----------- 179717 Noam Chomsky: Constructive Action? (see analysis by Brad de Long as last item) ---------- 178912 more chomsky -------  179612 Israel Destroys Entire Apartment Building -------------  179019 The Devil Made Mailbox Bomber Lucas ------ a great many items on the death of dandy gay exmarxist anti-islam political landslide and earthquake causer Pim Fortuyn (google does about 37.000 hits for him at the moment. Want a comparison? I get booke 473 times there) ------  http://www.expatica.com/ index.asp?pad=34,35,&item_id=19551 also at dutch indy 3916 Is Dutch racism on the rise? Pim Fortuyn ----------  179590 'national-sovereignty' or global state of subsidiarity & free movement--BETTER ? (large item, only the best bit here: one small part of a comment about Brazilian democracy innovations) --------------first part of a review of samantha powers new book about genocide and the UN at the nation which was posted in the lbo thread:  Native Amerikkkan Genocide ----------- first part of spiderman (the movie) review from the nation ------- anti-zionism thread at lbo-talk ---------- 178685 Ten questions to the Zionists -----------xxxxxx--------- 179717 Noam Chomsky: Constructive Action? (english) Chomsky 4:13pm Sun May 12 '02 (Modified on 9:35pm Sun May 12 '02) article#179717 Not surprisingly, the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant humiliation. Israeli plans for Palestinians have followed the guidelines formulated by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labour leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Thirty years ago, Dayan advised the cabinet that Israel should make it clear to refugees that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave". Constructive Action? by Noam Chomsky May 11, 2002 A year ago, the Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling observed that "what we feared has come true â€Â¦ War appears an unavoidable fate", an "evil colonial" war. His colleague Ze'ev Sternhell noted that the Israeli leadership was now engaged in "colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighbourhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era". Both stress the obvious: there is no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" in this conflict, which is centred in territories that have been under harsh military occupation for 35 years. The Oslo "peace process" changed the modalities of the occupation, but not the basic concept. Shortly before joining the Ehud Barak government, historian Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that "the Oslo agreements were founded on a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence of one on the other forever". He soon became an architect of the US-Israel proposals at Camp David in 2000, which kept to this condition. At the time, West Bank Palestinians were confined to 200 scattered areas. Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Barak did propose an improvement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control, virtually separated from one another and from the fourth enclave, a small area of East Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian communications. The fifth canton was Gaza. It is understandable that maps are not to be found in the US mainstream. Nor is their prototype, the Bantustan "homelands" of apartheid South Africa, ever mentioned. No one can seriously doubt that the US role will continue to be decisive. It is crucial to understand what that role has been, and how it is internally perceived. The version of the doves is presented by the editors of the New York Times, praising President Bush's "path-breaking speech" and the "emerging vision" he articulated. Its first element is "ending Palestinian terrorism" immediately. Some time later comes "freezing, then rolling back, Jewish settlements and negotiating new borders" to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. If Palestinian terror ends, Israelis will be encouraged to "take the Arab League's historic offer of full peace and recognition in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal more seriously". But first Palestinian leaders must demonstrate that they are "legitimate diplomatic partners". The real world has little resemblance to this self-serving portrayal - virtually copied from the 1980s, when the US and Israel were desperately seeking to evade PLO offers of negotiation and political settlement. In the real world, the primary barrier to the "emerging vision" has been, and remains, unilateral US rejectionism. There is little new in the current "Arab League's historic offer". It repeats the basic terms of a security council resolution of January 1976 which called for a political settlement on the internationally recognised borders "with appropriate arrangements ... to guarantee ... the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of all states in the area". This was backed by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states and the PLO, but opposed by Israel and vetoed by the US, thereby vetoing it from history. Similar initiatives have since been blocked by the US and mostly suppressed in public commentary. Not surprisingly, the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant humiliation. Israeli plans for Palestinians have followed the guidelines formulated by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labour leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Thirty years ago, Dayan advised the cabinet that Israel should make it clear to refugees that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave". When challenged, he responded by citing Ben-Gurion, who said that "who- ever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist". He could have also cited Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, who held that the fate of the "several hundred thousand negroes" in the Jewish homeland "is a matter of no consequence". The Palestinians have long suffered torture, terror, destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of basic resources, crucially water. These policies have relied on decisive US support and European acquiescence. "The Barak government is leaving Sharon's government a surprising legacy," the Israeli press reported as the transition took place: "the highest number of housing starts in the territories since â€Â¦ Ariel Sharon was minister of construction and settlement in 1992 before the Oslo agreements" - funding provided by the American taxpayer. It is regularly claimed that all peace proposals have been undermined by Arab refusal to accept the existence of Israel (the facts are quite different), and by terrorists like Arafat who have forfeited "our trust". How that trust may be regained is explained by Edward Walker, a Clinton Middle East adviser: Arafat must announce that "we put our future and fate in the hands of the US" - which has led the campaign to undermine Palestinian rights for 30 years. The basic problem then, as now, traces back to Washington, which has persistently backed Israel's rejection of a political settlement in terms of the broad international consensus. Current modifications of US rejectionism are tactical. With plans for an attack on Iraq endangered, the US permitted a UN resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from the newly-invaded territories "without delay" - meaning "as soon as possible", secretary of state Colin Powell explained at once. Powell's arrival in Israel was delayed to allow the Israeli Defence Force to continue its destructive operations, facts hard to miss and confirmed by US officials. When the current intifada broke out, Israel used US helicopters to attack civilian targets, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, hardly in self-defence. Clinton responded by arranging "the largest purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade" (as reported in Ha'aretz), along with spare parts for Apache attack helicopters. A few weeks later, Israel began to use US helicopters for assassinations. These extended last August to the first assassination of a political leader: Abu Ali Mustafa. That passed in silence, but the reaction was quite different when Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi was killed in retaliation. Bush is now praised for arranging the release of Arafat from his dungeon in return for US-UK supervision of the accused assassins of Ze'evi. It is inconceivable that there should be any effort to punish those responsible for the Mustafa assassination. Further contributions to "enhancing terror" took place last December, when Washington again vetoed a security council resolution calling for dispatch of international monitors. Ten days earlier, the US boycotted an international conference in Geneva that once again concluded that the fourth Geneva convention applies to the occupied territories, so that many US-Israeli actions there are "grave breaches", hence serious war crimes. As a "high contracting party", the US is obligated by solemn treaty to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, including its own leadership. Accordingly, all of this passes in silence. The US has not officially withdrawn its recognition that the conventions apply to the occupied territories, or its censure of Israeli violations as the "occupying power". In October 2000 the security council reaffirmed the consensus, "call[ing] on Israel, the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations..." The vote was 14-0. Clinton abstained. Until such matters are permitted to enter discussion, and their implications understood, it is meaningless to call for "US engagement in the peace process", and prospects for constructive action will remain grim. =========== "political leader?" (english) COINTELPRO Tool 4:51pm Sun May 12 '02 comment#179727 If Mustafa was a "political leader," then I guess Josef Mengele was just a geneticist. One only needs to read the contributions of indymedia regular Majdur to get a glimpse of what kind of "political organization" Mustafa led. Here's one of Majdur's works: http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=152573 For those of you with strong stomachs, check out the "video news release" in his second posting. Remember, when Chomsky uses the term "innocent civilians" in his lame attempt at moral equivalence, he is including people like Majdur, Mustafa, and the helpless victims who like to shoot blindfolded "collaborators" lying in ditches. http://cointelprotool.blogspot.com ========= : your standards for innocent civilians? (english) cog dissonance 8:01pm Sun May 12 '02 comment#179751 Tool, do you have anything to say about the substance of Chomsky's argument, or are you just dismissing the whole thing because he refers to Mustafa as a political leader? Not that a political leader would ever carry out extra-judicial killings right? I mean Sharon is a man of peace, so was Pinochet, and Suharto, and every other dictator your government has dealt with happily (all because of our precious fluids of course. I know about your disdain for Smedley Butler). So what, you're saying Chomsky is a hypocrite or using a double standard referring to Mustafa as a political leader, or are people like you hypocrites because your government supports an illegal coup in Venezuela (evidence pending, but common sense prevailing) and has in the past and continues to support undemocratic leaders/regimes everywhere and anywhere when it pays. Tool, you should know that Chomsky views all states and "political leaders" as illegitimate (he's an anarchist remember?) but in "mainstream" perceptions of political leaders, if Bush (his win was very democratic right?) and other despots are called political leaders, why wouldn't Mustafa qualify? Again, this is ignoring the much more important arguments he makes. =========== Chomsky article (english) t.c. 8:25pm Sun May 12 '02 comment#179756 I think he more or less copy and pasted this latest article from ones he has previously written. Compare the opening of the above article with the opening of this Aug 2001 article: "What we feared has come true," Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling writes in Israel's leading newspaper. Jews and Palestinians are "regressing to superstitious tribalism.... War appears an unavoidable fate," an "evil colonial" war. This prospect is likely if the U.S. grants tacit authorization, with grim consequences that may reverberate far beyond. http://monkeyfist.com:8080/ ChomskyArchive/essays/tribal_html Not that there's anything wrong with consistency I suppose. You can make a strong case by recycling the same cherrypicked quotes over and over again. I particularly like that Moshe Dayan one about treating the refugees like "dogs". I know it's one of Chomsky's favourites. He used it in the above article, as well as the one I've already linked to, and he used it here (http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-after-s13.html) and here (http://www.occupationalhazard.org/oslo/00.12.29.a.htm). I haven't yet been able to find the original source and I'm not sure of the context or what is meant by refugees in this particular case. I do know that, when asked how to govern the west bank, Dayan responded: "In a nutshell I want a policy whereby an Arab can be born, live, and die in the West Bank without seeing an Israeli official"(Warrior Statesman: The life of Moshe Dayan, 292-293) So what tipped him, and Israel, towards settlement on the West Bank? Mainly, the belief that the Arabs were never going to honour a treaty they signed with the Jewish state. The three no's decided at the Khartoum summit (no peace with Israel, no recognition of it, and no negotiation with it) were the offical policy of the Arab states. Thus, the post-'67 lands became a defensive tool. Chomsky doesn't bother to quote any Arab leaders from the period. Convienient. Chomsky is a brilliant wordsmith though. I really like his use of the phrase "US rejectionism", a play on the more common "Arab rejectionism", meaning the Arab rejection of the Jewish state of Israel (see the three no's above). He is great at dropping subtle jokes into his works. Again Chomsky asserts his "Bantustan" theory on why Camp David 2000 sucked. I've read there may have been some truth to that. The much better plan that Arafat rejected was actually presented in late December of 2000. It included 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza. Check out American negotiator Dennis Ross's comments in a recent interview Ross: ...the Palestinians would have in the West Bank an area that was contiguous. Those who say there were cantons, completely untrue. It was contiguous. HUME: Cantons being ghettos, in effect... ROSS: Right. HUME: ... that would be cut off from other parts of the Palestinian state. ROSS: Completely untrue. And to connect Gaza with the West Bank, there would have been an elevated highway, an elevated railroad, to ensure that there would be not just safe passage for the Palestinians, but free passage. So either Ross is lying, Chomsky hasn't heard about these later negotiations, or Chomsky chooses to ignore them. I don't think Ross is lying. Nor do I believe that Chomsky really cares about anything that doesn't bolster his worldview. ============== to cog dissonance (english) COINTELPRO Tool 9:03pm Sun May 12 '02 comment#179761 As usual, you missed the point entirely. The operative word was not "leader," but "political." Mustafa was a terrorist. Plain and simple. He did not merely advocate murder, he organized and bankrolled it. Did you even click on the link in my last post? Indymedia denizens of all people should know that the PFLP is no more a legitimate political organization than la cosa nostra. And if you claim to know my "disdain" of Butler, you don't know shit about me. My only reference to the good general was that pinheads like you continue to use his 80-year-old words to mold political realities of today into your archaic models. Whether leaders are despots or deomcratic isn't the point. Mustafa was no "political" leader. He was nothing more than a murderer. To equate his assassination with the killing of a politician, no matter how repugnant his views may be, is nothing short of obscene. Chomsky and his worshippers at IMC have been continually lying about IDF actions in the occupied territories. You have yet to produce a shred of evidence that they have targetted civilians, or that the deaths of Palestinian innocents should not be blamed solely on the terrorists who use them as shields. Jenin was only the most grotesque exposure of your lies. You've been doing the same for years. =========== b ohh (english) skip trippie 9:35pm Sun May 12 '02 comment#179766 If the is a choice between Ross lieing or Chomski lieing. My money goes on Ross. Tool no need to argue with this guy. It won't do any good. The other guy opposing Chomski says that Chomski chooses to omit quotes from the Arabs. Basicly saying that chomski is one sided. Well ya that's the way arguments go just look at your arguements you leave out half of what Chomski is saying. "Arabs were never going to honour a treaty they signed with the Jewish state. The three no's decided at the Khartoum summit (no peace with Israel, no recognition of it, and no negotiation with it) were the offical policy of the Arab states. Thus, the post-'67 lands became a defensive tool" you say the above yet yoou leave out that the Arab states agreed to the UN resolution in 1978 that Chomski refers to. And this deal with "post-67 lands became a defensive tool" is BS. As there is evidence saying that Israel was the instegater in the war which lead to the land grab. Commen sense would have also brought you to the conclusion that the Jews would need more land, if they keep importing Jews from around the world. Besides all arguements in this conflict are mute as the jews took the land from the people that were living there in the first place. What more can you say after this. The Arab Jews have to appess the Arab Muslims and Christians for the land they took. It's not up to the other Arabs to blindly accept the Jews. Let me put it simple. The Jews fucked things up in theat region. Jews that try to reverse the arguement would like everyone to forget history. The only thing we can do now is try and come to an arangement. One that lets all people in the Middle East live a peace full life. ---------------------- 178912 Chomsky's recent Interview (english) Noam Da Mad Analyzer Wit da' Krazy Ca$h 8:16am Wed May 8 '02 (Modified on 3:52pm Wed May 8 '02) article#178912 Chomsky flexing his intellectual might http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Toni Gabric The Croatian Feral Tribune May 07, 2002  =========   1. During the last month since we have contacted you asking for an interview there has been a great escalation of violence in the Middle East. How would you comment in general the situation betweeen the Israelis and the Palestinians?  =========  It is a mistake, in my opinion, to formulate the question that way. We should, rather, ask about "the situation between the US-Israel alliance and the Palestinians." The basic situation remains as before. It is not a confrontation between two local adversaries, and even between those too there is nothing remotely like symmetry. Israel is a major military power, backed fully by the global superpower. For 35 years, it has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are alone, defenseless. The US-backed military occupation has been harsh and brutal from the beginning. In violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US-Israel coalition has been settling the areas of the occupied territories they intend to integrate within Israel, and acting to ensure Israeli control over the major resource of the West Bank: water. This continued through the Oslo process, which was founded on the principle that a "permanent neo-colonial dependency" should be established for the Palestinians under Israeli domination. I am quoting Shlomo Ben-Ami, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's negotiator at the Camp David 2000 sessions, considered a dove in the US-Israel political spectrum. The proposals of Camp David, modelled on the South African Bantustans established 40 years ago, were designed to formalize this outcome. Like their predecessors, the Clinton-Barak coalition continued to expand the illegal settlements. During the final Barak-Clinton year (2000), the rate of settlement was the highest since 1992, before Oslo, under Sharon. All of this is possible because of the full support of the US: military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological. Crucially, the US continues to stand alone in barring the international consensus on a two-state settlement. That consensus, clearly articulated 25 years ago, has been supported by virtually the entire world, and the majority of the US population as well. Rejection of a political settlement in these terms has been the unvarying US stance since 1976, when Washington vetoed a Security Council resolution to that effect. The vetoed resolution incorporated the basic wording of UN 242, supplemented by a call for a Palestinian State in the occupied territories. The resolution was supported by every relevant actor, including the Arab states and the PLO. It has been often renewed since, most recently in the Saudi plan adopted by the Arab League in March 2002, which is the same in essence as the Saudi proposal of 1981, the 1976 resolution, and many others over the years. The latest Israeli offensive, which reached levels of violence and destruction not seen since Israel's US-backed invasion of Lebanon in 1982, has become an international scandal -- outside the US, where Sharon is described by the President as a "man of peace," and is provided with the means to carry out the atrocities, for example, the military helicopters that devastated Jenin and Nablus. The Powell mission was carefully crafted to allow the operations to proceed unhampered. Surely that should be as obvious to us as it is to observers in the region.  =========   2. The United States have openly taken sides with the Israeli government in this conflict, demanding an unconditional prevention of terrorist attacks of Palestinian suicide bombers. How would you comment the US policy in this matter, especially taking in account that last year the US has vetoed the Security Council's resolution which asked for an end to attacks and the deployment of monitoring teams.  Why, in your opinion, is the US so unconditionally backing Israel when the influence of Russia, which formerly backed some Arab states, has significantly diminished?  =========  The US demands that Arafat, imprisoned in a dungeon where he cannot even flush the toilet, must produce yet another condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, which everyone knows to be completely meaningless. No one even suggests that Sharon should condemn his much worse ongoing atrocities, or that the US government, which provides the crucial support for them them, should do so. The primary reason for the demands on Arafat are to humiliate and degrade the Palestinian people, for whom he is a national symbol. Humiliation has been the central feature of the occupation for 35 years, and is a familiar feature of the history of colonialism and conquest. As for the US-Israel alliance, which assumed its current form after Israel's military victories in 1967, it had little to do with Russia though of course it became enmeshed in the international confrontation. In the diplomatic arena, Russia fell well within the international consensus that the US opposed. The truth is revealed in internal documents, and was officially conceded shortly after fall of the Berlin Wall fell, when the Bush administration informed Congress (March 1990) that the US must continue to maintain its huge intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where the important problems confronting the US "could not have been laid at the Kremlin's door" in the past. Or, of course, at Iraq's door; Saddam was a favored friend and ally at the time. Accordingly, policies continue without essential change after the disappearance of the Russians from the scene, under new pretexts, and with some tactical modification. That is, incidentally, true of policies around the world, a fact that provides some insight into realities of the Cold War. In the crucial Middle East region, US policy since 1967 follows the logic outlined by US intelligence in 1958: a "logical corollary" of US opposition to Arab nationalism is support for Israel as the only reliable base for US power in the region (along with Turkey, and at the time, Iran, then under the Shah). In 1967, by destroying Nasser's armies, Israel substantiated that thesis, and the alliance was solidified. It has persisted since for essentially the same reasons, becoming even stronger when the Shah fell and Israel's role became more important as a "local gendarme" (as it was called by the Nixon administration). By then Israel was also providing a range of other services around the world as a proxy, and its military-industrial relations with the US had also become much more intimate.  =========   3. You have recently compared the idea of creating a Palestinian state on the shores of Jordan and in Gaza to South African bantustans. Many people, among them Princ Abdullah, believe that this could be the solution to the conflict.   =========   That is incorrect. In agreement with much Israeli commentary, I referred to the Clinton-Barak Camp David proposals as Bantustan proposals. A look at a map explains why (there is a good reason why the US media scrupulously avoided presenting any maps while intellectuals were hailing the proposals as "magnamimous" and "generous"). The proposals divided the West Bank into three cantons, effectively separated from one another by Israeli settlement and huge infrastructure projects, all effectively separated from East Jersulam, the center of Palestinian commercial and cultural life, and the communications center for the West Bank. This is, incidentally, the standard conclusion of serious American scholarship; see, for example, the discussion by Sara Roy of Harvard University, the leading specialist on the economy of the occupied territories (Current History,Jan. 2002, and other publications). And as I mentioned, this was the goal of the Oslo process all along, as was evident at once (I wrote about it in September 1993), also recognized by the leading Israeli architect of the proposal (Ben-Ami). This proposal, which closely resembles the Bantustan policies of South Africa 40 years ago, is completely different from the international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US has been blocking for 25 years, and still does.  =========   4. The events on September the 11th were followed by a rise in American patriotism, the relinquishing of a large part of legitimacy to the organs of state repression and the almost plebicite support of president Bush. These events have received much publicity in Croatia (and the world).  Have these trends been retained in the last six months?  What is the atmosphere like today in the US?   ========= These trends are much exaggerated. It is true that the Bush administration used the "window of opportunity" provided by Sept. 11 to advance its own agenda, including efforts to impose obedience and discipline. But it is doubtful that these measures can be implemented, apart from vulnerable populations (immigrants, minorities). The administration also exploited the opportunity to ram through domestic programs that it knows the population opposes, under the call for "patriotism" -- which in practice means: "You shut up and be obedient, and I'll relentlessly advance my own interests." That was true all over the world. For example in Israel, where Sharon realized at once that he could intensify repression under the guise of a way against terrorism, or in Russia, where the government was able to step up its atrocities in Chechnya under the same pretexts. In fact, it was quite general, and completely predictable. More surprising, to me at least, was that the Sept. 11 atrocities had the opposite effect among the US population. Very quickly, it was clear that there is far more openness to critical and dissident analysis, and there has been a remarkable upsurge of concern, often activism, about issues that were pretty much off the agenda before - including, among others, the US role in the Middle East. Naturally the media and journals of opinion claim the opposite, hoping to still independent thought and impose obedience. But people who have any contact with the general population know better. Demands for talks have spiralled competely out of control, and the scale and engagement of audiences is without precedent apart from the peak moments of the anti-war movement in the late 1960s. The same is evident in sale of books, and in fact by every other relevant measure. Even the media have been to some extent effected, and though still highly restricted, are more open than they have ever been in my experience over 40 years of intensive activism.  =========   5. After the attack on Afghanistan, there are presumptions of an attack on Iraq or some other country that is pronounced a patron of international terrorism. Do you think this kind of fight against terrorism can be effective enough? Do you believe that only these seven or eight countries can be declared as the perpetrators?   =========   If we understand "terrorism" in terms of its official definition - say, in the US Code of Laws or military manuals - then there is no "fight against terrorism," for reasons that are almost too obvious to discuss. In accord with these definitions, the US itself is a leading terrorist state, as are its allies in the "war against terrorism": UK, Russia, China, Turkey, etc. Saddam Hussein is doubtless a monster, but that cannot possibly be the reason why the US is seeking is seeking to overthrow him. The US and Britain fully supported him through the period of his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, and provided him with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction when he was far more dangerous than he is now. As late as early 1990, George Bush sent a high-level Senatorial delegation to Iraq to convey his good wishes to his friend and ally Saddam - and turned again to support for the mass murderer and torturer in March-April 1991, when there was concern that he would be overthrown by a Shi'ite rebellion in the south. The reasons for a planned attack on Iraq lie elsewhere, and they are not hard to discern. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. One way or another, the US will attempt to regain control over them, and the Bush planners may feel that this is a good opportunity. Charges about "support for terrorism" can easily be concocted, and it would hardly come as a surprise if they were true despite the scanty evidence. But the historical record - not only in this case - shows with great clarity that they cannot be a serious factor.   =========  6. How much legitimacy and ethical standing does the US have to take the leading place in the international war on terrorism? Do you think there is an additional interest behind such a policy of the individual lobbies in the US(eg. the military industry)? ============ US legitimacy derives from the fact that it is, by an overwhelming margin, the most powerful military force in the world, and is also one of the major economic centers of the world, as it has been for a century. Since there is no "international war on terrorism," the US cannot be leading it. Military industry has some role but not a dominant one. Twenty years ago, the Reagan administration came into office proclaiming that a "war on terror" would be the core of US foreign policy, and we need not review how they fought that war. "Terrorism" plays a role similar to "Communism," "crime," "drugs," and other devices to frighten the public into supporting policies undertaken to serve the interests of the state and domestic power centers; when one pretext loses its efficacy (like "Communism"), others take its place at once, with scarcely a murmur from the educated classes. None of this, of course, is peculiar to the US. This is the way states and other power systems operate. Surely these are among the clearest lessons of history. As for military industry, one should not forget that the dynamic state sector of the economy in the US has functioned under a military cover, to a large extent. That is where we find the roots of most of the "new economy," including computers and electronics generally, telecommuncations and the internet, automation, lasers, civilian aircraft, major service industries (e.g., tourism, based heavily on the aviation industry), etc. That has been true historically, not only in the US. But since World War II it has become an enormous component of the economy, serving to socialize risk and cost while privatizing profit, and to allow the rich and powerful states to escape market discipline.  =========   7. What do you think about US' opposing to the idea of forming the permanent International war crimes tribunal?   ======== The US is far too powerful to have any need to submit to an in-ternational authority. That is why it blithely rejects World Court condemnation, vetoes or ignores Security Council resolu-tions, and in general disregards international law and treaties when it chooses. As the world's most powerful state, it guards its sovereignty zealously, while ignoring the sovereignty of others as it chooses. Again, there is nothing new or surpris-ing about this.    ======== 8. How would you comment on the changes in world relations af-ter September 11th?    ======== = We can see deeper misunderstanding be-tween US and European Union in themes such is ratification of the Kyoto protocol, or International war crimes tribunal, or their competition for the influence on the former social-ist world? I do not think that Sept. 11 made a great difference in these respects. Apart from temporary effects, earlier tendencies continue without much modification.  =========   9. The anti-globalization movement is often criticized for a lack of a theoretical foundation and clear goals. Do you agree with such critics and are you satisfied, in this respect, with the work of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre which you have participated in?  =========   The term "globalization" has been appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, one based on investor rights, with the interests of people incidental. That is why the business press, in its more honest moments, refers to the "free trade agreements" as "free investment agreements" (Wall St. Journal). Accordingly, advocates of other forms of globalization are described as "anti-globalization"; and some, unfortunately, even accept this term, though it is a term of propaganda that should be dismissed with ridicule. No sane person is opposed to globalization, that is, international integration. Surely not the left and the workers movements, which were founded on the principle of international solidarity - that is, globalization in a form that attends to the rights of people, not private power systems. There are no serious "theoretical foundations" for any of the versions of globalization, including the investor-rights versions. The international economy is far too poorly understood for there to be systematic "theories" in any serious sense. Certainly the neoliberal programs have no serious theoretical basis, even in the abstract; and their concrete realization is a complex mixture of protectionism and liberalization crafted to meet the interests of the designers, not surprisingly. As for Porto Alegre, a mere look at the program suffices to show that the meetings were extremely serious, devoted to detailed discussion and debate concerning a wide range of issues of human significance, from technical discussions of international financial architecture and GATS to broad questions of war and peace and fundamental human rights. In contrast, the World Economic Forum in New York at the same time seemed remarkably frivolous, at least according to the information released. That is quite typically the case.   ======== 10. Do you think that "anti-globalization" can become the concept for the new world's leftist movement as a counter to Blair's "third way"?   ======== The "third way" is a variant of the corporate-led programs of international economic integration, with a softer face than some. The popular movements that have developed worldwide - most dramatically in the South, and more recently in the recently in the North as well - are not a "counter" to these programs. Rather, they are pursuing a different path. There is no single "concept," and there cannot be in movements that are concerned with human affairs quite generally, from individuals and families to international affairs and the future of the species. There are many concepts, often guided by similar conceptions of freedom and justice. In contrast, dominant ideologies are intellectually shallow and not very interesting, apart from their relations to concentrated power.   ======== 11. What are the perspectives of overcoming the division between the rich North and poor South?  ========  We can see that the conference in Monterrey did not produce significant results. Can the cost of maintaining military control over the poor peoples become too expensive for the rich West, therefore leading to a more just distribution of world riches? The US intelligence community, with participation of academic experts and the business world, recently produced its forecast for the next 15 years. It expects that "globalization" (in the special sense of power centers) will proceed on course, leading to greater financial volatility and a widening economic divide. Greater financial volatility means even slower growth than in the "globalization" period of the past 25 years, which was accompanied by significant deterioration of standard macroeconomic and social indicators as compared with the "pre-globalization" period of the Bretton Woods years (roughly 1950 to the early 1970s. A widening economic divide means less globalization in the technical sense (convergence to single price-wage, etc.) but more globalization in the ideologically preferred sense (concentration of wealth and power). Military planners adopt the same forcasts. US plans for militarization of space in violation of the Outer Space Treaty are based, explicitly, on the assumption that there will be a growing divide between "haves" and "have-nots" and that new forms of military force will be needed to secure "US commercial interests and investments" in the face of rising disorder among the "have-nots". This is spelled out with great clarity in Clinton-era documents of the Space Command and elsewhere. What is planned, then, is increasing polarization, and development of sufficient force to control it in the interests of wealth and privilege. No one can predict with any confidence whether such plans will succeed, any more than in the past. The primary determinants are unmeasureable and unpredictable: will and choice.  ========  12. In one of your recent interviews you quoted John Dewey - if democratic forms are to have real substance, industry must be changed "from a feudalistic to a democratic social order" which would be based on workers' control and the free association. Do you think that some perhaps pozitive characteristics of abandoned socialism could be used in the future, for example something from the socialist self-management which in existed Yugoslavia?  ========  To speak of "abandoned socialism" presupposes that there was some socialism that was abandoned. That is quite an exaggeration. There have been moves towards traditional socialist ideals of the kind described by Dewey - who I quoted not because the observations are original, but because he is America's leading social philosopher, "as American as apple pie," in the standard phrase. Such initiatives have often been demolished by force, not only in the West. The first acts of Lenin and Trotsky after taking power were to destroy the factory councils and Soviets, and in fact just about every socialist tendency that had developed before the Bolshevik takeover. From then until its collapse, the Soviet tyranny was one of the major anti-socialist forces in the world. But nonetheless, there were elements of democracy and socialism (in the traditional non-Bolshevik sense), including self-management in the former Yugoslavia, though it was severely flawed because of the more general context of centralized authority within which it was embedded.   ======== 13. Your recent appearance in Turkey was noticed when you helped the publisher Fatih Tas refute the conviction for having published your article on the position of Kurds. Since there are a lot of ongoing proceedings against publicly stated opinions in Croatia, please answer in general - what do you consider to justify as verbal delict? (Note: There are currently two cases in Croatia having to do with Feral Tribune. One has to do with an article from 1995, where university professor and art historian Zvonko Makovic explains why the daughter of an eminent sculptor Ivan Me¡trovic doesn't have any qualifications to be the manager of a galery containing Mestrovic's work. Mestrovic's daughter sued Mr. Makovic for insulting her and by order of the court recieved a significant cash compensation. The second case is that of the editor of Feral Tribune, Viktor Ivancic, who had to pay a large fine for publishing an article in 1993 in which he wrote about the neofascist orientation of one member of the former government nomenclature in Croatia.)  ========  The case against Fatih Tas was dropped by the State Security Courts, but not because of arguments against the indictment; rather, because of international attention. Other cases, many even more disgraceful than this one, proceed without change. But not without protest. It is truly inspiring to observe the courage and dedication of the writers, artists, journalists, academics and others who carry out persistent civil disobedience in protest against the draconian legislation of the Turkish state, placing themselves in serious danger in a struggle for freedom that merits not only great respect but strong international support. And I cannot find words to describe the heroism of the millions of Kurds living in the dungeon in the Southeast, after having suffered some of the worst atrocities of the 1990s thanks to the enormous arms flow provided by the Clinton administration and the discipline of the educated classes, who hailed the atrocious international terrorism as a model of "counterterrorism." On the Croatian cases, I cannot comment, having no independent knowledge. What you describe should certainly not be tolerated. Unfortunately, it is not too far from what happens even in Western European countries like England and France, with a long tradition of advocacy of civil liberties, seriously tainted in practice. The US is unusual, perhaps unique, in its protection for freedom of speech. As for what should be permitted, the overriding principle, I think, is that a very heavy burden of proof must by met by any call for infringement of this fundamental human right. The US, in my opinion, finally reached a proper standard in the 1960s, after centuries of struggle, when the Supreme Court struck down the laws of seditious libel that made it a crime to assault the state with words, and established the standard that speech is protected up to direct participation in ongoing crime: if you and I are robbing a store, you have a gun, and I say "shoot," my speech is not protected. Unlike Britain and many other countries, the US is also free from onerous libel laws that severely inhibit free expression and provide institutions that can bear major legal costs with powerful weapons to silence voices they do not like. Having said that, however, it is important to stress that freedom from state coercion, under libel laws or in other ways, is still only a partial victory, though an important one. High concentration of power in unaccountable private institutions, as in Western state capitalist democracies, leads to restriction on expression that often resembles the outcomes in totalitarian states. These are matters discussed by Dewey, Orwell and others, and documented in extensive detail in studies of the major media. ========= Blah, Blah, Blah (english) Big Owl 12:58pm Wed May 8 '02 comment#178934 Noam is a communist fool. I wonder how he would react if one of his friends or family members were killed by a homicidal, Palestinian terrorist? But he may just react just like the United States reacted, and do everything within its power to route the terrorists from Afghanistan. Why should Israel bear the burden of terrorism? Israel should be recognized as having the right to defend its children from crazed Islamic fundamentalists willing to kill innocent women and children just to prove that Islam is a religion that worships death and martyrdom. The Americans have acted forcefully to deter terrorism from the middle east, and have successfully countered terrorist acts. Why shouldn't Israel follow the successfully US lead, and target murderous Palestinian terrorists like the US has done. . ============ Re: blah blah blah (english) Ravi 1:18pm Wed May 8 '02 comment#178941 > "I wonder how he would react if one of his friends or family members were killed by a homicidal, Palestinian terrorist?" Hmmm.. maybe the Palestinian is reacting to one of his friends or family members being killed by a homicidal Israeli terrorist? Would you meekly hand over your home to someone that demanded it? ========= Big Owl...... (english) outside the whale 1:51pm Wed May 8 '02 comment#178948 Noam Chomsky believes in anarcho-syndicalism not communism ya dope. Be careful, you show your level of intellect sometimes when you talk too much. ======= big owl... (english) redwolf 3:52pm Wed May 8 '02 comment#178964 ...is a simple minded capitalist tool. communists are no fools. neither are anarchists. we think with our minds not our emotions. --------------------- DUTCH TROUBLES, TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS  ---- 179019 The Devil Made Mailbox Bomber Lucas Helder Do It (english) Bible Thumper 10:00pm Wed May 8 '02 (Modified on 1:42am Thu May 9 '02) article#179019 As this photo from the Reno Gazette-Journal clearly demonstrates, possession by Satan is what obviously drove Lucas Helder to carry out his cross country mailbox bombing spree. Helder is clearly making the trademark "Hook-em Horns" sign of the Devil. Repent America! God is angry with us! Repent before another 911 happens! America deserves it! We've let Satan into our hearts and God is angry with us! Repent and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior before it's too late! www.rgj.com add your own comments his role model at high school graduation (english) . 11:31pm Wed May 8 '02 comment#179031 ============= hi guys I'm back, what's wit dat dear dutch? (english) piet 1:42am Thu May 9 '02 comment#179045 so, . . I endure the somanyeth attack and counsel session daddy bestows on my . .(shit, I don't sound like bobby yet do I????, anyways he gives me counsel about my) pending (for a decade already) (re)motorization (on the surface but he will till his last breath keep implying if not outrite telling me I am worth shit ((what he does manage to be more and more polite about is giving the following orders: "gogetajob, why don't you" as if I never do nuttin)) which is as good as our relating seems set to get) and whatayaknow? That very moment a man dies and the next thing dad does is call my nephew who lives in the local hollywood and was one of the first to hear of the brutal murder. Spooky no??? Aye aye, patronyms and patriation. Helder (RRRinger, too remotely controlled by the dutch govt) and Graaf (killer of a fast rising Dutch politician who was set to stop leaks, hemorhaging and insults to dignity unless merited) now both in custody. It bothers me more than I can say to see two solid dutch words 'owned up' by young people turned criminally psychotically (shades of world's end ((or was it devil's end)) by Coraghesan Boyle; riveting writ). I will speak of the case I know best. The cometary tale of Pim Fortuyn, like in a titanic battle, the one between form and style or content and appearance, Graaf (hyper formal legal nitpicker) and Fortuyn (semi scholarly too but on top and/or despite of that, a styling strategizer, genre mixer, playful debater and sparkling emoticon battallion all by hissself) seems to have had an invisible but meddley tentacle or two to spare when it came to helping the latter into a very dead darkroom (visits to the aboveground variety are as happy and open a bunch of proudly flouted memories to him as those illustrating his catholicity) fullfilling condition and complement to attaining his (other) halflife aspiration: sainthood, a present status pursued in a public eye he knew how to keep hungry for him on the strength of his sheer against all odds (including things like his bentley, etc) egalitarian joviality and of course bycause street campaigning got hell to break out (he wasn't even going to go home that night cause of the incidents and the guilt question about demonization of his controversial self rages). This archaic tugowar hijacked the democratic process as it should be: each and every bit of POLITICIZED money (SEE ULRICH VON BECKERATH) voluntarily parted with and accepted while passably well enough informed about those affected. The generated interest is booked on the account of taboobreaking democratic processes but to me these antics emphasize how much personalities and charismas related phenomena belong in the theatre (outrunning market speeds by EMOTOfactors that mock those of lightning magnitude) whereas politicized, a pretense of ability to freeze, monetize and weigh moony moods down with pontifical assurances meant to legitimize a next ((in))stallment of stability as if production cycles were really stuck on some sort of olympic periodicity is made due to the loss of cultural savvie: know/remember how the magic words open and direct once kept and must now squeeze out parasitic spaces. What resonance drew these two together? A degree of dedication perhaps. Anyway, yet another great loss. A person can be a complete idiot on most issues but be (s)he right about the most pressing problem? Useful, perfect even. I am mortified. I know I could have seduced the man kept him from harm and infused some sense in him .. I fancy ------- ------ ----- ------- 178861 Slain Dutch "conservative" might be a "liberal" here in the good ol US of A (english) Thee Slee Stak 11:44pm Tue May 7 '02 (Modified on 7:14am Wed May 8 '02) article#178861 Pim Fortuyn slain by a Mad Vegetarian Environmentalist was openly Gay, had a suave shaved head, and aside from his policies on immigration, the environment and fur farming... he would appear to our timid nation as a left-wing radical hipster! Next to our little "W" this cat was Austin Powers! Fortuyn defied easy labeling. A former Marxist and sociology professor, he spent more than a decade as a television commentator and a regular on the lecture circuit who was always ready to challenge the status quo. Openly gay, he championed Dutch tolerance on sexual orientation. But when he entered politics, his most potent issue was immigration, and he took the view that the tiny Netherlands had taken in too many immigrants without doing enough to integrate them into Dutch society. He also caused controversy by calling Islam a "backward" culture, a shocker in a country with a large Muslim immigrant population. He said he wasn't referring to the religion, but the Islamic culture's intolerance of homosexuals and the lower status it accords women. The assasin was described as a 32-year-old native Dutchman, a vegetarian and an animal rights activist who opposed "factory farming"..... (funny, but I thought most hard-core vegetarians would'nt kill anything... kind of makes you wonder if they got the right man.) Okay! Here come the comments! ============ Definitely not on the left. (english) Circuit 12:32am Wed May 8 '02 circuitry@post.com comment#178872 He was not a leftist. He was a part of the "new right", which is a weird amalgamation of libertarian views on social issues with hard-right views on economics, nationalism, and political issues. This is a growing movement in Europe, compared to the "old right", and has it's biggest base, it seems, in the Netherlands. I don't support his assassination, because I view it as an extremely poor political action. However, it is still possible that he was not assassinated by the left-wing, but by a member of the "old right" who opposed his social views. Circuit ========== no comment to title (english) Anti-Pim 5:54am Wed May 8 '02 comment#178889 Though the actions were rather drastic, no love lost for the pig. His affront nauture to immigration wasnt "the govt had failed to intergrate them into society", a pathetic assertion. The man was a racist, intolerant pig who connotated an entire belief system solely due to the intolerant nature of Arabic culture. That form of steriotyping en masse is destructive, maxims of israeli policy only reinforce that notion. I would have advocated a severe beating, though not an execution. Nonetheless, one more bigot bites the dust. ..Cry me a river later. ========== but... (english) uberswank 7:14am Wed May 8 '02 comment#178901 These things may be true, but the point the author was trying to make was that compared to what passes as liberal on television, he WOULD seem like a radical. His point being that the U.S. is off the scale in right wing politics. ----------- 179310 Avoid Lies in Portrayal of Murdered Dutch Politician (english) Adam Curry 9:47am Fri May 10 '02 (Modified on 1:32pm Fri May 10 '02) article#179310 The media would have us believe easy interpretations of Pim Fortuyn and the movement he represents. This is not simply Dutch racism. The left should listen to the people. All is not always as it seems at first glance. The Big Lie Monday's killing of historian and politician Pim Fortuyn brought an entire nation to its feet. After the initial shockwave that was felt throughout all communities in this tiny trading nation near the North Sea, the public showed its true colors. That of a peaceful, tolerant society. It was a feeling of disbelief. How could this happen, in the Netherlands of all places? This has never happened in modern Dutch politics. You hear it everywhere: "This isn't Holland", "Not the Dutch way". Many speak of "American drama on our shores". I'm pretty sure that statement is meant to reflect the shock, anger and sorrow of 9-11. Everyone agrees. Physical harm and violence are not to be tolerated. Like most modern cultures, opinion and speech are protected by the constitution. Ironically it is precisely this freedom of speech that killed Fortuyn. Real Events The tragedy struck outside the studios of Radio 3, which is the dutch national Contemporary Hit (top 40) Radio station. As part of campaigning for the May 15th elections, all the candidates (about 10 of the top candidates actually) were invited to be on the afternoon drive show with Ruud de Wild. That is a BNN show, and my friday night co-host at BNN is also a player on that afternoon show. Jeroen Kijk in de Vegte called me about 10 minutes after it happened, 15 minutes before ambulances and police arrived at the scene. He was describing facts to me as I was watching tv reporters spew out one mistake after another. It was a very confusing day, particularly because I was able to get first hand information and was loyally passing that on to blog space, omitting some details out of respect for my friends caught in the middle of this drama. But the tv painted a different picture. They were so out of control that the news desks were reporting anything that came in as fact and true. Disclaimed of course from time to time. And when it's on the news, or in the paper, it the truth. right? What is Truth I've been in the public eye for more than 18 years, in Europe and the US. I've enjoyed fame and recognition, which comes at a price. That price isn't privacy, as many would have you believe, the price is the cost of the truth. I've been interviewed hundreds of times. By broadcasters, publications, newspapers, magazines, school papers. You name it, they's interviewed me. Not once, ever, has the result been factually correct. And that's the battle, you feel so violated and wronged when someone or something of authority states an untruth about you. It takes tremendous amount of effort to correct or re-direct the flow of the press. And the only way you can do that is by doing more interviews to correct the mistakes, which in turn breeds more untruths and mistakes. A never ending vicous circle of fenzy feeding with reporters from all lines of media copying rumours, half truths and heresay without even bothering to check facts and background. Of course there's no time for all of that, we need to make a deadline, presses are rolling, or were about to loose our satellite window and most importantly of all: We need to attract and keep the audience. For there is no better drama than real life itself. The Truth about Pim Fortuyn The bitter pill was yet to come for the Dutch. As the world's media started to report on the tragedy came more disbelief: Pim Fortuyn was being described by the world press as a "Hard Right winger", "The Dutch LePen", "anti-muslim", "Racist". The only correct description I read or heard was "Populist". That Pim was indeed. It was stunning to read the New York Fucking Times report "Fortuyn's rise mirrored a right-wing resurgence in several European countries, lately highlighted by the anti-immigrant Jean Marie Le Pen's surprise showing in the first round of French presidential elections." Was the Times talking about the same Pim that the dutch endeared as he would appear on every talk show, always dressed to the nice with his sharp wit at hand. Was this the same Pim the country had d enjoyed for y10 years as a writer of many political books and cweekly columns always aimed squarely at exposing the underbelly of ducth politics, wich is mostly played out behind closed doors in the Hague. All dutch know it, but Pim wasn't afraid to say it. . Morning news shows clips of foreign coverage. Most shocking was what I saw from the Bigs in the US. Without fail all three major networks (ABC,NBC,CBS) labeled Pim Fortuyn as ultra right and/or racist. With phrases such as "running on an anti muslim platform" or "the Dutch Le Pen" . It isn't hard to trace this back to quotes from prime minister Kok, who positioned Fortuyn as 'hard right' at the beginning of the campaign. Furthermore there was the Volkskrant article from several months ago. In that interview Pim was quoted saying that he feels islam is a "backward culture" for ridiculing homosexuality and proclaiming homosexuals as "lower than pigs". Pim was openly gay. To reiterate: Pim Fortuyn never called for a "Ban on immigration" or "Removal of Muslims". Unfortunately the memes were set, and the largest news organizations in the world are copying incorrect information and propagating it shamelessly. What Pim did do, was start the public debate about immigration and standard of living in the Netherlands, which is the second most densely populated country in the world. No, Pim was not "anti-immigration", but struck several chords with the pulation about the immigration policy. It didn't matter, the wave was unstoppable. Where France had marched on the streets in protest against le Pen, the dutch had gone a step further and just stopped the problem with bullets. This is not the truth. United The Dutch were so outraged that something beautiful happened. Accross all ages, race and religion, people joined hands in unison. Thousands waiting hours in front of city halls throughout the country, so they could sign the makeshift condoleance registers, tens of thousands more marching in peaceful demonstartions with the mayor of their city at the head of the procession. For that is the real Dutch way, the 'working together' Polder Model. This country is still in a deep state of shock. That will pass, life will return to normal. It already has in many ways. Lessons to learn The Pim Fortuyn controversey started right here. In a country with 3 Public television stations and 10 (!) commercial stations all fighting for severly depressed marketshare and share of the evaporating advertising funds. It's a tinderbox. Programming budgets are at an all time low, most programming wouldn't make it on the air without help of so called 'non-spot advertising', better known as product placement. Fact checking is just too expensive and any resources avcailable are in the middle east. Catching the wave of the day and getting the right soundbite is more important, because it means ratings, which means more money, means more budget, means.....better reporting? Doubtful And it all started with a newspaper interview. A full day after the tragedy, the Times got back on track. At least one individual reporter did: Marlise Simons in the NY Times revealed the kernel of what sparked the controversey over Pim Fortuyn. I checked her translation against the original article. Spot on: "During the interview he was asked why he was so critical of Muslim immigrants. He said he found it shameful that foreign Islamic clergy here used offensive language against gays in this country, and that Muslim men tried to impose medieval rural customs in the Netherlands. "How can you respect a culture if the woman has to walk several steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut," he said. " There Are no Secrets This has been the tagline of my weblog for years. Now that the internet has empowered any man or woman to have a voice, the truth can be found. I tried screaming at my TV, telling the news anchor he was wrong! I have first hand information!. Yelling at the newspapers doesn't help much either. Writing on the web does. Pim Fortuyn will never be prime minister or take a seat in the dutch parliment. He was poised to be the leader of the largest political party in this country. But his work can and must continue. For Pim was all about truth. He wasn't afraid to speak his mind, which was directly connected to his heart. He spoke for many and was respected by even more. Only the misinformed could find fault. Our task here is to ensure the truth remains openly exposed. We have the tools to do this. This weblog alone is already making a dent in the misperceptions of Pim and the political climate in the Netherlands. And that happens through collaboration and information flow. Conclusion The Big Lie is all around us. It lives in the sense of security we have about our lives and surroundings. Just as the US was shaken to the bone over the possibility of attcks on US soil. Now nuclear threats loom. But the Big Lie also lives at the office and in schools. The news reports we're out of a recsssion, yet thousands lose their jobs. The principal ensures your child is 'safe' in the hallways of school. The business community found the Big Lie in the Anderson and Enron scandals. The catholic church is in the middle of disaster recovery from The Big Lie. You are safe to walk on the protected grounds of the national state broadcast facilities Professional Wrestling isn't real either And the sky won't fall on our heads. We clamour to media as our security blanket. We want to feel safe and secure. Does the record breaking $43 million opening day of Spiderman not show that we are in desperate search of 'good feelings' about our towns and cities. That Spidey will swoop down and save us from peril when the chips are really down? I point once again to the Zen TV experiment. if you have not done this, please at least read about it. The 4 hours you as an average citizen spend in front of the television is what keeps the general popualtion shackled to the teet of the beast. You are not relaxing when you watch, you are being fed. And the diet is not healthy Adam Curry May 8 2002 Adam Curry's Weblog add your own comments Skewed in favor of corporations, always (english) mussed coif 12:38pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179341 I wonder if the corporate media purposely inflates the political right way out of proportion and under reports and ignores the political left. This would have the effect of creating a distorted view of what’s politically possible to the individual voter. Pim Fortuyn (english) 23 1:32pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179354 Pim Foruyn mobilized about 30% of the Dutch electorate in about 6 months. His political party "LPF" was only registered 2 months ago. (To try put him in the political spectrum: He didn't want to be compared with Le Pen, he didin't mind too much to be compared with Berlusconi). He did this by focusing on one major "problem". "Holland is full". "To many immigrants". "Islam backward culture", etc, etc. One sweeping statement after the other. Pim Fortuyn stated many times publicly that if it was up to him, not one Moslem would enter Holland any more, but he said that there were laws preventing him to do so. Although absolute numbers off immigrants have been declining for many years now, the lie about the immigrants is being repeated and repeated. Politicians, who mobilize the electorate on these kind of issues are indeed populists. They tell the people what they want to hear. They do not necessarily tell people the facts. Pim Fortuyn by doing this sparked hatred. Hatred fueled by press, politicians, racists and moslem fanatics. Hard to understand from Pim Fortuyn's perspective, being gay, thus being part of a minority himself Most of Holland is in a state of denial now. "No, Pim was not a racist" actually trying to convince the world that the Dutch are not racists. In fact Holland is quit racist. The so called "Dutch Tolerance" tells the whole story, since the Dutch are the masters off tolerance but actually quit respectless towards other cultures or opinions. Tolerance and Respect are two different things. Do not mistake on for the other! Lets be clear: The fascist in this story is the killer. He became a fascist by pulling the trigger and cutting away a valuable life. He's even a loony fascist since he became a father 3 months ago and by murdering Pim Fortuyn he subsequently destroyed the child's life. He has also paid Holland a very bad service. Division and hatred will grow. After Pim Fortuyn's murder groups of fascists took the streets. The call for a "strong leader" will be louder than ever, with elections coming up next week. Adam Curry writes: "I point once again to the Zen TV experiment. if you have not done this, please at least read about it. The 4 hours you as an average citizen spend in front of the television is what keeps the general population shackled to the teet of the beast. You are not relaxing when you watch, you are being fed. And the diet is not healthy" Adam Curry This strikes me as weird. Adam you are part of the media circus through your involvement as a business man and dj/presenter. When will you stop feeding people your unhealthy part of the diet? ------------------------ 179372 CORPORATE LEFTIST slanders of Murdered Dutch Politician, Pim Fortuyn, critiqued (english) a green looking at Pim 3:03pm Fri May 10 '02 (Modified on 2:59am Sun May 12 '02) article#179372 beware evil corporate wolves in leftist clothing:corp.leftists benefit when they (ahem) "oppose racist immigration policies"--because these are actually only cheap labor policies.Pim wanted political integration services;Dutch economy seriously eroded,part- timed in jobs.It's intentional.Corporate leftists want to see ANYBODY come in desperate for jobs--just keep them politically mute.Can immigrants be pro-Pim & pro-Dutch cultural values they came for,like in Rotterdam vote? Pim as 'rightist' groundless; learn why: [four articles; what are the informal interests of the left and right that are demoted, when Pim's more representative state institutions and policies are created?] A New Dutch Gay Politician: Pim Fortuyn By Paul Varnell Originally appeared March 27, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press. Editor's note: Pim Fortuyn, 54, was assassinated May 6, 2002, outside a radio studio in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Dutch politics has recently been roiled by the emergence of an openly gay candidate who denounces Islam as backward, wants to limit foreign immigration, curtail street crime, improve public services, cut back a welfare state often labeled "bloated," and shake up the bland "old boy network" of Dutch politics. Pim Fortuyn is generally described as an author, television personality, and former professor of sociology with a Marxist perspective. He has attracted much media attention for employing a butler and traveling in a chauffeur driven Mercedes. But his ideas are what have aroused most interest. Journalists have difficulty finding an accurate label for him. "Populist" seems the safest, non-polemical term. But his detractors, ***mostly on the political left***, frequently denounce him as racist, fascist and other terms of abusive. But judging from a New York Times article, those claims seem counter-intuitive, slanderous, even crazed. And it may be Fortuyn's [leftist] opponents who better deserve the labels they use. Fortuyn points out, for instance, that many Muslim immigrants do not learn Dutch and refuse to adopt the Dutch national culture of tolerance and equality. The immigrants' version of Islam is backwards, he says, because, among much else, there is no equality between men and women and because Muslim clerical leaders attack homosexuals. It does seem clear that many Muslim immigrants come from historically sexist and homophobic regions such as Morocco, Turkey and Indonesia, bringing their cultural views with them. And Muslim Imams in Rotterdam have repeatedly denounced gays as immoral. Rotterdam Imam El Moumni said on Dutch television that homosexuality is "a disease that threatens society." There is a fascinating phenomenon here. A man who urges immigrants to embrace their adopted nation's liberal values of political tolerance, women's equality and respect for gays is the one denounced [by corporate leftists] as a racist and fascist. Yet insofar as immigrants suppress women, denounce the very existence of gays, and, we may reasonably suppose, are hostile to Jews, the immigrants seem far closer to those who originally bore the labels now being applied to Fortuyn. [In other words, immigrants can be fascists, as well, you know.] At this point we can begin to suspect that terms like "racist" and "fascist" are just empty rhetoric, swear words, with no cognitive content. They are designed merely to delegitimize someone without taking the trouble to provide evidence or argue against their ideas. One of the deepest political problems for any open, free society is what measures it must take in order to preserve its fundamental values of openness and tolerance against counter-pressures from people who reject those very values. But the problem is scarcely solved by denying the problem exists or by denouncing people who try to preserve a free society as racists or fascists. The Dutch, with their historical experience of real fascism, can surely recognize and reject any politicians who threatens any sort of authoritarianism. Gays in particular, as targets of fascist oppression, would presumably welcome a politician, gay or not, who wanted to preserve a society where they are accepted. And sure enough, when a Times reporter visited a gay bar to ask for opinions about Fortuyn, the bar-owner said, "Oh course most of my clients voted for the prof. His ideas about what's wrong are crystal clear." WHY THE CORPORTE LEFT IS SCARED: THEY WOULD BE UNABLE TO CO-OPT THE ACTUAL LEFT ANYMORE FOR CORPORATE INTERESTS!!! Most of Fortuyn's other policy ideas don't seem fascist or racist either. Rather the opposite. He wants local mayors to be popularly elected rather than appointed. Generally, people on the left view democracy and fascism as opposites. But in this case the man who wants to expand [leftist] democracy is the one labeled racist and fascist. Does this fit a pattern of dissimulation and obfuscation by Fortuyn's [corporate leftist] critics? POPULIST LEFTISTS PUT CORPORATE LEFTISTS OUT OF A JOB Fortuyn also addresses popular concern about rising crime rates and street violence. According to the Times, police attribute both to "gangs of immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, and the Caribbean." If true, it hardly seems racist to say so. And Fortuyn apparently has support from many earlier immigrants who fear street crime as much as anyone else. The crime problem may be exacerbated by an inability or unwillingness of more recent young immigrants to acclimate to Dutch culture, even to act out their rejection in anti-social ways. If so, the problem is to foster cultural integration in some way. But vigorous police vigilance can help in the meantime. Fortuyn also says he would like to revive military conscription. Since The Netherlands is not surrounded by foreign enemies, we can speculate that Fortuyn hopes to draw young immigrant into Dutch culture by requiring common service in the national military. We can oppose conscription as hostile to personal liberty and believe there are better ways to integrate immigrants, but urging it is hardly fascist. Conscription was supported by U.S. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Even now proposals for mandatory national service come more from the left than the right. It worth recalling which U.S. president ended conscription: Richard Nixon. And what presidential candidate first urged an end to conscription: Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Both men were viewed as on the political right. History is often embarrassing to facile polemics that way. http://www.indegayforum.org/articles/varnell91.html 2. Extreme? Pim Fortuyn was not who they say he was. Associated Press: "In the first assassination in modern Dutch history, a gunman fatally shot far-right leader Pim Fortuyn on Monday..." Agence France-Presse: "Dutch far-right leader Pim Fortuyn was shot dead today..." BBC:"The killing of Dutch far-right politician Pim Fortuyn, only days before the country's general election, has stunned the European political world." Supporters of murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn have long been accusing the media and the Dutch political establishment of character assassination for their exiling the maverick libertarian to the racist fringe. Placing Fortuyn on the "far right" or "extreme right" was a ridiculous smear, entirely typical of the Left (one is reminded of the abuse Rudolph Giuliani, another common-sense reformist, routinely endured from the Left in New York City during all but the last few months of his mayoralty). But it was effective. How "extreme" was Fortuyn, really? Read his platform for yourself. But if you don't have the time or the patience to parse the slightly wonky verbiage, here it is in plain English. Does this sound like neo-Hitlerism to you? IN HIS OWN WORDS Europe is a bureaucracy that barely interests its citizens, let alone inspires them. The Dutch ruling coalition has meant high crime rates and massive problems with the healthcare and education systems. Its twin policies of generous immigration [for cheap exploitable labor] and tolerance of extreme multiculturalism are dividing the country. The country can't absorb all these newcomers, and the government gives them no incentive to assimilate and become a part of Dutch society. This [particular government incentive structure] has to stop. 1. Health: The healthcare system is overregulated, and people have to wait absurdly long for treatment, even for life-threatening illnesses. The heavy hand of the state must be lifted, and market-based reforms must be introduced. 2. Education: Teachers must be paid a market salary, and the education system should be deregulated to get rid of the excessive red tape discouraging educational experimentation and freedom of choice for teachers. Smaller schools are preferable, and each child must be within cycling distance of a primary school. 3. Social affairs: The abuse of the disability-claims system is costing too much, and must end. [Note: One out of seven Dutch workers is on full disability] Workers can only get disability benefits if they are injured on the job. Private insurance should cover other situations. 4. Public order and safety: Cops need to leave their desks and get out onto the streets. Disorder in public places must not be tolerated. Authorities must cease prosecuting citizens who defend themselves, and redouble their efforts to punish criminals. Control of the police should devolve to local officials, and chief constables should be replaced if they don't deliver results. If we have to build more prisons, fine. To beef up security forces, the military police will be given the same powers as the standard police. 5. Finances: The Dutch pay unnecessary taxes [Note: The top personal-income-tax rate in Holland is 60 percent; the average Dutch worker pays 50 percent of his income in tax.], and there must be a thorough accounting for tax policy at all levels. Some taxes, such as the capital-gains tax, cannot be justified. [I would keep that actually!! Removing it turns stock markets into unstable roulette wheels, less an institution for investment, and more an institution for scalpers and those who work in arbitrage and destroy companies and worker lives financial for a living, to make a few million.] If it cannot be explained why the tax is charged, and it is not clear what is done with the tax collected, then eliminating it should be considered. 6. Emancipation and integration: Dutch society can't function with large groups of people from countries that did not experience centuries of Judeo-Christian-humanist developments, as Europe has had for centuries. [Note: He's talking mostly about immigrants from Islamic nations.] We've got to do something about it. The government should redouble its efforts on housing, schools, and cultural education for these groups, but it should also require these groups to make maximum effort themselves. Cultural developments which are diametrically opposed to Dutch values ? such as arranged marriages, revenge killings, and female circumcision ? must be fought. Discrimination against women in fundamentalist Islamic circles is unacceptable. In a democratic society like ours, all citizens have the same rights and obligations. Our hard-fought freedoms are worth protecting against increasing fundamentalism. 7. Immigration: Holland is not an immigrant country. We have one of the densest populations in the world. [Note: 16 million people in a place roughly the size of Rhode Island] We have to get our own society in order before we can accept more immigrants. Bringing in more poorly educated people with no income is a burden we can no longer bear. [though corporate leftists and corporate rightists certainly want to do this people dumping, without any social spending for them at all!] 8. Mobility and spatial planning: The government must stop spending money on prestige transportation projects, and instead improve local transport. Get tough on crime and vandalism in public transport to encourage people to use it more. End crime and restore social order in the cities, and people will quit leaving for the suburbs. 9. Culture: Subsidizing cultural development should take place only with the greatest of restraint. This will have to be based on the profit principle, with the primary focus on scholarship. 10. Defense: Reduce Dutch participation in NATO peacekeeping operations. Emphasize dialogue as well as military operations in the war on terrorism. Restructure the armed forces to eliminate bureaucratic overlap. 11. Agriculture: Deregulate Dutch agriculture to free up farmers to be more competitive in the marketplace. End onerous regulations in the areas of food safety, animal welfare, and the environment. [hotly disagree with Pim there. His favorite vacation place, mind you, was GM free Italy.] 12. Domestic government: Citizens should take more responsibility for running their own lives. As a general principle, local control is preferable to centralized bureaucracy, which has proven that it's not responsive to the needs of the average citizen. ONE OF MY FAVORITES: TAKING THE COROPRATE ARISTOCRATS OUT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, MAKING IT DEMOCRATIC REFERENDUM ENTRY ONLY 13. Europe: The EU is a good thing, but Holland should retain its own identity and, where possible, sovereignty. ***New member states will only be permitted to join after the Dutch people have been given their say*** in a politically binding referendum on the matter. This will keep politicians accountable to the voters for EU decisions. FAR RIGHT? That's it. That's the political platform of Pim Fortuyn. If mild free-market libertarianism [the article forgets to mention his social programs that are pro-immigrant immigration and the changing of budgetary concerns] like this is "far right," what on earth do we call true fascists? Of course, what accounted for Fortuyn's "extreme right" reputation was not his tax or agricultural policies, but his views on immigration and acculturation, which were easily caricatured by malicious [corporate left] opponents. For example, Fortuyn, who was openly gay and a self-confessed libertine, came out in favor of repealing Article 1 of the Dutch constitution, which forbids the government and individuals from discriminating on "religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex, or on any other grounds whatsoever." That makes him a racist, sexist, anti-religious bigot, right? Wrong. He was a civil libertarian who believed in free speech. As written, this constitutional clause potentially forbids frank and open discussion of the crime problem in Holland, which is largely one of predominantly Arab youth gangs. As NRO's Dave Kopel has observed, "In other words, Fortuyn [was] proposing that free speech protection in Holland be expanded to the levels of the American First Amendment." DUTCH LIFE About those youth gangs. Did you know that swimming pools, libraries, and other public places across Holland have been closed by police because of harassment and trouble caused by these young men, chiefly from Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia, who are often armed? The police there find it easier to shut down the facilities than face the politically correct uproar that would ensue if they enforced the law. Years of tolerating this abuse has produced a nation of voters like this Dutch woman wrote to NRO yesterday, relating common Dutch experiences and views: Everybody in Holland has had culture-clash experiences such as these. I can honestly say, that I know of no one in my circle of friends who is racist. But every single person I know gets their prejudices and stereotypes justified just about every day when confronted with such situations; they just do not assimilate. Here we are, conservative, normal, sober, Dutch people, quietly living our lives, proudly earning our money, keeping up with the Jones's but certainly not standing out from the rest, and gladly paying our taxes for the better good. And while bicycling to our work, we see the "foreign" youth, hanging out on the street, skipping school, up to no good, and we avoid them for our own safety. We see "foreign" adults and elderly, hanging out on park benches, doing nothing, shooting the breeze, all day! And we say nothing, for the neighbors might think us intolerant and critical. And we bicycle off to our eight-hour workday, so we get our paycheck and can pay our bills and taxes. And they close our pools because we might not be safe there, and our police don't dare to deal with them, and they live off of the state (our collective money), never making much of themselves or putting in their two cents' worth ? and some never being able to speak Dutch, while the Dutch government offers free (long-term) Dutch lessons for all immigrants to help assimilate. And Pim Fortuyn is said to be a racist because he talks about this in public? This is why the Dutch are awaiting these elections with much anticipation. How are the government elite going to deal with the things Fortuyn finally said out loud? http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher050902.asp [of course it is hypocrisy to see the patriarchial white-male National Review trump this libertine homosexual as a hero, though it is fun to watch! 3. [and more diverse pressure to drop the PC taboo on questioning immigration -] Proudly gay, and marching the Dutch to the right, by Marlise Simons, NYT, A4. [And again, a lame attempt to squeeze a new ecological concern into the old right-left straitjacket -] ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands...- Pim Fortuyn...not[es] that the 16 million inhabitants [of the Netherlands] already live in Europe's most densely populated nation. [Denser than Luxemburg, Andorra, Monaco or the Vatican? The only European entries in the Economist's Pocket World in Figures 2002 Edition with 1999 figures are: Malta 1,230 people per sq.km, Netherlands 466, Belgium 312, UK 246, Germany 235, Italy 196, Switzerland 180. [For comparison, China is 134, Japan 336, Hong kong 6628 and the front runner on this list is Macau with 26,301.] "We have to slow down and take stock," he said. "Too much pressure has built up." [Immigration is now an ecological sub-issue of the overall issue of global over-population. But there are also economic and social costs to immigration that need discussion. For example in Holland -] He asserted that Asian immigrants learn the language, get to work and integrate, while "in Rotterdam we have third-generation Moroccans who still don't speak Dutch, [still] oppress women and won't live by our values."... [Bottom line - the issue of immigration needs to break out of the strait jackets of 'political correctness' and 'representative' democracy and be decided and fine-tuned by binding annual referendums of the populations affected; in short, let's get direct democracy going - we've got the technology.] http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:JFbTCmmVeU4C: www.channel1.com/~timesize/1goodnus.htm+Pim +policy+on+immigrants+12+hour&hl=en 3. Thousands Honor Dutch Politician By MARCEL VAN DE HOEF, Associated Press Writer ROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Thousands of mourners on Thursday filed past the open casket of Pim Fortuyn in a solemn, often tearful tribute to the politician whose brash taboo-breaking policies and violent death ensured him a place in Dutch history. Fortuyn was gunned down on Monday after giving an election campaign interview in the town of Hilversum. On Wednesday, police charged a 32-year-old Dutchman with the murder. Prosecutors did not release his name, but he was identified by colleagues and by Fortuyn's party as Volkert van der Graaf, an environmental and animal rights activist. Hundreds gathered outside the 16th-century Laurentius and Elisabeth Cathedral in Fortuyn's home city of Rotterdam several hours before the doors were opened for a public viewing -- a rare tribute departing from the customary privacy accorded the funerals of even the most public figures. "This is just confirmation for me that it really happened. Everything is so unbelievable," said Trudie Roskam, fighting back tears after leaving the darkened Roman Catholic cathedral. The white coffin was surrounded by a growing mound of bouquets. A single rose rested on the chest of the politician, whose shaven head and elegant suits were as much a part of his image as his confrontational politics. To the double line of mourners who walked past the coffin there was no physical sign of the fatal bullet wounds. Fortuyn was shot twice in the head, twice in the back and once in the neck. Fortuyn's body was to lie in the cathedral until it is moved Friday to the town of Driehuis-Westerveld, on the northwestern Dutch coast, for a service at the family tomb to be attended by Prime Minister Wim Kok and most of the Dutch political leadership. He will be reinterred later near his vacation home in Italy. Fortuyn's strident attacks against the government, the Dutch system of consensus politics and immigration catapulted him near the top of opinion polls before the general elections on May 15. In March, shortly after forming an ad hoc party to contest local elections, Fortuyn won an astonishing 35 percent of the vote for the Rotterdam city council. His style and politics broke traditional Dutch barriers of political correctness, especially regarding immigration and the growing Muslim population. Fortuyn derided Islam as culturally backward and blamed Muslim immigrants for a rising crime rate and for repressing their women. He advocated closing the borders to new immigrants [that would cut off cheap labor exploitation] and ***diverting funds toward integrating those who already were in the country.*** [read that sentance once more why the corporate left hates Pim, because me makes good on their doubletalk nonsense and backpeddling and lack of budget changes to help the Dutch society as a whole.] His death was said to be the most prominent political killing in the Netherlands since William the Silent, considered the father of the nation, was shot dead in 1584. "I want to pay my last respects for all his efforts," said Renco van der Rassel, a 20-year-old window cleaner who waited three hours in line outside the church. "He had so much courage, he deserved respect." Fortuyn's name will remain on the ballot in next week's election, and many of the mourners said they would vote for his party, called "Pim Fortuyn's List," even though his was the only name they knew. "I'm still voting for Pim, even if it is just for the shock effect," said Rahim de Haas. "There's a lot wrong in politics. He gave a human face and a voice to all segments of society." Fortuyn grew up in a Catholic family. He cited his religion and his homosexuality to counter accusations [from leftists who would hate to have the people actually matter to corporations] that he was a racist because of his anti-immigration policy, saying he knew how it felt to belong to a minority. Police said van der Graaf was not cooperating with investigators, and the motive for the shooting was unknown. He was arrested minutes after the killing carrying a pistol, and police said they found matching ammunition at his home. Some newspapers linked the crime to reported statements by Fortuyn saying that if elected he would work to lift a ban on breeding animals, like mink, for fur. Last year, he was quoted as expressing impatience with the environmental movement. A former Fortuyn spokesman, Rene Warmerdam, expressed disbelief over speculation that he was slain because of his views on the environment, which barely figured in his political thinking. "If someone could get so angry about a single off-the-cuff remark and respond in this manner he must be a mad man," said Warmerdam. He quoted Fortuyn's recent book, in which the politician wrote: "Animal welfare must be a priority, and we need to switch to less industrial production methods." comment: I hope this clarifies why the corporate left hates Pim. Because his ideas ARE VERY VERY MUCH ALIVE IN DUTCH SOCIETY. VOTE FOR PIM! 4. [Note: I disagree with Pim's historical points about Christianity being 'more humanist' than Islam. It is what state politics do to religious politics that is important. In Europe, this has made. In the U.S. for example, it has made Christinaity into a kill a queer for Christ religion. I respectfully disagree with this essentializing of Christianity as all pure and good innately. It has been hellish torment for millions. Remember that Pim was a practicing Catholic. Perhaps that helps us understand his willful blindness and indulgence with his mother religion.] Liberal agenda used to argue for immigration ban John Hooper Tuesday May 7, 2002 The Guardian With his shaved head, his shiny black chauffeur-driven limousine with its champagne leather upholstery, his colourful ties and matching top-pocket handkerchiefs, Pim Fortuyn represented a radical departure from the Netherlands' traditionally bland politics. But he was more than just an anti-immigrant populist showman. He succeeded in blending liberal and reactionary ideas in a quite unique fashion. He defended his country's ultra-liberal social values while arguing that in order to preserve those values immigration had to be curbed. Central to this paradox was Mr Fortuyn's open, proud homosexuality. His autobiography, entitled Babyboomers, describes in graphic detail his first sexual encounter as a boy. First as a writer, then as a politician, he argued that Muslim culture, in particular, could not co-exist with Dutch permissiveness. "In Holland, homosexuality is treated the same way as heterosexuality. In what Islamic country does that happen?" he asked in a recent interview. In another of his books, Against the Islamicisation of Our Culture, he maintained that Islam is lagging behind western culture and should not be imported. Instead, Muslim immigrants should embrace Dutch culture and leave their own values behind. "Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam. Modern society places an emphasis on individual responsibility, whereas Islam places an emphasis on collective responsibility and the family. We have a separation of state and church. The laws of the country are not subject to the Koran. We have equality of men and women in western society, whereas in Islamic culture women are inferior to men," he said recently . All of this helped sustain his argument that he was closer to politicians like Edmund Stoiber, the hard right contender for the German chancellorship, than to naked racists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and J?rg Haider. Indeed, he would erupt when interviewers made what he denounced as "odious" comparisons. He surrounded himself with people from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Joao Varela, a 27-year-old businessman born in the Cape Verde islands, was number two on his party's list for the forthcoming election. But unlike Mr Stoiber and other right of centre politicians who have argued for integration and against the values of a multicultural society, Mr Fortuyn backed a more reactionary blend of populist policies. Critics insisted that the mix did not stand up to detailed costing. [Note: the expansion of leftist social services] It included a drastic reduction in bureaucracy, a massive boost to public services, a clampdown on crime and the return of much of the Netherlands' contribution to the European Union, proportionately the largest of any member state. Mr Fortuyn would slash disability and sickness benefits, which some blame for holding back a country in which almost 20% of the work force is on short or long-term sick leave. And he would freeze spending on health and education. His policies on race consisted of zero Muslim immigration, a cut in the overall annual number of immigrants from 40,000 to 10,000, ***better integration of the 2 million immigrants already on Dutch soil,*** [corporate leftists only want to see them imported and then left to rot as exploited labor] and financial aid to would-be refugees to get them to stay in their own country. Most alarmingly for his opponents, he campaigned for a key anti-discrimination clause to be struck from the constitution. Though there had been signs recently that he was losing momentum, opinion polls had still been predicting that Mr Fortuyn and his followers would form one of the largest parties in the Dutch parliament after the election. Once a sociology professor with Marxist leanings, Mr Fortuyn became known to the general public as a columnist and TV chat show personality. In August last year, he took over the leadership of the Leefbaar Nederland (Livable Netherlands) party, treating members to a military-style salute at the end of his acceptance speech. Three months ago he was sacked from the job after giving an interview to a Dutch newspaper which shocked even some of his own followers. In the offending interview in De Volkskrant, he said: "I think 16 million Dutchmen are about enough." Islam, he claimed, was "a backward culture" and Muslims allowed into the Netherlands looked down on the Dutch. "Moroccan boys never steal from Moroccans. Have you noticed that?" he added. Despite the furore, Mr Fortuyn went on to stun the political establishment in March when he captured 17 of Rotterdam council's 45 seats in a local election. With 35% of the votes, his party became the city's largest. What made his victory all the more remarkable is that nearly half the population of Rotterdam is of non-Dutch extraction. The ousted mayor, Bram Peper, commented: "I don't know what's going on, but something is terribly wrong in Rotterdam." [what's wrong is that the people as a whole want integration obviously, BOTH IMMIGRANTS AND LOCAL DUTCH WANT IT, and corporate leftists only want human dumping and exploitation and keeping their concerns out of Dutch politics. The immigrants likely came to the Netherlands for something worth preserving as well.] guardian.co.uk/farright/  story/0,11981,711331,00.htm =========== Corporate Leftists??? (english) anti-spam 4:42pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179388 Corporate leftists??? This must be a pretty small group, long overtaken in size, resources, and influence in the US by CORPORATE RIGHTISTS. This headline takes the "Clueless Headline of the Day" prize today on IMC. ===========justified title (english) college dude 5:02pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179391 Actually, as for American politics, I put together a ranking once of the top 25 funding sources of the Democratic and the Republican parties in the Congressional 2000 elections. Guess what? Of the top 25 funders of political campaigns, by sector, the Democrats and the Republicans are funded equally by 18 sectors of their respective top 25 sectors of campaign funding. Whose the dupe? Please tell us more about how you personally distinguish leftists from rightists. Is it that one puts a puppet on the left hand and the other puts a puppet on the right hand? Note instead that it is one body with two puppets on its hands waving at you. pim .. ======== no love lost (english) anti-pim 5:45pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179404 the title is an oxymoron, in contrast to other oxymoronic terms, such as 'libertarian socialism', the notion that leftism has the slightest to do with corporatism is almost insulting. the article speaks volumes on the assertion that leftists loathe, or display an anti-pim stance simply due to his corporate philosophies, and not his anti-immigration ideals. contrary to popular thought, the significant reason pim was hated was his anti-immigration, anti-arab, purely bigoted outlook on politik. which speaks volumes for leftists, as they are willing to overlook corporate despotism in order to achieve an anti-nazi anti-racist government. "Please tell us more about how you personally distinguish leftists from rightists (sic)" 'rightists' are the unfeeling,  unthinking lower caste of society,

who hate the unfortunate to alliviate their suffering. 'leftists' are the ones who fail to see a difference between the plethora of races and ethnic groups,  who make common cause with the disenfranchized, and who judge according to action. ==========  to the left and the right: it's up and down (english) green 6:23pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179410 What was the Soviet Union? Would you characterise it as leftist or rightist? It was leftist in ideology, thogh in practice, it was very rightist econmically in that only a small part of the society could ever be part of the Communist Party (wihtout any other parties), and rightist in the sense of party elites were the only ones who had any material items to speak of. And they were propogandized incessantly, and there was a large secret police. They even had their own 'rightist' places to shop (with luxury imported goods), strictly cordoned off and away from the rest of the masses! Does this sound famliar? It sounds like America, only with a different soundtrack--same aristocrats are there. The left and right issue is pointless. It is up and down. Up and down. And that is without an ideological solution. Only an institutional and policy solution for more democracy. And back and forth we argue this pointless left and right issue. Left and right, you are both manipulatable cattle to the actual elites. The only way is to address elites head on. Once they have you divided into left and right (HA! thanks for the data, college dude!), the control both ideologies in practice, and how far they get in their 'reforms.' What's important in left and right banter is to pretend to compete. Are you are just following along to the slaughter? Or are you actively seeking ways to demote the elite institutionally? Plus, your characterization of rightists, well, certainly you consider them subhuman? Is that a problem, dearie, that allows you to justify any hideous crimes against them? Then does being a doctrinare leftist make you somewhat inhuman? Any ideology left or right--however well intended--gets manipulated by institutionalized interests that are without ideology. They simply are. They depend on their existance though through informal legitimacy. Right. Or Left. Who cares? A legitimacy is a legitimacy. That is all. Beware of being manipulated by what you have been taught to love as much as by what you have been taught to loathe. I was the poster of these articles. I posted them because it says clearly in several areas that 1. Pim was challenging the existing left politically, in ways that the left parties despised, 2. and in ways that was integrating immigrants that already existed in Dutch society (NO ONE YET HAS KINDLY ADMITTED THAT HE WAS PROPOSING TO DO THIS). If you like disinformation or red herrings, please stick to shallow sea of the unsubstanciated comments above. If you are looking for ideas on how to make institutions more accountable, then read Pim's words. I mentioned that there are areas that I HOTLY despise about him, you know. However, his immigration politics were integrative, instead of divisory [he hated LePen!], and from some points I have read, they were temporary measures "until we get our house in order." Face it. There are people who want to keep any state from getting its "house in order". They are the corpoarate globalizers, left or right. NAFTA in the US was passed by left and right. The tax package under Bush last year was passed under left and right. Prisons, police, and military occupation strageies are being expanded by the left and right. However, they rule over all of us as parties because of division and dissention, because no one can challenge them that way seriously. Pim fails to fit in the left/right category. Obviously someone killed him because they were unable to understand that. ========== to all regrets, I add failing to seduce pim .  . (english) piet 10:56pm Fri May 10 '02 comment#179447 . . and protect him. With my guardian angels and his limelitelove and liveliness (learning very fast he was too) he .. we would have been team to help stop politics as we know it. After all to lead away from and/or back to politics being everybody's daily business (as it used to be ((Ulrich von Beckerath, Knapp, Hayek)), as it is ((multiLETS, microfinance)), as it will be ((open money, etc)) soon) instead of the focus on clogged fulcrums, broken spokespersons, secretive pontifacts, etc we need a person who exposes the fraud and castration of one (money) for all (motives). Damn my stupid pride, just bycause I wasted a handful of bucks on postage covering papers now here (too): https://poetpiet.tripod.com/guest_appearances/  intro_to_currency_issues.htm ======== Fortuyn (english) 23 7:40am Sat May 11 '02 comment#179473 Fortuyn was openly discriminating people. Especially moslems. Stop this denial. Extreme right (fascist) holland loves him. His partymembers were all on the far right spectrum. Also gays and coloured people can be racist or fascist. The dutch experience with fascism (second world war) ended with 90% of the jewish population gassed, something that could never been done with support of the population. The dutch had the biggest contingent of SS volunteers on the eastfront. Dear dutchmen, denial doesn't take you anywhere. . (english) green back at you 2:59am Sun May 12 '02 comment#179611 No one has yet to respond to my points above. I win the argument so far. The corporate left is always going to take empty idealistic leftists a goose chase. You will follow their carrot blindly until you are unrequired, then you will feel their stick. The 'left/right' issue is over. It only 'worked' when there were national economies to speak of--when there could actually be anti-systemic movements within a particular state, called 'left.' However, globalized interstate elites change all this. The left corporate left and the corporate right are one. It is all up and down from here. ------------------------ 178636 Peaceful leftist makes his views peacefully known to Dutch politician (english) Your worst nightmare 12:50am Tue May 7 '02 (Modified on 9:58am Tue May 7 '02) article#178636 I can't wait for this kind of terrorism to start up in the U.S. so we can cmash you violent kiddies once and for all. Surprise of surprises, some leftist kiddie shot a Dutch politician after an interview at a radio station. Unable to play within the rules, this member of the commie crowd you nuts belong to decided to perform some "direct action" to "make his message heard." I'm sure he's being heard loud and clear right now as he cries for the well-deserved beatings in his cell to stop. First the commies rise again in Italy to strike terror, then this little stunt which I haven't seen you craven meatheads exactly condemn like right-thinking people did. Do you support terror? I think you do! It wouldn't surprise me to find out those pipe bombs in the Midwest were planted by one of you "anti-globalization" Nazi nuts. You must all be proud of your cowardly terrorist troops right now. This great nation won't stand for your brownshirt crap much longer. Get ready to spend life in jail the next time you idiots decide to smash a window or burn a car, or even beat a hardworking cop in your misguided quest to "fight the man." Damned guilty liberals. Ann Coulter was right about you murderous freaks.======= ====== Who Cares What You Think? (english) peaceful lefty 1:17am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178638 Yawn.... ======= A question for you (english) ? 1:19am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178639 Is this what is known as moral clarity? ========= Pipe bombs (english) Gosh 2:55am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178644 What do you want to bet that the perpetrators of this pipe bomb scare will turn out to be the same folks who perpetrated the antrax scare last fall, ie, the underlings of Bush, Ashcroft, Ridge, et al? ======= Play by whose rules? (english) Injun John 3:21am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178649 the rules of pigs? The standard rules of the day of the land enthusiastically embrace slow and fast murder of the innocent, as long as it isn't mentioned in "polite" circles, and have for a long, long time. We can all look forward to the day when the last will be first. I can hardly wait, either. See you at the big fire, "worst," my little droogie... ======= LMAO @ the nightmare!! (english) Julia 4:01am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178652 Hello??????????????????? Did you sleep through Sept 11? Terrorism has already reached the US darlin!!! Looks like your worst nightmare must have turned into a wet dream and fucked your brain cell. ======= COMMENT (english) "extremist" 4:15am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178654 There is no such thing as "extremists"; only politicals and apoliticals (i.e. the politically naive or ignorant who are no threat to the capitalist order). The ruling class has always chopped down effective working class leaders and revolutionaries. We [the oppressed] will; and should; chop you [the oppressors] down too. To those who resist; do not be fooled; the ruling class are "extremists"; history has proved that. ========= wait a damn minute. (english) Abudiwa 5:15am Tue May 7 '02 CrimethIncFW@hushmail.com comment#178661 open your eyes. wasn't it "right wing" people that blow up abortion clinics? ok, so what was the definition of terrorism? doesn't that mean the right wing has displayed terrorism on US soil? i really could give two shits about either the left or the right. the wrong system is the wrong system. RISE UP! Another CrimethInc. Ex-Worker Worker, abudiwa www.crimethinc.com ========= WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! (english) FRANK 5:25am Tue May 7 '02 (Modified on 9:55am Tue May 7 '02) comment#178663 THE MORON THAT STARTED THIS FLAME PROBIBLY WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE THAT DID THE 911 THATS THEIR MO, THE TWIGS OF THE WORLD WANT CAOS AND DISORDER SO AS TO COVER THEIR MASS MURDER OF THE "USELESS CONSUMERS" AND THEN LEAVING THINGS CLEAR FOR "THE NEW WORLD ORDER" IE CORPORATE SLAVERYTHE 911ERS /BUSH ARE PROBIBLY PULLING THE STRINGS ON THE ANARCHY GROUPS TOO CAOS IS THE PERFECT COVER FOR THE MASS MURDER THEY PLAN ON DOING... ======== Too soon for ANY conclusions (english) Mike 5:27am Tue May 7 '02 stepbystepfarm@shaysnet.com comment#178665 Hey "Nightmare", it's a little too soon for you to be concluding the assassination was by a "leftist kiddie". Not much is known yet, but the description of the assassin does not match "kiddie". And there is little to no tradition of political assassination in the Netherlands (I believe their last one previous was hundreds of years ago). But of course they DO have killings for all sorts of other, more personal reasons. Let's wait and see shall we, till more is known. Political figures are not always killed for political reasons. ========= Wrong Again - Disinformation Still Alive! (english) Richard Martin 8:57am Tue May 7 '02 rmartin1978@yahoo.com comment#178690 BBC Quote: "The public prosecutor has dismissed media reports that the assassin was an environmental activist who had been known to the intelligence services." More can be found at the hyperlink above. news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/n... =========== HYPOCRIT (english) Jordan Thornton 9:58am Tue May 7 '02 pilgrim112@hotmail.com comment#178710 Perhaps this person was giving the man a taste of his own ... ? The Right kills millions in the name of their interests, and when one supposed "leftist" follows their logic and embraces their tactics, you condemn him? The reason the Right dominates, is because they "think the unthinkable" and resort to tactics the "left" would not. What's wrong with the other side employing these tactics? Perhaps because the violence is now directed at you? Perhaps you should re-think the sanctity of your own violence and "terror". You might want to consider the well-known actions and behaviours of the men you support, before condemning the people you know nothing about. The Right beats the drums of war in the name of freedom and fighting evil, then really uses the war to promote and protect their interests. Somebody listens to their logic, and kills someone who is truly, arguably evil, in the name of freedom, and you have a problem with that? As I see it, he got what he deserved ... No, I do not support the use of violence, but I do believe in Karma. ------------------ http://www.expatica.com/ index.asp?pad=34,35,&item_id=19551 also at dutch indy 3916 Is Dutch racism on the rise? Pim Fortuyn brought the thorny issue of tolerance towards immigrants to the forefront, just as racial attacks in the Netherlands were seen to be on the rise. As Roberta Cowan reports, local attitudes towards the "New Dutch" are far from simple. If the Dutch consider themselves 'tolerant' does that mean they are not racist? The number of racist incidences and violent attacks have risen considerably in the Netherlands since 11 September, according to the Rotterdam-based National Bureau Against Racist Discrimination (LBR), including several 'serious' incidents directly linked to the US terrorist attacks. A mosque in Vlissingen and school in Nymegen were burned to the ground shortly after the attacks. A man of Turkish decent was severely beaten by two Dutch men in Appeldorn. The accused men then got into their car, ran over the man they had just beaten leaving him for dead. The Turkish man survived but he suffered serious physical injuries. Witnesses heard the Dutch men shout 'one less Muslim' as they pummelled over him with their car. According to the LBR there have been more incidents of racist violence in the Netherlands since 11 September than any other western European country. But where does this apparent anger, hostility and fear come from? Racism is a pretty touchy subject in most places but in the Netherlands the average Dutch person takes pride in the 'live and let live' attitude this country has, for centuries, been known for. Tolerance is a source of Dutch pride. Liberal ideas, pragmatism, or so-called tolerance vis a vis soft drugs, abortion, euthanasia and prostitution have been woven into the Dutch social and political fabric. But is this willingness to be 'open' extended to the non-white living in this country? What's unique about Dutch racism Even if one accepts the notion that racism exists everywhere and that everyone, to some extent,  is racist, it's still quite thorny to ask whether the Dutch are more or less racist than other Western countries. But why then the rise in racist crimes, violence, hate propaganda and the popularity of the political party Leefbaar Nederlands? The rise in attacks against mosques and Muslims living in the Netherlands has in ways challenged the notion of Dutch tolerance. And some hypothesise that the events of 11 September have made space for suppressed racist attitudes to surface. Legal Advisor for the National Bureau Against Racist Discrimination Dick Houtzager said that a schism has become apparent with the attacks in the US triggering something in Holland which has made space for racist attitudes to come out from the dark. He added that 'regular' racist incidents, including hostile treatment, shouted insults, graffiti, spreading of pamphlets and hate mail, and grabbing of clothing, particularly head scarves have increased dramatically over the past few years. Too few conservative parties? According to Houtzager, the Dutch are as racist as any society but the circumstances in the Netherlands are unique and unlike other Western countries. He believes that the question is not so much whether neo-facist or extreme right wing views exist, because they do here in Holland, as they do in most countries. What is interesting about Holland is how these views are channelled. There is no right wing, extremist political party and although the Leefbaar Nederlands is attractive to right wing and perhaps some racist views, it is, at this point, not a neo-fascist or extremist party, according to Houtzager. The rise in incidences in Holland could be explained by the fact that there are no outlets for this political opinion in the country. In other countries, extremist parties have some political representation giving voice to these political opinions. When the channels exist people can express their opinions and their feelings. Although he does not advocate the creation of such a party, he said that in the case of Holland, even though the channels do not exist, the racist feelings people have remain. Pim Fortuyn and immigration Fortuyn was too radical, even for Leeftbar Nederlands. He was sacked in February 2002 by the LN leadership for refusing to retract comments made in an interview about doing away with a clause in the Dutch constitution that forbids discrimination. The LN party chair stated that Fortuyn's views were his own and that the party remained open to admitting asylum seekers. The move served to raise Fortuyn's profile. He established his own party, Lijst Pim Fortuyn, which has 49 candidates standing in the May general election. His policies included sealing the Dutch borders to the stream of newcomers, who largely end up as illegal aliens; offering an amnesty for "white illegal" newcomers who have been working here and paying tax for a minimum of five years but who do not have permits to stay; and taking additional steps to compel newcomers already living here to integrate. Such views tapped into a primal or basic emotion in some Dutch people, according to Houtzager, which is that Islam threatens or challenges the "one culture/one people" of the Netherlands. "The positive thing is that there is a strong norm in Holland that racism is bad but the problem is that some people are often blind to their own prejudice. They say 'I'm not a racist but….," said Jeroen Visser from LBR's information unit. "Most Dutch people do not have a real problem with foreigners but as soon as they realise that their presence might affect their wallet, neighbourhood or child's education, things begin to change," and Nimby sets in. 'Not in my back yard' is the Nimby effect and according to the LBR it is more prevalent in Holland than one might expect. The LBR oversees the national racist climate, monitors general trends, advocates for policy and legislative changes and offers expertise when required. There are anti-discrimination bureaus in each city, which provide immediate advocacy and information to those individual cases. For more information about LBR visit http://www.lbr.nl/euroinfo/english/index.html 12 February, updated 7 May 2002 Additional reporting by Cormac Mac Ruairi and Simon Payn ----------------- 179076 Poor Professor Pim (english) Daniel McCarthy 7:01am Thu May 9 '02 article#179076 Poor guy... Poor Professor Pim by Daniel McCarthy The significance of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician assassinated on May 6, was that he brought into question the compatibility of two cherished institutions of the Left ' mass immigration and sexual identity politics. Fortuyn favored immigration restriction and for that the political and media establishment of Europe branded him as "far right." His name was frequently mentioned alongside those of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Joerg Haider. Aside from their similar views on immigration all that the three of them had in common was charisma, which marked them as populists in contrast to the colorless politicians of the European mainstream. Fortuyn was also a homosexual, and a flamboyant one at that. He boasted to the press of his exploits with "rent boys" and of his affairs with men of all races, which he cited as proof that he was not a racist. Not the sort of thing one would associate with the "far right" of men like Le Pen, who once said that "â€Â¦homosexuality and sodomy are to blame for Aids, but the only rule in my party is patriotism. Although I like heterosexuals, because I am heterosexual, I don't think homosexuals are so bad they should be put in prison." Yet in the eyes of Europe’s socialists, Fortuyn’s heretical position on immigration was enough to make him and Le Pen bedfellows. Ironically, Fortuyn’s homosexuality contributed to his desire to restrict immigration. He was incensed by the attitudes of Muslim immigrants toward homosexuals and women. He feared that they were a threat to traditional Dutch tolerance. In one sense then Fortuyn was a conservative, trying to preserve Dutch customs, but the particular customs he had in mind were not the ones usually associated with the political right. He was however for slightly smaller government than most of his rivals; his platform was vaguely Thatcherite, calling for lower taxes and getting tough on crime. But it was immigration that made him "far right." From this one might conclude that the Left cares more for immigration than for sexual identity politics, but that would be a mistake. In truth the multiculturalist creed holds that "gay rights" and mass immigration, even of socially conservative Muslims, are not in contradiction. Fortuyn’s sin was to call that tenet into question. Fortuyn did not believe that Muslims were assimilating to Dutch culture, and therein lies what the Left would consider the root of his error. Contrary to what conservatives and libertarians tend to think, the Left in fact believes wholeheartedly in assimilation "but not assimilation to any nation" culture, be it that of the Netherlands or of the United States. The assimilation in which the Left believes is to the principles of democratic socialism and multicultural tolerance. To be sure that includes tolerance and even affirmation of homosexuality, but the Left is confident that Muslims will eventually accept that doctrine, after they've received "education." Christianity and the traditional culture of the West, including the free market and the bourgeois family, are the Left's first and foremost targets for destruction. Mass immigration is too valuable a means toward achieving that goal to be repudiated. For one thing the more occupied Christians and Western traditionalists are with Muslims, the less time and energy they have to fight socialism. Ideally Christianity and Islam will destroy one another, leaving the field clear for the State. Even without the religious dimension, mass immigration works as a wonderful solvent against the accumulated crust of tradition. And on the most practical level, immigrants make useful new voters to be swayed by handouts or multicultural rhetoric. In the short term Muslim immigration may jeopardize tolerance, but the Left is confident that in the long term it will only help. Immigration is not more important than lifestyle politics to the Left. On the other hand, the Left considers immigration restriction a much greater threat than mild free-market reforms such as abolishing the sales tax (one of Fortuyn’s proposals). The latter policy will not win you any friends on the Left, but it’s the former that will earn you the epithet of "far right." If you’re as unlucky as Profesor Pim, it may even get you killed. May 9, 2002 -------------------- they are trapped in the spotlight of their own greedy creation, from Kanaskakis (sp?)in Canada, to Virginia (upcoming Bilderburger meeting), from New York, to Davos, to Seattle, to QUTAR! They are having to meet in absolute monarchies! That has to tell you something. Their informal networks are becoming less and less legitimate manipulative tools. It is only habit and the lack of ideas of institutional design--what would a framework that intentionally demoted informal elites and gatekeeping look like? For anyone familiar with the Rio Grande du Sul participatory budgeting, it would look like that. That is a fascinating case where political parties were entirely done away with a series of stepped public meetings which actually became the way that budget priorities for the city of over a million people were set up. Participation in these meetings are very high. All I ask is that you separate what you seem to already be separating as distinct phenomena: informal elites, and formal frameworks. Can we formalize the informal gatekeeping away, with more choices for consumers and citizens in consumption, finance, etc.? - http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/0923.html Re: Native Amerikkkan Genocide From: Peter K. (peterk@enteract.com) Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 19:30:50 EDT Next message: Michael Pugliese: "Re: Marxism as Theory and movement" Previous message: Bradley Mayer: "It's official: Support for bombing Israel" Maybe in reply to: Michael Pugliese: "Re: Native Amerikkkan Genocide" Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] >I read the article in _NYRB_ twice, the second time because >I didn't see anything in it about the extermination of the >Indians and I thought any consideration of the U.S. and genocide >would have to start with that rather major fact, if only to >shuffle it off. According to Theodora Kroeber in _Ishi_, >Indians were still being hunted for sport in California in >1910. It was only thirty-two years or so to Wannsee. > >However, I didn't rant about this lacuna anywhere because it >occurred to me that I might be reading an excerpt, or that I >had missed something. > >-- Gordon ========== The Nation has a review which will probably be to your liking: thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020520&s=nevins Instead of giving the Indians casinos, we should have created some sort of national museum that would tell the truth about what happened. Also, there should be some sort of national museum about slavery, one that would be like the Holocaust Museum in DC. A lot of good that museum did, though, when just 8 years ago over 800,000 human beings were massacred within 100 days in Rwanda. A lot of good the US government did when it actually prevented any help from being sent to Rwanda. And a lot of good the anti-interventionists did at the time. However I agree that one should be skeptical about a government that was responsible for genocide - in the post WWII era mind you - in Indonesia, East Timor and Guatemala. Peter ---------------- On Justifying Intervention by JOSEPH NEVINS The twentieth century was arguably the bloodiest in modern history, earning from one commentator the moniker of the Age of Barbarism. From the Nazi genocide, to the killing fields of Cambodia and Rwanda, to the "ethnically cleansed" areas of the former Yugoslavia, the twentieth century was one of unprecedented horror for many. Mass slaughter of civilians is, of course, much older than these horrors. The modern world brought about by European expansionism, the famed Pakistani intellectual Eqbal Ahmad once observed, is a time of extraordinary unrecorded holocausts. How many of us, for instance, are familiar with the deaths of upward of 10 million in the Belgian-controlled Congo in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Or how about Australia's extermination of the indigenous population of Tasmania? The decimation of inferior races in settler colonies, brought about by Western imperialism and the associated legitimizing ideologies, in fact, contends Sven Lindqvist in his brilliant Exterminate All the Brutes, ostensibly laid the groundwork for Hitler's crimes by creating particular habits of thought and political precedents. What was unique to the twentieth century--and thus the subtitle of Samantha Power's very impressive "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide--was the invention of the very word "genocide" and its establishment as a legal construct outlawing one of the most egregious forms of state terror. That represents a great advancement in the construction of international law and associated political and juridical mechanisms, but the fact that genocide continues to occur and to go unpunished speaks to the difficulties of giving life to a legal regime. While the parties most responsible for this shortcoming are those that perpetrate genocide, Power focuses much of her opprobrium on the party that is in her estimation best positioned to put an end to or at least significantly curb such horror: the US government. "No US President has ever made genocide prevention a priority," she writes, "and no US President has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." The myriad horror stories of this age of genocide have many ugly characters, several of whom Power profiles in her well written and extensively documented book. But there are also many heroes, namely those within and without the US government who have spoken the proverbial truth to power with the goal of making Washington appreciate or acknowledge--and thus take appropriate action--that genocide was taking place in the various case studies that Power carefully details. Perhaps the biggest hero in Power's book is Raphael Lemkin. A Polish Jew who as a young boy had a fascination with the history of mass slaughters, Lemkin became a lawyer and international legal scholar. He set out to ban the destruction of ethnic, national or religious groups, to end the national sovereignty-granted impunity of state actors who perpetrate such atrocities and to insure universal jurisdiction for their prosecution. Forced to flee his homeland when the Nazi army invaded in 1939, Lemkin ended up in the United States soon thereafter. He worked indefatigably to bring attention to and to record Hitler's extermination of Jews, while urging Americans to do everything they could to put a stop to it. At the same time, he endeavored to invent a word to characterize such slaughters, one that, in Power's words, "would connote a practice so horrid and so irreparable that the very utterance of the word would galvanize all who heard it." When he coined the term "genocide" in 1944, Western governments and political pundits quickly embraced it. This led Lemkin to assume that actions to codify the term and fight the practices comprehended in it would quickly follow. He soon learned that he had a long fight on his hands--one that he waged incessantly until he died, penniless, in 1959. Before his demise, however, Lemkin saw the United Nations General Assembly pass the genocide convention on December 9, 1948, the body's first passage of a human rights treaty. And less than two years later, the necessary twenty countries had ratified the convention, making it international law. But he did not live to see the United States ratify it, a necessary step, Lemkin thought, to insure its enforcement, given American power. Indeed, it would not be until 1988 that the Senate did so, but not before attaching a set of reservations, understandings and declarations that insured that the United States itself could never be charged with the crime, thus rendering American approval largely symbolic. ----------------Re: Native Amerikkkan Genocide From: Michael Pugliese (debsian@pacbell.net) Date: Fri May 10 2002 - Oh, for crying in the bucket, Gordon! (That's an expression of my Mom's) Samantha Power set out to write a book on Bosnia, Rwanda, Uraq and the Kurdish uprising after the Gulf War which was betrayed by Bush and Snowcroft, and Kosovo. She was a repoprter on the ground in these conflicts. The books on the Genocide of Native Amerikkkans isn;t her area of expertise. You saying she whoops it up for USG killing of millions of Indians from the 1600's to the end of the 19th century? That she denies it? Man.Jeesh. Growing up in the early 70's, I went to the occupation of the BIA at the Interior Dept. by AIM with my Dad to take photos. That mass market paperback, "Bury My Hear At Wounded Knee, " by Dee Brown was a bestseller, along with other less notable books like, "The Greening of America, " (see, "What We Read In The 70's, " Univ. of N. Carolina Press, if memory serves.) What is the Hall of Mirrors This On The Left? If One Doesn't Assemble A Whole Bill Of Indictment For The Entirety of The Crimes of Wesern Imperialist Capitalism From 1492 On Everytime One Writes a Book Or Leaflet One Is Complicit In Mass Murder? These past two yrs. I've been on the internet left lists, lbo-talk has been the best venue/fora for a broad left debate. But, even here, the insinuation, that one is a Counter-Revoutionary Sell Out Rat Fink (even after one posts stuff like chapters of books like Michael McClintock's on U.S. counter- insurgency, heavily indebted to Chomsky or posts notice of discussions in Rethinking Marxism with leftist staffers at HRW like Reed Brophy who wrote Contra Terror In Nicaragua, for South End Press, and except for Ian Murray and Sabri Oncu gets a yawn from y'all, I wonder, at the ability of some to have a set of positions built on a totality of evidence, history, argumentation, debate without demogogic sub-texts and polemicist bag o' tricks posturing. Back to the subject of the thread. The fans of Ward Churchill and Russell Means (2004 candidate of the Libertarian Party he wants to be) ever confront, Ward on his, "objectively counter-revolutionary, " support of te CIA aided Miskito Indians of Nicaragua in their conflict with the FSLN? His friendship with Robert K. Brown, publisher of Soldier of Fortune/mercenary for Savimbi. Russell Means for the same. And when I say support, I mean they went down there and fount on their side. Not, "support, " as in, "The Bolshevik League of Proletarian Struggle(Marxist-Leninist) Supports The Valient Struggle of the .... Michael Pugliese, Man, I've really adjust my meds!!! =============  I found this interesting. On the cover of the _NYRB_ the article is prominently advertised in the middle of the page as "America & Genocide". Inside, in the table of contents, it's "Genocide and America". Below, under "Contributors", it says "SAMANTHA POWER is Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of the forthcoming _'A_ _Problem_from_Hell': America_and_the_Age_of_Genocide (Basic Books), from which the article in this issue is drawn." (I confess to a certain low delight in savoring such passages repeatedly -- "executive director, carr center, human rights policy, harvard, kennedy, school, government, executive director..." -- but! Let us go on.) It seemed to me, then, that a general consideration of the relationship of "America" -- John Smith, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and all that -- to genocide, the deliberate extermination of large numbers of people because of their nationality, race or ancestry -- or maybe culture -- would _have_ to start with the genocide which, with slavery, is one of the fundamental facts of the creation of the United States. As I pointed out, the trailing edge of the American Indian genocide can be detected in 1910. A person could have shot an Indian for sport in his youth, and read in his middle age of Auschwitz and Dachau in the newspaper. But (unless I missed something), there's no mention of this. Somehow, the world of genocide got stopped and restarted between the early 1900s (the aforesaid Indians and the Congolese) and 1917 (the Armenians who, Hitler to the contrary notwithstanding, have not been forgotten). Isn't this odd? Maybe it's because the Armenians are sort of White, at least with respect to the Turks. I don't know. Now, I think this is important because in the _New_York_ _Review_of_Books_ and the Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, we're not talking about some goofy dumb asses talking idle shit in the Walmart parking lot, we're talking about the _haute_bourgeoisie_ at their most self-conscious. The Indians and what happened to them have _disappeared_from_ _the_bourgeois_scope_. Doesn't Samantha Power think those acts and the way they're construed by the nation that perpetrated them might have _something_ to do with the American political mind? I'm not moralizing here; I find the omission peculiar and troubling for the most self-centered, practical reason: it indicates to me that there are large, important holes in the metaphorical heads of our leadership, either because they actually think this way or they think they can pretend they do. (Not that I haven't gotten this idea before.) The review in the _Nation_ tried to get at this by another route, I suppose, in noting that Powers's attention to intervention was very selective. But that is what I expect: the leadership are people who desire power, especially over other people, or they wouldn't be the leadership; if they desire power, they will notice and publicize what serves this power and downplay or omit what opposes or undermines it. But that game has a genealogy which I would think they would at least admit to themselves, i.e. talk about in the _NYRB_ and down at the Carr Center. So there's something of a mystery there -- hence my interest and comments. I concede these are sort of half-baked, and that is why I didn't mention them until provoked. There's this line drawn across the pages of even the fat, heavy books the wonks read.... I haven't figured it out. -- Gordon =========== OK, it's not ethnic, national or religious, so it falls outside the radar, but is there even a footnote on Indonesia 1965-66? Something from 500,000-1,000,000 murdered, the drainage canals of the padi fields flowing with blood. In view of the numbers alone, shouldn't it at least merit a discussion, even if only to reject it as 'genocide', but still to give pointers to how one might deal with such instances that might otherwise fall between the cracks (of skulls)? Especially given that celebratory NYT front page banner headline when the coup/counter-coup occurred, and given recent revelations of some kind of US complicity in the preparation of lists. Reading of the initial US press coverage of the Venezuelan coup reminded me of the Indonesian one. kj khoo ========= Though I did not find her e-mail address on the Carr Center's website I did find a general one. I sent the thread. Let's see if the haute bourgeoisie mandarins repond. You are an anarchist Gordon, so, this following comment is reaaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyy baiting. (I've been in the most snarlacious mood lately!) But, your reaction reminds me of the apocryphal story about the Stalinist in the thirties confronted by a Trotskyist or a left-liberral over the Purge Trials in Moscow. "I hear they lynch Blacks in the South!" The continual refrain since the 60's on the left about Amerikkka being on the wrong side of history and backing the wrong sidee in civil/revolutionary conflicts through massive military and other aid contains an implicit demand/hope that cutting off, for example the $1.3 Billion + gone to the Columbian miliary this yr. to slaughter their Indians, s/b high on the list of agitational/lobbying agendas of the practical left.Absent that Revolutionary Seizure Of Power qwhich ain't gonna ever happen here, folks like those in HRW, AI and Columbia solidarity groups attempt to pressure the USG to live up to it's rhetoric on human rights.Now, unless you hold to the Devil Theory of History like ultra-leftists do and impotentently wait for that inevitable collapse of kapitalizm that never seems to arrive, you've got to do that boring shit of education your fellow citizens of the Empire and lobbyour representatives. For example, mine, Nancy Pelosi has as her top local staffer at the S.F. Federal Bldg, Fred Ross, Jr. Son of Fred Ross, who was a major figure in the UFW. Fred Ross, Jr. in the 80's was active in El Salvador and Nicaragua solidary work for CISPES and later, Labor to Neighbor. One can either, rage at the very real atrocities committed by and for the American Empire, home and abroad, or harness that anger to do something to attenuate it.Eliminating fascist barbarity totally requires not just the necessary but not sufficient overturning of the politico-economic structures that undergird oppression and exploitation but a radical psycholological set of changes too in the massers and elites. In other words, utopianism, that every experience so far in human history, belies that naive hopes that undlie way too many belief systems of leftists and liberals and progressives. Michael Pugliese ========== I think she was just focusing on more recent history. I graduated high school in '88 and remember reading in textbooks about what happened to the American Indians. And perhaps while it wasn't as self-flagellating as you may wish it was, it did prepare the student to go on and read books like Zinn's History of the American People. So I don't see any hole. ======= >The review in the _Nation_ tried to get at this by another >route, I suppose, in noting that Powers's attention to >intervention was very selective. But that is what I expect: >the leadership are people who desire power, especially over >other people, or they wouldn't be the leadership; if they >desire power, they will notice and publicize what serves this >power and downplay or omit what opposes or undermines it. ======= This is true in general, but why then does Powers write about the US's recent crimes? (from the Nation review): "But as Power illustrates, it was not simply that the United States did nothing. Often Washington indirectly and directly aided the genocidaires. In Cambodia, for example, the US bombing that preceded Pol Pot's seizure of power "killed tens of thousands of civilians." While horrific in its own right, "it also indirectly helped give rise to a monstrous regime" responsible for the deaths of upwards of an estimated 2 million Cambodians. And in the case of Iraq's slaughter of the Kurds, the Reagan White House dismissed reports of Saddam Hussein's gassings and other atrocities while maintaining aid to his regime, preferring to maintain its unholy alliance with Iraq in its war with Iran. The year after Saddam's forces decimated several thousand Iraqi Kurdish villages and killed close to 100,000 Kurdish civilians (1987-88), Washington, now under Bush Sr., actually doubled the amount of agricultural credit it had been providing to Saddam's regime, increasing it to more than $1 billion." As far as leaders go, I liked Zizek's comments on anarchism in Doug's recent interview. Peter ========= Michael Pugliese: > Though I did not find her e-mail address on the Carr Center's website I did > find a general one. I sent the thread. Let's see if the haute bourgeoisie > mandarins repond. ======== Good luck. I'm sure I'm beneath their radar. At least, I certainly hope so. ========= > You are an anarchist Gordon, so, this following comment is > reaaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyy baiting. (I've been in the most snarlacious mood > lately!) But, your reaction reminds me of the apocryphal story about the > Stalinist in the thirties confronted by a Trotskyist or a left-liberral over > the Purge Trials in Moscow. "I hear they lynch Blacks in the South!" > The continual refrain since the 60's on the left about Amerikkka being on > the wrong side of history and backing the wrong sidee in civil/revolutionary > etc. etc. ... ========== But I wasn't in raging-left-deviationist mode. I could have been a most mandarin-, Natural-Aristocracy-worshipping liberal and noticed the rather large hole in the article I saw in the _NYRB_. If I put the terms "America" and "genocide" together, the first thing that pops into my mind certainly isn't the Tasmanians or the Armenians; it's the American Indians and the millions lost in the slavery system (including the rigors of the Middle Passage). What if I were a German and wrote an article titled "Germany and Genocide" as if nothing happened before, say, 1980? I think someone might have had some doubts about my approach. The stuff about how I'm too utopian for practical political work is completely irrelevant. It is "utopian" pressure on the established order that makes any kind of leftist struggle or progress possible. But in any case, my criticism was not from a particularly utopian perspective. ======== > ... > >political mind? I'm not moralizing here; I find the omission > >peculiar and troubling for the most self-centered, practical > >reason: it indicates to me that there are large, important > >holes in the metaphorical heads of our leadership, either > >because they actually think this way or they think they can > >pretend they do. (Not that I haven't gotten this idea > >before.) ======== Peter K.: > I think she was just focusing on more recent history. I graduated > high school in '88 and remember reading in textbooks about > what happened to the American Indians. And perhaps while it > wasn't as self-flagellating as you may wish it was, it did prepare > the student to go on and read books like Zinn's History of the American > People. So I don't see any hole. ========== I don't see a recognition of directly relevant facts as self-flagellation. It seems like an odd word to use in this context. ======== > >The review in the _Nation_ tried to get at this by another > >route, I suppose, in noting that Powers's attention to > >intervention was very selective. But that is what I expect: > >the leadership are people who desire power, especially over > >other people, or they wouldn't be the leadership; if they > >desire power, they will notice and publicize what serves this > >power and downplay or omit what opposes or undermines it. ======== Peter K.: > This is true in general, but why then does Powers write about the US's recent crimes? > (from the Nation review): > "But as Power illustrates, it was not simply that the United States did nothing. Often Washington > indirectly and directly aided the genocidaires. ... etc." ========== Because Powers is writing at a higher level than pure propaganda. One can see the informational agencies of the bourgeoisie, including academia, the media, public relations and advertising, and the relevant parts of the government, as structured into layers, where each layer lies or at least propagandizes the layer below it, but tries to be truthful with its peers and those above it. At a level of nearly complete ignorance, like the big-city tabloid press or network television, the material is almost purely propaganda. But Powers's layer, when writing in the _NYRB_, is not like the _New_York_Post_ layer; on this layer, the U.S. _can_ be said to do wrong. Most specifically, it can fail to intervene (imperialize) vigorously enough and may even back the wrong guys _at_times_. These errors can be corrected, not by retiring from imperialism, but by pursuing it even more vigorously and intelligently. This is why I found the omission of the extermination of the American Indians curious; it seems like something the author would want to take care of somehow, if only in passing, just as a German advocating intervention in Yugoslavia or wherever would want to take care of _his_ little historical problem. (Perhaps Powers does so in the book; as I said, I'm going by just the article in the _NYRB_. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the established intellectual order had boxed up the American Indian and slavery questions so elegantly that they could dealt with by a few words or even a convenient glyph. Maybe a little black Unhappy Face -- but I digress.) ======= Peter K.: > As far as leaders go, I liked Zizek's comments on anarchism in Doug's > recent interview. ======= You mean the part about the "secret masters"? I thought it was pretty funny. Best read in uniform, boots well polished, with Laibach blasting out of the stereo. -- Gordon ========= Some personal family history: a great-grandfather was a woodsman of sorts in Minnesota. He was called "Whitey" because of his Santa Claus beard and he was an alcoholic and admantly felt that redskins should be shot on sight. Two of my grandfather's cousins were conscripts in the Nazi army and were taken prisoner by the advancing Soviet army. That grandfather was in the shit in the Phillipines and feels that we would have lost too many soldiers invading Japan, so dropping the H bombs was the right thing to do. ----------- You can never be too picky: ======= > That grandfather was in the shit in the Phillipines and feels that we > would have lost too many soldiers invading Japan, so dropping the H > bombs was the right thing to do. ======== The first hydrogen bomb ("H bomb" aka fusion weapon) was detonated on 1 November, 1952 at Eniwetok atoll. The Soviet Union detonated their first on 12 August, 1953. Dropping a thermonuclear ("hydrogen") weapon on Japan would have been quite a bit more devastating that what actually happened (fission weapon). For reference, the Trinity shot was about 19kt, Little Boy (Hiroshima) was estimated at 15kt, Fat Man (Nagasaki) is estimated at 20kt. "Mike", the first H bomb, was 10.4 megatons, nearly 500 times more powerful than Fat Man. /jordan ========== Yup, no denying that the US killed millions of Native Americans. But, Ward Churchill after he said in a speech in Burlington, VT. (that was gone over on the list) said that ALL the WTC victims from Guatemalan dishwashers to stockbrockers were , "little Eichmanns, " is beyond my point of toleration. Those to whom evil is done is done, do evil in return it has been said. And, some from what has been called, "The Stupid Left, " seem to relish any damn statement that can perceived as counter-hegemonic. Whether the consequence and underlying ideological basis of such position is left or Right or just plain irrationist. Michael Pugliese, older I get the more I understand why someone like Nathan Newman is branded a Neo-Conservative Lackey of The Ruling Class Signed, a Counter-Revolutionary Social Fascist Really Pissed At The Caricatured Positions Some Leftists Take That Are Ripe For Lampoon By The New Criterion The Weekly Standard. Next paycheck gonna get the $ 30 book by SDUSA neo-con against Socialism and Communism That Is Blurbed by Christopher Hitchens.And Gonna Check-In To the Clinic For Pre-Mature Neo-Conservative tendencies While Being Driven Over The Edge By Ultra-Leftist...The Manuscript Breaks Off At This Point...Pugliese Led Away By Burly Men In Jackets To be Given Heavy Psycho-Tropic Meds To Chill His Soul... -------------- The First Webbie by STUART KLAWANS ay what you will against the Hollywood event film, and you can say it twice about Spider-Man. Twice, because this movie has been so successfully pre-sold, mall-booked, cross-marketed and revenue-streamed that Columbia Pictures confidently scheduled Spider-Man 2 before it ever let an audience see the first. Violent? The fight scenes in this picture must have cost a hundred Foley artists a hundred nights in the recording studio, banging away at a hundred anvils. Crass? The product placements are literally as big as Times Square. Crude? The camera is perpetually drawn, as if by animal magnetism, to the cleavage of Kirsten Dunst, the better to examine two of her character's few defining features. It is not enough to say that Spider-Man is a big movie. It is a big, big movie. And Spider-Man is also a small movie, which hangs from the thin, very odd thread of its lead actor, Tobey Maguire. A little late in life, though not implausibly so, Maguire plays high school senior Peter Parker: the smart, shy, artistic, dateless victim of his graduating class, the kid voted Most Likely Not to Be Voted Anything, who happens to get bitten by a mutant spider and so turns into--what? A superhero? More like a freak. As conceived for comic books by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man was the first really alienated guy to swoop around fighting crime in a funny outfit. His strange powers made this teenage outsider into even more of an outsider--and Spider-Man the movie stays true to that idea, thanks mostly to Maguire. Consider his voice, first of all: a nasal tenor instrument, with which he's in no hurry to say anything. --------------  http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/0784.html first of a long string of posts (a socalled thread folks) on anti-zionism and as usual with such discussions on lbo, they range all over the world At 06:11 PM 05/09/2002 -0400, Nathan wrote: >Many leftist campaigns have a large problem in picking the victims it favors >and diminishing the suffering of those it doesn't, instead of building a >movement against suffering in all its forms. One can acknowledge the >suffering of Jews, who lost a third of their global numbers in a space of a >few years during World War II after centures of persecution, while at the >same time arguing that suffering does not make Israeli oppression of the >Palestinians valid. =========== I acknowledge it Nathan. My father, a jew, was imprisoned and tortured by the Romanian Iron Guard and barely escaped with his life. However, neither he nor I accept that the Holocaust was a unique or unparalleled act of genocide in human history, which is what I was responding to.  =========== >It is precisely the horrors and lessons of the >Holocaust, like the suffering of other groups, that should make people >sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.  =========== Unless they're Israeli Zionists...you see, because the sufferings of their ancestors were so unique. >Trying to rank or diminish or express "being tired" at hearing about the >suffering due to any atrocity is a losing strategy for humanistic >progressive values. ===========  You are misquoting me. I was referring to the unique/unparalleled claim.  =========== >In fact, it is the memory of the Holocaust that makes the destruction of >land records and other markers of identity in Jenin and other camps so >scary, because it has the markers of the early stages of that past genocide.  =========== Just the markers? Where have you been? 48 resulted in the eviction/dispossession of 75% of the population of Palestine. More in 67 and many more/all shortly if Sharon has his way. Joanna ---------------- a liddul further down in this thread: Time to recommend (again) a short book (about 180 pgs. or so.) blurbed by Judith Butler, which critiques the anti-interventionist/anti-imperialist left. By Michel Feher, "Powerless by Design, "Duke Univ. Press, 2001.$14.95 or so.Even less, it seems at amazon.Powerless by Design : The Age of the International Community (Public Planet) by Michel Feher Our Price: $11.17 URL at the bottom will take y'all to 7 sample pages. Michael Pugliese Book Description In Powerless by Design Michel Feher addresses Western officials’ responses to post–Cold War conflicts and analyzes the reactions of the Left to their governments’ positions. Sometime in the early 1990s, Feher argues, U.S. and European leaders began portraying themselves as the representatives of a new international community. In that capacity, they developed a doctrine that was not only at odds with the rhetoric of the Cold War but also a far cry from the “new world order” announced at the outset of the decade. Whereas their predecessors had invested every regional conflict with an ideological stake, explains Feher, the representatives of this international community claimed that the crises they confronted did not call for partisan involvement. Exemplary of this new approach were Western responses to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda. In order to avoid costly interventions, U.S. and European leaders traced these crimes to ancient tribal enmities and professed that the role of the international community should be limited to a humanitarian, impartial, and conciliatory engagement with all the warring parties. They thus managed to appear righteous but powerless, at least until NATO’s intervention in Kosovo. Faced with this doctrine, both the liberal and radical wings of the Western Left found themselves in an uneasy position. Liberals, while lured by their leaders’ humanitarianism were nonetheless disturbed by the dismal results of the policies carried out in the name of the international community. Conversely, anti-imperialist militants were quick to mock the hypocrisy of their governments’ helpless indignation, yet certainly not prepared to demand that Western powers resort to force. Are we still in this “age of the international community”? Feher shows that with NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, both liberal and radical activists suddenly found their mark: the former welcomed the newfound resolve of their governments, while the latter condemned it as the return of the imperialist “new world order.” For Western leaders, however, the war against Serbia proved an accident rather than a turning point. Indeed, less than a year later, their indifference to the destruction of Chechnya by Russian troops suggested that the discursive strategy exposed in Powerless by Design might remain with us for quite some time. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition. >From the Inside Flap “Powerless by Design is necessary reading for anyone concerned with the contemporary politics of human rights. Feher offers a lucid and incisive indictment of the humanitarian pretensions of the international community.” —Robert Post, University of California, Berkeley “Extremely provocative and informative, this book should quickly become the center of political debate among liberal and left scholars and activists. The book deftly lays out the paradox of a discourse on... read more --This text refers to the Library Binding edition. .amazon.com/exec/ obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/ 0822326132/slide- show/lib_dp_sp_1/ 103-24525 67-5633410#reader-link  ------------------ "A two-state settlement is now the only possible way >to secure peace in the forseeable future. But for such >a settlement to stick there will have to be some >reversal of that historic ethnic cleansing. Those who >insist there can be no questioning of the legitimacy >of the state in its current form - with discriminatory >laws giving a "right of return" to Jews from anywhere >in the world, while denying it to Palestinians >expelled by force - are scarcely taking a stand >against racism, but rather the opposite." ============ So if we accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel, we are racists. The contrapositive to this is that: If we are not racists, then we do not accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The bullshit meter reading here is rather large. The anti-semitic meter reading is definitely positive too. Brad DeLong --------------------- Psychoanalysis was a symptom of everything the Nazis reviled: an intellectual assault on Kultur largely perpetrated by Jews. It was also, as this remarkable revisionary work shows, an inescapable symptom of modernity, practiced, transformed, and perpetuated by and within the Nazi regime. A sweeping, magisterial work by one of the most incisive and interesting scholars of modern philosophy, theory, and culture, Nazi Psychoanalysis studies the breadth of this phenomenon in order to clarify and deepen our understanding not only of psychoanalysis but of the twentieth century itself. Tracing the intersections of psychoanalysis and Nazism, Laurence A. Rickels discovers startling conjunctions and continuities in writers as diverse as Adler and Adorno, Kafka and Goethe, Lacan, H. Rider Haggard, and Heidegger, and in works as different as Der Golem, Civilization and Its Discontents, Frankenstein, Faust, and Brave New World. In a richly allusive style, he writes of psychoanalysis in multifarious incarnations, of the concept and actual history of "insurance," of propaganda in theory and practice, of psychological warfare, Walt Disney, and the Frankfurt School debates-a dizzying tour of the twentieth century that helps us see how the "corridor wars" that arise in the course of theoretical, clinical, social, political, and cultural attempts to describe the human psyche are related to the world wars of the century in an intimate and infinitely complicated manner. Though some have used its appropriation by the Nazis to brand psychoanalysis with the political odium of fascism, Rickels instead finds an uncanny convergence-one that suggests far-reaching possibilities for both psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic criticism. His work, with its enormous intellectual and historical span, makes a persuasive argument that no element of modernity-not psychoanalysis any more than Marxism or deconstruction, cultural revolutions or technological advances-can be adequately understood without a thorough consideration of its Nazi component. Laurence A. Rickels is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His books include The Vampire Lectures (1999), The Case of California (2001), and the edited volume Acting Out in Groups (1999), all published by Minnesota. ===================== Extreme Solution 2 (Sharon's Plan) (english) By Alexander Cockburn (via KD) 5:44am Thu May 2 '02 (Modified on 7:54am Thu May 2 '02) article#177681 Sharon's plan is to drive two million Palestinians across the Jordan using the pretext of a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike in Israel. This could trigger a massive mobilization to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs. Professor Martin van Creveld is Israel's best known military historian. On April 28 Britain's conservative newspaper The Telegraph, published an article outlining what Van Creveld believes Sharon's near-term goal: "transfer", otherwise known as expulsion of the Palestinians. According to Van Creveld, Sharon's plan is to drive two million Palestinians across the Jordan using the pretext of a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike in Israel. This could trigger a massive mobilization to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs. Van Creveld notes that two years ago less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favor of what is euphemistically called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent. In September 1970, Van Creveld recalls, King Hussein of Jordan attacked the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. The then General Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer, Southern Front, argued that Israel's policy of helping the king was a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite regime. Sharon has often said since that Jordan, which, according to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian state. The inference - that the Palestinians should go there - is clear. Van Creveld writes that Sharon has always harbored a very clear plan to rid Israel of the Palestinians.He has wait for a pretext - such as an American attack on Iraq, which some Israelis think is going to take place in early summer. Sharon himself told Secretary of State Colin Powell that America should not allow the situation in Israel to delay such an operation. An uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King Abdullah's regime, would also present such an opportunity - as would a terrorist attack inside Israel that killed hundreds. Should such circumstances arise, according to Van Creveld, then Israel would mobilize within hours. "First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government. A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armored, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas." In Van Creveld's view (he does say flatly that he is utterly opposed to any form of "transfer"), "The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison. He discounts any effective response from Egypt, Syrpia, Lebanon or Iraq. "Saddam Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably has. The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so 'awesome and terrible' (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the imagination." But what about international reaction? Van Creveld thinks it would not be an effective deterrent. "Some believe that the international community will not permit such an ethnic cleansing. I would not count on it. If Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States. The US, however, regards itself as being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long." Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days," Van Creveld writes."Ifthe Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties, especially in the north, where its population would come under fire from Hizbollah. However, their number would be limited and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973." www.counterpunch.org add your own comments Cockburn Should Know... (english) Kurt the Yank 7:54am Thu May 2 '02 address: Brooklyn, NY USA comment#177696 Cockburn should know all about mass expulsions. This Brit's commie parents supported Stalin. ----------------- 177889 Israel Shamir Supports LePen, Attacks Jews in General (english) Tim Hall 12:21am Fri May 3 '02 timhall11@yahoo.com article#177889 Included in the post below: the anti-Zionist Israeli journalist Israel Shamir's 4-23-02 article supporting the French fascist LePen and condemning Jewish people as a whole, an answer by Tim Hall, editor of Struggle magazine, Shamir's reply to his critics, and Hall's answer to this reply. These materials discuss important issues at this critical moment for Palestine and the solidarity movement. Israel Shamir's Turn Support for LePen and Condemnation of the Jewish People Denounced by Struggle Editor Included in the post below: the anti-Zionist Israeli journalist Israel Shamir's 4-23-02 article supporting the French fascist LePen and condemning Jewish people as a whole, an answer by Tim Hall, editor of Struggle magazine, Shamir's reply to his critics, and Hall's answer to this reply. These materials discuss important issues at this critical moment for Palestine and the solidarity movement. The Dangerous Liaisons The Beginning Of The End Of The Jewish Post-War Ascendancy? By Israel Shamir The people of France have sent an important message to the world, by electing the traditionalist leader, Jean-Mari le Pen to the second round of the French presidential elections. It was not just a proof of general dissatisfaction, as NY Times claimed. The first round occurred while the Jewish troops besieged the Church of Nativity, starved nuns, shot priests, and despoiled the land of Christ. Israeli bulldozers worked around the clock covering mass graves of their innocent victims in the Jenin refugee camp, Jewish soldiers destroyed churches and mosques in Nablus, shot at the Holy Virgin in Bethlehem, while one hundred fifty thousand Jews marched in Paris and elsewhere, supporting the genocide in Palestine. Waving Israeli flags and draped in the blue and white colours of their national banner (the tricolour is dropped and forgotten), the Jews marched from the Place de la République to the Place de la Bastille in Paris, chanting in French and Hebrew and carrying signs that read "Yesterday New York, today Jerusalem, tomorrow Paris.' Today’s Jerusalem is an unhappy city, its non-Jewish majority dispossessed, uprooted, pushed into ghetto and controlled by the brutal Jewish Border Police. Today’s Jerusalem has the most advanced torture facilities, and there, thousands of kidnapped Palestinians are subjected to electric chocks, beating and humiliation. Today’s Jerusalem is a place where only Jews can move freely and enjoy the fruits of civilisation. Should it be a model for tomorrow’s Paris? Mais non, the people of France had experienced the German Nazi conquest in 1940s, and they did not want to try the Judeo-Nazi occupation. That was the main message sent by the French voter. We should thank General Sharon’s brutality and ill-conceived solidarity of Jews in France with the génocidaire for this result. Until now, the Jews were divided in their tasks and purposes. In Palestine, they created a toxic, ferociously nationalist and religiously fanatic entity based on Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws. Elsewhere, in France as well as in Britain, they promoted the pseudo-liberal paradigm of dismantling European national and cultural content in favour of the Judeo-American spirit. In Palestine, they shot at the church; in France, they undermined it by subterfuge. One law for themselves: extreme right wing nationalism of Sharon. Another law for the goyiim: liberal New Labour of Tony Blair. If the Jews would have sense, they would keep the inner dialectical unity of their pincer-movement attack as their best guarded secret. But they were inebriated by their successes. The spiritual teacher of Sephardic Jews, Rabbi Obadiah Joseph, ruled that Jews should not show their ascendancy in the world until they would be able to destroy the Christian Churches in the Holy Land. Now, with the Nativity besieged, they apparently felt the condition is fulfilled. Jews became united to an extent unknown since the days of Christ, and united by a common will, single purpose and a feeling of arriving to the pinnacle of power. Intoxication of power and unity caused the usually cautious people to drop masks, to leave pretences. It seems the Jews call out 'Kill him', as two thousand years ago. This new openness provided us with a previously unheard-of insight into the soul of the Jews and their supporters. An authentic Jewish voice, Ron Grossman of Chicago Tribune[i] wrote, 'As a self-proclaimed humanist, I ought to recoil in horror from the thought of tanks rumbling through a city, anybody's city. My head should hang in sorrow at televised images of street fighting (rather, massacres - ISH) in Bethlehem and Ramallah. But here is a hint: Don't lecture or preach to us. Forget about appealing to our better selves'. Please note this plural 'us'before denying the obvious. The Jews do not hide anymore behind the useful but dated device of 'Americans, French or British citizens of Jewish faith'. It is again The Jews, a single body with a single mind. Forget about appealing to their better selves, as they have not got any. 'The better selves'were just a device. 'No one can express the aspirations of most Israelis like the prime minister. This is not a war that was waged by Sharon, the "warmonger," this is the war of all of us', reports Gideon Levy, a man of heart and conscience, who was recently banned from the pages of the 'liberal' Haaretz. (I was banned ten years ago. Welcome to the club, Gideon!) 'It will also be very difficult to blame Sharon for the consequences of the war, in the light of the sweeping support he has been given by the majority of Israelis. Nearly 30,000 men were mobilized and they reported for duty as one man, making the refusal movement, with 21 refuseniks currently in jail, irrelevant'. The Jews abroad were just as awful as those in Palestine. Professor David D. Perlmutter wrote in LA Times[ii]: 'I daydream--if only! If in 1948, 1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had acted just a bit like the Third Reich, then today Israelis would shop, eat pizza, marry and celebrate the holy days unmolested. And of course Jews, not sheiks, would have that Gulf oil' Witty if snobbish Taki of the British weekly Spectator contributed the following anecdotal evidence of the new Jewish vehemence and single-mindedness: 'On Easter Sunday, during lunch, the richest woman in Israel, Irit Lando[iii], suddenly burst into my house and began to harangue my friends and family about Adam Shapiro. Despite the fact she's one of my wife's oldest friends and was invited to drop in after lunch, I was extremely annoyed. I reminded Irit that my house was not Israeli occupied territory; that it was Easter; and knowing how I feel about the plight of the Palestinians, she should change the subject. Which she did, turning on the press, instead, and how they gave publicity to that godawful traitor Adam Shapiro'. As few mavericks of Jewish origin like Adam Shapiro or marvellous Jennifer Loewenstein became increasingly marginalized, the Jews en masse rally to support Sharon and Israel. From Moscow to Brooklyn, from Marseille to Hampstead, the Jews speak in one voice. WE ARE ONE, proclaimed the headline of the Jewish Week. This vision of united, ready for the kill, Jewry could not but scare the French voter, and any thinking man. Le Pen was probably the only French politician totally opposed by the Jews. The French and the West European Left should learn the lesson before it is too late. Their liaison with the Jews became a liability and a source of embarrassment. Historically it was probably justified, but not any more. Even the Jewish stranglehold on media can not deliver the electoral goods. Instead of supporting Jewish agenda, the Left should compete with the Right by addressing problems of working class in the country and of the income disparity on the global scale. There should be no more immigration, and this task calls to stop the main creator of immigration, the unfair Judeo-American globalisation and Bush and Blair’ s War against Islam. In the forthcoming May elections in the UK, the Left should give the boot to Michael Levy's protege Tony Blair, and turn to the tradition of Michael Foot. The electoral success of Le Pen could signify the beginning of the end of the Jewish post-war ascendancy. Inverting the slogan of French Jews, we say, "Yesterday Paris, Today Washington, and Tomorrow Jerusalem". ##### [i] chicagotribune.com/ news/opinion/perspective/ chi-0204070422apr 07.s [ii] April 7, 2002 [iii] I normalised the spelling of her name. Taki the snob had to spell quite an ordinary Jewish name Landoi (var. Landau) in the French way. (Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles can be found on the site www.israelshamir.net In order to subscribe to this list or to be removed from it, please write to info@israelshamir.net No copyright for electronic transmission, but ask for permission in order to publish as hard copy.)  =========== Reply by Tim Hall Dear Israel, From within Israel itself you have been a courageous voice in defense of the Palestinians, hailing their struggle and advocating a one-state, one-person-one-vote solution which would effectively dismantle the Zionist theocratic state if implemented. Hence it is with great disappointment that I read your April 23 article "The Dangerous Liaisons," which applauds the electoral success of the fascist LePen in France and raises the old fascist bogey of the "world Jewish conspiracy," which you re-name the "Judeo-American spirit." You take up LePen's retrograde call to oppose immigration and you make a ludicrous claim that the French voter is faced with a "Judeo-nazi occupation." You thus imply that those who voted for Le Pen inherit the tradition of the World War II anti-nazi Resistance. You even lay major blame for the present capitalist globalization on the Jews (it is hardly a Jewish monopoly, being an American-led imperialist globalization heavily supported by the EU and other capitalist powers). Factually, what you are saying is garbage. In its effect, it does nothing but help Sharon and the Israeli conquerors. Even if, as you claim, virtually all Jews were united in support of Sharon's brutality, that would be no reason to support LePen, a fervent defender of French colonial domination of Algeria. LePen's anti-immigrant call, which is obviously directed against Arabs and which you so shamefully embrace, is indefensible. At what point in history do you draw the line and declare that the immigrants who arrived before that date are "the true French" (or "the true Americans") and those who arrived later are "foreigners"? To play this game is to be a pawn of the cliques of billionaires who rule the world and use national/racial conflict to keep their working-class subjects divided and at war with each other. Factually, the "World Jewish Conspiracy" (you stress the Jewish part of what you call the "Judeo-American spirit") is also garbage. Yes, there are very powerful Jewish -- and, obviously, American -- capitalists. But there are also powerful capitalists of every other industrially developed nationality. Focusing all blame on only one or two nationalities among the ruling class lets all the others off the hook. Henry Ford and the majority of world capitalists were quite happy to finance Hitler to blame all the ills of the world on the Jews. It helped their class survive. Factually, again, the impression you give of all Jews being united behind Sharon is also false. Large numbers of anti-Zionist Jews took part in the big April 20th demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Progressive Jews are active in the militant pro-Palestinian student movement at the University of California Berkeley campus. Abroad, indignant Jewish voices have been heard in the UK and elsewhere denouncing Sharon's aggression. The present moment is certainly a turning point for the Palestinian struggle. It is also a turning point for the movement of solidarity with the Palestinians. Sharon's brutal aggression has horrified justice-loving people everywhere. It creates an unprecedented opportunity to expose Zionism and win people away from its influence. But in order to do that, we cannot transfer one ounce of our genuine hatred of Zionist brutality to blaming the Jewish people as a whole. That direction leads to fascism. I hope you will turn back from it. Sincerely, Tim Hall Editor Struggle A Magazine of Proletarian Revolutionary Literature Responses To The Dangerous Liaisons By Israel Shamir  =========== My commentary on Le Pen's electoral success in the first round of the French presidential elections caused many responses, from exuberant 'Yes, man. I agree with every word' of Gilad Atzmon, the Israeli musician and writer, to surly 'Take me off your list. I'm seeking to have you banned from al-awda-unity' of the good Jewish American supporter of Palestinians, Stanley Heller. The discourse went by two distinct routes, one, referring to Le Pen, his policies and circumstances, including the question of immigration; two, is the usual 'fight against anti-Semitism'of our Jewish friends. Their texts are given below, while the original Dangerous Liaisons is in the very end. I hesitate to enter another debate of anti-Semitism. After Jenin massacre, during the vicious siege of the Church of Nativity, I am not sure we should give much consideration to fine feelings of our Jewish friends. Hundred years ago, a similar discussion went on between the Russian Bolsheviks (of Jewish or any other origin) and the Jewish Bundists. Bund guys felt the Jewish people are too special to get the general treatment. Years and aeons passed, but good people like Stanley (and I like and appreciate him and his work for the cause) do not succeed to get out of Bund mould. My good friend Miriam wondered, why I should annoy people by speaking of 'Jewish'soldiers, snipers etc instead of the 'Israeli'ones. Dear Miriam, Israel means Jews. That is the meaning of the word. The State of Israel means the state of Jews. Beside semantics, there are none but us Jews in power of Israel. Enough of this small game of distinction between Israel and Jews, as we witness mass unlimited support of Jews for Israel. If our Jewish friends'feelings are hurt, they are now in the same boat with the Muslims, terrorists to a man, with the Germans, willing executioners of You-Know-Who, with Europeans (White Supremacists) and the rest of mankind. This demand of a special treatment for the Jews is a source of Jewish neurosis. Why a Jewish Week may write, 'We (the Jews) Are One', but I may not repeat: 'the Jews are unified to an incredible extent'? Isn't it a case of having a cake and eating it, proclaiming unity within and forbidding the outsiders to see it? Stanley objects to an 'old canard'of Jews as enemies of Christ. We live in the strange days when old canards became true. Jews besiege the Church of Nativity, and probably will destroy it soon ' is it an 'old canard'or reality? Hundreds of children are murdered in Palestine ' is it an 'old canard'or reality? Senate and Congress of the US kowtow to the Jews ' is it an ' old canard'or reality? Stan is sure that the Americans will forever stand by the Jews, right or wrong. Well, the success of Le Pen should teach him that it can change. He thinks that Le Pen won the hearts of French voters by his anti-Muslim views. How come, then, that he was tried twice for his 'anti-Semitic'remarks, and never ' for an anti-Muslim ones? I am not alone in my opinion: Naomi Kleinof No Logo wrote: The hatred of Jews is a potent political tool in the hands of the right inEurope and in Israel. For Mr. Le Pen, anti-Semitism is a windfall, helping spike his support from 10 per cent to 17 per cent in a week. Some readers misunderstood me and thought I support Le Pen. Surely I do not: Le Pen is a bad guy in my books, but bad guys will be called to undo the excessive Jewish power if the good guys fail to do it. The paradigm of Chosenness makes no harm as long as it is kept separately from power. Being empowered, it becomes a source of great trouble for mankind, and eventually for the pretenders to the Chosenness. History is made of harsh but just stuff: at first, it offers the pretenders a peaceful way out. Whoever fails to take it, will learn a hard way. The Jews who rejected Christ's message of peace with neighbours were crushed by the Roman legions just thirty years later. The Jews, who rejected the peaceful message of togetherness, and moved from Left to Right, may yet live to regret it. As to the question of immigration, immigrants should be allowed to integrate fully in the lands they chose to live in. But an additional import of immigrants is disruptive and inhuman. Shamir ========= Hall's Reply to Israel Shamir's Defense of "The Dangerous Liaisons" Dear Israel, Your article "The Dangerous Liaisons" (4-23-02) was controversial for two things: its apparent support for the French fascist demagogue LePen and its denunciation of the entire Jewish people for the crimes of Zionism in the wake of Sharon's aggression. Answering criticism in "Responses to the Dangerous Liaisons" (4-26-02), you assert that you do not really support LePen. At the same time you reiterate your condemnation of the Jewish people. Let us take the LePen question first. You declare, in your defense: "Some readers misunderstand me and thought I support LePen. Surely I do not: LePen is a bad guy in my books, but bad guys will be called to undo the excessive Jewish power if the good guys fail to do it." You claim that this is not supporting LePen. But what it really means is that you do support him: if the "good guy" (presumably here the Palestinians and the world's masses) can't defeat Zionist (you say "Jewish") reaction, you hold out hopes that LePen will perform a service to the world's people by doing it. I can't see any other meaning to this sentence and it does, in fact, constitute support for LePen. You are turning to a sleazy, vicious reactionary to fight your main enemy for you. Have you given up on the ordinary masses? Furthermore, there is the problem of your statements about immigration. You say you are only against new immigration. But the point is, to be democratic, to fight for the least oppressive situation for the workers under capitalism, we must be for the freedom to go from country to country in search of work. That's what most immigration is about. The severe interference with such movement by the authorities only condemns the workers to worse servitude by subjecting them to harassment, prison, deportation, etc. Keeping the workers in turmoil, keeping a section (the recent immigrants) without even the limited rights won by the earlier immigrants, only serves the rich bosses. But you have sadly taken up LePen's banner here as well. Finally, with regard to your present views on the "world Jewish conspiracy" (you stress the "Judeo" part of what you call the "Judeo-American spirit") being the core of world oppression, this is not only false but is very helpful to Sharon at this critical moment. Your answer to the complaints about the "Liaisons" article on this score are twofold. First, you state correctly that the world mainstream (imperialist, I would add) press constantly blames whole nations for the crimes of their ruling classes, as in the case of blaming "the Germans" for World War II, etc. So what right, you ask, do Jews have to complain when the same thing is done to them? True, the mainstream press does do this, in order -- consciously or unconsciously -- to pit one nation against another. But just when did you join the scurrilous, lying, jingoist mainstream press -- on April 23, 2002? I hope not. Inciting one nation against another only pushes the masses of each country closer to their rulers; progressive writers work to separate the masses of each country from their rulers, especially in oppressor countries like the U.S. and Israel. You look at the present situation and see considerable unity among Jews behind the Zionists. I think you exaggerate its extent. But when certain Jews write you in protest against your condemnation of them all, you answer that we can't worry too much right now about the feelings of "our Jewish friends." Not only does this falsely suggest that progressive Jews are a miniscule number, but it misses the point altogether. The point is, no matter what is the actual number of progressive Jews, progressive people are duty-bound to expose the crimes of the Sharon war machine in the West Bank and use this exposure to split Jews and others away from Zionism. This is a historic moment. Never has the opportunity been greater to expose the reactionary nature of Zionism to the world's people, including to Jews. You, and all of us, are being tested. But at this historic moment, you have seemingly thrown up your hands in despair, as if to say, "The Jews? Oh, they're all in the pocket of Sharon. To hell with them! I'll sic LePen on the whole damn bunch!" Do you really think that LePen will help the Arabs who are being slaughtered by Sharon? The Arabs to whom you have, to your great credit, shown such support in the past? This is very sad. What if the American youth had taken this attitude to the American people in 1965-69, when B-52's and napalm were slaughtering Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians by the hundreds of thousands? But we didn't, and it's time for you to show that same spirit. Sincerely, Tim Hall Editor Struggle 5-3-02 (Tim Hall is a Marxist-Leninist activist, supporter of Communist Voice Organization and editor of the quarterly revolutionary literary magazine Struggle, Box 13261, Detroit, MI USA. 48213-0261. Tim Hall may be reached at timhall11@yahoo.com. Communist Voice Organization may be reached at www.communistvoice.org.) - - ----------------- 178685 Ten questions to the Zionists (english) by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl ZT"L 8:33am Tue May 7 '02 (Modified on 1:02pm Tue May 7 '02) article#178685 IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that: a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily. IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that: a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily. IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti. IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments: a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees. b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war. c) No ransom will be paid IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber. IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved. IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions). IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany. IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!" IS IT TRUE that the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed. IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weitzman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weitzman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe". There are additional similar questions to be asked of these atheist degenerates known as "Jewish statesmen", but for the time being let them respond to the ten questions. These Zionist "statesmen" with their great foresight, sought to bring an end two two-thousand years of Divinely ordained Jewish subservience and political tractability. With their offensive militancy, they fanned the fires of anti-Semitism in Europe, and succeeded in forging a bond of Jew-hatred between Nazi-Germany and the surrounding countries. These are the "statesmen" who organized the irresponsible boycott against Germany in 1933. This boycott hurt Germany like a fly attacking an elephant - but it brought calamity upon the Jews of Europe. At a time when America and England were at peace with the mad-dog Hitler, the Zionist "statesmen" forsook the only plausible method of political amenability; and with their boycott incensed the leader of Germany to a frenzy. And then, after the bitterest episode in Jewish history, these Zionist "statesmen" lured the broken refugees in the DP camps to remain in hunger and deprivation, and to refuse relocation to any place but Palestine; only for the purpose of building their State. The Zionist "statesmen" have incited and continue to incite an embittered Jewish youth to futile wars against world powers like England, and against masses of hundreds of millions of Arabs. AND THESE SAME ZIONIST "STATESMEN" HEEDLESSLY PUSH THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF ANOTHER TOTAL WAR - REVOLVING ENTIRELY AROUND THE HOLY LAND. What may befall the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, of the Arab crescent, Europe, or the USA; is of no concern to these Zionist leaders. The rising anti-Semitism in the Western World is the product of their "statesmanship". Under the guise of "love of Israel", the Zionist "statesmen" seduced many Jews to replace devotion to the Torah and its Sages with devotion to the scoundrel who founded Zionism. It is of no little significance that Herzl originally sought conversion of the Jews as a solution to the problems of the Diaspora. When he realized that this was not acceptable to the Jewish masses, he contrived Zionism as a satisfactory alternative! A look into history reveals that this very same type of "statesmen" opposed the call of Jeremiah the prophet to yield to the minions of Nebuchadnezzar at the destruction of the first Temple. Five centuries later, Rabbi Yochonon Ben Zakai appealed to the people to surrender to Titus the Roman to avoid bloodshed. The "statesmen" rejected this appeal, and the second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. --- And now for the past fifty years, the Zionist "statesmen" rebuff the leadership of our Sages; and continue in their policy of fomenting anti-Semitism. When will they stop?? Must every Jew in America also suffer?? - Even the Nazi monsters had more sense, and gave up their war before all Germany was destroyed. The Zionist "statesmen" ridicule the sacred oath which the Creator placed upon the Jews in the Diaspora. Our Torah, in Tractate Ksubos, folio 111, specifies that the Creator, blessed be He, swore the Jews not to occupy the Holy Land by force, even if it appears that they have the force to do so; and not rebel against the Nations. And the Creator warned that if His oath be desecrated, Jewish flesh would be "open property", like the animals in the forest!! These are words of our Torah; and these concepts have been cited in Maimonides' "Igeres Teimon", "Be'er HaGola", "Ahavas Yehonosson", and in "Toras Moshe" of the Chasam Sofer. IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE SAGES AND SAINTS IN EUROPE AT THE TIME OF HITLER'S RISE DECLARED THAT HE WAS A MESSENGER OF DIVINE WRATH, SENT TO CHASTEN THE JEWS BECAUSE OF THE BITTER APOSTASY OF ZIONISM AGAINST THE BELIEF IN THE EVENTUAL MESSIANIC REDEMPTION. Yidden - merciful sons of merciful fathers - how much longer must holy Jewish blood continue to be shed?? The only solution is: The Jewish people must reject, outright, a "Jewish State". The Jewish people should accept the US compromise. We must depose the atheist-Zionist "statesmen" from their role as Jewish leaders, and return to the faithful leadership of our sages. We beseech the Nations to open all doors to immigration - not only the doors of Palestine. Peaceful, non-Zionist religious personalities in Palestine, (particularly from the native population) and their counterparts in the Diaspora, should engage in responsible, face-to face negotiations on behalf of the Jewish people, with the British and the Arabs; with an aim of amicable settlement of the Palestine issue. Every Jew is obliged to pray to the Blessed creator, for in Him lies all our strength. Let us bear in mind that our prayers be forthright. One should not entreat the Creator to provide a banquet on Yom Kippur, and one can not perform a ritual ablution with a dead bug in his hand. Similarly, we should avoid the untenable position of the robber who prays for Divine help in carrying out his crime. We should pray that Zionism and its fruits vanish from the Earth, and that we be redeemed by the Messiah with dispatch. A prisoner is released only when he has served his time, or if he is pardoned by the President for good behavior. If he attempts escape and is apprehended, his term is lengthened, besides the beating he receives when he is caught. Faithful Jews- for over three and one-half thousand years, in all parts of the world, through all trials, our grandfathers and grandmothers marched through seas of blood and tears in order to keep the Faith of the Torah unswervingly. If we have compassion for ourselves, for our women and children, and for the Jewish people, we will maintain our golden legacy today. We have been sentenced to exile by the King of Kings because of our sins. The eternal blessed be He, has decreed that we accept the exile with humble gratitude until the time comes, or until we merit His pardon through repentance if we seek to end the exile with force, G-d will catch us, as our sages have forewarned, and our sentence becomes longer and more difficult. Many times in the past have segments of our people been defrauded by false messiahs - but none of the false messiahs has been as fallacious and delusory as the lie of Zionism. With our historical experience as our guide, no retribution has been or will be greater than the retribution for giving credence to Zionism. If we wish our exile-sentence commuted, we must appeal through repentance; and through total physical and spiritual observance of the Sabbath, laws of family purity, and study of Torah. Let it be clearly understood that never in Jewish history (even in the time of Jeroboam or Achav) have such hostile atheists stood at the helm of the Jewish people as today. How can we plead to the Almighty for mercy while we tolerate these vile, "wicked" leaders as spokesmen! Beloved brothers - let us cleanse our ranks and cleanse our midst; let us entreat the Almighty through prayer, repentance, and fulfillment of mitzvos that He alone redeem us, immediately. www.jewsnotzionists.org/ ========== One more thing (english) Mike 8:50am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178689 It is also true how cowardly the Zionists are. When the Red Army poured into Poland in 1939, they betrayed the Poles. Within days the Zionists Jews pledged their alligance to the Soviets. The lesson learned from this; Zionists only care about themselves and their own survival. The wouldn't give two shits if America was ever bombed by lets say China. And if China was winning the war, the Zionists would quickly pledge their alligance to them. ========= yes (english) 23 9:15am Tue May 7 '02 comment#178697 The ss and the zionists had a deal: Only zionists to Palestine. "Ordinary" jews were not given any visa anyhow, not one Allied country allowed them in. It is also true that the allied forces never bombed the the railways leading to the death camps or the camps itself, although they knew what was happening. Nobody cared about the average jew. Ask the Bush family, they financed the nazis and therefore the holocaust. Fuck zionism ============ Greedy, Self Centered, Misers (english) outside the whale 1:02pm Tue May 7 '02 comment#178742 Mike hit the nail right on the head. "they" are the most self-centered species on the planet. They are stingy, miserly, and could care less about their fellow human. --------------------