|
Today's
Stories
December 28,
2007
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
December
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
What's Really Happened During
the Surge?
Diana
Johnstone
The Next Kosovo War
Paul
Craig Roberts
It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution
David
Macaray
Impasse in Hollywood
Ralph
Nader
Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result
Martha
Rosenberg
No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers
Steve
Champion /
Anthony Ross
Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams
Kim
Nicolini
Tangled Up in Dylan
Michael
Dickinson
Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent
Website
of the Day
A Charming (and Worthy)
Pitch
December 10, 2007
Uri
Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us
Debbie
Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child
Porn
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left?
If So, What Can It Do?
Steve
Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness
Donna
J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution
December
8 / 9, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney
Brenda
Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists
Saul
Landau
The Ruins of Empire
R.
F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?
Ray
McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges
Allan
Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in
Indonesia
Linn
Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row
Paul
Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?
December
7, 2007
Sean
Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers
Arthur
Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert
M.
G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some
Thoughts on Race and Intelligence
Pam
Martens
Banksters Gone Wild
Alan
Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia?
Sprawl and the Credit Crisis
Allan
Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village
Col.
Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday
Alice
Slater
The Iran Opening
Robert
Weissman
The Story of Stuff
Website
of the Day
Something
About Mitt
December
5, 2007
Mike
Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin
Sharon
Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden
and the Dead End Democrats
James
Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath
Ron
Jacobs
The Iran Charade
Dave
Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor
John
V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose
Peter
Zinn
Covered in New Orleans
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead
Alan
Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida
Heather
Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics
Website
of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas
December
4, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in
Ann Arbor
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme
Court
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American
Dream
Ray
McGovern
No-Nuke Iran
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are
Too Small
Allan
Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just
Want Food"
Russell
Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian
Nikolas
Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American
Left
John
V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed
Ghada
Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?
Stephen
Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist
Involvement in Interrogations
Website
of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran
December
3, 2007
Tariq
Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum
Bill
Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor,
Tax Credits for Developers
Eric
Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History
Uri
Avnery
After Annapolis
Marjorie
Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed
Dave
Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet
Stephen
Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise
Martha
Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile
Website
of the Day
So Just Lead!
December
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift
in a Sea of Booze
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and
the Future of the Rocky Mountain West
Mike
Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir
Rosen
Shemon
Salam
A Visit From the FBI
Roger
Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia
Benjamin
Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia
Brian
M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to
the Surge?
Greg
Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story
Sonja
Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference
Saul
Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston
Margaret
Kimberley
Black America Left Behind
John
Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?
Reza
Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran
Judith
Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays
Lance
Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy
Christopher
Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots
Robert
Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony
Dan
Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island
Michael
Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency
Website
of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices
November
30, 2007
Peter
Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan
Wajahat
Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's
Former Minister of Information
Allan
Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers
Alan
Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash
John
Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution
Corporate
Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals
Lucia
Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future
James
Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle
Website
of the Day
Bio-Bling?
|
December
28, 2007
Lessons from the
Past
Creeping
Fascism
By RAY McGOVERN
Former
CIA analyst
"There are few things
as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those
like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany,
as if from a box at the theater ... Perhaps the only comparably
odd thing is the way that now, years later...."
These are the words of Sebastian Haffner
(pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin
during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand
account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999
and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines
Deutschen" (The Story of a German). The book became an
immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages-in
English as "Defying Hitler."
I recently learned from his
daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th
anniversary of Haffner's birth. She had seen an earlier article
in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to "write
some more about the book and the comparison to Bush's America...this
is almost unbelievable."
More about Haffner below.
Let's set the stage first by recapping some of what has been
going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the
Nazi ascendancy, noting how "odd" it is that the frontal
attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such "calm,
superior indifference."
Goebbels
Would be Proud
It has been two years since
top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of
us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had
been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants
required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
of 1978. The Times had learned of this well before the
election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to
suppress the damaging information.
In late fall 2005 when Times
correspondent James Risen's book, "State of War: the Secret
History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," revealing
the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times
publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate
no longer. It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen's
book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending
that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs'
trademark criterion: All The News That's Fit To Print.
(The Times' own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame,
branded the newspaper's explanation for the long delay in publishing
this story "woefully inadequate.")
When Sulzberger told his friends
in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing
in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling
session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain
to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The
truth would out; part of it, at least.
Glitches
There were some embarrassing
glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency
Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected
to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on
Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring
visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt (D-N.J.)
that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.
Still possessed of the quaint
notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed
to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering
letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16,
front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Bush
Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." But House Intelligence
Committee chair Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) apparently found Holt's
scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable
for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who
had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.
What followed struck me as
bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article,
the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably
impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance
was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against
President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other
articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in
the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Bush Takes
Frontal Approach
Far from expressing regret,
the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance
"more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks,"
and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:
"Leaders in Congress have
been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and
the activities conducted under it."
On Dec. 19, 2005 then-Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden
held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet
unnamed surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White
House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it,
choosing instead a "backdoor approach." He answered:
"We have had discussions
with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to
allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we
were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."
Hmm. Impossible? It strains
credulity that a program of the limited scope described would
be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just
passed the "Patriot Act" in record time. James Risen
has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: "In
October 2001 you could have set up guillotines on the public
streets of America." It was not difficult to infer that
the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness
that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn't have a prayer for
passage.
It turns out we didn't know
the half of it.
What To
Call These Activities
"Illegal Surveillance
Program" didn't seem quite right for White House purposes,
and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks. It took
six weeks to settle on "Terrorist Surveillance Program,"
with FOX News leading the way followed by the president himself.
This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president's rhetoric
on Dec. 17:
"In the weeks following
the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National
Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution,
to intercept the international communications of people with
known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations....
The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September
11 helped address that problem..."
And Gen. Michael Hayden, who
headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page,
dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006
confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his
soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop
on Americans without a court warrant. "I had to make this
personal decision in early Oct. 2001," said Hayden, "it
was a personal decision...I could not not do this."
Like so much else, it was all
because of 9/11. But we now know...
It Started
Seven Months Before 9/11
How many times have you heard
it? The mantra "after 9/11 everything changed" has
given absolution to all manner of sin.
We are understandably reluctant
to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us
negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary
Paul O'Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy
toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first
National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001. Should we
not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home, as well?
Reporting by the Rocky Mountain
News and court documents and testimony in a case involving Qwest
Communications strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden
saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to
suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you,
me, and other Americans. Bear in mind that this would have had
nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on
the new administration's radar screen until a week before 9/11,
despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved
extremely high priority.
So this until-recently-unknown
pre-9/11 facet of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program"
was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his
associates might be speaking. It had to do with us. We know
that the Democrats who were briefed on the "Terrorist Surveillance
Program" include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (the
one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee),
Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and former and current chairmen
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jay
Rockefeller (D-WVA). May one interpret their lack of public
comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11
as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?
It is an important question.
Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within
days of George W. Bush's first inauguration the NSA electronic
vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite
the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?
Are They
All Complicit?
And are Democratic leaders
about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications
corporations-AT&T and Verizon-who made millions by winking
at the law and the Constitution? (Qwest, to it's credit, heeded
the advice of its general counsel who said that what NSA wanted
done was clearly illegal.)
What's going on here? Have
congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately
the adjective "spineless" has come into vogue in describing
congressional Democrats-no offense to invertebrates.
Nazis and
Those Who Enable Them
You don't have to be a Nazi.
You can just be, well, a sheep.
In his journal Sebastian Haffner
decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness"
with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the
burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933.
Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances
"saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from
then on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened,
and one's desk might be broken into."
But it is for the cowardly
politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation.
Do you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of March 4,
1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered
only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery"
of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent
of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible
for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
"It is in the final analysis
only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact
that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of
cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."
The Social Democratic leaders
betrayed their followers-"for the most part decent, unimportant
individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June
the Social Democratic party was dissolved.
The middle-class Catholic party
Zentrum folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied
the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized"
Hitler's dictatorship.
As for the right-wing conservatives
and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner,
"what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle
their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward....
They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution
of Jews.... They were not even bothered when their own party
was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:
"There was not a single
example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There
was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions
were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves
without leaders...At the moment of truth, when other nations
rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively
and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered
a nervous breakdown.... The result is today the nightmare of
the rest of the world."
This is what can happen when
virtually all are intimidated.
Our Founding Fathers were not
oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:
"I believe there are more
instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual
and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and
sudden usurpations.... The means of defense against foreign danger
historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
We cannot say we weren't warned.
Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990
and Robert Gates' branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now
serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to Imperial
Crusades, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.
He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
This article appeared first
on Consortiumnews.com.
|
Now Available!
How the Press Led
the US into War
Buy End Times Now!
New From
CounterPunch Books
The Secret
Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
WINNER
OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!
Click Here to Buy!
Cassidy
on Tour
Click Here for Dates & Venues
"The Case Against
Israel"
Michael
Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Click Here to Buy!
Saul Landau's
Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
Click Here to Order!
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh
The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced
as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"
|
