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What You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter Blood Diamonds: the Inside Story An amazing expose by T.R. Naylor: How the "Blood" or "Conflict Diamonds" Myth peddled by NGOs Helped a Vicious Mining Company Shore Up Its Monopoly, Made a Pile of Money for A Washington Post Reporter and Leonardo di Caprio, Served As A Propaganda Myth in the "War on Terror" and had Nothing to Do With Osama Bin Laden. Pinochet is gone, and the world is a cleaner place. JoAnn Wypijewski recalls 1988 in Santiago, when Chile lost its fear. And yes, here they are in charge of Congress again, ready to facilitate a troop hike in Iraq. Alexander Cockburn re-introduces an old acquaintance: the Democrats--Party of War. Remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Get CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year

Today's Stories December 23 / 24, 2006 Marjorie Cohn What's Going On? December 22, 2006 David Rosen Bush's Foreign Sex Policy: Imperialism's Second Front Christopher Brauchli When the Secret is the Question: Secret Prisons, Top Secret Interrogations John Ross Flashlights in the Tunnel of Hate J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Political Sell-Outs in Black and White Rahul Mahajan Dennis Kucinich: Maverick or Stalking Horse? Arthur Neslen Provoking Civil War in the Occupied Territories Peter Rost, MD The Secrets of His Success: Fired Pfizer CEO Walks Away with $198 Million Website of the Day 10 Ways to Change the World in 2007 December 21, 2006 Rosa Mariam Elizalde An Interview with Gore Vidal: "I am Jealous of Cuba" Arundhati Roy Breaking the News Brian Cloughley Poppies Rising: Afghanistan's Drug Catastrophe Daniel White Jimmy Carter in Austin: Time to Come Clean on the Shoot Down of That Itavia DC-9 John V. Whitbeck On Israel's Right to Exist Sam Smith Still Smearing Ralph Nader for 2000 Paris Reidhead GM Ice Cream: Something's Fishy in Your Good Humor Bar Kevin Wehr Denying Disaster: Katrina and the Case for Impeachment Website of the Day Pesticides and Amphibians: a Vital New Database December 20, 2006 Gabriel Kolko Rumsfeld and the American Way of War Winslow T. Wheeler The Pentagon Measures the Chaos in Iraq Tariq Ali The War is Lost Saree Makdisi Israel, Apartheid and Jimmy Carter Bruce Jackson Saying "Oh!": John Mohawk and the Power to Make Peace Dave Lindorff Democrats Walk Into a Bush Trap on Iraq Leslie Radford The Winter Harvest of the South Central Farmers Dave Jansson Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Secessionists Confront the Empire Johnny Barber Jesus is a Terrorist Website of the Day Is It for Freedom? December 19, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Democrats Prepare to Fund Longer War Jonathan Cook End of the Strongmen Greg Moses Globalized Gulag: Palestinian Refugees and Children Held in Hutto, TX Jail Sean Penn Georgie, There's a Crowd Downstairs Dave Lindorff Innocents Abroad: Cracking Down on Gitmo Detainees Despite Overwhelming Evidence Most Are Not Terrorists Ralph Nader Going Postal Laura Carlsen Latin America's Pink Tide? Carlos Villarreal The Well is Poisoned: Victory Requires an Immediate Pull-Out Website of the Day Chuck Spinney on the Pentagon December 18, 2006 Luis J. Rodriguez En Lak Ech: Chicanos, Mayans and Mel Gibson Norman Solomon Washington Refuses to End the War: Powell, Baker, Hamilton--Thanks for Nothing! Uri Avnery Lebanon: War Without a Plan Ron Jacobs More Troops, More Body Bags Phil Gasper Afghanistan: Bush's Other War Unravels Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Iran's Elections: The World Isn't Florida and Bush Isn't Its Supreme Leader William Blum The United States of Punishment Jim Goodman So What's the Big Deal If Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake? James Brooks Talking Surge: Let's Kill Some More Before We Go Maria C. Khoury Walking Into the Art World: Designing a Palestinian Academy for the Arts Website of the Day Got Powell December 16 / 17, 2006 Weekend Edition Vijay Prashad A Perilous Way to Socialism Saul Landau Filming Fidel Anthony Arnove The US Occupation of Iraq: Act III of a Tragedy of Many Parts Paul Cantor The Puppet and the Puppeteer: Pinochet and Kissinger Annie Nocenti Baluchistan's Fight: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes Nicole Colson Hard Times on the Killing Floor: Smithfield's Rotten Record Stephen Gowans Tehran's Holocaust Conference Jordan Flaherty A Catastrophic Failure: Foundations, Nonprofits and the Second Looting of New Orleans Fred Gardner Dustin Costa Faces 15 to Life P. Sainath There's No Such Thing as a Free Cow Seth Sandronsky The Democrats and Social Security: Watch What the Party Says and Does Nadia Hijab An AIPAC Shot Across Baker's Bow? Deb Reich Dear Santa, (Or Someone): Greetings from the Occupied Holy Lands Susie Day Cops Shoot Another Rich White Man! Albert Wan Why Does It Take 50 Bullets? Missy Beattie Will the Next Leader Stand Up? Please! Martha Rosenberg Kicking the Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives Lee Ballinger The Devil's Highway: Clinton, Border Checkpoints and the Deaths of the Yuma 14 Michael Dickinson Kingdom of Fear Jeffrey St. Clair Live/Evil: Listening to Miles Davis Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford Website of the Weekend "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"   December 15, 2006 Eliza Ernshire Palestinian "Civil War" and the Israeli Chocolate Ration Virginia Tilley What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel? Mike Ferner Roll Call for the Choir: If They Vote for War, Occupy 'Em! John Ross Mad Mel's Mayan Apocalypse Fred Wilhelms The Flip Side of Ahmet Ertegun: Where Did You Get Those Shoes? Kevin Zeese Dennis Kucinich's Strange Mission: Can You Be a Real Anti-War Candidate in a Pro-War Party? David Severn Social Engineering Begins at Home: Jeffrey Skoll, Billionaire Philantropist Dave Lindorff Sen. Tim Johnson Death Watch: Senate Gridlock May Be Best Outcome Sunsara Taylor As American as Shopping and Torture Website of the Day June 2, 2004: When Iraq Was There For The Looting   December 14, 2006 Jonathan Cook The Recognition Trap Riz Khan An Interview with Jimmy Carter Jason Hribal Kasatka, the Sea World Orca Pennick / Gray The Plight of Black Farmers: Racism in the US Farm Program Richard Levins That Embezzled Anti-Castro Money Pat Williams The College Crisis: Universal Access, Student Loan Debts and Pell Grants Peter Rost, MD Simply Irresistible: Do Women Prefer Bad Boys? Website of the Day The Sound of Rummy   December 13, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Iraq is Beyond Repair Greg Moses The Dixie Chicks Come Home to Roost Elizabeth Schulte Hungry for the Holidays Joshua Frank Death By Coke Debra Eschmeyer Corporations Control Your Dinner Leon Hadar Baker's Rescue Mission: Too Little, Too Late Peter Rost, MD I've Been a Very Bad Boy Margaret Knapke Mow bé and Malachi, Presenté! Reza Fiyouzat Are Cows Free? Fred Wilhelms A Last Minute Appeal: If You Know One of These Musicians Let Them Know They Are Owed Money--By Friday! Website of the Day The Crimes of Augusto Pinochet December 12, 2006 Fernando A. Torres The Last Man of the Junta: an Open Letter to Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners Paul Craig Roberts America's Injustice System is Criminal Stephen Soldz Abusive Interrogations Uri Avnery Baker's Cake William S. Lind Knocking Opportunity: From Vulcans to Vultures in Iraq Missy Beattie Convicted for Our Convictions: Trespassing for Truth at the UN Dave Lindorff The 35-Year Long Scream: Torture, Impeachment and a Vietnam Vet's Tears George Pyle Our Perverse Farm Plan: Where Christmas Comes Every Five Years Norman Solomon Is the USA the Center of the World? Website of the Day Citizens' War Tribunal   December 11, 2006 Virginia Tilley Banning Mandela Roger Burbach The Condor Model: the Atrocities of Pinochet and the US Col. Douglas MacGregor There's Only One Option Left: Leave! Fawwas Traboulsi Lebanon on the Brink Ron Jacobs Death of a Pig: Poetic Justice for Pinochet Gideon Levy The Cruel Line into Gaza: Elbow to Elbow, Like Cattle Mary McGrane Burning Books at Harvard Law Bernardo Ruiz The Disappeared of Oaxaca: a Message from One of the Actors in Apocalypto Website of the Day La Cancion de la Unidad Video of the Day Killing Castro: Congresswoman as Contract Killer?   December 9 / 10, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn Liberal Consensus for More Troops in Iraq Sen. Gordon Smith Out of Iraq: Cut and Run or Cut and Walk Greg Grandin Jeane Kirkpatrick, Mid-Wife of the Neo-Cons Paul Craig Roberts How Many More Will Die for Bush's Ego? Col. Dan Smith The Vietnamization of Iraq: Inside the Military Training Program Ralph Nader The Man from NAM: John Engler's Trail of Destruction Behrooz Ghamari The Donkey and the Date: Iran's Upcoming Municipal Elections Rev. Willliam Alberts Doing Unto Others: Pastor Haggard and President Bush James T. Phillips The James Gang: "Did You Kill Her?" Bennis / Leaver A Bi-Partisan Occupation Dave Lindorff A Congress of Hucksters and Pipsqueaks Nikolas Kozloff Robert Gates and Venezuela: Another Saber Rattler in Latin America Seth Sandronsky Activating White Racism Lucinda Marshall McKinney and Karpinsky: Silenced for Telling the Truth Mike Whitney Something's Gotta Give: James Baker vs. the Lobby John V. Whitbeck Recommendation No. 80 Faisal Kutty Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Merely a Western Construct? Hugh Sansom Smearing Jimmy Carter: an Open Letter to the New York Times Robert Gold My South American Journey: Impunity in Colombia Boots Riley Crash and Burn: an Urgent Message from The Coup Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel & Buknatski Website of the Weekend Alive in Mexico December 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn The Iraq Study Group's Cautious Appraisal Leutisha Stills Just How Progressive is the Congressional Black Caucus? Norman Finkelstein The Media Lynching of Jimmy Carter Will Youmans Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington: Brookings Hosts an Ethnic Cleanser Peter Rost, MD What Went Wrong at Pfizer? Jonathan Demme My Friend Bruce Langhorne: a Great Musician Needs Your Help! Ray McGovern Senate Democrats Give Gates a Free Pass Lucinda Marshall What She Wore Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn The Lost John Lennon Interview Website of the Day John Lennon's FBI Files   December 7, 2006 Alex Friedman Rev. Phelps' Hate-Fueled Fanatics Find a Home in the Kansas Prison Industry Maureen Webb Risk Scoring and the National Insecurity State Paul Craig Roberts Catastrophe Still Awaits Dave Lindorff Prosecutor Admits: Mumia Abu-Jamal Had "No True Defense" Matt Vidal Drug Pushers, Inc.: Power and Profit in the Legal Drug Trade Yifat Susskind Looking for a Few Good Principles: What Should be Done in Iraq Rodriguez / Jones NYPD's Death Squads: From Diallo to Sean Bell Website of the Day 2006, Remixed December 6, 2006 Robert Bryce Omitting the Obvious with James Baker: From the S&L Crisis to the Iraq Study Group William S. Lind The Boomerang Effect: When Will the First IED Strike Cincy? Zoe Blunt The Clearcut Truth About the Great Bear Rainforest Corporate Crime Reporter The New Conventional Wisdom: Prosecute Individuals, Not Corporations Amira Hass A Regrettable Indifference: Israel's Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners Richard W. Behan The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War Sophie McNeill Why Hezbollah is Broadcasting Sunday Mass December 5, 2006 Virginia Tilley Apartheid Israel: a Beacon of Hope? Sharon Smith The New Washington Consensus: Blame the Victims in Iraq Joe Bageant Somewhere a Banker Smiles Ron Jacobs A War Washington Can't Win Norman Solomon Media Consensus, Stay in Iraq! Mike Whitney Rumsfeld's Final Snowflake: "I Was Just About to Change Everything ... " Derrick O'Keefe Regimes Unchanged: Chavez's Victory Strengthen's Cuba Julian Assange The Road to Hanoi Missy Beattie Bush, the Unhappy Helmsman Website of the Day Lessons of Suez and Iraq   December 4, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Gaza and Darfur George Ciccariello-Maher Tears of the Escualidos: Election Diary, Venezuela Ray McGovern Lame Ducks, Hold That Nomination!: a CIA Insider's Take on Gates John Ross Repression on the Menu in Mexico Walden Bello Hurricane Milton: Friedman, Bayonets and Markets Peter Rost, MD Pfizer's Clueless Executives Stephen Lendman The Withering of the Bush Dynasty Gideon Levy This Ceasefire will Go Up in Flames Website of the Day The "Babes" of Hizbullah?   December 2 / 3, 2006 Weekend Edition Barucha Calamity Peller The Dirty War of Oaxaca Paul Craig Roberts Is Bush Sane?: When Denial Goes Pathological Ralph Nader The Big Boys of Financial Crime Winslow T. Wheeler Committee of Enablers: Is Gates Fit to Serve? Are the Senators? Amira Hass The Checkpoint Generation Maymanah Farhat Depoliticizing Arab Art: Christie's and the Rush to "Discover" the Arab World Dave Lindorff Fighting the Iraq War--At Home Fred Gardner Dr. Jimenez Defends His Practice Methods Col. Dan Smith The Semantics of Civil War Raed Jarrar Maliki's Monopoly of Power Seth Sandronsky US Prison Nation: Locking Up Surplus Labor K.-Y. Taylor The Bride Wore Black: the Shooting of Sean Bell and the Resurgence of American Racism Yifat Susskind Greed, Dogma and AIDS David Rosen Made in China: the Global Trade in Sex Toys Ron Jacobs All Hands on Deck!: the New Pirates of the Caribbean Nikolas Kozloff Venezuela Prepares to Vote Talli Nauman Fighting La Choya: the Secret Toxic Dump on the Border Alan Gregory Shadow Trout: Why Hatchery Fish Aren't Real Joe Allen RFK and Hollywood Mythmaking: Emilio Estevez's Beatification of Bobby Kennedy St. Clair / D'Antoni Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Davies, Engel, Ford and Orloski Website of the Day Demo for Oaxaca   December 1, 2006 Greg Grandin Midnight in Mexico: Calderón's Inauguration Behind Closed Doors Linn Washington, Jr. The Mumia Case After 25 Years: Still More Keystone Kops Antics George Ciccariello-Maher Sleeping with the Enemy: At Home with the Anti-Chavistas Brian J. Foley Taking Responsibility for Iraq Dave Zirin Rebel Athletes: Organizing the Jocks for Justice Joshua Frank The Montana Formula: Jon Tester's Neopopulism Chris Floyd Hideous Kinky: Thomas Friedman Comes Undone Ingmar Lee Atomic Porker Strikes Indian Point Nuke Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Dark Fire: the Fall of WTC 7 Website of the Day No Gun Ri Revisited Video of the Day Drunken Hack Goes Ape at Aussie "Pulitzers" November 30, 2006 Jonathan Cook Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance Tariq Ali Axis of Hope: Venezuela and the Bolivarian Dream Winslow T. Wheeler Confirmation Hearings as Kabuki Dance Manuel Garcia, Jr Heat and Steel: the Thermodynamics of 9/11 William S. Lind More Troops Into a Lost War? Ray McGovern Gates is Rumsfeld Lite Fidel Castro "It is Our Duty to Save Our Species" Agustin Velloso Equatorial Guinea: So Close to the West, So Far From Democracy CP News Service The Arrest of Gerardo Bonilla: Muralist Among Oaxaca's Disappeared Website of the Day The Life and Times of H-Bomb Ferguson November 29, 2006 Glen Ford Barack Obama and the Winds of War Chris Sands Blood, Snow and NATO: the Latvian Summit Viewed from Afghanistan Rochelle Gause Dispatch from Oaxaca: Where Murderers Still Stalk the Streets, Protected by Police Manuel Garcia, Jr. The Physics of 9/11 Norman Finkelstein HRW's Shameful Press Release on Palestine Peter Rost, MD Pfizer's Shell Game: the Contraction Begins Gary Leupp CIA Report: No Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program Joe DeRaymond From Norman Morrison to Malachai Ritscher: Self-Immolation as Anti-War Protest Christopher Fons Prostituting Democracy: History, Latvia and Bush's Night on the Town in Riga Sibel Edmonds Auctioning Off Former Statesmen and Dime-a-Dozen Generals Website of the Day Bombing a Mosque   November 28, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Iraq Nears the "Saigon Moment" Winslow T. Wheeler SASC-ing Robert Gates Michael Ratner The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld: a Q&A John Ross The War on Rebel Journalists Molly Secours Racism Kills: From Michael Richards to the NYPD Peter Rost, MD Big Pharma and "the Pill": Profits, Branding and Experimentation on Women Lucinda Marshall War Chic Website of the Day "Action" in Iraq   November 27, 2006 Kathleen and Bill Christison Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians: Does It Matter What You Call It? Uri Avnery An Evening in Jounieh Nikolas Kozloff The Rise of Rafael Correa: Ecuador and the Contradictions of Chavismo Michael Donnelly Freedom Air: Keeping the Skies Safe from Nipples and Muslims Ben Terrall / John Miller Bush's Big Indonesian Photo-Op Robert Jensen Digging In and Digging Deep Sol Littman Missing Canada's Health Care System in Tucson Website of the Day State Minimum Wages: a Policy That Works   November 25 / 26, 2006 Gabriel Kolko Factors in Our Colossal Mess Saul Landau Republic of the Repressed William Blum New Congress, Same Quagmire Ralph Nader The Trouble with the Bubble Fred Gardner The War on Us: Another 1.9 Million Victims Daniel Wolff Return to District 8, New Orleans M. Shahid Alam Pitting the West Against Islam James J. Brittain Censorship in Colombia: the Arrest of Freddie Muñoz George Ciccariello-Maher Contingency and Counter-Contingency in Venezuela Aseem Shrivastava India on 20 Cents a Day Seth Sandronsky The Washington Post's War on Social Security Julian Assange The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism Christopher Brauchli The Rout and the Honeymoon: In and Out of Bed with Bush Michele Naar-Obed A Letter to the Judge Who Sentenced My Husband to Federal Prison for Protesting Nuclear Weapons Ramzy Baroud Reclaiming America Christiane Passevant / Larry Portis Women in the Israeli Army: Two New Films Adam Engel Striving of His Day-Days: a Prose Poem Jeffrey St. Clair / David Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Davies, Gibbons, Louise, Buknatski, Orloski Website of the Weekend The Black Agenda   November 24, 2006 Charles Glass How to Let Lebanon Live Gideon Levy A Prayer in Paradise Jonathan Cook Syria as Fallguy Ron Jacobs Build a Fire on Main Street: Stop the War, Now! Brian McKenna Native Resurgence Spurs Hope: Giving Thanks to America's Indians Kim Ives The UN Fails Haiti, Again   November 23, 2006 Alexander Cockburn The Democrats and the Slaughterhouse November 22, 2006 Kathleen Christison The Massacre at Beit Hanoun Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Lone Victory: Defeating the Bill of Rights Mike Roselle Green Muscle on Election Day: Now is the Time for Boldness Dave Lindorff The First Task of the New Congress Greg Moses Up From Chiapas: Giving Thanks to Women's Revolution Dave Zirin Born Under Punches: the Pimping of Mike Tyson Nadia Martinez Dealing with Ortega Sherwood Ross Why the World Needs Trade Unions Now More Than Ever David Kalbfeisch I Am A Navy Veteran Against Wars Gilad Atzmon Palestinian Solidarity in a Time of Massacres Website of the Day Sorry, Charlie: No Draft   November 21, 2006 Robert Bryce The Ongoing Myth of Energy Independence John V. Walsh Spoilers of the World Unite! Luis Hernandez Navarro Lessons from the Teachers of Oaxaca Kevin Zeese An Interview with Michael Isikoff on Iraq Peter Rost, MD Rules of the Game: How Big Corporations Avoid Paying Their Taxes Evelyn Pringle Drug Your Fetus: How Big Pharma Hits on Pregnant Women Roger Morris Reason in an Age of Folly (and Felony) Don Monkerud Here Come the Democrats ... So? Website of the Day The Grind   November 20, 2006 David H. Price American Anthropologists Stand Up Against Torture and the Occupation of Iraq Col. Dan Smith Usurpation of Power Katherine Hughes Compassion on Trial in War on Terror: Muslim Charities and the Case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir Dave Himmelstein Ziodammerung: Netanyahu and the End Times Robert Jensen Opportunities Lost Joe Mowrey America's Progressive Nightmare: Here Come the Armani Democrats Mike Whitney Housing Bubble Smack Down: Alan Greenspan, Homewrecker Carl N. McDaniel Living Within Limits Robert Fisk Shia Walk Ramzy Baroud Killing Hope in Beit Hanoun Website of the Day Iraq: the Hidden Story   November 18 / 19, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn Top Dems to Voters: "Shut Up! We've Got a War to Run!" Ralph Nader The Hole in Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Lost the Senate Barucha Calamity Peller Who Will Live on in the Oaxaca Uprising? John Ross Halliburton Wrecks Mexico Dave Lindorff The Albatross: Why the Democrats Should Cut Loose Joe Lieberman Fred Gardner The Adverse Effects of Marijuana: California Medical Survey Ron Jacobs Back in the Aether Again: Thomas Pynchon's Stunning Return Larry Portis The Songs of Basilio Martin Patino: Father of the New Spanish Cinema Frida Berrigan The Weapons Bonanza: a Perfect Storm of Profit Wes Enzinna Ghosts of Dictatorships Past: the School of the America's and Memory in Latin America Elizabeth Schulte The Fall of Donald Rumsfeld: Architect of a Disaster Peter Rost, MD The Credit Card Trap Martha Rosenberg We're Drinking What? Milk, rBST and Monsanto's Rats Seth Sandronsky University Unity: California's Professors and Students Unite Missy Beattie Explore This! Adam Engel Data Days Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Newberry and Curtis Website of the Weekend A Modest Proposal for the Art World   November 17, 2006 Greg Grandin The Road from Serfdom: Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire Joseph Massad Pinochet in Palestine: Fateh's Unholy Alliance Kevin Zeese George McGovern's Return to Capitol Hill: "A Down-to-Earth Disengagement Plan" Gideon Levy After the Rain of Death Bill Quigley WMDs Protected!: Blood-Pouring Anti-Nuke Clowns Sent to Prison David Swanson Last Chance for the Democrats?: a Tale of Two Conyers Sherry Wolf Gay Rights: When Will the US Catch Up with Africa? Jerry Beisler What James Webb Knows Website of the Day Thanks for the False Memories!   November 16, 2006 Kathy Kelly Sources of Violence Col. Douglas MacGregor Was It Only Rumsfeld? Norman Solomon Operation Last Resort: the Media Offensive to Prolong the Iraq War Nikki Thanos From Oaxaca to Portland Cindy Sheehan Impeachment Proceedings Lena Khalaf Tuffaha Jimmy Carter and the "A" Word: Will the Democrats Listen to Carter on Palestine? Gloria La Riva Where is the Justice? Anti-Castro Terrorist Gets Only 4 Years Pat Williams How the Democrats Won the West Kerry Joyce From Rummy to Rahmmy: Bob Novak's New Source CP News Service Wal-Mart Charged with Selling Non-Organic Food as "Organic" David Letterman Top 10 Slogans for Wal-Mart Wine James Ridgeway Did Robert Gates' Planning Help Bring Black Hawk Down? Website of the Day A Conversation with West Point Grads Against the War   November 15, 2006 Jennifer Loewenstein Alice in Erez: the Gaza Crossing David Rosen Rev. Ted Haggard and the Eclipse of Evangelical Fury Ashley Smith A Socialist in the Senate? Landau / Hassen Talking Tough on Iraq Isn't Courageous Walden Bello Iraq After November 7: New Challenges for the AntiWar Movement Sibel Edmonds The Highjacking of a Nation Austin / Bernstein Why Bill Cosby is Wrong to Link Black Culture to Economic Decline Yitzhak Laor This Merchandise, Security James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: a Brief Argument Why Gail Dines "Borat": It's a Guy Thing Website of the Day Kakistocracy November 14, 2006 Werther Beltway Bromo-Seltzer: a Sneak Peak at the Baker Report Ray McGovern Benching Scowcroft John Walsh Korea, Vietnam and Iraq Syndrome: Alive, Well and Gaining Strength David MacMichael Gates to the Pentagon William S. Lind Lose a War, Lose an Election Sharon Smith Democrats, Born to Compromise Laura Carlsen Oaxaca Fights Back Ron Jacobs The Perishing Republic Peter Rost, MD Whistleblowers: Who Are They? Carol Norris Post-Campaign Ad Stress Disorder? Website of the Day A Map of the US Nuclear Arsenal     November 13, 2006 Kathleen and Bill Christison Screw the Palestinians, Full Steam Ahead Bill Quigley Robin Hood in Reverse: the Corporate Looting of the Gulf Coast Paul Craig Roberts The Democrats and Civil Liberties: Will They Turn a Blind Eye? Uri Avnery Call It What It Is: a Massacre! Joe DeRaymond The Strange Return of Daniel Ortega Norman Finkelstein Jimmy Carter's Roadmap Col. Dan Smith The Pentagon's Revolving Gates: Out with the Old, In with the Old Shepherd Bliss After the Party Dave Lindorff What Vote-Theft Conspiracy? Missy Beattie For Better / For Worse: Will Laura Stay the Course? Trenticosta / Fleming Vindication for the Angola 3       Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition December 23 / 24, 2006 Lessons from the Holocaust Ways of Denial By AZMI BISHARA The Nazi Holocaust aimed to rid Europe of its "Jewish taint". By this was meant banking capital as opposed to industrial capital and the moral degeneracy, lack of patriotism, scorn for national values, heritage and other such ills caused by the "worm" that ate away at all that was noble and pure in the Germanic people. That worm was the racial strain that never belonged, that was intrinsically alien and that nevertheless insisted on remaining in order to wreak its pollution; it was European Jewry and its various manifestations including capitalism, communism and liberalism, and its mere presence, according to this diabolical system of thought, that were a scourge to racial purity. Late capitalism, as forcefully imposed by the centralised bureaucratic state, converged with a fanatical and rabidly xenophobic and very ideological late nationalism of the "vesrspaeteten Nationen" with a history of religious anti-Semitism dating back to the Middle Ages and the crusader expeditions that attacked Jewish villages in central Europe en route to Palestine, a religious exclusionism that targeted both Muslims and Jews in Andalusian Spain and that shaped part of European identity in terms of both an external determinant -- the Muslims -- and an internal determinant -- the Jews. But the Nazis' obsession with the annihilation of the Jews was also fired by an ideology that incorporated totalitarian social engineering, founded upon social Darwinism and assorted recent biological discoveries that were applied to human beings, together with a populist romantic socialism that was hostile to communism, democratic socialism and liberalism, all regarded as alien to the "Volksgeist", "the spirit of the people". This form of pseudo-scientifically justified and coldly carried out mass extermination would not have been possible without a strong ability to compartmentalise between the bureaucratic functionary and the duty to obey orders, on the one hand, and the individual and his private moral sphere on the other, a phenomenon that is one of the characteristics of the modern state apparatus. Nor would it have been possible without all the business of documentation, recording and archiving, which is also a characteristic of the modern state. The irony of all this pseudo-scientific human taxonomy and the obsessive documentation of the names, addresses, confiscated possessions and physical details of the people who were rounded up and freighted to the concentration camps and from there to the gas chambers is that this paperwork has become the most important primary historical source for the Holocaust and the most important instrument with which to refute the claims of those who deny it occurred or belittle its magnitude. It is not so much the sheer numbers of victims that distinguishes the Holocaust. As unique as it was in the 20th century, millions of native inhabitants were exterminated en masse in the Americas over the course of previous centuries. Nor is it just a question of scale: many more millions died in the course of World War II, alone, than in the Nazi gas chambers and these included Russians, Germans, Poles, French, Italians and many other nationalities. The true horror of the Holocaust resides not only in the deliberate singling out of entire peoples -- Jews and Gypsies -- for extermination and in the scale of this crime, but also in the totality of the target and the "rational" way in which it was carried out. Jews were snatched from their homes amid the general silence of their neighbours, a silence interspersed by hatemongering by anti-Semitic groups and by the active complicity of informers. Most of the Jews who died in the concentration camps were not Zionists; in fact, many may not have even heard of Zionism. Moreover, the role of the Zionist movement in saving Jews, or in conspiring with the Nazis, was very marginal, regardless of the number of studies that have been produced on both cases and regardless of the fact that most of their findings have been corroborated. Zionism did, indeed, have two faces; it was the perspectives and aims of the researchers that were and remain at odds. The Zionist movement began, and had set its sights on Palestine, long before the Holocaust. Zionists only used the Holocaust to justify their national project in hindsight, even if that justification is what drove some Arabs to deny the existence of the Holocaust. Yet, while there are people who have felt that by minimising or even refuting the Holocaust they undermine Jewish claims to a state in Palestine, the majority of educated and informed Arab opinion has never denied the Holocaust or the existence of anti-Semitism in Europe. Rather, they have argued -- correctly -- that since this horror took place in Europe the Palestinians should not have to pay the price. Although it vaguely existed as a blend between the residue of a religious culture and extremist nationalist ideas imported from Europe even in early stages, anti-Semitism in the sense of hostility towards the Jews only began to spread significantly in the Arab world in the form of cultural and intellectual output after 1967. Clearly, the rise of this phenomenon coincided with the rise of a metaphysical attitude that sought to explain the overwhelming Arab defeat of that year in terms of the confrontation with an absolute evil bent on a global conspiracy of the nature of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which has been proven to be an invention of the Russian secret service at the end of the 19th century but which nevertheless found many gullible ears in the Arab world in the wake of the 1967 defeat. Holocaust denial similarly emerged during this period and in the same spirit of a fantastic conspiracy theory that ascribed to an international Jewish cabal the power to invent and dupe the entire world into believing a stupendous set of lies. I would like to suggest that there are two types of Holocaust denial. One, espoused by elements of the European traditional right and neo-ultra right, is to deny it happened. This form has not acquired sufficient roots to become a determinant of the behaviour of nations and societies. The other form of denial is to ignore that the Holocaust occurred within a particular historic context and, hence, to deal with it as some fiendish aberration that somehow occurred outside the bounds of time and place. One major consequence of this approach is that it inhibits the study of the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon and as a sobering primer on the dangers of racism, extremist nationalist chauvinism and totalitarian social engineering in modern mass societies. But Holocaust denial can assume another face, which is to reduce it to an instrument for realising political ends. The Zionist movement has excelled in this, its rituals and rhetoric in commemoration of Holocaust victims far outstripping its concern for the victims and its activities to combat the phenomenon when it occurred. In fact, the subject was not even on the agenda of the Jewish organised community, the "Yeshov", in mandate Palestine during the war years and many Zionists at the time found it embarrassing to hear of Jews being dragged off to be slaughtered without putting up a resistance; it conflicted with the nationalist fighting spirit and the image of the new man they were trying to inculcate. It was not until the Eichmann trial that the embarrassed silence was broken and emotions suddenly gushed out. In the course of Zionism's attempts to portray the history of the entire Jewish people as one uninterrupted stream of oppression and persecution that culminated inevitably in the Holocaust, Holocaust history has been transformed into an exclusively Israeli property. Victims of the Nazi gas chambers have been nationalised and converted, in spite of themselves, either into an episode in the Zionist struggle to create a state or into an instrument for blackmailing others into supporting Zionist aims or for justifying the crimes the Zionist state perpetrates against others. It is as though the magnitude of the crime entitles Israel to play the victim par excellence or the victims' sole proxy, placing it beyond accusations of wrongdoing because it is the victim by definition. The Zionist casting of all Jews as victims of Nazi atrocities has given rise to two curious phenomena. The first is that any Israeli can speak and act as the victim even if he has more in common ideologically and psychologically with the offender or the "Capo" -- the Jews who cooperated with the Nazis in the concentration camps. In other words, the mere fact of being born to a Jewish mother somehow gives licence to represent all victims, including in front of those who actually are more victims than he is and those who are more hostile to Nazism, racism and its offshoots. The second phenomenon is the monopoly claimed by the Israeli ruling establishment to speak on behalf of Jews and Jewish history in general, which largely translates into soliciting, and pressuring for, political and financial support for Israel. In the first instance, the challenge of truly understanding and learning lessons from the Nazi phenomenon is reduced to something akin to a therapy session in which those in the role of victim help those in the role of perpetrator purge their guilt by satisfying the psychological and material demands of the former. There is something morally repugnant in this passing of the sins, or innocence, of the fathers to the sons, as opposed to engaging in an objective process of historical investigation with the aim of combating racism in all forms and in all societies. After all, the main victims of European racism today are not Jews, and in Palestine Zionism is not the victim but the perpetrator. Unfortunately, the Israeli- German therapy sessions ignore such stark realities and, in so doing, offer both the Israelis and the Germans carte blanche to vent their racism on others, as though the Holocaust were a purely German-Israeli concern and the greater phenomenon of racism something else entirely. It is as if through their mutual catharsis with regard to the former they exonerate themselves from responsibility for the latter. Meanwhile, Zionism's unwarranted, illogical and historically unsubstantiated monopoly on the role of Holocaust victims' spokesperson sits well with Europe. Most of Zionism's aims and demands do not require Europe to engage in a serious process of introspection in order to uproot the deeper causes that gave rise to the Holocaust. Contrary to what one may logically expect, this suits Zionism's purposes because it keeps the monolithic discreteness of the Holocaust intact and diminishes, in comparison, the significance of Europe's other crimes. The upshot is to toss the entire Jewish question outside Europe and dump it in the Middle East. It may come as a relief to European officials to be able to exonerate themselves for the Holocaust by placating Israel with anti-Palestinian, anti- Arab and even anti-Muslim sympathies. If anything, however, this form of behaviour confirms the continuation of the underlying syndrome, a syndrome that is nevertheless glossed over with a fresh bill of moral health, authorised and stamped by Israel after every visit of atonement a European leader makes to the "Yad Vashim" Museum in Jerusalem. It is for this reason that all victims of racism across the world should campaign to break the Zionist hold over the role of spokesman for victims of the Holocaust. Conversely, the Arabs and Palestinians who deny the Holocaust offer European and Zionist racism no greater gift than this denial of the occurrence of the Holocaust. What possible Arab or Islamic interest can it serve to even offer to exonerate Europe of one of the blackest pages in its history? To do so is not only to absolve Europe of a crime that was, in fact, committed, but also to earn its contempt and to wake up one day to find Europe and Israel joining forces against Arab or Muslim Holocaust deniers with such venom that one might imagine that the Holocaust had occurred in Egypt or Iran and that Holocaust denial is a far graver crime than the perpetration of the Holocaust itself. Holocaust denial is just plain stupid, also as a political argument. But Israel will be no less expedient in turning the provocation against its regional adversaries who had nothing to do with the Holocaust. On the other hand, the Holocaust is a phenomenon that merits proper scholastic study, the purpose of which is to sort fact from fiction, and myth form reality. No incident in history lies beyond the realm of historical research. This said, Tehran can hardly be said to have a tradition of Holocaust studies; the subject does not rate very high in Iranian academic priorities. And a conference in Tehran that was proceeded by a political speech denying the Holocaust cannot be said to be an academic conference; it was a political demonstration, one that harms the Arabs and Muslims and serves only the ultra-right and neo-Nazi forces in Europe and the Zionist movement. During World War II, when some Arabs and other Third World peoples were rooting for Germany because it was fighting the colonial powers France and Britain, the Arab and Third World left, which had allied with the Soviet Union, argued that it was wrong for the victims of racism to side with the racist Nazi regime. Their position was correct. Today, there is not even a pragmatic immoral justification whatsoever for siding with European racism. Holocaust denial does not undermine the moral justifications for the existence of the state of Israel, as some imagine. What it does, however, is hand the European right and Israel a convenient enemy upon which to unload their problems. This enemy comprises Palestinians and Arabs, specifically fundamentalist Muslims, those Bush is fond of calling "Islamic fascists". The initial Arab reaction to the Holocaust was simple and straightforward and much more rational. The Holocaust occurred, but it was a tragedy for which the Europeans, not the Arabs, should assume responsibility. This is the opinion that prevailed throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the sense of normalcy that survived in all of us continues to hold it. Azmi Bishara writes for Al-Ahram, where this essay originally appeared.

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