Bulletin N° 781
Subject : “If
you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem!”
15 January 2018
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and
Friends of CEIMSA,
Another Casualty in This War of
Attrition?*
I was surprised to hear Norman Finkelstein say toward
the end of this fourth interview on TRNN by Aaron Maté
that : “I'm not a religious person but I certainly go
by the adage, ‘God helps those who help themselves’. You can't liberate
Palestine from the outside, nor should you be able to. I mean at some level of
course, if they're facing a genocide then of course
liberate from the outside. But as a
general rule you neither can nor should you. People have to free themselves
because that's the only way that they will stay free.”
. . . “from the outside”,
Norman?
While I did expect him to reflect the idea that
Palestinian freedom cannot be achieved from change attempted by only 'transitive causes',
that is to say meaningful changes must stem from 'immanent causes'; I was taken aback to hear him repeat the idea that US citizens live 'external' to the Palestinians in Gaza,
and therefore US intervention would constitute an ineffective 'mechanical cause'. North America is very much in this world and the world is
in Americans (whether they know it or not). America's impact on people is world-wide and
reflexive; US citizens are as fully implicated in the brutal
Israeli-Palestinian relationship of domination/subjugation as they are in
ritual murders by police officers at home. This is part of what it means to be
American, today. We’re not speaking of a billiard ball striking another ball on
a billiard table, with some mechanical outside force moving from ‘cause’ to
‘effect’, Norman; but rather the qualities which are immanent within every
person, including Americans – like the physiology of our senses and the vital
organs that constitute our body - these are sources of feelings (including empathy),
memory, reason, and will . . . the very essence of our existence. There is no
'final cause', no goal or purpose - this is a fiction.
[See "Spinoza for dummies" @ https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=spinoza&&view=detail&mid=DE162FC718DD0C31286ADE162FC718DD0C31286A&FORM=VRDGAR ]
The 'indwelling cause' is inseparable from its
effect, which is, in this case, the suffering of Palestinians living in Gaza
and their relationship to the world. There's no need to advocate another Warsaw
Ghetto uprising. We've seen the results of this. What are the 'immanent causes'
at play here, and how can we leverage this sentient reality, in solidarity with
the oppressed, to improve our own lives and the lives of so many others (beyond
national borders and parochial identities)?
This understanding was expressed by the Black
Panthers early in the1960s, with the popular slogan: “If you’re not part of the
solution, then you’re part of the problem!”
________
*(Taken from my response to Norman
Finkelstein @ http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20896:After-Israel-Decimated-Gaza%2C-Human-Rights-Defenders-Failed-It-%2844%29
)
For more on tactics and strategies relevant to class
struggles, see CEIMSA discussions of the works of Anthony Wilden @ Bulletin N° 288 & Bulletin N° 493 as well as Wilden’s essay, “The Strategic
Envelope,” reprinted in Chapter 5 of the CEIMSA anthology, War, Resistance, and Counter-Resistance in
Modern Times (CSP, 2010)
In the 16 items below
we look at the fatal moral corruption that late capitalism has ushered in, as
despair and decadence - the hallmark of capitalist decline that was
immortalized by George Grosz at the time of the
Nazi seizure of power in Germany - once again spreads across our landscape. The
scrounging, writhing, painfully pleading predator becomes outraged at the
slightest sign of resistance. You must lick the hand that robs you, on
pain of death!
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.
Empire Files:
Abby Martin Meets Ahead Tamimi
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20909:Empire-Files%3A-Abby-Martin-Meets-Ahead-Tamimi
Abby outlines the Tamimi family's tragic tale and unending bravery in the
fight for justice and equality in Palestine and how the story of their village
of Nabi Saleh is emblematic
of the Palestinian struggle as a whole
===========
b.
Bibi’s Son (Or Three Men in a Car)
It
is all about a conversation between three young man in
a car, some two years ago.
One
of the young men was Ya’ir, the eldest of the two
sons of the Prime Minister.
Ya’ir is named after the leader of the
“Stern Gang”, whose real name was Abraham Stern. The
original Ya’ir split from the Irgun
underground in 1940, when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. While the Irgun stopped its actions against the British government
for the time being, Stern demanded the very opposite: exploit the moment in
order to get the British out of Palestine. He was shot by the British police.
The
modern Ya’ir and his two friends were on a drunken
tour of Tel Aviv strip-tease joints, an appellation which often seems to be a
polite way of describing a brothel.
===========
c.
The US ‘Betrayed’ Russia, but It Is Not
‘News That’s Fit to Print’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48586.htm
by
Stephen F. Cohen
New evidence that
Washington broke its promise not to expand NATO “one inch eastward”—a fateful decision
with ongoing ramifications—has not been reported by The New York Times or other
agenda-setting media outlets.
===========
d.
Finding the Answer to a
Riddle Shrouded in a Mystery
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48558.htm
The art of the non-deal might be the only way out of
the stand-off between the US and North Korea
by Pepe
Escobar
High-level inter-Korean talks at the border village
of Panmunjeom not only represent a vital step in
Winter Olympics’ diplomacy
but also offer a tantalizing chance of a breakthrough in stalled six-party discussions.
===========
e.
Wormwood and a Shocking Secret of
War: How Errol Morris Vindicated My Father, Wilfred Burchett
===========
f.
Another Step Toward Armageddon
https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-another-step-toward-armageddon/
by Paul Craig Roberts
===========
g.
Starting Them Young: Is Facebook Hooking Children on Social Media?
Over the past few months, social media companies
have come under increasing scrutiny from media critics, watchdog groups, and US
congressional committees. Much of the criticism has focused upon how Facebook and Twitter facilitated the propagation of
inflammatory messages created by Russian agents during the 2016 US presidential
elections, ostensibly to polarize American voters. Self-serve advertising, “filter
bubbles,” and other aspects of social media have made mass targeted
manipulation easy and efficient.
===========
h.
'Get Him Out of
Here!': Watch Maxine Waters' Epic Trump Takedown After
His Racist 'Sh*thole'
Remarks
The
congresswoman delivered perhaps her most furious denunciation yet.
by Chris Sosa
===========
i.
Why no one from Norway wants to move
to US!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyHnNPMI9M
===========
j.
“Hello, I Must Be Going”:
Is Michael Wolff’s Book Fake-Populist Trump’s Exit Strategy?
Authoritarian
propagandists’ most ridiculous conceit (and most telling barometer of their
criminal madness) is that if you tell a “big lie” often enough and long enough
it becomes the truth.
No
it doesn’t: It remains a lie. And makes the teller appear
evermore insane.
So
it is with Donald Trump and the Republicans’ “big lie” that Trump was and is
some sort of conservative “populist” leading a “movement” and pursuing policies
that advantage America’s working men and women who earn wages, as opposed
pursuing traditional GOP policies favoring the wealthy, employers and those
whose earnings come from investments. See Trump’s famous “closing
argument” video here, the first draft version of which is captured
here.
===========
k.
From: Mark
Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, 12 January, 2018
Subject: [MCM] About Trump's mouth
As if Trump's calling
Haiti a "shithole" is far worse than Obama's turning Libya into one.
_______
For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com
===========
l.
World
War I: Crime and Punishment
In 1887, Frederick Engels made a chilling prediction
of the war that would come in 1914:
The only war left for
Prussia-Germany to wage will be a world war, a world war, moreover of an extent
of violence
hitherto
unimagined. Eight to ten million soldiers will be at each other’s throats and
in the process they will strip Europe
barer
than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed
into three to four years and extended
over
the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal lapse into barbarism.
This
prediction was not the result of second sight. It was a conclusion derived from
the premise that “war is the daughter
of capitalism,” first proposed by
Engels with Marx in The
Manifesto of the Communist Party of
1848. “The bourgeoisie
is always in a struggle . . . against
the bourgeoisie of all foreign states,” they wrote, and this struggle is so
bitter as to lead
inevitably to an “industrial war of
annihilation among nations.”
===========
m.
From: "Alan
Grayson" <alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com>
Sent: Friday, 12 January, 2018 :13:02 AM
Subject: Rock the Boat
TESTIMON
BY CONGRESSMAN ALAN GRYSON
ON
THE LIFE & DEATH OF AARON SWARTZ
« ROCK THE BOAT »
|
Dear Francis, I knew Aaron Swartz. Aaron was an internet leader and free-speech advocate who helped organize the worldwide movement to keep the internet free from censorship and corporate control. Now more than ever, we should listen to his story and what he fought for. Aaron committed suicide at the young age of 26 after downloading JSTOR articles without JSTOR's permission. He was unfairly facing many years in prison. As we approach the five-year anniversary of his death, I hope you read my remarks at his memorial service, and learn a bit more about the man who “rocked the boat.” Here is what I said:
CONGRESSMAN GRAYSON: Aaron worked in my office as an intern. He had a quality that I found unnerving. He could come up with better things for him to do than I could come up with for him to do. Time and time again, I would give him something to do, and he’d say, “Is it okay if I also work on this other thing?” And “this other thing” turned out to be much more important than anything that I could come up with.
I learned to live with that. I learned to live with that shortcoming, which I took to be a shortcoming of my own, not one of his.
The other unnerving quality that I found in him was the fact that when he would conjure these assignments, they actually came to fruition — an unusual phenomenon here on Capitol Hill. He’d give himself something to do, I would recognize that it was very worthwhile, I let him do it, and it got done! He was a remarkable human being.
Another thing that I found unnerving — but also very endearing — about Aaron was that Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Now, we all hear from a very, very young age, “Don’t rock the boat.” I would venture to say that of the 2000 languages spoken on this planet, probably every single one of them has an idiom in that language for that term: “Don’t rock the boat.” And yet Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Not just for the sake of boat-rocking, but for the sake of improving the lives of ordinary people. And that’s a beautiful, a wonderful quality.
We’re talking about somebody here who helped to create Reddit, an important world-wide service, at the age of nineteen. Honestly, somebody who probably could have spent the rest of his life in bed, ordering pizzas, and left it at that. And yet he didn’t. He continued to strive to do good — good as he saw it. And that’s a rare quality in people. Many of us, we just have to do our best to get through the day. That’s the way it is. Many of us struggle to do just that. Very few of us actually can think big thoughts, and make them happen. But Aaron was one of those rare people.
And he was willing to take the heat for rocking the boat. Now, you know, sometimes when you rock the boat, the boat tries to rock you. That is exactly what he encountered, right up until the end.
And it’s a sad thing, that that’s the price you have to pay. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our property. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our freedom. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our families. And in Aaron’s case, his life.
And yet, he was willing to face the facts, and to let that happen. To keep striving, to keep struggling, to keep trying to shake things up.
Aaron’s life reminded me about a different life that came to the same end. It’s the life of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician. He lived in England, and was born one hundred years ago. Alan Turing was the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century. He not only invented the Turing Machine, which is the basis for all modern computing, but Alan Turing also broke the Nazi codes during World War II, and allowed the English and the Americans to defeat the Nazis.
You would think that someone like that would be cherished. Someone like that who, if he had managed to have a full life, might have won one, or two, or even three, Nobel Prizes. But in fact he was vilified, because he was a homosexual, which, at that point in England, in those days, was illegal. And I’m sure that at that point in England, in those days, there were people who said, “Well, the law is the law. And if you disobey the law, then you should go to prison.” Because of that, because his boyfriend turned him in, Alan Turing was convicted of perversity, and sentenced to prison.
Given the choice between spending hard time — years and years of his life — instead of doing the mathematics that he loved, or alternatively, to accept estrogen injections, well, Turing took the estrogen injection choice. And that broke not only his body, but his mind. He found that he could not do the thing he loved the most, mathematics, any longer. So after two years of this, Alan Turing committed suicide.
And who lost, out of that? Well, Alan Turing lost. But so did all of we. We lost as well. All of us who would have benefitted from that first, and second, and the third Nobel Prizes that Alan Turing had in him. And that Aaron Swartz had in him.
We’re the ones who lose.
If we let our prejudices, our desires to restrain those with creativity — if we let that lead us to the point where that creativity is restrained, then going back all the way to the time of Socrates, what we engage in is human sacrifice. We sacrifice their lives, out of the misguided sense that we need to protect ourselves from them, when in fact it’s the opposite.
Our lives have meaning, our lives have greater meaning, from the things that they create. So we’re here today to remember Aaron — and also to try to learn from the experience. To understand that prosecution should not be persecution.
This morning I reached into the closet, randomly took out this tie [showing necktie], and wore it. And I have a sense that sometimes, things are connected in ways that are not exactly obvious. It happens that this tie is a painting of “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, someone else whose life ended all too soon.
In a Don McLean song about Vincent Van Gogh, it ends this way: “They would not listen. They’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will.”
It’s time to listen.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
“And when no hope was left in sight, On that starry, starry night, You took your life, as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one As beautiful as you."
-Don McLean, "Starry, Starry Night” (1971).
|
===========
n.
From The OffGuardian
https://off-guardian.org/category/guardian-watch/
How anyone who questions
the White Helmets narrative became victims of the Guardian propaganda machine
===========
o.
Democrats
and the End(s) of Politics
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/15/democrats-and-the-ends-of-politics/
A
paradox at the intersection of capitalism and representative democracy is that
under capitalism
every person represents their own
interests. The King
of Versailles (Donald Trump) illustrates this tendency
most straightforwardly amongst modern
political leadership. But the paradox is systemic, not personal.
And
the question that follows is: which is to be shedded,
capitalism or democracy?
===========
p.
America
is spiritually bankrupt,
We
must fight back together
by Cornel West
The
undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our public and private
life has fueled racial hatred and contempt.