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Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: How Go the Democrats?

Democrats on the Brink: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; Innocent Lads, Depraved Killers and Predatory Priests by JoAnn Wypijewski; Torture Air, Inc.: the Road to Rendition: by Jeffrey St. Clair. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

March 11, 2005

Dave Zirin
Neo-McCarthyism Slugs Baseball

March 10, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
So Much for the New Bush Economy

John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin and Ashley Smith
Vermont Vs. the War

Larry Birns
The Pathological John Bolton

Michael Donnelly
The Re-Reinvention of an Oregon Timber Beast

Luis Gomez
In Bolivia, Reality Changes Once Again

Jackie Corr
Whatever Happened to the Social Security Trust Fund?

Uri Avnery
Bush's Guru: Natan Sharansky

Website of the Day
Red Alert in the Siskiyous!

 

March 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dirty Harry's Fear of Flying: Making Love, War and Profits at Boeing

Ward Churchill
Who's the Terrorist?

Robert Fisk
Another Species of Cedar: a Half Million Lebanese March for Syria

Bernice Powell Jackson
No Justice for America's Nuclear Guinea Pigs in the Marshall Islands

Mickey Z.
The Revolutionary of Potential Art

Dave Zirin
NHL Says: "Bring On the Scabs!"

Michael Donnelly
Standing Up to Ecocide in Oregon

James Reiss
Stopping by Words in Favor of Privatizing Social Security

Vijay Prashad
Get Modi: a State Terrorist Visits Florida

March 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Syrian Delusion

Robert Fisk
Lebanon's Nightmare

Kurt Nimmo
War is Peace: John Bolton to the UN

Suzan Mazur
Time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Polygamy?

Evelyn Pringle
Neil Bush and Crest: Another Profiteering Scheme

Giuliana Sgrena
My Truth: "The Americans Don't Want You to Return"

Elaine Cassel
The Appalling Case of Abu Ali

 

March 7, 2005

Dave Zirin
Bloodlust in Annapolis: Gov. Ehrlich Wants to Kill Vernon Lee Evans

Brian Cloughley
More War Crimes

John Chuckman
The Creature Walks Among Us

Mike Whitney
Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments

Mark Weisbrot
Haiti's Torment: Why Are US Human Rights Groups Silent?

Fred Gardner
The Cannabinoid Messenger

Richard Neville
The Italian Job

Uri Avnery
The Next Crusades

 

 

March 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Arnold vs. the Nurses

Gary Leupp
What's Happening in Lebanon: an Interview with Fadi Agha, Advisor to President Lahoud

Ron Jacobs
Lies Military Recruiters Tell

Tom Reeves
Haiti: One Year After the Coup

Jenna Orkin
Memories of Kawaggi, Saudi Arabia

Tom Barry
Negroponte: Intel Czar or Policy Hack?

Joshua Frank
The Trials of Max Baucus

Moshe Adler
When Pfizer Came to New London: Corporate Giveways vs. Eminent Domain

Jane Stillwater
My Jury Questionnaire: "Do You Agree that a Corporation is a Person?"

Omar Barghouti / Jacqueline Sfeir
Double Standards on S. Africa and Israel: an Open Letter to UNESCO

Christopher Brauchli
Target: Al Jazeera

John Pilger
The Fall of Saigon: 30 Years Later

Raúl Zibechi
Colombia: Militarism and Social Movements

David Krieger
Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement

Three Takes on Nepal

Surendra R. Devkota
Another Blow to the King of Nepal

Bhishma Karki
Nepal in Twilight

Joseph Pietri
Murder at the Palace

Ben Tripp
The Good Old Days

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Chief Running Late, Wuest, Albert and Collins

Website of the Weekend
O'Shaughnessy's: All About Medical Pot

 

 

March 4, 2005

Frederick Hudson
Caught in a Cage

 

March 3, 2005

Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"

Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions

Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?

Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again

Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?

Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness

Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists

John Ross
Mexico's Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist

 

March 2, 2005

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The "Noble Liars" Attack Syria

Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental Dissent

M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism

Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah

Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"

Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass

Jeffrey St. Clair
Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing

Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey

 

 

March 1, 2005

Scott Richard Lyons
Million Dollar Bigotry

David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions

Patrick Cockburn / David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled

Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security

Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince

Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam

Paul Craig Roberts
The Coming End of the American Superpower

Website of the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran

 

 

February 28, 2005

Gary Leupp
Year 4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?

Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers

Mickey Z.
The Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter Thompson and the "Right to Die"

Paul de Rooij
Why Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel

David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Maria Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars

Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge of Academia

Diana Johnstone
Censorship and the Empire

Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!

 

 

February 26 / 27, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
An American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence

Noam Chomsky
Nuclear Terror at Home

Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground

Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited

Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami Mafia

Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda

Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts

Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind

Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars

Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee

Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America

Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood

Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin

John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns

Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style

Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace

Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation

Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert

 

 

February 25, 2005

Roger Burbach
Murder in the Amazon

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making

Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats

Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party

John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians

Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil

Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs

David Smith-Ferri
When the Battlefield has No Borders

Website of the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D

 

February 24, 2005

Omar Waraich
The Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician

Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame & 30 Pieces of Silver

Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons

Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?

Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill

James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush

Diane Christian
Bad Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq

Website of the Day
The Gray Line

 

 

February 23, 2005

Werther
The Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq

W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground Rules

James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?

Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby

Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and Cops)

Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism

Alexander Cockburn
Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo

Website of the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?

 

February 22, 2005

Naseer Aruri
The Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East

Richard Manning
The Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan

William A. Cook
Righteous Racism Running Rampant

Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability

Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out

Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL

Kirkpatrick Sale
Imperial Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire

 

 

February 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson
"He Was A Crook"

John Ross
Mexico: the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq

Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did I Say It?

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to You by the US Navy

David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State

Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake

Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST

Michael Neumann
Strategies in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky

 

 

February 19 / 20, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"

Kathleen Christison
Struggling for Justice in Palestine

Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata

Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to Commit Suicide

Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues

Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior

Scott Richard Lyons
Ward Churchill and the Identity Police

Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage

George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in Oregon

Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels

Manuel Garc'a, Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War

Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?

John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past

Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?

Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal

Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark

Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard

CounterPunch News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland

Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller

Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin

 

February 18, 2005

Ben Moxham
In East Timor, the Nightmare Continues

Dave Lindorff
The Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte

Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery

Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy

Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads

Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward Churchill

Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?

Mickey Z.
"One Man Has Stopped Killing"

 

 

February 17, 2005

Joshua Frank
Hogtying of the Deaniacs

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media

Robert Fisk
Under the Shadow of Death in Lebanon

Christopher Brauchli
Where Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be Cannon Fodder?

Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions

Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples the Laws It Wrote"

Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill

 

 

February 16, 2005

Robert Fisk
Lebanon: a Battlefield for the Wars of Others

Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect Retirement

Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...

Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration

Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff

Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities in Texas

Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre

Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel

Website of the Day
The World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch

 

 

February 15, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
Dean a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch

Robert Fisk
The Killing of Mr. Lebanon

Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again"

Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal

Mickey Z.
Radio Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook

Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean

Nadia Martinez
Ending World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now

Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of Magical Thinking in Politics

Paul Craig Roberts
The American Job Sell Out

 

 

February 14, 2005

Robert Jensen
Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11

Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style

Patrick Cockburn
Outcome of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War

Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?

Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?

Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood

Elaine Cassel
The Lynne Stewart Verdict

 

February 12 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill's Genes

Saul Landau
Alarcon Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba

Paul Craig Roberts
Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself

Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All Major Roads into Baghdad

John Feffer
Bush v. N. Korea: Round Two

Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak

Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!

Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich

Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)

John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll

Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"

Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice

Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin

Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour

Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado

Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?

Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan

Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting

Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman

 

 

February 11, 20055

Manuel Garcia, Jr
The Eight Percent War

Kurt Nimmo
Ann Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need Him?

Dave Lindorff
Guckert or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In

Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott Abrams

Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz

Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion

Jennifer Van Bergen
Lynne Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All

 

 

February 10, 2005

Dave Lindorff
What Academic Freedom?

Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed

Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?

Suzan Mazur
More on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha

Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition

Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little Hope"

Greg Moses
Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

Website of the Day
The Missionary Positions

 

 

February 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Duck and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers

Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say

John Ross
Hecho en Mexico: the Iraqi Election

Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon

Conn Hallinan
The Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely Forbidden"

Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions

Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

 

 

February 8, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral Pact, Not a Party"

Brian Cloughley
Out of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"

Harry Browne
"Don't Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland

Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President and Ward Churchill

Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the Same Beast

Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper

David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq

 

 

February 7, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's War on Jobs

Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher Ed

Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill

Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill

Patrick Cockburn
The Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism

Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried

Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI

Tariq Ali
Imperial Delusions

 

 

 

February 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs

Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day

Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill

P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust

Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story

Pamela Olson
West Bank Story

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court

Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents

Robert Fisk
History by Laptop

David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome

Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada

Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love

Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life

Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside

Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy

Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the Game

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File

 

February 4, 2005

Brian Cloughley
The Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"

Bill Christison
Election Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?

Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft

Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal

Ron Jacobs
The Downward Spiral in Iraq

 

 

February 3, 2005

Ward Churchill
On the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions

Sharon Smith
Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support

Mickey Z.
Leslie Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?

Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union

Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan

Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq

Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence

Dave Lindorff
The Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies

 

 

February 2, 2005

David Domke / Kevin Coe
Bush's Brand of Christianity

Noam Chomsky
Iraq After the Elections

M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me in Its Crosshairs

Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen

Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean

Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT

Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn

Website of the Day
War is a Racket

 

 

February 1, 2005

Joshua L. Dratel
The Torture Memos

Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi

Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"

Uri Avnery
The Stalemate

Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal

Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel

Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades

Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
American Police State

Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 22, 2004

James Petras
An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia

Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel

Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge

Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column

Kathleen Christison
Imagining Palestine

Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos

 

 

December 21, 2004

Greg Moses
The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV

Dave Lindorff
Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish

Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk

Dragon Pierces Truth*
Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam

Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"

Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti

Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report

Paul Craig Roberts
America Locked Up: a System of Injustice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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March 11, 2005

Tel Aviv's Fears and Washington's Dollars

Making Levensraum in the Middle East

By RON JACOBS

If one examines the history of Israel, especially under Sharon, it is safe to state that their policy regarding the Palestinians is one where Israel draws so-called provisional security lines and the IDF is then deployed along them. These new lines always include land where Palestinians currently live and also lands occupied by settlers who took their property from Palestinians. Of course, the Israeli government always confirms its support for whatever US-sponsored peace plan is out there-plans that actually support the land theft that Tel Aviv desires.

[W]ithout consideration of "traditions" and prejudices, (our country) must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.-Mein Kampf

I use the word lebensraum with purpose. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a German word that literally translates to "living space" or "room to live," and was part of the program of Nazi Germany. Indeed, it was one Hitler's reasons for his war on much of the territory to Germany's east. However, its origins go deeper than Hitler's program for a thousand year reich. In fact, the desire for more lebensraum for the Germanic people was part of the reasoning behind the drive for the unification of the German provinces in the late 1800s. As the idea progressed, it became a codeword for German colonialism-an area where Germany lagged behind its European competitors-France, England, Spain. After the German defeat in World War I, the Nazi movement and Hitler o not only shifted the meaning of the word away from the colonization of non-European lands; he also added an element of racism (beyond that implicit in the idea of a German nation) to its definition. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler argued that Russia and the eastern lands were subservient to the Jewish people and should therefore be conquered by the German nation to create a unity between the German people and land that he believed should be German. After all, went his argument, just as it was "Impossible for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever."(Mein Kampf) So, to save Russia and the world from the Jews and make room for the German nation as he and many Germans saw it, Hitler began his war on Europe.

Ironically, Israel's actions and words are eerie echoes of Hitler's words regarding the Jews of Europe. In its pursuit of living space for the Jewish people, the Israeli project has always insisted that the Palestinians were incapable of ruling themselves and that the land where they lived was not really theirs. After all, goes the argument, Palestinians have no culture and they had no centralized government. Indeed, some of the more racist of Israel's supporters argue that the Palestinians are not even a people, just another bunch of "dirty Arabs." This logic provides Sharon and his supporters to conclude that it is their right to take Palestinian land, which they have done and will continue to do. History has taught the Sharons of the Jewish people a lesson, albeit the wrong one.

In addition, if one reads the above quote from Mein Kampf without locating it specifically to the Nazi project, they will hear the words of Ariel Sharon as he calls on Israelis and their supporters to support his expansionist drive and thereby prevent their country from "vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation." This fear is, in a nutshell, the reason most often given by rabid supporters of Israeli expansionism. Indeed, it may be the ultimate reason for their country's fall, as well. Unless, of course, they decide to drop their goal of a Greater Israel and begin to deal honestly with those whose lands they have taken and lives they have diminished. From the sound of Tel Aviv's most recent pronouncements demanding that Syria remove itself completely from Lebanon (a move that would benefit Israel more than any other country), it certainly doesn't seem like Sharon and company are considering any such move.

To expand on this theme of lebensraum, I borrow a thought from Neil Smith's latest book, The Endgame of Globalization (2005); wherein he explains the US drive for global domination in the past 60-odd years is nothing more than the economic version of this idea. If one understands capitalism and its need to continually expand, this explanation makes complete sense. After all, isn't that what imperialism (now globalization) truly is-the drive to continually increase the size of a nation's markets? Smith isn't the first to say this, of course, it's just that his book places this dynamic on top of the current situation. By doing so, he reduces the significance of the 9-11 attacks in terms of their world-changing character and places them in a more realistic role-an excuse for the corporate overseers to make endless war. The current wars are not just Bush's wars, insists Smith. They are a logical culmination of the neoliberal project of the past thirty years. Furthermore, this project is just the latest chapter in Washington's (and, in a lesser manner, London's) twentieth-century (now twenty-first) drive for complete domination of the world. It is a drive that is informed by John Locke's liberalism even more than by Hobbes conservatism-a liberalism that places the rights of property holders above the rights of all others. This is why Bill Clinton and George Bush both believe in the righteous power of the market-because it is the market that defines their worldview, not humanity. Neo-conservatism is just a more bullying form of neoliberalism. The rich get richer and the poor get more numerous under either regime.

It's not that the market is intentionally immoral. In fact, it is neither immoral nor moral-it is amoral. After all, it is a non-human entity and, despite US court decisions to the contrary, it is not a person and therefore does not have the same motivations as the humans who manipulate it for their own ends. This isn't to say that unfettered capitalism is a good thing, because its very nature insures inequality and injustice-monopolies tend to set up these types of realities. It is the humans who use the market that can either create a just dynamic or allow the inequalities inherent in monopoly capitalism to run their course and create a world like the one we live in today. It is the rest of humanity that can demand that the market operate according to our needs and not the needs of the market or the greed of those who profit from it.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu