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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! ISRAEL'S IRON HEEL It began when Harry Truman was in the White House. It has continued under every U.S. President since, and in this extended report we lay out the consequences of 60 years of brutal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Feroze Sidhwa details the human price of systematic, intentional destruction of the Palestinian social and economic fabric: physical and mental deterioration, traumatized youth, a savaged environment. Nancy Glass and Reem Salahi describe the Kafka-esque conditions in which Palestinian lawyers try to defend their people in Israel's courts. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Note: Thanks to a last minute surge of donations from CounterPunchers across the globe we met and surpassed the goal of our annual funding appeal. More than 2,000 CounterPunchers helped us raise $76,175! A heartful thanks to one and all! Remember, if you haven't yet donated, contributions to CounterPunch are tax deductible and CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents. Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories November 29, 2007 R. F. Blader The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe November 28, 2007 James Petras CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela Jeff Halper Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street Pam Martens Crashing Citigroup Peter Morici Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession Mohammed Khatib Separate and Unequal in Palestine Helen Redmond The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America William S. Lind In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm? Ben Tripp We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges Jeff Berg Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran Website of the Day The Lies of Joe Klein   November 27, 2007 Joe DeRaymond On the Road to the Torture School Paul Craig Roberts Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy Marjorie Cohn Remembering Victor Rabinowitz Mike Whitney A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp Ron Jacobs The Myths of Military Progress Col. Dan Smith The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work Ralph Nader Family Learning Karim Makdisi Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut Christopher Ketcham Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop Ronan Bennett Martin Amis Does a Coulter Website of the Day Celebrating the Uncensored Media   November 26, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Heading for Annapolis Paul Craig Roberts The End of All That David Macaray Enter Mediator Sameer Dossani Pakistan's Wounded Dictator Roger Burbach The Final Battle in Bolivia Mark Scaramella Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire Brian McKinlay Howard's End Rick Kuhn The Fall of a Racist Union Buster Binoy Kampmark Ruddslide and Dull Alec Monica Benderman What Do You Know of War? Brenda Norrell Return to Alcatraz Website of the Day Ghostworld by DJ Spooky   November 24 / 25, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD Robert Fisk Darkness Falls on the Middle East Saul Landau Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P. Jeffrey St. Clair Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism Rannie Amiri Beirut's Black Friday Christopher Brauchli Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace Daniel Gross The Gap and Black Friday Mike Whitney "A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions" Marjorie Cohn Iran and the 2008 Elections David Rosen Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans David Michael Green If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom .... Kenneth Rexroth When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan Muhammad Iqbal Trans. Shahid Alam Ghazal Website of the Day Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill November 23, 2007 Gary Leupp Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley Laura Carlsen Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP David Macaray Keeping Labor Unions Out Andy Worthington Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden Clifton Ross Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant Seth Sandronsky Battling Sodexho Dan Bacher Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation William A. Cook The Myth of Middle East Peace Website of the Day Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film   November 22, 2007 Alan Farago Who Lost America's Everglades? Greg Moses A Thanksgiving Basting Dave Lindorff Impeachment is Back on the Table Mike Ely Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving Omar Azfar Gore for President of Pakistan?   November 21, 2007 Vijay Prashad Our Dictator, Their Democracy Martha Rosenberg Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Epiphany on the Glacier John Ross The Last Days of Mexican Corn Brian McKenna Cancer Terrorists Unmasked Stephen Soldz Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo Monica Benderman Needing Peace Ben Terrall Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar Website of the Day Mercy for Animals   November 20, 2007 Oren Ben-Dor Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State Wajahat Ali An Interview with Norman Finkelstein Alan Farago The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty Marjorie Cohn Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool Ralph Nader Green is Gold? Andy Worthington Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged Tribunals Sara Olson When Going AWOL is the Only Escape Dave Lindorff Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence Paul Krassner The First Amendment, a Dialogue Website of the Day Joanne Mariner on Torture November 19, 2007 Winslow T. Wheeler Why Congress Won't Reform China Hand The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan Allan Nairn Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia Uri Avnery How to Get Out? David Macaray The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements Dave Lindorff Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008! Bill Quigley Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials Ron Jacobs Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie Sunsara Taylor Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs? Binoy Kampmark Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead! Heather Gray Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois Website of the Day The Meat Market     November 17 / 18, 2007 P. Sainath Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India David Rosen The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery Mike Whitney Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War? George Wuerthner Saving the Big Wild Brenda Norrell The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent George Ciccariello-Maher Of Submarines and Loose Screws Karim Makdisi Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread Marie Trigona Wal-Mart in Argentina Valerio Volpi The Catholic Church, Incorporated Fred Gardner The Straight-Ahead Runner Robert Fantina The White House Press Office Mike Ferner Thank God for the Senate Republicans! Missy Comley Beattie The Radical Majority Kenneth Couesbouc Circles of Power Patrick O'Hayer A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford   November 16, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War Dave Zirin The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System Gary D. Barnett A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent Alan Farago Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption Dave Lindorff Two Brothers and Two Scandals Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?" Robert Ovetz Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea Brenda Norrell "Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border David Swanson Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate Peter Letheby Outside the Box on the Great Plains Website of the Day Why Activism Fails   November 15, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair Hillary Clinton in Arkansas Adolfo Gilly The Spirit of Revolt Peter Bohmer 10 Days That Shook Olympia Andy Worthington The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier Gray / Derks Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups Liaquat Ali Khan Liberating Pakistan Dave Lindorff Where's the Party? Christopher Brauchli Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip Anthony Papa Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences Martha Rosenberg Merck's Big Write Off Ben Terrall Thank You, Ehren Watada Website of the Day On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies November 14, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Making of Hillary Clinton James Petras Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets Al Giordano Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50 Paul Craig Roberts The Lobby Andy Worthington Innocents and Foot Soldiers Stephen Lendman Torturing Palestinian Detainees Fatima Bhutto Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy Martin Smith Norman Mailer and the "Good War" Jeff Leys Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding Website of the Day Why the Writers are Striking November 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It Jeffrey St. Clair Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter Robert Bryce The Pakistan Fuel Connection David Macaray The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike Mike Whitney Bulletins from the Titanic Ralph Nader Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers Nikolas Kozloff Chavez Blasts the Spanish King Jordan Flaherty Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana B. R. Gowani Dear Mrs. Bhutto Website of the Day Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"   November 12, 2007 Vicente Navarro Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed Ben Brown Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father Omar K. A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency Sadia Abbas The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military Farzana Versey Mailer's Miasma Richard W. Behan The Political Crimes of Complicity Paul Krassner Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert! Cindy Sheehan Faith and War Peter Stone Brown The Return of Levon Helm Dave Lindorff Dennis, You are Not Alone Website of the Day Police Attack in Olympia   November 10 / 11, 2007 Alain Gresh Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard Mike Whitney For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street Ron Jacobs A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq Jeffrey St. Clair The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story Alan Farago Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism Binoy Kampmark When Language Drowns: Torture in America Robert Fantina Legitimizing Torture Fred Gardner Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values Ayesha Ijaz Khan The General in His Labyrinth Nicola Nasser NATO's Southward Drift Philip Rizk The Blame Game in Gaza Michael Dickinson Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins Joel S. Hirschhorn The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties Paul Krassner Flunking Out of the Electoral College Wadner Pierre / Joe Emersberger The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti   November 9, 2007 Patrick Cockburn In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK Mohammed Hanif Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle John Ross Blackwater Goes to Mexico Mike Whitney Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate Tom Barry In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy Corporate Crime Reporter Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care? Badruddin Khan Pakistan and the Israel Lobby David Macaray The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back Martha Rosenberg The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents Website of the Day Stryker Blockade!   November 8, 2007 Kathleen & Bill Christison Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine William Loren Katz Waterboarding in American History Mike Whitney The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes Sheldon Richman Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life Liaquat Ali Khan Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers Marc Gardner The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes) Jackie Corr The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker? Brenda Norrell Between Bombs and Border Walls Dave Lindorff Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times China Hand Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity Sen. Russ Feingold FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act Website of the Day The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez   November 7, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor? Vijay Prashad The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal Niranjan Ramakrishnan Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf Alan Farago To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse David Macaray The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker? Nikolas Kozloff The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey Charlotte Laws What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign Daniel White Zahid's Story William Cook The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby Website of the Day Safe Lawns   November 6, 2007 Mike Whitney Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution Ralph Nader Who Determines the Price of Oil? Andy Worthington The Torture of Ali al-Marri Pam Martens Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan's Dark Future William Schroder The Return of Water Torture Stephen Lendman Punishing Gaza William Blum Cuba and Original Sin Former US Intelligence Officers A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey   November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer David Macaray How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) Gary Leupp General Musharaff's "State of Emergency" Dave Lindorff Those Minot Nukes Ludwig Watzal Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Patrick Cockburn Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan Peter Stone Brown John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past Michael Simmons Yo! What Happened to Peace? Website of the Day Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students   November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 29, 2007 Fear, Aggression and Empire War on the Couch By STEPHEN SOLDZ The following is a transcript of an interview on the Pinky Show. Phone ringing. Soldz: Hi. Pinky: Hi, is this Dr. Stephen Soldz? Soldz: Yes it is. Pinky: Hi, this is Pinky... from the desert. Soldz: Hi, how you doing? Pinky: Um, fine thank you. Dr. Soldz, may I ask you some questions about psychoanalysis and fear and ... empire building and stuff? Soldz: Sure. Pinky: Okay ... Um, maybe first can you please tell me about psychoanalysis - like, what's it for? And what is the objective of therapy? Soldz: Well, psychoanalysis is based on the assumption that in addition to the things we're aware of that there's a lot of mental life that we're unaware of, you know, the concept of 'unconscious'. In particular, wishes and motives that we're unaware of because they conflict with other aspects of life - with reality, with the way we think we should be, and that these unconscious wishes and motives frequently get in the way of us having a enjoyable, meaningful life. So, the essence of analysis is to get people to talk and to try and find out why people are avoiding certain areas. Technically we call it resistance, but what it is that people are avoiding and why they are avoiding it, and to try and reduce this resistance to knowing yourself. So that people then develop greater flexibility and can live their life with less compulsion and a wider range of thoughts and feelings guiding them. So that is sort of the essence of what the process is about. Pinky: When people construct these kinds of - can I call them self-narratives? - if these narratives differ from outward 'reality' too much, is this merely annoying or can this be dangerous? Soldz: That's a good question. I mean, all of our self narratives, as you put it, differ from reality in various ways. None of us lives totally 'in reality'. So, but, if too much of it differs from... and especially the internal reality, for example, someone who thinks of themselves as only being a nice person who never gets angry, that can be very limiting. There are many things in the world that do get one angry and if one has to keep that out of awareness that one never gets angry, then it can express itself in various other ways that can cause problems. So no, it's not always a problem, but it often is. Pinky: In one of your talks, I heard you characterize America as suffering from a sort of 'social narcissism'. Can you please explain what you mean by this? Soldz: Well, I'm sort of using a metaphor from clinical narcissism, which involves a self-absorption, a general unawareness of other people. It's not that you don't know that there's physically another person and they, you know, they've got a different body and a different name, but you're not really aware that they're different than you, that they have different thoughts, different wishes. You think that they're just like you. You know, like a patient who says "I know what you're thinking!", and it's what they're thinking. It doesn't occur to them that you might be thinking something different than what they're thinking or you might have different feelings than them. So, in a clinical sense narcissism involves this sense that others are just like oneself, and therefore an unawareness of others as real, separate people. In some sense I think the United States suffers from this at a social level. We have this ideal that we're the best people on Earth. President Reagan described it as the, I think it was "the shining city on a hill" from the New Testament, you know, we're this beacon to the world and all and the rest of the world should just realize that and emulate us. They should aspire to have our cars, our political system, our Coca-Cola, and there's very little interest in or concern that different cultures have different values, different interests. You know: "Why are they so weird?". And I think that, you know, it's true of all countries to some degree, but I think the United States has been particularly true partly because we've been relatively isolated by the oceans and by being such a big country, you know we've had a huge influx of immigrants over the centuries. And we've been relatively spared from internal wars, at least since the Civil War, and... many Americans do not travel overseas, knowledge of foreign languages is like much lower than most other countries, at least most other industrial countries, and there's just a lack of curiosity about other people. I mean, the most extreme of this is our president, you know, I believe who just about never traveled outside of the country, he can barely stand to sleep in a bed different than his own, he needs a very controlled environment, and he just doesn't seem to be curious about anyone in the rest of the world. It never occurs to him that maybe Iraqis have different interests. Maybe they don't want what exactly what he thinks we want. But I think it's true of a lot of Americans in general. Pinky: Okay, so I assume that these kinds of problems are only compounded when the individual or the nation is very powerful, is that correct? Soldz: You probably can only keep it up either in isolation or when you're extremely powerful. You know, those at the bottom of the rung probably don't have the luxury of really believing that because they're constantly impinged upon by others. So, in that sense, I think you're probably right. Pinky: In one of your talks I was listening to, you cited a very interesting statistic re: trust in America. You said that from 1960 to 2000, the amount of people who would agree with the statement "Most people can be trusted" dropped from approximately 55% to 35%, and something like 25% among high school students. What's happening? Soldz: Well we seem to have a much more fearful society. Since 2001, we've seen the results of this, and the deliberate exploitation of it by certain politicians. But I think it's been true for a long time. There was this myth of this shining city on a hill that lasted through much of the Cold War to a great degree, and it got challenged. In the 60s, it got challenged by the Civil Rights Movement, by the social movements spawned in opposition to the Vietnam War. I know I'm of that generation. In the sense that our country was doing something pretty wrong in Vietnam. It was a pretty rude awakening for a lot of people. And, we've also had increased social tensions around the cities, and then, especially since around 1980, a large increase both in inequality, you know, it's now become accepted, but it's been true for a long time, there's been a large and growing gap between the upper few percent of the population and the majority of the population in income, in social power, which I think is probably almost as important as income. The institutions of popular power in the country have decreased, say, unions, neighborhood organizations, things that allowed ordinary people to exert influence over their lives have decreased radically. So there's much more of a sense of powerlessness, of being driven by external forces. To a large percentage of the population, there's a decline of security. We know that, for example, retirement, that there used to be a good number of jobs which had pension plans that were guaranteed pension plans, and you put in your 20 or 30 or whatever years and you were taken care of pretty well. And that's gone. Now we have a fractured.. you take care of yourself with a 401k that's never anywhere near equal to an old pension plan. You know, the social welfare net has been frayed in various ways, and people sense it. They don't have a good understanding of it but, there's in many ways people just feel afraid. Unfortunately, I think people often end up attributing it to sort of the wrong things. For a long while the danger was from poor people, and essentially black people, that was exploited. You know, the fear of crime. And I don't want to say that crime isn't a real problem, but we've noticed that as violent crime has declined for the last almost 15 years now, fear of crime has increased. The amount of crime and the danger doesn't reflect your fear of it. I mean, it partially has to do with the media, but it also partially has to do with there's a reflection of an overall sense of just 'Danger', of that things are not safe. And we focus on particular things like crime or most recently like terrorists in order to give some structure to this sense that something's not quite right, that things are getting worse. You know, we've seen in recent polls that there's a radical increase in the sense that the nation is going in the wrong direction, and that leads to this general sense, well, it's easier to find a scapegoat in some sense than to live with that uncertainty and fear. Pinky: So... into this era of instability and insecurity, from a psychoanalytic perspective, how does one control the population by manufacturing fear in the form of an external enemy? Soldz: Well, it seems the structure the way people think and in certain circumstances it pulls people together. You know, you think of WWII and the sense of the nation 'being together'. In recent years, is this odd quality. We have this external enemy which is of a very unfocused character, you know, terrorism, which is - "What in the world is terrorism? Where is it located? Who does it manifest?" The administration if they wanted to mobilize, and I'm sort of the opinion that they had at some level consciously or not that unconsciously were aware of creating a new enemy to replace the Cold War enemy. I remember watching Bush's speech after 9/11, his speech to Congress, and I was struck how he defined terrorism in very vague terms, so that the 'war on terrorism' could never be won. I mean, how can you win a war on a tactic? Terrorism has been around for thousands of years. There's no way you can win this war, so therefore, you know, he didn't define it in terms of Al-Qaeda or any particular enemy. And, I think it was deliberate, but we have this war combined with this sort of lack of a war footing in the country because I think that they guessed that they couldn't sustain it, that opposition to their policies would have increased a lot if they actually asked for sacrifice. So if I recall correctly, the same speech told people to go to the mall and go shopping in order to prevent some economic collapse. So you have this formless enemy. I mean, terrorism can be anywhere, can be anyone, and this sense that there's nothing concrete you're doing about it. This is in some sense the worst situation. If you remember you know you have these fears, go out and buy duct tape, and other nonsense like that that just leads to this increase in fear, but in a formless fear. It's not a fear of the Nazis which is much more concrete. So, it becomes our manifestation of all our worst fears, and it also becomes I think to some sense a manifestation of our guilt, that Americans in some sense know that we have this privileged status in the world, we use a far greater fraction of the resources of the world than our population, which suggests we should, and that it's built upon a world where other people have to be kept down if we're going to keep having these resources. So there is a real danger, and it gets focused but in it's undifferentiated way so that it doesn't work as well psychologically, as more traditional enemies, and I think it leads to greater anxiety. Pinky: Hmm, this is really interesting. It kind of sounds like, sort of, a cycle, like we're projecting ... Is that what you're talking about? Projection? Soldz: Yes, yeah, I'm talking about projection, trying not to use the technical word! [laugh] But yes, projection. And remember, projection is projecting what's in us. Which doesn't mean, you know, there's the old saying "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that someone's not out to get you" but, it's our own fears and our own hatred, you know, "it's not me who hate those other people for trying to get what I've taken from them or what I'm getting unfairly, but it's them who hate me" is the process of projection. And in fact, it goes to a further step, to what psychoanalysts now call 'projective identification'. Projective identification is where you project your feelings, wishes into another person and you then act in such a way as to get that person to enact it. So you act in such a way as to get the other person to give you grounds to be paranoid of them. You make them so uncomfortable, you know, "Why are you staring at me?" You say that and someone's likely to get hostile. Again these are somewhat metaphors. But in projective identification it's analogous to 'blowback' that Chalmers Johnson and others have talked about. We do things in such a way as to arouse others to take us on and to be a greater danger. I'm not trying to claim, I don't want to be misunderstood as saying that there aren't dangers, let's say Al-Qaeda, or certain Islamic extremists aren't potentially dangerous, but that we act in such a way as to magnify those dangers and increase them rather than to reduce them. Take the war in Iraq, which is you know, in every poll around the world has led to precipitous decline in respect for the United States. That can't be making us safer. Pinky: Okay, in terms of your work, how would you go about trying to help someone who's suffering from these kinds of mental projections, or narcissism? How do you help them to overcome this? Soldz: Well, that's a good question, and unfortunately it doesn't easily generalize to the social sphere. You know the first thing is you have to create a safe environment, and that's what we try and do in the office. One where a person can have any thought or feeling and not be afraid that's going to cause problems for them. So it's of course a gradual process. Then, you have to be not too challenging, you don't go telling people, "Hey, you're projecting! Why are you projecting on to me?" That doesn't usually work, that usually arouses greater defensiveness. So you accept whatever it is the person has to say, whatever it is they feel and at the same time you try not to be too alien to them, not to be so "good and understanding" that we increase the feelings a person has for themselves. And so then there's a gradual process of trying to get a person to put into words rather than act to experience. Because a lot of what people do is they act in order not to experience - in order not to feel angry, or not to feel ashamed, or not to feel terrified - they act. You know, it feels safer and more in control if I yell at you instead of having some feeling that I'm in danger or I don't understand what's going on. Or, I'm terrified of myself. It takes a long time for people to get to a point where they will admit that it's primarily themselves that they're most scared of - what they don't know, or what they think they shouldn't know about themselves that's most terrifying. I mean if you can accept that then you can deal better about the external world. Pinky: Hmm. I know you started out by saying that it's difficult to generalize these kinds of things to the social sphere, but are there maybe like, at least general patterns that psychiatrists can see that might help us to approach these kinds of problems at a societal or international scale? Soldz: Yeah, I mean we know some things and they're not profound. I wish I had the profound answers but I don't think anybody does. I think, you know, we psychoanalysts are just one small part of trying to piece together these issues. I don't want to foster the megalomania that any field has the answers to human problems. But we certainly know that belligerence is the opposite of understanding and it's not gonna lead to increased harmony. That you have to come to try and understand others and understand that they're different. Part of the problem that the Bush administration got into Iraq was that they had this image of Iraqis as children. I mean they wouldn't quite express it that way, but you know, there are phrases like "we have to help them grow up", "we have to educate them", "we have to teach them democracy" or whatever it is. And the problem is, Iraqis aren't children. They're grown ups. And they have their own wishes, their own fears, their own desires, and their own culture. And that psychological orientation, which is often been the one of colonialism, that the Natives are children who, you know, we need to be this paternalistic parent. It doesn't work very well, and in the modern world seems to work not at all. So ... I mean I don't know if we can generalize exactly from the consulting room, but we know that you have to develop a greater awareness of others, the ability to talk and to listen, and the acceptance, and this is for Americans a major major problem, the acceptance that our country, like all other countries, it's good and it's bad, and our motives are no less pure than any other countries' motives. This is something that Noam Chomsky has focused on a lot. You know, the myth of American exceptionalism, that the United States is somehow the only country in human history which only has pure motives. So for example, the history of the Vietnam War has been re-written in the school books and even in the newspapers and the press as one of American idealism that was sort of too idealistic and pure to deal with a dirty world. So we went in to bring democracy and all these good things to Vietnam and we couldn't really acknowledge that, you know, Vietnam was corrupt and had these dictators and things, but it was all the goodness of our motives, which is a total violation of history. The United State's motives were anything but pure and democracy was the last thing on the US agenda there as witnessed at the elections that were called for and a number of treaties were always cancelled under US pressure because the North Vietnamese would win them. And a similar thing in Iraq. There's this myth that the United States went into Iraq to bring democracy and yes, there's the language of democracy, but we know that in fact one of the first actions of Paul Bremer was to cancel local elections. And why did they cancel local elections? Because they didn't think that the pro-US factions who had been in exile, and didn't have local roots, they thought that they would lose. So democracy simply meant electing a pro-US government. So in that sense, one step is to become self-aware. To accept that the United States, no worse than any other country, but also not much different than other countries, has its own interests, and pursues them, and sometimes for good, and sometimes for ill, but unless we can recognize our own motives, how in the world are we gonna deal with other people with their complex motives? So that's one lesson we have there, and certainly an increased belligerence toward the world that we've seen in the last number of years is little question that leads to increased belligerence on the other side. You know there was the belief that the United States was so powerful with its shock and awe, that we could overwhelm any country, and we see how well that worked - this tiny little country of Iraq with about a twelfth our population and no military to speak of has defeated the United States military. So, at some point you have to come to terms and listen to others, which unfortunately we're not ready to do in Iraq. I mean, we still have Congress debate "What's the proper government for Iraq?" It doesn't occur to Congress that it's not for the United State's Congress or anyone in the United States to choose that. [laugh] You know, whether or not federalism is a good policy, I don't know, but that's for Iraqis to decide. It's not for the US Congress to adopt. And until the U.S. learns that lesson, it's not going to have much success. So I don't know if I've answered your question there or not because I think, you know, it takes psychoanalysis, it takes years for an individual. And I wish I knew what the analog at the social level is, but it's hard to do that, other than to know that some of what we need to accomplish is the same. Pinky: Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think that gives us something to think about because that's not the direction that public discourse is going over the last few years, to say the least. Soldz: Yeah, and unfortunately it's on all sides. I mean, all a politician has to say is "Why don't we try talking to Iran?" and they're in deep trouble. Pinky: Right. I was wondering if I could ask you this semi-personal question. Psychoanalysts are not popularly known as being very politically engaged. I mean, we don't generally see a ton of you guys on television protesting this or that. What has been the connection for you that's led you to be more public in your opposition to the so-called 'War on Terror', and to empire building in general? Soldz: Well let me say two things. One, I think your assumption is partly wrong. Psychoanalysis was born as a radical set of ideas. It was a great challenge to the status quo and in fact almost all of the early psychoanalysts were political radicals of one stripe or another. In pre-war Europe, it was often allied with various social movements. But when it came to the United States, what happened was that psychoanalysts came from Europe as the Nazis took over and in this country, they sort of gave up their radical beliefs partly out of fear I think, and partly out of the general processes that it were occurring in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and it became a much more sedate and established profession in this country. But that's not been its history everywhere and for example, in Latin America, there are long traditions of psychoanalysts working very closely with social movements in Argentina, in Nicaragua, in Brazil, and so in some sense the United States' form of psychoanalysis in its particular sort of social quietism is the exception, perhaps more than the rule. But even in this country, there's been an increasing number of psychoanalysts who are becoming more activist. There are a lot of people. It's not the dominant mainstream, but it's not a total excluded fringe either. So I think to some degree psychoanalysis gets a bad rap from some of the sort of Hollywood-ish stereotypes. For me personally, I mean, in fact, my history is sort of the other way. I was a political radical first from very early in my teens and the social movements of the 60s. Now that said, that was a long time ago and I have been less active over the decades. I have a family and you know, like many of us, we're raising kids, and doing this and that, but when the Iraq war came, my activism came out. I could not believe that at the end of the Cold War, we had an opportunity to try and create a more peaceful world, to try and reduce belligerence, to reduce the number of, or even eventually abolish the nuclear weapons in the world, and I couldn't believe that the country and the world were launching into another round of belligerence and warfare. That without without much thought, without much opposition, without anybody really discussing "Why are we doing this?" I don't mean "Why Iraq in particular?", but realizing the magnitude of what we gave up. By doing this we gave up the possibility for a long time of trying to find more peaceful solutions. And this is an enormous loss, as I think people are just starting to realize. And so, I could no longer remain quiet and so I thought, well, where's the place to start? Well you know there are all kinds of activists but why don't I start among my own? Among psychoanalysts and more recently among other psychologists, and try and get them more involved, and try and take some of the tools that we have because I think one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that we're all complex and that ambivalence is central to life, that no one is all good and probably no one or very few are all bad, that we all have anger, we all have destructive tendencies, and we all have constructive and loving tendencies, and the world has to accept that that's in all of us. And creating myths of us good, them bad is a recipe for failure as we've seen in the last ten years or so. Pinky: Well, thank you Dr. Soldz, this has been really helpful. Soldz: Well thank you, I appreciate it. Pinky: Okay, take care. Soldz: Okay, well thanks. Okay, bye bye. Pinky: Thank you. Take care. Oh! Bye bye. [ laughs ] That was Dr. Stephen Soldz, Director at the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis in Brookline, Massachusetts. Click here for an audio of this interview. Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. Your Ad Here

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