Guy is a neolith like conservative.

I have written a review of his book, Killing of History, some time ago,
and it was a murder of good taste in h-science. A war against po-mo
nonsense in the name of pre-Rankeian empiricism. A vulgar display of the
worst conservatism in historical science. Which is a pity, because he made
some valuable contributions to a resistance against po-modernism in social
sciences.

Compare these two articles, the one of W. and this one, by Petras.
Interesting in comparison.

             Andrej Grubacic



Role of Intellectuals
--James Petras
  THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INTELLECTUALS:
CUBA, THE U.S. AND HUMAN RIGHTS
by James Petras - May 1, 2003
 Once again the intellectuals have entered into the center of a debate -
this time over the issues of U.S. imperialism and human rights in Cuba.
"How important is the role of the intellectuals?", I asked myself as we
walked past the Puerta del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon (
April 26, 2003 ) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred
protestors echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a dozen articles
and opinion columns by well known intellectuals in the leading Madrid
newspapers, and hours of television and radio propaganda and endorsements
by the major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only 700-800,
mostly Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba. "Clearly," I thought, "the
anti-'Cuban intellectuals have little or no power of convocation, at least
in Spain." But the political impotence of the anti-Castro writers does not
mean that intellectuals in general do not play an important role; nor does
the lack of a popular audience mean that they are without resources,
especially if they do have the backing of the U.S. war and propaganda
machine, amplifying and disseminating their word throughout the world. In
order to come to reason about the debate raging between intellectuals on
the issues of human rights in Cuba and U.S. imperialism it is important to
step back and consider the role of the intellectuals, the context and
major issues that frame the U.S.-Cuba conflict. THE ROLE OF THE
INTELLECTUALS The role of the intellectuals is to clarify the major issues
and define the major threats to peace, social justice, national
independence and freedom in each historical period as well as to identify
and support the principal defenders of the same principles. Intellectuals
have a responsibility to distinguish between the defensive measures taken
by countries and peoples under imperial attack and the offensive methods
of imperial powers bent on conquest. It is the height of cant and
hypocrisy to engage in moral equivalences between the violence and
repression of imperial countries bent on conquest with that of Third World
countries under military and terrorist attacks. Responsible intellectuals
critically examine the political context and analyze the relationships
between imperial power and their paid local functionaries who they
describe as "dissidents" - they do not issue moral fiats according to
their dim lights and their political imperatives. Committed intellectuals
who claim to speak with moral authority, especially those who lay claim to
being critics of imperialism, have a political responsibility to demystify
power and state and media manipulation particularly in relation to
imperial rhetoric of human rights violations by independent Third World
states. We have in recent times seen too many self-styled "progressive"
Western intellectuals supporting or silent on the U.S. destruction of
Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs, gypsies and others
in Kosovo, buying into the U.S. propaganda of a "humanitarian
intervention". All the U.S. intellectuals (Chomsky, Zinn, Wallerstein
etc.) supported the U.S.-financed violent fundamentalist uprising in
Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed secular government in Afghanistan -
under the pretext that the Soviet Union "invaded" Afghanistan and the
fundamentalist fanatics entering the country from all over the world were
the "dissidents" defending "self-determination" - an admitted propaganda
ploy successfully executed by the boastful former National Security
Adviser, Zbig Bryzinski. Then and now prestigious intellectuals brandish
their past credentials as "critics" of U.S. foreign policy to give
credibility to their uninformed denunciation of alleged Cuban moral
transgressions, equating Cuba's arrest of paid functionaries of the U.S.
State Department and the execution of three terrorist kidnapers with the
genocidal war crimes of U.S. imperialism. The practitioners of moral
equivalents apply a microscope to Cuba and a telescope to U.S. crimes -
which gives them a certain acceptability among the liberal sectors of the
empire. MORAL IMPERATIVES AND CUBAN REALITIES: MORALITY AS DISHONESTY
Intellectuals are divided on the U.S.-Cuba conflict: Benedetti, Sastre,
Petras, Sanchez-Vazquez and Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and scores of others
defend Cuba; right-wing intellectuals including Vargas Llosa, Savater, and
Carlos Fuentes have predictably issued their usual diatribes against Cuba;
and a small army of otherwise progressive intellectuals - Chomsky,
Saramago, Sontag, Zinn and Wallerstein - have joined the chorus condemning
Cuba, waving their past critical postures in an effort to distinguish
themselves from the right-wing/State Department Cuban opponents. It is the
latter "progressive" group which has caused the greatest harm among the
burgeoning anti-imperialist movement and it is to them that these critical
remarks are directed. Morality based on propaganda is a deadly mix -
particularly when the moral judgements come from prestigious leftist
intellectuals and the propaganda emanates from the far-right Bush
administration. Many of the "progressive" critics of Cuba acknowledge, in
passing and in a general way, that the U.S. has been a hostile aggressor
against Cuba, and they "generously" grant Cuba the right to
self-determination - and then launch into a series of unsubstantiated
charges and misrepresentations devoid of any special context that might
serve to clarify the issues and provide a reasoned basis for ."moral
imperatives". It is best to begin with the most fundamental facts. The
left critics, based on U.S. State Department labeling, denounce the Cuban
government's repression of individuals, dissidents, including journalists,
owners of private libraries and members of political parties engaged in
non-violent political activity trying to exercise their democratic rights.
What the "progressives" fail to recognize or are unwilling to acknowledge
is that those arrested were paid functionaries of the U.S. government.
According to the Agency of International Development (AID), the principal
U.S. federal agency implementing U.S. grants and loans in pursuit of U.S.
foreign policy, under USAID's Cuba Program ( resulting from the
Helms-Burton Act of 1996) AID has channeled over $8.5 million dollars to
Cuban opponents of the Castro regime since 1997 to publish, meet,
propagandize in favor of the overthrow of the Cuban government in
co-ordination with a variety of U.S. NGO's, universities, foundations and
other front groups. (Profile of the USAID Cuba Program - on the AID web
site ). The U.S.AID program, unlike its usual practice, does not channel
payments to the Cuban government but directly to its Cuban "dissident"
clients. The criteria for funding are clearly stated - the recipients of
payments and grants must have demonstrated a clear commitment to U.S.
directed "regime change" toward "free markets" and "democracy" - no doubt
similar to the U.S. colonial dictatorship in Iraq. The Helms-Burton
legislation, the U.S.AID Cuba Program and their paid Cuban functionaries,
like the U.S. progressive manifesto, " condemn Cuba's lack of freedom,
jailing of innocent dissidents, and call for a democratic change of regime
in Cuba". Strange coincidences that require some analyses. Cuban
journalists who have received $280,000 from a Cuba Free Press -AID front-
are not dissidents they are paid functionaries. Cuban "Human Rights"
groups who receive $775,000 from CIA front "Freedom House" are not
dissidents - particularly when their mission is to promote a "transition"
(overthrow) of the Cuban regime. The list of grants and funding to Cuban
"dissidents" (functionaries) by the U.S. government in pursuit of the U.S.
policy is long and detailed and accessible to all the progressive moral
critics. The point is that the jailed opponents of the Cuban government
were paid functionaries of the U.S. government, paid to implement the
goals of the Helms-Burton Act in accordance with the criteria of the
U.S.AID and under the guidance and direction of the head of the U.S.
Interest Section in Havana. Between September 2, 2002 and March 2003 James
Cason, head of the US Interest Section, held dozens of meetings with his
Cuban "dissidents" at his home and office, providing them with
instructions and guidelines on what to write, how to recruit, while
publicly haranging against the Cuban government in the most undiplomatic
manner. Washington's Cuban functionaries were supplied with electronic and
other communication equipment by USAID, books and other propaganda and
money to fund pro-U.S. "trade unions" via the U.S. front, the "American
Center for International Labor Solidarity". These are not well-meaning
"dissidents" unaware of their paymaster and their role as U.S. agents,
since the USAID report states ( under the section entitled "The US
Institutional Context"), "The Cuba Program is funded through Economic
Support Fund, which is designed to support the economic and political
foreign policy interests of the US by providing financial assistance to
allies (sic) and countries in transition to democracy". No country in the
world tolerates or labels domestic citizens paid by and working for a
foreign power to act for its imperial interests as "dissidents". This is
especially true of the U.S. where under Title 18 ,Section 951 of the U.S.
Code , "anyone who agrees to operate within the United States subject to
the direction or control of a foreign government or official would be
subjected to criminal prosecution and a 10 year prison sentence". Unless ,
of course, they register as a paid foreign agent or are working for the
Israeli government. The U.S. "progressive" intellectuals abdicate their
responsibilities as analysts and critics and accept at face value the
State Department characterization of the U.S. paid functionaries as
dissidents striving for "freedom". Some defenders of the U.S.
agent-dissidents claim that the functionaries received "scandalously long
sentences". Once again empirical myopia compounds mendacious moralizing.
Cuba is on a war footing. The Bush government has declared that Cuba is on
the list of military targets subject to mass destruction and war. And in
case our moralistic intellectuals don't know it : What Bush, Rumsfeld and
the war-mongering Zionists in the Administration say -- they do. The total
lack of seriousness in Chomsky, Zinn, Sontag, Wallerstein's moral dictates
is that they fail to acknowledge the imminent and massive threat of a U.S.
war with weapons of mass destruction, announced in advance. This is
particularly onerous given the fact that many of Cuba's detractors live in
the U.S., read the U.S. press and are aware of how quickly militaristic
pronouncements are followed by genocidal actions. But our moralists are
not bothered by context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or proximate,
they are eager to ignore it all to demonstrate to the State Department
that they not only oppose U.S. foreign policy but also condemn every
independent country, system and leader who opposes the U.S. In other
words, Mr. Ashcroft, when you crack down on the "apologists" for Cuban
"terror", remember that we are different, we too condemned Cuba, we too
called for a change of regime. The critics of Cuba ignore the fact that
the U.S. has a two-pronged military-political strategy to take over Cuba
that is already operative. Washington provides asylum for terrorist air
pirates, encouraging efforts to destabilize Cuba's tourist-based economy;
it works closely with the terrorist Cuban American Foundation engaging in
attempts to assassinate Cuban leaders. New U.S. military bases have been
established in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador and there is
an expanding concentration camp in Guantanomo - all to facilitate an
invasion. The U.S. embargo is in the process of being tightened with the
support of the right-wing Berlusconi and Aznar regimes in Italy and Spain.
The aggressive and openly political activity of James Cason of the
Interest Section in line with his Cuban followers among the paid
functionaries/ "dissidents" is part of the inside strategy designed to
undermine Cuban loyalties to the regime and the revolution. The
inter-connection between the two tactics and their strategic convergence
is ignored by our prestigious intellectual critics who prefer the luxury
of issuing moral imperatives about freedom everywhere for everyone, even
when a psychotic Washington puts the knife to Cuba's throat. No thanks,
Chomsky, Sontag, Wallerstein - Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a
kick in the balls and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest
living. The death penalty for three ferry boat terrorists is harsh
treatment - but so was the threat to the lives of forty Cuban passengers
who faced death at the hands of the hijackers. Again our moralists forgot
to discuss the rash acts of air piracy and the plots of others uncovered
in time. The moralists failed to understand why these terrorists
desperadoes are seeking illegal means to leave Cuba. Bush's Administration
has practically eliminated the visa program for Cuban emigrants wishing to
leave. Visa grants have declined from 9000 for the first four months of
2002 to 700 in 2003. This is a clever tactic to encourage terrorist acts
in Cuba and then denounce the harsh sentences, evoking the chorus of 'yea'
sayers in the 'Amen' corner of the progressive U.S. and European
intellectual establishment. Is it simply ignorance which informs these
moral pronouncements against Cuba or is it something else besides - moral
blackmail? , to force their Cuban counterparts to turn against their
regime, their people or face the opprobrium of the prestigious
intellectuals - to become further isolated and stigmatized as "apologists
of Castro". Explicit threats by Saramago to abandon his Cuban friends and
embrace the cause of U.S. paid functionaries. Implicit threats of no
longer visiting Cuba and to boycott conferences. Is it moral cowardice to
pick up the cudgels for the empire and pick on Cuba when it faces the
threat of mass destruction over the freedom of paid agents, subject to
prosecution by any country in the world? What is eminently dishonest is to
totally ignore the vast accomplishments of the revolution in employment,
education, health, equality, and Cuba's heroic and principled opposition
to imperial wars - the only country to so declare - and its capacity to
resist almost 50 years of invasions. That counts for nothing for the U.S.
intellectuals - that is scandalous!! That is a disgrace, a retreat in
search of respectability after "daring" to oppose the U.S. war along with
30 million other people in the world. It is not time to "balance" things
out - by condemning Cuba, by calling for a regime change, by supporting
the cause of the "market oriented" Cuban functionary-dissidents.  Let us
remember the same progressive intellectuals supported "dissidents" in
Eastern Europe and Russia who were bankrolled by Soros and the U.S. State
Department. The "dissidents" turned the country over to the Russian mafia,
life expectancy declined five years ( over 10 million Russians died
prematurely with the sacking of the national health system), while in
Eastern Europe "dissidents" closed the shipyards of Gdansk , enrolled in
NATO and provided mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of Iraq. And never
among these current supporters of Cuban "dissidents" is there any critical
reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting from their
anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in favor of the 'dissidents'
who have become the soldiers of the U.S. Middle Eastern and Central
European empire. Our U.S. moralists never, I repeat, never, ever reflected
critically on their moral failures, past or present because, you see, they
are for "freedom everywhere", even when the "wrong" people get into power
and the "other" empire takes over, and the millions die from curable
diseases and white slavery rings expand. The reply is always the same:
"That's not what we wanted - we were for an independent, free and just
society - it just happened that in calling for regime change, support for
dissidents, we never suspected that the Empire would 'take it all', would
become the only superpower, and engage in colonizing the world." The moral
intellectuals must accept political responsibility for the consequences
and not hide behind abstract moral platitudes, neither for their past
complicity with empire building nor their present scandalous
pronouncements against Cuba. They cannot claim they don't know the
repercussions of what they are saying and doing. They cannot pretend
innocence after all they we have seen and read and heard about U.S. war
plans against Cuba. The principal author and promoter of the anti-Cuban
declaration in the United States (signed by Chomsky, Zinn and Wallerstein)
was Joanne Landy, a self-declared "democratic socialist", and lifelong
advocate of the violent overthrow of the Cuban government - for the past
40 years. She is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
one of the major institutions advising the U.S. government on imperial
policies for over a half century. Landy supported the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and the Albanian terrorist group, the KLA -
calling publicly for overt military support - responsible for the murder
of 2000 Serbs and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs
and others in Kosova. It is no surprise that the statement authored by
this chameleon right-wing extremist contained no mention of Cuba's social
accomplishments and opposition to imperialism. For the record, it should
be noted, that Landy was a visceral opponent of the Chinese, Vietnamese
and other social revolutions in her climb to positions of influence in the
CFR. For all their vaunted critical intellect, the "progressive"
intellectuals overlooked the unsavory politics of the author who promoted
the anti-Cuba diatribe.  THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL TODAY Many critics
of Cuba speak of "principles" as if there were only one set of principles
applicable to all situations independent of who is involved and what are
the consequences. Asserting "principles" like "freedom" for those involved
in plotting the overthrow of the Cuban government in complicity with the
State Department would turn Cuba into another Chile - where Allende was
overthrown by Pinochet - and lead to a reversal of the popular gains of
the revolution. There are principles that are more basic than freedom for
U.S. Cuban functionaries , that is , national security and popular
sovereignty. There is, particularly among the U.S. progressive left, a
certain attraction to Third World victims, those who suffer defeats ,and
an aversion for successful revolutionaries. It seems that the U.S.
progressive intellectuals always find an alibi to avoid a commitment to a
revolution. For some it is the old refrain "Stalinism" - if the state
plays a major role in the economy; or it can be mass mobilizations - that
they dub "plebicitary dictatorships", or it can be security agencies which
successfully prevent terrorist activity which they call a "repressive
police state". Living in the least politicized nation in the world with
one of the most servile and corrupt trade union apparatus in the West,
with virtually no practical political influence outside a few university
towns, the practical intellectuals in the U.S. have no practical knowledge
or experience of the everyday threats and violence which hangs over
revolutionary governments and activists in Latin America. Their political
conceptions, the yardsticks they pull out to condemn or approve of any
political activity, exists nowhere except in their heads, in their
congenial, progressive, university settings where they enjoy all the
privileges of capitalist freedom and none of the risks which Third World
revolutionaries have to defend themselves against. A little modesty, dear
prestigious, critical, freedom preaching intellectuals. Look deep inside
and ask yourself if you would like to be pirated by a Miami-based
terrorist organization. Ask yourself if you would enjoy sitting in a café
in a major tourist hotel in Havana when a deadly bomb goes off - greetings
from the terrorists taking a beer with the President's brother, Jeb. Think
about living in a country which is on the top of the hit list of the most
violent imperial regime since Nazi Germany - and then perhaps your moral
sensibilities might awaken to the need to temper your condemnations of
Cuban security policies and contextualize your moral fiats. I want to
conclude by establishing my own "moral imperatives" - for the critical
intellectuals. 1.  The first duty of Euro-U.S. intellectuals is to oppose
their own imperial rulers set on conquering the world. 2.  The second duty
is to clarify the moral issues involved in the struggle between imperial
militarists and popular/national resistance and reject the hypocritical
posture that equates the mass terror of one with the justified if at times
excessive security constraints of the other. 3.  To establish standards of
political and personal integrity with regards to the facts and issues
before making moral judgements. 4.  Resist the temptation to become a
"moral hero of the empire" by refusing to support victorious popular
struggles and revolutionary regimes which are not perfect which lack all
the freedoms available to impotent intellectuals unable to threaten power
and therefore tolerated to meet, discuss and criticize. 5.  Refuse to set
themselves as Judge, Prosecutor and Jury condemning progressives who have
the courage to defend revolutionaries. The most appalling instance is
Susan Sontag'sscurrilous attack on Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who she accused of lacking integrity and being an
apologist of Cuban terror (sic). Sontag made her blood libelous
accusations in Bogota, Colombia. The Colombian death squads working with
the regime and the military kill more trade unionists and journalists than
any place in the world, and do so, for far less than being an "apologist"
of the Castro regime.  This is the same Sontag who was an enthusiastic
supporter of the U.S. imperial invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia,
apologist for the fundamentalist Bosnian regime and who was a silent
witness to the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and others in Kosovo.
Moral integrity indeed! The precious sense of moral superiority found
among New York intellectuals allow Sontag to finger Marquez for the death
squads and feel that she has made a great moral statement. U.S.-European
intellectuals should not confuse their own political futility and
inconsequential position with that of their counterparts among committed
Latin American intellectuals. There is a place for constructive dialogue
and debate but never personal assaults that demean individuals facing
daily threats to their lives. It is easy for critical intellectuals to be
a "friend of Cuba" in good times at celebrations and invited conferences
in times of lesser threats. It is much harder to be a "friend of Cuba"
when a totalitarian empire threatens the heroic island and puts heavy
hands on its defenders. It is in times like this - of permanent wars,
genocide and military aggression, when Cuba needs the solidarity of
critical intellectuals, which they are receiving from all over Europe and
particularly Latin America. Isn't it time that we, in the United States,
with our illustrious and prestigious progressive intellectuals with all
our majestic moral sensibilities recognize that there is a vital, heroic
revolution struggling to defend itself against the U.S. juggernaut and
that we modestly set aside our self-important declarations, support that
revolution and join the one million Cubans celebrating May Day with their
leader Fidel Castro?



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