Bulletin #189
SUBJECT: ON AMERICAN PACIFISTS ("MY
TORTURER, MY BROTHER") : FROM THE CENTER FOR THE
ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
Dear Colleagues and
Friends of CEIMSA,
A month ago, on May 13, I
was invited to moderate a debate between Paul Allies (of Montpellier) and
Jean-Louis Quermonne (of Grenoble), two French law professors who were
addressing the up-coming referendum on the European constitution. M. Allies
eloquently advocated a No Vote to promote industrial democracy in Europe
and to force greater participation and discussion before the adoption of a
better constitution, and M. Quermonne with equal eloquence argued that this
constitution was a Lesser Evil and that any delay would have dire
political consequences in the future for a united Europe.
I, of course, being an
American and the moderator, assumed the formal role of "neutral
party". My function was to call on people in the audience for questions
and to organize rules by which some limits were placed on ensuing monologues.
It was a rather successful exercise in democracy --first on the
At the start of the
afternoon meeting on campus, before introducing the jurists, I decided to
discuss the sociological concept developed by Barrington Moore, Jr., in his
book, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. What (I asked
the audience) are the social origins of obedience and political apathy? Can we
determine why, at specific historic moments, large numbers of people
collaborate with their own oppression and thereby dismiss (or never even
consider) alternative modes of action which might lead to disobedience and
revolt and ultimately a better life with better social policy? Is it legitimate
for the majority of "non-specialists" to reject the political solutions
of the "specialists" and to insist that they go back to the drawing
board and propose something better. In a word, must we
keep our veto power over the political and corporate elite who govern
our institutions and our society, and insist on our right to urge the specialists
toward better policies which better meet our collective needs, the knowledge of
which we alone are the experts to whom the specialists must listen?
By obeying the
"ill-will" of officially designated authorities, rather than
recognizing and acting on their genuine collective interests, large majorities
of people throughout history and in societies across the world, according to
Barrington Moor, Jr., have again and again tolerated abuse at the hands of
remarkably small numbers of people. In order to analyze this phenomenon,
Professor Moore closely examines in great detail selected case studies taken
from comparative world history, and he tries to answer the question: "How
did this small group maintain control over that large number of people at this
specific moment in history ?" As a good social
scientist Moore is not out to discover an absolute cosmology or some universal
"iron law" of human behavior, but rather he offers us some new tools
and techniques of analysis so that we too can examine a selected historical
moment and derive a satisfactory answer to his important question as it
pertains to the specific social context that might be of interest.
Good social scientific
writing should serve as an inspiration and a model for all of us --both inside
and outside the academy.
Below, are four items we
received recently on the all-too familiar subject of REPRESSION.
Item A. is an historical
reminder by John Gerassi of what society can look like when capitalism enters a prolong and worsening crisis. It is not the first time,
and there are lessons to be learned from the past . . . .
Item B. is an essay by Michael
Parenti who explains why there are simply no easy solutions to the problems
President Hugo Chavez of
Item C. is a reminder from
Professor Edward Herman of the vicious bigotry that nationalist indoctrination
reproduces, sometimes leaving the victimizers the greatest victims of their
dogma, forcing on them at times a life worse than death.
Item D. arrived at CEIMSA via
Michael Moore, and is a discussion of a recent attempt to return to the era of
red-baiting, which today has adopted a post-modern ruse called
: The Student Bill of Rights.
And finally, item E. is an article sent to us
by
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American
Studies/
Director of Research
Université Stendhal
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
____________________
A.
from John Gerassi
HYiya,
The fact that you all seemed not to have received the original gave me a
chance to add a few sentences to this revised
edition.
Cheers tito
Empire means
Repression
by John Gerassi
Throughout history, no empire has survived if
it tolerated dissent. From the day that
But
again, it did so slowly, within its potential. It went to war against
Though
many of the idiotic Republicans never understood that Franklin Roosevelt was
saving their capitalism for them, it was he who set up the machinery of state
to crush serious dissent in
Senator
Joseph McCarthy's "anti-Communist" crusades did them a disservice for
a while by overdoing it, causing some newsmen (Edward R. Morrow) and academics
(Harvard President Pusey) to fight back, especially after two more
rank-and-filer dissidents, in this case the Communists Rosenbergs, were executed. But
the
Bush
II's infamous "if you're not with us you're against us" is not new to
No
poor country can develop its infrastructure, build low-cost housing, hospitals,
universities, self-defense force without capital accumulation. No poor country
can achieve such accumulation by allowing foreign companies to run its
utilities, its banks, its
mines.
Does
the average American know any of this? Does the mainstream
media report any of these facts? No wonder then that when a Latino
rebels or a Shiite blows himself up with a few
Most
of the people of the world (not in the US) know that it was the US which
started the Cold War, by violating the Berlin treaty whereby each of the
victorious powers would rule the city together, backed by a currency defended
by the four. But the
To
get the American public to buy
How
would Americans react if, on the guise of helping the
Arrest
any one who looks Moslem could now be jailed. And any foreigner the
Some of that information is now known to the average American. But not all. Not enough, thanks to a pliable media, for average-Joe to understand that the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and most local US police corps are today no better than the Gestapo or the KGB goons. And to make sure that average Joe does not get to know the extent of US atrocities, the government is now trying to silence even defense lawyers.
So
for you and me, who don't look Moslem or Latino or Hindu or Apache, beware: one wrong word and we
will face the charge of aiding and abetting the terrorists. And we will find it
harder and harder to find a lawyer willing to defend us, that is if we are not
simply "disappeared" to
We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should cease the talk about vague, unreal objectives, such as human rights, raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
______________
B.
from Michael Parenti
Francis,
Please use this article as you wish.
Michael
Good Things Happening in
by Michael
Parenti
Even
before I arrived in
Our
conversation moved along famously until we got to the political struggle going
on in
She
herself owns an upscale women’s fashion company with links to prominent
firms in the
Other
critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of attack: weak on
specifics but strong in venom, voiced with all the ferocity of those who fear
that their birthright (that is, their class advantages) was under siege because
others below them on the social ladder were now getting a slightly larger slice
of the pie.
In
Far from
ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has
accomplished:
A land reform
program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been
instituted. Just this month (March 2005) a large landed estate owned by a
British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes.
Education is now
free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade
school enrollment.
The government has
set up a marine conservation program, and is taking steps to protect the land
and fishing rights of indigenous peoples.
Special banks now assist small enterprises,
worker cooperatives, and farmers.
Attempts to
further privatize the state-run oil industry---80 percent of which is still publicly owned---have been halted, and limits have
been placed on foreign capital penetration.
Chavez kicked out
the
“Bolivarian
Circles” have been organized throughout the nation, neighborhood
committees designed to activate citizens at the community level to assist in
literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and other public services.
The government hires
unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair streets and neglected drainage
and water systems in poor neighborhoods.
Then there
is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez’s home state
of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, two of whom were young
Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were there on a one-year
program. The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not
have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, but care
was severely rationed by the private market, that is, by one’s ability to
pay. Dental care was distributed like any other commodity, not to everyone who
needed it but only to those who could afford it.
When the
free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people seeking dental
care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of the Chavez government availed
themselves of the free service, temporarily putting aside their political
aversions.
Many of
the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the
clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from
That
low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first time in
their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much weight among
the more “professionally minded” practitioners.
I visited
one of the government-supported community food stores that are located around
the country, mostly in low income areas. These modest establishments sell
canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce and fruits at well below the
market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.
Popular
food markets have eliminated the layers of middlemen and made staples more
affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run by women. The
government also created a state-financed bank whose function is to provide
low-income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.
There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in
Surprisingly,
many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker cooperatives. Or
perhaps it’s not surprising, given the near monopoly that private capital
has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy media
moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five television stations
and all the major newspapers.
The man
most responsible for
In the Nation
(6 May 2002), Marc Cooper---one of those Cold War liberals who nowadays
regularly defends the U.S. empire---writes that the democratically-elected
Chavez speaks “often as a thug,” who “flirts with
megalomania.” Chavez’s behavior, Cooper rattles on, “borders
on the paranoiac,” is “ham-fisted demagogy” acted out with an
“increasingly autocratic style.” Like so many critics, Cooper
downplays Chavez’s accomplishments, and uses name-calling in place of
informed analysis.
Other
media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez “mercurial,”
“besieged,” “heavy-handed,” “incompetent,” and
“dictatorial,” a “barracks populist,” a
“strongman,” a “firebrand,” and, above all, a
“leftist.” It is never
explained what “leftist” means. A leftist is someone who advocates
a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services, and who
supports the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place.
(Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance
the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.)
The term
“leftist” is frequently bandied about in the
Meanwhile
Chavez’s opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in
April 2002 against
When one
of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with charges
for the role he had played, the New
York Times chose to call him a “dissident” whose rights were
being suppressed by the Chavez government.
Four other top military officers charged with leading the 2002 coup were
also likely to face legal action. No doubt, they too will be described not as
plotters or traitors who tried to destroy a democratic government, but as
“dissidents,” simple decent individuals who are being denied their
right to disagree with the government.
President
Hugo Chavez whose public talks I attended on three occasions proved to be an
educated, articulate, remarkably well-informed and well-read individual. Of big
heart, deep human feeling, and keen intellect, he manifests a sincere
dedication to effecting some salutary changes for the great mass of his people,
a man who in every aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic
revolution he is leading.
Millions
of his compatriots correctly perceive him as being the only president who has ever
paid attention to the nation’s poorest areas. No wonder he is the target
of calumny and coup from the upper echelons in his own country and from ruling
circles up north.
Chavez
charges that the
____________
Michael
Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights) and The
Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press) which won Book of the Year
Award, 2004 (nonfiction) from Online Review of Books. His latest work, The
Culture Struggle , will be published by Seven Stories
Press in the fall of 2005. For more
information visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.
_____________________
C.
from Ed Herman
Date:
Subject: Erasing the Past in
Francis,
You can read this sad story about
ultra-ethnic cleansing in the Israeli press, but not in the NYT or Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Ed Herman
Shards
of memory
by Gideon Levy
June 02/2005
This is the most Arab-free area in
settlers of the Gush Katif bloc from the
Gaza Strip are to be brought here. In a bitterly ironic jest of fate, the
settlers who sowed ruin and destruction in the Gaza Strip will now live on the
ruins of the homes of the residents who were their invisible neighbors in the
refugee camps.
Again they will see nothing. From
Gush Katif they saw nothing of the devastation that was wrought in Khan Yunis
and in its refugee camp; and in the Nitzanim region they will see nothing of
the rich fabric of life that existed here and was destroyed. It was all erased
from the face of the earth (eternity is
only dust and earth). Only the skeletons of a few beautiful homes, which
somehow still stand, and the piles of stones, the orchards and the natural
fences made of sabra bushes remain as mute testimony among the eucalyptus
groves, the new settlements and the orchards that were planted on the sites of
the destruction. From the Ashdod-Ashkelon road it is possible to see a few of
the ruins, but who pays attention? Who asks himself what these houses are, what
used to be here and where the former residents are as he shoots past on the
highway?
There is no memorial and no
monument. No signpost and no sign of the dozens of villages that were razed. In
Moshav Mavki'im, on the ruins of the
In the center of Kibbutz Zikim from
the left-wing Kibbutz Haartzi movement a sign stands next to a ruined
Palestinian mansion: "Danger, dangerous building. Keep away." An
illustration showing a skull and crossbones
embellishes the sign, so threatening is the memory. In Mavki'im the last
vestiges are being leveled. This week the industrious tractors already removed
a few piles of
stones that were once homes. Thus the
final remnants of the indigenous people, the previous residents of the land,
are being erased. In a country that has a law mandating "rescue
digs," a country that delays and sometimes prevents construction wherever
archaeological remnants of its ancient past are found, the near past is being
trampled into dust.
Only in one place was it decided to
be considerate of the past. Three kilometers south of the community of Nitzan,
in the orchards of the Mehadrin Company, whose chairman is the head of the
Disengagement Administration, in a place where settlers will also be
moved under the plan of the Housing
Ministry, it was decided not to touch the land on which the center of the
construction, but not Palestinian ruins. But
this lovely region also has a near past which is a bleeding present in the
refugee camps, and no heavy engineering equipment will be able to erase the
memory.
We drove like detectives across the
dunes, between the natural brush, the fruit groves, the garbage dumps and the
local communities, hunting for any sign of earlier life. In one orchard we
found an old faucet, in another the remnants of a millstone. We entered every
ruin, turned over almost every stone. In the second part of the journey to
uncover what is hidden from the eye we
were joined by the director of the
Farjun can not only identify every
rare plant and the footprints of every deer that has trod here, he can also
relate the history of every ruin. Now he shrinks at the sight of every
bulldozer that slashes into the soil so the settlers' new homes can be built. There
are
bulldozers aplenty here. Earth-moving
contractors again have more work than they can handle, the whole coastal plain
is inundated with heavy equipment. It is the unfolding of the country's history
in metal: the equipment that once built the Bar-Lev Line and then the
settlements line and then the separation wall is now building these new
communities.
About a kilometer south of the Ad
Halom junction, on Highway 4, the remnants of a fence surround a mosque, two
homes and the sabra fence that contains a secret. There were sabra fences
around every village, and now they are living fences of dead villages. This was
the site of the town of Isdud, 4,910 residents in the years 1944-1945 - 4,620
Palestinians and 290 Jews - according
to the historian Walid Khalidi's book
"All That Remains." In a field of withering hummus, which looks as
though it was only recently abandoned, behind an electrified fence on which are
signs warning against entry and hunting, another handsome home stands on a
limestone hill, defying the attempt to erase
everything.
East of the road, behind a sign
inviting local residents to a performance by the singer Zehava Ben in the
"Queen's Courtyard," located in the Kanot industrial zone, a splendid
house of arches is perched atop a lofty hill amid a dump of building refuse.
"1948
will return to the Muslims,"
declares graffiti on the peeling wall, and also "Man, you stole."
Rusty iron cables dangle from the high ceilings, all that's left of the lights
in the Isdud house. On the southern wall someone has drawn an Israeli flag in
blue and white.
This is the battle for home. The
carcass of a sheep is lying next to the balcony which is covered with arches.
There are few architects in Israel today who could build such a beautiful
house. The tiles in the next-door house, a one-room place, still preserve
vestiges of their turquoise glory. On the cracked wall is an empty clothes
hanger.
The double-decker red train from
Ashkelon to Tel Aviv passes by quickly. It would be interesting to know if any
of the passengers turn to look at the remains of the school which is hiding in
the shade of the giant ficus tree, west of the road and east of the tracks.
Some of the schools were not
demolished, Farjun explains, because they were built by the British and Ben-Gurion
was afraid that they would be angry, just months after their departure from the
country. This was a small educational center: a few classrooms, arches and a
well in the courtyard. An empty Bamba bag lies in the yard. Where are the
children who went to school here and played in the shade of the tree? On the
house closest to the highway, on its very edge, by the road that goes to Emunim
and Azrikim, someone has written "Isdud" in Hebrew. On the side is a
call to place the Oslo criminals on trial. On the fence is a sign:
"Private
property. Kibbutz Hatzor." It too belongs to Hakibbutz Haarzti.
About a kilometer to the south the
earth-moving trucks of Zalman Barashi spread locust-like over the dunes. Soon
expanded Nitzan will arise here, that is, the new Neveh Dekalim. The bulldozers
of Haim Yisraeli & Sons roll across the fields of Mavki'im, namely the
Palestinians'
Barbara. All
that remain here are piles of stones from a village with a population of 2,410,
according to Walidi. Mavki'im was founded in January 1949 on the southern lands
of Barbara, to block the return of refugees from Gaza to the village. It is a
meager-looking moshav, without even one upgraded
house, its economic situation gloomy, awaiting the bonanza that is perhaps
closer than ever. The restaurant that serves bland Hungarian goulash in the gas
station at the entrance to the moshav stands on the ruins of the school of
Barbara.
The bulldozers are hard at work to
the west of the moshav houses, removing the last piles of stones that stand for
Barbara. In 1949, after demolishing the schools, the workers of the Jewish
National Fund pushed aside the ruins and unwittingly created mute monuments in
the form of these piles of stones among the eucalyptus trees they planted on
the ruins. Barbara was abandoned between the 4th and 5th of November 1948
during Operation Yoav, which was carried out by the Givati Brigade under the
command of Yigal Allon, who left no Arab population in any of the areas he
conquered - in Operation Yiftah, in Operation Dani and finally in Operation
Yoav, which was originally called "Operation 10 Plagues." It was
perhaps the case that even without Allon saying anything specific, "[his]
officers knew what he wanted," Benny Morris notes in "The Birth of
the Palestinian Refugee Problem,
1947-1949."
Abed, a construction worker from
Gaza, who was originally from Barbara and built the houses of Nitzan on the
land of his lost village, told Farjun that his father said on his deathbed that
the family had fled and not been expelled and that he never forgave himself for
the hasty decision. "We saw everyone running away, so we ran too,"
the old man told his son apologetically. They were convinced that when the
fighting abated they would be able to return. But whether they fled or were
evicted, they were never
allowed to return. Now an Arab driver from
the Israeli
Kibbutz Zikim is also expanding. The
expansion, which was originally earmarked for the private market but did not
succeed, will probably now be sold to the state to house the settlers (in
nearby Carmiya another 53 homes are being built for them, on the land of the
lost
within the framework of `50 settlement and
revival sites.'" This building was in fact bought from its owner, the
Effendi Surkaji, in 1942.
The zoologist Dr. Michael Satner
sits in Farjun's office, exhausted from a day of
searching and extremely worried. "You are destroying the last habitat of
the gray force in the coastal plain," furious researchers from around the
world are writing to him in the wake of the construction project for the
settlers, on the eve of a major international conference on the gray force due
to be held in Bonn. Gray force? The Hebrew word for force - koach [see Leviticus
Farjun, from the Society for the
Protection of Nature, looks the part. A hero of the Yom
Kippur War in the fighting on the
knowledgeable expert who speaks fluent Arabic.
"In terms of the Zionist ethos, the best work was done in the south. If
not for that work, Ahmed and Mustafa would now be holding a discussion about
us, and I prefer me holding a discussion about Ahmed and
Mustafa." That is the gist of his Zionism.
"Anyone who tells you that there was no ethnic cleansing here will be
lying, and anyone who tells you that without the ethnic cleansing Israel would
have been established will also be lying."
We travel on a dirt road, but an
amazingly beautiful one, to Hamama; this was once the service road of the
farmers between Majdal [today's
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=gideon+levy&itemNo=5838
______________
D.
Moore
7 June
2005
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
What's
behind the Student Bill of Rights?
By David Bacon
Today, witchhunts seem once again on the rise. The latest attempt to
return to the era of red-baiting is called, ironically, the Student Bill of
Rights. That has a fine, democratic ring to it. The phrase, however, is being
used to restrict the ability of teachers to introduce controversial or
provocative ideas into their classrooms. The argument goes like this:
Conservative students are offended when "liberal" faculty
try to force them to consider ideas with which they don't agree.
Political science or sociology instructors, for instance, who support the
benefits of minimum or living wage ordinances for workers, should be prevented
from advancing such liberal biases in class.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider the fact that 13 states have
introduced legislation that would prohibit such "indoctrination."
These bills, a project of ultra-conservative ideologue David Horowitz, aren't
aimed at the many prestigious business schools around the country. There,
instructors not only teach students that making profit is necessary and
virtuous, but insist students learn to do so as efficiently as possible.
Instead, these measures are directed against teachers who question such
established ideas.
This spring in
On February 25, leaflets quoting Section 51530 of the Education Code
were anonymously posted on the doors of ten faculty members at
A subsequent press release by the Santa Rosa Junior College Republicans
claimed responsibility. "We did this because we believe certain
instructors at SRJC are in violation of
In a letter to the campus newspaper, the Oak Leaf, the president of the
SRJC College Republicans, Molly McPherson, explains that "The instructors
I 'targeted' were not selected at random ... There have even been accounts of
JC teachers openly advocating Communist and Marxist theories ... [which have]
been outlawed in the classrooms of a country with the strongest free speech
rights in the world."
When the campus Republicans found it hard to document the massive
teaching of communism at the junior college, they retreated to general
complaints of "leftist bias" by faculty members. Evidence to support
charges of biased teaching seemed just as scarce. In a forum discussing the
flyer, student trustee Nick Caston pointed out, "I have been on the Board
of Review (the last step of the grievance process) for three years and have
never heard a complaint about bias in the class room."
"I've never even talked with any of the students who were involved
in this," commented red-starred professor Marty Bennett. "But I do
teach a lot of labor history in my social sciences classes, and I'm identified
in the community as someone involved in the labor movement. That's probably why
I was chosen." Other instructors also had had little or no contact with
the young Republicans. Bennett says that because of the incident, "some
teachers were reluctant to take up more controversial subjects. But it pushed
others towards an activism they might not have considered before."
On her organization's website, McPherson says the flyering was
"just in time for one of our senators introducing the academic bill of
rights in April." That bill, SB 5, introduced by Sen. Bill Morrow, R-San
Juan Capistrano, says, "faculty shall not use
their courses or their positions for the purpose of political, ideological,
religious or anti-religious indoctrination."
David Horowitz' website warns that "while a professor is on campus
or in an academic setting, he or she has professional responsibilities that
make partisan political action unacceptable," and that "all too
frequently, professors behave as political advocates in the classroom, express
opinions in a partisan manner on controversial issues irrelevant to the
academic subject." In an era in which Governor Schwarzenegger has gone to
war with the state's teachers, Horowitz's admonitions would silence protest
against him. On April 20, SB 5 failed to pass the Senate Education Committee.
McPherson and her clubmates fared equally poorly in late April student body
elections at SRJC, when the slate they supported lost by a 2-1 majority.
Nevertheless, bills similar to Morrow's have been introduced into 13
other states this year. Defending one in the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State
Senator Larry Mumper warned that "card-carrying Communists," whom he
defined as "people who try to over-regulate and try to bring in a lot of
issues we don't agree with," are teaching at universities.
Isn't that what the free market in ideas is all about?
____________________
David Bacon is a California
photojournalist who documents labor, migration and globalization. His book The
Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the US/Mexico Border was published last year
by
________________
E.
from
Monty Kroopkin
Date:
Subject: Fw: A HUGE VICTORY for
Pablo Paredes! Navy Judge Finds War
Protest Reasonable
Francis,
I was a warm body at some of the
support demos for him and contributed a bit to his defense fund. This is not
what many people expect of a military judge in the heart of the empire. Do you
know Marjorie?
Also, guess what, I finally got a
copy of the Marcuse video, "Herbert's Hippos" along with the panel
discussion at UCSD that included both Angela Davis and former Chancellor
McGill. What address do you want it mailed
to?
--Monty
Navy
Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable
by Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t |
Report
"I think that the government has
successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe
that the wars in
In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty
Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the
amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000
sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr.
Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but
dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in
the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months
of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.
"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer.
"A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a
ship bound for
Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war,
and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He
told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having
a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my
conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties
dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the
current aggression that has been unleashed on
Pablo said he formed his views about the illegality of the war by
reading truthout.org, listening to Democracy Now!, and reading articles by Noam
Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein, Stephen Zunes, and Marjorie Cohn, as
well as Kofi Annan's statements that the war is illegal under the UN Charter,
and material on the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.
I testified at Pablo's court-martial as a defense expert on the legality
of the war in
I noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that all
military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 of the UCMJ says, "A
general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the
Constitution, the laws of the
I concluded that the
On cross-examination, Navy prosecutor Lt. Jonathan Freeman elicited
testimony from me that the
The Navy prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pablo to nine months in
the brig, forfeiture of pay and benefits, and a bad conduct discharge. Lt.
Brandon Hale argued that Pablo's conduct was "egregious," that Pablo
could have "slinked away with his privately-held beliefs quietly."
The public nature of Pablo's protest made it more serious, according to the
chief prosecuting officer.
But Pablo's lawyer urged the judge not to punish Pablo more harshly for
exercising his right of free speech. Pablo refused to board the ship not, as
many others, for selfish reasons, but rather as an act of conscience,
"Pablo's victory is an incredible boon to the
anti-war movement," according to
The night before his sentencing, many spoke at a program in support of
Pablo. Mejia thanked Pablo for bringing back the humanity and doubts about the
war into people's hearts. Sheehan, whose son, K.C., died two weeks after he
arrived in
Aidan Delgado, who received conscientious objector status after spending
nine months in
Pablo's application for conscientious objector status is pending. He has
one year of Navy service left. If his C.O. application is granted, he could be
released. Or he could receive an administrative discharge. Worst case scenario,
he could be sent back to
For more on Pablo's trial and his
statement of conscience, go to:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/13/1437208
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Gandhi
*******************************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research at
CEIMSA-IN-EXILE