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Today's
Stories
October
25 / 26, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
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Corrie
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I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
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Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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|
October
25, 2003
Obligations to the
Future
Palestinian
Terrorism, Morality and Germany
By TED HONDERICH
The question 'Is there a right to terrorism?'
is obviously not about whether there is a legal right, a right
in national or international law. It must be the question of
whether there is a moral right. I take it in that way.
My answer depends at bottom on what I
take to be the fundamental moral principle to which we are all
committed. It is the Principle of Humanity. It is that we are
to take rational steps, which is to say actually efficient and
also humanly unwasteful ones, to get and keep people out of wretched
or otherwise bad lives.
Bad lives are defined in terms of deprivation
of the great goods, satisfactions of the great human desires.
These have to do with
1. a decent length of life, say 70 years
rather than 35 years;
2. material or bodily well-being;
3. freedom and power;
4. respect and self-respect;
5. relationships;
6. the goods of culture.
The Principle of Humanity is a consequentialist
principle. In my view, therefore, it is like all principles and
judgements of morality without exception -- at any rate when
they actually provide reasons for action, which they are supposed
to be doing. The principle is obviously not the Utilitarian principle.
Its goal is precisely not the maximization of the total of happiness
or satisfaction no matter how that is shared out.
We are all committed to this principle
because each of us reasons, for example, that it is right that
we not be tortured for months if what is gained by that is merely
somebody else's having a car rather than go to work by public
transport for a month. It is also a fact of our human nature
that we take and must take such reasons to apply to other and
different cases.
2. The Question of
a Palestinian Moral Right
You can make terrorism wrong by definition,
as you can make profiting or anything else wrong by definition.
It gets you nowhere. To advance in argument, you will now have
to show, say, that what the Palestinians are engaging in really
is terrorism as you have defined it. You are in exactly the same
situation of argument as when you define terrorism in some way
that does not beg the question in advance, and then consider
whether some of it is wrong.
Terrorism as more ordinarily defined
may of course also be other things. It may be self-defence, resistance,
resistance to ethnic cleansing, the struggle of a people for
liberation, the struggle of a people for their very existence
as a people.
Think now the killing of an Israeli child
by a Palestinian suicide-bomber. Think too of the killing of
a Palestinian child by an Israeli airforce officer from a helicopter
gunship. He says of course that he would have chosen, if he could,
to kill only the HAMAS terrorist near the child. The Palestinian
suicide bomber,  of course, says effectively
the same sort of thing, presumably as truly. She would have chosen
to have tried as effectively, if she could have, without killing
the Israeli child, to save her people.
My book After the Terror, which is on
another whole subject, asked in passing about such things. It
answered that the Palestine suicide bomber does have a moral
right to her act of terrorism, and that the Israeli in the helicopter
has no moral right to his act of state-terrorism. To clarify
any such assertion of a moral right, this one comes to this:
the Palestinian suicide-bomber was morally permitted if not obliged
to do what she did -- which very judgement has the support of
a fundamental and accepted moral principle.
That answer to the question of terrorism,
about killing the Israeli child, is a terrible and horrible answer.
But it is the answer I continue to defend. Here, I can say only
a few words.
3. The Ordinariness
of the Terrible and Horrible Answer
The terrible and horrible answer about
a Palestinian moral right is in an important way not unusual
at all. The counterpart answer about neo-Zionist killing is openly
or covertly given by neo-Zionists, daily.
Also, glance away for a moment to items
in an overflowing history of us all. The terror-bombing of Germany
in World War Two, intended exactly as much to kill civilians
as to defeat Hitler, was justified by we British and our leaders.
So too with the genocide that went with the growth of the United
States of America. So too with the murdering of British captives
by the Jewish terrorists who were serving the justified cause
of the founding of the state of Israel after the Holocaust.
4. The Truth of the
Answer
There is a fact of the matter as to which
of two possible courses of action, one of them taken by the suicide
bomber, would serve the Principle of Humanity. It is possible,
I hope and trust, to see or discover the fact. Further, there
is truth in the Principle of Humanity itself. What this comes
to, as you have heard, is truth to our own natures, our existence.
There is another kind of fact, plainer
truth, that enters into the first two kinds. It is historical,
about a people and the usurpation of their freedom and power
and hence other great goods.
In the last quarter of the 19th Century,
there were about 50 times as many Palestinians as Jews in Palestine.
After World War Two, when the United Nations rightly and unjustly
resolved to make a homeland for the Jews out of one part of Palestine,
there were in fact equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians in
that part. There were 80 times as many Palestinians as Jews in
the other part. There is now a Jewish state violating the remaining
homeland of the remaining Palestinians.
5. Asserting the Answer
Do you now say that even if the moral
right of the Palestinians to their terrorism is or were true,
there are or would be reasons for not asserting it? Do you say
no one thinks all truths must be uttered?
It seems to me that this truth, unlike
some others, calls out to be uttered. It calls out to be uttered
in proper language and with proper passion. One reason has to
do with another fact of human nature and history, lesser than
those mentioned earlier but of great importance.
In such a conflict as the one in Palestine,
there is a primary question of who and what is right, which of
course is inescapable, and with which we have been concerned.
There are also conventional inclinations about the conflict.
In a word, they are inclinations to go along with what is more
official, legitimated, or recognized. They include the inclination
to go along with a democracy, a state, a power. Or indeed a superpower.
If you do not stand up openly for the
justice of the Palestinian cause, you give encouragement to the
secondary inclinations. In fact it is dishonourable to allow
oneself to be, or to encourage others to be, in the grip of the
categories of the official and the like. The gas chambers were
official. Hitler was elected.
6. Negotiation and
Futility
There are two ways for a people to get
and keep things, these being violence and negotiation. It has
been said at every stage of the conflict in Palestine that the
Palestinians must give up violence and negotiate.
That is typically to forget something.
Negotiation is the means for getting and keeping things of the
party whose position and ultimate power is stronger. Violence
is the means of the other party, the party with no other means.
It is in the interest of each party and their supporters to condemn
or resist the means of the other. It is the responsibility of
moral thinking to try to see what is right.
There are men and women of my outlook,
in effect supporters of the Principle of Humanity, who say Palestinian
terrorism is futile. It needs to be allowed that the factual
question of the eventual outcome of Palestinian is the hardest
question. But it is possible to think, as I do, that this course
of action, and only this course of action, will secure the freedom
and power of a people in their homeland. It is only wretched
bantustans, or rather only the promise of them, that can now
be offered by the advocates of negotiation. They were offered
to Nelson Mandela too.
To this can be added something else.
Jews in the Warsaw ghetto fought to the end -- hopelessly, it
was said. They bring to mind that there can be a realism in what
is hopeless. You can fight, not for yourself or your time, but
for those who come after you. The Palestinians can do so.
7. Anti-Semitism,
Guilt, Silence
To run together resistance to neo-Zionism
with anti-Semitism is to run together (1) a resistance to some
Jews and also others -- in no case because they are Jews -- with
(2) an attitude to all Jews or Jews in general. Someone who makes
the charge of anti-Semitism may speak in a loose way, as indeed
he does if he speaks of 'anti-Semitic anti-Zionism'. This is
to run together resistance to Sharon with sympathy for the gas
chambers, with the vomit of neo-Nazism in Germany today, and
so on.
To engage in the charge of anti-Semitism
against the likes of me, to add or imply that my book blames
the Jews for starvation in Africa, or that I said on television
that Germany is now managed by Jews -- let me say one thing about
this. It is to have no membership in the strong and continuing
tradition of Jewish humanity in morality and politics, with so
many noble men and women in it. It is not to be of that fine
company, praised by me before I ever heard of my accuser Brumlik.
Finally, with respect to Germans and
their past, and their now being quiet about the violation of
Palestine by neo-Zionists, there is an awful question.
Is that like your father having murdered
some woman -- and you, as a result, being quiet about a rape
by her son?
No large question was ever settled by
asserting an analogy. But certainly we commonly make use of analogies
in moral thinking, as much as we do of models in other reasoning
and inquiry, in science above all. It is possible to justify
the question by way of argument involving the Principle of Humanity.
As for the answer to the question, let me make only a comment.
There are relatively few Germans now
alive who acted in the Holocaust. I speak to the others. What
relationship should guide your actions, including your silence
and your speech? A relationship to those your father killed?
A relationship to your father? To the sons and daughters of his
victims? Or a relationship to those in misery, whoever they are.
The answer given by the Principle of Humanity is at bottom the
last one.
This is not to ignore all other considerations
of relationships. There are other kinds. We stand in relations
not only to the victims, but to those others who can be called
upon to support these victims, to try to stop their vicious abuse.
Germans stand in a relationship to Americans, who determine what
will happen to Palestine.
Germans are now rightly known for taking
on themselves the guilt of their fathers. They have a kind of
moral superiority not shared by all of the rest of us. The Holocaust
was not the first or last genocide in history. Other perpetrators
have not been so ready to accept and to deal with guilt.
It is for this reason of moral superiority
that Germans now have a special obligation to speak against a
rape. They will be heard a little more than other nations. There
is a reason for their being heard, which is their standing. This
moral position is also the reason of their silence until now.
They can do more than the rest of us to awaken America from its
ignorant trance.
That is not all. You can say, as I do,
in line with humanity, that Germans today have a certain obligation
to those their fathers killed, those who are gone. They have
the obligation, for the future, to make it less likely that those
victims of their fathers died wholly in vain.
Ted Honderich
is Great Britain's outstanding progressive philosopher, recently
interviewed for CounterPunch by Paul de Rooij. One of his past
books was Punishment, The Supposed Justifications. Another
was the funny and deadly examination of a political tradition,
Conservatism, and a third Violence for Equality: Inquiries
in Political Philosophy. His new book is After
the Terror (Edinburgh University Press, Columbia University
Press). He can be reached at: honderich@counterpunch.org
Note
* Lecture presented at DAS SONNTAGSGESPRÄCH
mit der Universitaet Leipzig. October 19, 2003, Universität
Leipzig, Hörsaalgebäude, Germany.
The full paper, of which this is a kind
of summary, can
be found on my website. More is said in various books. After
the Terror was published by Edinburgh University Press and Columbia
University Press, translated into German by Suhrkamp Verlag and
withdrawn from the market. It is now about to be published again
by MelzerVerlag. Terrorism for Humanity: Inquiries in Political
Philosophy, a revision of an earlier book, is being published
by Pluto Press, and also in German by Kai Homilius Verlag. On
Political Means and Social Ends, a collection of philosophy papers,
is being published by Edinburgh University Press and in German
by Kai Homilius.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
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