Bulletin #185
Subject: ON SOME HIDDEN LESSONS OF WAR: FROM
THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS,
14 May 2005
Dear Colleagues and Friends of
CEIMSA,
More than two years into the "clash of civilizations" has given rise
to a "post-modern" anti-war movement in this "Age of
Disinformation". Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in their classic two-volume study of the social
pathology of capitalist culture, L'Anti-Oedipe : capitalisme et schizophrenie
and Mille Plateaux, describe the modalities of
contemporary political economic interests and how they determine the behavior
of the masses : "le désire désiré
par le corps plein et sans organes"
(roughly translated as "internalized individual desires manufactured by
corporate interests").
Americans seem to be loosing interest in the desire for war. The price is very
high, but the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people since 9/11 is
producing a new organizing principle at the international level:
AMERICAN MILITARISM MUST BE CONTAINED. The Vietnamese and the Koreans before
them paid high prices (in millions of lives) but eventually contributed to
bringing world attention to
The "post-modern" counter offensive has sought to erase these lessons
of war from our collective memory by introducing an extreme relativism
into the cognitive processes of western cultural production, with the result of
increasing apathy, despondency and despair. The two-volume study by Deleuze and Guattari (L'Anti-Oedipe
and A
Thousand Plateaus) is more accessible today than ever before. The
innately human capacity to see ourselves as others see us is, it could
be argued, of vital importance to the survival of our species.
Meanwhile, our research Center for the Advanced Study of American
Institutions and Social Movements has received a series of contemporary
articles which illustrate the beginning of the end of the 21st-century romance
with American militarism.
In Item A.
Professor John Gerassi, from
In Item B. our
research associate and retired colleague at the University Grenoble-3,
Elisabeth Chamorand, forwarded to us an article on
Pablo Paredes' court-martial in
Item C. is an
article sent to us by our research associate Professor Edward Herman on "British and
The next three items (D., E.,
& F.) are current reports on the anti-war
movement that is developing around the world in response to
And finally, Professor Christian de Montlibert has
sent us another reminder of the holocaust. Item G. is an Attachment commemorating the death of the
French humanist, Maurice Halbwachs at
All seven of these articles speak to the severe consequences involved in ignoring
"les désires désirés
par le corps plein, sans organes"
in the contemporary, "post-modern," world.
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Director of Research
Université Stendhal-Grenoble
3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
______________________
A.
from John Gerassi
Subject: Fw: "A Picture is Worth . . . ."
Date: Fri,
Francis
A reminder: This is our achievement.
Tito
http://www.bushflash.com/y2.html
_________________
B.
from Elisabeth Chamorand:
http://www.truthout.org
Navy Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable
By Marjorie Cohn
"I think that the government has successfully proved
that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in
-- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant,
presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial
In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge
gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail
time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000
sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr.
Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's
movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although
Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction
and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.
"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren,
Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good
conscience to board a ship bound for
Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an
illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in
those crimes. He told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed
forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a
higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these
higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or
indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on
Pablo said he formed his views about the illegality of the
war by reading truthout.org, listening to Democracy Now!, and reading articles
by Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein,
Stephen Zunes, and Marjorie Cohn, as well as Kofi Annan's statements that the
war is illegal under the UN Charter, and material on the Nuremberg and Tokyo
tribunals.
I testified at Pablo's court-martial as a defense expert on
the legality of the war in
I noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires
that all military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 of the UCMJ says,
"A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the
Constitution, the laws of the
I concluded that the
On cross-examination, Navy prosecutor Lt. Jonathan Freeman
elicited testimony from me that the
The Navy prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pablo to
nine months in the brig, forfeiture of pay and benefits, and a bad conduct
discharge. Lt. Brandon Hale argued that Pablo's conduct was
"egregious," that Pablo could have "slinked away with his
privately-held beliefs quietly." The public nature of Pablo's protest made
it more serious, according to the chief prosecuting officer.
But Pablo's lawyer urged the judge not to punish Pablo more
harshly for exercising his right of free speech. Pablo refused to board the
ship not, as many others, for selfish reasons, but rather as an act of
conscience,
"Pablo's victory is an incredible
boon to the anti-war movement," according to
The night before his sentencing, many spoke at a program in
support of Pablo. Mejia thanked Pablo for bringing back the humanity and doubts
about the war into people's hearts. Sheehan, whose son, K.C., died two weeks
after he arrived in
Aidan Delgado, who received conscientious objector status
after spending nine months in
Pablo's application for conscientious objector status is
pending. He has one year of Navy service left. If his C.O. application is
granted, he could be released. Or he could receive an administrative discharge.
Worst case scenario, he could be sent back to
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor
at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National
Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the
American Association of Jurists.
_________________
C.
from Professor Edward S. Herman :
10 May 2005
The Guardian
Francis,
Some strong medicine from
abroad!
From the Guardian. Interesting, It's inconceivable that anything like this would appear in a
mainstream publication 9in the U.S.
Ed herman
__________________________________________
An ethical blank cheque
British and
and legitimises Anglo-American warmaking
by Richard Drayton
In 1945, as at the end of all
wars, the victor powers spun the conflict's history to serve the interests of
their elites. Wartime propaganda thus achieved an extraordinary afterlife. As
Vladimir Putin showed yesterday, the Great Patriotic
War remains a key political resource in
Five years ago, Robert Lilly, a distinguished American sociologist, prepared a
book based on military archives. Taken by Force is a study of the rapes
committed by American soldiers in
Article continues
We know from Anthony Beevor
about the sexual violence unleashed by the Red Army, but we prefer not to know
about mass rape committed by American and British troops. Lilly suggests a
minimum of 10,000 American rapes. Contemporaries described a much wider scale
of unpunished sex crime. Time Magazine reported in September 1945: "Our
own army and the British army along with ours have done their share of looting
and raping ... we too are considered an army of rapists."
The British and American publics share a sunny view of the second
world war. The evil of
All this seems innocent fun, but patriotic myths have sharp edges. The
"good war" against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to
bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and implicit
appeals to the war against fascism.
When we fall out with such tyrant friends as Noriega, Milosevic or Saddam we rebrand them as "Hitler". In the "good
war" against them, all bad things become forgettable "collateral
damage". The devastation of civilian targets in
Our democratic imperialism prefers to forget that fascism had important
Anglo-American roots. Hitler's dream was inspired, in part, by the
American imperialism in
We forget, too, that British and US elites gave aid to
the fascists. President Bush's grandfather, prosecuted for "trading with
the enemy" in 1942, was one of many powerful Anglo-Americans who liked
Mussolini and Hitler and did what they could to help. Appeasement as a state
policy was only the tip of an iceberg of practical aid to these dictatorships.
Capital and technology flowed freely, and fascist despots received dignified
treatment in
We least like to remember that our side also committed war
crimes in the 1940s. The destruction of
After 1945, we borrowed many fascist methods.
War has a brutalising momentum. This is the moral of
Taken By Force, which shows how American soldiers
became increasingly indiscriminate in their sexual violence and military
authorities increasingly lax in its prosecution. Even as we remember the evils
of nazism, and the courage
of those who defeated it, we should begin to remember the second world war with
less self- satisfaction. We might, in particular, learn to distrust those who
use it to justify contemporary warmongering.
________________
· Richard Drayton is senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University
__________________
D.
from Francis Feeley
The
Associated Press
Anti-US Protests Spread to
The demonstrations come two days after thousands of students
angered by the reported abuse set fire to shops, offices of aid workers and
The trouble began after Newsweek magazine reported in its
May 9 edition that interrogators at the
Many of those held prisoner at
On Friday, Ameer ul-Azeem, spokesman for Pakistan's six-party coalition, Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) said
the protests - to be held in cities nationwide - would not turn violent.
"We have no intention to disrupt law and order. We want
to stage peaceful rallies to condemn what happened in
Nonetheless, the Interior Ministry issued instruction to
police and other security personnel to ensure peace during the rallies,
ministry officials said. Police have been posted outside major mosques.
Ul-Azeem said he has asked
In
"Respect for religious freedom for all individuals is
one of the founding principles of the
______________________
E.
from Francis Feeley
Agence France-Presse
13 May 2005
Worst Anti-US Protests Spread across
The biggest anti-US protests since the fall of the Taliban
spread across
Seven people have been killed and at least 76 injured during
three days of violent demonstrations, all of them in clashes with security
forces and police in conservative towns east of the capital
Angry Afghans shouting "Death to
The Koran controversy has also spread to
Two protesters were killed on Thursday when gunfire erupted
as police stopped them marching into the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad from a district just to the northwest, deputy
governor of Nangarhar province Mohammad Asif Qazizada told AFP.
Jalalabad was the scene of a major
riot on Wednesday in which four people died when police opened fire to control
a mob that torched the buildings of several aid agencies, the Pakistani
consulate and the governor's house.
Meanwhile one person died and four were wounded when rioters
attacked a police station in the Chak district of Wardak province, which borders
The protests were sparked by a small report in Newsweek
magazine last week that interrogators at the
More than 500 detainees, most captured in
The
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday called
disrespect for the holy book "abhorrent" and promised to punish
offenders.
But the top
"... they cannot confirm yet that there was ever the
case of the toilet incident except in one case, a log entry that they still
have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages
out of a Koran and putting them in a toilet to stop it up as a protest,"
said General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In
Thousands of people also took to the streets in the
The United Nations and foreign aid agencies evacuated
hundreds of workers from Jalalabad fearing further
violence.
Afghan officials have suggested that elements opposed to the
US-backed effort to rebuild the war-ravaged country have coordinated the
violence, and protests come amid a recent deterioration in security.
Veteran Afghan analyst Rahimullah Yusufzai said the protests gave the public a chance to vent
their anger at President Hamid Karzai's
government and the
"This is the biggest protest campaign in
Previous anti-US protests in
_____________
Karzai, who is currently in
__________________
F.
From: Council for
the National Interest Foundation
Reply-To: cnif@democracyinaction.org
To: Francis.Feeley@u-grenoble3.fr
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005
Subject: Call for May 23rd Protest of AIPAC Annual Conference
The Council for the National Interest hopes that hundreds of people will
join us in protesting outside the Washington, DC, Convention Center on Monday,
May 23rd, from 6 to 8 pm. All the main actors in the Middle East peace process
will be here from Israel and be joined by a phalanx of important Americans to greet
Ariel Sharon, who is scheduled to speak on Tuesday morning after Sen. Hillary
Clinton (D-NY), and Natan Sharansky,
who is now out of government and working against the disengagement. In effect,
he is undermining the Road Map of his great friend, George W. Bush. (Click here
for the full conference schedule.)
The drumbeat against
Join in protesting the very presence of numerous Israeli defense specialists,
generals, and defense analysts who are featured at the AIPAC conference. AIPAC
should be renamed the Israel Political Action Committee (IPAC) and be forced to
register as the agent of a foreign government. As one activist with a major
Jewish group admitted in a report in the Forward
today, "It is routine for us to say: This is our policy on a certain
issue, but we must check what the Israelis think. We as a community do it all
the time."
Come join the rally and take back
The following call was initiated by
the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) and finalized by representatives of several
groups, six of whom already have signed on. We hope you will join us in
endorsing this very important event. We will keep you updated on further
developments. Email us to endorse, to attend a Sunday May 15 evening planning
meeting on Capitol Hill or if you have questions or comments. Please feel
free to circulate this call.
CALL FOR MAY 23RD PROTEST OF AIPAC ANNUAL CONFERENCE
A coalition of organizations is calling for a peaceful demonstration on Monday,
May 23 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the 2005 American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) annual conference being held May 22 to 24th at the DC
Convention Center. We will gather on
We do so to protest Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and
East Jerusalem, its building of a separation wall through the West Bank and its
current expansion of settlements, which will cut off an additional 250,000
Palestinians in East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine and implement a
system of de facto apartheid in the occupied territories. We protest any
appearance by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, who for over 50 years has been
involved in a series of war crimes, including the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla.
We also protest AIPAC's role in supporting Ariel
Sharon and other Israeli officials' threats to take military actions against
We believe that AIPAC's support of Israeli aggression
in
The organizations below represent a wide range of Americans who call for an end
to tax-funded military aid to
On
To endorse this call and be listed in the press release e-mail aipacprotest@earthlink.net by
close of business Monday, May 16, 2005. Feel free to
include a web page link, e-mail or phone contact for email announcements.
Current Endorsers:
Council for the National Interest http://cnionline.org
DC Anti-War Network http://dawndc.net
StopTheWarNow.Net http://stopthewarnow.net
Washington DC Area Chapter American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee http://adc.org
Washington DC Area Stop U.S. Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now! (SUSTAIN) http://sustaincampaign.org
Women for Peace and Justice in
Council for the
National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/
____________________
G.
from Professor
Christian de Montlibert :
10 mai 2005
cher francis,
je te fais parvenir le texte d'une conférence faite pour
l'anniversaire de la mort de Maurice Halbwachs il y a 60 ans ŕ Buchenwald. tu
peux le mettre sur ton site en exil.
amicalement christian
Please see the CEIMSA publication : « Une
histoire qui fait l’Histoire : la mort de maurice halbwachs ŕ Buchenwald »,
par le Professeur Christian de Montlibert.
******************************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research at
CEIMSA-IN-EXILE
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/