Bulletin N° 693

 

 Subject:  “Don’t Mourn –Organize ! (Joe Hill, 1879-1915).

 

7 April 2016
Grenoble, France

 Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

The internationally renowned activist collective known as ZNet has launched an initiative to follow the Bernie Sanders campaign which is advancing the idea of real democratic socialism to replace neoliberal capitalism as the foundation of the US political economy (“people over private profits”). This group of dedicated activists has long been active in educating the public on important issues, since the US military defeat in Vietnam and the start of the Reagan administration’s counter-revolution; they are again sponsoring social dialogues among citizens around the world, with the aim of establishing strategies, tactics and logistics for positive democratic change in the face of corporate authoritarianism and neo-liberal hegemony. Like superstitious peasants in the Holy Roman Empire, many of us are suffering the inequalities and the capricious indignities inflicted on us by the super-rich owners of corporate capital and their army of minions. Just as many of our ancestors lived under the control of the medieval Church and aristocratic property owners, so we today have been largely disarmed by an ideology of neo-liberalism financed by owners of corporate capital who are pursuing their narrow self-interests across continents more effectively than ever before by means of  high-technology in communication and transportation.

 

You are invited to sign up and join the discussion about this new world-wide phenomenon.

Programmatic Call by 75 International Activist/Scholars

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/possible-ideas-for-going-forward/

 

 

Hello Francis,

 We are 9 of the 75 signers of the document included below that seeks to spur wide and deep discussion of activist program with the purpose of trying to reach shared positions.

 The document offers possible initial but in no sense final ideas for discussion. 

 We hope you will give serious visibility to the document, perhaps running it as a multi author piece yourself, perhaps running an article or an editorial about it, or running a criticism, an extension, a debate, or whatever suits you. 

 If one or more folks at your publication would like to add your names to the list of signers, that is also excellent, of course, but please send those names to us, too, so we can add them to the underlying document.

"Michael Albert" <sysop@zmag.org>

 In any event, we hope you will agree to display the document or otherwise relate to the effort. Please let us know your decision. We intend for it to begin appearing on Thursday, April 7, and more widely by Friday, hopefully. so please publish either Thursday, or Friday, or thereafter.

 

Multi Author
Programmatic Initiative

https://zcomm.org/znet/

 

Thank you,

Michael Albert, Z Communications 

Noam Chomsky, Internationalist 

Marjorie Cohn, Scholar/Activist 

Bill Fletcher, Talk Show Host 

Irene Gendzier, Scholar/Activist 

Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence 

Robert W. McChesney, Univ Illinois 

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Internationalist 

Marina Sitrin, Lawyer/Author 

 

 The 6 items below will bring to mind for many of us the urgent need to shake off the effects of the dominant ideology of “corporate individualism” (i.e. the subjection of alienated individuals to corporate interests) so that we might find the loving and caring community that every member of our species needs to survive and prosper. The genocidal interests of corporations must be defeated --in theory and in practice.

 

Sincerely,

Francis Feeley

Professor of American Studies

University of Grenoble-3

Director of Research

University of Paris-Nanterre

Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements

The University of California-San Diego

http://www.ceimsa.org 

 

a.

The Occupation of the American Mind

https://fr.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A7x9UngkuwBXjjwAgJGPAwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsYWhiN2NvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2lyMgR2dGlkAw--?p=The+Occupation+of+the+American+Mind%2C&hspart=iry&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003

===========

 b.

The Empire Files: Abby Martin with Dr. Jill Stein - A Sick Society

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16035
Abby Martin sits down with Dr. Stein to look at how her career in medicine helped her diagnose America's "multi-organ failure," and why her ideas pose such a threat to Empire.

===========

 c.

Music therapy for traumatised Palestinian children

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/music-therapy-traumatised-palestinian-children-160306083935325.html

===========

d.

 

“Charlie Hebdo criticised for linking all Muslims to Brussels”

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/apr/04/charlie-hebdo-criticised-linking-all-muslims-brussels-bombings

by Harriet Sherwood

 

The CH editorial in question (translated into English) can be found at :

https://charliehebdo.fr/en/edito/how-did-we-end-up-here/

and

The response to it by Nigerian-American author, Teju Cole, is worth reading :

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153616146902199&id=200401352198 

===========

e.

From: "Jim O'Brien" <jimobrien48@gmail.com>
To: haw-info@stopthewars.org
Sent: Thursday, 7 April, 2016
Subject: [haw-info] HAW Notes 4/7/16: Vietnam draft resistance film; links to recent articles of interest

 A note: The IndiGoGo fundraising campaign for the film-in-progress The Boys Who Said No: Draft Resistance & the Vietnam War has gotten off to a strong start. Information about the project, with a link for contributing, is here.

  

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

 

 "Are Sanders' Criticisms of Israeli Occupation Policies Unprecedented in a Presidential Campaign?"

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, posted April 7

The author teaches history at the University of Michigan.

 

 "Orwell (and the President) Come to Hiroshima"

By Joseph Gerson, CommonDreams.org, posted April 6

 

 "Writing a Blank Check on War for the President: How the United States Became a Prisoner of War and Congress Went MIA"

By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch.com, posted April 5

The author is a professor emeritus of history and International Relations at Boston University.

 

 Two more by Prof. Bacevich:

"Matters of Choice," an interview by Stephen Kinzer, Boston Review, posted April 4

&

"Ted Cruz Embodies the Degeneration of Foreign Policy Conservatism," The Nation, posted March 30

 

 

 "Islamic Extremism Is a Product of Western Imperialism"

By Gary Leech, CounterPunch.com, posted March 30

 

 "Donald Trump: Foreign Policy's Useful Idiot?"

By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, posted March 30

 

 "Neoconservatism in a Nutshell"

By Jim Lobe, LobeLog, posted March 24

 

 "With the Middle East Peace Process 'Dead,' Now What?"

By Douglas Kerr and Ted Steinberg, Cleveland.com, posted March 23

Ted Steinberg teaches history at Case Western Reserve University.

 

 "A Force unto Itself: A Military Leviathan Has Emerged as America's 51st and Most Powerful State"

By William J. Astore, TomDispatch.com, posted March 20

The author is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and formerly taught at the US Air Force Academy.

 

Thanks for Mim Jackson and an anonymous reader for suggesting articles included in the above list. Suggestions for these occasional lists can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.

===========

f.

THE PANAMA PAPERS


If you are wondering why there is very little in the Panama Project that is focused on US politicians, business leaders or corporations, it is important to note that this project was funded by a USAID and USAID funds lots of "journalism" all over the world. I put journalism in quotation marks because the agency is very involved in US regime change operations so their reporting may have that purpose, which is why Putin was the headline of the first stories, I suspect (even though his name is not in any of the documents). 

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCR) got at least $3 million from USAID -- they are also funded by Open Society Institute and United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF). Their annual report looks like an anti-Putin/Russia project.

***

 

From USA Today, April 7, 2016 :

Whistleblowing group WikiLeaks criticized the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' decision not to allow open access to documents that show how wealthy people have links to offshore financial services.

"If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition," WikiLeaks said in a tweet Wednesday.

The ICIJ and its media partners have chosen not to release hacked Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca's files online.

When Wikileaks leaked classified diplomatic cables in 2010 that contained sensitive and embarrassing information and analysis about countries and world leaders it published the entire database on the Internet in a searchable format.

The group wants ICIJ to take a similar approach to its data.

"(The documents) should be available to the general public in such a manner so everybody, not just the group of journalists working on the data, can search it, "WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson told Russian broadcaster RT.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that first shared the leaked files with the ICIJ, said Thursday the full dossier of 11.5 million documents would not be made available to the public or law enforcement agencies because it contains private information about companies and individuals that have no public interest.

Separately, Gerard Ryle, ICIJ's director, told Wired magazine: "We're not WikiLeaks. We're trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly."


See :

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/07/wikileaks-criticizes-lack-access-panama-papers/82736064/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories