Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
After grading a mountain of papers and
what seemed like an endless stream of exams, we are about to begin spring
semester in
At the end of this month, CEIMSA-IN-EXILE
will sponsor a campus showing of the award-winning documentary
: "The Corporation", featuring Noam
Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, and
many other critiques of the American capitalist system in crisis
On another front ,
more than 50 graduate students in American Studies at
Meanwhile, we have received much mail
dealing with personal and institutional identity crises in this "Age of
Extremes".
Item A. is
a wake-up call from NYU Professor Bertell Ollman, an international scholar and winner of the Charles
A. McCoy Distinguished Career Award from the New Political Science
Section of the American Political Science Association. Professor Ollman has devoted his professional life to making Marx's
theories and methodologies accessible to social science scholars. In this piece
he has sent us, Professor Ollman is dramatically
rejecting "identity politics," beginning with his own ethnic
identity, which in his youth he had embraced as a universal good.
Item B. is
a report from the
In item C. Stendhal University Professor of linguistics, Vicki Briault, has sent us a recent article warning that
financial contributions to the victims on the tsunami-wracked costs on the
Indian Ocean may never arrive at their intended destination, because servicing
Third World debt takes priority over human lives. The banks are likely to
receive this money before the victims needs are met.
And finally, in item D., Dahr Jamail
has sent us another eye-witness account of U.S. imperialist violence and the
"banality of evil" that hangs heavily in the air during these last
weeks before the American-supervised "free elections" in Iraq.
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Director of Research
Université Stendhal
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
s
__________________
A.
from Bertell Ollman
Date:
Subject: "Letter of Resignation
from the Jewish People"
Please click on following
link to CEIMSA’s “Scholarly
Publications” for : “Letter
of Resignation”, by Professor Ollman.
__________________
B.
From: Council for the National
Interest
Date:
Subject: Is AIPAC Mortally Wounded?
The FBI investigation of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has long been viewed as the
pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, has sparked the thought that the once
powerful organization may be headed for history's dustbin. If it is required to
register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), as even mainstream
Newsweek hinted at this week, it may spell the ruin of the organization that
always professed itself the great supporter of
"American" interests.
But some supporters are wondering if
In Congress, the Zionist lobby is
now comfortably institutionalized. The core bipartisan group of congressional
supporters of Israel can be found in the Middle East subcommittee of the House
Committee on International Relations, headed by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and
including Gary Ackerman (D-NY) (also minority leader of the full IR committee),
Howard Berman (D-CA), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Shelley
Berkley (D-NV), and Tom Lantos (D-CA). Along with Robert Menendez (D-NJ),
Robert Wexler (D-FL), and Dan Burton (R-IN), this core group habitually puts forward
congressional resolutions and "dear colleague" letters to the
President on any number of Israeli needs and requests. The latest letter from
Wexler, Ackerman, Menendez, and Engel to President Bush expressed their
"concerns" about and requested information on why the FBI needs to
investigate their good friends at AIPAC, and Wexler has suggested that the FBI
is targeting Jews. This is the same group that circulated a letter condemning
the Presbyterian Church for its
So why is AIPAC needed at all? It
clearly is no longer required to push for economic or military aid; all that
seems to be left for the organization to do is provide junket trips for
congressmen and their staff to visit
One might wonder what will happen to
an organization with four of its principal officers testifying before a grand
jury investigating espionage on behalf of
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2836
Council for the National Interest
http://www.cnionline.org
_________________
C.
from Vicki Briault
Date:
Subject: Tsunami and debt
Dear
Friends and Relations,
I
translated the enclosed article on Sunday for the CADTM hoping to get it
published in
Love
and best wishes to all,
Vicki
PS
For people who kindly helped me with the rereading of a chapter in Your Money or
Your Life, we should be getting copies soon (it was delayed, they always are it
seems) and I will send you each one by way of thanks.
Disaster
donations may well end up servicing the
By
Damien Millet and Eric Toussaint (*)
Ever
since the earthquake that struck off the coast of
Eleven
countries are affected:
At the
end of 2003, the total external debt of the eleven countries came to 406
billion dollars . Their economic performance varied
greatly, as did their creditors . Promising countries
like
In
2003, the eleven countries repaid a total of 68 billion dollars to their
foreign creditors, as compared to 60 billion the preceding year. Their
governments alone repaid 38 billion dollars . It is an enormous drain on their resources:
between 1980 and 2003, repayments totalled eleven
times the amount owed in 1980, while at the same time, that original debt had
increased fivefold .
The
amount of international aid so far pledged is estimated at 6 billion dollars, 4
billion of which will come from official institutions. Without wishing to discourage the wave of
generosity, which relieves the donors' consciences long before it reaches the
victims, it is urgent to point out that the eleven countries shell out six
times that much in debt repayments each year.
So the grossly over-publicised generosity,
even when it is sincere, remains a very subtle mechanism for sucking the wealth
of the populations of the South towards their rich creditors. If only December's tragedy
could serve to highlight that other tragedy, going well beyond the eleven
countries hit by the tsunami: the debt.
Because of it, and with the complicity of the local ruling classes who
have a personal interest in keeping their countries indebted, States do not
guarantee the fulfilment of their people's basic
needs; poverty and corruption are widespread; political and economic
sovereignty have become meaningless concepts for dozens of countries; natural
resources are pillaged or sold off to powerful multinational corporations;
farmers are forced to grow cash crops for export to the detriment of
subsistence crops. The debt is the particularly
vigorous nerve centre of a predatory and oppressive economic model.
What
creditor would dare declare publicly that they still intend to obtain
repayments from such badly damaged countries?
Nevertheless, none has definitely given up. The long-awaited Paris Club meeting, (17 days after the
quake) attended by 19 rich countries, should fool no one. The creditors are ready to suspend
repayments, with no significant cancellation of the debt, all the better to lay
down strict conditionalities enforced by the
IMF. Yet this is the same IMF which
already distinguished itself during the 1997-1998 crisis
with remedies worse than the disease.
As a
mater of conscience, all creditors can decide to renounce their debts. Without delay. It has already happened in recent years for
geopolitical reasons .
Hundreds of social movements present in the region, particularly the
CADTM and Jubilee South networks, have called for cancellation, showing the
objective solidarity that exists among all those who have first-hand experience
of the tyranny of the debt. A moratorium
or simple reduction will not do. Only
the total and unconditional cancellation of the external public debt of the
stricken countries, with local citizens' control over the money thus freed up,
can be an adequate response to the scale of the tsunami disaster. Otherwise, the only purpose your donations
will serve, in the end, is to help the devastated countries to repay their debt
- a debt that has become immoral.
(*)
Damien Millet is president of CADTM France, Eric Toussaint is president of
CADTM
______________________
D.
from Dahr Jamail
Date: Januaru
13, 2005
Subject: A Restless Calm in
« This is not a life. |
A Restless Calm
I m typing as mortars are blasting away
in the nearby Green Zone. Mortars are easy to tell-the higher pitched thunk of their launch, then a pause, then a loud boom that
echoes through the still night. Blaring sirens wail in the distance, along with
the random cracking of gunfire. Nightfall always seems to bring action in this
area of central Baghdad-just last night there were many sporadic gun battles
out my window.
Earlier today while I was in the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad the
He took two plastic bags and began
dumping our half eaten salads and extra bread into them. She thanked us and
blessed us, then began to shuffle off&Abu Talat and I both quickly walked over to her and gave her a
small wad of Iraqi Dinars. We walked back to the car
not saying a word about it.
Funny that everyone lately is
talking about how calm it is here in
Calm looks like the military not
releasing the number of times each day they are attacked&at
last count this was around 70 per day that they admitted to&which
means it is probably more.
It also looks like a van with four
bank guards being destroyed, burning the men to death; it looks like another
Both of these locations are in the
vicinity of Fallujah.
Calm looks like mortars and gunfire
everyday, sporadically around
Of course it also looks like gas
lines up to 6 miles long.
It is impossible to drive for long
in Baghdad without running into these&lines of
cars on the sides of highways and side streets, as people stand outside their cars
waiting, then pushing their car forward each time the line inches a few meters
closer to the sacred gas station. With 70% unemployment in
Sitting in another traffic jam while
trying to decide how we ll work if any more fuel
stations close and the black markets begin to dry up, I suggest to Abu Talat, We can get a donkey. You can drive and I ll sit on the back and write in my notebook and take
photos.
Yes, that is certainly an option, he
laughs, Definitely a much better idea than trying to
steal a fuel tanker.
That had been my previous idea.
Earlier today I interviewed a man
who was in the intelligence service of the former regime. He asked me if I
wanted to go into Fallujah.
Um, no thanks, I said, Not right now, speaking to him from across a small table as
we drank our orange Miranda soft drinks. The room was darkened by curtains, and
he spoke to me only on condition of anonymity&after
he took my satellite phone and placed it in another part of the building.
They can track the satellite phones
even when they are not on, he explained to me, Only by
removing the SIM card can they not be tracked.
Information I hope I never need to
apply. One learns the most interesting things in
He gives me a quick rundown of what
he knows of Fallujah, telling me that the military
controls two main checkpoints into the city and the main road which divides
what is left of the demolished city. There are still 25 attacks each day by the
mujahideen there against the occupiers, he says, And the resistance is in control of large areas of the city
to this day.
Who knows how accurate this is. And with the military cordon around most of the city, it s almost
impossible to verify for now.
He claims that only 3% of the people
killed during the assault were fighters, and the rest civilians. I m sure this
is a little low&but certainly closer to the truth
than the US estimate that 1200-1300 of 2000 killed were fighters, and
definitely closer than the statement from Allawi that
every single person killed in Fallujah was a fighter.
Even members of the
He suddenly says, That
s it, no more, and the interview is over.
We thank him for his time and are
back on the street.
There are white military
surveillance balloons floating all over
Most of the Iraqi Army (formerly
known as Iraqi National Guard) is wearing black facemasks as they ride around
in the backs of pickups with makeshift machine guns in them. They seem like
boys with toys compared to the Humvees with the 50
calibers on top of them, rocket launchers slung over the backs of the seats of
the soldiers riding atop them&their faces hidden
under helmets and behind goggles.
Driving down the highway this
afternoon a van passes with a man waving a pistol at cars&making
them give way so it can speed ahead.
This is our civilization now, says
Abu Talat, laughing his deep contagious belly laugh
as he lights another of his terribly harsh Gold Seal cigarettes.
If you don t laugh here, you lose
your mind in a hurry.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail
at