Bulletin #719
Subject : Science for
the People and Fascism for our History Lesson.
2
November 2016
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
sad and hateful times in which we live are perhaps a harbinger for a better
future. If we compare today with the days of the Amerindian genocide and the
African slave trade (to cite only two of the innumerable crimes against
humanity during the history of capitalist expansion), the present is not so
terribly different from the past on the scale of human suffering and injustice.
Our cynical leaders and their fawning mignons are by no means a new species on
this earth; nor are the sadistic, brutal executioners of their self-serving
policies. The dialectics of historical development has many surprises in store
for all of us. Meanwhile, the least we can do is to stay informed for our own
mental health and perhaps for the well-being of our community. Citizenship has
been flushed down the tubes, but there remains no doubt that survival instincts
will generate collective actions of resistance and at the same time new modes
of cooperation among the oppressed and less-oppressed, a new urgency for
scientific thought.
The
pathetic flop of Bernie Sanders –down with a whimper,
and not a bang—is but another reminder of what we, the pro-living people, are
up against. The death wish of the ruling classes, who now flagrantly parade
their inhumanity before the cameras, will bring the notorious capitalist motive
to an ignoble end, which is much overdue. Out of the ashes, we can imagine,
will emerge life in new forms, non-capitalist lives which already existed in
embryo and will begin to flourish at high speed. By seizing control of science
and technology, ordinary people will become local geniuses and inventors of new
life styles. All this will occur on the graves of the old capitalist fossils who, when they were alive, devoted their time to
accumulating wealth and acquiring power over other people. Soon, in the grave,
they will be harmless history.
One
source of inspiration which I came across recently is Gaston
Bachelard’s book, La
formation de l’esprit secientifique.
This book was written in 1938, only months before the Nazi invasion of France
in June 1940. The impressive German Wermacht was
known to the French, and every intellectual felt the intimidation. (This is the
period when George Pompidou, returning from a visit to Nazi Germany, destroyed
his French Socialist Party membership card and burrowed into his secure job
teaching literature in a Paris high school.) Like Jean-Paul Sartre, Bachelard decided to become “compatible” with Fascism and
work within the constraints of the system. In our own historical context, it is
interesting to read authors who advocated ‘human liberation’ in the darkest
hours of social existence.
With
this book on the “scientific mind,” Bachelard intends
to free the mind for true scientific inquiry. He explains that contemporary
humans are now in a third era of mental development. The first period is
represented by the pre-scientific state of mind, which existed in antiquity,
through the centuries of the Rennaissance and into
the 16th and 17th centuries, and even into the 18th century. The scientific
mind appeared before the end of the 18th century and flourished through the
19th century and at the start of the 20th century. The third period, the ‘era
of the new scientific mind’, began precisely in the year 1905, the moment of
the publication of Albert Einstein’s first article on Relativity, which
challenged all preconceived notions of reality.
It
is in this context that Bachelard, proposes to
investigate the contemporary scientific mind of his day, by exposing the
obstacles most common to clear scientific thought.
Nous nous proposons, dans ce livre, de montrer ce destin
grandiose de la pensée scientifique abstraite. Pour cela, nous devrons prouver
que pensée abstraite n’est pas synonyme de mauvaise conscience
scientifique, comme semble l’impliquer l’accusation banale. Il nous faudra
prouver que l’abstraction débarrasse l’esprit, qu’elle allège l’esprit, qu’elle
de dynamise. Nous fournirons ces preuves en étudiant plus particulièrement les difficultés
des abstractions correctes, en marquant l’insuffisance des premières ébauches,
la lourdeur des premiers schémas, en soulignant aussi le caractère discursif de
la cohérence abstraite et essentielle qui ne peut pas aller au but d’un seul
trait. Et pour mieux montrer que la démarche de l’abstraction n’est pas
uniforme, nous n’hésiterons pas à employer parfois un ton polémique en
insistant sur le caractère d’obstacle
présenté par l’expérience soi-disant concrète et réelle, soi-disant naturelle
et immédiate.(pp.8-9)
. . . Il y a si loin du livre imprimé au livre lu, si
loin du livre lu au livre compris, assimilé, retenu ! Même chez un esprit
clair, il y a des zones obscures, des cavernes où continuent à vivre des ombres.
Même chez l’homme nouveau, il reste des vestiges du vieil homme. En nous, le
XVIIIe siècle continue sa vie sourde; il peut –hélas- réapparaître. Nous n’y
voyons pas, comme Meyerson, une preuve de la permanence et de la fixité de la
raison humaine, mais bien plutôt une preuve de la somnolence du savoir, une
preuve de cette avarice de l’homme cultivé ruminant sans cesse le même acquis,
la même culture et devenant, comme tous les avares, victime de l’or caressé. .
. . . Nous insisterons sur ce fait qu’on
ne peut se prévaloir d’un esprit scientifique tant qu’on n’est pas assuré, à
tous les moments de la vie pensive, de reconstruire tout son savoir. Seuls les
axes rationnel permettent ces reconstructions. Le
reste est basse mnémotechnie. La patience de l’érudition n’a rien a voir avec
la patience scientifique.(p.10)
This
book, then, is a gift to the French nation in the last days of the Front Populaire, before the Fascist tsunami hit
France in early summer of 1940.
The
‘true scientific mind’, Bachlard warned, consists of
recognizing and formulating important questions.
S’il n’y a
pas eu de questions, il ne peut y avoir connaissance scientifique. Rien ne va
de soi. Rien n’est donné. Tout est construit.
The
chapters of Bachlard’s book are organized along the
lines of epistemological obstacles which he finds commonly impede scientific
thought --obstacles such as firsthand experience, general knowledge, verbiage
and misuse of familiar images, utilitarian and pragmatic knowledge, realism,
animism, libido and objectivity, as well as quantitative knowledge. These
epistemological obstacles which block scientific thought, according to this
author, must be rendered conscious; then overcome if scientific work is to be
accomplished. Without this intellectual effort, scientific thought will be
continually sabotaged by ontological distortions, heuristic distractions,
conceptual deviations, and curious delights. The necessary preconditions are
simply not present for scientific work, the mind is not prepared.
This
book, in its proper historical context, can be seen as a solemn warning to its
readers, that something was going wrong in 1938. The human mind was not
functioning at its scientific potential, and for specific reasons. Today, we
witness the mindlessness of American political culture, and the violence of
ripping words and images out of context in order to manipulate the minds of the
masses. Eventually, our so-called ‘understanding’ is determined by our need to
feel secure, and nothing else. We are, so to speak, looking out at the world
from under the boot of our oppressor, the most secure place in the world that
we were able to find. The security produced by rational, scientific thought was
never offered as a possible alternative, and panic --the nutrient of
Fascism—spreads through society like a plague, homogenizing our lives and
regimenting our behavior in an entirely predictable pattern.
The
14 items below represent elements of realities which we must know if we
are to begin to think clearly and systemically about our possible futures.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
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.
‘Turkish
Soldiers’ Execute 2 Female Kurdish Fighters
(27 sec. Video)
Camoflauged men are shown throwing one woman off a cliff.
They then point an assault rifle in the direction she fell and fire
indiscreetly.
Another woman is then forced to her knees and repeatedly shot
point blank
===========
b.
From : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Hillary Clinton, FBI and the Real
November Surprise
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45768.htm
by Pepe Escobar
"As bad as it is the folks above the President make the decisions. They may have decided on Trump. These things do not happen by accident."
===========
c.
From: "Alan Grayson" <alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 2 November, 2016 1:23:48 AM
What $10 million buys from the Democratic Party
|
As many readers of this missive may
be aware, I ran against Patrick Murphy in the August 30 Florida
Senate Democratic Primary. A few months earlier, a Murphy political operative
had an interesting conversation with someone working on my campaign. The
operative said that Murphy’s father, Tom Murphy, had promised to give the
Democrats’ Super PAC (Senate Majority PAC) and Patrick Murphy’s captive Super
PAC (Floridians for a Strong Middle Class) $5 million if Patrick won the
nomination, and that Tom Murphy would round up another $5 million from his
friends and colleagues. So the Democratic Party could expect to see $10
million if it delivered the nomination to Murphy. Very interesting, I thought. This
explained to me why Sen. Harry Reid, head of the Senate Democrats, had been interfering
in my primary and belligerently attacking me personally for months, and why
the DSCC had been trying to plant “hit pieces” against me with its
inside-the-Beltway pet reporters in the media. I can’t say that I was surprised
by this. Patrick Murphy’s father Tom, a Republican, already had passed around
more than $1.5 million to Democratic candidates and organizations to grease
the skids for Patrick, including the purchase of several key endorsements by
elected officials. I asked one of them why he had endorsed Patrick. He told
me, “Alan, if you gave me $20,000, then I’d be your best friend for life,
too.” In fact, without Daddy’s promise
of $10 million, it would be very hard to explain why Senate Democrats would
give a fig for Patrick Murphy. Murphy won his seat by less than one-half of
one percent of the vote, while the Democrat running four years earlier in the
same district had won by ten points. Murphy is a second-term Congressman who
has accomplished so little that he was named the least effective Member of
the House. Completely bereft of any legislative accomplishments, he is forced
to point to a GOP bill for which he takes credit, because the GOP author said
something nice about him on the Floor of the House. Murphy’s main goal in
Congress seems to have been to try to set some kind of record for party
disloyalty, by voting for more than 60 times for bills that were so odious
than President Obama threatened in advance to veto them, voting seven times
to force the President to license the Keystone Pipeline, voting to “condemn”
the President over the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and
voting (with only six other House Democrats) in favor of the GOP’s Benghazi
witch-hunt committee. Murphy also voted (alone among 188 House Democrats) to
vote to kill high-speed rail in Florida, even though it passes through his
district, after his father’s construction company withdrew its effort to win
the bid on the project. And Salon magazine points out that Patrick Murphy was
a lifelong Republican who switched parties the month he declared for Congress
and then, after election as a Democrat, asked Speaker John Boehner if he
could switch back. (Boehner wasn’t interested.) And me? I’m the only House
Democrat to represent downtown Orlando in the past 42 years. I won my 2008
race by just four points. I lost in both 2006 and in 2010. House Democrats
have a system for Member of Congress in shaky districts like mine, called
“the pass.” If such a Member wants to vote against the party for political
reasons, you are supposed to tell the Democratic Leadership ahead of time, “I
need to take a pass.” I have never taken a pass. Ne-ver.
And I’ve passed 100 bills and amendments through the House in the last four
years, all solid progressive legislation. And I won my last two House
campaigns by double digits. So, if the question is why the
Democratic Party would endorse Patrick Murphy in a contested Senate primary,
the answer has got to be Daddy’s $10 million. What else could it be? Now, some might say, “OK, I’m not
too thrilled with the idea that $10 million buys a Senate nomination,
complete with full support from the party bosses, but we have to fight back
against the Koch Brothers’ billions somehow, right?” I’m sorry, but that’s
not what that $10 million is really all about. Media commissions are 15%.
When the party’s Super PAC spends $10 million, then someone who is on very
friendly terms with the party bosses makes a quick and easy (and legal!) $1.5
million. That’s what that $10 million is
really all about. Payola. Still, that conversation that was
conveyed to me is just a story, right? Just one politico talking to another. No. Because when the Democrat’s
Senate Majority PAC actually reserved TV time for that ten-week period
between the primary and the general election, the amount of Florida TV time
that it reserved was . . . $10 million. Precisely the amount that Tom Murphy
promised to deliver. It’s worth considering how utterly
implausible it is that the Senate Majority PAC and the DSCC each would
reserve $10 million for the last ten weeks of the Florida Senate race,
without Tom Murphy’s promised cash. Last time I looked, the Senate Majority
PAC had a grand total of $6 million in the bank. So it reserved almost twice
the amount of TV time – in just one race – as it had cash on hand. What is wrong with this picture? And the DSCC? It had $31 million
in the bank – for 34 different Senate races, ten of which have been
characterized as competitive. And in the polls for the Democrat in those ten
races, Patrick Murphy is . . . tenth. Why would the DSCC plan to spend
one-third of all of its cash on hand on its weakest competitive candidate? In mid-July, I was up by eight
points in my primary. On July
15, the Senate Majority PAC
announced a $1 million buy for a TV spot endorsing Patrick Murphy – almost unprecedented
Democratic Party interference in a Senate Primary. By August 1, the TV spot had had its intended effect, with Murphy
support zooming upward. The average Tampa voter saw that spot almost thirty
times, in barely two weeks. What happened next? Did Tom Murphy
deliver on his $10 million to Senate Majority PAC? Did the DSCC then match
Tom’s $10 million, buying young Patrick a Senate seat? No and no. Tom Murphy kicked in a
rather pitiful $250,000 to the Murphy Super PAC “Floridians for a Strong
Middle Class” on Sept. 27, which has been dutifully trundling its cash over
to the Senate Majority PAC. And after that earlier $1 million purchase of the
party endorsement ad on Aug. 13, Tom Murphy has given nothing to the Senate
Majority PAC directly. Zilch. So the Senate Majority PAC pulled
the last of its $10 million Florida Senate TV reservations three weeks ago,
and the DSCC followed suit a week later. FWIW, at that time, Patrick Murphy
had trailed Marco Rubio in 28 out of the last 28 Florida Senate polls posted
at Real Clear Politics. Apparently, Florida voters are not as stupid as the
Murphy clan thinks they are. Did Tom Murphy ever intend to come
up with $10 million for Patrick’s campaign? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Did
the Democratic Party ever intend to match Tom Murphy’s $10 million? I don’t
know, but I doubt it. All I know is that just getting a
whiff of $10 million of Tom Murphy’s money, just a glance at that mirage, was
enough to turn my party against me – in favor of someone contemptuous of my party
and its principles. I once told a national TV
audience, “you have only three friends in life: God, your mama, and the
Democratic Party.” Cross that last one off the list. Courage, Rep. Alan Grayson “Washington,
DC wanted to defeat Alan Grayson as the Democratic candidate for the Senate,
and now they’re happy to allow Marco Rubio to resuscitate his political
career.” -
Reporter Marc Caputo on WPLG-Miami (Oct. 17, 2016). |
===========
d.
From: Bertell Ollman
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2016
Subject: Mindful of Trump.
Francis,
Here
is the best piece I've seen on our elections and another - coming - of a
wonderful case study on the power of the Zionist lobby in American elections
and how they exercise it.
Hope all goes well.
Bertell
Dear Liberals: Trump is Right
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/26/dear-liberals-trump-is-right/
by Eric Draitser
===========
e.
The Failure of Democracy
How The Oligarchs Plan To Steal The Election
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45756.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
f.
From : http://www.truthdig.com/
American Irrationalism
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/american_irrationalism_201610305
by Chris Hedges
We are captive to images and forms of propaganda
that make us the most self-deluded population on the planet.
We are driven by manipulated emotions, not fact or
reason. And this is why, even now, Donald Trump could become president.
===========
g.
Tom Hayden’s Haunting
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/27/tom-haydens-haunting/
by Jim Kavanagh
An interesting piece, not only re Tom Hayden but also the reach of
Israel within US Politics.
===========
h.
“Confronting China”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45754.htm
by John Pilger
===========
i.
Russia Has Called the War Party's Bluff
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45746.htm
by Pepe
Escobar
A
hot war is not going to break out after Nov. 8th - thanks to shrewd moves and
preparation by Moscow
===========
j.
The Laura Flanders Show
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17541
Laura
Flanders interviews former presidential candidate Ralph Nader to discuss what
really constitutes "people power" when it comes to the 2016 election.
===========
k.
“Confronting China”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45754.htm
by John Pilger
===========
l.
From
:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
FBI Director Comey's
Catch-22
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17554
Former FBI
Special Agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley says most media and the Democrats
are ''shooting the messenger'' but keeping quiet can also be seen as
influencing the election
===========
m.
Forget the FBI Cache; The
Podesta Emails Show How America is Run
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45767.htm
by Thomas Frank
The emails currently roiling the US presidential
campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the
troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of
people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the
ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account
of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.
They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth
their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the
soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to
whom the party answers.
===========
n.
From : http://www.counterpunch.org/
How
Putin Derailed the West
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/01/how-putin-derailed-the-west/
by Mike Whitney
“Nation
state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting
and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the
nation-state.”
—
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era”, 1971
“I’m
going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria….not
only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees,
but to gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”
—
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Third Presidential Debate