Bulletin 214
Subject: ON
REVISIONISMS, OLD AND NEW : FROM THE CENTER
FOR THE
ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
22 November 2005
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The articles received by CEIMSA this week speak to the issue of basic
revisions
of social understandings inside the
Today, as an intellectual sea-change brings the vessels home, we
discover that
the mass media have affected a substantial cognitive shift among a
great part
of the population in the industrialized world, away from seeking
understanding
of cause and effect, and toward a new political determination
to conform
to the demands of the harsh climate created by the efforts to save
world
capitalism from its latest crisis. The aggressively expansionist and
militarized political economies that we are witnessing in the
industrialized
and the industrializing nations of the world will be successful in
accumulating
great quantities of capital and power only by introducing artificial
scarcity --that true-and-tried method for destabilizing and
disarming
the laboring poor.
Decades of disinformation have taken its toll on the public, and a
growing
number of people seek leaders instead of wisdom to save
them from
their "enemies," real and imaginary. Many years ago, Neil Postman
warned of this mental deformation in contemporary society. He
attributed it to
too much TV viewing :
Whatever the causes, the inability of a social class to recognize
what its
needs are and to identify those obstacles which must be overcome
in
order for it to satisfy these needs constitutes a real handicap for
developing
democratic controls of institutions. By promoting acquisitive
individualism and unbridled competition,
capitalist
culture effectively retards any development of those skills necessary
for
cooperative community relations. It ravages democracy by the authority
of rapport
de force.
Below, readers will find five articles which address this subject of
revisionism and tactical modifications necessary for political gains.
Item A. is the formal apology
from the
Item B., sent to us by
Item C. is a little gallows
humor sent to
us by Edward
Herman to lighten up the tunnel into which we have been led.
Item D. is a New York Times
article sent to us by Information
Clearling House in which journalist Frank Rich describes tactical
adjustments within Republican War Hawks circles in the U.S. Senate, as
mid-term
election time approaches.
Item E. is an article by
Gilbert
Achcar
(the author of The Clash of Barbarisms and Eastern Cauldron)
and Stephen
Shalom (author of Imperial Alibis, and Which Side Are You On? An Introduction to Politics) in which
they
discuss the revisionist thinking of
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université Stendhal-Grenoble
3
Grenoble, France
http://www.ceimsa.org/
____________________
A.
from Diana
Johnstone :
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005
Subject: IMPORTANT RETRACTION
Guardian Apologizes
to Chomsky, Publishes Total Retraction
of "No Massacre at
Srebrenica" Slur
by CounterPunch News Service
The following
unusually
detailed and categorical apology to Noam
Chomsky
appears in The Guardian for November 17. The Guardian's "readers'
editor", Ian Mayes, issues this virtually unprecedented
climb-down -
in effect a savage rebuke to its reporter Emma Brockes
- after complaints by Chomsky himself and others, and by detailed
exposes, first by Alexander Cockburn
and then by Diana Johnstone on this site.
The headline and text of The Guardian's retractions
follow.
Corrections and clarifications :
The Guardian and Noam Chomsky
Thursday November
17, 2005
The Guardian
The readers' editor has considered a
number of
complaints from Noam Chomsky concerning an
interview
with him by Emma Brockes published in G2,
the second
section of the Guardian, on October 31. He has found in favour
of Professor Chomsky on three significant complaints.
Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes
that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the
Bosnian war
he had placed the word "massacre" in quotation marks. This suggested,
particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes,
that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had
denied that
there had been a massacre. Prof
Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or
believed any
such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and
retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky.
The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also
complained,
added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word
massacre.
It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica
massacre was
exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough.
No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky. This part of the
interview
related to his support for Diana Johnstone
(not Diane
as it appeared in the published interview) over the withdrawal of a
book in
which she discussed the reporting of casualty figures in the war in
former
Ms Brockes's misrepresentation of Prof
Chomsky's views
on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone
have ever denied the fact of the massacre.
Prof Chomsky has also objected to the juxtaposition of a letter from
him,
published two days after the interview appeared, with a letter from a
survivor
of Omarska. While he has every
sympathy with the writer, Prof Chomsky believes that publication
was
designed to undermine his position, and addressed a part of the
interview which
was false. Both letters were published under the heading Falling
out over Srebrenica. At the time these letters were published,
following two in
support of Prof Chomsky published
the previous day, no formal complaint had
been
received from him. The letters were published by the letters editor in
good
faith to reflect readers' views. With hindsight it is acknowledged that
the
juxtaposition has exacerbated Prof Chomsky's complaint and that is
regretted.
The Guardian has now withdrawn the interview from the website.
____________________
B.
from Frederic Meni :
17 November 2005
Bonsoir M. Feeley,
Jai trouv頵n
article traitant de ce
qui
a 鴩 鶯qu頶endredi concernant
les bons c du
colonialisme : http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/hist/colonialisme/peau_dure.htm
Cordialement,
MɎI Fr餩ric
_____________________
C.
from Edward Herman :
Sent:
Friday, November
18, 2005
_________________
D.
from Frank Rich
New York Times
One War Lost, Another
to Go
by FRANK RICH
11/20/05 "New York
Times" -- -- IF anyone needs further proof that we are racing for
the
exits in Iraq, just follow the bouncing ball that is Rick Santorum. A
Republican leader in the Senate and a true-blue (or red)
Mr. Santorum preferred to honor a previous engagement more than
They know the voters have decided the war is over, no matter
what symbolic resolutions are passed or defeated in Congress nor
how
many Republicans try to Swift-boat Representative John Murtha, the
marine hero
who wants the troops out. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey last week found
that
the percentage (52) of Americans who want
to get out
of
Mr. Bush may disdain timetables for our pullout, but, hello, there
already is
one, set by the Santorums of his own
party: the
expiration date for a sizable American presence in
On the same day the Senate passed the resolution rebuking Mr. Bush on
the war,
Martha Raddatz of ABC News reported that
"only
about 700 Iraqi troops" could operate independently of the U.S.
military,
27,000 more could take a lead role in combat "only with strong
support" from our forces and the rest of the 200,000-odd trainees
suffered
from a variety of problems, from equipment shortages to an inability
"to
wake up when told" or follow orders.
But while the war is lost both as a political matter at home and a
practical
matter in
One hideous consequence of the White House's Big Lie - fusing the war
of choice
in
We have arrived at "the worst of all possible worlds," in the words
of Daniel Benjamin, Richard Clarke's former counterterrorism colleague,
with
whom I talked last week. No one speaks more eloquently to this point
than Mr.
Benjamin and Steven Simon, his fellow National Security Council alum.
They saw
the Qaeda threat coming before most others did in the 1990's, and their
riveting new book, "The Next Attack," is the best argued and most
thoroughly reported account of why, in their opening words, "we are
losing" the war against the bin Laden progeny now.
"The Next Attack" is prescient to a scary degree. "If bin Laden
is the Robin Hood of jihad," the authors write, then
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
"has been its Horatio Alger, and
Only since his speech about "Islamo-fascism"
in early October has Mr. Bush started trying to make distinctions
between the
"evildoers" of Saddam's regime and the Islamic radicals who did and
do directly threaten us. But even if anyone was still listening to this
president, it would be too little and too late. The only hope for
getting
Americans to focus on the war we can't escape is to clear the decks by
telling
the truth about the war of choice in Iraq: that it is making us less
safe, not
more, and that we have to learn from its mistakes and calculate the
damage it
has caused as we reboot and move on.
Mr. Bush is incapable of such candor. In the speech Mr. Santorum
skipped on
Veterans Day, the president lashed out at his critics for trying "to
rewrite the history" of how the war began. Then he rewrote the history
of
the war, both then and now. He boasted of
And once again he bragged about the growing readiness of Iraqi troops,
citing
"nearly 90 Iraqi army battalions fighting the terrorists alongside our
forces." But as James Fallows confirms in his exhaustive report on
"Why Iraq Has No Army" in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly,
THAT'S the alternative that has already been chosen, brought on not
just by the
public's irreversible rejection of the war, but also by the depleted
state of
our own broken military forces; they are falling short of recruitment
goals
across the board by as much as two-thirds, the Government
Accountability Office
reported last week. We must prepare accordingly for what's to come. To
do so we
need leaders, whatever the political party, who can look beyond our nonorderly withdrawal from
The arguments about how we got into Mr. Bush's war and exactly how
we'll get
out are also important. But the damage from this fiasco will be even
greater if
those debates obscure the urgency of the other war we are losing, one
that will
be with us long after we've left the quagmire in
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
Company
_____________
E.
from Tom Feeley
Information Clearing House
emailtom@cox.net
On John Murtha's Position
by Gilbert Achcar and
Stephen R.
Shalom
11/21/05 "ICH"
-- -- There is much of which to approve in the recent
speech of Rep. John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on
Murtha pointed out, as the anti-war movement has been pointing out all
along,
that the
Murtha pointed out that a recent poll indicated that 80% of Iraqis want
the
There is no guarantee of what would happen in the event of a
Murtha has submitted
a resolution to the House calling for the redeployment of
Nevertheless, the anti-war movement needs to be careful not to confuse
Murtha's
position with its own.
When Murtha says "redeploy" -- instead of withdraw -- the troops from
"We ...
have
united the Iraqis against us. And so I'm convinced, once we redeploy to
surrounding
area, that it will be much safer. They won't be able to unify against
the
if
we have to go back in, we can go back in."
Moreover, Murtha's
resolution calls for the
We strongly disagree. The anti-war movement cannot endorse
Murtha, we need to keep in mind, is not opposed to
Murtha's resolution calls for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq "at the
earliest practicable date" -- which is reasonable only if it means that
the withdrawal should be started immediately and completed shortly
after the
December elections, with the exact details to be worked out with the
elected
Iraqi government. In his press
conference, however, Murtha estimated it would take six months to
carry out
the "redeployment," which seems far longer than the "earliest
practicable date." (Recall that
Congressional Republicans, in a transparent ploy, offered a one-sentence
resolution stating that the deployment of
The anti-war movement should and no doubt will relentlessly continue
its fight
for the immediate, total, and unconditional withdrawal of
----------------
Gilbert Achcar
is the author of The
Clash of
Barbarisms and Eastern Cauldron, both published by Monthly
Review
Press. Stephen R. Shalom is the
author
of Imperial Alibis (South End Press) and Which Side Are You On? An Introduction to
Politics (Longman).
*********************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université Grenoble-3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/