Bulletin N° 356
Subject: A final word from CEIMSA in preparation for the June 5 ENSIMAG conference on "Ethics, Science, and Nuclear Weapons."
2 June 2008
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The general public is invited to attend the ENSIMAG conference on "Ethics, Science, and Nuclear Weapons," which is scheduled to take place next Thursday, 5 June, in
Amphi. D at the ENSIMAG building on the Grenoble Campus.
Some questions which might be discussed at this meeting are : What role does
Ethics play in promoting disarmament? What are the dangers, as Susan George points out in her book
The Laguno Report, of imposing an
ethics of law and order without justice, from the top down creating a corporate order in the name of "World Peace" and "Environmental Safety" ?
Since its creation at Stendhal University in 2000, one of the purposes of
CEIMSA (our Research Center For the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements) has been to make scientific contributions to democratic movements that aim at reorganizing society for greater economic equality and social justice. From such social and institutional reorganization, a meaningful peace, we believe, would more likely follow. Such interests give priority attention to issues such as
the structures of social class relationships, of private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and prevailing
systems of social control.
For those CEIMSA readers who intend to come to this conference on the Grenoble campus next Thursday, we recommend that you watch the important
Democracy Now! interview with former Chief UN Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, author of
Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters, at the Internet link below :
"The Threat of an Attack on Iran, and the Need for a Global Nuclear Ban to Avoid Further Catastrophe"
- [Blix is currently the chair of the Swedish government's
- Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.]
A second useful link is to George Kenney's laudably democratic Internet program,
Electric Politics, featuring his audio interview with Stanford University Professor Martin E. Hellman, who is discussing new mathematical methods for assessing the risk (prevention) of nuclear war:
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université de Grenoble-3
Grenoble, France
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA