Bulletin N° 227
Subject: On Anti-War Movements Past, Present,
and Future in
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
I began bicycling more than half a century ago, and it was just thirty years
ago next July that I set off for a trip across North America. It took me 40
days, traveling against the prevailing continental
wind currents, before I arrived in
Nevertheless, bicycling subcultures do teach you a thing or two about life : Perhaps the most important lesson is that if you let
people bully you (se laisser faire) --on
the highway, these people are often the arrogant drivers of sports cars and trucks-- they will grow bigger and bolder, and they are likely
to brutalize you (and others like you) even more. So, there exists a standard
international rule among bicyclers to resist bullies whenever they can. John
Locke was right : people create the governments they
deserve, usually by "tacit consent." This is the history of Benito
Mussolini, this is the history of Adolph Hitler, & it is the history of my
high-school basketball coach in south
Recently, our research center has
received many disturbing items of information. We live in an information-rich
society today, and the avalanche of news each day is daunting. There exists the
real danger of "drowning the fish" : By
depriving ourselves of our own perspectives, we surrender the
possibility of experiencing a gestalt which would permit us more
"oxygen", i.e. help us locate our own interests in the total picture
of what is going on. Usually we, "the public", are abstracted out of
this picture which is carefully crafted by the
mainstream media to depict world events as some sort of spectator sport.
Our only link to global events, we are reminded endlessly by media outlets, is
our role as a paying costumer, seeking tickets for good seats at the next
spectacle.
CEIMSA-IN-EXILE is busy organizing an
Below, is a series of
articles and essays sent to us by scholars and specialists who have much
experience in social movements themselves, and who have generously selected
information to share with us, information that could well change our lives, or
at least our opinions about our lives.
Item A., sent to us by Professor James
Cohen, is a brief description of Master
Sergeant Jimmy Massey's decision to refuse to slaughter
members of his own species in
Item B., from Professor Richard Du Boff, is a copy of a "working paper" first
published at
Item C., also sent to us
by Dr. Du Boff, is a retrospective essay on War
Resistance in
Item D., again from
Dr. Cohen, is a video link access to coverage of the historic Latino March for Peace on
the West Coast earlier this month.
In item E. Richard Du Boff shares with us an economic analysis of possible Euro-American neo-imperialist
ventures against the rest of the world: Endless
War and endless profits !
Item F. is from William Blum,
whose experience in the U.S. State Department in the 1960s, prior to his
resignation because of the criminal activities of the
Diane Johnstone, in item G.,
has chosen for us an important critique of the corruption in journalism, and the failing credibility of the U.S. Media,
written by Sherrie Gossett, who comments on a speech made by former New York
Times reporter, David Binder, in which he suggested that "the 1993
Pulitzer Prize awarded to the New York Times and Newsday for
reports by John F. Burns and Roy Gutman on the
Balkans wars "should in all honesty be revoked...."
And finally, item H. is an essay by Ralph
Nader, who is calling for immediate
resignations of key members of the Bush administration
because of their "incompetence" and their "crimes against
humanity."
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Universié Stehdhal-Grenoble
3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
______________________
A.
from Jim Cohen :
20 March 2006
Subject : un objecteur
Dear Francis,
Two
speakers worth checking out . . . .
Jimmy Massey, conscientious objector and Iraq veteran;
Naba S. Hamid Al Barrak, Iraqi profesor,
representing “New Horizons for Women”
On
Jimmy Massey,
A self-described
"good old boy" born in
He describes the
When he went to his superiors about his changing feelings regarding the war, he
was offered a desk job away from combat, he responded to this offer by saying
“Thank you sergeant major, I don’t want your money anymore. I
don’t want your benefits. You killed some civilians, and you’re gonna have to live with it partner, and I’m gonna tell the truth.” Massey hired a good
lawyer which meant that he was discharged rather than court-martialed.
Since his discharge, he has been telling the truth.
His conviction is this: "I’m not going to kill innocent civilians
for no government. ... I was taught and raised by parents and relatives
that there are certain things you don’t do, and killing innocent
civilians is one of them."
Website: www.jimmymassey.com
http://www.mvtpaix.org/agenda/descriptif-initiative/tournee-irak.php
Jim
_______________________
B.
from Richard Du Boff :
24 March 2006
Subject : The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.
click here : http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/publications/Scholars/2006.1.html.pdf
Francis,
This paper has not been withdrawn from the
Let me know if you want me to send you the PDF directly. It's not very long by
PDF standards (1830K), but I don't want to stuff your mailboxes at first
A week after it was first published, this was added to
the title page: "The two authors of this Working paper are solely
responsible for the views expressed in it. As academic institutions,
An edited and reworked version of this paper was published in the London
Review of Books 28 (March 23, 2006), and is available online at http://www.lrb.co.uk
The two authors told Corine Lesnes, Le Monde 24 March 2006 that "no American
publication has agreed to run it." http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-753823,0.html
Richard
_______________________
C.
from Richard Du Boff :
22 March 1996
Subject : Claude Bourdet: Gone ten years.
New York Times
http://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr_compagnon/131.html
http://www.peacenews.info/issues/2402/pn240215.htm
Claude Bourdet, 86, Leader of French
Resistance and Leftist Editor
By
Claude Bourdet,
a Resistance leader who emerged a starveling from the Nazi concentration camp
at Buchenwald to become a leader of
During the war Mr. Bourdet conceived one of the most
inspired Resistance plans -- to infiltrate all public administration offices in
When
Mr. Bourdet, who was born in
Mr. Bourdet was married in 1935 to Ida Adamoff. They had three children, Nicolas, Catherine and
Louis.
________________
D.
from James Cohen
25 March 2006
Subject : Latino March for Peace (from
Francis,
Good little video (6:40 min) for those equipped to watch it.
–jim
VIDEO
SPECIAL | Latino March for Peace
A Film by Scott Galindez and Ted Sapphire
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
On March 12, 2006, Fernando Suarez del Solar and Pablo Paredes started a march with a coalition of the willing across 240+ miles in a quest
for peace that aims at raising the Latino voice of opposition to the war in Iraq.
The March will run from
_______________
E.
from Richard Du Boff :
15 March 2006
Subject : Dream come true--endless war!
The Guardian (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1710030,00.html
US Introduces Radical New Strategy
by on Tisdall, Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor
Concern is growing in Europe about
US plans to involve governments in an expanded, all-out campaign against
Islamist extremism from north Africa to south-east
The Pentagon plan, designed to fight what it describes as "The Long
War", envisages "long-duration, complex operations involving the
The post-Iraq rethink, known as the Quadrennial Defence Review, was published
last week, and calls on existing allies such as Nato and "moderate" governments in the Muslim world "to share the
risks and responsibilities of today's complex challenges".
Measures proposed, to be funded through $513bn (£295.6bn) in US defence
spending for 2007, include boosting the number of special operations forces and
unmanned drones used for surveillance and targeted assassinations, the creation
of special teams trained to detect and render safe nuclear weapons anywhere in
the world, and a long-range bomber force.
Donald Rumsfeld, the
"The biggest risk is not of a generation of homegrown African terrorists. It is the ability of external terrorists to use Africa as a
base from which to launch attacks on African and western interests in
European governments are still digesting the contents of the
The Ministry of Defence said yesterday it had been consulted by the Pentagon as
the review was drawn up and was pleased to see references to working with
allies. As the consultation took place, Royal Marine commandos arrived at their
base in southern
But British commanders expressed concern that increased attacks on suspect
terrorists using drones - in which decisions are made rapidly by secret
watchers based thousands of miles away - could have legal implications. They
also highlighted potential infringements of sovereignty and the bypassing of
political controls and of established rules of engagement.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has backed the idea of Nato moving beyond its borders, as
it has in
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato secretary general, said:
"Nato is not a global policeman but we have
increasingly global partnerships."
The French government, anxious not to reignite pre-Iraq tensions with
The report proposes increased training and financing of security forces in the
Muslim world for counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations, and
relaxation of arms export controls and national legal regulations. It also
projects a big propaganda effort.
"Previously the emphasis was 'we'll do what we have to do, and it's nice
to have allies', but now it's seen as essential to what we are trying to
do," said Carl Conetta, a military specialist at
the Massachusetts-based Project on Defence Alternatives.
But Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University, a columnist for the openDemocracy website, said the long war "is hugely
convenient in that it simplifies everything into a 'them and us' global
confrontation ... This is clearly a global war and the world as a whole is
involved, whether or not it wants to be."
_____________
F.
From: BBlum6@aol.com
22 March 2006
Subject: Anti-Empire Report, March 22, 2006
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer31.htm
___________
G.
from Diane Johnstone :
22 March 2006
Subject: Fw: Former NY Times Reporter:
"The '93 Pulitzer Should be Revoked", by Sherrie Gossett
http://CNSNews.com
Former NY Times
Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
By Sherrie Gossett
New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting awarded to both the Times and
"should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked."
Binder was speaking at a press conference for the release of a new book
criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the book by
Peter Brock, titled "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and
Tragedy in
"What we're looking at here is a series catalogued by Peter Brock of
journalistic crimes," said Binder. Before mentioning the reporting of the
Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman, Binder
evoked the memory of what he called Walter Duranty's "phony reporting" for the New
York Times in the 1930s as an example of an undeserved Pulitzer. Duranty was criticized for having been too deferential to
Joseph Stalin and his plan to
industrialize the
"What Peter [Brock] has unraveled and disclosed
in this book involves at least a couple of Pulitzer prizes that should in all
fairness and honesty
be revoked." Binder confirmed to Cybercast News Service that he was
referring to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, awarded
to Burns of the New York Times and Gutman of Newsday
for their reporting in the Balkans. Brock devotes considerable space in his
book to criticizing
the reporting of Burns and Gutman.
Binder noted that the Times has gone through
"agony" in recent years over the "terrible professional behavior of its staff members" and with "what
has gone on under its masthead."
"[E]xposure is the best remedy," said
Binder.
"I think Peter Brock's book helps a great deal to confront these egregious
crimes of journalism. I think it should be shoved under the noses of
editors all across the press, at least the editors who are dealing with foreign
news ..." said Binder.
The Pulitzer Board at first voted to award the prize solely to Gutman, according to Binder. "The New York Times got
so agitated that John Burns
was passed over that they started lobbying the board. The Pulitzer is an
extremely political award in many if not all cases. There are all kinds of
backstage manipulations that go on."
The centerpiece of Burns' Pulitzer entry was a
seven-hour interview with a captured Bosnian Serb -- Borislav Herak -- who in graphic statements to
Burns, confessed to dozens of murders, including eight involving rape. Burns'
Nov. 27, 1992, article was described by the New York Times as
offering "insight into the way thousands of others have died in
However, more than three years after the publication of Burns' story, the Times
on Jan. 31, 1996, described Herak as "slightly
retarded" and reported
that Herak had retracted his confession and claimed
it had been beaten out of him by guards.
"I was tortured, forced to confess," said Herak.
By that time his testimony already had been used to convict Sretko Damjanovic for the killing of two
Muslim brothers who were later found alive. Both Herak and Damjanovic, who also said he had been
"tortured" into providing a false confession, were
sentenced to death by firing squad.
Author Peter Brock described Burns' interview with Herak as "a manipulated confession and interrogation in which Burns was the key
participant." Brock faults Burns for failing to tell readers that the
interview took place with a
conducted by [government] investigators and by
He also argues that "vital pieces" of Herak's story were missing. "[T]here was no evidence, corpses or victims, or
eyewitnesses to implicate Herak,
except for hearsay from Bosnian government 'investigators,'" Brock writes.
Brock also faults Newsday's Roy Gutman for being
unduly influenced by government propagandists including one source who operated
under four
different aliases. Gutman was criticized for not
exercising enough scrutiny before repeating allegations of atrocities and statistics
of the dead and
tortured.
Gutman won his Pulitzer partly for "electrifying
stories about 'concentration camps'," notes Brock, who criticizes the
reporter for the prominence of "hearsay" and "double
hearsay" in his stories, as well as gratuitous use of the language of the
Nazi Holocaust.
Gutman's first five stories about the alleged Omarska concentration camp in
Gutman's sixth story on the subject that finally carried
an Omarska dateline, Brock wrote, and that was after
the prison had been shut down.
Both Binder and Brock accuse the press of falling into "pack
journalism" and playing the role of "co-belligerent." The
reliance on Croat and Bosnian
Muslim propaganda resulted in distorted reporting that exaggerated the Serb
role in the three-sided conflict and ignored ethnic cleansing of Serbs,
according to Binder and Brock.
Brock went so far as to say the $3,000 Pulitzer Prize money awarded to Burns
and Gutman was "blood money."
"What we're talking about in terms of what I call crimes of journalism was
only ten years ago," said Binder. "It wasn't so long ago that these,
I
think revolting things, were happening -- revolting bias, revolting suppression
of other sides of the story."
During his recent appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.,
Binder said it would take "at least a decade" before historians
"clear out that wretched underbrush of lies and concoctions" from
"despicable" politicians "like Richard Holbrooke,"
an international
negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton and
"certainly the journalists" criticized in Brock's book. The rise of blogs
and media watchdog groups offers a "corrective" for the public now, Binder
contended.
In his call for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize Peter Brock said that
"in all fairness, if [the Pulitzer board] is not going to revoke the prize,
they ought to give Janet Cooke's Pulitzer back." Cooke was a
eight-year old heroin addict.
___________________
H.
from Ralph Nader :
26 March 2006
Subject : Impeachment or Resignation: Pick Your Poison
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12493.htm
*********************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université de Grenoble-3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/