MOTHER'S AND MEMORIAL DAY

Illustrations: In the early 90s I first head Rush on a trip across country. I honestly thought he was a comedian and a very funny one at that. It was only a short time later that I found out that he was the major source of information for many Americans. I haven’t heard him since.

Don Imus was a bit different. He could offend both the left and the right, interviewed intelligent and well-known journalists, and was often funny. His one remark that got him fired was offensive, but I have never heard him say things as stupid as Rush Limbaugh or a score of other right-wing radio people. As I mentioned, he is Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh with a GED.

Mother’s and Memorial Day

There is much to cover here, so this is a longer one. First, for those you you on the mailing list, I’m attatching a nice song about the flag and war.

Memorial Day is supposed to the day we honor those who died in combat for our ideals. After the Iraq war was voted on, Congress passed two bills on the same day. One was a statement of support for the troops. The other was a cut of 20 Billion dollars from the VA budget. I worked as an intern at the VA clinic for Alcohol and addiction for a short time, but it was long enough to not only satify residency, but also to learn a great deal about what war does to those who participate in it and “survive it”. There is a song by John Prine titled “Sam Stone” which describes very well about 70% of the patients there. And they were the lucky ones as those who had PTSD without narcotics and alcohol to help numb them seemed to suffer even more.

Mother’s Day fits right in here. While today it is an exercise in guilt for profit, it was introduced by Stowe in reaction to the Civil War as a call to mothers around the world to unite not to raise their children to slaughter one another. Capitalism took care of that unpatriotic idea.

Articles:

Tariq Ali is less known than Chomsky, but his mind is as clear and organized. He also get the facts right. I think this is the first time I’ve reprinted him and felt that he should be represented. Check some of the books he has written. Also, he is not Christian, Moslem, or Jewish, so no religious bias can possibly enter.

The second gives an insight into what the academic world is really like. I remember as an undergraduate looking at the professors and figuring they had a pretty good deal going. Show up 9 to 12 hours a week and spend the rest of the time reading and writing. Well, the truth is that is a bunch of nerds who always got picked last for baseball games, remain petty little anal-erotics, and are little more than glorified civil servants. I know because I’ve been there and was lucky to find one or two exceptions in any one institution. And I was in a less publicly known discipline. Imagine the problems in discussion the Middle East and being correct at the same time!

Finally, I’ve been asked to find something to support what I said about the world bank and Wolfowitz. Naiomi Klein provides that from the Nation Magazine.

1: British Author Tariq Ali on the Resignation of Tony Blair: “The Fact

That He’s Leaving is Because He’s So Hated?

2: "It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No

One Else is Out There" -- World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars

Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure

3: *lookout* /by/ Naomi Klein

Sacrificial Wolfie

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

British Author Tariq Ali on the Resignation of Tony Blair: ?The Fact

That He?s Leaving is Because He?s So Hated?

Friday, May 11th, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1531215

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced his plans to resign next

month after more than a decade in power. British author Tariq Ali talks

about Blair?s legacy, his fatal decision to follow the Bush

administration into Iraq, and his likely successor, finance minister

Gordon Brown. [includes rush transcript]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blair made the announcement on Thursday in a speech to Labour Party

members in his Sedgefield constituency. He will stay on in Downing

Street until the Labour Party elects a new leader - widely expected to

be finance minister Gordon Brown. In his address, Blair defended his

decision to send British troops to war in Iraq.

* British Prime Minister Tony Blair*.

Blair, President Bush?s closest ally, invoked 9/11 to defend his staunch

backing of US foreign policy.

* British Prime Minister Tony Blair*.

Back in Washington, President Bush paid tribute to Tony Blair at a

Pentagon news conference.

* President Bush*.

We go to London to speak with British author Tariq Ali.

* * Tariq Ali*. Historian, one of the editors of the New Left Review

as well as the author of many books, including ?Rough Music: Blair

Bombs Baghdad London Terror.?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

/This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us

provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

*Donate* - $25

,

$50

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*JUAN GONZALEZ: *We're going to move now to England, where British Prime

Minister Tony Blair has announced he plans to resign next month after

more than a decade in power.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *Today, I announce my decision to

stand down from the leadership of the Labour Party. The party will

now select a new leader. On the 27th of June, I will tender my

resignation from the office of prime minister to the Queen.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Blair made the announcement on Thursday in a speech to

Labour Party members in his Sedgefield constituency. He will stay on in

Downing Street until the Labour Party elects a new leader, widely

expected to be Finance Minister Gordon Brown. In his address, Blair

defended his decision to send British troops to war in Iraq.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *But I ask you to accept one thing:

hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Blair, President Bush?s closest ally, invoked 9/11 to

defend his staunch backing of US foreign policy.

*PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: *And then came the utterly

unanticipated and dramatic September the 11th, 2001, and the death

of 3,000 or more on the streets of New York, and I decided we

should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our oldest ally, and I did

so out of belief. And so, Afghanistan and then Iraq, the latter

bitterly controversial. And removing Saddam and his sons from

power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease.

But the blowback since from global terrorism and those elements

that support it has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. And

for many, it simply isn't and can't be worth it. For me, I think

we must see it through. They, the terrorists who threaten us here

and around the world, will never give up, if we give up. It is a

test of will and of belief, and we can't fail it.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Back in Washington, President Bush paid tribute to Tony

Blair at a Pentagon news conference.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *First of all, I?ll miss Tony Blair. He

is a -- he is a political figure who is capable of thinking over

the horizon. He's a long-term thinker. I have found him to be a

man who has kept his word, which sometimes is rare in the

political circles I run in. When Tony Blair tells you something,

as we say in Texas, you can take it to the bank. We've got a

relationship, such that we can have really good discussions. And

so, I?m going to miss him. He's a remarkable person, and I

consider him a good friend.

*AMY GOODMAN: *We return now to London to Tariq Ali, historian and one

of the editors of the /New Left Review/, as well as author of many

books, including /Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror/.

He joins us from a London studio. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/, Tariq.

*TARIQ ALI: *Hi, Amy. Good to be with you again.

*AMY GOODMAN: *It's good to have you with us. Talk about Blair resigning.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, it was classic New Labour spin, well-orchestrated,

designed for the global media networks, a self-serving speech, a

carefully hand-picked audience so that there would be no trouble at all,

and, actually, for him, a very bad speech. I mean, and I?ve always

regarded Blair as a second-rate politician with a third-rate mind, but

he's had better speech writers than this, and I wondered whether he had

written it himself. I mean, it's sort of full of contradictions and

half-truths. I mean, if he was going to see the so-called war against

terror through, why quit?

We had no real accounting of why he's leaving as prime minister. And the

fact is he's leaving is, because he's hated. And the reason he?s hated

is because he joined the neocons in Washington and went to war against

Iraq, which now 78% of the population in this country oppose. And when

people are being asked what will Blair?s legacy be, a large majority is

saying Iraq. And I think that's what he will be remembered for, as a

prime minister who took a reluctant and skeptical country into a war

designed by Washington and its neoconservative strategists, all of whom

are in crisis.

And you listen to Blair now and his successor, Brown, and they sound

much worse than any Democrat in the Senate or the House, because they

realize the war's unpopular. These guys carry on living in a tiny

bubble, media bubble, which they construct. And I think the BBC's

sycophancy, the way in which they portrayed him yesterday as if he was a

sort of dead Princess Diana, doesn?t do them proud. It was a low point

in BBC journalism, with one of their political correspondents saying,

?Gosh, look at him. Isn't he a winner?? Well, he isn't a winner, which

is why he's leaving. And a reluctant party is saying farewell to him,

because they think they?ll lose the next election if he?s in charge.

That's what's going on.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And, Tariq, he did try in his speech to point to the

continued prosperity, economic prosperity, of the British under his

tenure. Your response to that?

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, I mean, you know, it is prosperous for some people

and some regions of the country. But if you look, for instance, at

various regions in the north and northeast, you have a tiny proportion

of the population which is relatively well-off, and you have people who

are not so well-off, people who are dependent on social welfare, which

is constantly under attack. You have a two-tier health system now, which

you never used to, where if you have money, you can go in a hospital and

get treatment any minute, but if you don't, you have to stand in queues.

You have lots of hospitals who he sold to private finance initiatives,

which are now saying they can't fund their hospitals anymore. The

failures, the domestic failures, are not being talked about.

And you have large-scale corruption. I mean, recently a mega-scandal

with a British arms company, which had paid massive bribes to leading

Saudis, including probably members of the royal family. This came up.

Blair put a stop to it. His attorney general, not unlike Gonzales, said

we can?t sue, because the country?s future interests are at stake, so

corruption is fine. It's a total mess. Something is rotten in this

kingdom. And a very sycophantic media rarely talks about it. It's left

to small indie media outlets or satirical magazines like /Private Eye/,

basically, to carry on regular reporting of what is going on.

I don't think his legacy is anything new. He tried to carry on what

Margaret Thatcher did, and the results have not been too dissimilar.

He's had a bloodier reign than Thatcher. He has taken Britain into more

wars and actually antagonized, as I point out in a number of recent

articles, large swathes of the British establishment, who feel very

ashamed that they are being led by a leader who is so totally and

completely and a sort of favored attack dog in the imperial kennel.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Tariq Ali, President Bush in Washington, D.C., said he'll

miss Tony Blair and that he's ready to work with his presumed successor,

Gordon Brown, confident that he, quote, ?understands the consequences of

failure in Iraq.? Talk about that statement and also who Gordon Brown is.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, I think Bush is right. He will miss Blair. I mean,

you can't have a more loyal politician in Europe than Blair. I mean,

he's done virtually everything the United States has asked for, and not

just after 9/11. Even prior to that, he was extremely pro-Washington in

everything. He never raised any questions. So I think Washington will

miss him. Mercifully, very few people in this country will.

Now, as to his successor, Gordon Brown, he backed the war in Iraq, as he

himself said yesterday, and it was felt it was necessary. He backed the

war in Afghanistan, felt that that was completely necessary -- and think

that they wiped out all the problems with this. But they're completely

wrong. On all the central issues of the day, there is no difference

between Blair and Brown. The tone Brown adopts will probably be

marginally less aggressive, but in terms of substance, there's nothing

to choose between them.

And this is essentially yet another New Labour trick: OK, we?ve got rid

of the big bad war monger, and we?ve got a decent prime minister again.

But this guy is also a war monger. The difference is he is more

intelligent than Blair. If I were to say that Blair is a second-rate

politician with a third-rate mind, I?d say Brown is a second-rate

politician with a second-rate mind, which makes him a bit better than

Blair. But he's no different, and he is going to carry on in Britain in

exactly the same old way. They've already lost Scotland, which is a

Labour stronghold. They are declining in Wales. And they will lose

England at the next election. So essentially they will hand the

countries back to the Tories, and that, too, will be no different. So

it's a grim prospect which faces us here.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Well, I wanted to ask you that: in terms of the

political prospects for progressive-thinking people within Britain, for

the labor movement, for the racial minorities that are increasingly

under attack in your country, what are the alternatives that those folks

have?

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, interestingly enough, you know, the Nationalist

parties in Scotland and Wales are the only alternatives in those

countries which are more progressive than Labour, Conservative or

Liberal. I mean, they're against nuclear weapons in Scotland, against

Trident missiles, against the war in Iraq, want more money spent on

public services, health, education, etc. So the progressive voices at

the moment exist only in Scotland and Wales. In England, which has the

bulk of the money and is the largest chunk of the country, there is no

real alternative, and that is a big tragedy.

Of course, there is Ken Livingston, the Mayor of London, who is probably

the only Labour politician respected by sections of the population. He

has been very, very strong in defending racial minorities, in attacking

Islamophobic trends in British culture, and in staunchly attacking the

war in Iraq. He came out very hard against that war when it first

started and warned prophetically that it would put the citizens of

London at risk. But he, after all, is a mayor of a large city -- that's

all. On a national level, the alternatives at the moment are very

limited. And I think we will likely -- we will carry on in this way ?til

New Labour is defeated, as it probably will be in the next elections,

which might then open up some possibilities of new forces emerging. But

at the moment, it's grim.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Finally, on a different issue, Tariq Ali, as we wrap up,

Alan Johnston, who has not been heard from since he was kidnapped in

Gaza, was just named Broadcasting Journalist of the Year at the annual

London Press Awards. The award was accepted by his father Graham

Johnston and the BBC Director-General Mark Thompson. Your comment.

*TARIQ ALI: *Well, you know, I feel for him, you know, and I feel for

all journalists in war zones who try and do their reporting and are

kidnapped. But, you know, that happens on the one hand, and on the other

hand what we have is, I mean, you know, one can sympathize with Johnston

and his family and hope that he is released. But on the other hand, Amy,

what is going on in this country is that whistleblowers are being

punished. Yesterday, a British civil servant who leaked information

regarding a secret memo was sentenced to six months in prison by an

incredibly unpleasant judge, who said ?You put our country at risk.? Put

our country at risk? By coming out with the truth? It?s just astonishing.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Tariq Ali, we?re going to go to break. When we come back,

we'll be joined by another guest in that London studio that you are

sitting in to talk about that very issue, about a memo that reportedly

says that President Bush asked Prime Minister Tony Blair to bomb the

Doha headquarters of Al Jazeera. I want to thank you for being with us.

And we'll be back in the London studio in a minute.

www.democracynow.org

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

"It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No

One Else is Out There" -- World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars

Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1514221

The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to

receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein has

taught at DePaul for the past six years. Finkelstein?s two main topics

of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. We

speak to two world-renowned scholars in these fields: Raul Hilberg,

considered the founder of Holocaust studies, and Avi Shlaim, a professor

of international relations at Oxford University and an expert on the

Arab-Israeli conflict. Shlaim calls Finkelstein a ?very impressive,

learned and careful scholar?, while Hilberg praises Finkelstein?s

?acuity of vision and analytical power.? Hilberg says: "It takes an

enormous amount of courage to speak the truth when no one else is out

there to support him." [includes rush transcript]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to

receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein - one of

the country?s foremost critics of Israeli policy - has taught at DePaul

for the past six years. His tenure has been overwhelmingly approved at

the departmental and college level, but the dean of the College of

Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it.

A final decision is expected to be made in the coming weeks. Finkelstein

has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being responsible

for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an interview with the

Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz admitted that he had sent a letter to DePaul

faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein?s tenure. Then last week

the Wall Street Journal published an article by Dershowitz titled

?Finkelstein?s Bigotry.? In it, Dershowitz accuses Finkelstein of being

an ?anti-Semite? and says that he ?does not do ?scholarship? in any

meaningful sense.?

Finkelstein?s two main topics of focus over his career have been the

Holocaust and Israeli policy. Today we are joined by two world-renowned

scholars in these fields:

* *Raul Hilberg*. One of the best-known and most distinguished of

Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume

work ?The Destruction of the European Jews? and is considered the

founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his

home in Vermont.

* *Avi Shlaim*. Professor of international relations at Oxford

University. He is the author of numerous books, most notably ?The

Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.? He is widely regarded as

one of the world?s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

/This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us

provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

*Donate* - $25

,

$50

,

$100

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/

*AMY GOODMAN: *The battle over political science professor Norman

Finkelstein to receive tenure at DePaul University in Chicago is heating

up. Finkelstein is one of the country?s foremost critics of Israeli

policy. He has taught at DePaul for the past six years. His tenure has

been overwhelmingly approved at the departmental and college level. A

college-wide faculty panel voted 5-0 to back his ten-year bid, but the

Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it. A final

decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Professor Finkelstein has accused Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz

of being responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an

interview with the /Harvard Crimson/, Dershowitz admitted he had sent a

letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein?s tenure.

Then, last week the /Wall Street Journal/ published an article by

Dershowitz titled ?Finkelstein?s Bigotry.? In it, Dershowitz accuses

Finkelstein of being an anti-Semite and says he ?does not do scholarship

in any meaningful sense.? Professor Finkelstein's two main topics of

focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy.

Today, we?re joined by two world-renowned scholars in these fields. Raul

Hilberg is one of the best known and most distinguished of Holocaust

historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work, /The

Destruction of the European Jews/. He?s considered the founder of

Holocaust studies. He joins us from his home in Vermont. Avi Shlaim is a

professor of international relations at Oxford University in Britain. He

is the author of numerous books, most notably /The Iron Wall: Israel and

the Arab World/. He?s widely regarded as one of the world?s leading

authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

We?ll begin in Vermont with Professor Hilberg. Can you talk about

Professor Finkelstein's contribution to Holocaust studies with his book,

/The Holocaust Industry/?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Yes. I read this book, which was published about seven

years ago, even as I, myself, was researching actions brought against

Swiss companies, notably banks, but also other enterprises in insurance

and in manufacturing. And the gist of all of these claims, all of these

actions, was that somehow the Swiss banks, in particular, and other

enterprises, as well, owed money to Jews or the survivors or the living

descendants of people who were victims. The actions were brought by

claims lawyers, by the World Jewish Congress, which joined them, and a

blitz was launched in the newspapers. Congressmen and senators were

mobilized, officials of regulatory agencies in New York and elsewhere.

Threats were issued in the nature of withdrawal of pension funds, of

boycotts, of bad publicity.

And I was struck by the fact, even as I, myself, was researching the

same territory that Professor Finkelstein was covering, that the Swiss

did not owe that money, that the $1,250,000,000 that were agreed as a

settlement to be paid to the claimants was something that in very plain

language was extorted from the Swiss. I had, in fact, relied upon the

same sources that Professor Finkelstein used, perhaps in addition some

Swiss items. I was in Switzerland at the height of the crisis, and I

heard from so-called forensic accountants about how totally surprised

the Swiss were by this outburst. There is no other word for it.

Now, Finkelstein was the first to publish what was happening in his book

/The Holocaust Industry/. And when I was asked to endorse the book, I

did so with specific reference to these claims. I felt that within the

Jewish community over the centuries, nothing like it had ever happened.

And even though these days a couple of billion dollars are sometimes

referred to as an accounting error and not worthy of discussion, there

is a psychological dimension here which not must be underestimated.

I was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over

and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I

was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that

three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did

not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it

was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered. So

that?s the gist of the matter right then and there.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Why do you think, Professor Hilberg, he was criticized

and you were not?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Well, Finkelstein -- I believe Finkelstein was

criticized mainly for the style that he employed. And he was vulnerable.

And it was clear to me already years ago that some campaigns were

launched -- from what sector, I didn't know -- to remove him from the

academic world. Years ago, I got a phone call from someone who was in

charge of a survivors' group in California who told me that Finkelstein

had been ousted from a job in New York City at a university -- actually,

a college there -- and this was done under pressure.

And then, again, I gave a lecture a year and a half ago in Chicago,

which is the place where Finkelstein had been employed at DePaul

University, and my lecture was about Auschwitz, and it was based on the

records, which we?ve now recovered from Moscow, about the history of

this camp. Not exactly a simple topic. But there was a question period,

and I awaited pertinent questions, when someone rose from his chair and

asked, ?Should Finkelstein be tenured?? Now, for heaven?s sake, I said

to myself, what is going on here?

And whether he?s being intimidated, whether he is in a situation where,

whatever else may be happening, the employers are being intimidated,

it?s hard for me to say, but there is very clearly a campaign, which was

made very obvious in the /Wall Street Journal/, when Professor

Dershowitz wrote in a style which is highly uncharacteristic of the

editorial page of this newspaper, which incidentally I read religiously.

So I, myself, cannot fully explain this outburst, but it clearly

emanates from the same anger, from the same revolt, that prompted the

whole action against the Swiss to begin with.

*AMY GOODMAN: *I wanted to bring Professor Avi Shlaim into this

discussion, a professor of international relations at Oxford University,

has written numerous books, including /The Iron Wall: Israel and the

Arab World/. Can you talk about the significance of Professor

Finkelstein's work?

*AVI SHLAIM: *Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I

regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has

made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of

American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on

the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in

this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at

Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called /From Time

Immemorial/, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this

book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued,

incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people

without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he

showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the

entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a

marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is

/Beyond Chutzpah/, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing

biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about

Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very

impressive and a very learned and careful scholar.

I would like to make one last point, which is that his style is very

polemical, and I don't particularly enjoy the strident polemical style

that he employs. On the other hand, what really matters in the final

analysis is the content, and the content of his books, in my judgment,

is of very high quality.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Professor Shlaim, what about the whole issue of when you

criticize the Israeli government, being charged with anti-Semitism? What

is your response to this? You were born in Iraq. You?re also an Israeli

citizen and then moved to Britain?

*AVI SHLAIM: *I am. I was born in Baghdad. I grew up in Israel. I served

in IDF. And for the last forty years, I have lived in Britain, and I

teach at Oxford. My academic discipline is international relations, and

I am a specialist in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And I think that there is no -- that we must be very careful to separate

questions of anti-Semitism from critique of Israel. I am critical of

Israel as a scholar, and anti-Semitism just doesn't come into it. My

view is that the blind supporters of Israel -- and there are many of

them in America, in particular -- use the charge of anti-Semitism to try

and silence legitimate criticism of Israeli practices. I regard this as

moral blackmail. Israel has no immunity to criticism, moral immunity to

criticism, because of the Holocaust. Israel is a sovereign nation-state,

and it should be judged by the same standards as any other state. And

Norman Finkelstein is a very serious critic and a very well-informed

critic and hard-hitting critic of Israeli practices in the occupation

and dispossession of the Palestinians.

His last book, /Beyond Chutzpah/, is based on an amazing amount of

research. He seems to have read everything. He has gone through the

reports of Israeli groups, of human rights groups, Human Rights Watch

and Peace Now and B?Tselem, all of the reports of Amnesty International.

And he deploys all this evidence from Israeli and other sources in order

to sustain his critique of Israeli practices, Israeli violations of

human rights of the Palestinians, Israeli house demolitions, the

targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, the cutting down of

trees, the building of the wall -- the security barrier on the West

Bank, which is illegal -- the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians

in the West Bank, and so on and so forth. I find his critique extremely

detailed, well-documented and accurate.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Professor Hilberg, like you, Norman Finkelstein is the

son of Holocaust victims, his mother and his father both in

concentration camps. Your final thoughts on this whole dispute and

whether Norman Finkelstein should get tenure at DePaul University in

Chicago?

*RAUL HILBERG: *Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked,

offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a

university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I

know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however,

that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is,

when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was

given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not

be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a

scholar.

However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that

it?s not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most

important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this

book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to

speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I

think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power,

demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even

though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed,

they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not

obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and

of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing

history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right

triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it

so seems, at great cost.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, Professor Raul Hilberg and Professor Avi Shlaim, I

want to thank you both very much for being with us. Raul Hilberg,

speaking to us from his home in Vermont, one of the best-known and most

distinguished of Holocaust historians, his three-volume work is /The

Destruction of the European Jews/. Avi Shlaim, professor of

international relations at Oxford University in Britain, his book, his

latest, /The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World/. Thank you very much

for joining us.

www.democracynow.org

*lookout* /by/ Naomi Klein

Sacrificial Wolfie

[from the May 14, 2007 issue]

It's not the act itself, it's the hypocrisy. That's the line on Paul

Wolfowitz, coming from editorial pages around the world. It's neither:

not the act (disregarding the rules to get his girlfriend a pay raise)

nor the hypocrisy (the fact that Wolfowitz's mission as World Bank

president is fighting for "good governance").

First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. "Who wants to

be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to 'do as I say, not

as I do'?" asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty

good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global

trade system, in which the United States and Europe--via the World Bank,

the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization--tell

the developing world, "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep

ours up." From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal,

hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.

Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international

posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by

hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership "coach" is just

more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: When in

doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.

The more serious lie at the center of the controversy is the implication

that the World Bank was an institution with impeccable ethical

credentials--until, according to forty-two former Bank executives, its

credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American

liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush

that comes from forcing neocons to resign.) The truth is that the bank's

credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on

students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania

privatize its water system; when it made telecom privatization a

condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labor

"flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka; when

it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq.

Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is

that in 2005, the Bank withheld a promised $100 million after the

country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and

education. Some antipoverty organization.

But the area where the World Bank has the most tenuous claim to moral

authority is in the fight against corruption. Almost everywhere that

mass state pillage has taken place over the past four decades, the Bank

and the IMF have been first on the scene of the crime. And no, they have

not been looking the other way as the locals lined their pockets; they

have been writing the ground rules for the theft and yelling, "Faster,

please!"--a process known as rapid-fire shock therapy.

Russia under the leadership of the recently departed Boris Yeltsin was a

case in point. Beginning in 1990, the Bank led the charge for the former

Soviet Union to impose immediately what it called "radical reform." When

Mikhail Gorbachev refused to go along, Yeltsin stepped up. This

bulldozer of a man would not let anything or anyone stand in the way of

the Washington-authored program, including Russia's elected politicians.

After he ordered army tanks to open fire on demonstrators in October

1993, killing hundreds and leaving the Parliament blackened by flames,

the stage was set for the fire-sale privatizations of Russia's most

precious state assets to the so-called oligarchs. Of course, the Bank

was there. Of the democracy-free lawmaking frenzy that followed

Yeltsin's coup, Charles Blitzer, the World Bank's chief economist on

Russia, told the /Wall Street Journal/, "I've never had so much fun in

my life."

When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy,

while several of his deputies were enmeshed in bribery scandals. These

incidents were reported on in the West, as they always are, as

unfortunate local embellishments on an otherwise ethical economic

modernization project. In fact, corruption was embedded in the very idea

of shock therapy. The whirlwind speed of change was crucial to

overcoming the widespread rejection of the reforms, but it also meant

that by definition there could be no oversight. Moreover, the payoffs

for local officials were an indispensable incentive for Russia's

apparatchiks to create the wide-open market Washington was demanding.

The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never

been a high priority for the Bank and the IMF: Its officials understand

that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed

to win them furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little

in it for those politicians in bank accounts abroad.

Russia is far from unique: From Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet, who

accumulated more than 125 bank accounts while building the first

neoliberal state, to Argentine President Carlos Menem, who drove a

bright red Ferrari Testarossa while he liquidated his country, to Iraq's

"missing billions" today, there is, in every country, a class of

ambitious, bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as Western

subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called

corruption--the silent but ever-present partner in the crusade to

privatize the developing world.

The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in

crisis--not because of the small hypocrisies but because of the big

ones. The WTO cannot get back on track, the IMF is going broke,

displaced by Venezuela and China. And now the Bank is going down.

The /Financial Times/ reports that when World Bank managers dispensed

advice, "they were now laughed at." Perhaps we should all laugh at the

Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the

effort to cleanse the Bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd

narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty

organization has been sullied by one man. The Bank understandably wants

to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say, Let the ship go down with the captain.