Bulletin #725
Subject : A PARADIGM
SHIFT, OR A PLUNGE INTO THE ABYSS ?
5 December 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We have
entered a critical moment in US history, where ‘business as usual’ has lost its
attraction for most of us. The multiple crises are a loud knock on the door,
and only the most obtuse residents of our planet are
able to ignore it. The ratio between political ambitions and common sense seems
to be inverse today, and the murderous compromises
made by those at the top have become visible to all. Even their well-armed
bodyguards cannot shelter them from the truth. They will wither and die for
their crimes against humanity, and no one will regret their demise, not even
their most intimate friends and family.
Fernand Braudel,
social historian and author of the trilogy, Civilization & Capitalism, 15th
– 18th Century, wrote in the Preface of Volume One,
which he entitled “The Structures of Everyday Life: the limits of the
possible,” that in this study of the pre-industrial world, he will attempt to
describe the historical context in which there exists a limit, “a ceiling which
restricts all human life, containing it within a frontier of varying outline,
one which is hard to reach and harder still to cross . . . . This is the border
which in every age, even our own, separates the possible from the impossible,
what can be done with a little effort from what cannot be done at all. In the
past, the border line was imposed by inadequate food supplies, a population
that was too big or too small for its resources, low productivity of labor, and
the as yet slow progress in controlling nature. Between the fifteenth and the
eighteenth century, these constraints hardly changed at all. And men did not
even explore the limits of what was possible.”(p.27)
With an
enriched understanding of social context, however, the historian is able to
perceive a social dynamic at play, even centuries ago.
[T]he
co-existence of the upper and lower levels [of society] forces upon the
historian an illuminating dialectic. How can one understand the towns without
understanding the countryside, money without barter, the varieties of poverty
without the varieties of luxury, the white bread of the rich without the black
bread of the poor?(p.29)
Braudel’s extraordinary finding is that
ordinary people have had more influence in their societies than is commonly
acknowledged. Only a context-rich perception of society is able to detect this
and, of course, to take advantage of it.
The 9
items below offer CEIMSA readers insights into the mass mobilization now
underway in our rapidly changing consumer society and the possible trajectory
to where this popular movement will lead us.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor emeritus of American
Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
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.
STANDING ROCK
===========
b.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2971
The People's Tribunal on
the Iraq War
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17515
&
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxNcalgTsYY
===========
c.
Fake News List Death Knell for MSM-Paul Craig
Roberts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45954.htm
(41 min. video)
by Greg Hunter
===========
d.
From: News From Underground
Subject: [MCM] US journalists and profs
who speak out on RT are getting BLACKLISTED
← Washington
Post Reporter Spreads Blacklist of Independent Journalist Sites
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 2, 2016
NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller Is Interviewed on RT Television
Some independent journalists and university professors in the United
States who have appeared on RT television to criticize either runaway
corruption on Wall Street or in Washington, have landed on two newly created
blacklists. RT is a Russian state-financed news network formerly known as
Russia Today. Its English-language RT America unit broadcasts from Washington,
D.C.
A shadowy group called PropOrNot, that has not disclosed either its funders or its principals, has
created a blacklist of 200 independent
media web sites that it is calling tools of Russia. On
the list are some of the most popular and widely read alternative media outlets
like Naked Capitalism, Truthout and Truthdig, which regularly carry articles by some of the
most knowledgeable and informed voices in America. Another popular site, CounterPunch, was originally on the list but has now been
removed following what PropOrNot calls a
“constructive conversation.” Reporter Craig Timberg
of the Washington Post has come under withering criticism for
amplifying the McCarthyite blacklist in a
Thanksgiving Day article.
Equally disturbing, 200 university and college professors have been
placed on a new Professor Watchlist being
operated by Turning Point USA, a right-wing nonprofit run by 23-year old
Charlie Kirk who spoke this year at
the Republican National Convention. Kirk has raised
well over $1 million from conservatives to spread the “free markets/small
government” mantra at high school and university campuses (never mind that Wall
Street’s “free markets” are just as corrupt today as they were heading into the
2008 epic financial crash).
In 2012, Kirk wrote an opinion piece for
Breitbart News suggesting that Paul Krugman’s ideas should be replaced in high school
classrooms by those of the Cato Institute – a nonprofit secretly owned in part by the
Koch brothers for decades. (Such ideas will land one on the
fast-track to big money from the right wing in America.) Steve Bannon, the former Executive Chairman of Breitbart News Network and anti-liberal propaganda
filmmaker extraordinaire, has been named by Donald Trump as his
Senior Counselor and Chief Strategist in the White House.
Yves Smith, the founder and widely respected writer at Naked Capitalism
has appeared on RT television on several occasions. In the interview featured
below from 2010, she was afforded the time to make her brilliantly cogent
points on the systemic corruption on Wall Street that has yet to be remedied despite
the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression. In 2011, Smith alerted
her readers that she was going to be appearing on RT America, noting that she
“seemed to be banned from US TV channels, but the flip side is this was a much
more substantive conversation than you’d find on the usual suspects here.”
Indeed, RT America has allowed independent journalists and professors
adequate time to make detailed arguments against establishment group-think in
America, something that is regularly lacking on corporate-controlled news media
in the U.S.
Another independent journalist landing on PropOrNot’s
blacklist is Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan, a former Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal and a former columnist at BusinessWeek.
In this segment on RT
television, Roberts states that the “political system in the United States is
as corrupt as it is integrant.” In another appearance on RT, Roberts spoke favorably of
Senator Bernie Sanders, stating that “he has independence” and that the special
interest groups “don’t like candidates who think for themselves.”
The long-tenured and widely respected Professor of Media, Culture and
Communication at New York University, Mark Crispin Miller, has landed on the
Professor Watchlist. In this RT interview, Miller called U.S. media a
“disgrace,” adding that the quality of journalistic material is “embarrassingly
low.” Miller went on to characterize U.S. media as a “cartel,” stating that “we
have a system that’s owned and dominated by a handful of huge corporations.”
The above comments made by Smith, Roberts and Miller on RT television
are completely factual and are views shared by tens of millions of fellow
Americans. Rather than attempting to censor their well-founded arguments that
America is dangerously headed in the wrong direction, perhaps we should get to
work on the critical problems they are attempting to bring to the fore.
===========
e.
Trump's Carrier Deal: Job Saver Or Photo Op?
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:17832:Trump%27s-Carrier-Deal%3A-Job-Saver-Or-Photo-Op%3F
The closure of another
plant in leaving some workers in other parts of Indiana feeling abandoned
again, says Workers' Project Executive Director Tom Lewandowski
===========
f.
Jill Stein: Making Voting System More Credible is the First Step Towards Democratization
The former Green Party
presidential candidate says razor-thin margins, unexpected outcomes, and use of
unreliable voting machines prompted her to follow through with a campaign
promise to stand for election integrity
===========
g.
Shady Submarine Deal Ties Netanyahu to Another
Corrupt Scandal, Threatens Israeli-Germany Ties
The German arms
company ThyssenKrupp pushed enormously expensive weapons on Greece while Germany
was imposing austerity on the nation, says political economist Shir Hever
===========
h.
Why Chomsky
and Zizek are wrong on the US elections
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/11/chomsky-zizek-wrong-elections-161129090634539.html
Chomsky and Zizek clashed on voting in the US
elections, but the views of both are critically flawed.
===========
i.
Matt Damon from Howard Zinn's speech: The Problem is Civil Obedience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2li9E_94MA