Cagnes: Fishing, war and art

28.5.2007


Cagnes used to be a quiet little fishing village, now it's an more peaceful extension of tourist-filled Nice:



The view from Haut de Cagnes, the landscape is now tranquil:



But was once dangerous and this fortified village was a retreat:




Now its war function has changed:


"Art not war"

There are studio-galleries everywhere:



Alleyways which might have seen fierce fighting now seem romantic:



But even these medieval streets are not free from modern curses:



One room in the Chateau is devoted to a collection of portraits of Suzy Soliger who aimed to be "the world's most painted woman". She was a singer and ran a Parisian club "Boite de nuit" before spending her last years here:



Near the top of the Chareau is a studio-gallery where people can learn about art through interactive exhibits:



Enjoying the view before a meal by the sea:

Using Resistance heroes, forgetting soldiers, and selling wars

Sarkozy is the first French president who was not alive during WWII, so, while making a visit to Germany, now an important political and trading partner, he made clear his respect for the French Resistance:

"... the new head of state did not wait long to depart from past protocol. On his way to the airport for his flight to Berlin, his motorcade made a highly symbolic stop at a monument commemorating the death of 35 young French resistance fighters who were shot by Nazi occupiers in August 1944.”

But he quickly reassured his German hosts that this wasn’t an attempt to open old wounds:

" 'The Franco-German reconciliation was a sort of miracle and nothing must ever lead us to sacrifice the friendship that after so many difficulties now links the French and the German people,' Sarkozy said after a high school student read out a letter by a 17-year-old resistance fighter, Guy Môquet, who was executed by German officers in 1941. 'To end the eternal cycle of hatred and vengeance we had to build Europe.'"

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/16/news/france.php

Guy Môquet

The letter which was read out can be read here:

Letter

In Fact Sarkozy has ordered the letter to be read in Lycées at the beginning of the academic year:

"Nicolas Sarkozy annonce que sa « première décision » de président sera de faire lire dans toutes les classes du pays en début d’année scolaire, la lettre à ses parents du jeune résistant Guy Môquet avant son exécution."

http://bellaciao.org/fr/article.php3?id_article=48405

Some have objected to what they see as Sarkozy's exploitation or recuperation of the words of this young communist for Sarkozy's right-wing ideology, which they feel young communists of Môquet's generation fought against:

"Aujourd’hui le même Sarko prend les idées de celui qui véhicule les mêmes idéologies que ceux qui ont posé une chape de plomb pendant 5 ans sur la France ;en les reprenant à son compte(- ce qui change de 1940 c’est que l’émigré a remplacé le juif -)non seulement il les banalise mais en plus il donne de la puissance a cette doctrine ,dont les jeunes de 40 avaient donné leur vie préçisément pour la combattre.

Vraiment monsieur Sarkozy vous me donnez envie de vomir."

J C Depoil

http://bellaciao.org/fr/article.php3?id_article=48405

In fact not only can Môquet's communism be seen as something of an embarrassment for Sarkozy, but the manner of his capture and selection for execution is not something that many in France care to remember. He was arrested, aged only 16, by French police rounding up communists for their new Nazi masters, and beaten up to try to get the names of his father's communist friends:

"Guy Môquet était lycéen au lycée Carnot et fervent militant des jeunesses communistes. Après l'occupation de Paris par les Allemands et l'instauration du gouvernement de Vichy, Guy déploie une grande ardeur militante pour coller des papillons dans son quartier dénonçant le nouveau gouvernement et demandant la libération des internés. Il est arrêté à 16 ans le 13 octobre 1940 au métro Gare de l'Est par des policiers français qui recherchaient les militants communistes. Les policiers le passent à tabac pour qu'il révèle les noms des amis de son père."

He might have survived the war in prison, or even been released early, like Sartre, had it not been for the assassination of a Nazi officer by three young communists. The Nazis demanded that 50 French prisoners be executed in reprisal, and Pierre Pucheu, the Minister of the Interior in the Petain government selected 50 communists "to avoid letting 50 good Frenchmen be shot."

Emprisonné à Fresnes, puis à Clairvaux, il est ensuite transféré au camp de Châteaubriant (Loire-Atlantique), où étaient détenus d'autres militants communistes.

Le 20 octobre 1941, Karl Hotz, commandant des troupes d'occupation de la Loire-inférieure, est exécuté à Nantes par trois jeunes communistes. Le ministre de l'Intérieur du gouvernement Pétain, Pierre Pucheu, sélectionne des otages communistes « pour éviter de laisser fusiller 50 bons Français »

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_M%C3%B4quet

The Forgotten soldiers

But there is another aspect of the history of WWII which has also long been ignored, suppressed, forgotten; i.e. the fact that not all German soldiers were Nazi monsters and that many of them were idealistic young men like Guy Môquet.

By a striking coincidence, one of them has written one of the most powerful accounts of the experience of ordinary soldiers in WWII and was also only 16 when he became active in the war and was also named Guy. In fact he was also half French, but took his German mother’s maiden name - Sajer - when he decided to join the German army (despite having at first believed the post WWI propaganda about German soldiers):

"... It was there in June 1940 when his family was stranded on the road as refugees that young Sajer first encountered the soldiers of the Wehrmacht who had only a few days before completed their conquest of France. In the interview Sajer related how in line with World War I propaganda he had feared that the Germans would cut off his hands. To his surprise instead of cutting off his hands the German Landsers handed him food and something to drink.

... While serving in labor service camps in Strasbourg and at Kehl right across the Rhine Sajer admitted envying his youthful German counterparts who seemed so self-confident and eager to serve their country. He remembers his own feelings of inadequacy watching them volunteering for combat. At the time combat seemed a great adventure but it was a privilege extended only to pure Germans. Finally in 1942 when German manpower shortages began to worsen and he turned sixteen Sajer was allowed to volunteer for military service. From July 1942 to May 1945 he served in a variety of German Army units on the Russian Front most notably the elite Grossdeutschland Division and took part in many of the critical defensive battles that eventually decided the fate of Germany in the East."

Its authenticity has been questioned by some military historians, overly pedantic about details of where badges were worn, etc. Sajer is scornful of such criticism:

... 'I succeeded in having this horror story from the Second World War published in a country hostile to me [France] against my own best interests and with all of the problems in describing the well-merited compassion I still feel for my German soldier comrades ... all of them. I conveyed the difficulty of these moments ... the anguish and the horror. I [publicly] acknowledged the courage and good will of German Landsers in a climate where one was not permitted to talk about them. I depicted their faithfulness and self-sacrifice ... I moved the hearts of millions. I have proudly glorified the honor of all German soldiers at a time in history when they were slandered and reviled. In my opinion this was my duty and I asked for nothing in return.' "

http://www.deutschesoldaten.com/books/sajer.htm

I agree with this reaction to Sajer's critics:

... "I've known guys in the army who fought in Vietnam who didn't know which sleeve their overseas stripes were sewn ...

Also, many people tend to discount the importance of the state of maturity of Sajer at the time - he turned 17 years old in January 1943 and volunteered for the GD's Feld-Ers.Btl. in April, 3 months later. So he was still a juvenile at the time and he admits himself that he was very immature. How many 17-year olds today can remember what the heck they did a week ago, much less something much further in the past? When Sajer initially drafted his manuscript in the late 1950s, the war had been over at least 10 years and many of the details of what took place in the past had been forgotten or mis-remembered ...

... Of course, Sajer could be a fake, that's always possible, but writing a book extoling the glories of the Wehrmacht and having it published in France in 1968 was considered at the time a very risky thing to do - if nothing else, Sajer was a brave man."

http://www.feldgrau.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6928

But I doubt if Sarkozy will be quoting him.

"When the US wanted to take over France"

Fortunately the odious Pucheu who sent Môquet to his execution met the same fate:

"... No one personified the Vichy regime better than Pucheu. In 1941 he became Darlan’s industry minister and then interior minister. He had served as a fundraiser for the fascist French People’s Party . He also championed economic collaboration with Germany and anti-communist repression, working on behalf of the Nazi occupation (including selecting communist prisoners executed in 1941 in retaliation for the assassin ation of German officers, and establishing special sections - anti-communist tribunals).
Spurned by Giraud, Pucheu was imprisoned in May 1943 and sentenced to death; he was executed in Algiers in March 1944."

http://mondediplo.com/2003/05/05lacroix

In this article Annie Lacroix-Riz reveals another bit of largely forgotten history, despite its contemporary relevance. Contrary to the usual myths, the US wasn’t just the altruistic liberator, eager to restore democracy to France:

"The US was concerned that France, although weakened by its 1940 defeat, might reject the plan, especially if its presidency went to De Gaulle, who had vowed to restore French sovereignty. It feared France might use its nuisance capacity as it had when it opposed pro-German US policies after the first world war. France would not have wanted to relinquish its empire, rich in raw materials and strategic bases. The US had long called for an open door policy for goods and investments in all colonial empires (2). The US relied on twin strategies: ignoring De Gaulle, and dealing with Pétain’s regime with a combin ation of accommodation and toughness. It realised that Vichy, like the Latin American regimes dear to its heart, was more malleable than a government with broad popular support.

... The US depicted De Gaulle as a rightwing dictator and a puppet of French communists and the USSR... On 10 December 1944 France signed a treaty of alliance and mutual security with Moscow, to offset US power. De Gaulle described it in glowing terms.

Excluded from the Yalta conference in 1945 and dependent on the US, France became a key part of the US sphere of influence. But only vigorous resistance, internal and external, had saved it from becoming a US protectorate."
http://mondediplo.com/2003/05/05lacroix

The end of Gaullism?

Some right-wing Americans see Sarkozy, not so much as the first French president who has no experience of WWII, but as finally marking the end of Gaullism:

"Charles Kupchan, chercher au Council On Foreign Relations, le resumé ainsi:'Il brise le goule classique du leader de centre droit; il représente la fin du gaullisme traditionnel. Avec lui, vous n'entendrez plus le vieux refrain: "Il est temps que l'Europe émerge comme contre-poids à l'Amerique." ' "

Marianne, 28 Avril, 2007, p.18

But the US is not having much success as the dominant world power under Bush; Iraq is a disaster (despite Blair's absurd claim that the problem is the media are not reporting on all the progress there - even as the UK base in Basra was being mortared).

From US military propagandist to AL Jazeera journalist

Also one is encouraged to see that there are young American soldiers who see through the lies the war was based on, even one who at first believed them and whose job was to convince journalists (some of whom did their "journalism" by asking him: "What message would you like to get out today?"!).

I was impressed by Lt. Josh Rushing when I saw him in the documentary about Al Jazeera, "The Control room", which showed his obvious difficulty in believing the official line in the face of his actual experience in Iraq and his discussions with Al Jazeera journalists:

"[The Control Room] invites dissenting voices to comment on the station's work, including US Marine Corps press officer Lt. Josh Rushing (tellingly, he has a sudden epiphany halfway through the film, realising that Al Jazeera is simply the inverse of the pro-American Fox News)."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/07/07/control_room_2004_review.shtml

He has now left the US army and is working for the English-language version of Al Jazeera (like one of my ex-students, who tells me he is far more free from editorial control than he had felt with UK TV).

But of course the Right in the US tried to depict him as a "traitor"

"Amid the sudden publicity, Rushing ran afoul of the Pentagon. After defending Al Jazeera in an interview with the Village Voice, in which he suggested that the network showed a more realistic image of the war than the American media ('In America war isn't hell—we don't see blood, we don't see suffering. All we see is patriotism'), he was ordered to stop talking to the press. That didn't sit well with him. 'It's a weird place to be in when there's a national dialogue about you and you can't take part in it,' he says. 'When I came back from the war, I was frustrated by what I'd seen. I felt that what America thought it knew about Al Jazeera was wrong, and the way that America was engaging or not engaging with Al Jazeera was not only wrong but dangerous.'
...
When he joined the [Al Jazeera] network almost a year ago, he saw himself as a cultural emissary who could help the rest of the world understand the America he loves. Now, "more and more I see myself as a journalist," he says. "It's taking a long time to let go of that spokesperson side of me who wants to control the message and to embrace the side that's about letting the message be whatever you find. There's a real value to this journalism thing."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2006/11/education_of_lt_rushing.html

He has now made a documentary showing the same pattern of lies used to justify each of the US attacks on other countries, from Vietnam, through Panama, to Iraq.

"Spin: The art of selling war"

It was made with the help of Norman Solomon, author of "War Made Easy":

"If you don't have fun reading Norman Solomon's War Made Easy, you don't know how to have a good time. This exceptional book will drive our bonkers leaders and their mouthpieces in the US press crazier than they are already. Read one passage each night to your children to protect them from the brain-snatchers and dummy-fication zombies of America's news media of the living dead."

Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

http://www.amazon.com/War-Made-Easy-Presidents-Spinning/dp/0471694797

That is, there is not a lot of "real value to this journalism thing" as currently practised by the corporate media - see also Bill Moyers' PBS documentary: "Buying the war":

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

At least the Al Jazeera documentary is available on YouTube (most US TV channels won't carry Al Jazeera - English version). The documentary and the book make it clear that De Gaulle was right and a "contre-poids" to the US (as run by people like Bush) is very necessary and that it wasn't arrogance, as Sarkozy put it during this visit to the US, when the French refused to buy the nonsense Bush and co were trying to sell the UN about Iraq. If that was French arrogance, I echo Bush: "Bring it on!"

May festival at Cimiez

Sunday 13th May

We went up to Cimiez - an area very favoured by British royalty; as an Edward I felt quite at home:



There was Queen Victoria in front of Hotel Regina, looking all compassionate, despite ruling an imperial system:



But in the Parc it was a very French event:









There what was a Franciscan monastery there, with lovely views and flowers:

From jaywalking to torture

British historian's violent arrest in US - a "wonderful experience"

Browsing the net I came across a link to this on YouTube:




It's an interview with a British historian about his violent arrest for jaywalking while at an academic conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

I didn't think it would merit 3 episodes, totalling about 25 minutes, but it is fascinating, funny and a bit frightening; it makes one realise how easily one could have been in a similar situation (during one of about a dozen trips I've had to the US).

The other two sections of the interview (well worth watching) are at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENCa43r9jmY

To be fair, my only contact with the US police was entirely different. I had lost a credit card and thought I was supposed to report it to the police and that a phone call would be enough, but they arranged for a policeman to visit to take details at my hotel. He was about 6' 4", looked like film star, and was very polite about what seemed to be a waste of his time.

"Over-zealous" police

The experience of the historian, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, was very different from mine; it was very violent and quite traumatic at the time. Despite his name he is VERY British, and sounds a bit like someone from Noel Coward's era. He says that the policeman was wearing a zipped jacket which didn't seem like a policeman's uniform to him; he describes it as a somewhat "louche" garment, worn by people "affecting a rather raffish image".

The situation deteriorated when: "I may have passed comment on his uniform which was under-appreciative". He was violently thrown to the ground and handcuffed and when he "bridled" at this treatment, he was then held down by five burly policemen. The siuation was calmed by a security man from the hotel, but one of the more professional policemen explained that they had to go ahead with the arrest to avoid being sued if they admitted they'd made a mistake.

I suspect that the video is on YouTube not just as an example of what Fernandez-Armesto describes as "over-zealous" US police behaviour, but also because of the vocabulary and accent of this Brit which must be amusingly bizarre to many Americans (the link I saw warns Americans that it might take time to adjust to his accent).

He was held in custody for 8 hours, having difficulty in raising the required 1,000 dollars bail for this minor traffic infringement, but which now included "resisting arrest". He found the other inmates at the detention centre far more humane and polite than the police, but also praised the staff there, who quickly realised he didn't exactly fit the usual criminal profiles, and went to some lengths to help him. He was advised by lawyers to sue Georgia state authorities, but didn't want to do anything which might endanger his ability to enter the US - he was a visiting professor.

Luckily for him, in court the two young female prosecutors quickly realised this could be a very embarrassing case and it was quickly dismissed. But, while it was traumatic at the time, he found it to be in retrospect a "wonderful experience" because as "aging members of the bourgeoisie, we don't normally get an insight into this world".

US police torture drug dealer

He was lucky, by coincidence, today (Sun.), I came across this example of brutal US police behaviour, possibly not that unusual, except that the wife of the drug-dealer beaten up by the police left a tape-recorder on. Thanks to the internet you can hear it - should you want to, it's extremely "over-zealous":

http://wms.scripps.com/knoxville/siler/siler.mp3 The action starts about 3.40 secs in.

More delicate souls can get an idea of what happened from this report:

...Three years ago this July, Franklin, a senior detective with the Campbell County, Tennessee Sheriff's Department, presided over the prolonged torture of a pathetic small-time drug dealer named Lester Eugene Siler, who primarily trafficked in prescription drugs.

Franklin's five-man crew included three other full-time law enforcement officers and a part-time process server. This squalid little gang was created with the help of a federal Byrne Grant (a Justice Department subsidy for counter-narcotics programs), and – like most criminal cliques of that sort – they were involved in a vulgar shakedown-and-skimming operation conducted under the color of government authority.

Eugene Siler and wife

Franklin's squad descended on Siler's home on July 8, 2004 on the pretext of serving a warrant for probation violations. Their real objective, however, was to rummage through the home in search of either money or contraband that could be used to justify seizing and forfeiting Siler's assets. The police ordered Siler's wife to take their son and leave; before doing so, however, she turned on a tape recorder, which captured roughly half of what turned into a two-hour torture session.
...
Detective Franklin, a 17-year veteran of the Campbell County Sheriff's Department, was also the DARE officer at the local school district. Bear that last fact in mind as we examine his conduct.

Campbell County's Finest: Detective Franklin and his little shakedown-and-torture squad.

“Let me tell you what we're gonna do,” explained Franklin, the moral tutor to Campbell County's youth, as Siler – who had already been beaten once – cringed in terror. “We're gonna put them handcuffs in front of ya. Cut you a little slack. But if you don't start operating [sic], we're gonna put the motherf****rs behind your back, and I'm gonna take this slapjack and I'm gonna start working that head over, you understand?”

Officer David Webber elaborated on the plan: “We're gonna know everything about your business today. And you're gonna take us and where you got your money, we're gonna take every dime you have today and if we don't walk out of here with every piece of dope you got and every dime you got, your f*****g a** is not going to make it to the jail.... We're doing this on our own, and you're gonna sign a consent to search form and you're gonna give us permission to be here and you're gonna do it our way, cause we're tired of f*****g with your a**.”
...
A little later, Deputy Monday suggested that they should murder Siler and frame him for armed assault using a pellet pistol found in his home:

“Eugene, you're gonna sign this right here or I'm gonna f*****g put a bullet in your damn head, and we're gonna f*****g plant this BB gun.”

When that didn't work, the gang dragged Siler off for a few rounds of water-boarding.

Surely it wasn't necessary to beat, abuse, molest, and terrorize Siler in order to find a pretext for searching his house. So why did Franklin and his gang do so?

Because they could.

As I read the transcript, and saw how young Deputy Monday emerged as the most violent and sadistic of the officers, I made a small bet with myself that he was the first one to break when the FBI conducted its investigation of Franklin's squad.

I won the bet: Monday broke right away, and began “cooperating” with the inquiry. All five are now in prison.

But the only reason this happened is because Siler's wife had secreted a tape recorder where it could gather evidence, and had the presence of mind to turn it on before leaving her husband in the hands of his torturers.

How often does this sort of thing take place undetected?.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w12.html

But it is not just a matter of some US policemen, the report links it to the use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to the policy of the Bush government:

Because They Can: The Logic of the Torture State

... As Eliza Griswold recounts
in the current issue of The New Republic, the tribunal “cleared Corsetti of all charges. His lawyer successfully argued ... that the rules for detainee treatment were unclear: `The president of the United States doesn't know what the rules are. The secretary of defense doesn't know what the rules are. But the government expects this Pfc. to know what the rules are?'”

So – at the time of Corsetti's trial a year ago, the assumption was that sexual assault was considered a permissible interrogation tactic in the absence of a specific prohibition. He'd used the tactic before while working at Abu Ghraib: With the help of two comrades he forced an Iraqi woman to strip.

Why did he do this? Because he could.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w12.html

Torture in Nice in WW2

By another coincidence, on Saturday I was also reading Robert Kanigel's: "High Season in Nice: How One French Riveria Town Has Seduced Trvellers for Two Thousand Years". Generally this is a story of people seeking sun and pleasure, at first the wealthy and later workers taking advantage "congés payés" introduced in 1936.

But yesterday I read the section on the period of the Second World War, when Nice was at first a refuge for Jews, even when the Italians took control of the area and, to their credit, left the Jews alone despite German protests. But when the Italians were defeated the Germans took control and they and their French collaborators went after the Jews:

"In menacing black Citroens Germans and their French henchmen hunted down Nice's Jews.
... Brought back to the Exelsior [hotel] ...Many were tortured for information about brothers, parents and children not yet caught in the net.
... In the end, the Germans in Nice wound up shipping off to Drancy about three thousand Jews, most of whom died in Auschwitz." pp. 199-201

Iraq is not a "good war"

In August 1944 many Americans were in involved in liberating this area of France and today many look back proudly to this restoration of freedom. Scott Ritter, a US arms inspector (and ex-marine), recently joined the American Legion. He was one of the few American officals with the knowledge and guts to publicly disagree with Bush administration and argued that Iraq was no threat to the US and had no WMDs.

He was disappointed to find that some members of the American Legion who were veterans of WW2 had swallowed the propaganda of Bush and co:

"... It quickly became apparent that The American Legion magazine was a sounding board for many holding quite militaristic and jingoistic opinions based on their rather limited personal experiences, many dating back to World War II. The war in Iraq, together with the overarching “global war on terror,” seems to be viewed by many in the American Legion as an extension of their own past service, and much effort is made to connect World War II and the Iraq conflict as part and parcel of the same ongoing American “liberation” of the world’s oppressed.
...
I yearn for a time when “good Americans” will be able to stop and reverse equally evil policies of global hegemony achieved through pre-emptive war of aggression. I know all too well that in this case the “enemy” will only be emboldened by our silence, since at the end of the day the “enemy” is ourselves. I can see the Harvard professor shaking an accusatory finger at me for the above statement, chiding me for creating any moral equivalency between the war in Iraq and the Holocaust. You’re right, Mr. Dershowitz. There is no moral equivalency. In America today, we should have known better, since we ostensibly stand for so much more. That we have collectively failed to halt and repudiate the war in Iraq makes us even worse than the Germans."

Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, and his latest is “Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement” (Nation Books, April 2007).
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17683.htm

Fortunately the French did not support the disastrous attack on Iraq, and, while there were collaborators with the Nazis, there are memorial plaques all over Nice to those who died resisting, e.g., in what is now Rue Francis Gallo in the old town, there is this memorial to him:



http://farm1.static.flickr.com/230/496031342_aa76b49ed8_o.jpg

I find it particularly moving that the memorial records that he was seventeen and a half; when you're seventeen the half makes a great difference; who knows what difference he might have made had the Nazis not killed him. He might even have become a historian and visited an academic conference in Atlanta Georgia, without the "wonderful experience" of more British than the Brits - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

I supect that this "wonderful experience" has rather changed his opinion as expressed in an interview:

"For me, history is about what it meant to live in the past. It doesn’t mean experiencing it directly. One of the things about being a historian is that you do live vicariously, learning about things not by the senses but vicariously. I relish that. History is sources, I am much more interested in them than in what actually happened, if you could ever know them."

http://www.tmcq.co.uk/interviews/felipe-fernandez-armesto

He now knows, through "the senses", what many Americans experience on a daily basis and, I think, has been very changed by it.

American Historical Association votes to oppose the war in Iraq

But his particular conversion should not overshadow the far more important fact that the conference of the American Historical Association which he was attending was not just discussing "arcane historical issues" (as he puts in his YouTube video) but passed a resolution condemning the war in Iraq:

"... Whereas during the war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror, the current Administration has violated the above-mentioned standards and principles through the following practices:

excluding well-recognized foreign scholars;
condemning as “revisionism” the search for truth about pre-war intelligence;
re-classifying previously unclassified government documents;
suspending in certain cases the centuries-old writ of habeas corpus and substituting indefinite administrative detention without specified criminal charges or access to a court of law;
using interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons required by a civilized society;
Whereas a free society and the unfettered intellectual inquiry essential to the practice of historical research, writing, and teaching are imperiled by the prctices described above; and

Whereas, the foregoing practives are inextricably linked to the war in which the United States is presently engaged in Iraq; now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the American Historical Association urges its members through publication of this resolution in Perspectives and other appropriate outlets:

1. To take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession; and
2. To do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion."

http://hnn.us/articles/33409.html#Day3

Historians of the World unite - you have nothing to lose but your tenure.

Sarkozy - Business as usual ?

After Sarkozy's regrettable win, I updated the end of my earlier post:

streets

and posted it in the diaries sections of http://www.eurotrib.com and http://www.progressivehistorians.com

This is the new conclusion:

A new Napoleon ?

In Rue Cassini, which runs almost parallel with the smaller Rue Bonaparte, there was the local election headquarters of another small man, Sarkozy, who also wants to run France - ironically in a more Anglo-Saxon way:

The slogan says: "Together everything becomes possible" - including developing the same increasing gap between rich and poor which we have seen over recent years in the US and UK:

Rich-poor gap grows in US and UK

"George Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% in society is just one example of this cosy alliance between our leaders and those who frankly, already avoid paying more tax than a patriot ought to.


Of course, this could only happen in the USA, right? Erhh, no. Actually the size of the gap between the richest and poorest 20% of society has been growing in the UK since the late 1970s almost mirroring the USA (graph below). If you wonder how much privatisation and financial deregulation have to do with this, look to Russia (right) where, since the population were `liberated' from the shackles of communism in 1990,  the rise in inequality has been acute."


http://www.ablemesh....

Wellington would have approved.

A neocon Napoleon ?

So now Sarkozy is President and our new little Napoleon sees developments in the US and UK more favourably, and in the UK the Economist didn't just report on him, it put the case for him - as a new Napoleon:

Jérôme Guillet, a banker, but left-wing, argues that Sarkozy's success is partly due to this kind of very influential ideology; ironically our new Bonaparte was helped to victory by Anglo-Saxon media corporations:

"JG:  Well, the thing is, we're living in a world where the financial markets rule pretty much everything, and the economic writing decides everything, and most of that is done in English.  And the business press in English is done in Europe from London.  And, well, they're not exactly neutral when it comes to the French.


... for the past twenty-five years, basically these people have been pushing a very ideological agenda, and for the past fifteen years they have nobody against them.  And they can call anybody that dares protest what they are saying as "Communists"  or "Socialists or "dinosaurs".  And this is non-stop propaganda for "reform", for "globalization", that "profits are good", that companies must rule and "what's good for companies is good for the economy".  And everybody has come to believe that.


... I mean, you heard Christine Ockrent just before.  She's married to a Socialist man, and she's been repeating the same talking points that she gets from the right, declining "blah blah dynamism of Sarkozy, the economy's in a funk", which are all false, it's all propaganda, it's an ideological agenda, and has to be called as such."


http://www.eurotrib....

But it has worked again, lots of intelligent French people believe the propaganda which has been pumped out so relentlessly. In his post-election speeches Sarkozy called for unity. Thatcher had the nerve to quote Saint Francis of Assisi when elected:

"On the steps of Number 10, she quoted from St Francis of Assisi: 'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.' "


http://news.bbc.co.u...

  Far from bringing harmony she radically divided the country, but brought hope to media corporations like Murdoch's, whom Blair courted to help him get elected. We'll see if Sarkozy really brings unity to France - the scale of voter turnout and Royal's 47% share suggests otherwise.

State subsidies for corporations

One part of the ideology of the Anglo-Saxon model more favoured by Sarkozy is that the market must be left free from state interference; hence the opposition to the French model, in which the state has a strong role. But, as Chomsky has pointed out, the market ideology does not match the facts; in the US the state plays a massive role in subsidising corporations, particularly through the military, which consumes a huge amount of the US budget:

"Chomsky states that over fifty percent of all research and development conducted in the electronics, computer, aeronautics, metallurgy, laser and telecommunications industries has been done with the public's money. He points towards the satellites used by AT&T and the airplanes sold by Boeing as obvious examples of pieces of technology that were largely developed with taxpayers' money and are now used for private profit."


http://www.radiofree...

Thus there is the need for the propaganda of fear, which helps justify this enormous expense:

"The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside


... In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.


The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.


In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.


It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media."


http://news.bbc.co.u... 

So this myth of external threats is used to justify the myth of the free market, and recently the military have realised that, with the pace of change in technology, they need to look beyond the major corporations they normally help support. Recently they have been turning to small start-ups (how Microsoft began) and more than ever to universities doing cutting-edge research, as in Chomsky's own MIT.

From the NYT:

Tech Investors Cull Start-Ups for Pentagon

  ? the participants argue that the project, called DeVenCI for Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative [Leonardo Da Vinci wrote a famous letter to the Duke of Milan, offering his services as a designer of weapons, and adding, almost as an afterthought, that he was also pretty good at painting and sculpture too], brings together two groups that have much to gain from each other and that have had trouble finding easy, efficient ways to work together. Those on the military side of things have adopted the Silicon Valley vernacular to explain the idea of systematically consulting investors to find new technology.


"We're a search engine," said Bob Pohanka, director of DeVenCI, noting that the program is a chance for military procurement officials to have more intimate contact with investors who make a living scouring laboratories and universities for the latest innovations."

But they don't want to upset their usual powerful clients (and dependents):

"The idea of these meetings is not necessarily to short-circuit the usual military procurement process, which usually involves doing business with one of a handful of big companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, DeVenCI officials said. Rather, the idea is that the military buyers will see technology that they can recommend to those massive contractors for new or continuing projects, or, conceivably, that they will sign small initial contracts with the start-ups so they can further develop a technology for military use."

Napoleon, founder of the Ecole Polytechnique (see above), would have approved, and even former anti-war protesters find themselves drawn into the huge, but rarely acknowledged system of state subsidies for corporations:

"In 1969, Kevin Fong, a high school student, attended antiwar protests on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto. Now 52 and a managing director with the Mayfield Fund in Menlo Park


... he said his first impulse to help came from a recognition that participation in DeVenCI could be good for business. "When the DeVenCI people approached me, they said the magic words to a V.C.: `We'll hook you up with buyers,' " Mr. Fong said. "How can you resist that?"


http://www.nytimes.c...

Sarkozy will continue with the rhetoric of the "free" market and its supporting myths; but his corporate backers would be dismayed if he really cut the hidden state subsidies upon which they depend. He has said:

"The French people have chosen change," Mr. Sarkozy declared. "I will implement that change. Because that is the mandate I received and because France needs change."


http://www.nytimes.c...

For an explanation of why France doesn't need change see:

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/5/4/113029/9034

http://homepage.mac/vedeze.... (Highly recommended)

I think it will be another case of "tout ça change, tout c'est la même chose" - i.e. business as usual.

For the full revised version and comments by members of www.eurotrib.com see Eurotrib

Meet up on a Nice beach

Sunday 6th May - a beautiful day at Gallion plage, Nice (not rare in Nice but lucky as it had been a bit cloudy the previous few days)


This was with the Nice Meet-up group, organised and "animated" by Maria and James.



Maria is behind the yellow flowers.



James in sympathetic mode when asked why there is only water left.



"So I slapped him hard" - "Good for you. I would have used my bag!"


But seriously - it was a vey pleasant lunch, as was evident from the fact that it went on for over four hours - and we think the French have long lunches. Still, it was a Sunday - and just about perfect:



See the Nice Meet-up group for this event at Nice Meet-up

Nice new tramway and the naked Apollo

Saturday, 5th May, 2007

The fountain in Place Massena has been reinstalled as the tramway nears completion. Ironically there was a tramway at the beginning of the 20th century, before the city was dominated by cars and the noisier motorbikes and scooters. What a nice atmosphere then, with pedestrians free to wander in peace:


Nice-Matin

By the early 1960s cars had begun to take over the square - notice the fountain with its central figure, a naked Apollo:


Nice-Matin

Now the fountan is back:





But it lacks the Apollo statute which should be in the centre; but in 1976 it was moved somewhere more obscure, the entry to Parc Charles-Ehrmann, due to his nudity and local prudery of "les ligues de virtu feministes".


Nice-Matin

Though why that should be a problem when the fountain includes figures like this I can't imagine:




We continued on through the old town for a cocktail or two on the beach:



But retreated to a covered area and a nice couch as it clouded over:



Then we went for a meal in Cours Salaya, where heaters made sitting outside possible even for M:

Beau jour a Beaulieu/Villefranche

Sunday 29th April



Having had a nice time at a dance at the Beaulieu Casino, just above the beach, on Friday evening, we decided to visit it during he day - anoher nice one, with just a few clouds in the hills.





In the evening we went to the more picturesque harbour at Villefranche



and indulged ourselves in with a meal at Mere Germaine, in business since 1938 and now internationally recognised









An accordianist serenaded us as it got dark, a lovely day on the Cote D'Azur.