Bulletin #703
Subject: THE
POWER ELITE AND THEIR ZOMBIES’ CULTURAL ACTIONS AGAINST FREEDOM, AIMING AT
REPRODUCING SILENCE.
23 June 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
I was recently re-reading Paulo Freire’s small Penguin Books edition of Cultural
Action for Freedom (1972), which I had first read as a graduate student in
history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We had been assigned Freire’s classic work, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed (1968, 1970), and I found it so interesting I wanted to know more about
his thinking. I was not disappointed.
In the period of the anti-war movement, many
students were committed to interact with ‘the uncritical masses’. “In mass
society,” Freire taught us,
ways of thinking become as standardized as ways of
dressing and tastes in food. Men begin thinking and acting according to the
prescriptions they receive
daily from the [corporate media] rather than in response
to their dialectical relationships with the world.(p.80)
We learned to identify around us the presence of a
‘death wish’, which mythologized science and technology for social stability in
the ‘necropolis’. In the cultural
revolution, science is no longer at the service of domination. The
right-wing cultural elite have targeted freedom to produce silence, while we engaged
in critical dialogue with people to encourage self-realization against the
corporate forces of inertia.
“Cultural Action for Freedom” was first published
as a monograph in Harvard Educational
Review in 1970. It was subsequently produced as a “pocket size” book that
served as a source of energy and inspiration for anyone wishing to change
society, which is (or at least ought to be) the vocation of all teachers. The
first part of this two-part book is entitled, “The Adult Literacy Process as
Cultural Action for Freedom,” and it begins with a short section on how “every
educational practice implies a concept of man and the world.” The phony
educators, according to Freire, produce lessons to be
“mechanically memorized and repeated, [depriving their students] of the
authentic dimension of thought-language in dynamic interplay with reality. Thus
impoverished, they are not authentic expressions of the world.”(p.26) He goes
on to elaborate on this concept of “languaging” as a
social activity with political implications.
To be an
act of knowing the adult literacy process demands among teachers and students a
relationship of authentic dialogue. True dialogue unites subjects
together in the cognition of a knowable object which
mediates between them. . . .
In so far
as language is impossible without thought, and language and thought are
impossible without the world to which they refer, the human word is more
than vocabulary –it is word-and-action. The cognitive
dimensions of the literacy process must include the relationships of men (sic)
with their world. These
relationships are the source of the dialectic between the
products men achieve in transforming the world and the conditioning which these
products in turn exercise
on men. . . .
For the
learner to know what he did not know before, he must engage in an authentic
process of abstraction by means of which he can reflect on the action-object
whole, or, more generally, on forms of orientation in
the world. In this process of abstraction, situations representative of how the
learner orients himself in the world
are proposed to him as the objects of his critique.
The adult
literacy process as an act of knowing implies the existence of two interrelated
contexts. One is the context of authentic dialogue between learners and
educators as equally knowing subjects. This is what schools
should be –the theoretical context of dialogue. The second is the real, concret context of facts, the social
reality in which men exist. (p.31-32)
Freire then suggests that learners must constantly reconstruct “their former
admiration for reality” :
To admire is to objectify the ‘not-I’. It is a
dialectical operation which characterizes man as man, differentiating between
him and the animal. It is directly
associated with the creative dimension of his language. To
‘ad-mire’ implies that man stands over against his ‘not-I’ in order to
understand it. For this reason,
there is no act of knowing without ‘admiration’ of the
object to be known. If the act of knowing is a dynamic act –and no knowledge is
ever complete- then in
order to know, man not only ‘ad-mires’ the object, but
must be ‘re-admiring’ his former ‘ad-miration’. . . . This ‘re-admiration’ leads us to a perception of an
anterior perception. . . .
The
learners must discover the reasons behind many of their attitudes toward
cultural reality and thus confront cultural reality in a new way.
‘Re-admiration’
of their former ‘ad-miration’
is necessary in order to bring this about. The learner’s capacity for critical
knowledge –well beyond mere opinion- is established in
the process of unveiling their relationship with the
historical-cultural world in and with which they exist.(p.35-36)
A few pages later, Freire illustrates this species of self-revelation, by a conversation with a Brazilian peasant who had recently entered the literacy
program.
We asked
[one man] finishing the first level of literacy classes, why he hadn’t learned
to read and write before the agrarian reform.
-‘Before
the agrarian reform, my friend,’ he said, ‘I didn’t even think. Neither did my
friends.’
- ‘Why?’ we
asked.
-‘Because it wasn’t possible. We lived under orders. We only
had to carry out orders. We had nothing to say,’ he replied emphatically.
The simple
answer of this peasant is a very clear analysis of ‘the culture of silence’. In
‘the culture of silence’, to exist is only to live. The body
carries out orders from above. Thinking is difficult,
speaking the word, forbidden.
-‘When all
this land belonged to one latifundio,’ said another
man in the same conversation, ‘there was no reason to read and write. We
weren’t
responsible for anything. The boss gave the orders and we
obeyed. Why read and write? Now it’s a different story.’(p.43)
In Part Two of this book, "Cultural Action and Conscientization," Freire begins by discussing the concepts of living in and existing with the world :
Whereas the being which merely lives is not capable
of reflecting upon itself and knowing itself living in the world, the existent
subject reflects upon his
life within the very domain of existence, and questions
his relationship with the world. His domain of existence is the domain of work,
of history, of culture,
of values—the domain in which men experience the
dialectic between determinism and freedom.
If they
did not server their adherence to the world and emerge from it as consciousness
constituted in the ‘ad-miration’ of the world as its
object, men
would be merely determinate beings, and it would be
impossible to think in terms of their liberation. Only beings who can reflect
upon the fact that they
are determined are capable of freeing themselves.
Their reflectiveness results not just in a vague and
uncommitted awareness, but in the exercise of a
profoundly transforming action upon the determining reality. Consciousness
of and action upon reality are, therefore, inseparable constituents
of the
transforming act by which men become beings of relation. By
their characteristic reflection, intentionality; temporality and ‘transcendence’,
men’s
consciousness and action are distinct from the mere contacts of animals with the world. The animals’ contacts are a-critical; they do not go
beyond the
association of sensory images through experience. They are
singular and not plural. Animals not elaborate goals; they exist at the level
of immersion
and are thus a-temporal.
Engagement
and objective distance, understanding reality as object, understanding the
significance of men’s action upon objective reality, creative
communication about the object by means of language, plurality
of responses to a single challenge –these varied dimensions testify to the
existence of
critical reflection in men’s relationships with the world.
Consciousness is constituted in the dialectic of man’s objectification of and
action upon the world.
However, consciousness is never a mere reflection
of, but a reflection upon, material reality.(p.52-53)
In a world of zombies, Freire supported the struggle for human liberation, the first step toward which was
the recognition of the obstacles to liberation. This cultural activity would
create community and introduce a new critical dimension to people’s lives --this was
what he hoped for the future.
Filoche président ! Mais
d’abord, retrait de la loi El Khomri et son monde
http://la-bas.org/newsletter/filoche-president-mais-d-abord-retrait-de-la-loi-el-khomri-et-son-monde
In the 15 items below, CEIMSA readers will
uncover the practico-inert in post-coup-d’état society,
which requires personal interaction for mutual understanding in the midst of
ruling-class attacks using zombies who would silence us and create a future of deep despair,
thereby protecting the privileges and the great wealth and the sacred system that
supports them.
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
a.
I Helped
Create ISIS
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/I-Helped-Create-ISIS-20151218-0016.html
byVincent Emanuele
===========
b.
From: "John Clark" <clark@loyno.edu>
To: "Francis Feeley" <francis.feeley@u-grenoble3.fr>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June, 2016 5:20:48 PM
Subject: Re: ON CHOOSING BETWEEN THE LESSER EVILS: ENSLAVEMENT OR ANNIALATION ?
The Lesser of Evils Versus the Common Good: On
the Poverty of Ideology
in the Washington Post
and
The Illustrated version of "The Lesser of
Evils Versus the Common Good" (recommended) at:
https://www.academia.edu/26019145/_The_Lesser_of_Evils_Illustrated_
===========
c.
Julian Assange: Next Leak of Hillary Clinton Emails Will Be Enough
to Indict Her, but ...
===========
d.
At The People's Summit in
Chicago.
RoseAnn DeMoro: Sanders Campaign
a Historic Source of Political Education
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16588
At The People's Summit in Chicago, Executive Director of National Nurses United Roseann DeMoro says that
the Sanders campaign has made the immense influence of Wall Street on the
Democratic Party apparent, and that many don't have faith that the party is reformable
===========
e.
From: "Michael Albert" <sysop@zmag.org>
To: "Francis Feeley" <francis.feeley@u-grenoble3.fr>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June, 2016 5:21:56 PM
Subject: Re: ON CHOOSING BETWEEN THE LESSER EVILS: ENSLAVEMENT OR ANNIALATION ?
Francis,
Thanks
for the link to the program project…
I will
look at your piece soon…meanwhile, you may find the
one I just put up to day on znet relevant to the
debate - which is what it focuses on…
Michael Albert
ZCommunications
Lesser Evilism
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/lesser-evilism/
===========
f.
From: "Edward S Herman" <hermane@wharton.upenn.edu>
Subject: Fw: [shamireaders]
Fwd: John V Walsh
Francis,
It is interesting that none of these strong
voices can be heard in the mainstream media. even with
a whisper.
ed herman
Dear All,
Hillary
is supported by the Military Industrial Complex, the Neocons and even the current State Department is eagerly waiting for her in the White
House.
The only real difference is that a Clinton presidency absolutely means
more Middle East wars, and a Trump presidency may not. Which
is why the Republican establishment is doing its best to ensure that Trump
loses which is what AIPAC (Israel Lobby) wants, sensing that someone with his
wealth and ego may not be as malleable as Hillary, who they now already have
deep in their pockets, totally compromised.
Trump seems like a loose cannon – but he did
not become a billionaire several times over by being foolishly incompetent.
===========
g.
Trump as the
‘Relative Peace Candidate’
By VNN
The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but
Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence
of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is
totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.”
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2016/06/20/1007332-trump-as-the-relative-peace-candidate/
and
Hillary
Clinton’s Project For A New American Century
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44884.htm
by Dan Wright
===========
h.
Kill List: Smashing
the 'B' in BRICS
http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160608/1041017686/brics-brazil-coup.html
by Pepe Escobar
===========
i.
We Must
Understand Corporate Power to Fight It
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_must_understand_corporate_power_to_fight_it_20160612
by Chris Hedges
===========
j.
Hollande Capitulates to EU Pressure on Labor Laws
Risking His
Own Presidency
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16559
Renaud Lambert of Le Monde Diplomatique says Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European
Commission, came to France to endorse Hollande
and his decree on restrictive labor reforms
===========
k.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
To: "newsfromunderground"
<newsfromunderground@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, 17 June, 2016 9:27:52 PM
Subject: [MCM] Stock market rallies on Jo Cox's murder
← Why Brexit Is Such a Threat to the New World Order
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2016
Jo Cox, Member of Parliament, Was Murdered on Thursday, June 16, 2016;
U.S. Stocks Rallied on the News
The U.S. stock market
was mired in red ink yesterday morning with every major Wall Street bank
trading down on news that multiple polls in Britain were showing that a
majority of citizens were in favor of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the
European Union (EU). A referendum vote on the issue is to be held next
Thursday.
Then, at 12:17 p.m. New York time yesterday, Bloomberg News printed the following headline:
“U.K. Lawmaker Jo Cox Is Murdered, Silencing Brexit Debate.” Cox was a Member of Parliament from the Labour Party who was an advocate for the U.K. remaining in the EU. Cox, a mother of
two children, was shot and stabbed by a man said to be in favor of Brexit, the term for a British exit from the EU. On the
news of her death, which fueled the market perception that it
would dampen the zeal to leave the EU, the pound and euro rallied along with
the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Wall Street bank stocks.
After the U.S. market closed, with the Dow up 92 points on the day, an
abrupt turnaround from morning trading, James Mackintosh penned an
article at the Wall Street Journal taking note that markets can
appear “callous,” but justifying the market reaction to the death of Cox with
this line of reasoning:
“But one of the
points of markets is that they are amoral. Not immoral — although much of the
wrongdoing uncovered after the financial crisis certainly was — but unconcerned
with morality at all. They are deliberately unfeeling, heartless and
unsympathetic, because they exist to balance out millions of individual views
in order to allocate capital and assess risk.”
This is simplistic
and naively wrong on so many levels. Let’s start with the U.S. market’s ability
to “allocate capital and assess risk.” Here’s what Ron Chernow correctly had to say on this subject back in 2001 in the New York Times:
“Let us be clear
about the magnitude of the Nasdaq collapse. The
tumble has been so steep and so bloody — close to $4 trillion in market value erased in one year — that it amounts to nearly
four times the carnage recorded in the October 1987 crash.” Chernow likened the NASDAQ stock market to a “lunatic control tower that directed most
incoming planes to a bustling, congested airport known as the New Economy while
another, depressed airport, the Old Economy, stagnated with empty runways. The
market functioned as a vast, erratic mechanism for misallocating capital across
America.”
The U.S. stock market
at that time was corrupted by crooked research analysts at the still crooked
Wall Street mega banks who were pumping out buy recommendations to the public
while internally calling the stocks “crap,” and debating how to put lipstick on
the pigs they were peddling.
Instead of cleaning
up this cesspool of corruption that was misallocating trillions of dollars of
capital, a few wrists were slapped and the road was paved for the next epic
misallocation of capital – the subprime debt, synthetic derivatives,
off-balance-sheet black hole adventure, otherwise known as the financial crash
of 2008, which took down the entire U.S. economy.
Bundling up junk debt
and paying a ratings agency to wink and deliver a triple-A rating is not
efficient allocation of capital – it is a fraud on the market. But until
subprime blew up, the dumb tourist market traded it as triple-A paper. That’s
not an efficient market that knows how to allocate capital.
It’s also
preposterous to suggest that we can have a stock market made up of major
companies whose executive ranks are populated with liars and crooks, where
corporate lawyers are also liars and crooks, and this won’t inject chronic
disease into the efficient market theory.
Tobacco company
stocks have been part of the U.S. stock market for most of its existence. In
1999, the United States sued the largest tobacco firms under the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The government’s
complaint said that the tobacco companies engaged in a four-decade conspiracy
to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking and unconscionably targeted
the youth market as “replacement smokers.”
We call that immoral
– not amoral.
Following a nine-month bench trial, 14,000 exhibits, live testimony from
84 witnesses and written testimony from 162 witnesses, on August 17, 2006,
Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
issued a 1,683 page opinion,
writing as follows:
“It is about an
industry, and in particular these Defendants, that survives, and profits, from
selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a
staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering
and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system.
Defendants have known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more.
Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, repeatedly, and with enormous
skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, to the Government,
and to the public health community. Moreover, in order to sustain the economic
viability of their companies, Defendants have denied that they marketed and
advertised their products to children under the age of eighteen and to young
people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one in order to ensure an
adequate supply of ‘replacement smokers,’ as older ones fall by the wayside
through death, illness, or cessation of smoking. In short, Defendants have marketed
and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded
focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or
social costs that success exacted.”
Judge Kessler also
had this to say about the individuals that were assigned the duty of making
corporations uphold the law — the corporate lawyers:
“Finally, a word must
be said about the role of lawyers in this fifty-year history of deceiving
smokers, potential smokers, and the American public about the hazards of
smoking and second hand smoke, and the addictiveness of nicotine. At every
stage, lawyers played an absolutely central role in the creation and
perpetuation of the Enterprise and the implementation of its fraudulent
schemes. They devised and coordinated both national and international strategy;
they directed scientists as to what research they should and should not
undertake; they vetted scientific research papers and reports as well as public
relations materials to ensure that the interests of the Enterprise would be
protected; they identified ‘friendly’ scientific witnesses, subsidized them
with grants from the Center for Tobacco Research and the Center for Indoor Air
Research, paid them enormous fees, and often hid the relationship between those
witnesses and the industry; and they devised and carried out document
destruction policies and took shelter behind baseless assertions of the
attorney client privilege.”
Today, two of Wall
Street’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, which house both investment
banks and commercial banks filled with the insured deposits of savers, are
mandated to efficiently allocate capital in order to build a growing economy,
finance deserving new businesses and build a strong labor market that supports
an improving quality of life. But units of JPMorgan Chase were hit with felony
charges by the U.S. Justice Department in both 2014 and 2015, which it admitted
to. A unit of Citigroup admitted to a felony charge in 2015. For the first time
in their century old existence, two major U.S. banks are felons – after
participating in the greatest market swindles in history in the lead up to the
2008 crash.
“Callous” simply
doesn’t begin to describe today’s Wall Street.
===========
l.
Capitalism
Will Collapse Because Elites ‘Allow Poor to Rot,’ Tariq Ali Tells Chris Hedges
(Video)
by Chris Hedges
“The elites who have run the United States and
Western Europe have proven incapable of offering even the smallest palliatives
to their populations,” says Tariq Ali, a British-Pakistani radical
intellectual, in an interview with Truthdig columnist
Chris Hedges on RT America. “They have allowed the poor to rot—regardless of
skin color—and grow. ... And so what we have is a protest against this center elite, which I call the extreme center, because
whether it’s social democratic or conservative, they unite to crush.”
===========
m.
From: "Jim O'Brien" <jimobrien48@gmail.com>
To: haw-info@stopthewars.org
Sent: Thursday, 16 June, 2016 3:01:39 PM
Subject: [haw-info] HAW Notes 6/16/16: Links to recent articles of interest
Links to Recent Articles of Interest
"The Pentagon's Real
Strategy: Keeping the Money Flowing"
By Andrew Cockburn, TomDispatch.com, posted June 16
"Top 7
Ways of Telling if Someone Is Lying about being a 'Salafi Jihadi'"
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, posted June 14
The author teaches history at the University of Michigan
"What
America Keeps Getting Wrong in the Middle East"
By Charles W. Freeman, Jr., The National Interest, posted June
14
The author is a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia among many
governmental positions; the article draws extensively from the history of
recent decades.
"The War in Vietnam: Studies
in Remembrance and Legacy: 2000-2014"
By Jerry Lembcke, Choice, June
issue
An extensive bibliographic essay, commissioned from the author by the
journal of the American Library Association
"Why
Israel Is Blocking Access to Its Archives"
By Jonathan Cook, Aljazeera, posted June 10
Part 2 of interview with Andrew J. Bacevich by
Patrick Smith, Salon.com, posted May 25
Andrew Bacevich is a professor emeritus of
history and international relations at Boston University.
Part 1 of the interview with Prof. Bacevich was posted by Salon on May 15: "'The
Scope of Our Failure': The Real Story of Our Decades-Long Foreign Policy
Disaster That Set the Middle East on Fire"
"Obama Is Not First President
at Permanent War"
By David Swanson, Let's Try Democracy blog, posted May
23
"The
Vietnam War Is Still Killing People"
By George Black, The New Yorker, posted May 20
"China
Closes the Innovation Gap"
By John V. Walsh, Consortium News, posted May 9
"Despondent, Divided, and
Angry: Welcome to the Past"
By Thomas M. Grace, History News Network, posted May 1
Based in part on the author's newly published book Kent State: Death and
Dissent in the Long Sixties"
===========
n.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
To: "newsfromunderground"
<newsfromunderground@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, 17 June, 2016 11:29:43 PM
Subject: [MCM] DNC drops "Democratic" mask, as Hillary takes
it over, openly. (This is not a joke.)
DNC Comes
Out of Closet-- Goes Public, Handing Reins Over to
Clinton Campaign
by Rob Kall
The
DNC has allowed Hillary Clinton to replace Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the
practical head of the DNC with someone of her choosing, finally coming out of closet, showing their collusion openly.
===========
o.
Decades
Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a US Hydrogen Bomb
Accident in Spain
by DAVE PHILIPPS
In 1966, a B-52 bomber on a Cold War
nuclear patrol exploded over Spain, releasing four hydrogen bombs. Fifty years
later, Air Force veterans involved with the cleanup are sick and want
recognition.