Bulletin #711
Subject: FROM THE EYE OF THE
HURICANE AND THE STINK OF THE SWAMP.
28 August 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
When you see people around you digging themselves
deeper and deeper in a hole and filling it with more and more weapons, money
and excrement, what do you do . . . ?
a) Help
them accomplish their task.
b) Move to
New Zealand.
c) Pray to
your personal god for salvation.
d) Try to
convince them to stop in the name of common sense.
Can you find the answer?
The Nigerian novelist, Amos Tutuola
(1920-1997), suggests an answer to this question in his first novel, The
Palm-Wine Drinkard (1953). It is the story of the eldest son of a rich man, who since the age of ten had no other work than to drink palmwine all day long.While his brothers and sisters worked, he drank 150 kegs of palmwine every morning and another 75 kegs the remainder of the drinking day. When his wealthy father noticed that he could do no work other than drink palmwine, he engaged an expert palm-wine tapster and gave his son a palm-tree farm nine square miles large, containing 560,000 palm trees. After fifteen years of satisfying employment, the expert palm-wine tapster dies in an accident, falling from a tall tree, and soon the
protagonist embarks upon a journey to find the whereabouts of his irreplaceable
palm-wine tapster. Dylan Thomas describes Tutuola's novel as 'a
grisly and bewitching story' of one man’s quest for meaning in a world of absurdities. He and his wife, whom he acquires early in this
surrealistic journey, finally find what they have been looking for : the much
valued palm-wine tapster who now resides in the town of the walking dead, but
the encounter is not what the young man expected . . . .
When it was 8 o’clock in the morning, then
we entered the town and asked for my palm-wine tapster whom I was looking for
from my town when he died, but the deads asked for
his name and I told them that he was he was called “BAITY” before he died, but
now I could not definitely know his present name as he had died.
When I told them his name and said that he
had died in my town, they did not say anything but stayed looking at us. When
it was about five minutes that they were looking at
us like that, one of them asked us from where did we come? I replied that we
were coming from my town, then he said where. I told
him that it was very far away to this town and he asked again were the people
in that town alives or deads?
I replied that the whole of us in that town had never died. When he heard that
from me, he told us to go back to my town where there were only alives living, he said that it was forbidden for alives to come to the Deads’
Town.
As that dead man told us to go back, I began
to beg him to allow us to see my palm-wine tapster. So he agreed and showed us
a house which was not so far from the place where we stood, he told us to go
there and ask for him, but as we turned our back to him (dead man) and were
going to the house that he showed us, the whole of them that stood on that
place grew annoyed at the same time to see us walking forward or with our face,
because they were not walking forward there at all, but this we did not know.(p.96)
Eventually, the young man and his palm-wine tapster
met, and much excellent palmwine was drunk, but the irreplaceable palm-winer tapster had to
decline the young man's emphatic invitation to return with them to work on the family’s
large palm-tree farm, where his father had planted so many trees to satisfy his
son’s proclivities.
He
told us that both white and black deads were living
in the Deads’ Town, not a single alive was there at
all. Because everything that they were doing there was incorrect to alives and everything that all the alives
were doing was incorrect to deads too.
He said that did I not see that both dead
persons and their domestic animals of this town were walking backwards? Then I
answered “Yes.” Then he told me that he could not follow me back to my town
again, because a dead man could not live with alives
and their characteristics would not be the same and said that he would give me
anything that I liked in the Dead’s Town. When he
said so, I thought over what had happened to us in the bush, then I was very
sorry for my wife and myself and I was then unable to drink the palm-wine which
he gave me at that moment. Even I myself knew already that deads
could not live with alives, because I had watched
their doings and they did not correspond with ours at all.(p.100)
The following morning, the young man and his wife
began their journey homeward, by way of a road where they were attacked by a
band of dead babies, who were on their way to Dead’s
Town. Once at home, the man resumed his career of drinking 150 kegs of
palmwine each morning with his friends until famine struck the region and his
all-providing Egg (given him by the tapster in Deads' Town and which produced regular banquets for the community) was
broken, at which time his friends turned against him and he did what was
necessary to protect himself.
If there is a moral to this tale, Amos Tutuola seems to tell us that the dead and the living have
little in common. We are well advised to develop a strong sense of solidarity
with the alives, and to prudently protect ourselves
from both the deads and those alives who threaten our existence.
The 16 items below speak to
the chaos today that has engulfed us, and the social class analyses that have all but
rendered nationalist values archaic. Who are we? What do we really want? These
are the radical questions at the eye of the hurricane, a vantage point which
did not create this chaos but nevertheless seizes it up as a whole, including the stinking swamp spewing its toxic fumes into our air.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor of American
Studies
University of Grenoble-3
Director of Research
University of
Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced
Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of
California-San Diego
a.
Israeli Think Tank: Don’t Destroy ISIS
- It’s a “Useful Tool” Against Iran, Hezbollah, Syria
http://www.salon.com/2016/08/23/israeli-think-tank-dont-destroy-isis-its-a-useful-tool-against-iran-hezbollah-syria/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
Head of a right-wing think tank says the existence of ISIS serves a
"strategic purpose" in the West's interests
by Ben Norton
===========
b.
How We Know ISIS Was Made In The USA
I
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45324.htm
by Roger Stone
+
How We Know ISIS Was
“MADE IN THE USA”
II
http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/How-We-Know-ISIS-Was-MADE-IN-THE-USA-.htm
by James H. Fetzer
===========
c.
"Fractured
Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart": NYT Mag
Examines Region Since 2003 U.S. Invasion
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/12/fractured_lands_how_the_arab_world
===========
d.
A Repost:The New York
Times Whitewashes US Imperialism - Contemplates Ethnic Cleansing
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45300.htm
by
Eric London
===========
e.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/22/this_is_our_war_it_is
“This is Our War &
It is Shameful ” : Journalist Andrew Cockburn on the
U.S. Role in the War in Yemen
===========
f.
U.S. Considers Its Citizens Cowards
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45326.htm
by Dmitry Orlov
===========
g.
Why Jeremy Corbyn is Right About NATO
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45321.htm
It's disturbing that Jeremy Corbyn's
comments on foreign policy were in any way controversial says Chris Nineham
by Chris Nineham
===========
h.
A Lawless
Plan to Target Syria’s Allies
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45332.htm
Official
Washington’s disdain for international law—when it’s doing the lawbreaking—was
underscored by ex-CIA acting director Michael Morell
voicing plans for murdering Iranians and maybe Russians in Syria
by Ray McGovern
===========
i.
Propaganda for Syrian ‘Regime Change’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45340.htm
Neocons
and liberal hawks have poured millions of dollars into propaganda to justify
“regime change” in Syria and are now desperate to keep the war going until
President Hillary Clinton gets a chance to escalate, as Rick Sterling
describes.
by Rick Sterling
===========
Provoking
Nuclear War by Media
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/356846-provoking-nuclear-war-media/
by John Pilger
===========
j.
The Genocide of a Land
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45341.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
===========
k.
Green Party of Canada Leader Reaffirms
Leadership Following Row Over BDS
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=17070
While Elizabeth May says no to other parties, a
strong stand for Palestinian rights includes making Israel pay the appropriate
economic and political penalties for its clear violation of international law,
says Dimitri Lascaris
+
Architects and
Organizers of BDS Reflect on Global Success, Fate Within
Canada
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=17119
Participants at the World Social Forum earlier this month in
Montreal, Canada took up the questions of tactics, organizing, and the role of
political parties in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against
Israel
===========
l.
From: "c.sham" <c.sham@wanadoo.fr>
Sent: Thursday, 25 August, 2016
Subject: GAZA : voie
sans issue
GAZA
: voie sans issue
com de l'UJFP (Union Juive Française pour la Paix)
:
http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?article5102
Gaza : dead
end*
mercredi 24 août 2016 par le Bureau national de
l’UJFP
*voie sans issue
Dimanche 21 août : en 20 minutes, la bande de Gaza a subi 70 raids
aériens touchant essentiellement le nord (Beit Lahia et Beit Hanoun).
« Je me souviens en 2014 avant la guerre. C’est la même chose qui est
arrivée. Alors, je pense qu’une nouvelle guerre s’annonce. Ils ont juste
besoin d’un peu de temps » nous écrit un militant de Khan Younis.
Tout commence toujours et seulement par une roquette sur Israël (sur
Sdérot cette fois) qui entraîne des représailles
totalement
disproportionnées, posant ainsi Israël toujours en victime d’agressions
sans causes, et validant la « stratégie de la force » israélienne, taper
toujours plus fort, si la première frappe ne suffit pas.
Le message de Netanyahou à la population de Gaza vivant en cage est
clair : « si tu bouges, je t’écrabouille. Il n’y aura pas de limite et
personne ne viendra t’aider. » Le gouvernement de Gaza a pourtant
annoncé avoir arrêté ceux qui ont lancé la roquette.
Dans cette économie on en est aujourd’hui à une roquette lancée = 70
raids aériens.
Or il y aura toujours des roquettes, parce qu’il y a une population
assiégée, deux millions d’hommes, de femmes et d’enfants pris au piège.
- Piège d’Oslo qui définit une infra-direction nationale et installe la
sous-traitance par les Palestiniens eux-mêmes de leur occupation.
- Piège de la division palestinienne (Hamas contre Fatah) voulue et
programmée par l’occupant.
- Piège de la définition néo-conservatrice de Gaza
considérée comme «
entité hostile » au moment de l’accession au pouvoir du Hamas, par les
urnes faut-il le rappeler. Gaza, entité hostile, devient ainsi un
parfait « alien » sur qui on peut, on doit, taper
sans scrupule ni limite.
- Piège aussi de la volonté israélienne d’effacer la colonisation, de
requalifier le conflit en guerre de religions (d’où l’intérêt du Hamas
au pouvoir à Gaza) et de tenter d’assimiler la résistance inévitable et
légitime d’un peuple enfermé au terrorisme de Daech.
Le fait que les grands médias français ne mentionnent même pas les 70
raids aériens, et ne les mentionneront que pour parler des prochaines
roquettes contre Israël afin de justifier la prochaine opération
sanguinaire, ne fait que démontrer que la stratégie israélienne est
celle de nos gouvernants.
Il n’y aura pas d’issue ni pour Gaza, ni pour les Palestiniens, ni pour
les Israéliens tant que la diplomatie européenne et occidentale
soutiendra la stratégie de la force et l’assassinat de civils.
Il n’y aura pas d’issue tant que l’occupant ne sera pas sanctionné.
Mais en réalité il n’y a d’issue pour personne : Gaza, après avoir été
le laboratoire, est devenu l’emblème de la non-politique d’aujourd’hui.
Si les gouvernants et les médias font semblant d’y croire, la population
française ne devrait pas s’y tromper, et commencer à mesurer avec
inquiétude les effets de l’importation de ce système d’écrasement et
d’enfermement de masse en France. Gaza est le signe du retour de
l’époque des camps.
Le
Bureau national de l’UJFP, le 24 août 2016
Union Juive Française pour la Paix (UJFP) - 21 ter rue Voltaire, 75011 PARIS
Téléphone : 07 81 89 95 25 • E-mail : contact@ujfp.org
: • Site web :
www.ujfp.org
Page facebook : www.facebook.com/UJFP.Officiel
• Compte twitter: @contactujfp
===========
m.
Former CIA Deputy Director Publicly
Advocates for Bombing Syria's Assad
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17111
This would be illegal under international law -
and qualify as terrorism - but that hasn't stopped the U.S. before, says former
intelligence analyst Ray McGovern
===========
n.
Trump vs. Hillary: A Summation
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45351.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
“If
Hillary gets into the Oval Office, I predict nuclear war before her first term
is over.…”
===========
o.
Vijay Prashad: Hillary Clinton Shows Dangerous Tendency to Go to
War
No Matter the
Consequences
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/26/vijay_prashad_hillary_clinton_shows_dangerous
===========
p.
From: "Jim O'Brien" <jimobrien48@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, 25 August, 2016
Subject: [haw-info] HAW Notes 8/25/16: anti-blacklist petition; US
interventions; links to recent articles of interest
Miscellaneous Notes
1. Several hundred faculty members have signed a petition
condemning the anonymous website Canary Mission, which maintains and publicizes
a blacklist of students who have acted in any way to support Palestinian
rights. You can click here for more
information and a form for signing the petition,
2. Zoltan Grossman of Evergreen State
College has an extensive annotated listing of US military interventions
from 1890 to 2014.
3. The link for the new issue of the Peace History Society's
semi-annual on-line Newsletter was omitted by mistake in the last HAW
e-mailing. It's at this address.
Links to Recent Articles
of Interest
“No Need to Build the Donald’s Wall,
It’s Built”
By Todd Miller, TomDispatch.com, posted
August 23
“Does Henry Kissinger Have a
Conscience?”
By Jon Lee Anderson, The New
Yorker, posted August 20
On the files released by the National
Security Archive (see below) on Argentina's "dirty war"
“US War Crimes or ‘Normalized
Deviance’”
By Nicolas J. S. Davies, Consortium
News, posted August 15
On the evolution of US war tactics in
recent decades
“Monsters to Destroy: Top 7 Reasons
the US Could Not Have Forestalled Syrian Civil War”
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog,
posted August 12
The author teaches history at the
University of Michigan.
“‘Declassified Diplomacy’: Argentina”
By the National Security Archive, posted
August 11
1,078 pages of Carter administration
files on human rights abuses in Argentina, including the efforts of former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to defend the military junta
“The Decay ofAmerican
Politics: An Ode to Ike and Adlai”
By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch.com,
posted August 4, 2016
The author is a professor emeritus of
history and international relations at Boston University.
“The Myth of Trump’s Alternative Worldview”
http://fpif.org/myth-trumps-alternative-worldview
By John Feffer, Foreign
Policy in Focus, posted August 3
By Leon Fink, In These Times, posted
August 2
The author teaches history at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.
“The Costs and Consequences of
Managing Rogue States”
By Paul Pillar, The National
Interest, posted July 28
“There’s NothingUn-American
about Donald Trump”
By Greg Grandin, The Nation, July 22
The author teaches history at New York
University.
Suggestions for this occasional set of
article links can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.