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Now Available! How the Press Led the USA Into the Iraq War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 7, 2007 Middle East Mind Lock The Occupation Within By JAMES BROOKS How were the terms of US political and economic debate severed from basic standards of evidence and common sense? Why does the word "hypocrisy" seem inadequate to describe the pretzel logic of the neo-conservatives? Why do the people of the United States remain inert as the madness at the top claims the authority to hemorrhage its execution of Iraq into a nuclear war on Iran? John McMurtry is a decorated professor of philosophy who has pursued questions like these to the ideological foundations of today's US-centric global empire. (1) His analysis offers insights that can help us identify and think our way out of this now ubiquitous "mind-lock". McMurtry's approach also turns out to be useful for illuminating core ideological contradictions in Israel's US-supported ethnic cleansing regime, which has been forcing Palestinians off their lands for the last 60 years. McMurtry narrates the ascendance of a "fanatic mind-set" in the west following the demise of the Soviet Union, when "a strange ideological inversion occurred." Marxism's 'economic determinism', "abhorred by liberal theory", was swiftly replaced with the west's own brand of imposed economic determinism. "Inevitable globalization" was framed as a product of unaccountable and unstoppable forces unleashed by a veritable law of nature, the ultimate "wisdom of the market" that benefits all. McMurtry demonstrates the destruction of value and meaning inherent in the adoption of this absolutist dogma, which claims to encompass all human activity and reflexively rules out of order any other explanation or concern. He also traces the use of this irrationality to justify brutal economic and military predation under the twin deceptions of "free trade" and "democracy". The nakedness of this nonsense is revealed by McMurtry's observation that it glorifies its "no alternative" market theory and bullying imperial trade policies as the ultimate in economic freedom. Noting the ways in which similar inversions of meaning have been used in totalitarian ideologies, he concludes that inversion is one of the fundamental processes involved in the development of today's "fanatic mind-set": "Throughout the world re-engineering by the global apparatchiks, there has been a transformative principle of representation across phenomena and crises: to invert social values and general facts into their contrary so that no bearings remain for intelligibility of resistance." [emphasis in original] Observers of Israel and its influence within the United States see a long trend toward ideological convergence between the two nations, especially in foreign policy, war, economics, and propaganda. One of the little-noted fundamentals of this growing affinity is a mutual and increasing need and desire to justify unjustifiable acts and obscure incriminating truths. So it is not surprising that Israel is awash in the same intellectual process of inversion that McMurtry finds so pervasive in the US. Indeed, one could argue that many of Israel's ideological contradictions are at least as old as the state. Using McMurtry's style of formulation and taking broad liberties with his method, here are a few of the more obvious inversions of meanings and values underlying the Israeli government's proclamations and practices. US readers may note the obvious parallels: Israel's "right to defend itself" assumes the "harsh necessity" of its military and civilian occupation of Palestinian land, which is an illegal act of war. Self-defense = Aggression Israel's security depends upon the continual provocation of forces that will threaten Israel's security when provoked. Security = Promotion of insecurity Israelis' freedom depends upon the imprisonment of another people. (2) Freedom = Denial of freedom Israel's democracy depends upon the racist exclusion of its indigenous citizens and the empowerment of the most intolerant of its privileged citizens. (3-5) Democracy = Apartheid Israel is a "bastion of religious freedom" in which civil law is based on an "orthodox" version of a single religion. (6) Religious freedom = Religious exclusivity Israel's continued prosperity requires "market liberalization" that dramatically increases poverty and consolidates wealth at the top. (7,8) Prosperity = Poverty Israel's commitment to the rule of law and sound economic policy (which promises to earn it a seat at the OECD next year) is reflected it its continuing slide down international corruption indexes, an unending string of serious political scandals, and thriving organized crime. (9-11) Legality = Lawlessness Peace for Israel requires its negotiating partners to accept terms that fall far short of their people's minimum standards for peace. Whether or not these terms are met, the formula is: Peace = Continual war Prospects for peace are enhanced when negotiating partners collaborate in banning, imprisoning, and isolating their constituents who oppose Israel's terms. Such actions also signal the negotiating partners' "commitment to democracy". (12-14) Peacemaking = Democracy = Unconstitutional oligarchy, collective punishment, and civil strife = Illegitimacy and probable failure of any agreements reached between Israel and its partners = Continual (land-grabbing) war The public's acceptance of these inversions creates what McMurtry calls an "occupation of consciousness" that makes it very difficult for the citizen thus "occupied" to understand her predicament, much less anyone else's. However, just as one man's meat is another man's poison, the ideological contortions that befuddle and disempower the public simultaneously comfort the powerful with an automatic self-justifying narrative. While there is no gainsaying the cynicism of today's leaders, the "fanatic mind-set" must be an irresistibly attractive narcotic to those driven to acquire the power to give the orders to drop the bombs. One of the implicit subtexts of the mind-set is that cynicism is reality; the ends always justify the means if the means can be kept largely hidden from public view and the ends are framed as unassailable indispensables; freedom, democracy, "growth", rule of law, etc. The negative side of the equation is always "more than" balanced by its positive equivalent. The powerful are the anointed agents of the world's "best hope". To advance its interests (and their own) they ought to do anything "the market will bear". It's not just what the powerful want us to believe. At least to some degree, it's what most of them need to believe, to do what they do. McMurtry argues that the fanatic mind-set is "closed" and "self-referential". From within the delusion, it would be logical to conclude that increasing the negative side of the equation can increase the positive. More denial of freedom to others equals more freedom for us, and (as an afterthought) all the other "good" people of the world. We hear that 'a greater readiness to use military force will better protect our democracy and freedoms at home', and we hardly notice. But if this mind-set is closed in its circularity, it will increasingly diverge from reality. And, being self-referential, chronically ambitious, and uniquely powerful, it can only seek to outdo itself. If such a dominant mind-set persistently follows its inverted logic, it may rapidly auto-escalate with disastrous results. What's next? Rather than simply "protecting" our freedoms by creating, torturing, and slaughtering "terrorists" in Iraq, why not be "pro-active" and eradicate an "evil source of terrorism" that threatens everyone's freedoms? Wouldn't bombing Tehran-a supposed "existential threat" to nuclear-tipped Israel-produce more freedom and prosperity for all? Ideologies create the authoritative psychic space within which the unthinkable can become possible. At one time, few could have imagined that the west's Christian democracies would support a concrete wall splitting the little town of Bethlehem in two, or that the United States would pay for decades of bloody ethnic cleansing in the Holy Land. Israel's ideology (to some extent crafted to appeal to western powers) supplied the framework of justification that made it possible. In the US, we face a threat to our national sanity that is similar to the physical danger bearing down on the caged and impoverished Palestinian people-the destruction of what we have left. Our common foe is an irrational ideology that inverts fundamental values and legitimizes crimes against humanity. For us, the struggle to overcome the threat begins in the mind. James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net. Notes 1. John McMurtry, Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy (London and Sterling Va.: Pluto Press, 2002), 277 pages. 2. Prison within a Prison, Gideon Levy, MIFTAH, 8/27/2007 3. GDP per capita of Arab Israelis third of that of Jews, YNetNews, 1/18/2007 4. IRIN reports on the devastation caused to Bedouins by the Israeli forces in the Negev Ma'an News Agency, 6/27/2007 5. Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington, Will Youmans, CounterPunch, 12/8/2006 6. Only Orthodox conversions accepted in Israel, Boim stresses, YNetNews, 5/23/2007 7. NII report: 100,000 newly poor, half of them children, Ha'aretz, 9/1/2006 8. Netanyahu: Cut taxes for rich to help poor, Dalia Tal, Globes Online, 6/26/2007 9. A supreme effort is required, Ze'ev Segal, Ha'aretz, 5/27/2007 10. Poll: 85% of public believe the leadership is corrupt, Ha'aretz, 1/11/2007 11. Dichter: Police trying to block mafia's bottle recycling takeover, Ha'aretz, 1/9/2007 12. Hamas members arrested by the Palestinian Authority, Ma'an News Agency, 8/22/2007 13. U.S.-Backed Campaign Against Hamas Expands to Charities, Adam Entous, MIFTAH, 8/22/2007 14. Abbas urges Socialist leaders to help isolate Hamas By Aude Marcovitch, Middle East Online, 6/29/2007 Your Ad Here

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