Bulletin
N°225
Subject: ON THE DIALECTICS OF WAR
AND MILITARY REPRESSION: FROM THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN
INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
25 February 2006
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The documentary film which our research center tried to screen last Tuesday
evening (21 February) was sabotaged by a false alarm fire drill in the
building. The concierge was seen running from his office located next to the
main entrance of the building two minutes before the false alarm went off. In
Amphitheater 2, at precisely 19h, the projector was shut down; all the lights
came on, and a loud voice (possibly that of the concierge) kept repeating
"EVACUATE THE BUILDING NOW!" Fifty of us in the room agreed, before
we filed out of the Amphitheater, to meet outside, at the front of the
building. I locked the Amphitheater door behind me and spoke to some cleaning
women in the lobby before joining the students outside. We had been able to see
Part I and most of Part II of the documentary film, "The
Un-Americans", and we agreed to postpone the screening of Part III for
another day, instead of waiting in the dark for the false alarm to finish. The
students left for supper, and I returned to the Amphitheater to retrieve my
video tape where the voice over the loud speaker continued to blast the command : EVACUATE!
I had trouble retrieving my tape until suddenly I heard a click. The machine
was turned on, my tape was released, and the loud voice ceased at that same
moment. I left the room, locking the door behind me, once again, and exited the
main entrance. As I walked toward my bicycle in the dark, I saw the concierge
returning to his office.
It was Victor Serge, I believe, who observed around 1917, "War is the midwife
of Revolution." If this be true, we seem to be heading for some
revolutionary days ahead, as the permanent war economy in the
My own historical research on the impressive anti-war movement in
The five items below were recently received by our research center, and speak
to the "unforeseen" consequences of another war, the slaughter we are
today witnessing in the
Item A. are two website links from Peace
Activists working in the state of Colorado, who have made a major
contribution toward breaking the silence and media collaboration which serve to
protect George W. Bush and his "business as usual" doctrine.
Item B. are again two website links, this
time from The National Council on Child Abuse & Family Violence,
which describe the effects this War is having on groups of American women.
Item C. is an article by investigative
reporter Marjorie Cohn discussing
the censored cause of deaths of American women soldiers".
Item D. is a press release from late
January announcing the approaching trial of dissidents who were arrested while
protesting the "International School of Torture" at
And finally, item E. is an article from Dahr Jamail, analyzing the
political context of the February 22nd bombing of the Shia Mosque at
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of
____________
A.
from " Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace" :
October 2005 - February 2006
Photo and Video Archives by "unembedded" journalists.
________________
B.
from The National Council on Child Abuse & Family Violence :
Women in
the Military
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
"It's mind-boggling," said Henry Berry, manager of family advocacy
programs at
Two
Base officials said that before the recent rash of killings, there had been no
deaths attributable to domestic abuse by
The string of deaths started June 11 when Sgt. 1st Class Rigoberto Nieves fatally shot his wife, Teresa, and then killed himself in their
On July 1, Master Sgt. William Wright reported that his wife, Jennifer, was
missing. On July 19, he led investigators to her body, buried in a shallow
grave in a field near
Sergeant Wright, who had been back from Afghanistan for about a month, had
moved out of the family's house and was living in the barracks.
His mother-in-law, Wilma Watson, said from her home in
On the same day Sergeant Wright was arrested, Sgt. 1st Class Brandon Floyd shot
his wife, Andrea, and himself in their Stedman home.
The
In the fourth case, Sgt. Cedric Ramon Griffin was charged with stabbing his estranged
wife, Marilyn, on July 9. He was in an engineering battalion.
_____________
C.
from Truthout :
30 January 2006
For background, see:
Marjorie Cohn | Bush
on Trial for Crimes against Humanity
Marjorie Cohn | Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration
Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers'
Deaths
By Marjorie Cohn
In a
startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior
Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission
of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to
drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even
raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.
The latrine for female soldiers at
Karpinski testified that a surgeon
for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in
fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the
latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or
"And rather than make everybody aware of that - because
that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you then you're not
much of a leader - what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those
details anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide
that in a written report but don't brief it in the open anymore."
For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski,
Sanchez's top deputy in
Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so
now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me that Sanchez,
who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of
everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the
cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released.
"That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.
"It was out of control," Karpinski told a group of students at
"There were countless such situations all over the
theater of operations -
Karpinski was the highest officer
reprimanded for the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,
although the details of interrogations were carefully hidden from her. Demoted
from Brigadier General to Colonel, Karpinski feels
she was chosen as a scapegoat because she was a female.
Sexual assault in the US military has become a hot topic in
the last few years, "not just because of the high number of rapes and
other assaults, but also because of the tendency to cover up assaults and to
harass or retaliate against women who report assaults," according to Kathy Gilberd, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild's
Military Law Task Force.
This problem has become so acute that the Army has set up
its own sexual assault web site.
In February 2004, Rumsfeld directed the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to
undertake a 90-day review of sexual assault policies. "Sexual assault will
not be tolerated in the Department of Defense," Rumsfeld declared.
The 99-page report was issued in April 2004. It affirmed,
"The chain of command is responsible for ensuring that policies and
practices regarding crime prevention and security are in place for the safety
of service members." The rates of reported alleged sexual assault were
69.1 and 70.0 per 100,000 uniformed service members in 2002 and 2003. Yet those
rates were not directly comparable to rates reported by the Department of
Justice, due to substantial differences in the definition of sexual assault.
Notably, the report found that low sociocultural power (i.e., age, education, race/ethnicity, marital status) and low
organizational power (i.e., pay grade and years of active duty service) were
associated with an increased likelihood of both sexual assault and sexual harassment.
The Department of Defense announced a new policy on sexual
assault prevention and response on January 3, 2005. It was a reaction to media
reports and public outrage about sexual assaults against women in the
The policy is a series of very brief "directive-type
memoranda" for the Secretaries of the military services from the Under
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. "Overall, the policy
emphasizes that sexual assault harms military readiness, that education about
sexual assault policy needs to be increased and repeated, and that improvements
in response to sexual assaults are necessary to make victims more willing to
report assaults," Gilberd notes.
"Unfortunately," she added "analysis of the issues is shallow,
and the plans for addressing them are limited."
Commands can reject the complaints if they decide they
aren't credible, and there is limited protection against retaliation against
the women who come forward, according to Gilberd.
"People who report assaults still face command disbelief, illegal efforts
to protect the assaulters, informal harassment from assaulters, their friends
or the command itself," she said.
But most shameful is Sanchez's cover-up of the dehydration deaths
of women that occurred in
Sanchez reportedly plans to retire soon, according to an
article in the International Herald Tribune earlier this month. But Rumsfeld recently considered elevating the 3-star general
to a 4-star. The Tribune also reported that Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the
Army's chief spokesman, said in an email message, "The Army leaders do
have confidence in LTG Sanchez."
_______________
D.
from Truthout
27 January 2006
Trials Begin in
The 34 were among 19,000 who gathered on November 18-20
outside the gates of
"People speaking out for justice and accountability
will most likely be sent to prison next week," said Fr. Roy Bourgeois,
founder of SOA Watch, "while the SOA and its graduates continue to operate
outside a system of real accountability."
Those arrested at the demonstration -
The SOA/WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon
released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion
and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights
abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent
investigation into the facility has ever taken place. New research confirms
that the school continues to support known human rights abusers. Despite having
been investigated by the United Nations for ordering the shooting of 16
indigenous peasants in El
The defendants are scheduled to begin trial at 9 am on
Monday morning before Judge G. Mallon Faircloth,
known for handing down stiff sentences to opponents of the SOA/WHINSEC. Since
protests against the SOA/WHINSEC began more than a decade ago, 183 people have
served a total of over 81 years in prison for engaging in nonviolent resistance
in a broad-based campaign to close the school.
The movement to close the SOA/WHINSEC continues to grow. In
2005, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced HR
_____________
________________
E.
from Dahr Jamail
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
February 24, 2006
Who Benefits?
The most important question to ask regarding the bombings
of the Golden Mosque in
Prior to asking this question, let us note the timing of the bombing. The last
weeks in
First, the negative publicity of the video of British soldiers beating and
abusing young Iraqis has generated a backlash for British occupation forces theyve yet to face in
Indicative of this, Abdul Jabbar Waheed,
the head of the Misan provincial council in southern
Iraq, announced his councils decision to lift the immunity British forces have
enjoyed, so that the soldiers who beat the young Iraqis can be tried in Iraqi
courts. Former
This deeply meaningful event, if replicated around
The other huge event which drew Iraqis into greater solidarity with one another
was more photos and video aired depicting atrocities within Abu Ghraib at the hands of
The inherent desecration of Islam and shaming of the Iraqi people shown in
these images enrages all Iraqis.
In a recent press conference, the aforementioned Waheed urged the Brits to allow members of the provincial committee to visit a local
jail to check on detainees; perhaps Waheed is alarmed
as to what their condition may be after seeing more photos and videos from Abu Ghraib.
Waheed also warned British forces that if they didnt not comply with the demands of the council, all
British political, security and
reconstruction initiatives will be boycotted.
Basra province has already taken similar steps, and
similar machinations are occurring in Kerbala.
Basra and Misan provinces, for example, refused to
raise the cost of petrol when the puppet government in Baghdad, following
orders from the IMF, decided to recently raise the cost of Iraqi petrol at the
pumps several times last December.
The horrific attack which destroyed much of the Golden Mosque generated
sectarian outrage which led to attacks on over 50 Sunni mosques. Many Sunni
mosques in
This is what was shown by western corporate media.
As quickly as these horrible events began, they were called to an end and
replaced by acts of solidarity between Sunni and Shia across
This, however, was not shown by western corporate media.
The Sunnis where the first to go to demonstrations of
solidarity with Shia in
Demonstrations of solidarity between Sunni and Shia went off over all of
Thousands of Shia marched shouting anti-American
slogans through
Baghdad had huge demonstrations of solidarity, following announcements by
several Shia religious leaders not to attack Sunni
mosques.
Attacks stopped after these announcements, coupled with those from Sadr, which
Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, shortly after the Golden Mosque was attacked,
called for easing things down and not attacking any Sunni mosques and shrines,
as Sunni religious authorities called for a truce and invited everyone to block
the way of those trying to generate a sectarian war.
Sistanis office issued this statement: We call upon
believers to express their protest ... through peaceful means. The extent of
their sorrow and shock should not drag them into taking actions that serve the
enemies who have been working to lead
Shiite religious authority Ayatollah Hussein Ismail al-Sadr warned of the emergence of a sectarian strife
that terrorists want to ignite
between the Iraqis by the bombings and said, The Iraqi
Shiite authority strenuously denied that Sunnis could have done this work.
He also said, Of course it is not Sunnis who did this
work; it is the terrorists who are the enemies of the Shiites and Sunni,
Muslims and non Muslims. They are the enemies of all religions; terrorism does
not have a religion.
He warned against touching any Sunni Mosque, saying, our Sunni brothers mosques
must be protected and we must all stand against terrorism and sabotage. He
added: The two shrines are located in the
He ruled out the possibility of a civil war while telling a reporter, I dont believe there will a civil or religious war in Iraq;
thank God
that our Sunni and Shiite references are urging everyone to not respond to
these terrorist and sabotage acts. We are aware of their attempts as are our
people; Sistani had issued many statements [regarding
this issue] just as we did.
The other, and more prominent Sadr, Muqtada Al-Sadr, who has
already lead two uprisings against occupation forces, held Takfiris [those who regard other Muslims as infidels], Bathists,
and especially the foreign occupation responsible for the bombing attack on the
Golden Mosque in
Sadr, who suspended his visit to Lebanon and
cancelled his meeting with the president there, promptly returned to
It was not the Sunnis who attacked the shrine of Imam Al-Hadi,
Gods peace be upon him, but rather the occupation
[forces] and BaathistsGod damn them. We should not
attack Sunni mosques. I ordered Al-Mahdi Army to
protect the Shii and Sunni shrines.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of
Instead, he blamed the intelligence services of the
British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that those who committed the attack on
the Golden Mosque have only one motive: to create a violent sedition between
the Sunnis and the Shiites in order to derail the Iraqi rising democracy from
its path.
Well said Mr. Blair, particularly when we keep in mind the fact that less than
a year ago in
Jailed and accused by Muqtada al-Sadr and others of attempting to generate sectarian conflict by planting bombs in
mosques, they were broken out of the Iraqi jail by the British military before
they could be tried.
Al-Arabiya TV reports that on February 22rd, the day of the bombing at
the Golden Mosque in
Al-Arabiya Television has lost its correspondent in
with two other colleagues. Atwar gave the last live
dispatch to
Al-Arabiya Television at 1500 gmt yesterday. Atwar disappeared after
that. The Iraqi Police today confirmed that she and two other colleagues
were assassinated in
attack on the shrine of the two Shi'i imams, Ali al-Hadi and Al-Hasan
al-Askari, north of
Also, on February 21st:
KARBALA GOVERNOR SUSPENDS MEETING WITH AMERICANS
(Asharq al-Awsat) Karbala governor Akeel al-Khazali announced on
February 20 that he will suspend all official contact with the Americans
to protest the improper behavior of the US officials who visited the
province last week. They did not show any respect to the province's
local security and prevented high-ranking Iraqi officials from entering
the (governor's office,) which frustrated them. He insisted that the
Americans should officially apologize for the uncivilized behavior
(including bringing dogs into the building) and that they should never
act that way again. If not, the governor said he would prevent them from
entering the office without prior approval from the Iraqi authorities.
(London-based Asharq al-Awsat,
a pro-Saudi independent paper, is issued
daily.)
*********************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université Grenoble-3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/