On 9 July 2021, I said this:
Since my tweet, these two articles have been published:
ALISON WEIR - AUGUST 18, 2021
Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Saturday, April 15, 2017
On Syria - Peggy Mason is a dog of war dressed as a human rights defender
Canadian
dogs of war dressed as human rights defenders, from Trudeau to NGOs. A
very tired trick that must be exposed. Thank you Ken Stone.
AND SEE 2017-04-15 UPDATE BELOW.
2017-04-12:
<< Ken Stone challenges Peggy Mason to a public debate.
Based on her attribution of the recent chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun on the government of Bashar-Al-Assad, I wish to challenge Peggy Mason to a public debate. She is not fit to lead a peace organization in Canada.
Peggy Mason is president of the Rideau Institute and a leader of Ceasefire, the Institute’s main public outreach and advocacy arm.
I am available to debate Ms. Mason publicly at a time and place which can be negotiated between the two of us.
Ken Stone
Treasurer, Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War >>
2017-04-15 UPDATE:
PEGGY MASON HIDES FROM DEBATE, AND KEN'S RESPONSE TO HER EVASION:
<< Dear Peggy,
Thank you for your prompt reply and your admission that you were wrong to to conclude, before an investigation took place, that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the April 4th gas attack at Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.
It’s unfortunate that you don’t wish to debate the widely different attitudes within the peace movement towards the US missile strike on the Shayat Airbase in Syria. Nonetheless, the Canadian peace movement still has to consider the issues you don’t want to debate.
In your reply, you touched on the key issue of investigation and judgment before any consequential action should take place. However, in your original e-mail message to the “peace listserver”, you wrote that “Putin has said he will agree to an independent investigation. Tillerson should nail this down.”
I think you have got things backwards. US Secretary of State Tillerson did not wait for (or even call for) an independent investigation of the April 4 incident. Rather, on his watch, his country rushed to engage in an act of war on the sovereign country of Syria which killed several civilians and pushed us towards a wider war in the Middle East, while Putin (as you noted) did call for an independent investigation.
So, here is where we have a difference. In my opinion and that of our Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, the peace movement in Canada needs to be clear and consistent about international law. No country is above that law. The USA and its coalition partners, including Canada, are violating international law by overflying and stationing military forces in the sovereign country of Syria without the permission of the Syrian government. They are also violating international law by inserting, funding, and arming proxy armies of terrorist mercenaries to achieve regime change in Syria. They have levelled onerous economic sanctions upon Syria, causing great distress to the Syrian people, without the approval of the UN Security Council. The US-led coalition used military force against the Syrian government in its attack on Sharyat Airbase on April 7, 2017.
Where we have another difference with the Rideau Institute and Ceasefire is that you have decided to put pressure on the wrong parties. You seem to want to hold the Russian government to account when it appears that it had no hand in the incident and although its military forces are legally stationed in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. Moreover, you seem to be deeply invested in the campaign to delegitimize the Syrian government and to demonize its elected president.
Neither of your approaches is helpful. And these are very important matters which should be aired in public.
Another important point: what have you, the Rideau Institute, and Ceasefire said about the performance of Prime Minister Trudeau in the context of Khan Sheikhoun? Trudeau initially called for an investigation into the claims of a gas attack. Then, less than 24 hours later, he endorsed the USA cruise missile strike on Syria's Sharyat airbase. Now, his Minister of Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, imposes new unilateral sanctions on Syria, which are illegal under international law, because they lack the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Your comments would be appreciated by our Coalition members.
Finally my parting comment on your parting comment that (you) are “paying your dues every day” in the peace movement. As far as I know, you are paid a salary. Am I wrong?
Ken Stone
Treasurer,
Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
AND SEE 2017-04-15 UPDATE BELOW.
2017-04-12:
<< Ken Stone challenges Peggy Mason to a public debate.
Based on her attribution of the recent chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun on the government of Bashar-Al-Assad, I wish to challenge Peggy Mason to a public debate. She is not fit to lead a peace organization in Canada.
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Peggy Mason <margaretpeggy.mason@gmail.com> wrote on the "peace-listserve":
"Dear Folks,
We should be calling for an independent UN investigation, with full access, so we have the evidence needed to hold Assad to account, whenever that might be. Because he cannot be prosecuted now, does not in any way mean that it can never be prosecuted. There is no immunity for war crimes.
But the starting point is independent, credible evidence. BTW Putin has said he will agree to an independent investigation. Tillerson should nail this down.
Peggy"
Peggy Mason is president of the Rideau Institute and a leader of Ceasefire, the Institute’s main public outreach and advocacy arm.
I am available to debate Ms. Mason publicly at a time and place which can be negotiated between the two of us.
Ken Stone
Treasurer, Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War >>
2017-04-15 UPDATE:
PEGGY MASON HIDES FROM DEBATE, AND KEN'S RESPONSE TO HER EVASION:
<< Dear Peggy,
Thank you for your prompt reply and your admission that you were wrong to to conclude, before an investigation took place, that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the April 4th gas attack at Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.
It’s unfortunate that you don’t wish to debate the widely different attitudes within the peace movement towards the US missile strike on the Shayat Airbase in Syria. Nonetheless, the Canadian peace movement still has to consider the issues you don’t want to debate.
In your reply, you touched on the key issue of investigation and judgment before any consequential action should take place. However, in your original e-mail message to the “peace listserver”, you wrote that “Putin has said he will agree to an independent investigation. Tillerson should nail this down.”
I think you have got things backwards. US Secretary of State Tillerson did not wait for (or even call for) an independent investigation of the April 4 incident. Rather, on his watch, his country rushed to engage in an act of war on the sovereign country of Syria which killed several civilians and pushed us towards a wider war in the Middle East, while Putin (as you noted) did call for an independent investigation.
So, here is where we have a difference. In my opinion and that of our Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, the peace movement in Canada needs to be clear and consistent about international law. No country is above that law. The USA and its coalition partners, including Canada, are violating international law by overflying and stationing military forces in the sovereign country of Syria without the permission of the Syrian government. They are also violating international law by inserting, funding, and arming proxy armies of terrorist mercenaries to achieve regime change in Syria. They have levelled onerous economic sanctions upon Syria, causing great distress to the Syrian people, without the approval of the UN Security Council. The US-led coalition used military force against the Syrian government in its attack on Sharyat Airbase on April 7, 2017.
Where we have another difference with the Rideau Institute and Ceasefire is that you have decided to put pressure on the wrong parties. You seem to want to hold the Russian government to account when it appears that it had no hand in the incident and although its military forces are legally stationed in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. Moreover, you seem to be deeply invested in the campaign to delegitimize the Syrian government and to demonize its elected president.
Neither of your approaches is helpful. And these are very important matters which should be aired in public.
Another important point: what have you, the Rideau Institute, and Ceasefire said about the performance of Prime Minister Trudeau in the context of Khan Sheikhoun? Trudeau initially called for an investigation into the claims of a gas attack. Then, less than 24 hours later, he endorsed the USA cruise missile strike on Syria's Sharyat airbase. Now, his Minister of Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, imposes new unilateral sanctions on Syria, which are illegal under international law, because they lack the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Your comments would be appreciated by our Coalition members.
Finally my parting comment on your parting comment that (you) are “paying your dues every day” in the peace movement. As far as I know, you are paid a salary. Am I wrong?
Ken Stone
Treasurer,
Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
From: Peggy Mason
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 8:44 AM
To: ernie yacub
Cc: Robin Collins ; Ken Stone ; peace list
Subject: Re: [Peace-l] CW and cruise missiles - I wish to challenge Peggy Mason to a public debate
Sorry to disappoint but I have no intention whatsoever of wasting my time on such a ridiculous debate.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 8:34 PM, <ernieyacub@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Robin Collins <robin.w.collins@gmail.com> wrote:
Ken S,
If you read closer you will see that Peggy refers to war crimes committed by Assad, and those may include his alleged use of chemical weapons on April 4.
if you read much closer, you will see the bias in her statement...
"We should be calling for an independent UN investigation, with full access, so we have the evidence needed to hold Assad to account, whenever that might be."
i would very much like to see a debate between pm and ks - what do you say peggy?
ey >>
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
It's the Geopolitics, stupid!
By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD
Geopolitics determines domestic policy.
Geopolitics determines domestic policy.
Geopolitics determines domestic policy.
This is apparent in the client country "Canada", where no sovereignty is allowed, and where domestic policy is entirely about preventing any emergence of actual democracy.
It is glaringly obvious, to anyone who escapes the constant institutional social-engineering restrictions and blaring propaganda amplified by all the media, that US-led geopolitics determines every aspect of state management in Canada.
That US-led geopolitics determines every aspect of state management in Canada is true in every area of state involvement:
- regulation of politics
- social policy
- health policy
- educational and student-debt policy
- prison and police complex
- domestic surveillance complex
- slave banking and monetary policy
- corporate tax and royalties policies
- zero resistance against foreign takeovers
- zero national policy for industrial-base development in all areas except the client arms industries and slave industries such as agri-food using proprietary seeds and chemicals
- slave trade agreements designed to counter BRICS and boost US global corporations
- implementation of carbon economic instruments
- pipeline economics (versus domestic refinement and transformation)
- predatory global mining extraction (including on domestic territories)
- arms industry preeminence
- arms purchases
- foreign policy and diplomatic campaigns
- involvement in and diplomatic support for illegal direct and proxy wars of aggression
The "Conservative" and "Liberal" blocks are entirely aligned with the US "Republican" and "Democrat" blocks, to the point that it has become a cartoon, with pipelines swinging in different directions at the turn of elections, as easily as geopolitical directions.
Break diplomatic ties with Iran, remake diplomatic ties with Iran... etc.
The Canadian state, in the hands of the US governing complex, has given itself the task of gutting our minds and our political agency, in order to serve the US global campaigns, without the nuisance of popular domestic awareness or demands. This has been a long and continuing process, which accelerated in the 1980s, and became solidified by ever-increasing "globalization" agreements, and security "cooperation".
The truth is: there is no Canada. There is only an illusion maintained by servants. There are institutional remnants that would allow sovereignty to take hold, in a battle for the nation, but the intelligentsia and service managers have no interest in an independent and democratic nation on Canadian territory.
At this rate, eventually the majority of Canadians will experience something towards what the Aboriginals have experienced in Canada's genocide. Those who have had their families and lives destroyed by the "children's aid" and family court complex are already experiencing aboriginality at the hands of a vicious state system.
The corporate managers (including governments, which are corporations) already invest abroad, serve on the boards of multinationals, vacation in the US, accept tourist packages to Israel, send their kids to Harvard, and even occasionally try to import their facade party leaders from Harvard. The middle managers want a heated pool, vacation packages, big-screen entertainment, two cars, and a golden retirement.
All the others can fight among themselves, be institutionalized, and get fucked.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Psycho-biological basis for image leverage and the case of Israel
by Denis G. Rancourt
Psycho-biological basis for image leverage – General model
Family and friends keep the First World financial-corporate elite bosses from murdering brown people in the developing world. Not directly of course but via a psycho-biological survival reflex: We don’t feel secure living with overt psychopaths.
In other words, for the elite bosses to continue practicing genocidal predation for power and profit it is necessary that the predation be cast in a false cover of humanitarian aid, democratic development, solidarity, progress, and the like, and that the most overtly murderous practices be cast as necessary in a fight against evil.
If sufficient care is not taken to secure this cover of mental imagery, then the bosses’ actions will appear more to be what they are, murderous and psychopathic, and the bosses’ children may not feel comfortable sitting on the bosses’ laps and the bosses’ partners may not feel comfortable sleeping in the same bed…
Actually, this problem is solved within the elite nuclear family with a strong family culture of elitism and racism. And it is solved in the bosses’ communities of friends with a strong community culture of classism, elitism, and racism.
But these gated communities are not hermetic. The elite classes have contacts and interactions with the more vibrant broader society. That’s where things get tricky. If the broader society sees the bosses as being psychopathic then by reflection the gated community will see itself as defective and this will represent a serious challenge to its self-image and to its sense of security.
One reaction is for the gated community to further isolate itself, to deepen its elitism, classism, and racism and to build higher walls around its community but this strategy is not sustainable [1]. Often, just the potential for the broader community to develop a negative impression of the elite bosses is enough to somewhat keep the elite psychopaths in check.
A main battlefield therefore is the mental environment in the broader society. The elite bosses own the media and control the schools and the institutions. They work hard and continuously at branding themselves and their finance-corporate projects in a positive light. Energy extraction giants are “green”, in fact greener than ever. Finance giants bring development to the world – one wonders why we need NGOs. NGOs alleviate any guilt or second thoughts from the rampages of exploitation and wholesale destruction. An elaborate mesh of lies is constantly constructed and maintained in order to keep the bosses hidden and their dirty work clean.
The mental environment therefore is a place where elite forces cross swords in winning over hearts and minds (read impulses and impressions) and where activists can have a counter influence. People talk. Errors get through. Interpretations go wrong. New communication platforms suffer temporary democracy.
An important tool in the activist’s arsenal is to go for the jugular. Call murder murder and genocide genocide. Call it displacement, extermination, and a war crime when that is what it is and name the exploiters and murderers. Find them and name them. Expose it in the broad society and flyer it in the gated community if you can.
Once the blood on their hands starts to show they will want to escape the mess that they have created. They will be more constrained than before. Having to create appearances always caries a real price – a new standard to which the mental environment must conform... Expose expose expose and they will need to spend more resources than ever defending their image. And the more they spin the more obvious it becomes that they are spinning.
So our job is to keep them honest by bold, creative, radical and repeated affirmations about their crimes, in the hope that their partners and children will leave them until they come to their senses and discover inter-class and inter-race civility, in the hope that their desires to be accepted in the broader society will reign them in.
This model of leverage on the powerful via public image is applicable at every level of a given control hierarchy and in relationships between individuals, institutions, corporations, and sovereign nations…
Individual Example – Terrorist vs. Freedom Fighter
The military understands this. An essential step in creating a killing machine that follows orders is to separate him/her from his/her nuclear family and community and to displace all self-worth evaluation in the individual to the sole standard of following orders, to replace community with an isolated squadron of death legitimized by orders and to demonize the enemy.
Following this, the more community-tied and morally constrained individuals, if they don’t escape or rebel, suffer “post traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD), no wonder. The more the war is questioned by the broader society and the aggressor home community, the greater the need for soldier and military-community isolation and the greater the incidence of PTSD. “Support our troops” becomes a military exigency.
Soldiers following orders in geopolitical wars of aggression – even if masked in aggressor-nation “self-defence,” like elite finance-corporate boss predators and “facilitators,” are terrorists.
Similarly, an essential step in making a suicide bomber is to kill his/her family, to separate him/her from his/her original community, to isolate him/her both physically and ideologically, and to replace all self-worth evaluation with liberation through martyrdom. The difference is that the suicide bomber is fighting the perceived killer of his/her actually-murdered family and actually-destroyed community in a desperate act of guaranteed death, not playing a video game from the relative safety of a helicopter gunship.
The freedom fighter on the other hand is a self-defence fighter on home territory [2], relatively integrated with the home community during the fighting. The freedom fighter is motivated by his/her ties with community, rather than artificially isolated from it. As a result, freedom fighters do not suffer PTSD but instead are strengthened by the solidarity of a community struggle for survival. This is why the Viet Cong and Northern People’s Army of Vietnam were unbeatable without massive all-out nation-wide aerial and economic destruction.
This is why US-trained and supported “contra” forces kill community. This is why they are trained to root out and murder all community organizers and visible leaders of civil society, to remove the community from the freedom fighters, to destroy the motivation to resist.
Contrary to Empire soldiers and trained killers, freedom fighters readily move from battle to civil society and from defence to community, without suffering overly debilitating adjustments. I have met former civil war freedom fighters with battle scars (including a bullet hole in the head) that were among the most adjusted, rational and authentic community builders I have ever known, including a village mayor, an independent war museum guide, and a community historian. Where are the former Empire soldiers in these positions? – Few and far between.
Nation State Example – The case of Israel
Take the case of Israel [3][4]. It is the local super power in the Middle East and the uncontested military occupier of Gaza and Palestine. From the evidence available, the only thing keeping it from all out genocide of the Palestinians and nuclear extermination of Muslims in the region is public opinion in combination with Israel’s desire to be accepted as part of the broader community of nations.
This is why Israel considers its branding in the world a military priority, because its image limits its military options. This is why the recent flotilla fiasco [1] was a national emergency, because world opinion can tie Israel’s hands and cause the blockade on Gaza to be lifted. This is why jam and crackers are now allowed into Gaza, in order to alleviate public opinion leverage as the international community demands an impartial inquiry.
This is why Israel wants its ballet dancers to tour the world and its scientists to exchange with international laboratories and its perfumes to sell in supermarkets around the world, because positive image is a prerequisite for colonial occupation and indigenous genocide. Ask Canada. Ask the US. Ask Australia. Ask any First World nation that uses immigration labour and practices finance-corporate colonialism.
This is why Boycott-Divestments-and-Sanctions (BDS) for Palestine is such a big deal. BDS alone cannot hurt Israel’s economy. It hurts its image. This in turn produces real leverage regarding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians because it can affect Israel’s relationships even to its closest allies, thereby significantly putting its military economy at risk.
Israel’s image is so low that it is bringing down the credibility of its allies, the US and Canada. How far can this go before the allies want to distance themselves? This is why the Israel Lobby in the US and Canada is part of the real battle [5]. It must constantly fabricate domestic US and Canadian support for Israel and constantly battle infiltration of negative image and opinion from the rest of the world.
Damn it’s hard to practice a proper colonial genocide these days when the indigenous population does not collaborate and has friends in the broader world! It’s tough being Israel.
Our job is to make certain that all colonial exploiters and elite bosses get the image that they deserve. In the case of Israel the violations are flagrant and the leverage is real (thank God).
Notes
[1] "Israelis Celebrate IDF Flotilla Attack" - youTube.
[2] "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." Jean-Paul Sartre.
[3] "Rabbi Weiss Criticizes Zionist Occupation of Palestine" - youTube.
[4] Norman Finkelstein on the Israel-Palestine conflict - website.
[5] "The Israel Lobby (Marije Meerman, VPRO Backlight 2007)" - youTube.
Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca]
Psycho-biological basis for image leverage – General model
Family and friends keep the First World financial-corporate elite bosses from murdering brown people in the developing world. Not directly of course but via a psycho-biological survival reflex: We don’t feel secure living with overt psychopaths.In other words, for the elite bosses to continue practicing genocidal predation for power and profit it is necessary that the predation be cast in a false cover of humanitarian aid, democratic development, solidarity, progress, and the like, and that the most overtly murderous practices be cast as necessary in a fight against evil.
If sufficient care is not taken to secure this cover of mental imagery, then the bosses’ actions will appear more to be what they are, murderous and psychopathic, and the bosses’ children may not feel comfortable sitting on the bosses’ laps and the bosses’ partners may not feel comfortable sleeping in the same bed…
Actually, this problem is solved within the elite nuclear family with a strong family culture of elitism and racism. And it is solved in the bosses’ communities of friends with a strong community culture of classism, elitism, and racism.
But these gated communities are not hermetic. The elite classes have contacts and interactions with the more vibrant broader society. That’s where things get tricky. If the broader society sees the bosses as being psychopathic then by reflection the gated community will see itself as defective and this will represent a serious challenge to its self-image and to its sense of security.
One reaction is for the gated community to further isolate itself, to deepen its elitism, classism, and racism and to build higher walls around its community but this strategy is not sustainable [1]. Often, just the potential for the broader community to develop a negative impression of the elite bosses is enough to somewhat keep the elite psychopaths in check.
A main battlefield therefore is the mental environment in the broader society. The elite bosses own the media and control the schools and the institutions. They work hard and continuously at branding themselves and their finance-corporate projects in a positive light. Energy extraction giants are “green”, in fact greener than ever. Finance giants bring development to the world – one wonders why we need NGOs. NGOs alleviate any guilt or second thoughts from the rampages of exploitation and wholesale destruction. An elaborate mesh of lies is constantly constructed and maintained in order to keep the bosses hidden and their dirty work clean.
The mental environment therefore is a place where elite forces cross swords in winning over hearts and minds (read impulses and impressions) and where activists can have a counter influence. People talk. Errors get through. Interpretations go wrong. New communication platforms suffer temporary democracy.
An important tool in the activist’s arsenal is to go for the jugular. Call murder murder and genocide genocide. Call it displacement, extermination, and a war crime when that is what it is and name the exploiters and murderers. Find them and name them. Expose it in the broad society and flyer it in the gated community if you can.
Once the blood on their hands starts to show they will want to escape the mess that they have created. They will be more constrained than before. Having to create appearances always caries a real price – a new standard to which the mental environment must conform... Expose expose expose and they will need to spend more resources than ever defending their image. And the more they spin the more obvious it becomes that they are spinning.
So our job is to keep them honest by bold, creative, radical and repeated affirmations about their crimes, in the hope that their partners and children will leave them until they come to their senses and discover inter-class and inter-race civility, in the hope that their desires to be accepted in the broader society will reign them in.
This model of leverage on the powerful via public image is applicable at every level of a given control hierarchy and in relationships between individuals, institutions, corporations, and sovereign nations…
Individual Example – Terrorist vs. Freedom Fighter
The military understands this. An essential step in creating a killing machine that follows orders is to separate him/her from his/her nuclear family and community and to displace all self-worth evaluation in the individual to the sole standard of following orders, to replace community with an isolated squadron of death legitimized by orders and to demonize the enemy.Following this, the more community-tied and morally constrained individuals, if they don’t escape or rebel, suffer “post traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD), no wonder. The more the war is questioned by the broader society and the aggressor home community, the greater the need for soldier and military-community isolation and the greater the incidence of PTSD. “Support our troops” becomes a military exigency.
Soldiers following orders in geopolitical wars of aggression – even if masked in aggressor-nation “self-defence,” like elite finance-corporate boss predators and “facilitators,” are terrorists.
Similarly, an essential step in making a suicide bomber is to kill his/her family, to separate him/her from his/her original community, to isolate him/her both physically and ideologically, and to replace all self-worth evaluation with liberation through martyrdom. The difference is that the suicide bomber is fighting the perceived killer of his/her actually-murdered family and actually-destroyed community in a desperate act of guaranteed death, not playing a video game from the relative safety of a helicopter gunship.
The freedom fighter on the other hand is a self-defence fighter on home territory [2], relatively integrated with the home community during the fighting. The freedom fighter is motivated by his/her ties with community, rather than artificially isolated from it. As a result, freedom fighters do not suffer PTSD but instead are strengthened by the solidarity of a community struggle for survival. This is why the Viet Cong and Northern People’s Army of Vietnam were unbeatable without massive all-out nation-wide aerial and economic destruction.
This is why US-trained and supported “contra” forces kill community. This is why they are trained to root out and murder all community organizers and visible leaders of civil society, to remove the community from the freedom fighters, to destroy the motivation to resist.
Contrary to Empire soldiers and trained killers, freedom fighters readily move from battle to civil society and from defence to community, without suffering overly debilitating adjustments. I have met former civil war freedom fighters with battle scars (including a bullet hole in the head) that were among the most adjusted, rational and authentic community builders I have ever known, including a village mayor, an independent war museum guide, and a community historian. Where are the former Empire soldiers in these positions? – Few and far between.
Nation State Example – The case of Israel
Take the case of Israel [3][4]. It is the local super power in the Middle East and the uncontested military occupier of Gaza and Palestine. From the evidence available, the only thing keeping it from all out genocide of the Palestinians and nuclear extermination of Muslims in the region is public opinion in combination with Israel’s desire to be accepted as part of the broader community of nations.This is why Israel considers its branding in the world a military priority, because its image limits its military options. This is why the recent flotilla fiasco [1] was a national emergency, because world opinion can tie Israel’s hands and cause the blockade on Gaza to be lifted. This is why jam and crackers are now allowed into Gaza, in order to alleviate public opinion leverage as the international community demands an impartial inquiry.
This is why Israel wants its ballet dancers to tour the world and its scientists to exchange with international laboratories and its perfumes to sell in supermarkets around the world, because positive image is a prerequisite for colonial occupation and indigenous genocide. Ask Canada. Ask the US. Ask Australia. Ask any First World nation that uses immigration labour and practices finance-corporate colonialism.
This is why Boycott-Divestments-and-Sanctions (BDS) for Palestine is such a big deal. BDS alone cannot hurt Israel’s economy. It hurts its image. This in turn produces real leverage regarding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians because it can affect Israel’s relationships even to its closest allies, thereby significantly putting its military economy at risk.
Israel’s image is so low that it is bringing down the credibility of its allies, the US and Canada. How far can this go before the allies want to distance themselves? This is why the Israel Lobby in the US and Canada is part of the real battle [5]. It must constantly fabricate domestic US and Canadian support for Israel and constantly battle infiltration of negative image and opinion from the rest of the world.
Damn it’s hard to practice a proper colonial genocide these days when the indigenous population does not collaborate and has friends in the broader world! It’s tough being Israel.
Our job is to make certain that all colonial exploiters and elite bosses get the image that they deserve. In the case of Israel the violations are flagrant and the leverage is real (thank God).
Notes
[1] "Israelis Celebrate IDF Flotilla Attack" - youTube.
[2] "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." Jean-Paul Sartre.
[3] "Rabbi Weiss Criticizes Zionist Occupation of Palestine" - youTube.
[4] Norman Finkelstein on the Israel-Palestine conflict - website.
[5] "The Israel Lobby (Marije Meerman, VPRO Backlight 2007)" - youTube.
* * *
Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca]
Saturday, July 26, 2008
AGAINST CHOMSKY
AGAINST CHOMSKY
by Denis G. Rancourt
.
Chomsky invites us to peer into the functioning of the superpower and provides analyses and predictive descriptions of complex societal phenomena such as war, the US military economy, and continental-scale corporate predation. Using institutional and media and geopolitical analyses, Chomsky illustrates golden rules such as that an organization will never work against itself and unravels relationships between domestic interests, class divisions, and global pillaging.
.
As a professor at MIT, is Chomsky an exception to the rule or does Chomsky work for the man?
.
by Denis G. Rancourt
.
Chomsky invites us to peer into the functioning of the superpower and provides analyses and predictive descriptions of complex societal phenomena such as war, the US military economy, and continental-scale corporate predation. Using institutional and media and geopolitical analyses, Chomsky illustrates golden rules such as that an organization will never work against itself and unravels relationships between domestic interests, class divisions, and global pillaging.
.
As a professor at MIT, is Chomsky an exception to the rule or does Chomsky work for the man?
.
Chomsky once challenged the US war machine at its root and went to jail for his activism, an activism tied to a strong campus anti-war movement. But after jail and after Vietnam, Chomsky became a non-activist intellectual engaged in analytical penetration of the monster.
.
.
In debating Chomsky in 1971, Foucault stated [1]:
.
.
“One knows … that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. … It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.”
.
.
Chomsky, from his position of power within MIT, has not done this. One can say that that is a question of personal choice; that one needs to “choose one’s battles”. But is this choice informed, in terms of action that creates justice – which liberates, rather than reinforces the murderous machine that Chomsky describes?
.
.
No, it is not. Chomsky feeds our need for truth by providing analysis, an intellectual framework that resides in inaction. Chomsky appeases First World cerebral wanderers by giving them their fix, thereby locking them into either cynicism or a non-ending quest to mentalize it all while being disconnected from any real battle. Chomsky feeds the false notion that one can understand the world and one’s place in it and oneself by reading books.
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While this may not be Chomsky’s intent, it is clear that the great majority of Chomsky readers have never put themselves at significant risk by confronting the madness that rules our lives and that is destroying every region of the planet. It is clear that most Chomsky readers don’t read Chomsky as part of a necessary reflection within a high-risk activist battle, within a praxis of change [2, 3, 4].
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Among activist readers Chomsky mainly serves to deepen the pathological pacifism of neutralized mainstream movements. This is mainly because almost all First World activists are of the latter variety [4] but Chomsky does not challenge us to step out. Instead, Chomsky feeds the disconnected and ailing trapped intellectual, the lost soul who has been socialized to study as a “first step” rather than to first feel and stand based on primordial impulse.
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Education as a “first step” constrains us to study and precludes action until an “understanding” is sufficiently complete, in a manner not unlike compulsory and self-imposed schooling as a holding pattern. When one cannot perceive or will not fight one’s own oppression [5] and when the problem is taken to be the intractable entire planet and the systems of exploitation that occupy it, the “first step” is a non-ending self-trapped cycle of intellectual isolation in which the brain is severed from the heart; the heart that is defined by solidarity in battle and in shared risk and shared consequences, and by inter-dependence.
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The same scientific method that has alienated us from nature and from our own selves also defines the framework in which we interpret the new world and our place in it [6]. It is a cold framework of measured consequences, weighed counter pressures, and legalistic morality, without the liberating impulse.
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Chomsky is very careful to not provide any examples of how individuals can free themselves. At most, the prescription is to “organize” [7]: Organizing as a “first step”, leaving out the individual’s primordial quest for freedom to influence. The individual’s impulse to free herself must be constrained behind organizing and education, to the extent that the realities of “survival” permit. Anarchy as anarchism, not anarchy from anarchy [8].
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In reality, one must first act. The world cannot be correctly perceived from involuntary observation and thought. Only knowledge from action allows one to realistically evaluate the proposals of others. Action, reaction, communication, reflection, action… There is a natural sequence that cannot be adulterated without separating us from ourselves.
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The intellectual as mentalizer is a service intellectual [2, 9], just as surely as cerebral wanderers are trapped intellectuals. Only through action have I come to understand Chomsky and his place in the world. Let’s move on.
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References cited:
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[1] Chomsky-Foucault debate, 1971.
[2] Gradual Change is Not Progress.
[3] Activism and Risk.
[4] Churchill, Ward. Pacifism as Pathology. 1998.
[5] Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970.
[6] Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. 1964.
[7] Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. 2002. (P.R. Mitchell and J. Schoeffel, eds.)
[8] Chomsky, Noam. Chomsky on Anarchism. 1969. (2005, AK Press)
[9] Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. 1994.
[2] Gradual Change is Not Progress.
[3] Activism and Risk.
[4] Churchill, Ward. Pacifism as Pathology. 1998.
[5] Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970.
[6] Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. 1964.
[7] Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. 2002. (P.R. Mitchell and J. Schoeffel, eds.)
[8] Chomsky, Noam. Chomsky on Anarchism. 1969. (2005, AK Press)
[9] Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. 1994.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Afghanistan: Guerre humanitaire ou criminelle? (in French)
Critique de la guerre canadienne en Afghanistan
Conference du professeur Denis G. Rancourt
(Universite du Quebec en Outaouais, 6 mars 2007 - in French.)
Audiovisuel:
http://www.railcitoyen.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&amp;amp;id=38&Itemid=89
[Radical analysis of Canada's crime of war in Afghanistan (in French).]
Conference du professeur Denis G. Rancourt
(Universite du Quebec en Outaouais, 6 mars 2007 - in French.)
Audiovisuel:
http://www.railcitoyen.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&amp;amp;id=38&Itemid=89
[Radical analysis of Canada's crime of war in Afghanistan (in French).]
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