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Hysteria, Exploitation and Witch Hunting In the Age of Internet Sex
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Today's Stories April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Fred Gardner David Orchard
Alan Maass Joe Bageant Robert Fantina Hanan Ashrawi Ron Jacobs Nicole Colson Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Harvey Wasserman Cindy Beringer Mike Roselle RAWA James McEnteer Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
the Day
April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Joshua Frank Lee Sustar Joseph Grosso Nirmal Ghosh Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Paul Rockwell Mario Joseph
and Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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April 30, 2007 Racaille, Religion and RepressionThe Three Rs of "Sarko the American"By DIANA JOHNSTONE Right-wing French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has built his political reputation on "getting tough with crime". Since crime is generally unpopular, that seems an unbeatable theme. But Sarkozy's approach to the problem is highly controversial in France, where it goes against established cultural norms in ways that can be called "American". This approach can be summed up by Sarko's "three Rs": racaille, religion and repression.
The word has stuck to him, and he accepts it as part of his political persona. His notorious use of the expression "racaille", best translated as "dregs", occurred on the very eve of the spectacular car-burning riots that brought world media attention to France's working class high-rise banlieues. On October 25, 2005, publicity-hungry Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's media event of the day was a visit to a high-rise neighborhood in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil, accompanied by police and a swarm of photographers. Some local youths shouted insults and lobbed a few plastic bottles in his direction. A woman leaned out of a nearby window and shouted at the Interior Minister, "when are you going to rid us of these racailles ?" Sarkozy shot back: "You want us to rid you of these racailles ? Very well, we're going to get rid of them for you!" Here Sarkozy was speaking the local language, using a descriptive term current in the youth culture itself. But use of the term racaille was widely considered unbecoming for a government minister. Worse, it was characteristic of Sarkozy's aggressive exploitation of social problems to project his own tough guy image. Although Sarko surely was not referring to all local youth as racailles -- on the same visit, he attempted to engage in dialogue with young residents -- the interpretation of the incident as indiscriminate served to bond local youth together against him--and against the police under his orders. It was blamed for helping to ignite the riots that inflamed the banlieues. In short, his spectacular approach was widely judged to be highly counterproductive. Another public light on Sarkozy's attitude toward delinquents was shed by an interview he gave to Michel Onfray, which appeared in the April edition of the magazine Philosophie. It may be that only in France could an interview in a philosophy magazine have an impact on a presidential election. In any case, this one did, and everyone knows someone who switched to the centrist candidate François Bayrou after reading or hearing about that interview. In their exchange, Onfray, currently France's most fashionable young philosopher, expressed the prevailing French left-wing view that "we are fashioned not by our genes, but by our environment, by the family and socio-historic conditions in which we evolve". Sarkozy replied: "I don't agree with you. I would tend, for my part, to think that a pedophile is born a pedophile ; and moreover, it is a problem that we do not know how to treat that pathology. There are 1,200 to 1,300 young people who commit suicide in France each year, and it is not because their parents didn't take proper care of them! But because they had a genetic frailty [] Circumstances are not responsible for everything, the share of the innate is immense." Now, in purely scientific terms, this polarization between innate and environmental determinism is mere loose talk. Both factors come into play, in proportions that are far from being understood. Of the two men, Onfray was the more extreme in his certainty. But it is Sarkozy who has responsibility in the real world. His opinion that pedophilia is genetically determined was especially shocking because of the way it fits his methods of combatting crime. If the "bad guys" are born that way, and circumstances don't matter, there is no point in trying to improve social conditions to prevent crime. The only thing to do is to catch the bad guys. And if there is to be prevention, it could take the form of "genetic profiling" of potential criminals to catch them before they do anything. Sarkozy has in the past suggested legislation to diagnose "behavioral disorders" in children as young as three. This raises fears that he would turn France into a police state, with files on the "genetically flawed". Such an approach to crime is consistent with a policy of cutting social spending and giving all power to financial capital in an unrestrained "free market" economy. Such an economy widens the gap between rich and poor, breaking down the social fabric while inciting desire for consumer goods. That is the economic policy advocated by Sarkozy.
A related area in which Sarkozy
is more American than French is religion. Sarkozy "the Hungarian-American"
seems to understand none of this. For Sarkozy, oblivious to theological complexities, "religion" boils down to "hope for survival after death", the "hope to have, after dying, a perspective of self-realization in eternity". By calling for "recognition of a universal right to hope", he transforms belief in life after death into a sort of "human right". (See Nicolas Sarkozy, La République, les religions, l'espérance, Le Cerf, Paris, 2006.) It is a right French people have not been clamoring for. A 1992 poll showed that 62 per cent of French did not belief in an afterlife. This includes a good number of professed Christians. But Sarkozy believes such a belief is good for people. Or to be more precise, he suggests that hope in an afterlife is good for people who don't have much to hope for in this one: "Throughout France, and above all in the banlieues where all sorts of despair are concentrated, it is altogether preferable that young people can have spiritual hope rather than to have in their heads, as sole 'religions', violence, drugs and money." Parenthetical remark: Sarkozy has also said that in a "meritocracy", " merit" must be rewarded by a lot of money, "otherwise, what's the point ?" Apparently, he can scarcely conceive of any motivation for doing a good job other than money. In his own milieu, that is. But for youth in the banlieues, a "religion of money" might lead to activities such as drug dealing. For them, it is better to place their hopes in an afterlife. And any afterlife will do. He sees this "hope" as the common denominator of all religions, at least the monotheistic ones, and dismisses the details separating them. He recommends a religious education of young people stressing "the convergence of religious messages" around the "spiritual fact: there exists a life after death, a sole and unique God, a meaning to history, a possibility of redemption, a natural morality common to all civilisations with reference to an absolute". Not averse to contradiction, Sarkozy also plays up to his conservative Catholic constituency by declaring his unflagging devotion to France's "2000 years of Christian heritage". As Interior Minister, Sarkozy promoted the institutionalization of Islam in France with the establishment of the French Council of the Muslim religion. Islam is now the second largest religion in France and requires recognition. But beyond that, Sarkozy clearly wants a watered-down, luke-warm Islam to provide the banlieues with moral policing. He seems quite unaware of the risks inherent in implicitly turning social problems over to religious institutions--risks of dividing society along ethnic-religious lines and undermining the rationalist values which alone are able to offer a solid common ground to a diverse society. "Pie in the sky when we die" seems to be the carrot of Sarkozy's "carrot and stick" approach to the social problems of ethnically mixed, depressed neighborhoods. As for the stick 3. Repression Nicolas Sarkozy's principal stock in trade is repression of crime. He claims to be the only one who can provide "security". However, the evidence indicates that his policies as Interior Minister have been counterproductive, raising the level of violence by needless provocation. The major proof of Sarkozy's failure is, of course, the banlieue riots of October-November 2005. It is remarkable that he has managed to continue as number one "champion of law and order" after that catastrophic failure, for which his own policies were largely responsible. A leading criminologist, Sebastian Roché, has carefully analysed both the riots and Sarkozy's police policies. (See Le Frisson de l'Emeute, Seuil, Paris, 2006.) The conclusions are clear--and confirmed by testimony from ordinary rank and file policemen and their largest trade union, Alliance. Sarkozy's repressive policies have exacerbated public hatred of the police and made their law enforcement job more difficult. There is a strong tradition on the French far left of hostility to "les flics" (the cops), who are associated with political repression and violence against innocent persons. During the Mitterrand presidency, police behavior actually improved considerably. The left initiated--too timidly, it seems--a policy of "proximity police", aimed at making the cop on the beat welcome in troubled neighborhoods. The right denounced these "proximity" police as softy social workers undermining the macho morale of the profession. Sarkozy's policy was to remove police commissariats from problem banlieues, and instead, when trouble was reported, to send in squads of combat police to round up suspects for questioning. Drug dealers were a prime target. Sarkozy's approach to crime is statistical. This fits his philosophy. If criminals are born not made, then they are going to commit crimes, and what matters is to catch them. Even more, it fits his public relations strategy. Police were given quotas of arrests and interrogations. The larger the numbers, the more vigorous the " war against crime". In short, Sarkozy abandoned certain banlieues to bands of minor delinquents, drug dealers and petty thieves (mainly stealing car radios and mobile phones), and then sent in police raids to catch them. Not knowing the neighborhoods, the police raiders got lost and arrested many of the wrong people. They took out their frustration by roughly treating the youth they questioned, especially those of African or North African background. The growing resentment was similar to the hostility that develops against a foreign invading army. Such was the background of the 2005 banlieue riots. Both left-wing and right-wing commentators have speculated on the causes based on their own wishes or prejudices. For the left, the sight of youths throwing projectiles at police and setting fire to cars conjured up visions of a new social revolution. For the right, the "barbarians" in the banlieue were probably Muslim fanatics, importing an "intifadah" into France. There is no solid evidence
for either of these hypotheses. The only serious studies carried
out indicate negative correlation between riot participation
and political conscience. The rioters themselves never developed
any political leaders or demands, and after roughly three weeks
of photogenic car bonfires, the riots petered out as weather
turned colder. The left and right ideological interpretations have both served to mask Sarkozy's responsibility and failure. And he has continued with the same policies. Police complain anonymously of the " quotas" of useless arrests they have to fill, whose only effect is to make themselves hated by the population. The statistics allow Sarko to claim that arrests have increased and crime has decreased. But experts point out that crime has remained relatively stable for a long time, and that if instances of reported theft have decreased, it is partly because manufacturers have made cars and car radios harder to steal. Meanwhile, gratuitous violence against persons has increased--symptomatic, perhaps, of the very sort of "every man for himself" society advocated by Sarkozy. Sarko's false security Human beings are fragile creatures whose need for security is real--both innate and learned. There are different kinds of security. The "hard right" represented by Sarkozy displays infinite concern for the security of victims, or potential victims, of crime. It has scant sympathy for victims of economic insecurity, who are admonished to "work harder and longer" -- even in times of job scarcity. Efforts to help those victims are denounced as undeserved "handouts". The left, on the contrary, is by definition sensitive to the need for economic security. However, as its political base moves up the socio-economic scale, it has shown little sensitivity to the complaints of people, especially older people, who live in neglected neighborhoods where their daily life is marred by fear of being harassed by petty delinquents. A reasonable policy is to respect the various dimensions of the legitimate need for security, and to seek realistic ways to improve them all. As for crime, some sort of repression is necessary once a crime is committed. But there is no evidence that repression can eliminate crime. Excessive repression may be counterproductive. The United States is vastly more repressive than France, and violent crime is far more prevalent. Causes of crime and ways to prevent it are complex and far from evident. But it is reasonable to start with measures designed to create a social environment of mutual respect and consideration, by means of education in the fullest sense, plus opportunities for active integration into the constructive life of society. A policy of enhancing economic security and social equality may be the best way to improve other aspects of security. The Sarkozy approach goes in the opposite direction. Diana Johnstone can be reached at dianajohnstone@compuserve.com
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The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn           CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
