Bulletin N° 803
The films and
journalism of John Pilger
+
John Pilger: Real
Journalism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49538.htm
+
“Is This
Iran's Future?
Paying The Price: Killing The
Children Of Iraq”
http://johnpilger.com/videos/paying-the-price-killing-the-children-of-iraq
Subject :
It’s lonely at the top: The world’s oligarchs and their collective desire for a
‘New World Order’ (to be achieved at a high price for most of us &
ultimately at the risk of exterminating all humankind).
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
There is a bag of academic theories out there which
have produced careers and virtual industries for people seeking political
power, usually for the best of reasons. Such social theories as “Elitist
Theory,” “Modernization Theory,” “Rational Choice Theory,” “Historical
Materialism,” not to mention various religious theories, all have in common the
desire to remake the world into a “better” place. By imposing the Will of the most able on the rest of
humanity it is believed the world will become a better place (at least for some
people).
Thus the human cognitive powers of feeling, memory, reason and will are brought to bear on all of us
through daily practice within institutions and organizations which for the most
part govern our behavior. To be conscious of this ubiquitous force is not to be
“free” of it; but rather to understand our own complicity in the flawed system
of which we are a part. There is no advantage in remaining unconscious of the political realities around us, only a
greater certitude of obedience which will by no means guarantee our well-being.
The novelist Henry James describes the creative act
– common to both scientists and artists - in his Preface to The
Spoils of Poynton (1897), where he
wrote:
Such is the interesting truth about the stray
suggestion, the wandering word, the vague echo, at touch of which the
novelist’s imagination winces as at the prick of some sharp point: its virtue
is all in its needle-like quality, the power to penetrate as finely as
possible. This fineness it is that communicates –the virus of suggestion,
anything more than the minimum of which spoils the operation. If one is given a
hint at all designedly one is sure to be given too much; one’s subject is in
the merest grain, the speck of truth, of beauty, of reality, scarce visible to
the common eye – since, I firmly hold, a good eye for a subject is anything but
usual. Strange and attaching, certainly, the consistency with which the first
thing to be done for the communicated and seized idea is to reduce almost to
naught the form, the air as of a mere disjointed and lacerated lump of life, in
which we may have happened to meet it. Life being all inclusion and confusion,
and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the
hard latent value with which alone it is concerned, sniffs round the
mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone.
The difference here, however, is that, while the dog desires his bone but to
destroy it, the artist finds in his tiny nugget, washed free of awkward accretions
and hammered into a sacred hardness, the very stuff for a clear affirmation,
the happiest chance for the indestructible. It at the same time amuses him
again and again to note how, beyond the first step of the actual case, the case
that constitutes for him his germ, his vital particle, his grain of gold, life
persistently blunders and deviates, loses herself in the sand. The reason is of
course that life has no direct sense whatever for the subject and is capable,
luckily for us, of nothing but splendid waste. Hence the opportunity for the
sublime economy of art, which rescues, which saves, and hordes and “banks,”
investing and reinvesting these fruits of toil in wondrous useful “works” and
thus making up for us, desperate spendthrifts that we all naturally are, the
most princely of incomes. It is the subtle secrets of that system, however,
that are meanwhile the charming study, with an endless attraction, above all in
the question – endlessly baffling indeed – of the method at the heart of the madness;
the madness, I mean, of a zeal among the reflective sort, so disinterested. If
life, presenting us the germ, and left merely to herself in such a business,
gives the case away, almost always, before we can stop her, what are the signs
for our guidance, what the primary laws for saving selection, how do we know
when and where to intervene, where do we place the beginnings of the wrong or
the right deviation? Such would be the elements of an enquiry upon which, I
hasten to say, it is quite forbidden me here to embark: I but glance at them in
evidence of the rich pasture that at every turn surrounds the ruminant critic.
The answer may be after all that mysteries here elude us, that general
considerations fail or mislead, and that even the fondest of artists need ask
no wider range than the logic of the particular case. The particular case, or
in outer words his relation to a give subject, once the relation is
established, forms in itself a little world of exercise and agitation. Let him
hold himself perhaps supremely fortunate if he can meet half the questions with
which that air alone may swarm.(cited in The Creative
Process, pp.147-148)
The same imaginative process of creativity, as a
kind of “mutation” that gives birth to something new (and occasionally useful),
is described by Albert Einstein, who wrote in a letter to Jacques Hadamard
(1865-1963) :
The words or the language, as they are written or
spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical
entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more
or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined.
(cited in op.cit, p.43)
The Einstien theory of
Relativity, accompanied by Mozart....
(1923)
The aesthetics of theory building must be
accompanied by methods of verification, if knowledge is to be gained and
catastrophes averted.
The 26 items below testify to the murderous
aesthetics in this period of Late
Capitalism. The human sacrifices on the Alter
of Realism have become a daily ritual. The attempt to rationalize these
daily sacrifices under the rubric of some transcendent theory is increasingly
recognized as a desperate attempt to conceal the losses by a bankrupt
leadership. Sooner or later, collective self-management using tried and tested
democratic means will replace this command political economy of
self-sacrifices.
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.
In Syria, Putin and Netanyahu Were on the Same
Side All Along
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49536.htm
Putin
is ready to ditch Iran to keep Israel happy and save Assad’s victory
by Anshel
Pfeffer
As
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman meets his
Russian counterpart Thursday in Moscow to discuss the arrangements
for keeping Iran and its proxies away from Israel’s border with Syria, they will be
merely formalizing an understanding between the two countries that has long
been in the making. It should have been clear from the beginning of the Russian
involvement in Syria nearly three years ago that, when forced to choose between
Israel and Iran,
Vladimir Putin would come out on Israel’s side. This has little if anything to
do with Putin’s own special brand of philo-semitism.
The Russian president is not the sentimental type. He favors Israel because it
is currently the only regional power capable of ruining his plans. Putin, who
wanted to ensure that the Bashar Assad
regime survived in Syria, had a shared interest with Iran, which sees Syria as
part of its axis of influence in the region. Iran supplied the ground forces to
prop up the Assad regime, which in mid-2015 was very close to collapse. Not so
much its own troops, but its proxy Lebanese militia Hezbollah and
tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, who were paid or press-ganged into
joining the Fatemiyoun brigades, that Iran financed,
armed and sent to Syria. Putin, for political reasons, did not want to risk too
many Russian soldiers in Syria. Coffins coming home would have eroded his
popularity. Moscow supplied the air-power and the combination of Russian Sukhoi fighter jets bombing rebel enclaves from thousands
of feet, and Iranian-paid Shi'ite fighters mopping up
the survivors, saved Bashar Assad. Now that the war
in Syria has been decided in Assad’s favor, the Russians have less need for
Tehran’s boots on the ground.
Russia
of course has no plans to leave Syria. It is its client state and thanks to the
Assad regime, Russia has its coveted warm-water ports on the Mediterranean.
Iran wants to remain as well, but Israel sees the Iranian long-term presence as
a strategic threat and since Russia has little need for Iran either, the choice
is clear.
===========
b.
MEK’s Money Sure Can’t Buy Love
But It Can Buy A Lot Of Politicians
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49546.htm
by Philip Giraldi
Iran’s
radical Marxist cult Mohajedeen e Khalq,
better known by its acronym MEK, is somewhat reminiscent of the Israel Lobby’s
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in that it operates somewhat
in the shadows and is nevertheless able to punch well beyond its weight by
manipulating politicians and understanding how American government functions on
its dark side. MEK promotes itself by openly supporting a very popular hardline policy of “democratic opposition” advocating
“regime change” for Iran while also successfully selling its reform
credentials, i.e. that it is no longer a terrorist group. This latter effort
apparently convinced then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 2013 as she and
President Barack responded to the group’s affability campaign by delisting MEK
from the government list of terrorist organizations.
===========
c.
Saudi Wahhabism
Serves Western Imperialism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49513.htm
by Andre Vltchek
When the Saudi Crown Prince gave an
interview to the Washington Post, declaring that it was actually the West that
encouraged his country to spread Wahhabism to all
corners of the world, there was a long silence in almost all the mass media
outlets in the West, but also in countries such as Egypt and Indonesia.
Those who read the statement,
expected a determined rebuke from Riyadh. It did not come. The sky did not
fall. Lightning did not strike the Prince or the Post.
Clearly, not all that the Crown Prince declared
appeared on the pages of the Washington Post, but what actually did, would be enough to bring
down entire regimes in such places like Indonesia, Malaysia or Brunei.Or at least it would be enough under ‘normal
circumstances’. That is, if the population there was not already hopelessly and
thoroughly indoctrinated and programed, and if the
rulers in those countries did not subscribe to, or tolerate, the most
aggressive, chauvinistic and ritualistic (as opposed to the intellectual or
spiritual) form of the religion.
Reading between the lines, the Saudi Prince
suggested that it was actually the West which, while fighting an ‘ideological
war’ against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, handpicked Islam
and its ultra-orthodox and radical wing – Wahhabism –
as an ally in destroying almost all the progressive, anti-imperialist and
egalitarian aspirations in the countries with a Muslim majority.
===========
d.
Putin’s Peace Efforts Are Coming To
Naught
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49497.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
The Trump regime has sabotaged
Putin’s peace efforts in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea.
Now that Washington
and Israel have sabotaged Putin’s diplomacy, Putin’s hope is that the result
will isolate Washington from Washington’s European and British vassal states
rather than isolate Russia, Syria, Iran, and North Korea from the rest of the
world. There is much evidence that European leaders have had their fill of
being treated as Washington’s slaves. Possibly they will throw off Washington’s
control. On the other hand, except for France under DeGaulle,
no European country has had an independent foreign or economic policy in 75 years.
Moreover, European leaders are accustomed to relying on Washington providing
their comfortable retirements, like Tony Blair’s $50 million, and European
business interests would be harmed if Trump cuts them off from US markets. How
real an European revolt is
remains to be seen.
There are great
risks to Russia of relying on Europe’s revolt as Washington uses the time to
regain what was lost in Syria to Putin’s initiative. In effect, Russia might be
throwing away the victory in Syria. While the Russian government waits to see
if the Anglo-Zionist Empire comes apart, Washington is organizing the jihadists
Washington used against Gaddafi and Assad to prepare an offensive against Russia and China through former Soviet
central Asian republics such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Here is a
report by Andrey Afanasyev:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49471.htm
I have checked out
this story with Russian sources. What I learned is that Washington’s plan to use its jihadists to begin destabilizing Russia
and China surfaced in Russia in the 7th Moscow International Conference
on Security, which I believe was in April. Currently, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defence,
is in Uzbekistan evaluating the situation with military and political leaders
there. The Russian government, the state TV channels, and establishment press
are sitting on the information. Apparently, the Russian government doesn’t want
this information out as it could undermine public support for the peace agenda
that the government favors.
However, reports
have been published in Tsargrad, NewsFront,
and Fergana.
===========
e.
In the Middle East, Putin Has a Lot to Thank Trump For
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49525.htm
by Robert Fisk
Vladimir Putin will have paid very
close attention to the location of the Syrian artillery battery where four
Russian soldiers lost their lives at the weekend. The desert around Deir ez-Zour remains a dangerous
place – politically as well as physically – in which the Americans and Russians
play an extremely risky game of war. Putin still suspects the Americans helped
the artillery guidance of a mortar battery which killed the commander of the
Russian Far East 5th Army in Deir ez-Zour,
lieutenant
general Valery Asapov, less than a
year ago. Was the mortar fired by pro-American Kurdish fighters? Or by Isis? The Russians say that Isis mobile attackers
stormed the Syrian artillery position this weekend at night – the Islamists’
normal routine, streaming out of the desert wadis in
suicide trucks and motorcycles – even though the little Syrian forts, hillocks
of sand and cement strewn across the vast sand plateaus, are supposed to be
invulnerable.
So now the Russians are directing
artillery. First they were the air component to the Syrian army, their forward
air observers on the ground with Syrian troops directing the Sukhois onto Assad’s enemies. Then the Russians were the
de-miners of Palmyra and Deir ez-Zour,
Homs and Aleppo. Then the Russian military police escorted the beaten jihadists
to the wastelands of Idlib province or the Turkish
border. The Russians liaise between the Syrians and the pro-American Kurds on
the Euphrates River.
Twelve months ago, Putin’s top
artillery technicians were searching through the rubble of eastern Aleppo to
draw up painstaking maps of the fall of shot – the exact bomb crater and blast
effects of air-dropped Russian munitions. I met one of their teams. Its reports
were circulated, of course, to Russian military intelligence. But they first go
directly to the Kremlin. Putin reads them. He is a micro-manager. There will be
no Brezhnev-style Afghanistan disasters in Syria – or so the Russians pray – no
slovenly retreats across the Amu Darya by political generals, no Kremlin
lethargy. Russian officers speak good Arabic (and quite good English) –
products of the Moscow School of Foreign Languages – and, like the Syrian army,
their officers go to the front lines. That’s why Asapov
was killed. Putin decided to pursue his Chechen and Russian jihadi
enemies all the way to Syria – and kill them all. He saved his ally, Bashar al-Assad. But at the very same time – give or take a
warning or two and one downed Russian jet courtesy of a later-to-repent Erdogan – he remained a trusted friend of Israel,
Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and so on.
Refusing to join his insane
counterpart in Washington in a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias, Putin deploys the one phrase which unites every
dictator, prime minister, mafiosi
autocrat, king, president, mass-murdering tyrant, public relations hack or fawning
editor: the “war on terror”. I reckon Putin and Trump use this circumlocution
about the same number of times. It’s a cracker for the masses, and it doesn’t
matter if it’s uttered by a cynic in the Kremlin or a guy in the White House
who is completely bananas. But Putin, of course, is a man for all seasons.
===========
f.
Israeli Military Prevents Palestinian Attempt
to Break Gaza’s Naval Blockade
May 29, 2018
Palestinians in Gaza mounted a flotilla of small
ships to take 17 injured to Cyprus for medical treatment, but Israel’s navy
halted the expedition. Meanwhile, Israel also launched massive strikes on Hamas
positions in retaliation for mortar fire from Gaza. Noor
Harazeen reports from Gaza
===========
g.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 29 May, 2018
Subject: [MCM] Open war on Gaza (WITH PHOTOS & LINKS FOR DONATIONS)
As "our free press" is
largely not reporting, Israel is openly at war
with Gaza. Since Hamas took the bait, firing rockets
into Israel a few hours ago, the Gaza Strip is under heavy
shelling.
This will only worsen the
humanitarian disaster over there; so please consider making a donation to
the nurses caring for the wounded.
(If you're going to do it, DO IT NOW, as such donations may be blocked across the
board.)
We are a young volunteer group working to help the wounded in the Gaza
Strip who were shot by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip
We are working with them first Powell first aid and work the necessary refills
for them
We are living in a great ordeal due to a great shortage of medicines and first
aid kits for the poor economic situation in Gaza
As has been the case in the Gaza Strip for the past 12 years of a suffocating
siege in the Gaza Strip
We hereby wish to assist you
We need a large range of medicines
The first is gauze and iodine
And saline solution
And some other refractories, such as a band of wounds
and some masks, to protect against toxic gases fired by the Israeli army
at us
We also visit the wounded in their homes to continue with them and stay in
contact with them until they recover from this injury
And examine their wounds
We are a group of volunteer nurses in helping the wounded in the Gaza Strip
Hence we need you to stand with us in this ordeal
Help us help you be great no matter how little you promise it is great for us
thank you
$ 5 is enough to help a person once and first aid to the injured
Every day, 500 wounded and more are injured and they need us
Thank you my dear ones
This is a direct support PayPal account
eb.erouq@gmail.com
Or through this campaign
Paypal account
From Amal Arafa:
Since Tuesday morning, May 29, Gaza
has been subjected to a fierce attack from the Israeli occupation. Sites,
land and residential buildings have been hit hard and the shelling
continues. I write this mail and hear the sounds of explosions shaking the
Gaza Strip.
The sounds of the planes do not
leave the atmosphere of Gaza
The Israeli occupation forces also
arrested 18 people, including two women while they were sailing at sea,
traveling to the Greek Cypriot coast to ask for
help. The fate of these people has yet to be known
We do not know what will happen and
we are in great concern about it, and we need those who support us from
journalism and support on the pages of communication.
We need more donations to secure
ourselves.
PHOTOS
FROM GAZA ATTACKS ON 28 MAY 2018:
===========
h.
URGENT
URGENT
Date : Tue, 29 May 2018
De : Union of Agricultural Work Committees <uawc.news@uawc-pal.org>
http://www.uawc-pal.org <http://www.uawc-pal.org/
Dear UAWC’s Friends,
Warm regards from the occupied Palestine
Besides the crimes done against our Palestinian people in Gaza strip, and the
daily attacks in the West bank by the settlers, the occupation
authority through a group of settlers organizations, is continuing its
incitement campaign against the Palestinian civil society organizations
in general, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees “UAWC” in particular.
Recently, they have published a video in which they claimed that UAWC is
funding a “terrorist” attacks against “Israeli targets”, and asking the
donors and the friends of Palestinian people to
stop their funding for UAWC.
*We turn to you all to seek your help as lovers of peace and justice to
confront this terrorist campaign against UAWC and Palestinian civil
society and to help in removing this video by reporting this video as
inflammatory material full of fraud and lies. Below is a detailed
explanation of how to report a video in order to remove it from YouTube.*
The YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcueQZslZGo
How to report a YouTube video:
https://www.wikihow.com/Report-a-Video-on-YouTube
We hope you can help in spreading the message which will enable us to delete
this video from YouTube within the coming two days.
Thank you for your cooperation
In struggle
Aghsan Barghouthi
Media Coordinator
Union Of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
aghsan@uawc-pal.org
===========
i.
The roll out of 5G wireless service is 'a massive health experiment,' public health
expert warns as cell companies install 800,000 towers
across
the US
·
The
latest generation of wireless service - 5G - is being rolled out across select
cities in the US
·
Networks
will transmit data 100 times faster using shorter radiation waves
·
The
new network will require 800,000 new 'small cell' towers
·
Some
research has suggested that cell phone radiation may be carcinogenic
·
The
new millimeter waves used in 5G have hardly been studied and introducing them
constitutes an 'experiment,' warns a public health professor
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5784487/The-roll-5G-wireless-service-massive-health-experiment-public-health-expert-warns-a.html#ixzz5H00VGXV3
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
===========
j.
Scientists warn of potential serious health effects of 5G
https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Scientist-5G-appeal-2017.pdf
(September 13, 2017)
===========
k.
Un scientisme contre les enfants de milieux populaires
Pascal Boissel
La question du scientisme, des scientismes est insistante. Nous avons à la
prendre très au sérieux. Voici une contribution à ce débat devenu urgent.
Connaissez-vous Stanislas Dehaene ?
Le Point, dans un récent numéro1, place son visage en couverture, le
présente comme « le pape du cerveau » et lui consacre douze pages.
Ses travaux « visent à enregistrer » les « capacités intellectuelles des
enfants pour les comprendre ». Ce qui est dit en creux, c'est que sans « preuve
» par IRM et scanner, les travaux sur les apprentissages des enfants accumulés
depuis des décennies n'ont pas de valeur scientifique, donc pas de valeur.
Serait-ce le nouveau monde de Macron ?
Voici quelques citations de cette interview.
Il est affirmé l'importance de faire du sport et de bien dormir, de faire
de la musique et de faire des efforts intellectuels, de lire à haute voix.
Ébouriffant, non ? Il y est dit aussi qu'il faut bien « bien nourrir le cerveau
» : sans doute avec le reste du corps hébergeant ledit cerveau ? Bref, un
certain nombre de banalités, mais rehaussée du prestige de « la science » dure.
Mais pas seulement.
L'article souligne : « Ses travaux invalident certaines pratiques pédagogiques.
Il est démontré que le cerveau ne peut traiter qu'une tâche consciente à la
fois ». Ce qui était reconnu empiriquement comme une (rare) supériorité des
femmes sur les hommes est balayé d'un revers d'IRM.
Il y parle des différences entre les filles et les garçons en mathématiques
; cette exclusion genrée ne nécessite pas l'apport
des neurosciences pour être démontrée...
L'importance de parler tôt une langue étrangère est soulignée à juste titre
; or, rien n'est dit dans ce long dossier sur les capacités particulières, à
étudier mieux, des enfants d'origine étrangère en milieux populaires ; au
contraire, ils sont abordés sous l'angle d'un déficit à noter. Le racisme
social n'est pas loin.
Il est fait référence aux travaux de Céline Alvarez2 : Dehaene en a conclu qu'« avec une bonne pédagogie, on
peut apprendre à lire plus tôt ». Il cite la méthode Montessori ; rien n'est
dit sur le marché en école privée qui lui est associé, ce qui ne saurait
disqualifier les travaux de recherche associés à cette méthode, certes.
Approchons du dur de cette interview. L'homme qui se fait photographier
avec un moulage de son propre cerveau sur son bureau affirme qu'il est ravi de
diriger ce Conseil scientifique car « c'est un problème magnifique que
d'essayer de comprendre comment le cerveau apprend ». Si les mots ont un sens,
il s'intéresse au cerveau comme d'un objet détaché du corps humain, comme si le
cerveau était le lieu unique de la pensée, se désintéressant par méthode des
humains et de leurs interactions sociales. Il considère qu'avant lui on ne
comprenait pas « comment le cerveau apprend ». Le mépris pour les pédagogues,
sociologues, épistémologues, psychologues, et autres est bel et bien affirmé.
Dans un article intitulé « la lecture, un jeu d'enfant. Test. Dans un CP de
Marseille, le logiciel GraphoLearn fait le bonheur
des élèves... et celui de leur institutrice », accompagné de photos d'enfants
en classe avec des casques sur les oreilles, la professeure des écoles se
félicite : « Ils sont vraiment dans leur bulle ». Certes, elle ajoute « Ils
peuvent aller à leur rythme et avancer selon leur réel niveau de lecture ». Un
peu glaçant peut-être. 2
Aucune connaissance pédagogique si elle n'est pas validée
par un protocole appuyé sur des recherches avec IRM ne saurait avoir la moindre
validité à lire ici le pape des neurosciences. Il nie le désir du professeur,
le désir de transmettre.
On peut s'inquiéter vivement d'apprendre qu'un « guide fondé sur l'état de
la recherche », un livret de 130 pages, « pour enseigner la lecture et
l'écriture au CP » vient d'être envoyé aux professeur.e.s
des écoles. Stanislas Dehaene y est cité douze fois.
Alors la pétition « Pour l'avenir de nos enfants »3, à propos de ce «
Conseil scientifique de l’Éducation nationale » présidé par Stanislas Dehaene,
est fort justifiée. Ce texte définit comme imposture la nomination d'un
neuroscientifique à la tête de ce conseil. Un élément central de
l'argumentation est qu'il est fait « peu allusion aux solutions déjà
préconisées par les pédagogues, enseignants, psychiatres, psychanalystes,
psychologues, sociologues à partir de leur longue expérience de terrain », ce
qui est bien l'esprit de l'interview dans Le Point de l'intéressé.
La dirigeante du syndicat FSU, syndicat qui regroupe des enseignants de
tous niveaux, en mai 2018, a alerté sur la « remise en cause des valeurs
fondamentales de l'école publique », le renforcement des inégalités scolaires
et des « déterminismes sociaux ». Et sur le « renoncement au pluralisme de la
recherche », et la négation de « l’expertise professionnelle » portée par
Dehaene et associés.
Un article, « Les neurosciences comme idéologie »4 de Bertrand Geay et Samy Johsua précise les
enjeux. Ce conseil est porteur de scientisme, mais il a une tâche et une seule
: l'étude des manuels scolaires et la formation des enseignants.
Que cette tâche soit dévolue d'abord à des neuroscientifiques ne peut
qu’étonner, Et en effet ce conseil est « dominé par les psychologues
cognitivistes et les neuroscientifiques » et par le premier d'entre eux,
Christophe Dehaene. C'est une « provocation » assurément. Mais M. Dehaene, à
l'occasion, peut dire aussi que les recherches neuroscientifiques « ne peuvent
définir dans le détail les pratiques pédagogiques ».
Sur l'essentiel, c'est un « coup de force » : en affirmant « le passage de
l'imagerie cérébrale aux conduites », c'est la dimension sociale qui est niée
de façon abrupte, (mais pas dans toutes les déclarations de ce Conseil).
Les deux auteurs insistant sur les travaux existants niés par le ministre
et ce Conseil proposent de prendre exemple sur les Etats-Unis où les recherches
concernant l'enseignement sont beaucoup plus variées qu'en France.
C'est un scientisme qui nous est bien décrit, mais un scientisme qui sait
être tantôt rusé et subtil, tantôt impitoyable. Nous sommes invités à prendre
garde de ne pas sous-estimer celui qui est assurément un adversaire.
La conclusion de l'article est que ce Conseil a pour mission d'affirmer à
un large public que les « meilleurs scientifiques président désormais aux
destinées de l'école publique » tout en lui donnant « une tâche finalement
réduite ».
L'introduction de ce recueil d'articles5 donne une autre focale, complémentaire: « de façon
inattendue, Jean Michel Blanquer est devenu une des
pièces maîtresses de la stratégie d’Emmanuel Macron.
C’est en quelque sorte un couteau suisse : il rassure, par son indéniable
connaissance du monde éducatif et sa capacité à célébrer une vision
traditionnelle de l’école, les parents sensibles à ces thématiques ; il a
l’oreille d’une partie du monde enseignant qui apprécie un discours qui célèbre
la transmission du savoir et l’autorité ; il est très lié à la droite et sert Macron pour mettre en difficulté Les Républicains ; il a
bonne presse dans le monde patronal.
Le ministre se présente comme celui qui veut dépasser des conflits anciens
que la « science » aurait tranchés. » 3
Avec ce Conseil scientifique voulu par Blanquer, dictées à l'ancienne, autoritarisme, sélection
sont à l'ordre du jour. Mais pas seulement.
Il faut être attentif à la multiplicité des fronts ouverts par le ministre,
à la cohérence qui peut s'en dégager, mais aussi au pragmatisme de ce ministre.
En vue : une école privée renforcée, des écoles sélectives, un recul de la
mixité sociale. Mais ce ministre est capable de moduler ses prises de position,
de construire un bloc réactionnaire et scientiste, mais sans ignorer les courants
autres chez les scientifiques.
La lutte contre le scientisme dans l'offensive idéologique en cours sera
déterminante. Mais il nous faut prendre garde de ne pas confondre neurosciences
et ses vulgarisations scientistes, ne pas simplifier les résultats des
neuroscientifiques, ne pas confondre les interviews de Dehaene et ses travaux
scientifiques reconnus par ses pairs. Il nous faut être attentif aux voix
discordantes qui viennent depuis le milieu des neurosciences qui peuvent être
exaspérés par la caricature médiatique que l'on fait de leurs recherches, que
le ministère participe à en donner. Dans Le Monde du 25 avril, on peut
lire la déclaration de 19 chercheurs qui dénoncent l’utilisation qui est faite
de la génétique. Spécialistes de haut niveau dans ce domaine, ils récusent
l’idée qu’« il existerait un « socle génétique important et quantifié, à
l’origine de différences psychologiques entre les êtres humains, en particulier
selon la classe sociale, les origines ou le sexe ».
Nous savons, à l'Union syndicale de la psychiatrie, depuis 2011 avec le
Collectif Pas de zéro de conduite que les élites politiques du pays ont
un projet de « repérage des élèves à risque », un projet de contrôle de masse
dès la petite enfance, projet qui fut certes différé grâce à une mobilisation
efficace.
Pour nous, lutter contre ces projets, ceux de Dehaene, et lutter contre le
scientisme avec « Stop DSM » et aussi déconstruire ce qui est une véritable
épidémie de diagnostics de TDA/H, tout cela participe du même combat.
« L’épidémie de TDA/H est devenue un fait social majeur. (…) Les questions
qu’elle soulève visent à la fois les orientations de la psychiatrie et les
évolutions de la société, en particulier à propos de la place donnée à
l’enfant. (...)En réalité, cette soi-disant avancée scientifique liée aux
neurosciences et à la neuro-imagerie s’appuie avant
tout sur les effets à court terme de la prescription de méthylphénidate
»6.
Nous avons à combattre ce scientisme ministériel en prenant garde à nos
terrains de lutte et à notre façon de les populariser est une urgence. De façon
générale, c'est le sort des enfants des classes défavorisées, racisés mais pas seulement, qui est en cause. Nous devons
continuer à le démontrer et constituer des alliances efficaces comme à l'époque
de Pas de zéro de conduite.
Pascal Boissel
Le 28 mai 2018
Notes
1- Le Point, 10 mai 2018
2- Cf. la critique faite dans l'article « Les neurosciences comme idéologie
», cf. infra.
3- « Pour l'avenir de nos enfants », https://www.change.org/p/m-dehaene-pour-l-avenir-de-nos-enfants
4- Bertrand Geay et Samy Johsua.
« Les neurosciences comme idéologie » in « Blanquer :
un libéralisme autoritaire contre l'éducation », (notes de la Fondation
Copernic), Syllepse, 2018.
5- Axel Trani, in opus cité, « Derrière l'activisme ministériel, un projet
dangereux ».
https://stop-dsm.com/fr/les-journees-stop-a-lepidemie-de-tdah-13-octobre-2018
PS
: Texte édité aussi sur l'édition « Contes de la folie ordinaire » de Mediapart le 20 mai 2018.
===========
l.
Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30620.htm
This Is A Must Watch Video
A brief and crucial history of the United States
Posted
by Class
War Films Nightmare and insanity are akin:
mysterious and involuntary states that skew and distort objective reality.
One wakens from nightmare; from insanity there is no awakening. Whether Americans live in the one
state or the other is the paramount question of this era. For
two hundred years Americans have been indoctrinated with a mythology created,
imposed and sustained by a manipulating cabal: the financial elite that built
its absolute control on the muscle and blood, good will, ignorance and
credulity, of its citizenry. America
began with the invasion of a populated continent and the genocide of its
native people. Once solidly established, it grafted enslavement of another
race onto that base. With
those two pillars of state firmly in place it declared itself an independent
nation in a document that nobly proclaimed the equality of all mankind. In
that act of monumental hypocrisy America’s myth had its beginning. |
|||
===========
m.
In Defense of Refusal:
Teacher Rebellion Rejects Corporate Assault on
Public Education
by Graham B. Slater
===========
n.
From: Максим
Скороходов
[mailto:zveroboy2@mail.ru]
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2018 11:40 AM
Subject: Hello from Russia
Dear Francis,
It was quite surprising to find CEIMSA web page. I thought that in
Europe no such views are allowed for sharing in public. And even more
surprising was to see that you and your collegues
actually work at the Univercity of Grenoble. Does
that mean that there is a group of students united by your ideas?
I work for a communist TV channal "Red
line" - http://www.rline.tv Our major goal is to show how ugly, greedy and destroing for Russia and the whole world capitalism is. And
we would like to establish some kind of communication with you and your friends
and students. Perhaps we could even organise web
meetings to share information. Does it sound interesting to you?
With the best wishes,
Maxim Skorokhodov
--
No pasaran!
Максим Скороходов
===========
o.
From:
"World BEYOND War" <info@worldbeyondwar.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 29 May, 2018
Subject: No to a New War in Europe
|
===========
p.
A Look Back at the My Lai Massacre,
MLK's Assassination, Columbia Protests and the Catonsville Nine
===========
q.
From 9/11 to
Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas
Drake on RAI (1/5)
https://therealnews.com/stories/tdrake0618raipt1-2
On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former
Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the
NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that
could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a
massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans
===========
r.
ICE Is Sending a Message to the World’s Asylum Seekers:
The US Is No Place of Refuge
by John Washington
Separating
children from their family members, imposing excessively long detention, and
other ways the immigration bureaucracy is making life impossible for asylum
seekers.
===========
s.
From: "Friends of the Earth" <foe@foe.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 29 May, 2018
Subject: Quick signature needed: GMOs
|
===========
t.
From: "À la Une de Là-bas" <contact@la-bas.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 29 May, 2018
Subject: Jean Ziegler :
« On ne peut ni amender, ni réformer le capitalisme »
|
===========
u.
Noam Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival:
America’s Quest For
Global Dominance
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15052.htm
Professor
Noam Chomsky, speaking at Illinois State University on October 7th, 2003..
“If you repeat it loudly
enough it will become the truth” - MIT institute professor of linguistics and
author Noam Chomsky speaks out on U.S. hegemony, controlling the domestic
population through fear and the historical parallels of current U.S. foreign
policy.
===========
v.
Will Putin’s Policy of Concession Succeed?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49523.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s
speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Conference last weekend
shows the Russian government’s ensnarement by neoliberal economic policy. Putin
defended globalism and free trade, and he warned that
crisis will result from the breakup of the global system.
In fact, crisis is the result of
globalism and neoliberal economics. For Russia neoliberal economics means both
economic and political crisis. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/05/25/americas-fifth-column-will-destroy-russia/
Neoliberal economics produces
domestic economic crisis, because it diverts employment in high-productivity,
high-value added activities, such as manufacturing and tradeable
professional skills such as software engineering, from developed economies,
such as the US, UK, and Europe, to economies where wages are much lower.
Neoliberal economics is also the basis for financialization,
which diverts the economic surplus from real investment into debt service.
Together these devastating impacts of neoliberal economics kill economic
growth. Just look at the no-growth experience of the Western world in the 21st
century, where growth has been limited to the prices of financial assets while
well-paid employment disappears.
===========
w.
Needed Now: A Real and Radical Left
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/needed-now-a-real-and-radical-left/
It’s “socialism or barbarism.” So wrote the
brilliant German Marxist revolutionary Rosa
Luxemburg in 1915. The 20th and 21st centuries have borne her out.
The list of barbarian horrors that have disfigured the human record under the
class rule of capital across the last century is daunting indeed.
Now, however, we have to say that Luxemburg put
things too gently. Marx and Engels got closer to our contemporary reality in
1848. They wrote in “The Communist Manifesto” about how the long-standing class
struggle between producers and appropriators always ends “either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes.”
It’s socialism or barbarism if we’re lucky. To be
more precise, its eco-socialism or annihilation as capital turns the planet
into a giant greenhouse gas chamber. The earth science is perfectly clear. The
“common ruin” of all is precisely where humanity is headed after half a
millennium under the rule of a system that relies on permanent unsustainable
expansion to avert collapse. “The rich,” the French ecological writer Herve Kempf
observed 11 years ago, “are destroying the Earth.” Well, not the earth itself,
just the chances for a decent and organized human future.
===========
x.
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.
Black Agenda Radio, Week of May
28, 2018
https://blackagendareport.com/black-agenda-radio-week-may-28-2018
Glynn Ford
===========
y.
Journalists and Academics Expose UK’s Criminal Actions
in the Middle East
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49544.htm
by Julie Hyland
Media
on Trial held a successful event in Leeds on Sunday, in the face of sustained
efforts to prevent the meeting taking place.
The group was formed by Frome Stop War, based in Somerset. Working with academics,
investigative journalists and other interested parties and individuals, and
drawing on the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq, Media on Trial seeks to
“cultivate public scepticism when faced with
establishment and corporate media’s partisan reporting at times of conflict.”
It held well-attended meetings in Frome and London
last year. Its success in exposing the ongoing regime-change operations in Syria,
and government/media propaganda to this end, has made its members the subject
of an organised media smear campaign, culminating in
efforts to silence it altogether. “Government propaganda and the war
on terror from 9/11 to Syria” was booked at Leeds City Museum. But in an
assault on free speech, Labour-run Leeds City Council
in West Yorkshire cancelled
the event. Sheila Coombes (From Stop War)
has reported that the ban, made on May 3—World Press Freedom Day—came after a
series of attacks
on several of the featured speakers by the Huffington
Post, Guardian and Timesnewspapers as “Assad Apologists.” Among those targeted were Professor
Piers Robinson (University of Sheffield), Professor Tim Hayward
(University of Edinburgh)—both of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and
Media (WGSPM)—and investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley.
Having travelled to Leeds to check
out the venue, Coombes was told that Leeds City
Council had cancelled the event, suggesting that “security issues” were
involved. She was informed that it was a blanket ban and that no other
council-run venue would host it.
Less than an hour after she had been informed, the Yorkshire Post ran an online article welcoming the ban, followed by a similar report in the Huffington Post. The speed of publication suggests that these media outlets were aware of the ban before Coombes herself had been informed.
===========
z.
Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
https://www.alternet.org/meet-economist-behind-one-percents-stealth-takeover-america
by Lynn Parramore
Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions.
Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.
The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.