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which attempts to infringe free speech in a fashion similar to the CDA. Has already had a chilling effect on free speech on the Internet.

Bombed more countries than any other peacetime president
The toll so far: Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia.

Rwanda

The Clinton administration, which had made numerous interventions in the name of "humanitarianism." did nothing to stop the Rwandan genocide.

April 16, 1999

The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C., on U.S. involvement in Rwanda:

No question, Bill Clinton has intervened in humanitarian crises during his six-plus years in office. Bosnia comes to mind as well as Kosovo. But Rwanda, where the world stood by as more than 500,000 innocents were slaughtered in 1994? We don't think so.

That's not the way Clinton describes it. ... In an interview with CBS anchor Dan Rather, ... the president said that while ``the rest of the world was caught flat-footed and did not have the mechanism to deal with'' the outbreak of tribal genocide, ``we did some good and I think limited some killing there.''

Human Rights Watch has looked into Rwanda. It finds otherwise. In a 789-page report cited by The Washington Post, it says the United States, France, Belgium and the United Nations all received ample warning of the genocide plot.

According to this report ... the United States actually blocked preventative military action by the United Nations. ...

Clinton, evidently uncomfortable with the charge that he failed to even try to prevent the greatest human tragedy of the 1990s, attempts to rewrite history ... just in case some of us were not paying attention. It won't work.

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