Subject: ON LEARNING TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY:
FROM THE CENTER FOR THE
ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Our research center continues to receive much mail while
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Director of Research
Université de Grenoble 3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
________________________
A.
from Dahr Jamail :
Date:
Subject: Iraq Dispatches: "
** Dahr Jamail's
Iraq is burning with wrath, anger and sadness&
Leaving the hotel is always an adventure. Last night, with a
full beard and a kefir draped around my shoulders, Abut Talat
wisks me out into the chaotic streets of occupied
As we traveled around the capital, we took side roads, winding varying routes
towards our destination, never daring to take the direct, most obvious path.
Aside from the obvious threat of kidnapping which is my greatest concern, we
travel accepting the fact that anywhere, anytime, we could be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Whether that take the form of a car bomb like the one
yesterday which detonated near a
The damp night air appeared as a haze which exaggerated the ever-present of
smog in the capital. Driving around
One of our stops is at the home of Dr. Wamid Omar Nathmi, a senior political scientist at
He told me that during the buildup to the siege of Fallujah,
he had sent John Negroponte, the current so-called ambassador of
Of course his letter was ignored, and now we watch in fear as the resistance is
spreading across
Dr. Nathmi added, Certainly
the
He asked what the difference was between what is occurring in Fallujah now to what Saddam Hussein did during his
repression of the Shia Intifada
which followed the 91 Gulf War. Saddam suppressed that uprising and used less
awful methods than the Americans are in Fallujah
today.
Dr. Nathmi is a brilliant man and certainly a
warehouse of informative analysis about the events in
He held up his hands and asked, Who will provide
security in Ramadi now, angels?
I can assure you, it is well over 75% of Iraqis who cannot even tolerate this
occupation, he said a little later when discussing the Bush administrations
attempts to whitewash the situation in
After our interview, we stopped by Abu Talat s home
for a coffee and so I could say hello to his family. His son Hissan somberly asked me, When
will the Americans leave, Dahr? I had no response. I
don t know Hissan. I really don t know. He then said,
I don t think they are ever going to leave
I snuck back into the car and we wound our way across
He insisted we stop for ice cream, which I most certainly did not refuse, then he dropped me back at my hotel.
Today dawned a grey, windy day, with fighter jets scorching the sky en route to
Fallujah.
Of course the flames of resistance have now engulfed other parts of
A friend of mine who lives in al-Dora said, The resistance
is in control here now, they are controlling the streets.
What few US patrols still roam the streets are attacked often. This fact
underscored earlier as several large explosions nearby shook the walls of my
hotel this afternoon.
Abu Talat was once again trapped in his neighborhood
and we were unable to conduct an interview when fighting broke out nearby his
home. He called me and said, The Iraqi Police found a car bomb, and when they
were warning people about it US troops showed up and were immediately attacked
with RPG s. The fighting raged for at least half an hour,
and several soldiers were wounded and taken away. Now fighter jets are flying
so low over our neighborhood, using their loud voices to terrorize people.
Huge areas within the cities of Ramadi, Fallujah, Baquba and
Meanwhile, over near the Imam Adham mosque a huge
demonstration organized by the Islamic Party (which just withdrew from the
so-called interim government and recently called for a boycott of the
elections), broke out. It was comprised of well over 5,000 angry people
denouncing Ayad Allawi and
demanding his resignation.
They also demonstrated to show that they were unafraid of the
And they called for jihad against Allawi.
_______________________________________________
Iraq_Dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches
________________________
B.
from Professor Ed Herman :
Subject: Iraq: the unthinkable becomes normal
http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200411150006
Iraq:
the unthinkable becomes normal
John
Pilger
Monday 15th November 2004
Mainstream
media speak as if Fallujah were populated only by
foreign "insurgents". In fact, women and children are being
slaughtered in our name. By John Pilger
Edward S Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil", has never
seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organised
and systematic way rests on 'normalisation',"
wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labour
in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the
direct brutalising and killing done by one set of
individuals . . . others working on improving technology (a better crematory
gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate
flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the
mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for
the general public."
On Radio 4's Today (6 November), a BBC reporter in
As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied
Saddam Hussein; they were merely "insurgents holed up in the city",
as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be "flushed
out" (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for
"rat-catchers", which is the term another BBC reporter told us the
Black Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view
Iraqis as Untermenschen, a term that Hitler
used in Mein Kampf
to describe Jews, Romanies and Slavs as sub-humans.
This is how the Nazi army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants
and non-combatants alike.
Normalising colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such racism, linking our imagination to
"the other". The thrust of the reporting is that the
"insurgents" are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead
people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi,
a Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda's "top
operative" in
In a letter sent on 14 October to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura Council, which administers the city, said: "In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target:
al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they
created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses, mosques,
restaurants, and kill children and women, they said: 'We have launched a
successful operation against al-Zarqawi.' The people
of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he
exists, is not in Fallujah . . . and we have no links
to any groups supporting such inhuman behaviour. We
appeal to you to urge the UN [to prevent] the new massacre which the Americans
and the puppet government are planning to start soon in Fallujah,
as well as many parts of the country."
Not a word of this was reported in the mainstream media in
"What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence?"
asked the playwright Ronan Bennett in April after the US marines, in an act of
collective vengeance for the killing of four American mercenaries, killed more
than 600 people in Fallujah, a figure that was never
denied. Then, as now, they used the ferocious firepower of AC-130 gunships and F-16 fighter-bombers and 500lb bombs against
slums. They incinerate children; their snipers boast of killing anyone, as
snipers did in
Bennett was referring to the legion of silent Labour
backbenchers, with honourable exceptions, and lobotomised junior ministers (remember Chris Mullin?). He
might have added those journalists who strain every sinew to protect
"our" side, who normalise the unthinkable
by not even gesturing at the demonstrable immorality and criminality. Of
course, to be shocked by what "we" do is dangerous, because this can
lead to a wider understanding of why "we" are there in the first
place and of the grief "we" bring not only to
There is nothing illicit about this cover-up; it happens in daylight. The most
striking recent example followed the announcement, on 29 October, by the prestigious
scientific journal, the Lancet, of a study estimating that 100,000
Iraqis had died as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. Eighty-four per
cent of the deaths were caused by the actions of the Americans and the British,
and 95 per cent of these were killed by air attacks and artillery fire, most of
whom were women and children.
The editors of the excellent MediaLens observed the
rush - no, stampede - to smother this shocking news with "scepticism" and silence. They reported that, by 2
November, the Lancet report had been ignored by the Observer, the
Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial
Times, the Star, the Sun and many others. The BBC framed the
report in terms of the government's "doubts" and Channel 4 News
delivered a hatchet job, based on a
In contrast, there is no media questioning of the methodology of the Iraqi
Special Tribune, which has announced that mass graves contain 300,000 victims
of Saddam Hussein. The Special Tribune, a product of the quisling regime in
The model for this was the "coverage" of the American presidential
election, a blizzard of platitudes normalising the
unthinkable: that what happened on 2 November was not democracy in action. With
one exception, no one in the flock of pundits flown from
No one reported that John Kerry, by contrasting the "war on terror"
with Bush's disastrous attack on
Bush won by invoking, more skilfully than Kerry, the
fear of an ill-defined threat. How was he able to normalise
this paranoia? Let's look at the recent past. Following the end of the cold
war, the American elite - Republican and Democrat - were having great
difficulty convincing the public that the billions of dollars spent on the war
economy should not be diverted to a "peace dividend". A majority of
Americans refused to believe that there was still a "threat" as
potent as the red menace. This did not prevent Bill Clinton sending to Congress
the biggest "defence" bill in history in
support of a Pentagon strategy called "full-spectrum dominance". On
Flying into
The most important evidence to the 9/11 Commission came from General Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad).
"Air force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring
towards the World Trade Center and Pentagon," he said, "if only air
traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner . . . We would have
been able to shoot down all three . . . all four of them."
Why did this not happen?
The Kean report makes clear that "the defence of US aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord
with pre-existing training and protocols . . . If a hijack was confirmed,
procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's
National Military Command Center (NMCC) . . . The NMCC would then seek approval
from the office of the Secretary of Defence to
provide military assistance . . . "
Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy
administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority that there was no reason the
procedure was not operating that morning. "For my 30 years of experience .
. ." said Monte Belger, "the NMCC was on
the net and hearing everything real-time . . . I can tell you I've lived
through dozens of hijackings . . . and they were always listening in with
everybody else."
But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report
says the NMCC was never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of
communication failed, the commission was told, to
The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system
that worked was in the White House where Vice-President Cheney was in effective
control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about
the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the
first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously
refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary
combination of coincidences. Or it could not.
In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for Bush read: "We [the
CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama Bin Laden] will
launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in
the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass
casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been
made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
On the afternoon of 11 September, Donald Rumsfeld,
having failed to act against those who had just attacked the
______________
John Pilger is currently a visiting professor
at