Fwd: Pilger - Academia's silence on imperialism

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Academia is silent on imperialism, as German universities were during the
> rise of the Nazis
> By John Pilger
>
> The other day, I attended a conference at the University of Sussex on the
> "new imperialism".
> What was extraordinary was that it took place at all. Julian Saurin, who
> teaches in the school of
> African and Asian studies at Sussex, said that, in ten years, he had never
> known an open discussion
> on imperialism. About 80 per cent of international relations studies in
> the great British universities is concerned with the United States and
> Europe. Most of the rest of humanity is often rated according to its
> degree of importance or usefulness to "western interests", the euphemism
> for western power and imperialism.
>
> The concept of modern imperialism seldom speaks its name. It is a taboo
> subject, described as
> "provocative" by those "liberal realists" who shunned the Sussex
> conference. The issue of
> academic silence this raises is crucial. At times, universities that p
> elations department of a British university. Like
> the massacres that brought Suharto to  power in the 1960s - in which both
> the US and British
> governments played critical roles - the genocide in East Timor was
> airbrushed by those whose job
> was to keep the scholarly record straight. The work of Noam Chomsky, a
> lone voice on East Timor, was considered too "provocative".
>
> The study of postwar international relations was invented in the United
> States, largely with the
> sponsorship of those who designed and have policed modern American
> economic power: a network that
> included the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, the OSS (the
> forerunner of the CIA)
> and the Council on Foreign Relations, effectively an arm of government.
> Thus, in the great US
> universities, learned voices justified the cold war and the new
> Washington-led imperialism.
>
> In this country, with honourable exceptions, this "transatlantic" view
> found its echo. There are
> current variations, known by their im system works, ensuring "access" and
> "credibility" in an
> academic hierarchy whose loyalty has shifted to a veiled "globalised"
> ideology that is really
> rampant capitalism. Always eager to credit more ethical intent to
> government policy-makers than
> the policy-makers themselves, the "liberal realists" ensure that western
> imperialism is
> interpreted as crisis management, rather than the cause of the crisis and
> its escalation. Behind the
> fog of obfuscation and jargon, this is essentially a tabloid scholarship
> that sees terrorism in
> groups, individuals and "rogue states", almost never in "our" governments
> and arms industries,
> which historically are among the world's greatest abusers of human rights.
> To state such a truth is
> to risk being dismissed as unscholarly.
>
> This recognition of a lethal "us" is the most enduring taboo. There was no
> debate on whether to
> take humanitarian action against the delivery of British Hawk fighter
> aircraft to the genocidists
> in Indonesia. There was n
> 9592948&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ejohnpilger%2ecom"
> target=_blank>www.johnpilger.com
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "When the entire wealth of this universe is the common property of all
> created beings, how can there
> be any justification for a system in which some roll in riches while
> others die for the lack of a handful of grain?"
>                                                From "Problem of The Day",
> (1959) by P.R. Sarkar the propounder of PROUT.
>
> PROUT (Progressive Utilisation Theory) is a new socio-economic philosophy
> that balances the material, the
> intellectual and the spiritual. As such it is an alternative to the
> materialistic philosophies of capitalism and communism.
>
> A 680 word outline is available from
> <http://lw14fd.law14.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=F000000001&a=75a7e1cc0a9f7ca1c22ba39eb1927827&mailto=1&to=bdyer%40prout%2eorg&msg=MSG988778291.61&start=1821278&len=16458&src=&type=x>bdyer@xxxxxxxxx
> Alternatively check out
> <http://64.4.20.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=6ab285f2c72e8ce65471916c5336aaec&lat=989592948&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eprout%2eorg>www.prout.org
> & www.proutworld.org