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Today's Stories February 26, 2008 Debbie Nathan Confessions of a Gitmo Guard February 25, 2008 Roger Morris A Death in Damascus Anthony DiMaggio Military Bases, the Media and the Democrats Ralph Nader Why I'm Running Patrick Cockburn Iraq Broils Paul Craig Roberts Kosovo and the Empire Crazies Peter Morici Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms Dave Lindorff General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That Minot Nuke Incident Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film Heather Gray James Orange, Civil Rights Legend Robert Weitzel Accomodating Torture John Halle Kucinich Goes Down Website of the Day Do the Trunk Monkey! February 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain Paul Craig Roberts Obama and Global Trade Wajahat Ali Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon on the 9/11 Commission Ralph Nader Neutering the FDA Jürgen Vsych "What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?" Fidel Castro Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo David Macaray Unions Under Assault Jeremy Scahill The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence David Krieger Stanley Sheinbaum Caging the Cold War Monster Ron Jacobs Building for the Future Michael Garrity The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies Brian McKenna Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down Missy Beattie Over the Hill with John McCain Fred Gardner American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly) Boris Kagarlitsky The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement Mike Ferner Kick That Barrel Dan Bacher On the Trail with the Border Angels Christopher Ketcham Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread Poets' Basement Davies and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Obama Mariachi   February 22, 2008 Mike Whitney The Bonfire of Capital Jason Hribal Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet Liaquat Ali Khan Arresting Musharraf Joshua Frank That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child Dave Lindorff Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for Her! Liliana Segura When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion Robert Fantina Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen? Yifat Susskind The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women Norm Kent Pushing 60 with Pot Website of the Day Bush Gets Down in Liberia February 21, 2008 Saul Landau Fidel Steps Aside Elizabeth Schulte Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed Helen Redmond Health Care as a Human Right Benjamin Dangl Undermining Bolivia Michael Levitin Kosovo's Dilemma Liam Leonard Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle Patrick Irelan Land and Food in Venezuela Linn Cohen-Cole Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto Michael Simmons Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music CounterPunch News Service A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs Website of the Day Cop Abuse in Shreveport   February 20, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Lies and Spies Paul Krassner My Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Pakistani Elections Farzana Versey The Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch Allan Nairn Dying for a Second Round: Israel's New Plan to Attack Lebanon John V. Whitbeck If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine? Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization? Steve Eckardt Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News Lee Sustar Union-Busting at Freightliner Mike Ferner How Sick of It are You? Website of the Day The US Military Index   February 19, 2008 Uri Avnery Blood and Champagne Paul Craig Roberts Paying Insurgents Not to Fight Gary Leupp The Independence of Kosovo Fidel Castro The Moment Has Come David Macaray Management's Dirty Little Secret Reza Fiyouzat Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections Valerie Morse The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie Walter Brasch Bush on Safari Website of the Day Don't Think Twice, It's Alright   February 18, 2008 Wajahat Ali Free Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan Diana Johnstone NATO's Kosovo Colony Paul Craig Roberts What Do We Stand For? Andy Worthington Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along" Debbie Nathan Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes Anthony DiMaggio Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business of Elections Bill Simpich Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq Eva Liddell A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash Christopher Brauchli The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans Stephen Soldz Wikileaks is Under Attack! Johann Rossouw The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism Website of the Day Sick of It Day!   February 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan Ralph Nader We the Corporations ... David Macaray The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin? William J. Peace Wheelchair Dumping Ron Jacobs War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption Diane Christian War Corrupts Alan Maass Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen (and Beyond) Ramzy Baroud Iraq and the US Elections Michael Donnelly Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card Cpt. Paul Watson The Art of Finding Whalers James L. Secor China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008 Eve Bachrach Bush Returns to Africa Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army Stephen Gowans Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian Missy Beattie To Vote or Not to Vote? David Michael Green Warming Slowly to Obama Wajahat Ali Attack of the Info-tainment Circus Poets' Basement Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther Website of the Day Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!     February 15, 2008 George Szamuely The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo Patrick Cockburn Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad? Wajahat Ali Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Bush Administration Mike Whitney Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg Alan Farago God and the Democrats Chris Genovali Alberta's Black Gold Rush Jacob Hornberger Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture Dave Lindorff Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull Website of the Day Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams     February 14, 2008 Kathleen and Bill Christison Palestine in the Mind of America Mike Whitney Swan Song for NATO Clancy Sigal Strike Notes from a Screenwriter George Wuerthner A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter Peter Morici Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit? John Ross Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border Allan Nairn Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can Whack Anyone Rannie Amiri Lebanon's Warmongers Niranjan Ramakrishnan The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein Donna Volatile Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It Seth Sandronsky The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes Website of the Day Conventions: the Land Around Us   February 13, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America Alan Farago Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line Christina Kasica King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America Vicente Navarro How to Read the U.S. Primaries Hall Greenland Australia's Finest Hour Lee Sustar Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most David Macaray The Writers' Strike Finally Ends Roderick Frazier Nash Celebrating Wilderness Patrick Irelan Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT Anthony Papa Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases Carl Finamore Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians Website of the Day John He Is   February 12, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Paul Craig Roberts War Without End Dr. Trudy Bond The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture? Col. Dan Smith The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away? Ronnie Cummins Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road Ralph Nader Open the Government John V. Walsh Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered Dave Lindorff Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate Michael Donnelly Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules Ron Jacobs La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life" Ben Tripp Beggars Collide Website of the Day Springsteen and Youngstown   February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? Wajahat Ali A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby Ray McGovern Waterboarding for God and Country Allan Nairn The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta Uri Avnery An End Foreseen? Chris Floyd American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech Martha Rosenberg School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows Stephen Fleischman The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics Marc Lamont Hill Not My Brand of Hope Liliana Segura Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation Peter Morici Challenges for the New President Christopher Brauchli A Drug Rant from a Former Taker Website of the Day Annie vs. the Blue Angels   February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden Dave Zirin Instep Intifada Saul Landau The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln Susie Day Our Blob in the White House Website of the Day George Carlin on Voting   February 6, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos Ben Rosenfeld Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters Vijay Prashad An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out Joe Bageant Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned Michael Donnelly What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths Allan Nairn Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion? Kathryn Gray Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit Ray McGovern Powell's UN Fiasco Sheldon Richman The Whining Empire Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks A Presidential Aptitude Examination John Chuckman Political Bits and Pieces Website of the Day Save the Albatross February 5, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget Tariq Ali Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair Stephen Soldz The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes? Chris Floyd Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War William S. Lind Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win Martha Rosenberg Live From the Killing Floor Heather Gray Conversations with Georgia Voters Ayesha Ijaz Khan Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics David Macaray Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice Eliza Ernshire Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run Brenda Norrell Hated Nation Website of the Day The Things I Used to Do     February 4, 2008 Marc Levy Winter in America Patrick Cockburn The Bird Market Bombings Saree Makdisi Strangling Gaza Uri Avnery From Stalingrad to Winograd Alan Farago Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer Ben Tripp Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter Paul Wolf Civil Wars North and South Paul Craig Roberts Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed? Joshua Frank MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change John Halle Whither Progressive Democrats? Website of the Day How to Cheat in School   February 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Hot Democratic Properties Pam Martens Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense Ralph Nader The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked John Ross Hilaria vs. "El Moreno" Wajahat Ali Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir Robert Fantina A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire B. R. Gowani Not All Veils and Guns James L. Secor China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow John V. Walsh The Invisible Green Primary Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble Dave Zirin Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul? Jeremy Scahill Blackwater and Blood Fidel Castro Reflections on Lula Joe Allen Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War Stephen Lendman Life in Occupied Gaza Patrick Irelan What Happened to the Streetcars? Andrej Grubacic Ziga Vodovnik Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo Josh Karpoff Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement Ron Jacobs Carl Oglesby's War Paul Krassner Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel Website of the Weekend Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart   February 1, 2008 Ray McGovern The Iniquities and Inequalities of War Diane Farsetta The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists Tariq Ali Et Tu, New York Times? Allan Nairn Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti Rannie Amiri Collective Punishment in Beirut Ramzy Baroud People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It Kenneth Couesbouc The Mother of All Snowballs Peter Morici Recession Looms Mumia Abu-Jamal Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro Rosemary Jackowski 27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President Scott Campbell Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges Website of the Day Betes et Hommes   January 31, 2008 Saul Landau Return to Afghanistan Andy Worthington Horror at Guantánamo Mike Whitney Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System Jeff Ballinger Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe" Tiffany Ten Eyck The Saga of the Freightliner Five William Loren Katz Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery? Alan Farago Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble Col. Dan Smith Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget? China Hand Slouching Toward Islamabad Dave Lindorff The Usual Suspects Once Again Wadner Pierre Fake Democracy in Haiti Website of the Day One Big Union   January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? Christopher Ketcham The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex Robert Weissman America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union Neve Gordon An Experiment in Famine Paul Craig Roberts Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse? Joanne Mariner How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech David Macaray Labor's Only Real Weapon Liaquat Ali Khan Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan? Raymond J. Lawrence Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication Dan Bacher The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon Website of the Day Onward Through the Fog   January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?         Subscribe Online

February 26, 2008 Bernard-Henri Levy's Plan for the French Left The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto By SERGE HALIMI Last September Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the luxury conglomerate company LVMH, held a little "do" to mark the 60th birthday of the couture house of Dior. He spared no expense, with Dom Perignon champagne, caviar, 75 waiters for 25 tables, 14 cooks, 4,000 roses and 8,000 sprigs of lily of the valley (the late Christian Dior's signature flower). But then the 270 guests were rather special too, including the justice minister Rachida Dati; the interior minister Brice Hortefeux and his wife, dressed by Dior; the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe; the television news anchor Claire Chazal, also draped in Dior; former foreign minister Hubert Vedrine and the parliamentary leader of the governing UMP Party, Jean-Francois Cope; Elton John and Farah Diba, wife of the late Shah of Iran . Also present was the prime minister, Francois Fillon, who only four days later said: "I am in charge of a bankrupt state. This has got to stop." There is nothing new about billionaires indulging in conspicuous consumption. But the social portent of such festivities now reaches beyond the pages of glossy magazines. The election of President Nicolas Sarkozy last year heralded a new approach to the exercise of power, completing the merger of several parts of France's elite: big bosses, opinion-makers and political leaders, right and left, providing they uphold free-market principles. Ideally they should be very rich too. Arnault is the richest man in France, worth an estimated $21bn in 2006. He is a personal friend of the president, whom he invited to the wedding of his daughter Delphine_a big occasion, with guests including six members of the government of the day, and Cope and Vedrine (who is on the LVMH board). A long truck was chartered to transport the bridal dresswithout creasing it. Arnault owns a financial daily, La Tribune, which he is selling to buy Les Echos, a more influential paper. The staff of both are against the project, but Sarkozy backs his friend. In 2006 LVMH handed out 1,789,359 stock options, including 450,000 to its boss. The government has recently awarded substantial tax breaks to the wealthy, including Arnault, perhaps as a token of its gratitude for holding down inflation by keeping tight control over pay. Many of those who manufacture Arnault's luxury goods earn only the minimumwage. Britain's Labor prime minister, Gordon Brown, asks Arnault for advice, but in France the tycoon is convinced he is seen as a pariah: "The problem for business leaders in France is that the country has difficulty accepting a market economy. I think Marxist ideas still exert an influence. Over the last 20 years their influence has even increased in political discourse." Arnault must be living in a different France from everybody else. His friend is now president and even the Socialist opposition, following the example of its British counterpart, talks about little else but rehabilitating free-market values, individualism, merit and money. Meanwhile Bernard-Henri Levy_a neo-liberal, pro-US socialite, astute manager of an immense fortune and established star of intellectual show business_has just published a book , which he hopes will establish him as a key Socialist Party (PS) thinker. The book is "Ce grand cadavre a la renverse", (Grasset, Paris, 2007), scheduled to be published in the U.S. next fall by Random House , under the title, "Left in Dark Times. A Stand Against the New Barbarism." The restoration marches on. France resembles a plutocracy; money is all that counts. The government abounds with corporate lawyers. Influential MPs such as Cope make no secret of their ambition to fulfil their public mission while making a fortune in business. With recurrent scandals in the stock market and finance, growing public fascination with billionaires and frequent lobbying, France is turning into another Monaco-style principality. The recent wedding of Socialist MP Henri Weber was an extravagant celebrity event attended by former leftists, such as Bernard Kouchner, who are now ministers in the rightwing government . Jacques Attali, once a special adviser to Francois Mitterrand, was also on the guest list. He recently accepted Sarkozy's proposal to chair the newly established Committee for the Liberation of French Growth and is proving a keen advocate of competition and mass distribution. On June 13, 1971, in a speech at the Epinay congress , Mitterrand condemned "all the powers of money, money that corrupts, money that buys, money that kills, money that brings ruin and money that rots even the conscience of men". Now Levy is suggesting that the PS should organize a congress to make a new start, an "anti-Epinay". He does not see the corruption, death, ruin and rot in money, but rather "its ability to replace war with trade, closed worlds with open borders. Thanks to [money], negotiations, transactions and compromise take the place of impatience, violence, barter, rapine, arbitrary settlements and fanaticism" . This definition of capital as a rampart against fanaticism is very much in vogue and seems unlikely to upset members of the property-owning classes such as Arnault, Arnaud Lagardere, the man behind the media and aerospace conglomerate of the same name, or Francois Pinault, owner of the PPR global retailing group. The last two are close friends of Levy, who has no qualms about tailoring his columns to suit their interests. Who cares about Levy? For the past 30 years his fan club has acclaimed his work and the media have made a fuss, yet no one would think of buying one of his books once the public relations barrage subsides. The title of his autobiography, "Comedie", suggests that even he sometimes realises the wholeprocess is a farce. In 1979 Cornelius Castoriadis admitted to being baffled by him: "How can a country with a fine, long-standing culture allow a writer to get away with such nonsense, with critics lauding his work and the reading public obediently lapping it up? No one silences nor imprisons those who point out it is all a sham, yet their words make no difference" He optimistically added: "This piffle will certainly go out of fashion. Much like all contemporary products it has built-in obsolescence." Nearly 30 years later the piffle is still selling. This trade in nonsense is doubly revealing of our current malaise. The excesses of Levy's prose and its repetition on TV and radio no longer prompt any response. His habitual Targets -- the "left of the left" and the writers least in thrall to the media -- must have given up the struggle. Meanwhile his pro-US, free-market ideas are in tune with those of a growing number of socialist leaders. Diminishing resistance goes hand in hand with greater impact. Any cultural scene, and by extension public debate, that can allow a writer to accuse Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Etienne Balibar, Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek of being anti-semitic is in trouble. It is strange that any of them should be suspected of taking their cue from a "Nazi thinker" (see "Levy's pet hates"). When the left starts taking its inspiration from Levy, it further proves that it is dead on its feet. Levy's friends have recently gratified him with favours (interviews with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, a leading radio personality, and Jean-Marie Colombani, the former editor of Le Monde; an immediate review in the same paper, a huge spread in Paris Match, front-page coverage in Le Nouvel Observateur). But he has recruited new fans, who in their youthful enthusiasm are all the more eager to serve his cause. Nicolas Demorand, on the France Inter radio station, and Philippe Val, the editor of the satiric journal Charlie Hebdo, are no fools; yet when Levy calls key contemporary leftwing writers fascists, anti-semites or Nazis, they pretend not to notice. After encouraging Levy to make liberal use of insults and bad language, Demorand let him conclude by saying: "We are the guardians of words on this program." Demorand may look forward to a long career. Following its third consecutive defeat in a presidential election, the PS is tempted to lean even further to the right. Having embraced "realism" in the early 1980s, the idea of "breaking with capitalism" has become meaningless. But media and business leaders keep demanding that the party should go even further, espousing free-market values more absolutely. Last August this pressure led to an outburst from the MP Henri Emmanuelli: "How dare they ask a party that has produced the director of the World Trade Organisation [Pascal Lamy] and very probably the future director of the International Monetary Fund [Dominique Strauss-Kahn] finally to accept the market economy?" In 1986, 1993 and 2002, the election defeats of the PS pushed the party line a few degrees to the left -- a move it could afford, it hardly being possible to blame their electoral misfortunes on having strayed too far to the left. Nor did Segolene Royal lean far leftwards during last year's presidential campaign (in which Levy was closely involved). In the face of Sarkozy's aggressive rightwing policies, the PS could surely afford to adopt a more militant stance, however superficial it might be in practice. Encouraged by the Blairist ambitions of several PS leaders, Levy has wheeled out his media battlewagon to ward off any such eventuality. He plans to dictate to any hypothetical leftwing government the ultimate theoretical basis for future neo-liberal, anti-revolutionary policies. In 1986 Levy supported the deregulation of broadcasting. In 1995 he condemned striking railway and public transport workers, highlighting the lack of responsibility of the public sector which was "in the process of assuming all the characteristics of what we once called a Soviet-style economy" . Two years later he mocked those who "demonize money and all those who deal in it". Now he has written a book specially for the left, to rid it of its "poisons". But the worst thing is that people actually listen. The break with the past Levy proposes is no different from that promised by Sarkozy. "For reasons related to its past and the history of its national software [sic], the whole of France is resisting free-market principles," he writes, rather as the president might. He adds: "The question of whether the revolution is possible has given way to another question that is even more disturbing and above all more radical, namely whether the revolution is desirable. The answer to this question has become 'No', clearly 'No'." Pierre Moscovici (who is close to Strauss-Kahn) promptly picked up the ball and wrote: "Bernard-Henri Levy concludes with an appeal to the melancholic left in opposition to the lyrical left, to a left stripped of its revolutionary Utopia, the 'dream that always ends in a nightmare'... That is also my version of the left" . But is Levy really best placed to suggest solutions to suit most people? His book hardly ever deals with the economy or finance, inequality, relocation of production, occupational hazards or purchasing power. Apart from a 10-page chapter on France's underprivileged housing estates, there is no mention of social issues. A few ideas, essentially comparing his opponents to fascists, float past, unrelated to their causes. He devotes half a chapter to the Khmer Rouge (in Cambodia), pointing out that they "sampled the work of [Charles] Bettelheim, Althusser, Lacan", but overlooking the fact that the US war in southeast Asia increased their power at least as much as the three French writers did. No one can be blamed for their origins, but it is unlikely that Levy has suffered a great deal from inequality. So why does his manifesto for the left so completely disregard the topic? During an interview in 1984 he explained how he works: "I do not write in cafes, but in hotels. All over the world. In Paris, in a room at the Pont-Royal, number 812, because it looks out over the roofs, commanding a view of the city. Also room 911 at the Georges-V. ... My stamping ground reaches from the Jardin du Luxembourg, where I live, to the rue des Saints-Peres, where we are now, or the Recamier, where I often lunch. In the afternoon I like the Twickenham, or otherwise the [cafe] Flore, and [the flat in] Rue Madame" . Since then his home ground has reached into other enchanted worlds. At the wedding of Pinault junior, in 1996, he "arrived in style, landing on the lawn of the chateau in a helicopter". When he married the actress Arielle Dombasle, in 1993, "a plane was chartered to transport guests to La Colombe d'Or, the mythical hotel in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Paris Match obtained exclusive rights to cover the event, with a six-page spread worthy of a royal wedding, not to mention the front page which featured an emotional Arielle in a white dress with a low-cut back, designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel" . Guests included Liliane Bettencourt (then the richest person in France), Jack Lang, the former minister, and Alain Carignon, then mayor of Grenoble, as well as the columnist Louis Pauwels and Jean-Luc Lagardere. Levy believes we forget how much we owe to capitalism. "We think we are attacking George Soros," he warns, "but in fact we are murdering Gavroche" (a key figure in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables). Here again Levy has something in common with Sarkozy, who rolls out a succession of reforms, the better to thwart his adversaries, unable to counter-attack on all sides simultaneously. The writer piles on names, approximations and historical wisecracks. The historian Pierre Vidal-Naquel noted this habit in 1979: "Whether he is dealing with the history of the Bible, Ancient Greece or even contemporary affairs, Levy displays, in every field, the same alarming ignorance and stunning presumption" . Levy had written that Heinrich Himmler, who actually committed suicide in May 1945, gave evidence six months later at the Nuremberg trial. In another instance he presented Francois Guizot, a conservative, free-market thinker in Restoration France, as one of the forerunners of the Paris Commune when he had infact supported its bloody repression. Many on the French left have praised Levy's latest book. "The left we have yet to reinvent should draw inspiration from this work. It has a fresh, youthful energy I particularly appreciate," said Jacques Lang . Moscovici, Vincent Peillon and Manuel Valls, all of whom are vying for the leadership of the PS, joined in the praise. Valls was one of those to whom Sarkozy offered a cabinet job. This came to nothing, but nevertheless suggests that the two men see more or less eye to eye. Valls subsequently hailed the policy statement of the incoming prime minister, Francois Fillon, as "on a par with the country's expectations", adding that he was prepared to "support the majority provided it listens to us" (the PS). He supports the current reform of special pensions and is calling for a change in the party's name. In his book Levy pays tribute to Valls: "Although many socialists still cling to their socialism much as a repertory actor hangs on to a familiar part -- the most lucid among themManuel Valls, the MP for the Essonne, springs to mind -- know there is no salvation for the left without a clean break with the past, and consequently a change of name." Valls quickly wrote a review of this "brilliant book" for Les Echos, though he failed to mention that in so doing he was merely returning the author's compliment. He even singled out for special praise the passage in which he was mentioned . Valls, suspected by some of his fellow travellers of harbouring rightwing sympathies, added: "Those who say this book is simply a celebration of neo-liberal values and a conservative left refuse to admit that it is a sincere attempt at introspection by a writer who quite certainly belongs on the left." He did acknowledge, though, that Levy tended to disregard social issues. Not so long ago, anyone admitting, as Levy did, to being "slightly deaf to social concerns" would have been banished by the left. Such ostracism would now be considered archaic, or "Marxist" as Arnault would say. Levy's political ideas are clear enough. He promotes free-market values and condemns radicalism. While Sarkozy is in power, Levy manufactures for him a "moral left", with plenty of emotion and indignation. Not the sort of left that might greatly hinder the government, which, in the words of a former captain of industry, is "methodically dismantling the program of the National Council of the Resistance". A final footnote on BHL's nutty hit list In his book Bernard-Henri Levy lists "laboratories brewing atrocities". This list features, in order of appearance: Hugo Chavez, "whose anti-neo liberal rhetoric recalls 'fascist or Nazi-style regimes' according to Latin-America's bishops". Etienne Balibar, Daniel Bensaid, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida: they are held responsible for the "widely publicized rediscovery... of a theoretician, driven by his hatred of free markets to espouse Nazism: Carl Schmitt. He is presented as the saviour of a left that has lost its bearings." S lavoj Zizek and Peter Sloterdijk: "A significant number of European intellectuals have wholeheartedly embraced this curious, indeed hallucinatory, notion that a Nazi thinker [Schmitt] could rescue the left from its current problems. Heidegger used to say that only a god could save us. Now, echoing the idea, this leftwing fringe repeats that only a Nazi can save us." Emmanuel Mounier and Jean-Marie Domenach: "The idea [attributed to them] that the real danger was not the Soviet Union, but the United States, not communism but Americanism, resurfaces among the ideologists of the new right in the 1980s, and then in all the neo-Nazi sects, mentioned above, such as Nouvelle Resistance, and finally in [France's] National Front." Le Monde diplomatique: "An editorial of Le Monde diplomatique explaining that America ... has found a secret weapon for 'domesticating souls'... almost exactly the same words as Drieu la Rochelle used [a French writer who headed La Nouvelle Revue francaise during the Occupation and advocated collaboration with the Nazi authorities.].... Or here again, in the same issue ... the foul stench arising from the condemnation of the 'cosmopolitan establishment of bankers and corporate lawyers' that dominates the US, and therefore the world. Maurras [Leader and principal thinker of the reactionary Action Francaise] . or nowadays Le Pen, would say the same... In yet another article, by Loic Wacquant and Pierre Bourdieu ... how can one not react to the disturbing similarities with another strain of anti-Americanism, the one and only true variety, hatched by Arthur Moeller Van den Bruck, the man who invented the idea of the Third Reich." Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 "was no more than a variation on the old isolationist, populist, ultra-nationalist and chauvinistic ideas of Pat Buchanan and other rightwing US extremists". Harold Pinter: "You would think you were listening to Pinter, Chomsky, Bourdieu or a neo-Trotskyist. But no. The nerve, the investigative style, the obsession with manipulation ... it all brings us back, I fear, to the ravings of the tsarist police fabricating its famous fake that supposedly proved Jewish domination of the world." Noam Chomsky: "this maniacal negationist". Olivier Besancenot and the Attac organisation: "Why have we never heard any of them, ever, telling us what they think about Iran's president Ahmadinejad, who repeatedly says that he dreams of annihilating Israel?" Referring to Levy's publications in 1979, Cornelius Castoriadis found "a good sample of devious Stalinist techniques". This is a severe criticism, particularly as Levy claims to write "without any sense of controversy", though "I do of course simplify", and even suggests the reader "look at things calmly and with a cool head". He sees himself as being "trained, I think, to be curious and respectful". Levy defends the US industrialist Henry Ford, who inspired Adolf Hitler. As Levy himself acknowledges, his commitment to the cause of Darfur brought him into contact with "an increasing number of Islamic militants, sometimes even Islamists, linked in particular to Farrakhan's Nation of Islam." (The preacher Louis Farrakhan is, among other things, an anti-semite.) Perhaps it would be most effective to refer Levy to his own writings: "Sometimes, overwhelmed by exhaustion or disgust, it is just too hard to go on. What is the point in trying to make someone see reason, when they just will not listen?" Just so. Translated by Harry Forster. Serge Halimi is the director of Le Monde diplomatique. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair write: This article appears in the February, English language edition of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, to be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.

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