From robertojorquera at yahoo.com Thu Oct 1 03:53:29 2009 From: robertojorquera at yahoo.com (Roberto Jorquera) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 02:53:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] directactionfilms sent you a playlist: "Hugo Chavez at 64th session of U.N General Assembly" Message-ID: <478268.90126.qm@web32004.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi All Below is Chavez's Speech to the United Nations translated into english directactionfilms sent you a playlist: "Hugo Chavez at 64th session of U.N General Assembly" Hugo Chavez at 64th session of U.N General Assembly http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E04ACFAC6F4F11BB ? 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 __________________________________________________________________________________ Get more done like never before with Yahoo!7 Mail. Learn more: http://au.overview.mail.yahoo.com/ From epoliticus at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 04:20:47 2009 From: epoliticus at gmail.com (Politicus E.) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 06:20:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] India: War Against the Naxals Message-ID: Al Jazeera English recently hosted a discussion on the current offensive of the Indian state in the so-called "Maoist-afflicted" areas of the country. Visit Visit http://bit.ly/cvct4 to watch the program. epoliticus -- "In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial ... the present year of course always excepted." -- A German refugee, circa 1867 -- http://epoliticus.wordpress.com/ From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 1 07:05:26 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:05:26 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Obama may turn to Republicans for support on Afghanistan escalation Message-ID: <4AC4A916.6080300@panix.com> Washington Post, Thursday, October 1, 2009 On War, Obama Could Turn to GOP Democrats Oppose Larger Afghan Effort By Scott Wilson With much of his party largely opposed to expanding military operations in Afghanistan, President Obama could be forced into the awkward political position of turning to congressional Republicans for support if he follows the recommendations of the commanding U.S. general there. Congressional Democrats have begun promoting a compromise package of additional resources for Afghanistan that would emphasize training for Afghan security forces but deny Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal the additional combat troops he has indicated he needs to regain the initiative against the Taliban insurgency. The emerging Democratic consensus is likely to constrain the president as he considers how best to proceed with an increasingly unpopular war. On Wednesday, Obama chaired a three-hour discussion on Afghanistan with Cabinet members and senior officials at the White House. The meeting was largely a reassessment of the past eight years of American involvement in the region, with the president repeatedly probing his military and civilian advisers to justify their assumptions, according to one participant. This source said there was a recognition that the decision facing Obama is one of the most critical of his presidency. In interviews over the past week, Democratic leaders have endorsed the change in military focus and the expedited training of Afghan forces that McChrystal outlined in his stark initial assessment of the war. But they expressed deep misgivings over McChrystal's impending request for as many as 40,000 new U.S. troops. Some argue that any increase in the U.S. military presence would help the Taliban whip up public anger toward an expanding foreign occupation that already comprises more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers and Marines. "We basically need a much larger Afghan army much quicker -- that's the bottom line, that's the winning strategy," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Before we commit to additional combat forces, which has a distinct negative, not only for our overstretched troops but also the footprint argument, I believe we must do these other things that are the best way to succeed." Levin's argument is echoed by many Democrats in the Senate, which is set to vote this week on a $636 billion defense appropriations bill, including $128 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress would be called on to approve additional funds if Obama decides to expand the war effort in Afghanistan. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said history demands that the administration and Congress vet the mission before committing more forces. "In Vietnam, we heard the commanding general on the ground saying we need more troops. We heard the president of the United States say if we just put in more troops, we're going to see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said in an interview for The Washington Post's "Voices of Power" series. "And the fact is that they were wrong because they never examined the underlying assumptions on which our involvement was based." Recent opinion polls have shown that only a minority of Americans believe the war is worth fighting, and the flawed presidential election in August has eroded the Obama administration's confidence in the Afghan government. Much of the opposition to the war is rooted in Obama's political base, which is angry that he is ending one war in Iraq only to expand another in Afghanistan, even though he pledged in his campaign to do just that. Obama and his senior advisers, including McChrystal, who participated by video link, on Wednesday concluded two days of initial discussions on the general's assessment. The talks marked the first formal internal White House debate over the report's recommendations, which, if carried out in full, would greatly expand the U.S. commitment to the war in Afghanistan, in terms of both military presence and civilian assistance to build a more stable government from the provinces to Kabul. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made clear in a meeting with Post editors this week that he supports the counterinsurgency strategy that Obama endorsed in March and that is the basis of McChrystal's plan. "Basically I share [McChrystal's] view," Rasmussen said. The right policy, he added, "is definitely not an exit strategy. It's of crucial importance to stress that we will stay as long as it takes to stabilize the country." A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the administration is asking questions about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan "that frankly have not been asked over the last eight years." The official said the discussions are focusing on how best to pursue "our core national security goals," which the official defined as defeating al-Qaeda and its allies. But the official indicated that an array of alternatives are under review. "I don't know if there is such a thing as middle option, because I know there are more than two options," the official said. In his 66-page report, first published by The Post, McChrystal warned that "a failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum" in the next 12 months "risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." He stated that "resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it." In the administration, there are divisions on whether to send more resources to Afghanistan or adopt a more narrow counterterrorism campaign that would avoid some of the long-term nation-building tasks that McChrystal considers necessary. In the past, Vice President Biden has advocated a strategy of shrinking the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and concentrating on disrupting al-Qaeda and its allies through drone strikes and Special Forces operations. Now anti-war Democrats on the Hill are pushing for that option. "We should use the same approach that we take in parts of the world that we have not invaded," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, citing U.S. operations in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere. The emerging Democratic position could compel Obama, whose domestic agenda is facing stiff Republican criticism in Congress, to rely on those same opposition lawmakers for support if he decides to send more combat troops to Afghanistan. Doing so would give Obama far less flexibility in devising his own plan, given that Republicans have strongly favored giving McChrystal what he asks for. As Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said last week: "I'm against a half-measure. That's the worst scenario. . . . If you do what the commanders recommend, I will be an enthusiastic supporter of the president." Feingold warned that "it would probably not be a good idea for the president to rely on Republicans and a handful of Democrats." McChrystal, whom Obama sent to Afghanistan in May after firing his predecessor, is expected to soon request thousands of additional combat troops, support forces and military trainers. His timeline for more resources roughly coincides with the U.S. withdrawal schedule from Iraq, which calls for all U.S. forces to leave the country by the end of 2011. At the conclusion of an initial review in March, Obama approved 21,000 additional combat troops for Afghanistan. By the end of the year, 68,000 U.S. troops are scheduled to be on the ground. Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who has many former aides working on Obama's national security team, said that "everyone likes the training of troops, which is something we've not been very good at." But he said the key question is whether Congress, if it approves the resources for McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy, will continue that level of support for the years it will take to stabilize Afghanistan. Even the most politically popular aspects of the administration's Afghan strategy are meeting resistance in Congress. Last week, a Senate panel stripped $900 million from the administration's $6.6 billion request to train and equip Afghan security forces. In a statement opposing the decision, the White House said the "full request reflects his commanders' plan for Afghan forces to assume a greater share of responsibility for security as quickly as possible." Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said: "This is a very complex stew here, and the McChrystal report is only one element of that stew. It's clear we're at a major decision point in Afghanistan, and unfortunately it comes as we're at a major decision point on health care, a major decision point on climate change, a major decision point on financial regulation and the economy," he said. Staff writers Ben Pershing, Paul Kane, Michael D. Shear and Anne E. Kornblut contributed to this report. From binesi at gvtel.com Thu Oct 1 07:15:38 2009 From: binesi at gvtel.com (David Thorstad) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:15:38 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? Message-ID: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com> It is clear from Geimer's testimony that at a minimum Roman Polanski's sexual imposition on her was unethical and indefensible. Her saying "no" should have been enough to stop his advances. There was no effective consent on her part, and that should be the determining factor, not her age. That said, the judicial corruption in the case not only may have justified his fleeing, but that, and Geimer's unwillingness to pursue the matter, should end the state's vendetta against him. One would think that in a city like Los Angeles, where young people are killing each other constantly in gang violence, the authorities would have more important things to preoccupy them than going after Polanski. Some of the comments on this list, to wit those bordering on hysteria and lynch mob mentality, have been disheartening, and suggest that some leftists throw words around to cover a deep-seated irrationality. David ======================================================================== http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/roman-polanski/story?id=8705958 Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? 13-Year-Old's Testimony Tells Story Behind Polanski's Guilty Plea to Unlawful Sexual Intercourse By LUCHINA FISHER Sept. 30, 2009? In the more than 30 years since director Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl and then fled the country before he was sentenced, he has continued to make movies and even won an Academy Award. Meanwhile, the details of what actually happened on that day in March 1977 have receded, as even the victim, Samantha Geimer, has said she forgives Polanski and doesn't think he should face further jail time. Now, with Polanski's arrest over the weekend at the airport in Zurich, Switzerland, there's been renewed interest in the still pending case. ABC News obtained transcripts of Geimer's 1977 grand jury testimony, which resulted in six charges against Polanski. They include shocking details of 13-year-old Geimer testifying that the 43-year-old Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude before performing oral, vaginal and anal intercourse on her, despite her demands to "keep away." A former Los Angeles prosecutor who worked on the case said he believes that if people knew all the details, they would have less sympathy for Polanski. "It's outrageous," David Wells, a former assistant district attorney on the case, told ABCNews.com. "This pedophile raped a 13-year-old girl. It's still an outrageous offense. It's a good thing he was arrested. I wish it would have happened years before." According to Geimer's testimony, Polanski first met Geimer at her home Feb. 13, 1977. Geimer said the director asked her mother if he could photograph her for French Vogue. She said her mother agreed to a private photo shoot, which Geimer told ABC's "Good Morning America" in 2003 that she believed would help further her acting career. The director returned nearly a week later to take Geimer for the photo shoot about a block from her home. Geimer said that at the top of a hill, Polanski asked her to change shirts, which she did in front of him. Then, she said, he asked her to pose topless, which she also did, though she said she felt uncomfortable. Girl Testified 'It Got a Little Scary' With Polanski Geimer testified that she did not tell her mother about the topless photographs because she had planned to tell Polanski, "I don't want to get any more pictures taken again." However, when Polanski turned up at her home March 10 for a second photo session, Geimer agreed to go with him. She had planned to ask him if she could bring along a friend, but said she felt he was rushing her to go. Polanski took pictures of Geimer at someone else's residence before they drove to Jack Nicholson's home. There, events took a darker turn, as Geimer said Polanski loaded her with champagne, then asked her to pose topless again. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer later told "GMA." "He was friendly and then right toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized, you know, he had some other intentions, and then I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." Geimer said the other intentions became clear after Polanski offered her part of a Quaalude, which she took, then asked her to get into a Jacuzzi without her underwear. He took pictures of her in the Jacuzzi naked, before taking off his clothes and joining her in the water, she said. Geimer said she grew uncomfortable when he grabbed her around the waist and started to move her hips around. When she hopped out of the Jacuzzi and retreated to the bathroom, she said, Polanski followed her there and she told him she wanted to go home. "Yeah, I'll take you home soon," he said, according to her testimony. "No, I have to go home now," Geimer said she told him. Geimer testified that Polanski persuaded her to go to the bedroom and lie down. Geimer went, she said, but she sat on the couch in the bedroom. She described Polanski sitting next to her and reaching over to kiss her. Geimer said she told him, "No, keep away" and "Come on, let's go home." He ignored her, she testified, then "went down and he started performing cuddliness (sic)." When the district attorney asked Geimer what "cuddliness" meant, she clarified, "he placed his mouth on my vagina." "I was ready to cry," she said. "I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.'" Polanski Asked Girl If She Was on Pill During Rape, Victim Testified Instead, a few minutes later, Geimer said, Polanski began having intercourse with her, while asking her if she was on the pill and when her last period was. She testified that he then asked, "Would you like me to go in through your back?" Then, he started performing anal sex on her. At one point, Geimer said, there was a knock on the door. The Los Angeles Times reported that the woman was actress Anjelica Huston, Nicholson's girlfriend at the time, but Geimer testified that she did not know who the woman was who was in the house. According to Geimer, the woman who knocked on the door said, "Roman, are you in there?" Polanski went to the door and opened it a crack to speak to the woman. Meanwhile, Geimer testified, she put her underwear back on and started toward the door. When asked why she didn't say anything to the woman, Geimer said, "I was still pretty much afraid of him [Polanski]." She added that he was her only way home. Geimer testified that Polanski closed the door before she could reach it, took off her panties and began intercourse again. When he finally let up, she said, she went to the bathroom and put on her dress again. On her way outside to the car to wait for Polanski, she said, she again saw the woman in the house, spoke with her, but didn't tell her what had just happened. Geimer said she began to cry in the car, and Polanski got in about 10 minutes later and drove her home. "All hell broke loose" when her mom found out, Geimer told "GMA." "My sister overheard me telling my then-boyfriend what happened on the phone after I got home. So she went in and told my mom," Geimer said in 2003. Polanski was arrested the next day. He claimed that the sex was consensual. Geimer said it was not and that she resisted. Huston later described the teen as "sullen" in a probation report prepared at the time of Polanski's plea deal. "She appeared to be one of those kind of little chicks between -- could be any age up to 25. She did not look like a 13-year-old scared little thing," Huston said. Today, Hollywood is still rushing to Polanski's defense. Directors Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Woody Allen are among dozens in the film industry who have agreed to sign a petition calling for the immediate release of Polanski. In a British newspaper, film producer Harvey Weinstein, who has already signed the petition, called Polanski's original plea deal a "miscarriage of justice." Polanski 'Served His Time' for 'So-Called Crime,' Harvey Weinstein Says "Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time," Weinstein wrote. Polanski took a deal and pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse and served 42 days in a California jail where he was psychologically evaluated. His Hollywood rep Jeff Berg told "GMA" Tuesday that Polanski fled to France in 1978 only after learning during a discussion with the district attorney outside a Los Angeles courtroom that the judge in his case was preparing to sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation. Following the 2008 HBO documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," which raised questions about the case, Berg said Polanski's rights were violated and the case was "plagued with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct." In the film, Wells, the former assistant district attorney, acknowledged having improper conversations with the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, and advising him on sentencing Polanski. When asked about it, he told ABCNews.com he exaggerated such claims for the film to make himself look more important to the case than he was. Wells did say he was being truthful when he told the filmmaker that he handed the judge's clerk a copy of a foreign newspaper with a photograph of Polanski with two young girls. Wells said the judge responded, "That son of a bitch is going to state prison." Polanski fled the country before Rittenband could sentence him and Rittenband later recused himself from the case. He died 15 years ago. From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 1 08:00:23 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:00:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? References: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com> Message-ID: <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> I am so touched, to my core actually, at this outpouring of good sense, compassion, sympathy, rationalism, and understanding for the plight of a man who forced himself on a girl. I particularly like the judicious, and euphemistic choice of words-- his actions were unethical and indefensible. That's nice. But what did he actually do? He drugged and assaulted a young girl to satisfy his sexual desires. If he had drugged and assaulted her in order to rob her of her money would anyone on this list, would anyone anywhere be this rational, compassionate, sensible? Not to mention if he were African or Arab and a poor citizen of France, not a wealthy citizen of France. Oops, I just mentioned that. I bet Sarkozy would be leaping to the defense of all those youths he called "scum" so recently. Truly unbelievable-- 1800 workers get fired because Obama is following through on the Bush plan-- most of the workers by the way are women, so let's chalk it up to just one more assault for which I'm sure most will forgive, in 40 years or so the assaulters-- 645 further assaults on workers in the workplace are in the works-- and this spectacle, this checkout counter entertainment becomes a cause celebre, because, of course, and only of course, the celebrity is a cause. What a waste of time. Can somebody please explain to me why we, why anybody, should give a rat's ass about whatever happens or does not happen to Roman Polanski, which for all my deep seated irrationality is the core of every comment I have made? ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Thorstad" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 9:15 AM Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? > It is clear from Geimer's testimony that at a minimum Roman Polanski's > sexual imposition on her was unethical and indefensible. Her saying "no" > should have been enough to stop his advances. There was no effective > consent on her part, and that should be the determining factor, not her > age. > That said, the judicial corruption in the case not only may have > justified his fleeing, but that, and Geimer's unwillingness to pursue > the matter, should end the state's vendetta against him. One would think > that in a city like Los Angeles, where young people are killing each > other constantly in gang violence, the authorities would have more > important things to preoccupy them than going after Polanski. > Some of the comments on this list, to wit those bordering on > hysteria and lynch mob mentality, have been disheartening, and suggest > that some leftists throw words around to cover a deep-seated > irrationality. > David > ======================================================================== From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Thu Oct 1 08:18:28 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 14:18:28 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] On the Kraft/Terrabusi conflict In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I?m sorry, my computer crashed yesterday and I was working (I know, you can?t believe your eyes,) and I couldn?t acknowledge my debt to N?stor for his report any sooner. But I don?t have much to add, everything N?stor says makes a lot of sense, I mean, obviously anti-neoliberal Mrs. President and her right-hand Scioli were in their absolute right to crush those adventurist workers (who of course have been mobilizing for months only at the behest of their ultra-leftist delegates, who make ALL the decisions,) since the important thing is to let the Ministry of Labor show Kraft that it has to comply with the National Law, that same Law, which sternly built the means of production during the 90?s when old anti-neoliberal fighter Carlos Menem did his best to get the IMF to work against the interests of imperialism? Now, on a serious note, is 1000 anti-neoliberal policemen enough to teach those fuckers? _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing? now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try bing_1x1 From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 1 08:19:19 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:19:19 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? In-Reply-To: <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com> <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4AC4BA67.5080502@panix.com> S. Artesian wrote: > Can somebody please explain to me why we, why anybody, should give a rat's > ass about whatever happens or does not happen to Roman Polanski, which for > all my deep seated irrationality is the core of every comment I have made? Leaving aside his scuzzy character and the special pleading on his behalf by the likes of Woody Allen, the case raises important questions about the legal system: 1. Why wasn't he extradited before? He owns a house in Switzerland after all. 2. What is the prison system about? Is it supposed to be for punishment or rehabilitation? If it is primarily for the former, then extradition makes sense. But I doubt that anybody takes the idea seriously that a 76 year old man is capable of such crimes in the future. 3. How do the rich and the famous manage to escape punishment? After all, Marc Rich is living it up in Switzerland. 4. How are sex offenders treated? In Texas they can be chemically castrated. There are other questions that spring to mind that transcend Polanski as an individual. Those are germane for Marxists to discuss, not his aberrant behavior. I think that these aspects of the case loom large because of the overbearing nature of the American judicial system since 2003, which has led to all sorts of abuses in the "war on terror". From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Thu Oct 1 08:21:01 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:21:01 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] raped and abused In-Reply-To: <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com>, <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4AC4828D.25922.270E0CF@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> On an Africa trip last month, Clinton met with women and girls raped and otherwise abused by soldiers and irregular forces in the conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC. http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-09-25-voa35.cfm Rape is part of war. Until that gets confronted women can not expect understanding from most men. Polanski was 44 at the time. even if the 14 year old has grown up and "forgives him" he still carried out brutality against a very young female.. This Polanski case has similarity to the Phillip Garrido case. On the latter there seems to be, at least, some societal concern. Maybe if Polanski had stayed and accepted justice the Phillip Garridos of the world would not have felt enabled. ==== Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook http://librarian.lishost.org/ On 1 Oct 2009 at 10:00, S. Artesian wrote: > I am so touched, to my core actually, at this outpouring of good sense, > compassion, sympathy, rationalism, and understanding for the plight of a > man who forced himself on a girl. I particularly like the judicious, and > euphemistic choice of words-- his actions were unethical and indefensible. > That's nice. But what did he actually do? He drugged and assaulted a > young girl to satisfy his sexual desires. If he had drugged and assaulted > her in order to rob her of her money would anyone on this list, would anyone > anywhere be this rational, compassionate, sensible? > > Not to mention if he were African or Arab and a poor citizen of France, not > a wealthy citizen of France. Oops, I just mentioned that. I bet Sarkozy > would be leaping to the defense of all those youths he called "scum" so > recently. > > Truly unbelievable-- 1800 workers get fired because Obama is following > through on the Bush plan-- most of the workers by the way are women, so > let's chalk it up to just one more assault for which I'm sure most will > forgive, in 40 years or so the assaulters-- 645 further assaults on workers > in the workplace are in the works-- and this spectacle, this checkout > counter entertainment becomes a cause celebre, because, of course, and only > of course, the celebrity is a cause. > > What a waste of time. > > Can somebody please explain to me why we, why anybody, should give a rat's > ass about whatever happens or does not happen to Roman Polanski, which for > all my deep seated irrationality is the core of every comment I have made? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David Thorstad" > To: "David Schanoes" > Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 9:15 AM > Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? > > > > It is clear from Geimer's testimony that at a minimum Roman Polanski's > > sexual imposition on her was unethical and indefensible. Her saying "no" > > should have been enough to stop his advances. There was no effective > > consent on her part, and that should be the determining factor, not her > > age. > > That said, the judicial corruption in the case not only may have > > justified his fleeing, but that, and Geimer's unwillingness to pursue > > the matter, should end the state's vendetta against him. One would think > > that in a city like Los Angeles, where young people are killing each > > other constantly in gang violence, the authorities would have more > > important things to preoccupy them than going after Polanski. > > Some of the comments on this list, to wit those bordering on > > hysteria and lynch mob mentality, have been disheartening, and suggest > > that some leftists throw words around to cover a deep-seated > > irrationality. > > David > > ======================================================================== Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook http://librarian.lishost.org/ From acpollack2 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 09:17:37 2009 From: acpollack2 at gmail.com (Andrew Pollack) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:17:37 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Scientists: 'Ardi' Fossil Sheds Light on Origin of Human Species Message-ID: <2fa1449b0910010817y1dd50f5o4fc55cd42503bbae@mail.gmail.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100102354.html?hpid=topnews Apparently a key transitional figure between tree-living primates and those walking on the savannah. But one researcher claims it was transitional in another sense: "The common ancestor looked like Ardi. It's the chimp and gorilla that have evolved enormously, not hominids. Hominids have concentrated their evolution in two things -- upright walking and brain. Everything else is pretty primitive," Lovejoy said. "In the Ardipithecus genus, the males are not significantly different in size from the females. The males also lack the dagger-like teeth that male chimps use to fight one another for access to ovulating females. Lovejoy argues that this is a sign of a different social organization. The males, he argues, pair-bonded with females, and supplied them with food. The upright walking would have made food transport easier. Lovejoy sees male parental investment in the survival of offspring as a hallmark of the human lineage. "'The road to becoming human didn't start with a big brain. The road to becoming human began with setting the social conditions that would allow for the expansion of the big brain,' Lovejoy said, reiterating a hypothesis he developed long before the discovery of Ardi." Unfortunately there's no evidence cited in the article for this claim, but it bears further investigation. From markalause at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 09:35:58 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:35:58 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? In-Reply-To: <4AC4BA67.5080502@panix.com> References: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com> <364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> <4AC4BA67.5080502@panix.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: How are sex offenders treated? In Texas they can be chemically > castrated. > > I wonder if Roman Polanski would be chemically castrated even in Texas? Or if the punishment would make juries reluctant to convinct him. I suspect that these kinds of things are reserved for lesser being...for whom the investigation would tend to be less thorough and the actual evidence even less clear. ML From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 1 09:51:59 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:51:59 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? References: <4AC4AB7A.8010804@gvtel.com><364DC737458F4A588E43819FDA0C9844@dmsthinkpad> <4AC4BA67.5080502@panix.com> Message-ID: <5AC1A9D502B0463CA3CFF05B6CC6BC51@dmsthinkpad> OK, 1. US pressure on Switzerland in connection with tax fraud cases. 2. Maintaining class power and property. Punishment. Which is why Polanski was able to plea-bargain down to sex with a minor, and avoid charges of rape and sodomy, and avoid a trial where the victim would testify. That is also why his sentence was only 1 year. He fled the sentence, remember, not the admission of guilt. To my knowledge he has never refuted or denied the grand jury testimony-- not that I have ever, before yesterday, paid any attention to it. His age? I find it funny that some [not the moderator ] who think her age is irrelevant, think his age, now, is relevant. 3. They manage to escape because they are rich and famous. Marc Rich was pardoned by Clinton after all becaus Mrs. Rich was providing financial support to the Democratic Party. Is he still in Switzerland? Probably planning to break out Bernie Madoff. 4. How are sex offenders treated? Awfully, I'm sure. 5. The overbearing nature of the US judicial system predates 2003, and predates the 2001 inauguration of the "war on terror." I think we can discuss any of the above without once referring to Polanski [disregarding the age issue], which makes it clear to me that the only reason we are discussing Polanski is because of his celebrity status. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 10:19 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What Did He Do? From tzsche at shaw.ca Thu Oct 1 10:14:03 2009 From: tzsche at shaw.ca (Steve Heeren) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:14:03 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? Message-ID: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca> Sartesian: if the whole subject is such a "waste of time", why have you posted so many times about it? i'm surprised, really, because, IF you are the same david schanoes who was once part of "Surrealist Subversion", that implies that group didn't encourage much by way of soul-searching or introspection. you live without any self-contradictions? steve heeren From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 1 10:28:22 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 12:28:22 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca> Message-ID: <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> Why did I post so much? Good question. I think on a personal level, I started because I think some of the outcry among the literati, the filmmakers, the politicians, the Swiss man who's ashamed to be Swiss, is based on "old-boy" camaraderie-- the old "wink wink" "nudge nudge" "it's only sex, heh, heh, she probably looked like she was 18," "now he's old," "leave him alone" and by the way "good for you you old horndog Roman, wish I could have been there in Hollywood," etc. etc. etc. The rest came in response to other posts which I think are precipitated, historically, not personally, by the celebrity, class, status of Polanski. And I think it's the wrong class to boot. As for the Surrealist Group, left that group in 1972? 1973?-- and violently, as Rosemont had one of his goons break into the home of, and threaten a comrade of mine, after the rupture. He was too much of a coward to try that shit with me. Proud to say, I took the time to track down and smack the shit out of the goon. Didn't like Rosemont, or his comrades, thought he was in essence, acting a combination [back then] oracle, bully, curator, and librarian. But that was 37 years ago, so I have little idea what he did in the intervening time, and besides, even I can't hold a grudge that long-- except for the case of the goon. As for soul-searching and introspection-- I do my share. I just keep it to myself. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Heeren" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 12:14 PM Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? > Sartesian: > > if the whole subject is such a "waste of time", why have you posted so > many times about it? > > i'm surprised, really, because, IF you are the same david schanoes who > was once part of "Surrealist Subversion", that implies that group didn't > encourage much by way of soul-searching or introspection. you live > without any self-contradictions? > > steve heeren From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Thu Oct 1 11:34:13 2009 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:34:13 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] Northern Arizona Tribal Leaders Sharply Critical of Some Environmental Groups Message-ID: <0A40195B1936462CA3541DC2ACF8A890@HunterGray> NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: October 1 2009 I frequently stand with the environmentalists -- e.g.,preservation of wolves and grizzly bears and opposition to uranium and much more -- but I certainly don't stand with them on these southwestern Native resource development issues. Economic destitution and privation on almost all Native reservations in this country have been chronic since -- and I say this with sarcasm -- "the West was won." Corporations, generally with Federal support, have traditionally pillaged Native lands and resources. This exploitative process has slowed -- thanks primarily to rapidly increasing Native self-determination -- reflected grudgingly by the Department of Interior,. And that self-determination also includes increasing efforts to launch and carry tribally owned and controlled -- and critically needed -- economic development projects. That, in turn, has often pitted Native nations against outside environmentalists -- as in the current issue of the proposed and developing Navajo coal gassification project. [These aren't cases of tribes "seeking a dollar at whatever cost to lands and people." All tribes with even the remotest relationship to uranium -- now much in demand globally -- have slammed and locked the door on That Evil. And, on numerous other "development fronts," tribes have proceeded with great care, frequently turning thumbs-down if the environmental price is heavy. This attached article from USA Today indicates the Native vs some environmentalists controversy. But first, for a little context, here is something I wrote last August 3 2009. "Minerals, natural resources generally, and attendant issues such as development and who or what does such, have been on-going controversies on many reservations for a very long time indeed. The role of outside corporations has been obviously exploitive and, even relatively recent reforms in the BIA/Interior lease and related arrangements -- e.g., the mandating of tribal approval in contrast to the old Federal/corporations unilateral Indians-be-damned approach -- hasn't ended a plethora of often hot, on-going issues. The companies may have felt they'd won re avoidance of responsibility for past royalty injustices when USSC ruled for Peabody Coal last spring -- but even that specific case has closely associated collateral dimensions that remain as very active issues. And much more litigation is afoot or planned on many fronts at Navajo -- and on other Indian lands as well. And, of course, many traditionalists oppose most or any natural resource development on their Native lands. For years, there has been the very worthy goal of moving BIA from corporate-sensitive Interior and giving it its own cabinet status -- and thus removing it from at least some corporate pressure. But, since the Indian New Deal era -- FDR and John Collier -- the highly necessary and thoroughly commendable call for tribally-owned and tribally-controlled economic development has been consistent and growing in virtually every reservation setting, large or small. The rapid growth of Indian casinos certainly reflects this. Even long before that phenomenon emerged and flew to the Four Directions a generation ago, a number of tribes -- including the Navajo -- had been doing some very productive work in the context of tribal economic development . But it's never been easy for the Indian nations to secure the funding necessary to launch and carry really larger scale tribal enterprises. Often, to accomplish this, outside fiscal forces become formally involved. The proposed Navajo coal gasification plant in northwestern New Mexico -- co-owned by Navajo Nation and an outside corporation -- is a big step toward an old goal. It carries the plus of several hundred Indian jobs -- and considerable money for the Nation. On the other hand, there'll be inevitable environmental damage and other possible dangers and the relocation of a number of Navajo families -- now reluctant to do so -- from their traditional individual settings. One would hope -- and I would definitely assume -- that if this project does go forward, the Navajo Nation will sensitively and constructively and effectively address all of those concerns." Hunter [Hunter Bear] August 3 2009 [See for uranium issues at Navajoland: http://www.hunterbear.org/a_native_rights_sampling.htm ] ____________ By Dennis Wagner, USA TODAY October 1 2009 PHOENIX - The president of the Navajo Nation joined other Native American leaders this week in assailing environmentalists who have sought to block or shut down coal-fired power plants that provide vital jobs and revenue to tribes in northern Arizona. "These are individuals and groups who claim to have put the welfare of fish and insects above the survival of the Navajo people when in fact their only goal is to stop the use of coal in the U.S. and the Navajo Nation," said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., who presides over America's largest Indian reservation, which sprawls over three states and claims a population of about 250,000. Shirley's remarks came Wednesday after the Hopi Nation's Tribal Council sent a message Monday to the Sierra Club and a handful of other environmental groups: Stay off the reservation. Tina May, a spokeswoman for the Hopi Nation's Tribal Council, said leaders unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that the conservation groups are unwelcome because they have damaged the tribe's economy by pushing to close the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant near Page, Ariz., that produces electricity distributed by providers in Arizona, California and Nevada. Andy Bessler, Sierra Club representative in the Southwest, expressed dismay at the resolution and noted that another tribal group, Hopis Organized for Political Initiative, supports environmental efforts. "We work with anybody who wants to help protect the environment, stop global warming and transition our economy to a clean economy," Bessler told the Associated Press. "We don't discriminate, and we'll continue to honor the invitations we get from Hopi and Navajo communities to work with them." The public castigation of conservation groups represents an unusual breach between Native American tribes and environmentalists, who often work hand-in-hand on political causes, according to Ben Nuvamsa, a former Hopi tribal chairman. Tribes frequently partner with conservationists to protect resources and sacred sites, said Jerry Pardilla, executive director of the National Tribal Environmental Council. However, he added, with 564 diverse tribes, there are times when they get crosswise with the green movement. Families depend on mines Environmentalists have long campaigned against coal as an energy source, but the Navajo and Hopi say they depend on such revenue. This spring, the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and some Native American groups called on the Environmental Protection Agency to study the Navajo Generating Station's role in causing smog over the Grand Canyon. Stephanie Kodish, clean air counsel for the NPCA, complained at the time that the power plant is a source of "excessive pollution." The Navajo Generating Station, operated by Phoenix-based Salt River Project, began producing electricity in 1974. It originally cost about $650 million, and $420 million more was spent in the 1990s to deal with pollution concerns. The generating station and a reservation coal mine now support hundreds of families, providing more than 70% of the Hopi Nation's governmental revenue, said Scott Canty, tribal counsel. Nuvamsa, who resigned as Hopi chairman last year amid political infighting, scoffed at the council's resolution. "This group here (the tribal council) has done so much to damage our tribal reputation and to violate our civil rights," he said. "As tribal members, we are all environmentalists because we're supposed to take care of Mother Earth." Canty said closure of the plant would be devastating for Hopis. "The tribe would essentially be penniless," he said. Shutdown cost millions Environmental campaigns such as the one surrounding the Navajo Generating Station have succeeded in the past. Environmentalists successfully closed the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., in December 2005 after a pollution lawsuit. That shutdown cost the tribe more than $6.5 million per year, according to May, and closure of the Navajo Generating Station would wipe out another $11 million. Shirley's statement of solidarity with his neighboring Hopi tribe ripped environmentalists for fighting development of Desert Rock Energy Project. This is a $2.5 billion proposed coal-fired power facility that Shirley described as "the most important economic development project in our nation's history." Nada Talayumptewa, chairwoman of the council's energy team, said, "We need to make public that we don't want the environmental groups coming in and causing trouble for the Hopi tribe. It's time we take a stand." The Sierra Club's Bessler said, "We need to do something about global warming, and coal is the greatest threat." Wagner reports for The Arizona Republic HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism [2009] And see Personal Narrative: http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 1 11:43:12 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:43:12 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca> <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4AC4EA30.3070203@panix.com> S. Artesian wrote: > > Didn't like Rosemont, or his comrades, thought he was in essence, acting a > combination [back then] oracle, bully, curator, and librarian. But that > was 37 years ago, so I have little idea what he did in the intervening time, > and besides, even I can't hold a grudge that long-- except for the case of > the goon. FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed-- BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead. --Christopher Marlowe "The Jew of Malta" From mdriscollrj at charter.net Thu Oct 1 12:01:15 2009 From: mdriscollrj at charter.net (Ralph Johansen) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:01:15 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] As energy guzzlers meet on Iran, Pepe Escobar examines specifics of empire Message-ID: <4AC4EE6B.4060005@charter.net> [Now that we've been schooled to pronounce/denounce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, how well will we do with Turkmenistan's Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov?] Tom Dispatch posted 2009-10-01 11:13:19 Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan's Ultimate Opera Back before email, a world traveler who wanted to keep in touch and couldn't just pop into the nearest Internet caf?, might drop you a series of postcards from one exotic locale after another. Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter for one of my favorite on-line publications, Asia Times, has been doing just that for TomDispatch readers as he explores the geography that undergirds our civilization, the pipelines that crisscross Eurasia through which flow energy -- and trouble. This, then, is his third "postcard" from what he likes to call Pipelineistan. The first in March began laying out a great, ongoing energy struggle across Eurasia via an embattled energy corridor (and a key pipeline) that runs from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Georgia and Turkey -- and the Great Game of business, diplomacy, and proxy war between Russia and the U.S. that has gone with it. In May, he plunged eastward into tumultuous Central and South Asia and the devolving battleground that, in Washington, goes by the neologism AfPak (for the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations). Now, he heads west toward Europe and another developing struggle, this time over just how natural gas from the Caspian Sea will reach Europe. Think of this as a story that lurks under so many other stories. For instance, this very day, the representatives of Russia, Germany, China, France, Britain, and for the first time, the United States, will be sitting down with Iran's representative in Geneva for what's billed as an historic exchange. On the table -- and in global headlines -- will be the Iranian nuclear program, a previously secret Iranian nuclear site, Iranian medium-range missile tests, sanctions of various sorts, the possibility of future attacks on that country's nuclear establishment, and so on. What won't be in the headlines, or the accompanying reams of analysis, is the approximately 15% of the world's natural gas deposits Iran controls. As it happens, for the Europeans and the Russians (and so for Washington), that's the story hidden under the Iranian imbroglio, which is why we need Pepe Escobar. Tom Jumpin' Jack Verdi, It's a Gas, Gas, Gas Iran and the Pipelineistan Opera By Pepe Escobar Brussels -- Oil and natural gas prices may be relatively low right now, but don't be fooled. The New Great Game of the twenty-first century is always over energy and it's taking place on an immense chessboard called Eurasia. Its squares are defined by the networks of pipelines being laid across the oil heartlands of the planet. Call it Pipelineistan. If, in Asia, the stakes in this game are already impossibly high, the same applies to the "Euro" part of the great Eurasian landmass -- the richest industrial area on the planet. Think of this as the real political thriller of our time. The movie of the week in Brussels is: When NATO Meets Pipelineistan. Though you won't find it in any headlines, at virtually every recent NATO summit Washington has been maneuvering to involve reluctant Europeans ever more deeply in the business of protecting Pipelineistan. This is already happening, of course, in Afghanistan, where a promised pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, the TAPI pipeline, has not even been built. And it's about to happen at the borders of Europe, again around pipelines that have not yet been built. If you had to put that Euro part of Pipelineistan into a formula, you might do so this way: Nabucco (pushed by the U.S.) versus South Stream (pushed by Russia). Be patient. You'll understand in a moment. At the most basic level, it's a matter of the West yet again trying, in the energy sphere, to bypass Russia. For this to happen, however -- and it wouldn't hurt if you opened the nearest atlas for a moment -- Europe desperately needs to get a handle on Central Asian energy resources, which is easy to say but has proven surprisingly hard to do. No wonder the NATO Secretary General's special representative, Robert Simmons, has been logging massive frequent-flyer miles to Central Asia over these last few years. Just under the surface of an edgy entente cordiale between the European Union (EU) and Russia lurks the possibility of a no-holds-barred energy war -- Liquid War, as I call it. The EU and the U.S. are pinning their hopes on a prospective 3,300-kilometer-long, $10.7 billion pipeline dubbed Nabucco. Planning for it began way back in 2004 and construction is finally expected to start, if all goes well (and it may not), in 2010. So if you're a NATO optimist, you hope that natural gas from the Caspian Sea, maybe even from Iran (barring the usual American blockade), will begin flowing through it by 2015. The gas will be delivered to Erzurum in Turkey and then transported to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Why, you might ask, is the pipeline meant to save Europe named for a Verdi opera? Well, Austrian and Turkish energy executives happened to see the opera together in Vienna in 2002 while discussing their energy dilemmas, and the biblical plight of the Jews exiled by King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), a love story set amid a ferocious struggle for freedom and power, swept them away. Still, it's a stretch to turn aluminum tubes into dramatic characters. Of course, the operatic theater here isn't really in the tubing, it's in the politics and strategic implications that surround the pipeline. In Eastern Europe, for instance, Nabucco is seen not as a European economic or energy project, but as a creature of Washington, just like the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey that President Bill Clinton and his crew backed so vigorously in the 1990s and which was finally finished in 2005. For those who have never believed the Cold War is over -- the Eastern Europeans among them -- once again it's the good guys (the West) against the commies... sorry, the Russians... at an energy-rich OK Corral. The Great Borderless Gas Bazaar Russia's answer to Nabucco is the 1,200-kilometer-long, $15 billion South Stream pipeline, also scheduled to be finished in 2015; it is slated to carry Siberian natural gas under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. From Bulgaria, one branch of the pipeline would then run south through Greece to southern Italy while the other would run north through Serbia and Hungary towards northern Italy. Now, add another pipeline to the picture, the $9.1 billion Nord Stream that will soon enough snake from Western Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, which already imports 41.5% of its natural gas from Russia. The giant Russian energy firm Gazprom holds a controlling 51% of Nord Stream stock; the rest belongs to German and Dutch companies. The chairman of the board is none other than former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Put this all together and Russia, with its pipelines running in all directions and firmly embedded in Europe, spells trouble for Nabucco's future and frustration for Washington's New Great Game plans to contain the Russian energy juggernaut. And that's without even mentioning Ukhta which, chances are, you've never heard of. If you aren't in the energy business, why should you have? After all, it's a backwater village in Russia's autonomous republic of Komi, 350 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. Built by forced labor, it was once part of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag archipelago. By 2030, however, you'll know its name. By then, a pipeline from remote Ukhta will be flooding Europe with natural gas and the village will be one of Nord Stream's key transit nodes. While Nabucco as well as South Stream remain virtual, Nord Stream is a Terminator on the run. By 2010, it will be tunneling under the Baltic Sea heading for Germany. By 2011, it should be delivering the goods and a second pipe -- 12 meters wide, 100,000 tubes long -- will be under construction to double its capacity by 2014. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller pulls no punches: this, he says, will be "the safest and most modern pipeline in the world." How can Verdi lovers possibly compete? In the middle of a global recession, Gazprom is spending at least $20 billion to conquer Europe via Nord and South Stream. The strategy is a killer: pump gas under the sea directly to Europe, avoiding messy transit routes across troublesome countries like Ukraine. No wonder Gazprom, which today controls 26% of the European gas market, is expected to have a 33% share by 2020. In other words, in many ways, the Nabucco versus South Stream energy war already looks settled. Nabucco is, at best, likely to be a secondary pipeline, incapable, as Washington once hoped, of breaking the EU away from energy dependence on Russia. Brussels, predictably, is in its usual multilingual policy mess. Most bureaucrats at its monster, directive-churning body, the European Commission, publicly bemoan the "pipeline war." On the other hand, Ona Jukneviciene, chairwoman of the committees at the European Parliament dealing with Central Asia, admits that Nabucco cannot be the only option. As for Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of the Nabucco consortium, he tries to put a brave face on things when he stresses, "we will transport Russian gas, Azeri gas, Iraqi gas." As for the top European official on energy matters, Andris Piebalgs, he can't help being a pragmatist: "We'll continue to work with Russia because Russia has energy resources." From a business point of view, it's tough to argue with South Stream's selling points. Unlike Nabucco, it will offer cheaper, all-Russian natural gas that won't have to transit through potential war zones, and while Nabucco will always deliver limited amounts of Caspian natural gas to market, South Stream, given Russian resources, will have plenty of room to increase its output. The fact is that, as of now, Nabucco still has no guaranteed sources of gas. In order for the gas to come from energy-rich Turkmenistan, to take but one example, the Turkmen leadership would have to break a deal they've already made with Russia, which now buys all of that country's export gas. There's no way that Moscow is likely to let one of the former Soviet Republics do that easily. In addition, both Russia and Iran could well be capable of blocking any pipeline straddling the floor of the Caspian Sea. Gazprom will pay to build South Stream, and then distribute and sell gas it already controls to Europe; Nabucco, on the other hand, has to rely on a messy consortium of six countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Germany) simply to finance one-third of its prospective costs, and then convince wary international bankers to shell out the rest. The Pentagon does the Black Sea So what does Washington want out of this mess? That's easy. Rewind to then-prospective Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her Senate confirmation hearings on January 13, 2009. There, she decried Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas and issued an urgent call for "investments in the Trans-Caspian energy sector." Think of it as a signal: The new Obama administration would be as committed to Nabucco as the Bush administration had been. What is never spelled out is why. Enter the Black Sea, that crucial geo-strategic stage where Europe meets the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Enter, thus, Bulgaria, home to a new Pentagon air base in Bezmer, one of six new strategic bases being built outside the U.S. and as potentially important to Washington's future games as the stalwart air bases in Incirlik, Turkey, and Aviano, Italy have been in the past. (Aviano was the key U.S./NATO base for the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and the 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999.) With the Pentagon's bases already creeping within a stone's throw of Southwest and Central Asia, it doesn't take a genius to imagine the role Bezmer might play in any future attack on Iran (something the Russian defense establishment has already taken careful note of). With both Romania and Bulgaria now part of NATO, Article 5 of the alliance's charter now applies. NATO can take action "in the event of crises which jeopardize Euro-Atlantic stability and could affect the security of Alliance members." In this way, Pipelineistan meets the American Empire of Bases. Young Turks and Wily Russians Why is everyone so damn hooked on Central Asian oil and gas? Elshad Nasirov, deputy chairman of the state-owned Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR, sums the addiction up succinctly enough: "This is the place where there is oil and gas in abundance. It is not Arab, not Persian, not Russian, and not OPEC." It's the Caspian and, unfortunately for Europe, the region could, in energy terms, turn out to be not the caviar for which it's renowned but so many rotten fish eggs. No one knows, after all, whether the EU will ever be able to buy Iranian gas via Nabucco. No one knows whether the Central Asian "stans" have enough gas to supply Russia, China, and Turkey, not to mention India and Pakistan. No one knows whether any of their leaders will have the nerve to renege on their deals with Gazprom. Ever since a 2008 British study determined that Turkmenistan may have natural gas reserves second only to Russia on the planet, the European Commission has been on a no-holds-barred tear to lure that country into delivering some of its future gas directly to Europe -- and not through the Russian pipeline system either. Turkmenistan's inscrutable leader, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, just has to say the word, but despite the claims of EU officials that he has agreed to send some gas Europe-wards, he's never offered a public word of confirmation. No wonder: with Nabucco unbuilt and a pipeline from his country to China still under construction, Turkmenistan can play Pipelineistan games only with Russia and Iran. In fact, Russia essentially controls the flow of Turkmen gas for the next 15 years. Should Gurbanguly someday say the magic word -- and assuming the Russians don't throw a monkey wrench into the works -- he can marry Turkey, as the key transit country, with the EU and let them all sing Verdi till the sheep come home. In the meantime, angst is the name of the game in Europe (and so in Washington). A declassified dossier from the FSB, the Russian heir to the KGB, is adamant: considering Nabucco's shortcomings, "Russia will remain the primary supplier of energy to Europe for the foreseeable future." Call it a matter of having your gas and processing it, too. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been making the point for years. If Europe tries to snub it, Russia will simply build its own liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, to facilitate storage and transport, and sell its LNG all over the world. Anyway it's worth paying attention to what the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute (where Putin earned his doctorate) has to say. According to the institute, Russia has only 20 years' worth of its own natural gas reserves left. Since Russia plans to sell up to 40% of its gas abroad, "Russian" gas may in the future actually mean Central Asian gas. All the more reason for the Russians to make sure that those massive Turkmen and other reserves flow north, not west. Whatever Washington thinks, the Europeans know that energy independence from Russia is, in reality, inconceivable. Bottom line when it comes to natural gas: Europe needs everything -- Nord Stream, South Stream, and Nabucco. The bulk of the natural gas in this Pipelineistan maze may well turn out to be Central Asian anyway and a substantial part could be Iranian, if the Obama administration ever normalizes relations with Iran. That, then, is the current state of play in the European wing of Pipelineistan. Russia seems to have virtually guaranteed its status as the top gas supplier to Europe for the foreseeable future. But that brings us to Turkey, a key regional power for both the U.S. and the EU. As President Obama has recognized, Turkey is both a real and a metaphorical bridge between the Christian and Muslim worlds. It is also an ideal transit country for carrying non-Russian gas to Europe and is now playing its own suitably complex Pipelineistan game. Chances are that, like Ukhta in far off Siberia, you've never heard of Yumurtalik either. It's a fishing port squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the Taurus mountains, very close to Ceyhan, the terminal for two key nodes of Pipelineistan: the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline from Iraq and the monster BTC pipeline. Turkey wants to turn Yumurtalik-Ceyhan into nothing less than the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean. Even as it dreams of future EU membership, however, Turkey worries about antagonizing Moscow. And yet, being aboard the Nabucco Express and already fully committed to the functioning BTC pipeline puts the country on a potential collision course with Russia, its largest trading partner. Of course, this does not displease Washington. On the other hand, the Turkish leadership draws ever closer to Iran, which provides 38% of Turkey's oil and 25% of its natural gas. Ankara and Tehran also have geopolitical affinities (especially in fighting Kurdish separatism). Together, they offer the best alternative to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia) in terms of supplying Europe with Iranian natural gas. All this, of course, drives Washington nuts. Needless to say, the Nabucco consortium itself would kill to have Iran as a gas supplier for the pipeline. They are also familiar with realpolitik: this could happen only with a Washington-blessed solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier. Iran, for its part, knows well how to seduce Europe. Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has insisted Iran is Europe's "sole option" for the success of Nabucco. Is Russia just watching all this gas go by? Of course not. In October 2007, Putin signed a key agreement with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: If Iran cannot sell its gas to Nabucco -- a likelihood given the turbulence of American domestic politics and its foreign policy -- Russia will buy it. Translation: Iranian gas could end up, like Central Asian gas, heading for Europe as more "Russian" gas. With its European and Iranian policies at cross-purposes, Washington will not be amused. When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rethink Nabucco" if the tricky negotiations for Turkey to enter the EU drag on forever, EU leaders got the message (as much as France and Germany may be against a "Europe without borders"). Pragmatically, most EU leaders know very well that they need excellent relations with Turkey to one day have access to the Big Prize, Iranian gas; and that puts Europe's energy and EU membership inclinations at loggerheads. Last July in Ankara, Nabucco was formally launched by an inter-governmental agreement. The representatives of Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary were there. Obama's special Eurasian envoy, Richard Morningstar (a veteran of the BTC adventure), was there as well. The Central Asian stans were not there. But crucially, Gurbanguly, ever the showman, finally made an entrance without ever leaving Turkmenistan, (almost) uttering the magic words in a meeting with his ministers in the capital, Ashgabat, on July 10th: "Turkmenistan, staying committed to the principles of diversification of supply of its energy resources to the world markets, is going to use all available opportunities to participate in major international projects -- such as, for example, [the] Nabucco project." At the Vienna headquarters of Nabucco the mantra remains: this is "no anti-Russian project." Still, everyone knows that Russia's leaders are eager to kill it, and not a soul from Brussels to Vienna, Washington to Ashgabat, knows how to link Central Asia to Europe via a non-Russian pipeline, at the cost of more than $10 billion, without some assurance that Turkmeni, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, and/or Iranian natural gas will be fully (or even partially) on board. Who would be foolish enough to invest that kind of money without some guarantee that hundreds of miles of aluminum tubes won't remain empty? You don't need Verdi to tell you this is one hell of a quirky plot for a global opera. Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and analyst for the Real News. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan. He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com. Copyright 2009 Pepe Escobar This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm From dwaltersMIA at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 13:07:46 2009 From: dwaltersMIA at gmail.com (nada) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:07:46 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] As energy guzzlers meet on Iran, Pepe Escobar examines specifics of empire Message-ID: <4AC4FE02.4000604@gmail.com> Ralph, this was, despite it's distraction theatrical flare, an excellent summation of the situation with the "All Gas Pipe Lines Lead to Europe" game. I think there are two key things, mostly related to the reader in the bottom 1/4 of the article: 1. The years long cooperation between NATO stalwart Turkey and Charter Member of the Axis of Evil, Iran and... 2. That "Peak Gas" is going to effect the Russian in about 2 decades. A few comments on both these points. There is no doubt special offices are set up in the both the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon over how to deal with US "Friend Among Friends" Turkey and it's relationship with Iran. They have a lot of common interests, such as 'controlling' Iraq, oppressing their own Kurdish populations, and energy access for Iranian gas and oil, which Turkey has no problem being Iran's front-end of the gas store. They did it for Baathist Iraq during the worse days of the US imposed embargo, doing the same for Iran is simply a 'win-win' for the two countries. I thought the article noted something also on this worth discussing, which is that the Obama administration is looking forward to the day of a closer, even diplomatically friendly, Iran-US relationship. This was already tested in the military block with Iran by the US Air Force in 2003 during the Afghan war to overthrow the Taliban, something in the interests at that time of both the Bush gov't and the Iranian gov't. But the gas is the big deal and if the US choose to become kissy-face with the Iranians assuming the nuclear issue blows over, the US and it's allies in Europe will be in a position to use the trans-Turkish Nabucco pipeline to counter-Russia's growing financial-imperial ambitions in the energy sector. I suspect, however, that even the most knuckle-dragging Cold-War throw-backs at the State Dept. realizes that Gasprom is NOT going away and they WILL sell lots of gas to the EU and, by default, NATO members, regardless of the Nabucco pipeline. On the second point. I think it's worth nothing that pipelines NORTH to Russia from both Turkmenistan and Iran are in the planning stages for the issue very issue of Russia's slowly dwindling gas resources. Russia, and Turkey, Iran and Bulgaria, are all rapidly planning to build out their nuclear energy sectors motivated by a long term understanding that the price of gas is going to skyrocket it becomes more and more a 'bridge' technology to a low carbon future. The Green & SPD ex-politicians both key players in the gas pipeline war, and with Greens everywhere "discovering" natural gas (see Joseph Romm and Amory Lovins, both shilling for natural gas), and world wide gas turbine production shooting up, the prices are going to follow, and with it, huge profits for all concerned. So the gas producers want to push back Peak Gas as far as possible. The best method to do this is using nuclear. Iran has plans to build 19 reactors (!!!), Russia, another 30 or so, Turkey, 4 to 8 and so on. It is getting nice and complex, isn't it? The more reactors, the less gas they have to burn for their own electrical and heating needs and the more to export and the less, down the road, they have to import. And...and...the article never mentioned China for goodness sakes. The whole east and south Asian market is booming for gas, especially in it's LNG form. China signed a deal with Cheveron in Australia for like 40 billion dollars of NG and LNG facilities. BTW...what IS the problem with Iran and their seemingly inability to build enough gasoline refineries? They have to import about half the petrol for their vehicles from Saudi Arabia! It's quite insane. Shows a total mismanagement of the "Islamic economy" of Iran. But that's another story. D. From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 1 13:20:45 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:20:45 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] When Freud came to America Message-ID: <4AC5010D.4060409@panix.com> http://chronicle.com/article/Freuds-Visit-to-Clark-U/48424/ September 21, 2009 When Freud Came to America By Russell Jacoby One hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud arrived in the United States on his first and only visit. As the George Washington pulled into New York Harbor, he supposedly remarked to Carl Jung, who accompanied him, "They don't realize that we are bringing them the plague." His more vociferous contemporary critics would probably agree. Freud came to deliver five lectures over five days in September 1909 at Clark University. Its president, G. Stanley Hall, had invited a number of leading thinkers to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Clark. Clark? For our rank-obsessed society, that might seem surprising. Not Chicago or Princeton or Columbia but a small Massachusetts university with just 16 faculty members had invited one of the pivotal thinkers of the 20th century. Indeed, William James came over from Harvard to listen to the lectures. Perhaps we overlook the role of the smaller and less flashy schools in American cultural life. Twenty-four years later a small outfit on West 12th Street in Manhattan hired many more refugees from Nazism than more celebrated institutions. In its housing of exiled scholars, the New School far eclipsed grander universities. Perhaps the balance of wealth in the early part of the century was not as skewed as it is nowadays; or at least Hall's invitation to Freud opens a small window into a neglected question of the economics of writing and lecturing. Hall first offered Freud an "honorarium" of $400 to cover expenses to lecture in July. Freud declined because he would lose too much income by canceling three weeks of private consultations. Hall upped the honorarium to $750, and the lectures were shifted to September, when Freud had no appointments. An honorarium of $750 is roughly in the league of what might be paid a professor nowadays to fly across the country and give a lecture, if he or she is lucky. Of course a 1909 greenback is not a 2009 greenback. Various indexes exist to update past prices. Readjusted in current dollars, $750 in 1909 computes out to something between $18,000 and $36,000 in 2009?not a bad piece of change! Few writers or professors would turn down an offer nowadays to give some lectures if the invitation came with a $20,000 honorarium. The amount not only suggests the relative wealth of Clark?Hall had $10,000, or half a million in current dollars, to spend on the anniversary?but the generous remuneration for independent lectures in the early part of the 20th century. Freud spoke off the cuff from notes to a good crowd. Yet contemporary observers of the Clark lectures did not mention what today would be extraordinary. Freud spoke in German with no translation provided. Today if J?rgen Habermas lectured in German at an American university, the audience could comfortably sit around a small table. But a century ago, a series of lectures in German neither diminished the audience nor elicited disapproval. In 1909 advanced study usually meant study in Germany. It was assumed the professoriate knew German. Today the opposite is true. That might not be a reason for dismay, if other languages have replaced German, but that has not happened. The din about globalization evades the reality of the decline of serious language study among American students. Globalization spells "English Spoken Here." Freud suspected that American prudishness would curtail the reception of his ideas. I think, he wrote to Jung before they departed, that once the Americans "discover the sexual core of our psychological theories they will drop us." Later critics of Freud, especially feminist critics, forget to what extent he showed up as a militant sexual reformer. He wanted to be able to talk about sexual desire and liberalize sexual practices. He made no effort to mute that message. Freud's five lectures closed with a call to allow greater sexual freedom. He said civilization demands "excessive" sexual repression. "We ought not to aim so high that we completely neglect the original animality of our nature." He cautioned that it was not possible to "sublimate" all sexual impulses into cultural accomplishments. To drive his point home, Freud closed with an analogy and recounted a folk tale about the foolish residents of Schilda. They owned a strong and productive horse with one flaw, its need for expensive oats. The thrifty citizens decided to gradually cut down its ration until the horse grew accustomed to "complete abstinence." The plan of action went well until one day the townspeople woke up and found the horse had died. This perplexed them. Freud closed his last lecture and formal visit to the United States with the following sentence: "We are inclined to believe that the horse had died of starvation and that without a certain ration of oats, no work can indeed be expected from an animal." In the first rows of the audience sat Emma Goldman, the anarchist and sexual reformer, with her lover Ben Reitman. She was "deeply impressed" by Freud's "lucidity" and "the simplicity of his delivery." (She did not comment that he lectured in German.) She also attended the ceremony where Freud received an honorary degree. The other professors appeared "stiff and important in their university caps and gowns," but Freud looked "unassuming" in his ordinary attire. She called him a "giant among pygmies." If he needed it, a reference from Emma Goldman could burnish Freud's credentials as a sexual reformer. Yet an opening and incidental sentence to his five lectures may prove more prescient than his last: "I have discovered with satisfaction that the majority of my audience are not of the medical profession." The observation seems trivial, but much turned on it. With virtually no success in the United States, Freud fought what might be called the monopolization of psychoanalysis by medical doctors. He wanted nonmedical or lay people to practice psychoanalysis, if they were properly trained. This was no minor issue to Freud. He distrusted the medical profession. He feared that doctors would turn psychoanalysis into a subfield, a narrow therapy. I do not "consider it at all desirable for psychoanalysis to be swallowed up by medicine," he wrote, "and to find its last resting place in a textbook of psychiatry under the heading, 'Methods of Treatment.'" In fact, that more or less happened. American doctors banished lay practition-ers and made psychoanalysis into a medical speciality. For decades psychoanalysis prospered as psychiatrists embraced it, but more recently the doctors have moved on. Psychoanalysis was too slow, too expensive, too uncertain, and too unscientific. Along with academic psychologists, psychiatrists adopted chemical, behavioral, and pharmaceutical approaches. But Freud did not defend psychoanalysis on the basis of its therapeutic effectiveness; he had other, perhaps more imperial ambitions. ("Somewhere in my soul," he admitted, "I am a fanatical Jew.") He wanted psychoanalysis to contribute to literature and culture, even reform society. He invoked the possibility of "combating the neuroses of civilization." He wrote smaller and smaller books on bigger and bigger subjects, such as The Future of an Illusion (on religion) and Civilization and Its Discontents (on happiness and aggression). This may be the "plague" that Freud brought to the New World: uninhibited thinking. To be sure, the molecular, genetic, or chemical perspective may be perfectly suitable for treating many ailments or behaviors. Yet the clamorous effort to rid the world of Freud is misguided. Psychology departments may relegate psychoanalysis to phrenology and other quackeries as they seek testable results, but Freud's thought lives on in the humanities?or wherever scholars and students contemplate the vagaries of desire, morality, and religion. In the name of reason, Freud challenged the veneer of reason. He dug to uncover the forces that make us not only loving but also odd, hateful, and violent. Even when he was wrong, a boldness infused his thinking. He remains a tonic for a cautious age. The epigram that Freud chose for The Interpretation of Dreams?a line from Virgil?has not lost its appeal: "If I cannot bend the higher powers, I shall stir up hell." Russell Jacoby is a professor in residence in the history department at the University of California at Los Angeles. A columnist for The Chronicle Review, he is author, most recently, of Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (Columbia University Press, 2005). From lueko.willms at t-online.de Thu Oct 1 14:00:07 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:00:07 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] Contra Polanski In-Reply-To: <65D3B368A8D3459B9AA98FEAD7BCB4AC@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC359E3.1080308@panix.com> <65D3B368A8D3459B9AA98FEAD7BCB4AC@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <000.e8e50400a3c9c44a.088@lws-media.de> S. Artesian (sartesian at earthlink.net) wrote on 2009-09-30 at 10:51:08 in about Re: [Marxism] Contra Polanski: > > > Polanski raped a child. She was 13. She said "no." Even if > she said yes, which she did not, he raped a child. Have you been a live witness to the act? Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From ectoren at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 14:16:08 2009 From: ectoren at gmail.com (ectoren at gmail.com) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 15:16:08 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] Contra Polanski In-Reply-To: <000.e8e50400a3c9c44a.088@lws-media.de> Message-ID: <4ac50e0e.1ac1f10a.59b5.0f95@mx.google.com> She gave testimony to a grand jury. As an adult, she has maintained the same set of facts as she lived them. If you want to cross examine her and question her rape, by all means contact her. I believe her and Polanski committed rape. por el socialismo, Erik Toren -- Sent from my Palm Pr? L?ko Willms wrote: S. Artesian (sartesian at earthlink.net) wrote on 2009-09-30 at 10:51:08 in about Re: [Marxism] Contra Polanski: > > > Polanski raped a child. She was 13. She said "no." Even if > she said yes, which she did not, he raped a child. Have you been a live witness to the act? Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/ectoren%40sbcglobal.net From ian at ianpace.com Thu Oct 1 14:41:04 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 21:41:04 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca> <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: From: "S. Artesian" > As for the Surrealist Group, left that group in 1972? 1973?-- and > violently, > as Rosemont had one of his goons break into the home of, and threaten a > comrade of mine, after the rupture. He was too much of a coward to try > that > shit with me. > > Proud to say, I took the time to track down and smack the shit out of the > goon. I think the above says all we need to know about your attitudes. Solidarity, Ian From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 1 15:03:47 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 17:03:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca><5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> Hey Ian, two guys break into your friend's house-- your comrade's house. Their motivation? Oh, you just split with them from some little self-anointed revolutionary group that really does nothing but suck the lint from between the toes of the dead-- you know, Andre Breton, Benjamin Peret. Anyway, these two goons break into your comrade's house, they trash his books, destroy his papers, they threaten him... That's called terrorism. What do you do? Call the cops? A lawyer? I just bet you would. What a joke. I'll bet your comrades get a real warm feeling knowing what you would do if they were ever attacked. Tell you what I did. Me and my comrade's brother waited outside one of the goons apartment, the older, bigger goon, as the other was just an eighteen year old kid . And when he came home we paid his ass back in spades-- but outside on the street. Then we went to a phone and we called Rosemont and his aide-de-camp Paul Garon, and we told them if anybody ever bothers us, if anybody from your little coterie so much as sneezes in our direction, we're coming after the two of you. With baseball bats. Guess what? Nobody bothered us again. Guess what else? The goon from Rosemont's group? He joined Lyn Marcus' psycho-fascist Labor Committee. Surprise, surprise. Once a goon, always a goon. Yep, that's my attitude-- somebody assaults you or your comrade-- you fight back. And you fight to win. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Pace" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 4:41 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? >> > I think the above says all we need to know about your attitudes. > > Solidarity, > Ian From ian at ianpace.com Thu Oct 1 15:10:33 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 22:10:33 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca><5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> <3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <31B20F8B5AA64918A939BA73E9B9523C@IanPacePC> If this sort of chest-thumping neanderthal machismo persists on the list, I may unsubscribe. Finding such a prevalence of such attitudes was why I left the SWP. Ever thought this might contribute to the perception of this as 'Marx-male'? Solidarity, Ian From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 1 15:13:45 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 17:13:45 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca><5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad><3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> <31B20F8B5AA64918A939BA73E9B9523C@IanPacePC> Message-ID: <6797F190197841BDA431AB8BF5909727@dmsthinkpad> My apologies to the list. That last email was supposed to be offlist to Ian. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Pace" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 5:10 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 1 15:31:09 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:31:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <6797F190197841BDA431AB8BF5909727@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca><5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad><3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> <31B20F8B5AA64918A939BA73E9B9523C@IanPacePC> <6797F190197841BDA431AB8BF5909727@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4AC51F9D.8050602@panix.com> S. Artesian wrote: > My apologies to the list. That last email was supposed to be offlist to > Ian. > I strongly value the participation of both Ian Pace and S. Artesian. All of us should strive to keep an even keel here, especially as capitalism enters a phase of profound crisis--to use a cliche. We really need powerful brains here to analyze the period we are in, so more of the cerebrum and less of the spleen, please. From pt_costello at yahoo.com Thu Oct 1 15:32:13 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 14:32:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? Message-ID: <946505.69395.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> S. Artesian wrote: "My apologies to the list. That last email was supposed to be offlist to Ian." Please do not apologize. That was one of the more interesting posts of late! And thanks for your comments re: Polanski. As a woman with a daughter I can barely stand to read some of what is written here as apology for his behavior. From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 15:50:13 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 17:50:13 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian General Strike In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910011450k3af84b72p8af8c966cb3819c6@mail.gmail.com> > > > International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-Labor > Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian General Strike > October 1, 2009 > > In the long tradition of Jewish working class involvement in and support > for liberation struggles, IJAN-Labor stands in solidarity with the High > Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the National Committee > of Local Authorities, and all parties, movements and institutions of > Palestinian civil society in Israel, who have called a general strike for > today, October 1, 2009. > > This strike marks the ninth anniversary of the Jerusalem and Al Aqsa Day in > October 2000 when Israeli authorities massacred 13 Palestinian protesters. > The killers have never been brought to justice. > > IJAN-Labor also welcomes the Trades Union Congress (U.K.) resolution of 17 > September, which endorses the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and > Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, and calls for reconsideration of > the TUC's relationship with the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation > whose latest crime was to support Israel's attacks on Gaza. > > The BDS campaign has been endorsed by a growing number of labor bodies, > including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Solidaires > Industrie (France), UNISON (UK), Transport and General Workers? Union (UK), > Western Australia Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, Canadian Union > of Postal Workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees-Ontario, six Norwegian > trade unions, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Scottish Trades Union > Congress, and Intersindical Alternativa de Catalunya. > > In the United States, despite growing support from labor organizations and > populations across the globe, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win fail to > recognize what their British counterpart has now acknowledged: that Israel > is a state built on defeating the aspirations and solidarity of working > families not only in Israel but internationally. > > Often without the knowledge or consent of union members, US Labor > officialdom remains a leading accomplice of Israeli apartheid and the > Zionist colonialism of which it is part. For more than sixty years, it has > closely collaborated with the Histadrut, which has spearheaded ? and > whitewashed ? apartheid, dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exploitation of > the Palestinians since the 1920s. > > Indeed, the Histadrut (as both employer and union) provided lethal weapons > which the South African apartheid government used against Black workers, > while at home it either excluded or segregated Arab workers. > > Today, in solidarity with the general strike of Palestinian workers in > Israel and growing international labor support for BDS, we call on US labor > organizations to divest their estimated $5 billion investment in State of > Israel Bonds, and to end all relations with the Histadrut. > > For more information IJAN Labor, please see our website: > http://www.ijsn.net/C91 > If you are interested in participating in IJAN Labor, please email us at: > Labor-IJAN at ijsn.net > From markalause at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 15:55:46 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 17:55:46 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <4AC51F9D.8050602@panix.com> References: <4AC4D54B.7090703@shaw.ca> <5B10575E56514DDAA0AA129AA251CFC4@dmsthinkpad> <3AFEDF77F7AA45FC844BA4117C0B7AEB@dmsthinkpad> <31B20F8B5AA64918A939BA73E9B9523C@IanPacePC> <6797F190197841BDA431AB8BF5909727@dmsthinkpad> <4AC51F9D.8050602@panix.com> Message-ID: I'm not surprised that Sartesian's run-in with Franklin resolved itself so bizarrely. I worked closely with the group until I suddenly and overnight became--with no explanation--a non-person. I often had the impression that they made such decisions on impulsive whims that didn't get discussed because they made no sense. Still, it was an important circle with much to offer. I learned as much being under their influence as I had during my later time in the SWP. I've appropriately dedicated a book to the memory of Franklin, who died just a little while back. ML From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 16:19:56 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 18:19:56 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] A Precarious Peace in Northern Iraq In-Reply-To: <20091001162502.73974@merip.biglist.com> References: <20091001162502.73974@merip.biglist.com> Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910011519n1dc0302cyd2234ad9c15d5550@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Middle East Report Online < meronline-service at merip.biglist.com> wrote: > "Differences of opinion are very normal," said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri > al-Maliki, standing next to a smiling Masoud Barzani, president of the > Kurdistan Regional Government in the north of the country, on August 2, > "because we are building a state on the ruins of dictatorship." One would > never know from Maliki's casual tone that this meeting was his first with > Barzani in more than a year, nor that, only months earlier, the Kurdish > leader was openly accusing him of having dictatorial ambitions himself. At > several points during the intervening year, indeed, the Iraqi army and the > fighters loyal to the two major Kurdish parties in Iraq were only a trigger > pull away from igniting an ethnic civil war as frightening as the sectarian > bloodshed that has now subsided. > > Quil Lawrence narrates the events that have left "A Precarious Peace in > Northern Iraq," now in Middle East Report Online: > http://www.merip.org/mero/mero100109.html > . > Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East Research > and Information Project (MERIP). > > . > From sabocat59 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 16:39:15 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 18:39:15 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] From the Sick house to the Jail house Message-ID: <6e42edf00910011539m66615758hbd1a2f105895df23@mail.gmail.com> http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090928/NEWS01/909270377/Medical%20debts%20compound%20Nashvillians%20%20pain Imagine getting sick, getting bills you can't pay, then being sent to jail Lawsuits, lost wages, even jail can result By Janell Ross ? THE TENNESSEAN ? September 28, 2009 Kenneth Hoagland went to jail for what started as a cold. Hoagland had refinanced his Nashville home to pay off the $25,000 tab for his weeklong diabetes-related stay at Southern Hills Medical Center. The new mortgage left Hoagland out of medical debt but afraid to get sick again. Unfortunately, he did. In 2004, Hoagland was in a health insurance waiting period on a new job when a cold turned into two days at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. This time, the bill was just over $1,200. When a collection attorney working for Vanderbilt filed suit in 2005, Hoagland was afraid to take time off from work to show up in court. After a series of hearings, attempts to collect the debt and what Hoagland says were genuine efforts to pay it, an attorney working for Vanderbilt asked a judge to issue what's known as a body attachment. One Friday in late 2008, a sheriff's deputy went to Hoagland's home. Because he was at work, Hoagland was allowed to turn himself in the following Monday. "They fingerprinted me, took my picture and asked some questions about my medical history," he said. "When the guy who tested (my blood sugar) asked me why I was there and I told him ? he said, 'I didn't know we did that in this country.' I told him, 'Until now, I didn't either.' " Hoagland, 36, is one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans ? insured and uninsured ? facing collection suits, wage garnishments and, more rarely, trips to jail because of medical debt. On the other side are doctors and hospitals that say they try to work with debtors and provide millions in free care, but unpaid medical bills affect their ability to care for others. Medical debt isn't closely tracked by courts, but it's one of the many types of debt collection suits that keep Davidson County's General Sessions Courts so busy that the people at the center of those cases sometimes fill the courtroom's audience seating and even the jury box. (2 of 7) But it's the docket, the list of cases that will be heard in Courtroom 5D on any given day and the people with cases on it, that really tells the story. Some entries reveal the types of services rendered. Advertisement There are cases filed by Associates in Gastroenterology, the Anesthesia Medical Group and Nashville Bone and Joint PLLC. And then, there are the names of nearly all the area's hospitals. The suits represent attempts to collect on bills that in cases examined this summer ranged from $81 to $22,000. They are, in most cases, bills patients never expected to accumulate. Judge Dan Eisenstein, one of the judges who hears these cases in Courtroom 5D, said debtors summoned to court often dispute just how much is owed to a landlord or whether a credit card debt is really theirs. But debtors rarely dispute medical bills. "There's not a lot of dispute because people just have no choice," he said. "They needed the care, and the law says they have to cover their bills. "But it's certainly tough to come into this courtroom and see people who have been sick or hurt and cannot pay their bills." Medical bankruptcy rises A study published in the American Journal of Medicine this year found that medical debt is deeply damaging the finances of American families. Based on a survey of 2007 filings, researchers estimate 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies that year were caused by medical debt and that 92 percent of these cases involved medical bills totaling more than $5,000, or 10 percent of the family's total pretax income. Other cases met the researchers' criteria for "medical bankruptcy" because they had lost significant income from illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical debt. Most medical debtors contacted by researchers were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed had health insurance. And, researchers found, the issue of medical debt has grown over time. Between 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6 percent. (3 of 7) Hoagland, who works in information technology, never filed bankruptcy or disputed his bill. Instead, he made payment arrangements with Vanderbilt and tried to keep them. Advertisement Sometimes he and his fianc?e, Sonya Davis, had to choose between paying their mortgage or $200 a month on medical bills, Davis said. When that happened, they paid the mortgage. They figured the family had to have a place to live, and the house had belonged to Hoagland's parents. Then Vanderbilt filed suit. When Hoagland missed a hearing because of a work emergency, the court ruled in his absence that Vanderbilt was due the full amount. He missed two more court dates aimed at determining his assets. A judge issued a body attachment ? a document issued in civil cases that demands defendants explain why they didn't appear in court. Sheriff's deputies find the defendants and, in many cases, take them to jail, where they are allowed to post bond quickly. It's a rare action ? out of 32,126 debt cases in General Sessions Court in 2008, for example, judges issued 98 body attachments. Hoagland made bond and the $250 that he paid was applied to his debt. His wages were garnisheed for several months, and he thought he was paid up. Then a bill arrived several weeks ago for $70 ? one he said he'll pay without question. People delay care Davis said the experience changed their lives. "The choice now is, do I stay sick? Because if I go run up this bill and can't pay for it and then get arrested again, what then? What are you supposed to do?" she said. Two months ago, they faced that question. Hoagland went to bed with a cold and woke up so listless that Davis knew immediately something was wrong. His blood sugar was at 39. Hoagland's blood sugar is supposed to stay between 80 and 120. He could barely speak. "I called the ambulance," Davis said. "And I hate to admit this, but as soon as they got here, I thought, 'Oh God, I hope they aren't going to have to take him.' He was sick, but I know he was probably thinking, 'We can't afford another set of medical bills.' " (4 of 7) The ambulance crew wanted to take Hoagland to the hospital but agreed to let Davis make him some breakfast and see if his blood sugar levels would normalize. They wouldn't leave until Hoagland drank some orange juice with a bit of sugar stirred in and his blood sugar surged. Advertisement As extreme as Hoagland's attempt to avoid another hospital bill may sound, it's not uncommon, said Shana Alex Lavarreda, the director of health insurance studies at the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research. As a result of a study released by the center this year, Lavarreda began to hear troubling stories from people across the country who had delayed medical care because of existing medical debt. "Delays in care could be something as serious as reattaching a portion of a finger or not or getting the respirator that you need," she said. The situation highlights the fact that many insurance policies carry a high deductible. This can turn out to be burdensome for families without significant savings if someone becomes ill, Lavarreda said. Drama outside courtroom What happens inside Courtroom 5D at General Sessions Court can pale in comparison to the high drama in the hallway outside. There, hospital debt collectors pull defendants to the side for hushed conversations about what they can realistically pay. If they can figure something out, defendants don't have to go back inside. The payment arrangement is entered into court records, and the person who owes the debt must pay it. On Sept. 11, all the good hallway spots ? with seating ? were taken. So Centennial Medical Center's attorney beckoned Stacy Grondin up to the long tables where prosecutors and defendants usually sit facing the judge during trials. The conversation was about the $997.74 bill Grondin incurred in 2006 at Centennial when her heart rate spiked. "I really thought I was having a heart attack," she said. Grondin, a grocery store manager, is insured. But she went to the hospital in an ambulance, and that required pre-approval from the insurance company. (5 of 7) So did her choice to seek care in an emergency room. She didn't have approval for that either. So when it turned out the problem was anxiety or a condition doctors couldn't precisely determine, her claim was denied. Advertisement Tom Norris, Centennial's attorney, leaned in close. "What kind of payment can you make?" he asked. "I think maybe $50," Grondin said. Norris accepted but declined to comment about Grondin's case or the collection process when approached by a reporter. On that day, the bill was actually $1,246.96 ? the original amount plus $161.75 in court costs and $87.47 in interest fees. The court costs are tacked on after collection efforts fail and a suit is filed. Interest accrues on medical debt at up to 10 percent after a court issues an order to pay. But for Grondin, 35 and a single mother of three, that's not even the sum total of her medical debt. While Grondin discussed her bill with Norris, her 9-year-old daughter, Emily, sat in the courtroom's gallery waiting for her mom to finish and take her to the doctor. Grondin feared Emily might have swine flu. The little girl with the robin's-egg blue eyes and a pair of silvery scars on her forehead heard every word of the payment discussion. Emily barely survived a 2003 car accident with her father at the wheel. He'd been drinking. She wasn't strapped in. A LifeFlight helicopter took her to Vanderbilt's children's hospital, where doctors saved her life. Now Emily's father is in prison because of that accident, and her mother is trying to pay $2,115.25 in medical debt charged to a credit card. That's the 20 percent of Emily's bill that insurance didn't cover, plus court costs and interest. "They sent papers to my job a couple of months ago saying they are going to garnish my wages, I think for her accident," Grondin said. "But that hasn't started yet." Grondin said she's not sure how to feel. There's the reality that services were rendered. But then there's the fact that she is insured and still left with medical bills, collectors' phone calls and soon, maybe, a wage garnishment. (6 of 7) "I know it's our responsibility. It is ultimately my responsibility to pay," she said. "But ... when I first saw all the bills I was kind of mad because I am paying for this insurance which I barely use. Then, when it's needed, it's hardly there." Advertisement Grondin's medical debt story doesn't end there. Her boyfriend, who has two children of his own, recently declared bankruptcy because he couldn't have afforded child support and other bills if his wages were garnisheed to collect more than $7,000 in medical bills. 'It's good to have a plan' Michael Wade Taylor, 57, was in Courtroom 5D just after 9 a.m. Aug. 28 when Judge Eisenstein called his name and case. Wedged between two men with debt cases of their own, Taylor stood and answered clearly, "Here." Southern Hills Medical Center's attorney waved him into the hallway to work something out. Today, Taylor is an unemployed construction worker. He had a job but no insurance in 2006, when doctors initially thought he'd had a stroke. He spent several days in intensive care at Southern Hills, having a stent threaded from his groin to his heart to check for blockages. Later, he took a stress test on a treadmill. The eventual diagnosis: "They told me I had the heart of a teenager and didn't know what was wrong with me," Taylor said. "They sent me home, and since that time I kept going down and going down. "Then I find out that for those four days they charged me $33,000. Thirty-three thousand dollars for nothing." Hospital staff checked to see if he could qualify for TennCare ? state-subsidized medical coverage ? but his income was too high. Then they talked with him about financial aid and setting up a payment plan. Taylor said he didn't qualify because he didn't have a checking account. The bills started coming, then the phone calls, then the loss of his job in 2008. Turns out either he didn't have the heart of a teenager or it aged very quickly, Taylor said. Two months ago, he had open-heart surgery for an arterial blockage. This time, because he was unemployed, TennCare paid the tab. (7 of 7) He and Southern Hills' attorney reached an agreement that would let Taylor pay $20 a month until he covers $3,000 of the bill from three years ago. Advertisement "It's good to have some kind of plan," he said. "Really having that hanging over me was just something that took a situation from bad to worse." Hospitals provide free care Deals like Taylor's ? taking a $33,000 bill down to $3,000 ? aren't uncommon, area hospital systems say. They give away millions in medical care each year. Meanwhile, they say, unpaid medical debt keeps them from covering important capital costs ? such as replacing buildings and equipment ? or improving treatment and services. Each has a policy of absorbing or forgiving some medical debt, but that benefits the poorest and most severely ill patients. Employees help some patients who qualify, such as Taylor, enroll in TennCare. In fiscal year 2009, for example, Vanderbilt had $274.3 million in unpaid medical bills and absorbed about $197.9 million of that. It writes off debt for patients whose bills exceed their annual income or who earn less than 250 percent of the federal poverty rate ? about $55,000 for a family of four. Vanderbilt provides almost half of all the uncompensated care delivered in Davidson County, spokesman John Howser said. TriStar Health System, which operates five health-care facilities in the Nashville area, offers similar help for low-income patients. "The No. 1 reason for charity care denials is that they do not submit the application," spokeswoman Teri Smith said. The hospital system provided about $158 million in uncompensated care during calendar year 2008. This figure includes unpaid medical debt, bills that the hospital wrote off for its poorest patients and discounts offered to uninsured patients, Smith said. Saint Thomas Health Services, which operates Saint Thomas and Baptist hospitals, is owed $90 million in unpaid medical debt for services provided over the past three years, spokeswoman Rebecca Climer said. This figure does not include what the hospital system has forgiven or provided free to patients who cannot pay, Climer said. The system is a part of Ascension Health, the largest not-for-profit health-care system in the nation. The hospital has a fiscal responsibility to attempt to collect unpaid debt from those who can pay, Climer said. From sabocat59 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 16:40:29 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 18:40:29 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Obamacare Cost Cutting Message-ID: <6e42edf00910011540tf7d67ebk6e66a10122aa82a5@mail.gmail.com> http://www.counterpunch.org/cramer10012009.html Obamacare Cost Cutting Seniors on the Chopping Block By MARY LYNN CRAMER Even at this late hour it seems progressives do not understand the goal of Obamacare. They keep repeating the mantra (on every ?liberal? talk show from Democracy Now to NPR?s On Point) that the cuts in Medicare will only be from the ?wasteful? programs like Medicare Advantage. That?s right! Medicare Advantage: The plans that make Medicare affordable for most of us senior citizens. The original Medicare A & B do not begin to cover basic medical needs. I would be living in a shelter and begging on the streets if I had to depend on Medicare A & B or Medigap (the program that covers the 20% of costs not paid for by Medicare A&B) for my weekly medical expenses and doctor visits. Progressives who think that ?Medicare For All? is the same as Universal Single-Payer, are stuck behind their ideological blinders, swinging their swords at windmills and stabbing senior citizens in the back, all the while pretending they didn?t know low-income seniors are the targeted source of the $500 billion cost savings that Obama plans to root out of the "wasteful and fraudulent" Medicare Advantage program. The health care plan being designed by Obama and his powerful friends will reduce the health care coverage of all of us to the same low standards and minimum coverage of the original Medicare. Yes, we will have ?Medicare For All,? the most inadequate and worthless coverage available: No coverage for physical exams, eye or hearing exams, hearing aids or glasses; no foot care or orthopedic shoes, no chiropractics, no dental care, etc., etc. (See my article ?Progressives Abet Obama Fraud? in the Aug. 18, 2009 at Counterpunch.org). That is why that wise old man confronted Obama demanding that he ?keep the government out of my Medicare Advantage.? Grampy had done his homework long before most of us. The ?Original Medicare (A&B)? and ?Medigap? programs are subsidized by the federal government on a cost percentage (of severely limited medical services) in a one-plan-fits-all program. All the private providers of Medigap insurance must offer the same identical plan---which does not include any drug coverage--- based on the very limited number of services covered in the Original Medicare. This Medicare Supplemental Insurance covers the 20% of costs of services in parts A & B that the Original Medicare does not pay for. Not so with Medicare Advantage. Each private provider for Medicare Advantage gets a lump sum per enrollee/patient, and covers a wide range of services, with competitive low premiums, no deductibles, and each manages its own costs and programs. Let me be clear: I am for universal single-payer health care, as they have in France or Canada or at least what they have in England. There are many different ways to do single-payer involving both the private and public sector. However, that is not what is on the President?s table! Obama has said repeatedly, there will be no ?Trojan Horse? opening the way for an eventual single-payer health plan. He means it, as you know. So progressives have to set their idealistic rhetoric aside and look at what is actually on the table being set for us by the largest drug and insurance corporations ? waited upon by their front men in the White House and Congress. Don't sacrifice the seniors for propaganda purposes. Mary Lynn Cramer, MA, MSW, LICSW, Senior Citizen, has a background in economics and clinical social work, and considerable personal experience with Medicare. She can be reached at mllynn2 at yahoo.com From sabocat59 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 16:47:39 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 18:47:39 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Key Senate Democrats opposing Public Option Get more $$ from, Guess who?? Message-ID: <6e42edf00910011547r677afcb4nbfcee1d2abac20d6@mail.gmail.com> http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/09/committee-members-opposed-to-p.html Key Senate Democrats Opposing Public Option Get More Cash from Insurers and Pharmaceutical Companies Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on September 29, 2009 6:19 PM Today was not a good day for supporters of a government-sponsored health care plan. Two senators, John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), offered two amendments that would add such an option to the the Senate Finance Committee's version of the massive health care legislation Congress has been considering for months -- and the committee handily knocked each down today. CEOs of insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, who tend to oppose the public option, might sleep a little easier tonight. These industries have been implementing a variety of strategies to thwart amendments such as these, including spending big bucks on lobbying and campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sided with these industries have collected more money, on average, than those who voted for these amendments, the Center for Responsive Politics has found. Here are the details: The Rockefeller Amendment * The 15 lawmakers to vote against Rockefeller's version of the public option have collected $69,137 more, on average, from insurers (including HMOs and health services and health and accident insurers) through their candidate committees and leadership PACs since 1989 than the eight who voted for his amendment ($297,089 versus $227,952). * The lawmakers who voted against Rockefeller's amendment have brought in $167,264 more, on average, from pharmaceutical and health care product companies since 1989 than those who supported it ($467,427 versus $297,163). * The Democrats who voted against their colleague's proposal have collected $97,472 more, on average, from insurance companies since 1989 than the Democrats who voted for it ($325,424 versus $227,952). * The Democrats who voted against Rockefeller's amendment have brought in $163,876 more, on average, from pharmaceutical and health product companies since 1989 than the Democrats who supported it ($461,038 versus $297,163). The Schumer Amendement * The 13 lawmakers who voted against Schumer's version of the public option have collected $93,177 more, on average, from insurers (including HMOs and health services and health and accident insurers) through their candidate committees and leadership PACs since 1989 than the 10 who voted for his amendment ($313,553 versus $220,376). * The senators who voted against Schumer's amendment have brought in $210,470 more, on average, from pharmaceutical and health product companies since 1989, than those who supported it ($497,757 versus $287,286). * The Democrats who voted against their colleague's proposal have collected $195,284 more, on average, from insurance companies since 1989, than the Democrats who voted for it ($415,660 versus $220,376). * The Democrats who voted against Schumer's amendment have brought in $315,923 more from pharmaceutical and health product companies since 1989, than the Democrats who supported it ($603,210 versus $287,286). Senate Finance Committee * At $675,350, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the committee's chairman, has since 1989 collected more from health insurance companies, including HMOs and health services and health and accident insurers, than all but one other member of the committee -- Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). And Kerry only collected big funds as a presidential candidate in 2004. Meanwhile, only Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has raised more from pharmaceutical and health product companies in that time ($1.6 million versus $1.1 million). Baucus voted against both amendments. * Insurers have contributed $265,441, on average, to individual Democrats on the committee, while pharmaceutical and health product companies have donated $360,192, on average, to individual Democrats since 1989. * Insurers have given $282,921, on average, to individual Republicans on the committee, while pharmaceutical and health product companies have contributed $466,121 since 1989. * For a list of contributions from health-related industries to members of this committee, visit our health care tools committees database. From dwaltersMIA at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 16:51:16 2009 From: dwaltersMIA at gmail.com (nada) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:51:16 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? Message-ID: <4AC53264.8@gmail.com> When it comes to violence, you do what you have to do to survive. To David S.: I've sort of been in both situations. I've also called the cops. We had a comrade in LA who blew a guy away who came into his store to rob him with a gun pointed at him. Dead. Sad. But dead. Responsibility for your reactions under capitalist decay runs in both directions. BTW, the SWP expelled him. In fact, the only reason NOT to call the cops is because it's usually, in most cases, a waste of time as any incident is over in a minute. D. From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 17:43:01 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 19:43:01 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] tens of thousands of Israeli Palestinians march and strike In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910011643l637034dl101279f56d94547c@mail.gmail.com> > > http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3784215,00.html > > < > http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iqrVpMUISglczJxzUhkA3J0zUvqQ > > > > photos - > < > http://www.daylife.com/search/photos/1/grid?q=%22general%20strike%22%20%22israel%22 > > > From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Thu Oct 1 19:38:16 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:38:16 +1000 Subject: [Marxism] South Africa: `The ANC has invaded Kennedy Road' shack settlement | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal Message-ID: <4AC55988.8060300@greenleft.org.au> A statement by Abahlali baseMjondolo president S'bu Zikode. S'bu and his family have been living as refugees since the September 27-28 violence by the African National Congress targeting Abahlali leaders at Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban, South Africa. He appeals for continued support for the Shack Dwellers Movement in these dire times of government repression and lies. It can be said without exaggeration that the so-called democratic government of South Africa is attempting to silence and disband the country's largest social movement of the poor. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1281 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From redbeard at riseup.net Thu Oct 1 21:43:15 2009 From: redbeard at riseup.net (Jon Hiesfelter) Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:43:15 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Obamacare Cost Cutting Message-ID: <4AC576D3.4040108@riseup.net> Left out from the Counterpunch article is how much extra the private insurers cost the federal government. My parents received several robo-calls spreading fear about Medicare Advantage being cut. I'd bet they were paid for by the insurance companies that will miss this profit at the expense of Medicare dollars. From ^ GAO-09-132R, "Medicare Advantage Expenses" The Government Accountability Office reported that in 2006, the plans earned profits of 6.6 percent, had overhead (sales, etc.) of 10.1 percent, and provided 83.3 percent of the revenue dollar in medical benefits. These administrative costs are far higher than traditional fee-for-service Medicare. More info on Medicate Advantage from Physicians for a National Health Program: http://pnhp.org/blog/2008/11/25/the-medicare-advantage-lesson-on-what-not-to-do/ From schaffer at optonline.net Thu Oct 1 22:19:15 2009 From: schaffer at optonline.net (Les Schaffer) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:19:15 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <4AC53264.8@gmail.com> References: <4AC53264.8@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AC57F43.3030601@optonline.net> a question came to me offlist from a friend: Mark Lause mentioned a "Franklin" in this thread: "I'm not surprised that Sartesian's run-in with Franklin resolved itself so bizarrely." who is this Franklin? it is not clear from the posts who is being referred to. Les From markalause at gmail.com Thu Oct 1 23:00:42 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 01:00:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Roman Polanski: What did he do? In-Reply-To: <4AC57F43.3030601@optonline.net> References: <4AC53264.8@gmail.com> <4AC57F43.3030601@optonline.net> Message-ID: I was responding to S. Artesian's account of his experience with the late Franklin Rosemont, someone with whom quite a number of us have worked at one point or another. ML From stuartmunckton at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 00:00:00 2009 From: stuartmunckton at gmail.com (Stuart Munckton) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +1000 Subject: [Marxism] Green Left Honduras update: Desperate regime steps up reign of terror, resistance pushes on Message-ID: <2c6145850910012300s4457a629gca19c5239178913f@mail.gmail.com> Honduras: Desperate dictatorship steps up reign of terror, resistance pushes on Federico Fuentes 2 October 2009 http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/812/41796 October 1 ? The dictatorship in Honduras, which overthrew the elected government of Manuel Zelaya in a military coup on June 28, has stepped up its reign of terror. A state of siege remains in place. The most recent targets of the repression have Radio Globo and Channel 36 ? the two main media outlets opposing the coup and giving the mass resistance movement in the Central American nation a voice. . The continual repression has affected the size of anti-coup protests. However, the ongoing resistance has caused further cracks to open within the pro-coup forces as support for the resistance spreads ?They have just attacked our comrades from the resistance who had been protesting at the offices of Radio Globo?, Dirian Pereira from the National Front Against the Coup in Honduras (FNRG) told *Green Left Weekly* over the phone from the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa. ?They were brutally attacked, the police fired tear gases and a number of people were beaten up.? ?Right now, there is no media outlet that is speaking about the resistance?, said Pereira about the shutdown of Radio Globo and Channel 36. Having shut down critical media, ?they are carrying out heavy acts of repression. This morning there kicked out some peasant comrades who had been occupying the office of the National Agrarian Institute.? Gilberto Rios, an FNRG leader, told *GLW*: ?This is the 10th time that they have taken [Radio Globo] of the air and left us without any possibility to communicate. ?They are violating an elementary right, which is the right to information and free speech. They are hitting us hard, and the balancesheet we have drawn up is that this is not positive. ?Nevertheless, the majority of the population is against the most repressive measures the government is carrying out. This has meant that more sectors are joining the resistance against the coup. ?We are converting ourselves into a force that, if we can unite, will defeat this coup.? On September 28, coup leader Roberto Micheletti declared a state of siege, suspending all civil liberties. A day later, under pressure, he promised to lift it. However, Pereira said: ?The only thing they have said is that they will study the decree because the Congress asked them to ? but they have not annulled it. ?Micheletti said that maybe next week they will annul it, but the repression continues. They are trying to undermine the motivation of the resistance to fight.? Rios added: ?Their attitude is one of strength that, according to our reading of the situation, does not correspond with the strength they have. Rather, it comes from the strength of the forces supporting them ? the transnational companies such as Exxon Mobil and other powerful financial forces that are behind this coup. ?In that sense, there is not only a Honduran coup. ?We have already defeated the Honduran coup. What we are fighting to defeat now is the coup by the transnationals.? A proposal to end the conflict between the coup regime, backed by the oligarchy, and the poor majority supporting Zelaya has emerged from a group of Honduran business leaders. The proposal would result in both Micheletti and Zelaya resigning. Power would be handed over to a United Nations mission that would oversee elections. Rios said: ?The proposal reflects a decision taken by the oligarchy in the face of the elections scheduled for November 29. The siege decree would exclude any possibility of the presidential candidates being able to carry out a political campaign during the next 45 days ? leaving only a week or two for campaigning. ?Many saw this as an attempt by the Micheletti government to prolong their stay in power beyond the date of the elections. ?This reflects a lack of confidence among [those that support the coup]. There is a process of fracturing within the oligarchy that is in power as a result of the coup. That is why the resistance is standing firm on its proposals ?The resistance is continuing to make the same demands as always: the reinstatement of Zelaya and a national constituent assembly.? On the possibility of a UN intervention, Rios said: ?The resistance is not in favor a such an intervention.? The mass protests continue. The resistance has called for a mobilisation tomorrow, Friday October 2, outside the US embassy in the morning and protests in the poor neighbourhoods throughout the afternoon and night. The FNRG has called a meeting of the neighbourhood-based resistance groups in Tegucigalpa for Sunday, October 4. From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #81230 September 2009. -- A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." ? Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?" ? Jarvis Cocker From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 03:23:38 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 05:23:38 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Blue Crosstic Gospels shed new light on Health Care Debate Message-ID: <6e42edf00910020223md2e2967q301c94e675cc8f42@mail.gmail.com> http://www.theassassinatedpress.com/hag.htm Christ Denied Healing to Those Who Couldn?t Pay. Archaeologists Discover Scrolls at Ancient Dead Sea Company Headquarters. Blue Crosstic Gospels Shed New Light on Health Care Debate. Ledger With Matthew as Comptroller Records Each Miracle and Amount Charged. Jesus Had Controlling Interest in Largest Health Care Provider in the Roman Empire. "How do you think the Pope got the big hat?" By JOHN HAGEE The Assassinated Press 9/14/09 This story is told in Matthew 15:22-26: A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." Coverage denied! In a new archaeological find in the Permanentus region of ancient Judea it turns out -Canaanite-, or more broadly -Gentile- was a term commonly used to designate a person diagnosed with a pre-existing condition by Christ and his followers as they went about the land healing the sick. Such individuals were denied coverage under the guidelines in a new set of rules set out on ancient scrolls which are half Christian gospel and half health care contract. Even paying for a premium policy called 'The Chosen' was not enough to guarantee coverage if a pre-existing condition was suspected. The scrolls, some 1500 in all, are proof positive that Christ only performed miracles of healing based on the patients ability to pay and/or their ethnicity. The contract in the scrolls explicitly states that the patient is required to present proof that the disease that he or she suffers from does not represent a pre-existing condition. The list of pre-conditions is long and comprehensive including leprosy, bulemia, fecal envy, toad reaper, wild Corsican hemotomas, foot loose air hinge, pre-mature hallelujeahs, prophecy fatigue and witch piles. Also, the scrolls reveal that after treatment Christ's disciples would work the crowd asking for donations probably in an effort to stay off the books and avoid Roman tax law. Some scholars however claim the Christians were pickpockets. Comptroller Matthew kept meticulous records of each healing and Mary Magdeline was in charge of billing and collection according to the scrolls. Also, according to the scrolls Christ's disciples were divided into advance teams led by the apostles who would flood a city where Christ was scheduled to appear. There they would cold call all the inhabitants pitching insurance plans to them. Those who signed up and paid their premiums in the form of a tithe were declared insured. Christ would then blow into town with his light show and pyrotechnics and his motivational speeches. After preaching and after his disciples carefully checked the insured's records they were deemed worthy of divine coverage or not. Gentiles, the illegals of their time, were routinely excluded from divine coverage. Being a Gentile was a 'pre-existing condition.' The chosen then would be further screened for pre-existing conditions other that 'coronary gentileness' like blindness and leprosy. After careful and thorough screening, the few left would then be sent to Christ for healing. The Savior led company became so successful that Christ branched out and according to The Blue Crosstic Gospels, He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness based on ability to pay, no gentiles and no pre-existing conditions. Coverage was also divided into categories of payment with the highest category being designated as -The Chosen.- Obviously, Lazarus had the company's premium policy. Among the records kept by Matthew in the Blue Crosstic Scrolls we see these notations: (dinarii represent out of pocket costs beyond what plan would pay) ? Healing of a nobleman's son --- 600 dinarii, and a bridge loan of 2000 dinarii ? Delivering a man in the synagogue from demonic spirits --- 275 dinari ? Healing Peter's mother-in-law --- denied, not covered under plan due to age ? Cleansing a leper -- coverage denied, leprosy considered a pre-existing condition ? Healing a paralytic ? coverage denied ? pre-existing condition ? Healing of the man at Bethesda ? coverage denied, policy expired ? Healing a man with a withered hand ? coverage denied, policy had not taken affect by date illness was diagnosed ? Healing the Centurion's servant ? denied, servant was in country illegally ? Raising the widow's son ? 4000 dinarii and two asses ? Casting out a dumb and blind spirit ? coverage denied ? illness not covered in patient?s policy ? Healing a man possessed by demons at Gadara ? 1600 dinarii ? Healing a woman with an issue of blood ? denied, experimental procedure ? Raising Jairus' daughter ? 3200 dinarii and daughter ? Healing of two blind men ? denied, pre-existing condition of blindness/experimental procedure ? Casting out a spirit ? denied, [no reason given] ? Healing a deaf and dumb man ? 1400 dinarii and the deed to his ranch ? Healing the blind man of Bethsaida ? denied pre-existing condition ? Casting demons out of a lunatic boy ? pro bono, miracle performed on Jerry Springer ? Healing a man born blind ? denied, see above ? Healing a woman with an 18-year infirmity ? denied, tests inconclusive, pre-existing conditions ? Healing a man with dropsy (or edema) ? 1250 dinarii ? Raising Lazarus ? 6700 dinarii ? Cleansing of ten lepers ? group plan denied, members of Leper?s Union 313 ? Healing blind Bartimeaus ? denied (see above) ? Cursing the fig tree ? Jesus having a nervous breakdown, talking to foliage not covered ? Healing of Malchus' ear ? denied, [no reason given] Republican congressman and other shills for the insurance industry have leapt on this discovery claiming that it proves that Christ himself was against universal healthcare. You have to admit, the evidence is compelling, John Boehner (pronounced boner) congressman from the 8th District of Ohio which encompasses Choke a Chicken, Ohio, the county's seat. Christ was clearly for profit and Mary Magdalene was a dental hygienist he met when he went to get some bridge work done. Kaiser Permanente CEO, George Halvorson, was more sanguine: We know born again Christians are unanimously against health care reform and now we know their hatred of the Obama plan is consistent with their beliefs and the beliefs of their Lord and Savior. End of discussion. From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 03:44:34 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 05:44:34 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Neoliberalism as Water Balloon Message-ID: <6e42edf00910020244t51127a6fq3215a4a2b9a9d980@mail.gmail.com> http://vimeo.com/6803752 Neoliberalism as water balloon. Aside from the obvious weakness in terms of underconsumption as an explanatory factor, still a straightforward and hilarious account. Someone should figure out how to incorporate overproduction into this model. Greg McD From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 04:06:07 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 06:06:07 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Jim DeMint: Crybaby of the US Senate Message-ID: <6e42edf00910020306h645be0d8y55ad3f1232092432@mail.gmail.com> http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3491/jim-demint-crybaby-us-senate Jim DeMint: Crybaby of the US Senate by Al Giordano US Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), in the right-hand photo, is having a tantrum today, alleging that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), on the left, is blocking him with ?bullying tactics? from visiting his pals in the Honduras coup regime. Truth is, nothing prohibits DeMint from traveling to Honduras on his own dime. It?s the US taxpayer funds - specifically those of the Senate committee - that he can?t use for the propaganda junket, one that DeMint announced in advance would be to advocate for the coup regime's sham "election" process. That he cancelled his scheduled trip to Tegucigalpa tomorrow when it became clear he?d have to purchase his own plane ticket and that of his entourage, he just gave up and decided to put out a press release instead. ?Not a single U.S. Senator has traveled to Honduras to learn the facts on the ground,? said the statement prepared by the Senator?s staff. ?And the Obama administration won?t allow Honduran officials or even businessmen to come to the U.S., either.? This is the same DeMint that invoked Senate rules that allow a single Senator to ?block? a vote on confirming various of President Obama?s diplomatic nominees, including those for US Ambassador to the Organization of American States, US Ambassador to Brazil and Undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, because he doesn?t like the White House position against the Honduras coup. It's the time-worn tale of a schoolyard bully who, when he gets punched in the nose himself, sobs and and accuses his bester of unfair play. During the years when Republicans were in power in the United States, they would frequently accuse the Democratic opposition of playing as ?victims.? And they were sometimes right about that. Politics is hardball, baby, and nobody who enters it should whine when hit cleanly and fairly. Now that they?re in the minority and unpopular with voters they?re whiners, too (which suggests that tantrums aren?t a partisan trait but rather a societal one). DeMint then reported Kerry to the principal?s office Twitter: ?@JohnKerry (Foreign Rel. chair) trying to hide truth to protect Zelaya, blocking our fact-finding trip to Honduras at last minute.? Everybody say, ?awwwwwwww.? What a big fucking crybaby. If you don?t want to get hit, Jimmy, don?t go out on the playing field throwing punches. Good for Kerry for knocking DeMint on his ass with such a timely, karma-packed punch. DeMint can still go to Honduras any time he wants. But that he cancels his trip the moment he?d have to pay for it, and instead puts a press release out sort of indicates that he didn?t feel that strongly about it all along. It?s just the usual beltway posturing of partisan politics. And the scoreboard reads: Kerry 1, DeMint 0. Update 8:29 p.m. ET: In what may be another case of the Obama administration not having its act together regarding speaking with one voice on Honduras policy, ABC News is reporting - with a question mark - that DeMint's office is now claiming that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell intervened and got the Defense Department to pay for DeMint's junket. (Apparently, Secretary Clinton's State Department is on the right side of this battle, denying the funds.) In that report, Kerry minces no words: ?Thanks to his intransigence, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can?t even hold hearings on our policy in Central and South America. Sen. DeMint is blocking the nominations of two key officials who will implement President Obama?s foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere... When Senator DeMint lifts these holds and allows these individuals to receive an up or down vote on the Senate floor, the Committee will approve his travel to Honduras, a country that is in the middle of delicate, political crisis.? But if DoD is now going to undercut that, it is the White House that will be perceived as equivocating and weak, again, regarding the Honduras coup. Somebody upstairs needs to step in and put all the players on the same page. From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 05:21:43 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 07:21:43 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Obamacare Cost-Cutting Message-ID: <6e42edf00910020421y5412110ah11f68c46a0f9392b@mail.gmail.com> Jon H. wrote: Left out from the Counterpunch article is how much extra the private insurers cost the federal government. My parents received several robo-calls spreading fear about Medicare Advantage being cut. I'd bet they were paid for by the insurance companies that will miss this profit at the expense of Medicare dollars. You bet, but you don't really know who paid for those calls. The bottom line is the Obama health care reform package is a privatizing package, and the government-subsidies for the mandated purchase of private insurance by the uninsured will fill the coffers of the insurance companies, so they will benefit more from the new plan than they have already with plans such as Medicare Advantage. i bet you those calls were paid for by the republicans, who, unfortunately, have benefited from the legitimate grievances among senior citizens that the cost-cutting to the tune of $500 billion will come at their expense. It is deeply ironic and politically asinine that the democrats are too craven and corrupt to offer even a decent public option, not to mention single-payer. And you know what? On this one the republicans are dead right. Better to kill the bill because what stands now, as bad as it is, is better than the bill sponsored by Max Baucus and the other blue dog democrats in the senate finance subcommittee. Greg McDonald Full: http://www.counterpunch.org/cramer08182009.html This new bottom line for benefits, much lower than anything I ever had with my ?employer-provided? insurance plans, will be this basic Medicare plan offered to all, served up with blarney that now all Americans have access to the same excellent Medicare that the elderly are so ?happy? with. If that isn?t good enough for you, anyone who can afford it will be able to purchase additional coverage, at a much higher price than seniors now pay for the government-subsidized supplemental programs (sometimes called Medicare ?Advantage?). According to repeated pronouncements by the President and Congress, these government-subsidized, supplemental programs (that seniors have depended upon to expand their Medicare benefits and make basic medical services affordable) will be eliminated. They constitute the ?waste? in the system that the President and Congress repeatedly refer to. They also represent ?chicken feed,? compared to the enormous profits the private sector is going to accumulate when we all have to purchase private health insurance policies. This is what Grampy meant, when he protested that he did not want the government messing around with his Medicare. In spite of the chortling and demeaning commentary by noted liberals on NPR talk shows, Democracy Now, The DR show, and others, Grampy does know that the deduction he agreed the government should take directly from his monthly Social Security check is his premium payment for the government-run Medicare plan. He also knows he could never afford decent medical coverage if he did not make an additional monthly premium payment for the private supplemental (?Advantage?) program. Grampy knows that these supplemental programs that give him the ?advantage? of being able to afford the basics of medical care, are on the chopping block and that their elimination (as Obama brags repeatedly) will play a major part in the cost-cutting needed to pay for the new health reform program. From stuartmunckton at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 06:28:26 2009 From: stuartmunckton at gmail.com (Stuart Munckton) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 22:28:26 +1000 Subject: [Marxism] Honduras: the people are still on the streets! Message-ID: <2c6145850910020528p71aeb4b8j5a9e74eb2d8d6923@mail.gmail.com> Honduras eyewitness: The people are still on the streets! http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/812/41797 2 October 2009 *On June 28, elected President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup backed by the Honduran elite. Since then, a mass resistance movement of the poor majority has brought the Central American country to a standstill and the coup regime very close to defeat. Pedro Fuentes is international secretary of the Brazilian Party Socialism and Liberty (PSOL). He wrote this article from Honduras on September 29. * 1. ?Blood of martyrs, seeds of freedom? was the slogan at the burial of Wendy, who died as a result of tear gas this weekend. All ?awakening has its price and Honduras has awoken?, an activist from a Communist Party background involved in the resistance told me at the ceremony, held Monday afternoon (September 28). Using Marxist terms, the comrade said that in Honduras, this awakening has meant that the movement has taken ?a qualitative leap forward?. ?This is not the first person we have brought to the cemetery. Officially, six comrades have already been buried, but there is an unknown number of people who have disappeared, of people that have been taken away and have not appeared, and people who they say have been killed for being criminals in clashes with the police.? 2. On Monday, the government began applying the decreed state of siege. Radio Globo and Channel 36 [which oppose the coup] were closed. The military entered into their offices and looted them of all equipment. That same day, the gathering of the resistance, which has been set every morning at the Pedagogical University, was weak. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the protest was encircled by troops, there was no sense of vacillation or fear. On the contrary, the comments had a radicalised tone, arguing that more energetic measures had to be taken. There was even talk in the corridors of the need to move towards more direct actions. The protest was able to march to STYBS [the union of beverage workers]. It was a reflection of the general sentiment of rejection against these measures among a broader section of the population. Not just by the great mass that is against the coup, but also those sections of the middle class that reject the authoritarianism symbolised by the shutdown of these media outlets. The mass rejection of the regime and the political parties that support it is constantly visible. They talk about the ?corrupt ones? ? a common term for politicians. The procession to the cemetery was short but the sympathy of the people was enormous. The cars and trucks, especially those carrying workers, saluted, beeped their horns and stopped to raise their fists in solidarity. 3. The fact is that, even though the resistance has not been able to maintain daily and permanent mass mobilisations on the streets, popular support has been increasing. An eruption of the masses occurred on September 15, Independence Day. That day, tens of thousands came out onto the streets. Moreover, there are permanent strikes by academics and others. Teachers are on strike two days a week. Some public buildings have been occupied and, until today, the occupations of the National Agrarian Institute has been maintained ? headed by Juan Barahona. This comrade is one of the most charismatic leaders, together with Carlos H. Reyes, an independent presidential candidate. A very large, broad vanguard has been forged in these 90 days since the coup. It is made up of workers, neighbourhood organisations, unions such as those of beverage workers and teachers, and peasant organisations with an important weight and history of struggle. This is a vanguard that has not kneeled down in the face of repression, that has suffered the break-up of road blockades, and suffered the day that the protest was broken up outside the Brazilian embassy, where the repression was savage. A young motorbike rider, no more than 22, showed me his back covered with marks left by the successive beatings he received in those confrontations, as he stood next to his proud partner. A nurse with a Liberal Party flag told me how, in the first few days, she organised a health workers front in Tegucigalpa: ?We began with 10 nurses, but we spread out to assistants, medical workers and dentists with which we became a large organisation.? This organisation counts on a clinic that is at the service of the sick and injured among the resistance. It is worth recalling that throughout the two decades that followed the revolutionary upsurge of the 1980s, Honduras was the country where the social movements have been the strongest in leading strikes and struggles. Together with this vanguard, a radicalised section of Zelaya?s Liberal Party has brought new activists, that emerged after the coup, into the fold. These are the sectors that make up the National Resistance Front against the Coup D?etat (FNRG). The FNRG has maintained revolutionary democratic mobilisations for more than 90 days ? and show no signs of having been defeated or stepping back. 4. The state of siege decreed by the coup regime has been aimed precisely at heading in the direction of a classic totalitarian regime (such as the dictatorships of the ?70s in Latin America) in order to hold back the revolutionary democratic mobilisation underway and to strengthen the regime. The institution that appears the most intact is the army, which has not given any signs of fissures. It is the military that has remained most intact following the process in Central America with the formal end of armed conflict. It enjoys a strong relationship with the upper level of capitalist class and the US Armed Forces. But Micheletti?s state of siege decree backfired, because the parliament and all presidential candidates rejected it. The decree indicated the intention of Micheletti to stay in power and an end to the elections planned for November 29. During a press conference early on Monday afternoon, Micheletti, together with a group of parliamentarians, had to backtrack. This does not mean that they will end the shutting down of radio and TV stations and the ban on protests, but it shows that as a political strategy, the siege decree has failed. This situation demonstrated the contradictions and incapacities of the dominant classes and the regime. Less a regime, it is more a conglomerate of sectors with different positions in the middle of a political crisis. Even though all of them are against the resistance and the drift by Zelaya towards ?Bolivarian? policies, they are divided in how to confront this. Their ?exit strategy? is the scheduled elections, but the question is how to get there. With less than 60 days to go in the election campaign, there is no way how. The only thing that exists is the TV campaigns ? but there are no electoral campaigns on the streets. The bourgeoisie has to change this situation. But this is impossible via the baton and the state of siege. Not only because there will be no possibility of electoral campaigning, but also because this has only thrown more wood into the fire. This is not the only problem. The other, and bigger, one is that the legitimate president Manuel Zelaya is in the middle of the capital, Tegucigalpa, in the Brazilian embassy. To this we could add the international isolation of the regime. 5, Today, all the sectors supporting the coup have begun to talk more forcefully about the necessity of a ?national dialogue? towards the elections. Dialogue with Zelaya is only possible if he is reinstated as president. But this solution is impossible for the bourgeoisie as its policy has been to break with Zelaya?s government. Zelaya talks of dialogue, but at the same time talks of ?homeland, restitution or death?. In the current context, after nearly two weeks of Zelaya being inside the Brazilian embassy and more than 90 days of mobilisations, allowing one single day of Zelaya in government, given the absolute fragility of the regime, is too adventurous for the dominant classes The possibility of a dictatorship typical of the ?70s, as well as Zelaya?s return, has been closed off for the bourgeoisie. This seems to point towards the fact that the dialogue of which they speak would mean a provisional government of national unity without Zelaya and Micheletti ? something difficult to achieve. This is the framework of the political crisis in the upper spheres. It has other important factors ? the international isolation of the regime and the deepening of the economic crisis that has taken the country to the brink of collapse. Each curfew means more ruin for the people ? especially the middle class and small shop owners. 6. There are minority sectors of the left that do not understand that the principal demand is the reinstatement of Zelaya. The difference between the revolutionaries and the opportunists is that, in order to return Zelaya to power, it is necessary to continue and deepened the direct action of the people. In other words, a consistent democratic struggle that clashes with the regime. The slogans of the resistance are clear: No to elections organised by the coup regime; for the restitution of Zelaya; and a constituent assembly, which has transformed itself into a slogan of the masses in the face of this crisis. The problem for the resistance is that the intense mass actions, even though they have fractured the regime and placed it in crisis, have not been strong enough to bring it down. (This is a situation that is very similar to those experienced by the revolutionary processes in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where popular insurrections opened the path later on to very progressive solutions via overwhelming electoral victories). The existing accumulation of forces and the deepening of the crisis leaves this possibility open. As the crisis worsens and becomes unsustainable, the possibility of a more general uprising is on the cards. And with it, a new Zelaya government in a totally different context of rupture with the old regime ? like what has occurred in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador. 7. In any case, it would be an error to underestimate the possibility that the dominant classes will divert this process. A section of it, which is attempting to break the international isolation, has adopted a position of attempting to reach out to the most right-wing sectors in the continent. This includes the corrupt president of the Brazilian senate, who has come out attacking Brazilian president Lula?s position of supporting Zelaya. He is not the only one. The meeting yesterday (September 28) of the Organisation of American States [which involves the governments of the entire Americas minus Cuba] demonstrated that the US is also changing its position to one of directly attacking Zelaya, Lula and [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez for their ?adventurism?. The possible plan that the US is seeking to implement, which will be difficult, is to maintain the status quo with a provisional government of national unity without Zelaya or Micheletti, which organises elections. This reveals the important of maintaining at all costs the demand to reinstate Zelaya. Support on the international level should be towards the forces and countries that defend this position. 8. It is clear that whatever occurs in the next few days, nothing will be the same again in Honduras and our continent. The people have awoken; they have taken a leap forward. The revolutionary process is marching forwards. If not now, then sooner or later, it will be expressed in a new political power, as has already happened in other Latin American countries. New leaders have been forged in this resistance, but so has a change in the consciousness of the masses and new forms of organisations. There is a rupture with the old parties, the FNRG, and in particular the Popular Bloc that draws together the most militant sectors, have emerged as an alternative for sections of the masses. All of this has to flow into a new mass revolutionary political organisation. Various sections of the FNRG have already proposed this. It is necessary to ensure that this force is a crucial player in future events. 9. Latin American militants, anti-imperialist and socialist organisations are faced with the great challenge of collaborating with this process. Honduras today is our political capital in order to advance the class struggle. Because of this, solidarity is fundamental. We have to ensure that October 2 (called as an International Day of Solidarity) is a massive day of support for the Honduran resistance, through all our means, including economic. From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #81230 September 2009. -- A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." ? Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?" ? Jarvis Cocker From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 06:33:23 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 08:33:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Weekly Worker 787 Message-ID: Weekly Worker 787 - Thursday October 1 2009 The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/787 In this week?s issue: ANTI-BNP CLASS-COLLABORATION The left?s spluttering response to Nick Griffin?s invitation to appear on Question time reveals a floundering political strategy, argues James Turley LETTERS Confused?; Sex security; Vetting vaccine; Quiet life; Eco-obsession; Left out; Illuminating; Afghanistan; Language tool YOU COULDN?T MAKE IT UP With the general election now, at most, seven months away, what is happening with left unity projects? Peter Manson surveys recent developments LIONS LED BY DONKEYS Matthew Cobb, dubbed an anti-communist by the Morning Star, examines the contradictory role of the French Communist Party during World War II THREATS OVER URANIUM ENRICHMENT AID REGIME Ahmadinejad uses the ?enemy without? to justify increased repression, arrests and the torture of the ?enemy within?, writes Yassamine Mather SUCCESS POSES NEW QUESTIONS With an astonishing 11.9% of the vote at the September 27 national elections, the German left party Die Linke now has 76 members of parliament. Tina Becker reports THE ?NEW INDIAN? TIGER On October 6, the winner of the Man Booker prize will be announced. All but one of the shortlisted works are ?historical fiction?. Last year, however, the winning novel was set in present-day India - The white tiger by 34-year-old Aravind Adiga. Mike Belbin weighs up its appeal to UK judges and asks whether or not it does credit to the ?new India? of technological and cultural advance ROOTED ON CAMPUS Communist Students have been winning supporters at freshers fairs. Chris Brandler reports from Manchester WRITING ON WALL FOR BROWN Brown?s primary objective at Brighton was to present himself as the saviour of capitalism, writes Eddie Ford TREMENDOUS Robbie Rix gives thanks for payments, even guilty ones A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/787/787web.pdf From bbauerly at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 07:31:55 2009 From: bbauerly at gmail.com (brad bauerly) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 09:31:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!! Message-ID: <55868ddf0910020631j68368845vc3388717ad648d8a@mail.gmail.com> I am having a really hard time rapping my head around the contradiction between the large and growing number of unemployed and the supine nature of the US left. Why is there no substantial movement? Just flabbergasted... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/business/economy/03jobs.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print From biastg at embarqmail.com Fri Oct 2 07:37:25 2009 From: biastg at embarqmail.com (Thomas Bias) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 09:37:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!! In-Reply-To: <55868ddf0910020631j68368845vc3388717ad648d8a@mail.gmail.com> References: <55868ddf0910020631j68368845vc3388717ad648d8a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <848123C0-EC3B-42F8-ABA4-AE84D84EC96A@embarqmail.com> Read the first sentences of Trotsky's "Transitional Program." Never more true than now.--Tom On Oct 2, 2009, at 9:31 AM, brad bauerly wrote: > I am having a really hard time rapping my head around the > contradiction > between the large and growing number of unemployed and the supine > nature of > the US left. Why is there no substantial movement? Just > flabbergasted... > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/business/economy/03jobs.html? > _r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/ > marxism/biastg%40embarqmail.com From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 07:41:39 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:41:39 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Review of new book on Mariategui Message-ID: <4AC60313.20701@panix.com> http://monthlyreview.org/090921dunbar-ortiz.php Indigenous Resistance in the Americas and the Legacy of Mari?tegui Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Reviewed: Marc Becker, Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador?s Modern Indigenous Movements (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 356 pages, $22.95, paperback. Following the 2005 election of the first Indigenous president of any country in the Americas ? Evo Morales in Bolivia ? I commented in MRzine on the fact that many were taken by surprise by this seemingly sudden occurrence out of nowhere, but only because they had not been paying attention to the development of the international Indigenous movement over the past three decades. I called attention to the Indigenous mass movements in the Americas during the 1960s and 1970s that gave rise to the international Indigenous movement that, in turn, brought mass-based Indigenous movements into the United Nations. At that forum, significant work was done to develop international law norms for the protection of Indigenous communities and nations, in order to found collective rights analogous to those established in international law by the process of decolonization, the outstanding achievement of the United Nations. Historian Marc Becker, in his invaluable new book, goes deeper in locating the roots of those twentieth century mass movements, focusing on Ecuador. Sixteen years before Evo Morales, in another Andean region, Indigenous peoples rose up and paralyzed Ecuador for a week. Becker begins with this moment in a chapter titled, ?What Is an Indian?? He describes how the protesters blocked highways, halting all traffic in the country, and then massed in the streets of Quito, the capital, presenting sixteen demands focused on land, culture, and political rights. The pan-Indigenous organization, CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), founded in 1986, provided both leadership and an ideological frame for the future of Indigenous movements in that country. Becker focuses on the extraordinary role of women?s leadership and participation as well (?gendered histories?). Although Becker doesn?t refer to it, CONAIE had been actively participating in the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and after 1990, the Ecuadorian government included Indigenous representatives in its delegations to the United Nations. Becker observes that, following the 1990 uprising: ?In a manner rarely seen in Latin America, Indigenous activism in Ecuador spawned an academic ?Generation of 1990? with numerous articles, books, and doctoral dissertations on the subject of Indigenous politics. Anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists analyzed the uprising and the ideological shifts engendered within the Indigenous world. Academics came to see the uprising, the organizational process leading to it, and the political negotiations following it as representing the birth of a new Indigenous ideology and organizational structure.? Becker contrasts that flurry of new academic interest with CONAIE?s view of how the resistance movement developed: ?Popular, community, syndicate, associate organizations, peasant and Indigenous movements do not appear overnight, nor are they the fruit of one or two people who meet and decide to create them. . . . A movement, a mass organization is the fruit of a long process of organization, of consciousness-raising, of decision making, of uniting many ideas. . . . More than anything, it is the fruit of problems and contradictions that are produced between oppressors and the oppressed at a specific time and place.? Becker agrees, and proceeds to provide a clear, persuasive, and brilliantly written history, based on exhaustive documentation and his direct experience in Ecuador. Noteworthy is the extraordinary collaboration between the Communist Party of Ecuador and Indigenous communities in the highlands, including the early participation of women. Becker?s case study of Ecuador suggests that the study of similar collaborations throughout Indigenous regions of the Americas would prove fruitful, not only as a matter of historical research, but also as a guide to political practice. Thanks to the guiding light of the work and vision of Peruvian Marxist Jos? Carlos Mari?tegui in the 1920s, both communist and Indigenous organizers early on were cognizant that the Indigenous peoples of the Andes are nationalities, which, in the Marxist-Leninist sense, have the right to self-determination, although Mari?tegui argued against the practicality of a separate Andean state. Becker wrote a good book, exploring Mari?tegui?s influence on Latin American social movements and, more recently, an article specifically addressing the relationship to Indigenous peoples.1 The book under review focuses on Ecuador, bringing to it not only his knowledge of those questions but also of current Indigenous social movements. Mari?tegui was disabled and in poor health most of his life, dying at age thirty-eight in 1930. Although he was never able even to visit the Andean region and had no Indigenous colleagues, his thorough studies of the ?Peruvian reality,? that is, its colonial and neocolonial social and economic history, led him to conclude that Indigenous peoples were the source of social revolution in Per?, with land tenure as the key element. He was famous throughout Latin America and in communist and socialist communities as a staunch defender of Indigenous rights, as well as for being a brilliant and devoted socialist. During the time when the Soviet Union-led Comintern promoted the right to self-determination ? including independence ? of all nationalities, and promoted Black Republics in the United States and in South Africa, it proposed that an Andean Indian Republic be formed in South America. Mari?tegui accepted the fact that Indigenous peoples were nationalities and had the right to self-determination, but believed liberation and socialism ? Indigenous socialism ? would come from struggles of the Indigenous, peasants, and urban workers in unison. He was certain that a century of independent state formation in Latin America would not lend itself to separatist movements, nor would such movements lead to authentic liberation. In fact, even the most militant Andean leaders and organizations have not proposed separate Indigenous republics, but rather a multinational of state formations. As contemporary Ecuadorian Indigenous (Shuar) intellectual, Ampan Karakras, states: ?The power of decision-making and the political will of nationalities will be exercised through the multinational state and its respective agencies and institutions.?2 Becker contextualizes the Indigenous-peasant-workers? social movements during the 1920s to the 1950s within the history of anti-colonial Indigenous revolts from the beginning of Spanish occupation of the Andean region and the Ecuadorian Amazon. Here too, he includes the participation and leadership of women. As in the rest of the Americas, Indigenous resistance movements prevented colonialism from achieving total eradication of Indigenous cultures, and actually worked to continue the development of Indigenous identity. However, particularly in the densely Indigenous-populated areas of Mexico and the Andean states, after independence, the colonial/feudalistic latifundia land tenure system persisted, perpetuating the servile status and debt peonage of agricultural laborers, both Indigenous and Mestizo. Land reform and workers? rights were central to Indigenous struggles, which, in Ecuador at least, brought about alliances between rural Indigenous and Mestizos and urban workers. Becker shows that socialists not only supported labor and land reform in alliance with Indigenous communities but also Indigenous cultures, languages, and self-governance. They brought to Indigenous struggles tactics such as strikes, demonstrations, and marches, while Indigenous activists adapted socialist tactics to specific, local conditions. Ecuadorian socialists, Becker emphasizes, were not given to paternalism toward the Indians. This work culminated in the 1940s with the founding of the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians (FEI) as part of the communist-led Confederation of Ecuadorian Workers (CTE). The thesis of communist involvement in social movements is not a popular one. The Cold War affected peoples? movements in every corner of the world, no less the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. By the 1950s, Marxist-inspired movements were under heavy attack, ideologically, as well as physically. As mild a democratic reform government as that in Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and following the Cuban Revolution, any social movement demanding land reform or workers? rights was labeled communist. Missionary intervention and assistance in Indigenous movements, particularly following Vatican II, largely replaced the weakened socialist movements. One of the most interesting and valuable parts of the book is found in Chapter 7, titled, ?Return of the Indian.? Here, Becker traces the end of the Indigenous militants of the earlier era, and the rise of new movements, assisted, and sometimes originated, by Christian religious groups, as the ?secular leftists and religious activists competed for subaltern allegiance, representing two alternative trends in the evolution of Indigenous movements.? Now that socialism is back in the forefront of the Indigenous movement, most visibly in Bolivia with Evo Morales?s political party MAS (Movement Toward Socialism), Becker?s book is timely and an important source for those on the left seeking to comprehend Indigenous struggles and aspirations, as well as for Indigenous communities. Shuar intellectual Ampan Karakras captures the specificity of Indigenous views in contrast to peasants and workers, and especially, unitary nationalism: The different ?indigenous? peoples, from within their cultural beliefs and experience, consider as part of their sovereignty the three areas that modern states consider part of their own sovereignty: the subsoil with all its riches, the soil or the national territory, and the airspace. To the ?indigenous? people, in the subsoil are the living or mythological beings that should be respected, and valued, and asked for permission to extract a part of the soil?s riches. In the territory live the human beings; we share the soil with other living creatures ? the fauna and the flora ? because we are part of nature and not the kings of nature. In the firmament, or the airspace, mythological beings form an indivisible part of the life of human beings and the universe. This ?indigenous? concept of sovereignty ? that we are an indivisible part of a whole ? is entirely different from Western values and concepts of sovereignty. They may be complementary, but they are different in concept and form; for the Western world, everything is money, power, and private property. We are Nationalities. Our sovereignty is based on our spiritual relation with Mother Earth, whom we recognize as a point of meeting with the supreme creator and the source of life.3 Readers of Monthly Review are well aware that imperialist global capitalism has brought us to the brink of planetary disaster. The notion that Indigenous resistance movements ? in particular those imbued with the legacy of the genius of Mari?tegui ? contain the germ of successful resistance is an idea whose time has come. Notes 1. Marc Becker, ?Mari?tegui and Latin American Marxist Theory,? Latin American Series, No. 20: Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Monographs in International Studies 1993; ?Mari?tegui, the Comintern, and the Indigenous Question in Latin America,? Science and Society, no. 4 (October 2006): 450-479. Go back 2. Ampan Karakras, ?Indigenous Sovereignty: An Ecuadorian Perspective.? Go back 3. Ibid. Go back Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (www.reddirtsite.com), a longtime activist, historian, writer, and professor emeritus at California State University East Bay, has published numerous articles and books on the history and issues of Indigenous peoples, including The Great Sioux Nation (1977) and three books of historical memoir. From debs4prez at comcast.net Fri Oct 2 08:13:00 2009 From: debs4prez at comcast.net (debs4prez at comcast.net) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:13:00 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, Message-ID: <1135000982.456531254492780427.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> I'm starting a betting pool: riots in one or more U.S. cities in 21 months.? I'm basing the pool on the fact that it took the working class four years to fight back from the 1929/30 Great Depression.? I've got $10 down.? Anyone else? My guess is that we'll see: riots, followed by repression, followed by political/third party organizing, followed by more repression, followed by demos and strikes, followed by more repression and then I'm not so sure.... Riots to start based on the fact that the U.S. working class is so atomized and beaten down. From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 08:24:02 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:24:02 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, In-Reply-To: <1135000982.456531254492780427.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> References: <1135000982.456531254492780427.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <4AC60D02.7050904@panix.com> debs4prez at comcast.net wrote: > > > Riots to start based on the fact that the U.S. working class is so atomized and beaten down. This question is being posed even by liberals nowadays. With the Great Depression in mind, people like Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Bill Moyers keep "waiting for lefty". I think that facile comparisons with the early 30s should be avoided. There was a *massive* organized left wing in the USA in that period that played a key role in moving the struggle forward. There was also a total absence of a safety net so being laid off would have a much greater impact than it does today. Finally, there was no big, institutionalized, house-broken AFL-CIO back then that could have kept workers in the abysmal, crumbs from the table stance that is so pervasive today. No wonder most of the open discontent is manifested by the ultraright, middle class followers of Glenn Beck rather than from the working class. From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 08:29:42 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:29:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Correa vs. Social Movements: Showdown in Ecuador Message-ID: <4AC60E56.8010005@panix.com> https://nacla.org/node/6094 Correa vs. Social Movements: Showdown in Ecuador by Paul Dosh and Nicole Kligerman Report On September 28, 2008, 64% of voters in Ecuador approved a progressive new constitution, launching a new political era in the country.1 For more than a year leading up to the vote, Ecuador had been gripped with ?constitution fever,? as thousands of people lobbied the Constituent Assembly?s 130 delegates, who were organized into 10 thematic roundtables. The resulting document consisted of 444 articles centered on reforming Ecuador?s institutions, including several groundbreaking environmental measures touted as among the most progressive in Latin America. Yet, although the passing of the new constitution represented a moment of unity between Ecuador?s popular movements and the electoral left, these two entities have clashed recently over the question of environmental protection?showing that they are hardly synonymous and sometimes not even allies. After the Constitution was ratified, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa, who was instrumental in establishing the Constitutional Assembly, began a public campaign to pass legislation that would expand the operations of gold-, silver-, and copper-mining corporations in the Amazon and the southern highlands around Cuenca, as well as initiate new mining sites in the northern highlands. Moving away from the firm anti-neoliberal rhetoric he used on the 2006 campaign trail, Correa described his vision of a socially responsible mining sector whose profits would be harnessed to break the country?s dependence on extractive industry. ?[Passing the proposed Mining Law] is urgent, because this industry represents the country?s future,? Correa said in an October 2008 press conference. ?But obviously, I?m talking about mining companies that pay taxes, respect the workers, and develop social and environmental responsibility projects.? He added: ?Unfortunately, some people are ?childish??in quotations?like the ones opposed to mining. But what country in the world has rejected mining? The dilemma is not ?no? or ?yes? to mining. It is well-developed mining. There is simply no dilemma. . . . [The childish environmentalists] believe that bringing an end to an extractive economy is to shut down the oil wells and close the mines. That is absurd. Getting out of that economy means using this sector surplus to revive other sectors of the economy: services, agriculture, industries, etc.?2 While other Latin American countries, like Argentina, Peru, and Guatemala, have long been at the epicenter of the international mining industry, Ecuador was until recently more known for its (often disastrous) oil industry. Large-scale Ecuadoran mining did not begin until the early 1990s, after a mining law was passed in 1985 that encouraged foreign corporations to explore for minerals. Since then, Ecuador has increasingly attracted the attention of foreign mining corporations, sometimes provoking headline-making conflicts with affected communities.3 In January, the Ecuadoran congress approved Correa?s plan, passing the Mining Law to allow Canadian mining corporations, including Kinross Gold, Iamgold, and Corriente Resources, to begin operations.4 Specific articles in the Mining Law have come under intense scrutiny by the anti-mining opposition; for example, Article 2 (?Applications?) mandates the participation of both private and public figures in policy discussions but does not include community members who will be affected by mining. Moreover, Article 15 (?Public Utility?) declares mining a public activity, which some members of the opposition argue can be used to expropriate indigenous land for a supposed collective good. Article 16 (?State Dominion Over Mines and Oil Fields?) allows the government alone to define ?national interest,? which critics believe will focus solely on income. And Article 28 (?Prospecting Freedoms?) allows any business to ?liberally prospect for mineral substances? on community and indigenous land.5 After the Mining Law passed, social movements, led primarily by indigenous nationalities throughout the country, mobilized in response, claiming that the law violates the new Constitution?s environmental provisions?especially those that declare access to clean drinking water and access to a healthy environment to be inviolable human rights, as well as those that ascribe to the environment itself the right to be respected, sustainably maintained, and regenerated. Critics further argue that the track record of Ecuadoran mining demonstrates that the industry?s practices fundamentally conflict with these constitutionally protected rights. While many Ecuadoran groups have worked for years at the local level either to oppose particular mining projects or to lobby for environmental improvements or cleanup of specific mining sites, a national opposition movement?including indigenous, urban, environmental, Afro-Ecuadoran, and humanitarian groups?with the more ambitious goal of banning large-scale metal mining was first built after Correa?s election. The Mining Law thus provided a focal point around which this movement?s nationwide efforts have coalesced.6 Several protests have demonstrated the cross-national and cross-organizational unity against the Mining Law and the Canada-based transnational mining corporations. On November 10, 2008, about 200 activists from throughout the country, including executive members of the Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), marched on the Canadian Embassy in Quito, where they declared Canadian miners ?unwelcome? in Ecuador. A week later, thousands throughout Ecuador protested the Mining Law, then still pending, in marches led by the Unified Community Water Systems of Azuay (UNAGUAS) and the Federation of Campesino Organizations.7 It was not until the passage of the Mining Law, however, that protests and debate became widespread. January 12, the day the law was passed by Congress, was designated by the anti-mining movement as the Day of Mobilization for Life; thousands mobilized that day throughout Ecuador. About 4,000 indigenous people blockaded the Latacunga-Ambato highway in the south, and tens of thousands mobilized in Quito, Cuenca, the Amazon, and on the coast.8 Some protest leaders were detained and charged with terrorism; one Amazonian leader disappeared only to reappear later with a gunshot wound in his head. Police officers were also wounded.9 In response, Correa again called those who oppose his mining law ?childish,? ?nobodies,? and ?allies of the right.?10 ?It is absurd that some want to force us to remain like beggars sitting atop a bag of gold,? he said in a January 24 radio address, promising to move forward with the mining plan.11 These accusations deepened the rift between Correa and the social movements that supported the Ecuadoran constitution and are now increasingly disillusioned with the possibility that Correa represents a continuation of neoliberal policy. Humberto Cholango, the president of Ecuarunari, an indigenous organization representing the Ecuadoran sierra, contended in a recent statement: ?The president needs only to look to either side to see the right.?12 * Already in 2008, before the Constitution was approved, the leaders of Women for Life, the Coalition in Defense of Water, and other popular movements in Quito made clear in interviews that their support for the Constitution should not be mistaken as support for Correa. Said Gonzalo Guzm?n, secretary for natural resources for Ecuarunari: ?[Our organization] will vote yes for the new Constitution, but we are voting for the Constitution, not for Correa.? Luis Esparza, executive council member of the Urban Forum coalition of popular groups, echoed this feeling: ?We are not a Correa fan club. We are social organizations.? Such tensions were already evident in the deliberations that took place on the Constituent Assembly?s Roundtable 5, which focused on natural resources and biodiversity. Composed of eight assembly members from Correa?s party, Alianza Pa?s, along with two from the right-wing, militaristic Sociedad Patri?tica, one from the right-wing Partido Renovador Institucional Acci?n Nacional, and one from the socialist Movimiento Popular Democr?tico, Roundtable 5 began by mapping out the use of natural resources and protection of Ecuador?s biodiversity in an international, national, and local context. National meetings were held to garner public opinion on the issues involved, granting civilian groups the opportunity to submit proposals. Roundtable 5 ultimately approved 23 articles. Together with its comprehensive prohibition of water privatization, it also included a remarkable declaration that nature itself is entitled to legally enforceable rights. Yet the issue of privatization divided the roundtable?s Alianza Pa?s delegates, with some favoring leeway for privatization under certain circumstances. Although privatizing natural resources and water was ultimately prohibited, an exception was added to allow the president to ask Congress for permission to extract resources. M?nica Chuji, the chair of Roundtable 5 and former communications secretary for the Correa government, describes this as ?one of biggest deceptions of the Constitution.? Another contested proposal, which was ultimately defeated, stated that the government must be given consent from indigenous people residing on land where natural resources are to be extracted. The final article states that indigenous groups must only be ?consulted?; they do not give permission. Although the Constitutional Assembly members drafted and approved the articles pertaining to natural resources, a long process of social-movement engagement led to their implementation. Since the 1980s, indigenous organizations like CONAIE and Ecuarunari, as well as nonprofit organizations like Acci?n Ecol?gica, have fought the exploitation of oil, water, and precious metals, and they have protested pollution, deforestation, and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Moreover, fierce fights against the privatization of oil, electricity, and telecommunications have taken place, largely generated by popular mobilization in rural areas. According to Ecuarunari?s Cholango, the result has been a shift in the culture toward respect for indigenous ancestral knowledge and the rights of land, and this is now reflected in the constitution: Chapter 2, Article 12, states that access to water is a fundamental human right. Article 13 asserts that the population has the right to live in a healthy and sustainable ecological environment?abiding by sumak kawsay, a key indigenous principle meaning ?living well,? representing the need for people and the environment to coexist harmoniously. Article 15 declares that the state will promote clean technology and alternative, nonpolluting energy, and that energy sovereignty should not affect the population?s right to water. Chapter 7 outlines the specific rights of the environment. Article 71 states that the environment, or Pachamama, has the right to be respected and that its cycle structure, functions, and evolutionary processes should be maintained and regenerated. Every person, community, and nationality should enforce the rights of nature, the article maintains, while the state is to provide incentives to protect nature and promote its rights. Article 73 states that introducing organisms, i.e., GMOs, or organic and inorganic material that will change Ecuador?s national genetic patrimony is prohibited. Article 74 describes the right of people, communities, and nationalities to benefit from the environment and natural riches that allow them to live well. Yet the environmental movement is divided over whether the Constitution really does provide a sound legal basis for opposing Correa?s mining plans. Ivonne Ramos, president of Acci?n Ecol?gica, argues that the Constitution does not fundamentally question the state?s reliance on natural resources as its primary source of income. She adds that this is a particularly challenging reality when coupled with the ambitious social programs called for in the Constitution: How will Ecuador?s government finance these programs without exploiting natural resources? Ramos argues that Correa, as a capitalista popular (people?s capitalist), will be unable to deliver on the progressive promises of fully protecting natural resources. ?Correa has stated that his principal enemy are ecologists and thus politicized these problems,? she says. * After the January protests, the Correa administration moved to close down several organizations that helped lead the protests against the mining plan, including the Development Council of the Indigenous Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador (CODENPE). Correa argued that CODENPE?s executive secretary was misusing the organization?s funds to favor her home province. In February, Correa placed the National Directorate of Intercultural Bilingual Education (DINEIB), which had supported the anti-mining movement, under control of the Ministry of Education, thus undermining its autonomy.- Then, in March, the government withdrew the legal status of Acci?n Ecol?gica via the Ministry of Health, through which Acci?n Ecol?gica had obtained its NGO charter. Health Minister Caroline Chang said the organization did not fulfill the objectives it was registered for, while the organization countered that the imposed legal complications were a form of censorship due to the group?s activist opposition to the Mining Law.13 Acci?n Ecol?gica received support both nationally and internationally, with author-activist Naomi Klein writing an open letter to Correa denouncing ?something all too familiar: a state seemingly using its power to weaken dissent.?14 In response to widespread criticism, the health minister released a statement claiming that the revocation was not politically motivated, but was rather an administrative decision?Acci?n Ecol?gica, Chang said, should be registered under the Ministry of the Environment, which did not exist when the group formed in 1986. Acci?n Ecol?gica?s legal status was then temporarily reinstated, though a final legal decision was still pending in early August. Ramos, however, remains concerned about Correa?s attempt to reorganize grassroots organizations and NGOs by placing them under the National Secretariat for Planning and Development, thereby co-opting their organizational objectives and work.15 Despite the growing animosity between social movements and the Correa government, Correa was re-elected to a second term as president on April 26, winning 52% of the vote and becoming the first Ecuadoran presidential candidate to win an election without a runoff in 30 years. Yet in interviews, social movement leaders continued their refrain: Support for the new Constitution is not necessarily support for Correa. * The official narrative of the new Constitution centers on Correa?s efforts to chart an alternative trajectory for Ecuador. But this narrative obscures the decades-long struggle of the country?s social movements for radical change. Indigenous organizations like CONAIE and its partner political organization, Pachakutik, have worked since the early 1980s to fight for an Ecuador that, among other things, respects the plurinationality of the populace and opposes the privatization and exploitation of natural resources. These decades of organizing have resulted in at least a partial shift toward reorganizing the state apparatus to show greater respect for natural resources. Correa has not been at the forefront of these movements, however, and natural resource protections granted in the Constitution stem more from the grassroots than from the National Palace. This tension is likely to foster continued conflict in the months and years ahead. Paul Dosh teaches political science at Macalester College, where Nicole Kligerman is majoring in Latin American studies. 1. Jes?s Valencia and C?sar Flores helped interview members of Ecuador?s Constitutional Assembly and leaders of popular movements in Quito. This research was supported by a Wallace International Research Grant, a Student-Faculty Summer Research Grant from Macalester College, and a grant from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest in support of innovative faculty-student collaboration. We are also grateful to Emily Hedin, Glen Kuecker, and David Seitz for their feedback on earlier drafts. 2. Silvia Santacruz, ?Correa Confirms WFT, Condemns Eco-Extremists,? Ecuador Mining News, October 14, 2008, ecuadorminingnews.com/archives.php?id=105. 3. Glen Kuecker, ?Fighting for the Forests: Grassroots Resistance to Mining in Northern Ecuador,? Latin American Perspectives 34, no. 2 (March 2007): 95?97. 4. Daniel Denvir, ?Resource Wars in Ecuador: Indigenous People Accuse President Rafael Correa of Selling Out to Mining Interests,? In These Times, February 28, 2009. 5. Ra?l Zibechi, ?Ecuador: The Logic of Development Clashes With Movements,? Americas Program Report, March 17, 2009, americas.irc-online.org/am/5965. 6. Jennifer Moore, ?Ecuador: Mining Protests Marginalized, but Growing,? Upside Down World, January 21, 2009, upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1673/1. 7. Daniel Denvir, Jennifer Moore, and Teresa Velasquez, ?In Ecuador, Mass Mobilizations Against Mining Confront President Correa,? Upside Down World, November 19, 2008, upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1588/49. 8. Zibechi, ?Ecuador: The Logic of Development.? 9. Denvir, ?Resource Wars in Ecuador.? 10. Zibechi, ?Ecuador: The Logic of Development.? 11. Denvir, ?Resource Wars in Ecuador.? 12. Zibechi, ?Ecuador: The Logic of Development.? 13. Jennifer Moore, ?Swinging From the Right: Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador,? Upside Down World, May 13, 2009, upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1856/49. 14. Naomi Klein, ?Open Letter to President Rafael Correa Regarding Closure of Acci?n Ecol?gica,? March 12, 2009. 15. Moore, ?Swinging From the Right.? From debs4prez at comcast.net Fri Oct 2 08:36:17 2009 From: debs4prez at comcast.net (debs4prez at comcast.net) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:36:17 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, Message-ID: <1712361708.465981254494177173.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> Oh yeah, I hear ya, Louis.? I was being self-consciously facile.? Still, with climate catastrophe and possibly peak oil, I think there's possibilities for rioting, at least.? Also, third party organizing, demos, etc.? I'm not so thick in the middle of the AFL bureaucracy that I know the different currents there, but I wouldn't discount some layers encouraging rebellion in the face of acute crisis.? Plus, we're just at the start of the unemployment running out for hundreds of thousands/millions.? Still, who can predict the future.... From farmelantj at juno.com Fri Oct 2 08:40:28 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:40:28 GMT Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions Message-ID: <20091002.104028.17202.0@webmail16.vgs.untd.com> Rosa Lichtenstein debates Jurriaan Bendien on dialectical contradictions versus formal contradictions. http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Jurriaans_Folly.htm ____________________________________________________________ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYb0tnDBNAz6o8PdG4t4n7vgXbKPduaIh7YPuBPDin8rrs82HU8/ From nmgoro at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 09:41:41 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:41:41 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, In-Reply-To: <4AC60D02.7050904@panix.com> References: <1135000982.456531254492780427.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> <4AC60D02.7050904@panix.com> Message-ID: <4AC61F35.1040306@gmail.com> I agree, and as always humbly and from afar: the repressive system and the mediatic monster were still in diapers. The danger of an ultra-right onslaught in USA should not be diminished, IMHO. Obama is not THEIR man. Louis Proyect escribi?: > debs4prez en comcast.net wrote: >> >> Riots to start based on the fact that the U.S. working class is so atomized and beaten down. > > This question is being posed even by liberals nowadays. With the Great > Depression in mind, people like Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Bill > Moyers keep "waiting for lefty". I think that facile comparisons with > the early 30s should be avoided. There was a *massive* organized left > wing in the USA in that period that played a key role in moving the > struggle forward. There was also a total absence of a safety net so > being laid off would have a much greater impact than it does today. > Finally, there was no big, institutionalized, house-broken AFL-CIO back > then that could have kept workers in the abysmal, crumbs from the table > stance that is so pervasive today. No wonder most of the open discontent > is manifested by the ultraright, middle class followers of Glenn Beck > rather than from the working class. From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 11:02:16 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:02:16 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Turk hurls shoe at IMF chief Message-ID: <4AC63218.4000804@panix.com> NY Times, October 2, 2009 Another Shoe Flies, This Time in Istanbul at I.M.F. Chief By SEBNEM ARSU ISTANBUL ? A protester threw a shoe at the managing director of the International Monetary Fund at the end of his speech at a university on Thursday in the prelude to I.M.F. and World Bank meetings in Istanbul. The protester, Selcuk Ozbek, a student at Anadolu University, shouted, ?Get out of the university, I.M.F. thief!? threw a white sneaker and ran toward the podium where the managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, stood. But televised images showed Mr. Ozbek being quickly tackled by security guards. A female student then tried to unfurl a banner but was surrounded by security officials, allowing Mr. Strauss-Kahn to calmly answer a last question before leaving the hall. Mr. Strauss-Kahn played down the episode. ?I was glad to meet students and hear their views,? he said in a written statement released afterward. ?This is what the I.M.F. needs to do, even if not everyone agrees with us. One thing I learned: Turkish students are polite. They waited until the end to complain.? He filed no official complaint, and Mr. Ozbek was freed by the police later in the evening. ?I think this is how global capital should be welcomed wherever it goes,? Mr. Ozbek told NTV on a live broadcast. ?The anti-imperialist youth of any country responsible for their future should act this way.? Mr. Ozbek said his shoe was returned to him after his protest. Like his inspiration, Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw shoes in December at President George W. Bush in Baghdad, Mr. Ozbek, 24, works at a news outlet. He is a full-time editor on the politics desk at Birgun, a left-wing daily, his department confirmed. The hurled shoe lost speed after it hit a seated student posing a question with a microphone in hand, and so it missed the director, slow-motion television pictures showed. But while a Turkish shoe company claimed to have made Mr. Zaidi?s shoe ? a statement that promptly increased its sales worldwide ? Mr. Ozbek?s shoe was reported to have been made by Nike. Halil Guven, the dean of Bilgi University, where the event occurred, said that the university was used to protests because it often served as a site for controversial speeches and events. From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 11:03:33 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:03:33 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] NY Philharmonic banned from Cuba trip Message-ID: <4AC63265.9040705@panix.com> NY Times, October 2, 2009 New York Philharmonic Won't Go to Cuba Without Patrons By DANIEL J. WAKIN Violinists, bassoonists and timpanists in Cuba? Fine. A bevy of rich Americans? Sorry. The New York Philharmonic scratched its trip to Cuba at the end of October because the United States government was barring a group of patrons from going along, the orchestra said on Thursday. Without them and their donations, the Philharmonic said, it could not afford the tour. About 150 board members and other donors had promised to pay $10,000 each to spend Oct. 30 to Nov. 2 in Havana, where the orchestra was to play two concerts, said Zarin Mehta, its president. The money was to have covered the cost of the proposed trip, which came at the invitation of the Cuban government. Supporters, both individuals and executives of donor companies, usually tag along with major orchestras when they travel around the world. For some, the travel amounts to high-class tourism, along with a chance to make business connections in foreign capitals. In effect, orchestras would not be able to raise tour money without giving the donors a chance to accompany them. ?The patrons were excited about giving us the money with the opportunity of going to see Havana and be a witness and support their orchestra,? Mr. Mehta said. ?This is what?s important to them.? Mr. Mehta said he would not consider taking the patrons? money while leaving them behind. ?I wouldn?t want to insult them,? he said. ?I think it?s most likely they would say, ?Go another time.? ? That?s what the orchestra will try to do, he said. Mr. Mehta said he had hoped that pressure applied by New York elected officials ? including Senator Charles E. Schumer and Representatives Steve Israel and Charles B. Rangel, who have supported the trip ? would help to have the decision overturned. ?They haven?t been successful,? he said. ?They?re befuddled.? The spokesman for the State Department, which guides the Treasury Department in deciding which Americans can go to Cuba, said the reason was simple. The sanctions on Cuba permit performing artists to enter, said the spokesman, P. J. Crowley, but ?there?s no permitted category of travel that would include the Philharmonic patrons. Basically they?re tourists, and we don?t license tourist travel to Cuba under the present circumstances.? He said there was also an economic component to the decision: the wealthy patrons could spend large amounts of money in Cuba, which would effectively violate economic sanctions. In response to the Philharmonic?s position that it could not go without the financial supporters, he said, ?Perhaps the New York Philharmonic should have checked with the government before announcing the trip.? The cancellation was an embarrassment and something of a setback in the New York Philharmonic?s effort to cast itself as the nation?s flagship traveling orchestra. It made headlines with a trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, nearly two years ago (no United States government permission for patrons was required) and leaves on Sunday for an Asian tour that will take in another Communist nation, Vietnam. The Treasury Department?s Office of Foreign Assets Control issues licenses to visit Cuba because of the longstanding economic sanctions aimed at the island?s Communist government. According to the orchestra, the office said informally that the players and staff members would be allowed to go, but not the patrons. A lawyer for the orchestra has delivered a brief to the licensing office, making its case that the categories are elastic and an exception should be made for the donors. Several board members were allowed to accompany the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra when it visited Havana in 1999. The trip plans came about amid a warming of relations between Cuba and the United States. The Obama administration has restarted talks about migration and eased limits on remittances and travel by Cuban-Americans to the island to visit relatives. But as a sign of the political thorniness involved in closer ties, the administration extended for a year the law used to impose the trade embargo on Cuba. Bills pending in both houses of Congress would lift travel restrictions on all Americans to Cuba. The bills have a surprising level of bipartisan support, helped by lobbying by agricultural and business groups eager to expand commercial ties. ?This exposes how arbitrary the rules are governing American citizens? rights to travel to Cuba,? Julia E. Sweig, an expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the Treasury Department?s position. ?If you have a family member there, you can go. If you play an instrument or sport, you can go. But if you?re a philanthropist who wants to support arts in Cuba, you can?t?? J. Christopher Flowers, a Philharmonic trustee, said he was still hoping to go to Cuba with the orchestra someday. ?It sounds absolutely fascinating,? he said, but he declined to offer an opinion on the decision. ?It?s up to the government to make the rules and for us to follow them,? he added. ?It?s not for me to try to figure out our policy with respect to Cuba.? Mr. Flowers said he did not know whether he would have spent much money in Cuba. ?I?ve never been there,? he said. Mr. Mehta said the next opening for a Cuba trip would probably come in June or July. The orchestra will try to come up with concerts quickly to play at its Avery Fisher home for the time it would have been in Havana. As for programming on those dates, Mr. Mehta said, Latin American music is a distinct possibility. ?The thought has crossed our minds.? Ginger Thompson and Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington. From humaneco at hsph.harvard.edu Fri Oct 2 11:18:11 2009 From: humaneco at hsph.harvard.edu (Richard Levins) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:18:11 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions In-Reply-To: <20091002.104028.17202.0@webmail16.vgs.untd.com> References: <20091002.104028.17202.0@webmail16.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <4AC5FD8F.F29D.002C.1@hsph.harvard.edu> The following considerations might be helpful: 1. "contradiction", in its etymology "speaking against" was a process unfolding in time, negating a proposition in order to get beyond it. 2. Formal logic removes the temporal dynamic aspect to make it a formal, structural relation. 3. The formal logical statement "implies" is a static, set-theoretic relation but is a detemporalized equivalent to "leads to" (in time). 4. In real systems, variables change(except at equilibrium, a set of measure 0!). That is, A leads to not-A. If there is an eventual equilibrium, this is equivalent to proof by contradiction. In living systems, social systems, eco-systems etc there is permanent change ( A always leads to (implies!) not-A.These may be periodic or chaotic . The terror of early computer programmers was to get into an endless (and expensive) loop, which was equivalent to contradiction in the program. In formal logic, you may not (but can) hold to contradictory propositions at the same time . In dialectical logic, two propositions may be separately false but jointly true; health is socially determined, and you are responsible for your health. Either one alone can result in passivity but jointly can result in self-care and collective action... 5. You can create formally disjunct mathematical sets, but with real things no division of a whole world into mutually exclusive categories really holds. Environmental/genetic, physical/psychological, biological/social, etc interpenetrate, and furthermore it is when we recognize their interpenetration that we get the exciting new insights. All of these and other aspects of contradiction make it an important tool in science. ========================= Richard Levins >>> "farmelantj at juno.com" 10/2/2009 10:40 AM >>> Rosa Lichtenstein debates Jurriaan Bendien on dialectical contradictions versus formal contradictions. http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Jurriaans_Folly.htm ____________________________________________________________ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYb0tnDBNAz6o8PdG4t4n7vgXbKPduaIh7YPuBPDin8rrs82HU8/ ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/humaneco%40hsph.harvard.edu From daynegoodwin at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 11:25:40 2009 From: daynegoodwin at gmail.com (Dayne Goodwin) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:25:40 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret Message-ID: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/02/president-obama-has-reaffirmed-a-4-decade-old-secr/ From intnsred at golgotha.net Fri Oct 2 11:52:52 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 13:52:52 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!! In-Reply-To: <55868ddf0910020631j68368845vc3388717ad648d8a@mail.gmail.com> References: <55868ddf0910020631j68368845vc3388717ad648d8a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200910021352.53007.intnsred@golgotha.net> On Friday 02 October 2009, brad bauerly wrote: > I am having a really hard time rapping my head around the contradiction > between the large and growing number of unemployed and the supine nature > of the US left. ?Why is there no substantial movement? While there are many reasons, a few are clear. The propaganda from decades of Cold War indoctrination and the subsequent "failure" of socialism and communism are (hopefully) at their peak. Though public schools insist on schooling kids and in not teaching much critical thought, I've found that younger people -- not being exposed to as much Cold War propaganda -- are more receptive of critical ideas. The capitalist victory over traditional labor is similarly at a high point in terms of propaganda and mental mindsets. The concentration and the use of the corporate mass media has reached new heights. The ruling class is nearing perfection at infotainment and distractions, be it from "reality TV", to sitcoms, to sports or movies. The US left continues to be fractious and seems to spend more time in analytical debate among themselves than appealing to the masses of working people with simple, common sense proposals. -- "In 1998, the top 1 percent of stock owners owned 47.7 percent of all stock, while the bottom 80 percent owned 4.1 percent. Between 1989 and 1998, nearly 35 percent of all stock market gains went to the top 1 percent of shareholders. 64 percent of American households have stock holdings worth $5,000 or less, or own no stock at all." -- www.inequality.org From mdriscollrj at charter.net Fri Oct 2 12:02:00 2009 From: mdriscollrj at charter.net (Ralph Johansen) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:02:00 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!! Message-ID: <4AC64018.8050202@charter.net> debs4prez at comcast.net wrote: > > > Riots to start based on the fact that the U.S. working class is so atomized and beaten down. Louis Proyect wrote: This question is being posed even by liberals nowadays. With the Great Depression in mind, people like Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Bill Moyers keep "waiting for lefty". I think that facile comparisons with the early 30s should be avoided. There was a *massive* organized left wing in the USA in that period that played a key role in moving the struggle forward. There was also a total absence of a safety net so being laid off would have a much greater impact than it does today. Finally, there was no big, institutionalized, house-broken AFL-CIO back then that could have kept workers in the abysmal, crumbs from the table stance that is so pervasive today. No wonder most of the open discontent is manifested by the ultraright, middle class followers of Glenn Beck rather than from the working class. Composed before I read the contribution of Intense Red >: This may be obvious to us but has not been mentioned: Safety nets are not worldwide; they exist only where and to the extent that capital accumulation has been most pronounced. Nor is the productivity-based compact with capital any longer viable in those areas. Don't we have to factor in the massive failure of the Soviet Union's experiment in socialism, as well as China's failed revolution, and aside from Cuba (in one country and not spreading beyond the as yet unproven effort in Venezuela) the consequent labeling of socialism itself as a failed movement, even a pejorative in the political lexicon? The spectre is diminished. This, plus the broken neoliberal promise of unlimited expansion of capital, lies at the heart of the weakened workers' organizations worldwide, and their failure to grasp the opportunities that lie out there. Although recognition of the causes of this failure clears the decks for a more democratic and thoroughgoing program, and although analysis of the causes of the failure of capitalism meanwhile deepens and broadens, it leaves popular resistance to capitalism for the time being without guidance, with the current input going little beyond 'another world is possible'. Wouldn't you agree that time, intellect and experience will tell, but we could (without an unforeseeable breakthrough) experience a long period of unfocused protest, indecisiveness and pessimism on the part of the working class and its leadership before a viable program gains popular credence? From pt_costello at yahoo.com Fri Oct 2 12:07:47 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:07:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. Message-ID: <5276.7083.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/01/thoughts-for-polansk.html On "Getting Over It," by Lauren over at Feministe: What does rape do to you? Afterward? It changed me; there is before and after. Before, a child, playing with Barbies, looking sideways at boys, wondering. After, confusion. Depression. A litany of fuck-ups and fuck-its, whatevers, mistakes, trusting no one, least of all myself. Before, sex was mysterious; after, miasma. I was tarred as a Lolita. I was called jail bait. Rape is not the only assault. Around rape is a large segment of the population that questions the victim, a culture that looks down on victims for allowing themselves to be victimized, or keep them victimized, questions about the victim's credibility, questions about the legacy of rape and how bad it is, because how bad is rape really? Rape, because various levels and forms of sexual assault are systemic and pervasive across all societies, exists alongside one's experiences of unwanted touching, wanted touching, sexual objectification, sexual desire, sexual harassment, incest, love, leering eyes, cat calls, roaming hands, consent, confusion, tits, vagina, rectum, penis, mouth, rape and not-rape, all of it loaded, all of it veering at rape's ugly legacy, co-mingling, the legacy that tells us to be more careful, to dress more conservatively, to BE BETTER AT BEING VULNERABLE, or BE MORE POWERFUL, or BE MORE FEARFUL, or GET OVER IT ALREADY. Rape leaks into healthy, consensual experiences. It lingers. It pervades. Related: This Smoking Gun archive contains the entire "1977 grand jury testimony of the 13-year-old California girl with whom the director had sex after plying her with Champagne and a Quaalude at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson." A rape is a rape by any other name. See also: Polanski's Victim and Me, by the celebrated novelist Robert Goolrick, who is also a survivor of child rape. Finally, Polanski in his own words in 1979, an unrepentant abuser: "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But... f--ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f-- young girls. Juries want to f-- young girls. Everyone wants to f-- young girls!" From cbcox at ilstu.edu Fri Oct 2 12:14:53 2009 From: cbcox at ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:14:53 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, References: <1712361708.465981254494177173.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <4AC6431D.D223B569@ilstu.edu> It was an overload of this sort of thing that led me to more or less stop reading the marxism list. What _is_ the point? It seems to me that this posting of bad economic news exhibits mostly serious doubt abaut the validity of Marxism. You have to keep enocuraging yourself that capitalism is really bad by posting this sort of trivia. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz It is not bad news that shows that capitalism is intolerable. Nor is it bad news that shows that capitalism is vulnerable. In fact the opposite. Bad news just shows how nearly invulnerable capitalism is, how difficult it will be to avoid the second alternative offered by Luxemburg -- barbarism. It is good times, relatively at least _real_ good times, in which capitalism is most vulnerable. Then more of the wroking class (about 80% of the population) has some margin in which to think, and feeling the improvement begin to wonder why not more improvement. The Great Depression created fascism, war, and the reinvigoration of capitalism. It was the nearly two decades of rising hope that generated the'60s, which deserve far more study and far more respect than is usually accored them by leftists, still c aught up in the sectarian prejudices of that era. In fact what made it a great era was the whole chorus of diffrent, eving clashing, trends of resistance. That is roughly what a revolutionary decade, if one ever comes, will resemble most. (It will be more like the 60s than any other past period, but still very different. The Great God of History is Contigncy. Carrol From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 12:23:27 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:23:27 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, In-Reply-To: <4AC6431D.D223B569@ilstu.edu> References: <1712361708.465981254494177173.JavaMail.root@sz0030a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> <4AC6431D.D223B569@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <4AC6451F.9010606@panix.com> Carrol Cox wrote: > It is good times, relatively at least _real_ good times, in which > capitalism is most vulnerable. Lenin: In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: ?...The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.? full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm > Then more of the wroking class (about 80% > of the population) has some margin in which to think, and feeling the > improvement begin to wonder why not more improvement. The Great > Depression created fascism, war, and the reinvigoration of capitalism. Silly me thinking that the boneheaded tactics of the Social Democracy and the Comintern had something to do with it. > It was the nearly two decades of rising hope that generated the'60s, > which deserve far more study and far more respect than is usually > accored them by leftists, still c aught up in the sectarian prejudices > of that era. The 60s were generated by the civil rights movement, disgust with cultural and political repression, and--most of all--an imperialist war that was killing hundreds of draftees every week. If several hundred draftees were being killed in Iraq since 2003, Abby Hoffman would rise from his grave and levitate the Pentagon followed by 750 thousand wild-eyed college students. From meisner at xs4all.nl Fri Oct 2 13:12:37 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:12:37 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <5276.7083.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> At 11:07 02/10/09 -0700, Pat Costello wrote: >http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/01/thoughts-for-polansk.html Thanks for posting this Pat. Because you have finally identified the reason that any such debate has been occurring on this list. Namely insensitivity to rape (and latent sexist ideologies that feed that insensitivity). When all of a sudden a big discussion ensued about this one case (which S Artesian correctly identified as having no general importance whatsoever), it was clear to me that matters regarding extradition treaties or the personal circumstances of a famous movie producer were not the actual issue. Just as when the IDENTICAL debate took place on this list about rape by the Red Army in WW2, the real issues were not questions of historical accuracy or how a worker's state conducts a war against fascism. The only reason that these side issues could get raised in either case is due to insensitivity concerning rape by those taking one side. But this isn't new or surprising. Someone who hasn't been raped cannot understand the feelings of a rape victim. Even someone who has been raped can't really understand the feelings of a different victim. In fact she/he can't very well understand her/his own painful experience! The human brain is wired in such a way that makes a sexual assault extremely traumatic compared to any other assault of a similar physical magnitude. I don't think psychologists understand the mechanism for that, but it can be examined scientifically through observing the outcomes of rape victims. The inability of the perpetrator to easily comprehend the gravity of such an action mitigates for stringent laws and programs of education for potential perpetrators (i.e. everyone, especially men). In a large number of cases (likely including this one) the perpetrator feels relatively innocent because the action wasn't based so much on malice but insensitivity (of course there are other cases where great malice is involved). In most other crimes, the perpetrator can more easily understand the pain that the victim would feel if they were similarly beaten, robbed, or discriminated against. Thus it is in the interests of society to increase enforcement of laws on sexual assault (including age of consent!) and promote awareness of the serious harm caused and the ethical conclusions. I am sorry that so many "Marxists" have failed to listen to the wisdom of feminists who have delved into this issue. I have no interest in discussing any other details of either the Polanski or Red Army: the problem is insensitivity to rape and it shows. :-( - Jeff From ian at ianpace.com Fri Oct 2 13:19:52 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 20:19:52 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <73BCB29DFBD04637B32C8FC93D3EDFFD@IanPacePC> If we can place the emotive hysteria, worthy of any right wing tabloid, to one side for a moment, can one presume that in some of your future Marxist utopias, the principle of innocent until proven guilty will be suspended in cases of sex crimes (maybe race crimes as well)? Solidarity, Ian From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 13:40:57 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:40:57 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <4AC65749.9090500@panix.com> Jeff wrote: > Thanks for posting this Pat. Because you have finally identified the reason > that any such debate has been occurring on this list. Namely insensitivity > to rape (and latent sexist ideologies that feed that insensitivity). This is unmitigated bullshit. We discussed the OJ trial on the Marxism list that preceded this one. The entire liberal blogosphere, as well as the Nation Magazine, Huffington Post, Salon.com et al, are discussing this. So is the bourgeois press. People have differences over this matter. When you accuse one side of being misogynist, it cuts off discussion. Period. This is the sort of crap that the CP was infected by in the late 1940s when the witch-hunt was gathering steam. People got thrown out for having male chauvinist or racist attitudes, usually at the same time that they were uncomfortable with the party's drift. We need to keep these kinds of charges to an absolute minimum if we are generally interested in a free exchange of ideas. The god-damned prosecutor in the case has just now told the media that he was *lying* in the documentary about Polanski when he told them that he was in cahoots with the judge. This is absolutely mind-boggling and makes the legal system in the USA even more arbitrary than usual. There are important legal and political questions in this case that transcend Polanski, just as there were in the OJ Simpson case. From meisner at xs4all.nl Fri Oct 2 14:31:42 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:31:42 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <4AC65749.9090500@panix.com> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091002223142.04ee5128@pop.xs4all.nl> At 15:40 02/10/09 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: >the Nation Magazine, Huffington Post, Salon.com et al, are discussing >this. So is the bourgeois press. Oh, that makes it really important then........ >People have differences over this matter. When you accuse one side of >being misogynist, it cuts off discussion. That was the point though. There isn't any issue of actual importance to discuss due to this PARTICULAR case that wasn't present before. It's only that this case involves a celebrity. > This is the sort of >crap that the CP was infected by in the late 1940s when the witch-hunt >was gathering steam. People got thrown out No one is getting thrown out of anything. YOU are the one reacting that way to ME! >We need to keep these kinds of charges to an >absolute minimum I did NOT make any "charges!" I made an explanation of why people who I agree with on other matters would get caught up defending a non-political prisoner in an otherwise unimportant criminal case. I stand by every word I said. >The god-damned prosecutor in the case has just now told the media I'm not following this. If you want to talk about corrupt prosecutors and the legal system then there is plenty of material that comes out every day not involving celebrities. >There >are important legal and political questions in this case Affecting many other cases too, then. I'm more interested in the fate of political prisoners, for instance. I still think that insensitivity to sexual assault is pervasive and is a factor in many of the reactions on this list. But I made no "charges" and don't find anything further of importance to discuss in this matter. That's all I have to say. - Jeff From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 14:35:36 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:35:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091002223142.04ee5128@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091002223142.04ee5128@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <4AC66418.8050206@panix.com> Jeff wrote: > Oh, that makes it really important then........ Absolutely. The Nation Magazine is especially important in this debate because it has over 100,000 subscribers, many of whom consider themselves pretty far to the left. I suppose given the political makeup of the USA, this is fairly accurate. From ian at ianpace.com Fri Oct 2 14:54:46 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 21:54:46 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <4AC66418.8050206@panix.com> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl><3.0.3.32.20091002223142.04ee5128@pop.xs4all.nl> <4AC66418.8050206@panix.com> Message-ID: From: "Louis Proyect" > Jeff wrote: >> Oh, that makes it really important then........ > > Absolutely. The Nation Magazine is especially important in this debate > because it has over 100,000 subscribers, many of whom consider > themselves pretty far to the left. I suppose given the political makeup > of the USA, this is fairly accurate. > We could spend all of our time on here discussing the finer points of Marxist theory, obscure labour disputes from the 1890s, and fine details of ideological differences between various factions who all seem synonymous to anyone looking on from outside. And no doubt some would be proud of the purity and lack of concession involved in such a mode of discourse. But in reality, if we can't even discuss amongst one another the sorts of things that hundreds of thousands or millions of others are talking about, and bring some perspectives to bear upon those, then we might as well retreat to the most remote ivory tower. Solidarity, Ian From bbauerly at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 15:18:41 2009 From: bbauerly at gmail.com (brad bauerly) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:18:41 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, Message-ID: <55868ddf0910021418q66889a82nb3448d3564f5b704@mail.gmail.com> I agree with all of the above reasons as to the lack of coherent left movement as 15.1 million US citizens are unemployed and 40 million lack health care (these two issues alone as a campaign platform to build a movement has very large potential IMO). I would also posit a theory that understands one of neoliberalisms main goals as the individualization of suffering and oppression. After I posted that article on the 26 year record breaking unemployment I began to wonder if this wouldn't actually enhance capital as much as open up the possibility of social resistance and a growth of a movement. The unemployment figure means one thing for sure, an increase in the reserve army of labor and the associated increase in competition for jobs and increased productivity as folks fear the loss of jobs. With fewer people in unions there is little regress to a boss who says "increase your productivity to match that of Joe's or else you are out of a job". I see little reason that it will automatically lead to movement building and cooperative means to oppose this heightened exploitation. The recent history regarding housing foreclosures and the individualization of the issue ('folks just bought homes they can't afford') reveals the real world level of consciousness of workers in the US. How to break out of this and recognize the collective capacity to overcome the problems is the real issue going forward. I just don't know how to do it. Brad From markalause at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 15:29:06 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:29:06 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Funded graduate work in Anarchist Studies Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Seth Wigderson" < wigderso at CC.UMANITOBA.CA> To: Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 5:16 PM Subject: PhD Studentship in Anarchist Studies From: Dave Berry PLEASE CIRCULATE The Department of Politics, History & International Relations at Loughborough University (UK) invites applications for a fully-funded (UK or EU fee status) studentship to undertake doctoral research from December 1 2009 in any area related to the Department's research interests. Dr Dave Berry and Dr Ruth Kinna would like to hear from anyone interested in studying for a PhD in any area related to anarchist history, politics or theory. Dave Berry is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary European History. He has published primarily on the French anarchist movement, the contemporary alternative left in France and on Daniel Gu?rin. He is the author of 'A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917-1945' (Greenwood Press, 2002); he is an associate editor and reviews editor of 'Anarchist Studies' and a founder member of the Anarchist Studies Network (Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism within the Political Studies Association - http://www.sgsa.org.uk/HomePage). Ruth Kinna is a Senior Lecturer in Politics. She has published on William Morris and Peter Kropotkin, and is the author of 'Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide' (Oneworld, 2005) and co-editor, with Laurence Davis of 'Anarchism and Utopianism' (Manchester UP, 2009). She is the editor of the journal 'Anarchist Studies' and is also a founder member and co-convenor of the Anarchist Studies Network. There are currently five PhD students in the Department working on aspects of anarchism: Cris Illiopoulos, working on Nietzsche and anarchism; Saku Pinta, who is working on convergences and divergences between anarchism and Marxism; Sureyyya Turkeli working on the historiography of anarchism; Matt Wilson working on anarchist ethics; and Gwen Windpassinger, working on the queering of anarchism in Buenos Aires. Dr. Alex Prichard's research on the political thought of P-J Proudhon was also completed at the Department and his thesis successfully defended in 2008. If you would like to discuss a possible research project informally, please e-mail Ruth (r.e.kinna at lboro.ac.uk ) or Dave (d.g.berry at lboro.ac.uk ). Other information The Department is multidisciplinary and relatively small, with about 18 academic staff and 20-25 PhD students. We pride ourselves on the friendly, informal atmosphere in the department and on the facilities provided for postgraduates, all of whom currently have office space and a PC. Unfortunately, the studentships will only fund research for those with UK/EU fee status. Please note that the criteria for determining your fee status are not based simply on nationality, but also involve a residency requirement - for details please see: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/admin/ar/funding/international/status/index.htm For further information about the Department see: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/eu/studying/research/index.html For more general information about postgraduate research at LU, how to apply, etc, see the Research Student Office web pages here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/admin/ar/rso/index.htm Please note: the availability of this funding is strictly time limited and complete applications must be received by the end of the first week of November to meet the University start date of 1st December. Ruth Kinna Dept. Politics, History and IR, Loughborough University, LE11 3TU direct dial: +44 (0)1509 223651 From Paula_cerni at msn.com Fri Oct 2 15:57:14 2009 From: Paula_cerni at msn.com (Paula) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:57:14 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Unfortunately I don't have time to read through all of this intricate debate right now, but I'll have a stab at the first point raised by Rosa. Apologies if this is a little basic. Rosa: "Well, Marx added that the two interconnected 'halves' of a 'dialectical contradiction' "mutually exclude one another". If that is so, then they cannot exist together, which means that [they] cannot 'contradict' one another in the way you require. On the other hand, if they do 'contradict' one another, and both exist at the same time (perhaps as opposing forces, or determinations (depending on how you give them physical being)), then they cannot "mutually exclude" one another." This doesn't sound right to me. In every 'real world' contradiction, the two terms exclude each other and yet exist together. Male excludes female, female excludes male; yet male and female obviously do exist (and act!) together. Parent and child are mutually exclusive, in the sense that whoever is the parent is not the child, whoever is the child is not the parent; yet the parent is the parent of that child, the child is the child of that parent, etc. Master vs servant, capital vs labor ... you get the drift. So perhaps in the real world all contradictions are 'dialectical' in this sense. If Rosa objects to Marxists inflating this simple idea with fancy words, she may have a point. But the idea itself seems correct. Paula From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 16:23:04 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 18:23:04 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] A qualitative step forward for the organized struggle in Honduras Message-ID: <6e42edf00910021523x1e7ac0dld3a06a353baae8c8@mail.gmail.com> A qualitative step forward for the organized struggle in Honduras Posted: 01 Oct 2009 10:05 PM PDT A new challenge: taking over highways, ports and customs offices to bring the country to a halt and overthrow the dictatorship Delfina Berm?dez - Rebeli?n ??Because a people disorganized becomes a mass that can be toyed with, but a people that organizes itself and fights for its values and for justice is a people that demands respect.? Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Homily, March 2, 1980 After more than 90 days of resistance and struggle, the Honduran people have taken a qualitative step forward. As of last Tuesday, in addition to collective marches down the main streets of the cities, the protest actions have extended to towns, neighborhoods and residential districts. The protest actions and occupations of roads in towns, neighborhoods and residential districts are very important because: 1) they force the police and the military to use additional personnel, ammunitions, fuel and other logistical support and to mobilize in areas with which they are not very familiar, which leads to the forces getting worn out more quickly, having difficulty maintaining their supplies and potentially becoming trapped and isolated. 2) the people in the resistance are familiar with the towns, neighborhoods and residential districts and know the back roads and short cuts. 3) the struggle in these territories gives people a sense of membership and forces them to show up, take a stand and position themselves in opposition to those who until now have remained passive. 4) the mobilizations in towns and neighborhoods allow many people to join the movement who have been unable to go to the protests because they can not afford to take the bus or eat meals away from home, or because they are housewives and have to take care of their homes, elderly relatives, siblings or children. More than anything, many have to work a full workday and now they can join in on the actions that are taking place in their neighborhoods at night. 5) mobilizations in the neighborhoods, towns and residential districts require that people identify themselves with and organize logistically around the actions. They also force people to sit down and discuss the reasons for being in resistance, the scope of the changes that need to be made, to question corruption, the limitations of the current electoral circus and, especially, to propose a new nation, a new reality that is highly democratic and participatory, that goes beyond political parties and reduces inequities ? a country more just and more our own. 6) the movement in towns and neighborhoods includes older people who have past experience in resistance, in farm worker, labor, and urban movements; it also extends a hand and gives a renewed sense of agency to the youth who are playing a decisive role in the street protests. 7) in addition, organizing in the neighborhoods brings the movement and the conflict closer to home. It breaks down the media?s portrayal and official stigma of us as just a few troublemakers engaging in acts of vandalism, allowing each one of us to identify with and recognize ourselves as the RESISTANCE. We are the RESISTANCE. With the incorporation, organization and action of the towns, neighborhoods and districts there is no turning back. With this step, we are taking back the public spaces that we have lost due to indifference and the exclusionary pattern that proposes and imposes on us governance by the mediocre ?Arab? bourgeoisie ? the members of the wealthy and middle classes who intend to build walls and fences of police control and force us all take refuge in our homes and turn our backs on our neighbors. Now it is time to take a new step and make the most of the richness and capacities of local organization, to strike a final blow against this repressive and brutal regime, against the big ?Arab? and Honduran business owners who finance and support the coup, who have grown wealthy due to the exclusive and reactionary system under which we live. Against those who do not care about the crisis, the repression and the curfews, about the many people who have lost their jobs, who cannot leave home daily to earn the bread for their children to eat, about the thousands of small and mid-sized businesses that are on the verge of failing because of the collapse of consumer markets. So for the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya, for the recovery of the state, for the recovery of the country, and to set a new course for our own destinies, we should make use of all of the organization and structures developed in towns, neighborhoods and districts to hit them where it hurts most: in their businesses, in their dirty profits. We have to block land transport and the ports through hundreds and thousands of small but effective takeovers of roads in every corner of the country. In this way, we will incorporate every person in every small town close to the highways, customs offices and ports. Short takeovers of half an hour, in which we stop traffic with 100 people, burn tires, build barricades with sticks and any material we have at hand, put ground glass and other materials to ?puncture tires? of the cars that are passing. We stay there for half an hour and DO NOT CONFRONT the police and the military. I REPEAT: WE WILL NOT CONFRONT THE POLICE AND THE MILITARY. We ask the neighbors of the nearest community to warn us before they arrive. We will leave before they arrive, using the side streets, hills and paths we know so that the police and military will exhaust themselves trying to catch us, putting out tire fires, removing rubble and clearing glass and nails off the highway. And the town should cut them off; no one should sell them food. We will close the local stores and the businesses; we will become the crafty ones. We will immediately coordinate to set up a new roadblock at another point many kilometers down the highway from ours so that they run off to the next point being occupied on the highway; that is how it will go on all day long. At the same time, we will continue with occupations and disturbances in every neighborhood and district in the city so that they many troops must be kept in Tegucigalpa and other cities. But we have to organize ourselves and create a telephone or radio information network, transmitting in code, to send warnings about how many troops are moving from one point to another. We will drive the police and the military crazy and, more importantly, we will not allow the companies backing the coup to move their products on the highways, to get their products through customs or to export them. No African palm oil, bananas, plantains, coffee, sugar, shrimp, melons or minerals ? no product, piece of clothing, cloth, sock or undergarment will be exported from the factories. And this is just the beginning; we can stop trucks, seize them and sabotage the customs offices, ports and airports. Because if they don?t sell, if they don?t export, their businesses and profits will dry up. And then what purpose will the coup government serve? And these businessmen and women, who are the ones propping up the de facto government, and the ones paying off the criminal colonels and generals, will have to back up before the power of the people to make way for the reinstatement of the Zelaya administration, for democracy for all and for our National Constitutional Assembly. So, comrades, let?s take over the highways, the customs offices and the ports, along with the neighborhoods, districts and towns, to bring the country to a halt. We call on our brothers and sisters in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua to coordinate with our people to take over customs offices and carry out protests in the major cities. IN RESISTANCE UNTIL POPULAR DEMOCRACY IS RESTORED! IN RESISTANCE UNTIL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IS DEEPENED BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY AND A NEW CONSTITUTION IS APPROVED, A NEW POLITICAL PACT TO RENEW HONDURAS! ?SALUD COMPA?ERAS Y COMPA?EROS! Delfina Berm?dez is a Honduran teacher in resistance. From pt_costello at yahoo.com Fri Oct 2 18:54:16 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:54:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. Message-ID: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> >People have differences over this matter. When you accuse one side of >being misogynist, it cuts off discussion. Do you ever wonder why there are virtually no women on this list? or why it is known as Marxmale? I would have thought that indignation over the rape of a child would not be debatable. Racist attacks, rape, police brutality....these are merely academic discussion for many on this list. There have been a number of comments and discussions on this board that have offended me as a woman, that would have offended any number of women i have known in the movement. If you imagine that you will have any relevancy in any coming upsurge while you cling to the idea that a group of men can be oblivious to to the experiences of at least half the population, you are sadly deluded. >We need to keep these kinds of charges to an >absolute minimum Pat: i.e. "stifle, Edith, stifle" from jeff: I still think that insensitivity to sexual assault is pervasive and is a factor in many of the reactions on this list. pat: amen, brother. amen. From lnp3 at panix.com Fri Oct 2 19:30:40 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:30:40 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4AC6A940.104@panix.com> Pat Costello wrote: > Do you ever wonder why there are virtually no women on this list? or why it is known as Marxmale? I would have thought that indignation over the rape of a child would not be debatable. Racist attacks, rape, police brutality....these are merely academic discussion for many on this list. Yes, I have heard this charge before. I have also heard Marxmail accused of reflecting imperialist privilege as well--me in particular as a reeking example of imperialist privilege. Frankly, there is no response that is worth making especially since this is merely an Internet mailing list and not a revolutionary organization. If it was a revolutionary organization, such concerns would loom a lot larger. I think it would be a huge mistake to confuse a listserv with a group that aspires to make a revolution. > There have been a number of comments and discussions on this board that have offended me as a woman, that would have offended any number of women i have known in the movement. I understand this. > > If you imagine that you will have any relevancy in any coming upsurge while you cling to the idea that a group of men can be oblivious to to the experiences of at least half the population, you are sadly deluded. My goals are much more modest. I am trying to provide a forum for Marxists around the world. That forum has to lean very much in the direction of free speech, even when people get offended. If anybody reaches the point where they feel that being subbed to Marxmail exposes them to racist, sexist, homophobic or other degrading verbal assaults, I invite them to unsub. This is not a revolutionary organization and you are not missing the opportunity to become part of the future salvation of humanity by not being a subscriber. All you would be missing is stimulating conversation, not that much different than you hear at a cocktail party for highly educated and class-conscious people. From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Fri Oct 2 20:01:35 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:01:35 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] agree- insensitivity to sexual assault In-Reply-To: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4AC6783F.5839.4DDE0F2@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> I agree. I hope RP's statement to Martin Amis was not true. ==== Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook http://librarian.lishost.org/ > from jeff: > > I still think that insensitivity to sexual assault is pervasive and is a > factor in many of the reactions on this list. On 2 Oct 2009 at 17:54, Pat Costello wrote: > > >People have differences over this matter. When you accuse one side of > >being misogynist, it cuts off discussion. > > Do you ever wonder why there are virtually no women on this list? or why it is known as Marxmale? I would have thought that indignation over the rape of a child would not be debatable. Racist attacks, rape, police brutality....these are merely academic discussion for many on this list. > > There have been a number of comments and discussions on this board that have offended me as a woman, that would have offended any number of women i have known in the movement. > > If you imagine that you will have any relevancy in any coming upsurge while you cling to the idea that a group of men can be oblivious to to the experiences of at least half the population, you are sadly deluded. > > >We need to keep these kinds of charges to an > >absolute minimum > > Pat: i.e. "stifle, Edith, stifle" > > from jeff: > > I still think that insensitivity to sexual assault is pervasive and is a > factor in many of the reactions on this list. > > pat: > amen, brother. amen. From shacht at aol.com Fri Oct 2 20:20:47 2009 From: shacht at aol.com (shacht at aol.com) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:20:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <73BCB29DFBD04637B32C8FC93D3EDFFD@IanPacePC> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <73BCB29DFBD04637B32C8FC93D3EDFFD@IanPacePC> Message-ID: <8CC11E740FD6E97-53D4-14ED7@webmail-d053.sysops.aol.com> Wasn't the issue in the Los Angeles Court that the district attorney had arranged a plea agreement with Polanski's attorneys and that the judge then said he would not be bound by and and not follow the recommendation? In the face of this, Polanski fled. That's how I remember it, but could be wrong. A defendant is powerless when the judge, representing the bourgeois state, rejects a plea agreement and declares that he intends to impose a greater sentence than "bargained for." Now, admittedly, a defendant having pled guilty is a bit of a supplicant seeking mercy rather than a non-convicted defendant. Having in theory admitted his crime, Polanski was assuming that his "sentence bargain" rather than a "plea bargain" was going to be carried out. This just reflects the unequal power of individual v. state. Every state imposes laws to maintain social order within the rubric of the existing economic and social relationships. But every state also seeks to maintain social stability, not just order in the relationships among citizens. Rape is a crime in feudal states, capitalist states and would have been in a "workers state" or under the "dictatorship of the proletariat" which is the same thing. Polanski's presumed conduct was heinous under any social system. zHis wealth, prestige and connections enabled him to escape from the U.S. legal system and to flourish abroad. This cannot justify his perpetration of the original act nor cloth his flight with the cloak of victimization, as his celebrators would do. European knee-jerk anti-American sentiment, no matter how titillating to American leftists, including this who subscribe to this list, is an irrelevant reaction, it to create newspaper filler and nothing more. At worst, it reflects nothying but the flip side of Cold War Propaganda the most people seem to lack familiarity with or forgotten. (Its modern day equivalent can be found among most academic leftists in the U.S.) The worst aspect of the whole affair is the thirst for vengeance. Retroactive, belated, vicarious. I have not seen any discussion of whether Polanski has changed, has reformed himself - which assumes he was habitually a sexual maniac and that the event was not a one of a time encounter or aberration. Vengenence is an individualistic, petty bourgeois sentiment - especially when remote from the initiating event. More disturbing, therefore, are calls for vengenence now as well as the gleeful, condescencion of the foreign intelligentsia and press. Hoping that my efforts to "clip" the posting to which this response is intended, so that I may escape the earlier threat to endure permanent ban from this list for not doing so which I have been warned could be forthcoming for failure to clip. If not... ________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Ian Pace To: Wayne M. Collins Sent: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 12:19 pm Subject: Re: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/shacht%40aol.com From bhandari at berkeley.edu Fri Oct 2 20:27:44 2009 From: bhandari at berkeley.edu (Rakesh Bhandari) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:27:44 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] dialectical contradiction Message-ID: <4AC6B6A0.9060105@berkeley.edu> Richard, I had been confused by your footnote against the set theoretic concept of contradiction in Biology Under the Influence; what you say here makes the point well and compellingly. I am wondering whether you have read Andreas Wagner's Paradoxical Life; it seems that ideas that you stated in Dialectical Biologist are being rediscovered. There is another sense of contradiction, recently articulated by Andrew Collier in his short and stimulating book on Marx: "two demands, both necessary for the successful working of the same system, but mutually incompatible." I think here of Marx's analysis of the development of contradictions of the falling profit rate, especially the famous paragraph that begins with capital being identified as the true barrier to itself. What does Marx mean? Here's a quick take, but I'd be happy to hear other interpretations. The system requires the valorization of the extant capital and encourages ceaseless productivity growth which proves necessary to relieve the relentless upward pressure on the value composition of capital that growth of the technical composition of capital engenders (especially on the assumption that unit values remain constant). In other words, the system requires (and encourages or 'incentivizes') the cheapening of capital and wage goods but the system also requires that the extant capital be allowed to valorize itself. These are both structural tendencies, yet they may prove to be incompatible. And the system may collapse under the weight of the contradiction. The value destroyed by the new cheaper capital and wage goods may be so great as to undermine the profitable accumulation that those new commodities should make possible. I am interested in how Marx understands contradiction in his theoretical work. This chapter is an important one to study as is Marx's analysis of the polar opposition between and mutual assumption of commodities and money. Yours, Rakesh The following considerations might be helpful: 1. "contradiction", in its etymology "speaking against" was a process unfolding in time, negating a proposition in order to get beyond it. 2. Formal logic removes the temporal dynamic aspect to make it a formal, structural relation. 3. The formal logical statement "implies" is a static, set-theoretic relation but is a detemporalized equivalent to "leads to" (in time). 4. In real systems, variables change(except at equilibrium, a set of measure 0!). That is, A leads to not-A. If there is an eventual equilibrium, this is equivalent to proof by contradiction. In living systems, social systems, eco-systems etc there is permanent change ( A always leads to (implies!) not-A.These may be periodic or chaotic . The terror of early computer programmers was to get into an endless (and expensive) loop, which was equivalent to contradiction in the program. In formal logic, you may not (but can) hold to contradictory propositions at the same time . In dialectical logic, two propositions may be separately false but jointly true; health is socially determined, and you are responsible for your health. Either one alone can result in passivity but jointly can result in self-care and collective action... 5. You can create formally disjunct mathematical sets, but with real things no division of a whole world into mutually exclusive categories really holds. Environmental/genetic, physical/psychological, biological/social, etc interpenetrate, and furthermore it is when we recognize their interpenetration that we get the exciting new insights. All of these and other aspects of contradiction make it an important tool in science. ========================= Richard Levins From ffeldman at bellatlantic.net Fri Oct 2 21:17:15 2009 From: ffeldman at bellatlantic.net (Fred Feldman) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:17:15 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. Message-ID: Believe it or not, I have been working over a commentary on the Polanski business for a couple days. Buy now that the issues in dispute have been narrowed down to for or against raping children or for or against being indignant about the rape of children, it makes no sense to contribute my thoughts on the matter. I am against raping children, my own included. And I have no problem identifying with feelings of indignation about it. Since all the other matters in dispute have been buried under the for-or-against child rape issue, I suggest that Louis conclude the Polanski debate after letting Pat and other opponents of child rape on the list, who seem to imagine themselves as totally isolated by the alleged child=rape enthusiasts on the list, express themselves once or twice more. Fred Feldman From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Fri Oct 2 21:22:03 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:22:03 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] alleged child=rape enthusiasts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4AC68B1B.19722.5278BD5@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> I guess if you want to miss the point, you will. This isn't mildly clever. On 2 Oct 2009 at 23:17, Fred Feldman wrote: > Believe it or not, I have been working over a commentary on the Polanski > business for a couple days. > > Buy now that the issues in dispute have been narrowed down to for or against > raping children or for or against being indignant about the rape of > children, it makes no sense to contribute my thoughts on the matter. I am > against raping children, my own included. And I have no problem identifying > with feelings of indignation about it. > > Since all the other matters in dispute have been buried under the > for-or-against child rape issue, I suggest that Louis conclude the Polanski > debate after letting Pat and other opponents of child rape on the list, who > seem to imagine themselves as totally isolated by the alleged child=rape > enthusiasts on the list, express themselves once or twice more. > Fred Feldman > From bhandari at berkeley.edu Fri Oct 2 21:43:29 2009 From: bhandari at berkeley.edu (Rakesh Bhandari) Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:43:29 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski Message-ID: <4AC6C861.3050304@berkeley.edu> Haven't read this exchange, but I wonder whether anyone has commented on the social construction of childhood (Marx Wartofsky once wrote about this from a historical materialist point of view). The 19th century bourgeoisie were quite interested in reducing the period of childhood to facilitate the exploitation of child labor. There is no possibility in our social world or anyone that I can imagine that a 13 year old could have the autonomous power to choose freely to engage in a sex act with a forty four year old man. There may be a question about enough time having passed in determining Polanski's punishment. I don't know about that, but those who think childhood is so flexible or such an invention that it could be as short as Polanski wants it to be seem oblivious to the biological possibilities of a thirteen year old, the as yet undeveloped nature of the frontal lobes, and the actual minimal independence a thirteen year old has a chance to develop. Polanski may find himself attracted to the wildest versions of social constructionism, but Marxists should be very skeptical of this line of argument. Simply put, a thirteen year old cannot be the willing sexual partner of an adult. It's not biologically or cognitively possible. Not in this society or in any society that we can now imagine. Polanski's statement that she was not an innocent is insidious. Now on the passivity in the face of 15 million unemployed. Boltanski and Chiapello have an interesting idea: Workers who are employable and mobile enjoy privileges that the immobile are not able to wrest from their employers. In fact the privileges enjoyed by the former may even contribute to a further reduction of the resources available to the immobile. Yet the immobile blame themselves for their condition, and are grateful for what they have, given that they are not mobile as the better off workers are (of course the immobile do so many tasks the mobile have the time to do what they need to remain mobile--develop new skills, network, innovate) . The point is that the working class is divided upon itself, making the demands of the immobile, the unemployed and the uninsured seem special, narrow and resentful. And then there is that social Darwinist streak in American social life. Remember also that anyone who admits the possibility of involuntary unemployment and thinks that there is a public obligation to reduce the resultant suffering or thinks the state should take steps to make American capitalism live up to its equal opportunity creed (say subsidized pre school or student loans) is called a Marxist by Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, and Father Coughlin. At present people don't want to be called Marxists just as not long ago no one wanted to be a liberal. From markalause at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 22:21:21 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 00:21:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <8CC11E740FD6E97-53D4-14ED7@webmail-d053.sysops.aol.com> References: <3.0.3.32.20091002211237.04e35e90@pop.xs4all.nl> <73BCB29DFBD04637B32C8FC93D3EDFFD@IanPacePC> <8CC11E740FD6E97-53D4-14ED7@webmail-d053.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: In any event, except for the people we've actually met on this list--very few in most of our cases--none of us really know anything about their genders, nationality, former political connections, etc. I suspect that Pat's correct, though I suspect a higher proportion of female subscribers are here, though mostly lurking. While I share her concerns, they seem to me unavoidable on a open email list. My guess is that most politicaql lists look much the same. As unfortunate as I find that, I don't know what can be done about it. I mean, as long as anyone who regards themselves as a Marxist or someone having an interest in it can join the list, I don't know how it is collectively responsible for what's said here. ML From ian at ianpace.com Sat Oct 3 02:26:24 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 09:26:24 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. In-Reply-To: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <166553.17798.qm@web63108.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: From: "Pat Costello" > > I would have thought that indignation over the rape of a child would not > be debatable. Racist attacks, rape, police brutality....these are merely > academic discussion for many on this list. Total and utter bullshit. Just that some (I would hope most, in terms of how I understand Marxism) think rational responses are more valuable than mere indignation. You could say exactly the same thing as you do about the murder of a child, in the case of, say, a debate about capital punishment. The tabloids and the right wing media will often respond exactly as you do in such situations, using emotive rhetoric to try and shut down debate on the subject. Solidarity, Ian From ffeldman at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 3 03:38:12 2009 From: ffeldman at bellatlantic.net (Fred Feldman) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:38:12 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains Message-ID: China's imperialist business partners were pushing for them to junk the remaining nationalized industry a few years ago. But that prospect is definitely off for now as the state sector plays a key role in helping China contain the effects of the world crisis and even make headway. Fred Feldman China's growth will continue John Ross Published 17 September 2009 China's successful economic policies are specifically Chinese. But they are made up of universal elements Deng Rong, Deng Xiaoping's daughter, commences a memoir of her father by noting that before he launched China's economic reform programme in 1978 policies had been adopted 'in violation of the laws of economics.' Deng Xiaoping, in contrast, restored policies respecting these. This relates to a highly topical question. Little under a year ago there was controversy over whether the stimulus programme launched by China to confront the international financial crisis would succeed. Today this is essentially settled. Not only will China achieve eight percent growth in 2009, a year when every other major economy will contract, but even a former sceptic, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, concludes 'Is this growth surge sustainable? In a word, yes.' Such success comes after thirty years in which China has been the world's most rapidly expanding economy, with 9.8% annual average growth. China's urban investment is up over thirty percent in a year in which most other countries' investment is falling - and UK spending on infrastructure, such as housing and transport, has declined by the same amount. China is counter-cyclically expanding bank loans while lack of such lending throttles the UK and US economies. China is also responsible for one hundred percent of the reduction of world poverty in the last quarter century - as Professor Danny Quah of the London School of Economics recently point out. However, on the one hand China emphases that its economic system is with 'Chinese characteristics' - that is, it asserts its specifically Chinese character. China does not seek to promote its economic model to other countries and its authorities explain that their specific duty is to lead a country with more than 1.3 billion people to economic development. But simultaneously, as Deng Rong notes, China considers its policy since 1978 is guided by 'laws of economics'. Therefore to what degree are China's economic successes specific to that country, and without general lessons, and to what degree are they expressions of 'laws of economics', which are necessarily universal in character and from which others can draw lessons? The paradox is only apparent. China's specific combination of policies is, of course, strongly unique and indeed with 'Chinese characteristics' - it would be highly foolish to attempt to double guess such characteristics from outside. Another country mechanically applying them would suffer failure as every situation is specific. But China's success is understandable in terms of internationally recognised economics because the elements of which its specific economic model is constructed are universal. The fact that China does not seek to promote its economic model therefore does not mean that others cannot draw lessons. Such analysis show, first, that China has been successful in confronting the financial crisis because its policies are right not only practically but from the viewpoint of economic theory. Second, for other countries, that the elements of such economic policies are capable of being successfully applied in a parliamentary democracy. For these reasons it is worth setting out key elements of such policies not in terms those in China would necessarily use but in those of an economic discourse familiar in Europe and the US - classical and Keynesian economics. The first is the most classical economics imaginable. Adam Smith first demonstrated what modern econometrics confirms, that division of labour is decisive in raising the level of productivity. And division of labour in a modern economy is necessarily international. A high level of trade is the sole way to participate in this, as well as to benefit from advantages such as economies of scale. The high level of trade in China's economy is crucial to its "opening" process. Protectionist and "import substitution" strategies inevitably lead to inefficiency in capital use and low productivity. China's opposition to protectionism is integral to its economic model. Second, is China's high investment level. Again modern econometric research confirms that, after division of labour, the largest element in economic growth is growth of fixed investment not only in a developing economy such as China but also in developed economies. As Dale Jorgenson, probably the world's leading expert on productivity growth notes: "investment in tangible assets is the most important source of economic growth in the G7 nations. The contribution of capital inputs exceeds that of total factor productivity for all countries for all periods." The third point is decisive in regard to the financial crisis. Keynes understood that the driving force of any recession, as with the present one, is a decline in investment. Keynes advocated low interest rates, and in the short term budget deficits, to overcome this. But Keynes also noted in the final chapter of his General Theory, in a point highly relevant to a situation where mass unemployment is again soaring, that "a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment". This "somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment" is impossible in a purely private sector-dominated economy. A decisive advantage China has in the financial crisis is that it does not have to rely only on indirect means (reduction of interest rates, budget deficits) to attempt to influence investment. China can use its large state-owned company sector to increase investment and instruct its state-owned banks to lend - while Alistair Darling is still pleading ineffectually for UK banks to increase theirs. China's economic policies are indeed very specifically Chinese. But the elements of which they are made are universally recognisable. John Ross is Visiting Professor at Jiao Tong University Shanghai This article was originally published on newstatesman.com at 11:26 on 17 September 2009 From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Sat Oct 3 03:46:07 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 05:46:07 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] =?windows-1252?q?=5BThe_Activist=5D_N=2EW=2EA=2E=92s_Se?= =?windows-1252?q?cond_Album=2C_Track_Two?= Message-ID: http://theactivist.org/blog/n-w-a-s-second-album-track-two From ffeldman at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 3 03:57:33 2009 From: ffeldman at bellatlantic.net (Fred Feldman) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:57:33 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Sexual Assault Message-ID: <5ADFCB0E372A4BA58EC104F2E6A41BF6@office1pc> This was provided by a comrade who sometimes comments on list discussions: Hi Fred Jeff wrote at [Marxism], " it is in the interests of society to increase enforcement of laws on sexual assault". It's also in the interests of society to get rid of capitalism and patriarchy, but I don't see it happening. In the '70s my girlfriend was a volunteer at a rape crisis center and one weekend a month she carried the beeper. I heard it go off many times. Women don't report sexual assault because they know they will be the ones put on trial and because the chances the offender will do ANY time are extremely low. My advice to my daughters: call the rape crisis center and call your sister and then call a personal injury lawyer, and refuse to talk to the cops. Cops use their badge and gun to force sex from the poor. They are some of the worst offenders. They don't give a shit about you. If the lawyer thinks you have a good case bring a civil suit against the asshole. In a civil suit there is a much higher chance the attacker will be exposed as a sexual predator and lose his bank account and all the rest of his stuff, instead of smirking as the criminal court judge says, "case dismissed." Pat Costello is re-victimizing the victim when she says, "The victim does not get to decide" It's her body, it's her call, she is the only one who gets to decide. that's the way I see it Duen Canadian Law on Sexual Assault You have a choice, you can have your assailant charged criminally, and/or you can bring a civil suit against your assailant. Most survivors don't realize that you can sue your assailant for a monetary reward in civil court. Duen also provided this astonishing and horrifying statistic: openDemocracy28 - 11 - 2007/ ... across most of Europe the rape conviction rate has fallen continuously in the last thirty years. In the UK, in 1977 33.3% of all rapes reported to the police led to a conviction. In 2007, this figure has fallen to 5.7%. From acpollack2 at gmail.com Sat Oct 3 06:02:17 2009 From: acpollack2 at gmail.com (Andrew Pollack) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:02:17 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Marek Edelman, antifascist fighter, dies Message-ID: <2fa1449b0910030502h7df20132vb256e66bcc32e796@mail.gmail.com> I sent this to the list of my group, Al-Awda-NY: Palestine Right to Return Coalition, thus the emphasis on his antiZionism. If you google his name you'll turn up lots of more general biographical detail on him, including his account of the ghetto uprising. Andy ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis. He died in Warsaw, where he stayed after the war, refusing to move to Israel. His political party, the Bund, was antiZionist. He referred to Israel as "a historic failure," and was involved in a comradely dialogue with Palestinian liberation fighters about their tactics (he was mistaken tactically, but the point is he saw them as comrades). He and the Bund weren't the most revolutionary force among Jewish workers in Europe, but they were a far sight better than the Zionist quislings in Warsaw who counseled silence and practiced betrayal, all in pursuit of their hopes to eventually become colonizers in their own right. From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Sat Oct 3 06:07:57 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:07:57 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Bernard-Henri Levy bandwagon Message-ID: <4AC7065D.5756.7090566@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> ------- Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends KATHA POLLITT 10/01/2009 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/anotherthing/479379/roman_pola nski_has_a_lot_of_friends If a rapist escapes justice for long enough, should the world hand him a get-out-of-jail-free card? If you're Roman Polanski, world-famous director, a lot of famous and gifted people think the answer is yes. Polanski, who drugged and anally raped a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977 in Los Angeles, pled guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor and fled to Europe before sentencing. Now, 32 years later, he's been arrested in Switzerland on his way to the Zurich film Festival, prompting outrage from international culture stars: Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodavar, Woody Allen (insert your own joke here), Isabelle Huppert, Diane von Furstenberg and many, many more. Bernard-Henri Levy, who's taken a leading role in rounding up support, has said that Polanski "perhaps had committed a youthful error " (he was 43). Debra Winger, president of the Zurich Film Festival jury, wearing a red "Free Polanski" badge, called the Swiss authorities action "philistine collusion." Frederic Mitterand, the French cultural minister, said it showed "the scary side of America" and described Polanski as "thrown to the lions because of ancient history." French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, called the whole thing "sinister." Closer to home, Whoopi Goldberg explained on The View that his crime wasn't 'rape rape,' just, you know, rape. Oh, that! Conservative columnist Anne Applebaum minimized the crime in the Washington Post. First, she overlooks the true nature of the crime (drugs, forced anal sex, etc), and then claims "there is evidence Polanski did not know her real age." Talk about a desperate argument. Polanski, who went on to have an affair with 15-year old Nastassja Kinski, has spoken frankly of his taste for very young girls. (Nation editor-in-chief Katrina vanden Heuvel, who tweeted her surprise at finding herself on the same side as Applebaum, has had second thoughts: "I disavow my original tweet supporting Applebaum. I believe that Polanski should not receive special treatment. Question now is how best to ensure that justice is served. Should he return to serve time? Are there other ways of seeing that justice is served? At same time, I believe that prosecutorial misconduct in this case should be investigated.") On the New York Times op-ed page, schlock novelist Robert Harris celebrated his great friendship with Polanski, who has just finished filming one of Harris' books: "His past did not bother me." This tells us something about Harris' nonchalant view of sex crimes, but why is it an argument about what should happen in Polanski's legal case? I just don't get this. I understand that Polanski has had numerous tragedies in his life, that he's made some terrific movies, that he's 76, that a 2008 documentary raised questions about the fairness of the judge (see Bill Wyman in Salon, though, for a persuasive dismantling of its case.). I also understand that his victim, now 44, says she has forgiven Polanski and wants the case to be dropped because every time it comes up she is dragged through the mud all over again. Certainly that is what is happening now. On the Huffington Post, Polanski fan Joan Z. Shore, who describes herself as co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality (Belgium), writes: " The 13-year-old model 'seduced' by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!)." Actually, in 1977 the age of consent in California was 16. Today it's 18, with exceptions for sex when one person is underage and the other is no more than three years older. Shore's view--that Polanski was the victim of a nymphet and her scheming mother--is all over the internet. Fact: What happened was not some gray, vague he said/she said Katie-Roiphe-style "bad sex." A 43-year- old man got a 13-year-old girl alone, got her drunk, gave her a quaalude, and, after checking the date of her period, anally raped her, twice, while she protested; she submitted, she told the grand jury "because I was afraid." Those facts are not in dispute--except by Polanski, who has pooh-poohed the whole business many times (You can read the grand jury transcripts here.) He was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, like many accused rapists, to spare the victim the trauma of a trial and media hoopla. But that doesn't mean we should all pretend that what happened was some free-spirited Bohemian mix-up. The victim took years to recover. Fact: In February 2008, LA Superior Court Judge Peter Espinosa ruled that Polanski can challenge his conviction. All he has to do is come to the United States and subject himself to the rule of law. Why is that unfair? Were he not a world-famous director with boatloads of powerful friends, but just a regular convicted sex criminal who had fled abroad, would anyone think it was asking too much that he should go through the same formal process as anyone else? It's enraging that literary superstars who go on and on about human dignity, and human rights, and even women's rights (at least when the women are Muslim) either don't see what Polanski did as rape, or don't care, because he is, after all, Polanski--an artist like themselves. That some of his defenders are women is particularly disappointing. Don't they see how they are signing on to arguments that blame the victim, minimize rape, and bend over backwards to exonerate the perpetrator? Error of youth, might have mistaken her age, teen slut, stage mother--is that what we want people to think when middle-aged men prey on ninth- graders? The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may make great movies, write great books, and design beautiful things, they may have lots of noble humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all the right principles: equality under the law, for example. But in this case, they're just the white culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who automatically support their favorite athletes when they're accused of beating their wives and raping hotel workers. No wonder Middle America hates them. ------- Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook http://librarian.lishost.org/ From lnp3 at panix.com Sat Oct 3 06:49:31 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:49:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] US bribe to Lockerbie witness? Message-ID: <4AC7485B.5040302@panix.com> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/02/lockerbie-documents-witness-megrahi US paid reward to Lockerbie witness, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi papers claim Scottish detectives discussed secret payments of up to $3m made to witness and his brother, documents claim Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $3m (?1.9m) in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US government, according to legal papers released today. The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence that was intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. Megrahi abandoned his appeal last month after the Libyan and Scottish governments struck a deal to free him on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Now in hospital in Tripoli, Megrahi said he wanted the public to see the evidence which he claims would have cleared him. "I continue to protest my innocence ? how could I fail to do so?," he said. "I have no desire to add to the upset of many people I know are profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie. My intention is only for the truth to be made known." The documents published online by Megrahi's lawyers today show that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was asked to pay $2m to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave crucial evidence at the trial suggesting that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly held the Lockerbie bomb. The DoJ was also asked to pay a further $1m to his brother, Paul Gauci, who did not give evidence but played a major role in identifying the clothing and in "maintaining the resolve of his brother". The DoJ said their rewards could be increased and that the brothers were also eligible for the US witness protection programme, according to the documents. The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which returned Megrahi's conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi's lawyers said, but not their official notebooks. The SCCRC was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the DoJ's "reward-for-justice" programme but found it was after Megrahi's trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out. A memo written by "DI Dalgleish" to "ACC Graham" in 2007 confirms the men received "substantial payments from the American authorities". The inspector claims the rewards were "engineered" after Megrahi's trial and appeal were over, but said there was "a real danger that if [the] SCCRC's statement of reasons is leaked to the media, Anthony Gauci could be portrayed as having given flawed evidence for financial reward." Instead, he claimed, the reward was intended to ensure the Gaucis could afford to leave Malta and start new lives "to avoid media and other unwanted attention". However, the documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told Dumfries and Galloway police that they wanted to offer Gauci "unlimited money" and $10,000 immediately. Gauci began talking of a possible reward in meetings with Dumfries and Galloway detectives in 1991, when a reward application was first made to the DoJ. The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial and new testimony contradicting the prosecution's claims that Megrahi bought the clothes on 7 December 1988 ? the only day he was in Malta during the critical period. In 23 police interviews, Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person's age, appearance and the date of purchase. Two identification experts hired by Megrahi's appeal team said the police and prosecution breached the rules on witness interviews, using "suggestive" lines of questioning and allowing "irregular" identification line-ups. Two new witnesses also disproved the prosecution claim that Megrahi was in Gauci's shop on 7 December, his lawyers said. Gauci said the area's Christmas lights were not on when the clothes were bought. The current Maltese high commissioner to the UK, Michael Rufalo, then the local MP, told the SCCRC the lights were switched on on 6 December, raising further inconsistencies in the prosecution case. It has also emerged that Scottish police did not tell Megrahi's lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying very similar clothes on a different day; evidence that psychologists believe may have confused Gauci and again clouded the prosecution case. Dumfries and Galloway police said only a court could properly consider this material, and supported previous criticism of Megrahi's decision to release his appeal papers by Elish Angiolini, the lord advocate. "We will not be taking part in any discussion or debate concerning the selective publications made by Mr Megrahi," a statement said. "We have nothing more to add other than to echo the lord advocate's recent comments pointing out that Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the lord justice general, Scotland's most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history." A spokesman for the US Department of Justice also refused to comment, since Megrahi had voluntarily withdrawn his appeal. He said: "None of the allegations in the SCCRC referral, or the grounds of appeal filed by Megrahi, were finally adjudicated by the Scottish High Court of Justiary (the appropriate judicial forum) because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the court could rule. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice will not comment further on his aborted appeal." From rjacobs3625 at charter.net Sat Oct 3 06:56:21 2009 From: rjacobs3625 at charter.net (Ron J) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:56:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski Message-ID: <4AC749F5.2040605@charter.net> I've been reading this list on and off for a while now and have to say that I can't believe the amount of bandwidth that has been wasted discussing Roman Polanski. Why aren't you all discussing McKenzie Phillip's incestuous relationship with her father, too? I personally could care less what happens to Polanski since the question of innocence or guilt has already been answered by Polanski himself. His credentials do not excuse him from prosecution, nor should he be dealt with differently in terms of sentencing because of his Hollywood profile. My point is, what the hell does this have to do with Marxism beyond a passing interest? It certainly doesn't deserve the three-five days of debate among supposed Marxists that has already occurred on this list. -ron jacobs From lnp3 at panix.com Sat Oct 3 07:04:11 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:04:11 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski In-Reply-To: <4AC749F5.2040605@charter.net> References: <4AC749F5.2040605@charter.net> Message-ID: <4AC74BCB.1030801@panix.com> Ron J wrote: > I've been reading this list on and off for a while now and have to say > that I can't believe the amount of bandwidth that has been wasted > discussing Roman Polanski. Why aren't you all discussing McKenzie > Phillip's incestuous relationship with her father, too? I personally > could care less what happens to Polanski since the question of innocence > or guilt has already been answered by Polanski himself. His credentials > do not excuse him from prosecution, nor should he be dealt with > differently in terms of sentencing because of his Hollywood profile. My > point is, what the hell does this have to do with Marxism beyond a > passing interest? It certainly doesn't deserve the three-five days of > debate among supposed Marxists that has already occurred on this list. Okay, I've been persuaded by Ron and Fred to wind this down. I invite comrades to make one more statement, if they must, and then we move on. Btw, this issue consumed Doug's list as well, so much so that he had to blow the whistle to call a halt. When one person refused, he was unsubbed. So obviously there is a lot of passion about it. From sartesian at earthlink.net Sat Oct 3 09:05:10 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 11:05:10 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions Message-ID: <4B39C99F05994B5AB98EB89C0121789E@dmsthinkpad> I should first say, I'm no philosopher. I've read Marx, Feuerbach, Hegel, Russell, Wittgenstein. Mostly Marx, then Hegel... Hegel brought me to tears, and not tears of joy. OK I'm no philosopher. Neither was Marx, although unlike Marx, I never studied the subject formally. My take on Rosa's debate is a little unusual, if not for others , certainly for me, being a partisan of dialectics-- at least I think I am-- or I think I am, therefore I am, or I might be. Anyway... First-- I am more than sympathetic of Rosa's argument that Marx did not create a dialectical materialism, I am in complete agreement. IMO, those who think there is a "dialectical materialism" to Marx's work are taking a giant step backward. Marx is not creating a new philosophy, a philsophy of the universe, a philosophy of science or nature or anything else. He is, in the beginning grappling with...he is grappling with what he and Engels call the "rational kernel" that he extracted from Hegel. And that core is the real content of human history. What Marx finds in Hegel, in the Hegel's presentation of "spirit," "consciousness" making itself manifest in the world is an alienated expression for the real content of history. And what is the unalienated expression, what is that real content? For Marx, it is the social organization of labor. The materialism is history. The materialism is social. But my take is, as I said, unusual, in that I think Marx clearly takes over words, methods, "tactics," from Hegel in his analyses of contradiction, necessity, immanence in capital's existence. What is the "dialectical contradiction" Marx explores? Philosophy has proven itself incapable of answering that, and we must, to be consistent with Marx find the answer in history, in the social organization of labor. That contradiction is the relation of capital and wage-labor. Each exists only in the organization of the other. Capital, to be capital, must organize labor in a specific form in order to access, appropriate surplus value. To do this, the means of production must be monopolized by the class of [emerging] capitalists-- but they are monopolized in a manner that makes them essentially useless when not yielding exchange-value and profit. For that to occur, labor itself must be organized as useless, as offering no mechanism for the laborer to subsist, save in the exchange of the ability to labor in return for the means of subsistence [or the medium for their purchase]. So while capital belongs to the capitalist as private property, the private property can only exist with a specific social organization of labor. Capital can go nowhere without dragging this, wage-labor, its complementary opposite with it. Now for capital to aggrandize greater portions of the source of the surplus value, it must not only organize, aggrandize labor as wage-labor, it must simultaneously aggrandize and expel such labor from the production process. The more capital accumulates, the more it exchanges itself with wage-labor, the less, relatively, of itself it exchanges with wage-labor. And it is this contradiction, dialectical contradiction, that leads to the overproduction of capital and the decline in the rate of profit. The more capitalist property expands, the less that property is capable of providing the return that is necessarily the end, and the beginning, the realization and the extinction of capital's circuits. Now these processes of capital are historical, material, social processes. Marx wasn't making philosophical inquiries, no more than he weas making a "new" political economy. Capital is no work of political economy. It is the history of capitalism's internal metabolism, almost like a teasing-apart of the strands of DNA to find the patterns of replication. Economics is nothing but concentrated history. History is the social organization of labor. Marx really is, or supposed to be, the end of philosophy and political economy. I think Marx makes this breakthrough most evident not so much in the Theses on Feuerbach, but in two later works, Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850, and, IMO, the 2nd greatest work of historical materialism ever produced, The 18th Brumaire... (Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution being number 1). And of course, there is Marx's preface to the 2nd edition of Vol 1, when he explicitly declares himself a dialectician.... From sartesian at earthlink.net Sat Oct 3 09:22:23 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 11:22:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains Message-ID: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> Think this article posted by Fred is a wee bit late to the party. It, the article, is an old "on the one hand..." But on the other more recent hand, we see tremendous overinvestment in fixed assets in China, we see tremendous overproduction in aluminum, cement, steel, The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that China's State Council, warning of excess capacity, has set rules to limit investment in seven sectors of the economy and has banned, literally banned investment or construction in any new aluminum smelters for the next three years. We know that in the steel industry, overcapacity for the domestic market in China is around 25% with the export market severely impacted by the global contraction. China has 800 steel producers, with the largest BaoSteel producing about 35 million tons per year, just about 5% of total output, and producing an amount equivalent to that of Nippon Steel with 6-7 times the labor force. The aluminum market has become the "model" of a speculative play [almost as severe as the run up in oil prices a year ago], with spot prices rising from $1300 per ton to $2100 per ton while stocks on hand have nearly doubled from 2.4 million tons to 4.5 million tons between January and August of this year AND global consumption has declined 7 percent. That hssss.. you can barely hear behind the noise of the cash registers? That's the gas starting to slowly leak out of the Chinese balloon. From lnp3 at panix.com Sat Oct 3 11:53:25 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:53:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Columbia University Business School: toxic ideology dump Message-ID: <4AC78F95.8070308@panix.com> As part of the fall-out from the financial crisis, business schools are now seen as training grounds for what FDR once called malefactors of great wealth?the more prestigious the business school, the worse the malefaction obviously. Columbia University?s Business School Dean, R. Glenn Hubbard, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush and has been one of the nation?s more intransigent defenders of free market fundamentalism. While it is difficult to rank people such as Hubbard in terms of the harm done to American workers, he surely is a finalist in the competition for evil economists. Hubbard is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country?s foulest neoconservative think-tanks, and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal editorial page where he defended Bush?s tax cuts for the rich, scuttling the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and most recently defended the health insurance industry against even the mildest reforms. Apparently not content to ravage American society, he has donned a safari cap and penetrated the Dark Continent in order to help the benighted natives achieve prosperity. For those who follow the activities of a-list economists, it should be well understood that ?helping the Africans out of poverty? is a must for those aspiring to the Nobel Prize and other honors bestowed by bourgeois society. read full article: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/columbia-business-school-toxic-ideology-dump/ From pt_costello at yahoo.com Sat Oct 3 13:31:40 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 12:31:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] women, rape and marxmale Message-ID: <570261.24181.qm@web63105.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Forget Polanski. I am talking about what Jeff articulated so well: insensitivity to rape and general indifference to women's issues. Does anybody care that this is pretty much a male only forum? Yes? No? This is a group of men discussing rape. Perhaps I was wrong to assume that because this list is called Marxist, a woman's perspective on women's issues would be welcome. Ian Pace wrote: "Total and utter bullshit. Just that some (I would hope most, in terms of how I understand Marxism) think rational responses are more valuable than mere indignation. You could say exactly the same thing as you do about the murder of a child, in the case of, say, a debate about capital punishment. The tabloids and the right wing media will often respond exactly as you do in such situations, using emotive rhetoric to try and shut down debate on the subject." Pat: Rape is in fact different since it relates to the historic oppression of women. Rape is used to control, humiliate and objectify women. The murder of a child, while certainly heinous, is not necessarily related to women's oppression. I am sorry that you do not see the difference. As for indignation, I guess you thought Che was full of total and utter bullshit when he said "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine." Louis Proyect wrote: Frankly, there is no response that is worth making especially since this is merely an Internet mailing list and not a revolutionary organization. If it was a revolutionary organization, such concerns would loom a lot larger. I think it would be a huge mistake to confuse a listserv with a group that aspires to make a revolution. Pat: Please don't think that I imagined this to be some kind of revolutionary organization. I assure you I would NEVER do that. Louis P: All you would be missing is stimulating conversation, not that much different than you hear at a cocktail party for highly educated and class-conscious people. Pat: A cocktail party? You look more like this to me, old boy: http://www.lionbrandyarnstudio.com/lionStudioBlog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ca002791.jpg Forgive me for inferring from your statement here... "All of us should strive to keep an even keel here, especially as capitalism enters a phase of profound crisis--to use a cliche. We really need powerful brains here to analyze the period we are in, so more of the cerebrum and less of the spleen, please." ....that you hope that the powerful Marxmale brains will actually do something with the analysis. Now i realize it is just intended as entertaining cocktail chatter. Thanks for clearing that up. That is all i have to say on the matter. Must get back to work. My work is never done, you know, though i work from sun to sun. Very little time for cocktail chatter. From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Oct 3 14:22:36 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 16:22:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions Message-ID: <20091003.162239.6352.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Please note that more of this discussion concerning Rosa L can be found at: http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectics-and-political-t118934/index.html On Sat, 3 Oct 2009 11:05:10 -0400 "S. Artesian" writes: > I should first say, I'm no philosopher. I've read Marx, Feuerbach, > Hegel, > Russell, Wittgenstein. Mostly Marx, then Hegel... Hegel brought me > to > tears, and not tears of joy. > > OK I'm no philosopher. Neither was Marx, although unlike Marx, I > never > studied the subject formally. > > My take on Rosa's debate is a little unusual, if not for others , > certainly > for me, being a partisan of dialectics-- at least I think I am-- or > I think > ____________________________________________________________ Earn your accounting degree online. Free info. Click Now! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTEP2pJe80fvI4Sl4Yj0owvWADLbc0NXwFkPpfrUBJcU8ICFp1a8OM/ From sartesian at earthlink.net Sat Oct 3 15:03:57 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 17:03:57 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] women, rape and marxmale References: <570261.24181.qm@web63105.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think we care, no matter what our differing views on Polanski might be. I don't see how we could be Marxists and not care. The role and quantity of female labor, uncompensated social not just domestic female, labor has expanded dramatically across the entire panorama of capitalism-- from the maquilladoras, to the food processing plants in North Carolina, to electronics assembly, to agro-industry in Chile, to textile production everywhere. And the additional brutality inflicted upon women to maintain and increase that exploitation is mind-boggling. Once in Havana, in 1999, I remember a young woman from Venezuela interrupting Fidel at a conference on globalization and economic development when Fidel was talking about the "new face" of poverting in the emerging countries. She stood up and said, "How can you talk about the 'new face' of poverty? The new face of poverty is the face of young women." Fidel applauded her. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Costello" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2009 3:31 PM Subject: [Marxism] women, rape and marxmale > Forget Polanski. I am talking about what Jeff articulated so well: > insensitivity to rape and general indifference to women's issues. Does > anybody care that this is pretty much a male only forum? Yes? No? This is > a group of men discussing rape. Perhaps I was wrong to assume that because > this list is called Marxist, a woman's perspective on women's issues would > be welcome. > > > Ian Pace wrote: > > "Total and utter bullshit. Just that some (I would hope most, in terms of > how > I understand Marxism) think rational responses are more valuable than mere > indignation. > > You could say exactly the same thing as you do about the murder of a > child, > in the case of, say, a debate about capital punishment. The tabloids and > the > right wing media will often respond exactly as you do in such situations, > using emotive rhetoric to try and shut down debate on the subject." > > Pat: > > Rape is in fact different since it relates to the historic oppression of > women. Rape is used to control, humiliate and objectify women. The murder > of a child, while certainly heinous, is not necessarily related to women's > oppression. I am sorry that you do not see the difference. > > As for indignation, I guess you thought Che was full of total and utter > bullshit when he said "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, > then you are a comrade of mine." > > Louis Proyect wrote: > > Frankly, there is no response that is worth making especially since this > is merely an Internet mailing > list and not a revolutionary organization. If it was a revolutionary > organization, such concerns would loom a lot larger. I think it would be > a huge mistake to confuse a listserv with a group that aspires to make a > revolution. > > > Pat: > > Please don't think that I imagined this to be some kind of revolutionary > organization. I assure you I would NEVER do that. > > > Louis P: > > All you would be missing is stimulating conversation, not that much > different > than you hear at a cocktail party for highly educated and > class-conscious people. > > > > Pat: > > A cocktail party? You look more like this to me, old boy: > > http://www.lionbrandyarnstudio.com/lionStudioBlog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ca002791.jpg > > Forgive me for inferring from your statement here... > > "All of us should strive to keep an even keel here, especially as > capitalism > enters a phase of profound crisis--to use a cliche. We really need > powerful brains here to analyze the period we are in, so more of the > cerebrum and less of the spleen, please." > > ....that you hope that the powerful Marxmale brains will actually do > something with the analysis. Now i realize it is just intended as > entertaining cocktail chatter. Thanks for clearing that up. > > That is all i have to say on the matter. Must get back to work. My work is > never done, you know, though i work from sun to sun. Very little time for > cocktail chatter. > > > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Sat Oct 3 15:12:57 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 21:12:57 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don?t have much time to comment on this, but I just wanted to make a point. It?s understandable that after the asinine vulgarities of dialectical materialism, some people, like Rosa here, should feel aversion for anything dialectical. But for all intents and purposes, Rosa, the Wittgenstenian-Trotskyist-Marxist, who is pretty avid at the quote-mongering game as long as the quotes ?sound? to her as something she (?) would agree with, wants to resuscitate a debate which Marx had already put in ash-heap of history in his twenties. The question for Rosa is ?what is dialectical contradiction??, she is looking for a higher rationality than that of formal contradiction, of course, leaving the whole presupposed metaphysic of formal logic totally unquestioned. A good critique of this blindness can be found in the Hegelian philosopher Errol Harris, surely that has all the caveats of him being a defender of some liberalized version of Hegel, with a bag-full of Spinozism on the side, but still, a pretty clear reference (see his ?Formal, Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking?) if Hegel?s obscure style throws you off?the cliff. The question is not whether dialectical logic is more ?rational? than formal logic, the essence of the matter is in that both are LOGICS, they are a manifestation of alienated consciousness, which as external (?out-there?) modes of thinking fail miserably in grasping the internal, truly historical (history being a process), dynamic of the human species? appropriation of Nature. In this sense, as Alfred Sohn-Rethel (whose work, ?Intellectual and Manual Labor?, I highly recommend,) puts it, that ?social being determines consciousness? is something that a Marxist, beyond any ?isms, should understand in its full literal sense. Why? Because the real question is: ?what is the dialectic for?? And, as crass as this may sound in this format, the dialectic is a method (and there is a whole lot to say about this obviously, though if I can recommend one more thing, the book by Jindrich Zeleny, ?The Logic of Marx?, despite its tasteless title and that it?s more of a summary, has some good pearls on the methodological issue, as regards the analytical and synthetical stages, etc.) to ascertain the objectivity of the real process of subsumption of labor under capital, and it is superior to the formalized scientific method, in that it goes beyond any appearance by not hypostasizing the external immediacy of sense-data (itself a result of the fetishism of the commodity form), by, that is, penetrating the object which one is trying to appropriate consciously until one attains the objective knowledge of this object so as to fully deploy the necessity of one?s action. It is a method then to provide Marxists a scientific critique of science, science being ?the? modality of production of relative surplus-value, that is, the production of a scientific consciousness, wherein lies the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class. I?m not a big fan of Adorno -the fact that I haven?t read him enough might have something to do with that- but this quote of his rings very true to me: ?If the Hegelian synthesis did work out, it would only be the wrong one.? _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Sat Oct 3 16:30:37 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 22:30:37 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Sexual Assault In-Reply-To: <5ADFCB0E372A4BA58EC104F2E6A41BF6@office1pc> References: <5ADFCB0E372A4BA58EC104F2E6A41BF6@office1pc> Message-ID: For what its worth, a felony criminal conviction by itself "proves up" a civil case based on the same conduct. > From: ffeldman at bellatlantic.net > Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 05:57:33 -0400 > Subject: [Marxism] Sexual Assault > To: tcod at hotmail.com > > If the lawyer thinks you have a good case bring a civil suit against the > asshole. In a civil suit there is a much higher chance the attacker will > be exposed as a sexual predator and lose his bank account and all the rest > of his stuff, instead of smirking as the criminal court judge says, "case > dismissed." > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tcod%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft?s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Oct 3 16:46:14 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 18:46:14 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Sexual Assault Message-ID: <20091003.184615.6924.3.farmelantj@juno.com> On Sat, 3 Oct 2009 22:30:37 +0000 Tom Cod writes: > > For what its worth, a felony criminal conviction by itself "proves > up" a civil case based on the same conduct. But I think Fred's point is that very often rape victims have a better chance prevailing against their attackers in civil suits than they would in the criminal courts, where very often it is the victim who gets put on trial. Also, the standards of proof required to prevail in a civil suit differ from those that hold in the criminal courts. To get a criminal conviction, the prosecution is supposed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas in a civil suit, the standard of proof is by a preponderance of the evidence. To take a couple of examples involving homicides rather than rape- O.J. Simpson was not convicted of murder, but he was successfully sued for "wrongful death" by the Goldmans. In my own state, Massachusetts, we had a doctor who was widely suspected of having murdered his girlfriend, a fellow physician. He not only was never convicted of murder, he was never even charged. But eventually, the family of his murdered girlfriend, successfully sued him for "wrongful death." He got into criminal troouble because during his civil trial he attempted pay an acquaintance of his to provide perjured evidence on his behalf. For that he was criminally convicted of perjury and is doing time for that. Jim F. > > From: ffeldman at bellatlantic.net > > Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 05:57:33 -0400 > > Subject: [Marxism] Sexual Assault > > To: tcod at hotmail.com > > > > > If the lawyer thinks you have a good case bring a civil suit > against the > > asshole. In a civil suit there is a much higher chance the > attacker will > > be exposed as a sexual predator and lose his bank account and all > the rest > > of his stuff, instead of smirking as the criminal court judge > says, "case > > dismissed." > > ____________________________________________________________ Click here for free info on Graduate Degrees. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTKKsqLbWa9zDYxY4qmMZyrNL96xjAYIZTUfHfnrb0ZPnhqCveatTC/ From tcod at hotmail.com Sat Oct 3 16:57:57 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 22:57:57 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] crime In-Reply-To: <4AC3BAE5.6020606@wanadoo.fr> References: <4AC3BAE5.6020606@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: > Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:09:09 +0200 > From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr > Subject: [Marxism] crime > To: tcod at hotmail.com Are you sure that was all that Mao was about? Didn't he and the CCP have some involvement in the epochal social revolution that occurred in China in the last century? Just seems like a right wing comic book version of history papered over with leftist rhetoric. Was Mao a tyrant? could be? but what kind of a tyrant was he, what social forces were behind him and what was his historical role in Chinese history? What was his relationship with the masses of workers and peasants who could care less about the petty personal intrigues among leadership cliques. Henry VIII was a tyrant and a pig who had two of his wives killed (evidence Mao did that?), but to just disparage him on that basis without alluding to or appreciating his broader role in English history in terms of say expulsion of the Catholic Church would reflect an impoverished view of history. > Mao was an awful tyrant. In order to reach the top of the Chinese > Communist Party, he , either, betrayed his "friends" to the Kuomintang, > or had them "confess" and executed them on trumped-up charges . He had > four wives, two of which he cynically caused to be killed in order to > re-marry. Mao was truly a despicable example of a human being. > Preoccupied only by himself and how he could out-wit the other members > of the Politburo. > _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Oct 3 17:04:09 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:04:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] crime Message-ID: <20091003.190409.6924.4.farmelantj@juno.com> On Sat, 3 Oct 2009 22:57:57 +0000 Tom Cod writes: > > > Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:09:09 +0200 > > From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr > > Subject: [Marxism] crime > > To: tcod at hotmail.com > Are you sure that was all that Mao was about? Didn't he and the CCP > have some involvement in the epochal social revolution that occurred > in China in the last century? Just seems like a right wing comic > book version of history papered over with leftist rhetoric. Was Mao > a tyrant? could be? but what kind of a tyrant was he, what social > forces were behind him and what was his historical role in Chinese > history? What was his relationship with the masses of workers and > peasants who could care less about the petty personal intrigues > among leadership cliques. Henry VIII was a tyrant and a pig who had > two of his wives killed (evidence Mao did that?), but to just > disparage him on that basis without alluding to or appreciating his > broader role in English history in terms of say expulsion of the > Catholic Church would reflect an impoverished view of history. > > The British historian E.H. Carr, in his book, "What is History?" very effectively critiqued the kind of moralistic approach to the evaluationof political leaders that Dan seemed to take in his post. Jim F. ____________________________________________________________ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYdEBNJUwanFa0hCjz1I0sFJycQDIoaPbJjl7icp6euEXgVFUoY/ From tcod at hotmail.com Sat Oct 3 17:05:13 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 23:05:13 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] The Victim's Words: Samantha Geimer In-Reply-To: <581572.78060.qm@web112616.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <132870.40651.qm@web63101.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: the idea is that there are broader issues involved with crime that go beyond an individual victim's wishes. Thus her view should be considered but is not necessarily dispositive. We see this in domestic violence cases a lot. > Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:23:35 -0700 > From: adambrichmond at yahoo.com > Subject: Re: [Marxism] The Victim's Words: Samantha Geimer > To: tcod at hotmail.com > > "I am stunned that someone on this list would defend the rape ...." > Have I defended a rape? > I have given the right of the victim of the crime to speak. You apparently disagree with her conclusions to have her own say in the matter for the greater good of the bourgeois courts. The judge proved his inability to honor the plea agreement. > And a million dollars, or what ever she negotiated, probably helped her more that his jailing. The question here is who decides. Does the court deserve a second chance, despite the victim's opinion. > Adam > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tcod%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From sartesian at earthlink.net Sat Oct 3 17:09:21 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:09:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions References: Message-ID: <9B6351691DC44EB5B78B8D83BC3721E3@dmsthinkpad> That is a very incisive post, Leonardo, and just about condenses and resolves the entire issue, IMO. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leonardo Kosloff" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2009 5:12 PM Subject: [Marxism] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions I don?t have much time to comment on this, but I just wanted to make a point. It?s understandable that after the asinine vulgarities of dialectical materialism, some people, like Rosa here, should feel aversion for anything dialectical. But for all intents and purposes, Rosa, the Wittgenstenian-Trotskyist-Marxist, who is pretty avid at the quote-mongering game as long as the quotes ?sound? to her as something she (?) would agree with, wants to resuscitate a debate which Marx had already put in ash-heap of history in his twenties. The question for Rosa is ?what is dialectical contradiction??, she is looking for a higher rationality than that of formal contradiction, of course, leaving the whole presupposed metaphysic of formal logic totally unquestioned. A good critique of this blindness can be found in the Hegelian philosopher Errol Harris, surely that has all the caveats of him being a defender of some liberalized version of Hegel, with a bag-full of Spinozism on the side, but still, a pretty clear reference (see his ?Formal, Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking?) if Hegel?s obscure style throws you off?the cliff. The question is not whether dialectical logic is more ?rational? than formal logic, the essence of the matter is in that both are LOGICS, they are a manifestation of alienated consciousness, which as external (?out-there?) modes of thinking fail miserably in grasping the internal, truly historical (history being a process), dynamic of the human species? appropriation of Nature. In this sense, as Alfred Sohn-Rethel (whose work, ?Intellectual and Manual Labor?, I highly recommend,) puts it, that ?social being determines consciousness? is something that a Marxist, beyond any ?isms, should understand in its full literal sense. Why? Because the real question is: ?what is the dialectic for?? And, as crass as this may sound in this format, the dialectic is a method (and there is a whole lot to say about this obviously, though if I can recommend one more thing, the book by Jindrich Zeleny, ?The Logic of Marx?, despite its tasteless title and that it?s more of a summary, has some good pearls on the methodological issue, as regards the analytical and synthetical stages, etc.) to ascertain the objectivity of the real process of subsumption of labor under capital, and it is superior to the formalized scientific method, in that it goes beyond any appearance by not hypostasizing the external immediacy of sense-data (itself a result of the fetishism of the commodity form), by, that is, penetrating the object which one is trying to appropriate consciously until one attains the objective knowledge of this object so as to fully deploy the necessity of one?s action. It is a method then to provide Marxists a scientific critique of science, science being ?the? modality of production of relative surplus-value, that is, the production of a scientific consciousness, wherein lies the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class. I?m not a big fan of Adorno -the fact that I haven?t read him enough might have something to do with that- but this quote of his rings very true to me: ?If the Hegelian synthesis did work out, it would only be the wrong one.? From snedekerg at verizon.net Sat Oct 3 17:13:41 2009 From: snedekerg at verizon.net (george snedeker) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:13:41 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] question for discussion Message-ID: <016a01ca447f$25b08060$2b01a8c0@dell> We have a Dean of Students at my college who was hired a year and a half ago without a normal search. Prior to becoming Dean of Students, he had no experience in higher education and had been working as a lawyer. It was recently discovered that in 2008 the Dean was disbarred from practicing law for Professional Misconduct. Three of his former clients charged him with taking their money and failing to properly represent them. The gist of their charges is that he did not file motions or other legal documents for his clients when he was supposed to and their cases suffered as a result. One of his clients was a Transit Worker who had sued the MTA for discriminating against him. In a higher court ruling, the court mentions that the Transit Worker had not gotten adequate legal representation by our Dean when he was his lawyer. The cases go back to 2002-5 before he started working at the college. The actual disbarment took place in 2008. My question to you is does the disbarment of the Dean of Students matter? Does his being disbarred have any relevance to his employment at the college and his performing the duties of Dean of Students? I don't yet know what the Administration of the College will do about the Dean since it has just become public that he was disbarred in 2008. I am the Chair of the Student Life Committee at my college. We have worked with the Dean of Students up to this point. I am not fond of him since he has not been very cooperative with my committee, but I have done my best to work with him. Our committee has taken no actions toward him. I have informed the members of the committee about the disbarment and told them where they can find the official ruling in his case online, but we have not discussed the disbarment of the Dean of Students in our committee. I would like to pose the disbarment of the Dean of Students as representing both ethical and political questions and would like to hear people's opinions about the issues posed by the disbarment of the Dean. George From lnp3 at panix.com Sat Oct 3 18:33:31 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:33:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Richard Greener letter to Alexander Cockburn Message-ID: <4AC7ED5B.7050000@panix.com> This appeared on the latest Counterpunch. Greener is a very old friend of mine from Bard College, a heart transplant recipient, and successful novelist who blogs at http://papadablogger.blogspot.com/. From: Richard Greener Subject: Obama's "Ghost" Ayers... (This was prompted by an item in last week?s Diary noting a claim made in Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage by Christopher Andersen, that in preparing Dreams from My Father Obama had made taped interviews with relatives about his family history, and, according to Andersen, those "oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers".) As an author and novelist (The Knowland Retribution, The Lacey Confession), I know the process for deducting a writer's expenses when figuring taxable income rather than simply paying tax on gross advances and royalties. Obama's tax returns have been made public and they show no deduction for a "ghostwriter" and no future royalty payments to one either. Since Obama has now reported more than $8 million in book earnings, one would have to believe he has either paid his accused ghost - Ayers - nothing whatsoever, or that he has paid taxes on 100% of his earnings when he had a perfectly legal deduction for whatever he paid to a "ghostwriter." As a point of comparison, look to John McCain who deducts 50% of his book earnings ? the money he paid to Mark Salter - and Hillary Clinton who also reports deductions of more $2.5 million for her "ghostwriter." It's more than just silly to say William Ayers wrote Obama's books. It's absurd. In addition to the financial evidence, I can tell you for certain that if Ayers was that good ? he'd be cashing in to the tune of millions writing similar books for others. I'm sure my agent would love to have such a successful "ghost" on her client list. If the "Birthers" are idiots and morons... the "Bookers" are so stupid maybe they neglected to deduct things as simple as mortgage interest on their own IRS tax returns. Richard Greener Roswell, GA From markalause at gmail.com Sat Oct 3 18:57:03 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 20:57:03 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] question for discussion In-Reply-To: <016a01ca447f$25b08060$2b01a8c0@dell> References: <016a01ca447f$25b08060$2b01a8c0@dell> Message-ID: We have to remember that the funders have increasingly insisted that standards in higher education mirror more closely those in "the private sector," ie., the corporate world. For this reason, if no other, the answer to whether an administrator having been disbarred as a lawyer matters is almost surely the same as to the following related questions.... Does it matter if they lie to the search committee about their credentials? Does it matter if they claim on their c.v. to have written something that's actually available, in print and under someone else's name? Does it matter whether a certain portion of the funds they administer disappears as it passes through their fingers? Does it matter whether they regularly make decisions over people immensely more qualified than they are? Does it matter if they were essentially fired from their last job--but their former employer is giving them a good recommendation because they want to be rid of them without getting sued? Does it matter if they are the subject of a Federal investigation over civil rights violations? Over dummying statistics? Over the handling of public funds that has resulted in Federal criminal investigations? ML From russo.matthew9 at gmail.com Sat Oct 3 19:51:12 2009 From: russo.matthew9 at gmail.com (Matthew Russo) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 18:51:12 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski Message-ID: <1b7033e60910031851y2c769472qfa47e7cae780b752@mail.gmail.com> That it is a class issue does warrant some Marxist attention, but beyond that, yes, let's move on. That Polanski should be tossed in the slammer as a sterling example to all and sundry _precisely_ because he is a member of the ruling liberal intelligentsia is the relevant principle in play here. -Matt I've been reading this list on and off for a while now and have to say that I can't believe the amount of bandwidth that has been wasted discussing Roman Polanski. Why aren't you all discussing McKenzie Phillip's incestuous relationship with her father, too? I personally could care less what happens to Polanski since the question of innocence or guilt has already been answered by Polanski himself. His credentials do not excuse him from prosecution, nor should he be dealt with differently in terms of sentencing because of his Hollywood profile. My point is, what the hell does this have to do with Marxism beyond a passing interest? It certainly doesn't deserve the three-five days of debate among supposed Marxists that has already occurred on this list. -ron jacobs From adambrichmond at yahoo.com Sat Oct 3 20:12:06 2009 From: adambrichmond at yahoo.com (Adam Richmond) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:12:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] The Victim's Words: Samantha Geimer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <222339.11160.qm@web112613.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Much of this discussion...if you can call it that.. has focused on the specific individuals in the case. ? The difference here is that the victim is discussing the case decades after the incident.? She puts into a perspective no one else can.? The domestic violence victims often are economically and emotionally tied to their tormentors.? Geimer has distance. She also points out the other oppression: the exploitative media. ?? From shmage at pipeline.com Sat Oct 3 20:40:50 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 22:40:50 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] crime In-Reply-To: References: <4AC3BAE5.6020606@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: On Oct 3, 2009, at 6:57 PM, Tom Cod wrote: > Was Mao a tyrant? could be? but what kind of a tyrant was he... > Henry VIII was a tyrant and a pig who had two of his wives killed > but to just disparage him on that basis without alluding to or > appreciating his broader role in English history in terms of say > expulsion of the Catholic Church would reflect an impoverished view > of history. > Of course, you'll never ever find an art historian who will tell you that the looting of the monasteries was anything but an atrocity, unparalleled until Mao, a prototypical yahoo, repeated the process on a much vaster scale in his "Cultural Revolution." And, pig that he was, Harry never caused a famine, let alone one that killed tens of millions. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From russo.matthew9 at gmail.com Sat Oct 3 20:56:00 2009 From: russo.matthew9 at gmail.com (Matthew Russo) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 19:56:00 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] 15.1 Million unemployed in US!!, Message-ID: <1b7033e60910031956h4a974e78yf5957bfe1843d32b@mail.gmail.com> You raise a good question. The problem is twofold: 1) the U.S. Left is largely petit-bourgeois and divorced from the working class (and its rising unemployment) and therefore gravitates to the Democratic Party as its natural political home, because 2) there is no independent - or even D.P.-dependent - mass working class movement in response to the economic crisis as of yet, and therefore no alternative force for middle class leftists to gravitate towards. The two conditions dialectically reinforce one another. Glum comparisons with conditions in the 1930's are in order, but don't overlook a positive flip-side of the absence of a substantial working class-oriented Left: the absence also of an organization such as the C.P. that was positioned to steer the working class movement back into the D.P., as well as the absence of the shining example of a bold bourgeois reformer to steer them towards: just compare the courageous FDR to the pathetically weak Obama. BTW, this latter difference is _not_ the product of an FDR urgently moving to head off the threat of an independent working class movement, whereas Obama does not face such an urgency; rather, it reflects the profound change in the resources (and subsequently historical character) of the U.S. ruling class that granted FDR tremendous room for maneuver - the U.S. ruling class "had a lot of reserves" as the stalinist line went in the old days. Indeed the U.S. bourgeoisie was the _only_ major ruling class capable of what we'd call "progressive reform" in what was otherwise a deeply reactionary decade everywhere else, including in Stalin's Soviet Union. OTOH Obama is incapable of enacting even reforms that would clearly benefit large sectors of the U.S. bourgeoisie such as lowering health care costs, for current example, a reform that would advance the competitive position of U.S. capital in the world market. FDR smashed the J.P. Morgan interest; Obama further strengthens Goldman Sachs and indeed the whole finance cartel. This is not because Obama does not face the threat of an independent working class movement, but because the finance cartel is absolutely essential to the maintenance of the outsized U.S. military apparatus and therefore the global geopolitical position of the U.S. The U.S. relies on this, rather than a mighty industrial base as it did in FDR's time. So do not expect a move towards reform even in the face of the emergence of the working class threat. Instead, expect just the opposite: intensified reaction. -Matt From bhandari at berkeley.edu Sat Oct 3 21:04:21 2009 From: bhandari at berkeley.edu (Rakesh Bhandari) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:04:21 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski In-Reply-To: <4AC6C861.3050304@berkeley.edu> References: <4AC6C861.3050304@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <4AC810B5.6080606@berkeley.edu> It's absurd to think that Marx, who campaigned against child labor, would have considered such a situation even possibly consensual. It's more than clear that he would have also thought the conveniently negligent mother nothing more than a hawker of a slave. And there are those who think that the state has socially constructed adulthood at 16 years of age and that nothing lies beyond this demarcation than--to wax Foucauldian-- the classifying technology of the state which is then understood as the primary instrument of oppression, instilling in youth a fear or even disdain for their own bodily pleasures that adult proletarian life will never be able to satisfy. Yet Katha and others are not inveighing against sexual experimentation among roughly same age teenagers; no one here is signing on to the Palin abstinence movement. I am in favor of sex education and birth control. And this white hot anarchist radicalism pays no attention to the actual maturity and biological and social development of a ninth grader in our culture, and no one who pays attention to this material reality--that is anyone who does not think that the achievement of adulthood is only an arbitrary state classificatory action, per radical social constructionism (see the criticism by Andrew Sayer in the Moral Significance of Class)-- can say that ninth graders can be consensual sex partners of forty year old adults. Those who rise here to the defense of Polanski sully Marx's name and discredit the great struggle for emancipation to which he devoted his life. And perhaps their intention is to discredit Marx by enlisting him in support of Polanski. At the very least what we have here are men concerned only with themselves, and they make me certain that I am not a Marxist. Rakesh From stthomas at uchicago.edu Sat Oct 3 22:13:30 2009 From: stthomas at uchicago.edu (Saul Thomas) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:13:30 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] Chinastudygroup relaunch Message-ID: <4AC820EA.2050102@uchicago.edu> China Study Group is pleased to announce the launch of its redesigned site: chinastudygroup.net China Study Group is a global group of scholars and activists concerned with carrying on the critical tradition of China-focused analysis best exemplified by William Hinton. The site has been completely redesigned, and a raft of new bloggers have joined our ranks. China Study Group provides alternative perspectives on China ? both its revolutionary past and today?s China in the context of globalization. Highlights of the new site: * reviews of Li Minqi's "The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy" and William Hinton's "Through a Glass Darkly: U.S. Views of the Chinese Revolution" * overview of recent workers' struggles in China * translations of important works by the Chinese left * daily China-related news updates * new bibliographies on China-related topics * much, much more! chinastudygroup.net contact: chinastudygroup at gmail.com From v_brown_au at yahoo.com.au Sun Oct 4 01:29:35 2009 From: v_brown_au at yahoo.com.au (Virginia Brown) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 00:29:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Max Lane in latest Direct Action - Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts Message-ID: <200066.52138.qm@web36806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Direct Action # 16: October, 2009 Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts By Max Lane, in Jakarta In the immediate aftermath of the July 8 Indonesian presidential election, the two losing sets of candidates alleged that there was widespread ballot fraud. Both the team of outgoing vice-president Jusuf Kalla of the Golkar party and retired army general Wiranto, leader of the Hanura party, and the team of Indonesia Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP) leader Megawati Sukarnoputri and Gerindra party leader Prabowo Subianto lodged complaints with the courts centred on discrepancies in the voter lists. However, this argie-bargie between the losers and re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was soon put to rest as the two losing teams, especially the PDIP and Gerindra, began their attempts to gain cabinet posts in Yudhoyono?s government. Not only did the noise about electoral fraud, but all the accusations about Yudhoyono and his new vice-president, economist Budiono, having ?neoliberal? rather than the opposition teams? ?peoples? economy? approach, appear to have been put aside ? at least until it is clear whether Yudhoyono gives them cabinet posts or not. The PDIP hopes to obtain the support of Yudhoyono?s Democratic Party for the election of Taufiq Kiemas, Megawati?s husband, to the position of speaker of the Peoples? Consultative Assembly (MPR), a body comprising the House of Representatives and the Council of Regional Representatives. The MPR sets the broad outlines of state policy on a five yearly basis and meets regularly on some other issues. As media discussion on this approach increased, it also became clear that the PDIP wanted to obtain cabinet posts. During the same period, Prabowo also arranged to have a one-on-one meeting with Yudhoyono where his possible appointment as Minister for Agriculture was discussed. It is not clear who asked whom first, but it soon leaked to the press. It was after these meetings that Prabowo finally held a press conference to congratulate Yudhoyono on his re-election, after holding out from doing this while claiming the election was undemocratic. There has also been a discussion and struggle inside Golkar as to whether it should be an opposition party or seek to remain in the government. This discussion was overshadowed recently when Kalla stated he would not seek re-election as Golkar chairperson. The party of deceased dictator Mohammed Suharto is now preparing a congress where four of the country?s weathiest capitalists will fight it out to be Golkar chairperson. Among the candidates are Aburizal Bakrie, possibly the richest person in the country; media baron Surya Polo; Tommy Suharto, millionaire conglomerate owner, convicted murderer and Suharto?s son; and Tutut Suharto, millionaire conglomerate owner and Suharto?s daughter. Bakrie is a minister in the current Yudhoyono cabinet. Little policy difference These post-election shenanigans simply repeat what happened before the election, during the process of putting together presidential tickets, revealing again that all of the parties involved are willing to cooperate with each other and that there is no real ideological and little policy difference between them. While there has been discussion and mention by all of the elite parties of the possibility of Yudhoyono broadening his coalition from beyond those who supported him during the election to include the PDIP, Gerindra and Golkar, he has still not yet announced his cabinet. Whether his negotiations with the PDIP and Gerindra were a tactic to expose the fakery of their oppositionist stances during the election or a genuine attempt to include them in a new governing coalition is not yet clear. A number of different orientations have emerged on the left in the aftermath of the presidential election. The Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), formerly led by Dita Sari, had adopted a position of alleged critical support for the Kalla-Wiranto ticket as well as for the Megawati-Prabowo ticket during the election campaign. The PRD organised a series of rallies of its own supporters denouncing Yudhoyono as a neoliberal politician, but not denouncing Kalla, despite him having been Yudhoyono?s vice-president for the past five years. Similarly Megawati, who began the neoliberal program of large-scale privatisation of state-owned enterprises during her 2001-04 presidency, was allowed to pass herself off as a supporter of ?peoples economy? without any criticism from the PRD. In one article by a PRD spokesperson, it was also argued that through rhetorical campaigning against neoliberalism in the lead-up to the election, retired general Prabowo had ?wiped out his sins? of organising the torture and disappearance of pro-democracy activists during the late Suharto era. It was even argued that the numbers involved ? 14 are still missing, presumed dead ? were minor compared to the victims of Yudhoyono?s neoliberal policies, forgetting that the disappearing of the 14, and the torturing of several others, were actually acts aimed at terrorising the whole pro-democracy movement. More: http://directaction.org.au/issue16/indonesia_oppositionists_seek_cabinet_posts From n.fredman.11 at scu.edu.au Sun Oct 4 03:27:49 2009 From: n.fredman.11 at scu.edu.au (Nick Fredman) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:27:49 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] Max Lane in latest Direct Action - Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts Message-ID: v_brown_au wrote: > Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts____ > > By Max Lane, in Jakarta > > ..... > In one article by a PRD spokesperson, it was also argued that > through rhetorical campaigning against neoliberalism in the lead-up > to the election, retired general Prabowo had "wiped out his sins" of > organising the torture and disappearance of pro-democracy activists > during the late Suharto era. It was even argued that the numbers > involved ? 14 are still missing, presumed dead ? were minor > compared to the victims of Yudhoyono's neoliberal policies, > forgetting that the disappearing of the 14, and the torturing of > several others, were actually acts aimed at terrorising the whole > pro-democracy movement. It's hard to know what to make of the quotation of four words without any indication of where they came from (apparently from some article by some unnamed PRD person), let alone what context these four words appeared in or what else the apparent PRD leader wrote. Max seems to escalating his campaign of dubious rhetorical tactics (disingenuous excision of a few words from their context, outright distortion, lecturing the PRD on things they've already clearly stated) in his now long-running factional intervention in the Indonesian far left. As I've written here before, perhaps Max is correct in some of his criticisms; I don't have the time or Indonesian language to thoroughly investigate. But considering his blatant distortion of what is readily available in English, my previous demonstration of which I'll re-paste in below, and utter silence about the PRD's previous history of critical support for bourgeois figures (let alone his own presumably still extant view of voting for Labor before Liberal), in my eyes Max has lost all credibility as an objective observer of the Indonesian far left, despite the usefulness of his more general analyses of Indonesia (note: there may be a detailed exposition of the PRD's own views publicly available in English soon, which I can relate is very different from Max's distorted account). Below is what I wrote before, referring to a previous article by Max at http://directaction.org.au/issue14/the_indonesian_left_and_green_left_weekly . Perhaps, as Max claims the PRD made no criticisms of these figures, the clear characterisations of Prabowo as a murderer of pro-democracy activists and Megawati as a neolioberal and both as cynical opportunist members of the "oligarchic elites", given by the PRD writers below, were just for the benefit of Green Left readers and not repeated in any form anywhere in Indonesia. And perhaps it will snow in Jakarta for Christmas. Here's what I wrote and quoted before: For example Max claims: > Now the PRD/Papernas line is framed within the assertion that in the > 2009 presidential election there was a ?contest between pro-people > policies versus pro-capital ones?. The alleged champion of the ?pro- > people policies? is ?Prabowo Subiyanto...The new PRD/Papernas line > was oriented towards giving electoral support to General Prabowo Well you'll have to excuse me for interpreting the actual article, as opposed to the minimalist quotes Max selects, as meaning that the stated Papernas line was framed within and oriented towards organising mass actions and making demands on bourgeois politicians while explaining the latter's demagogic nature pretty clearly: From http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/801/41260 > Indonesia: Challenging the neo-liberal regime > > More than 2500 people from the Volunteers of People?s Struggle for > the Liberation of Motherland (SPARTAN) held a festive anti- > neoliberalism protest in front of the National Election Commission > on July 1 in Jakarta. > > The multi-sector coalition, initiated by the People?s Democratic > Party (PRD) to intervene in the 2009 election, held similar protests > involving more than 1200 people in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. > > Hundreds rallied in Surabaya, Medan, Lampung, and protests occurred > in 11 other cities... > > ...Until the rise of neoliberalism as an issue in this year?s > presidential election, previous electoral contests did not involve a > contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones. > > However, the bitter truth is that this development is not directly > caused by any advances for progressive and democratic forces. > Rather, it comes from a conflict within the oligarchic elites. This > specifically involves Prabowo Subiyanto, a retired lieutenant- > general who commanded the notorious Kopasus elite troops involved in > the kidnappings and killings of pro-democracy activists in 1998. > > Lately, the content of Prabowo?s speeches are almost identical to > the arguments of progressives in recent years. This is both the way > he explains the nature of neoliberalism as well as, to a degree, the > proposed economic solutions. > > Prabowo is running for vice-president with the presidential > candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri in this election. Is his populism an > illusion, considering that Megawati carried out a neoliberal agenda > when she was in power between 2001-2004? > > Only time will tell... > > ...[Papernas is among] those who focus their attack against the most > obvious representation of neoliberalism, Yudhoyono, while remaining > critical of the other candidates. > > For this sector, intervening in the elections is a way of promoting, > and seeking to organise around, anti-neoliberal policies. This is > what the SPARTAN-organised protests have sought to do. > > Supporting this view, the National Liberation Party of Unity > (Papernas) have said that Yudhoyono?s rivals who speak against > neoliberalism still have to prove that they are not just ?thieves > who shout thief?. > > Anti-neoliberalism cannot be demonstrated only through debates and > advertisements, but through concrete measures such as the > nationalisation of the oil and mineral industry, cancellation of > foreign debt and a national industrialisation program. So whatever criticisms of the PRD/Papernas might be valid, they did use the elections to mobilise some several thousand people around radical demands. Did the boycott campaign of Max's favoured group achieve much? (Max does not seem to mention it). From daynegoodwin at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 05:17:25 2009 From: daynegoodwin at gmail.com (Dayne Goodwin) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 05:17:25 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] capitalists' two-party political system: a case study Message-ID: Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout By Sebastian Jones The Nation magazine October 19, 2009 . . . Taken as a whole, Gephardt's success represents two distinct problems. For Democrats, it raises the legitimate question of whether his ideological shift from progressive populist to big business champion is indicative of where the entire party is headed after two successive electoral victories. For Washington, it exposes the rot at the core and the insidious manner in which Gephardt has harnessed his media-anointed, colleague-respected role as an expert on issues of labor and universal healthcare to work against reforms for both. While it is well within Gephardt's rights to make money representing every anti-labor, anti-environmental, anti-universal healthcare client he can find, the former Congressman cannot have it both ways. Neither can the Democratic Party. In 2006 the top issue for voters was Washington's "culture of corruption," epitomized by Tom DeLay's K Street Project and Jack Abramoff's illegal excesses. Then, as in the 2008 campaign, Democrats were happy to decry the influence of lobbyists and special interests at every turn. As an electoral strategy, it worked brilliantly, but there has been little real reform to match the rhetoric. So it is hardly surprising that men like Gephardt continue to be welcome in polite progressive company, to be treated as statesmen by the media and their Congressional colleagues, and to serve as ostensibly neutral experts on issues they are heavily invested in on behalf of their new employers. Progressives would be fooling themselves to think the Gephardts of the Beltway are any different from their Republican predecessors. In fact, when it comes to cynically exploiting his reputation to profit his new employers, Gephardt is worse. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/jones From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 06:45:16 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:45:16 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 8 GI's killed by Afghan insurgents Message-ID: <4AC898DC.2000804@panix.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100400778.html Eight U.S. Troops Die in Attack on Afghan Outpost By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 4, 2009 6:35 AM KABUL, Oct. 4 -- Firing rockets and rifles, Taliban militiamen attacked American and Afghan military outposts in a daylong siege on Saturday that killed eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan security forces in one of the deadliest battles in months, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. The fighting began early Saturday morning and raged throughout the day in a remote region of eastern Afghanistan in Nurestan province, which borders Pakistan. Staging their attack from steep mountainsides that overlook the outposts in the valley below, on a morning when weather made visibility poor, the Taliban fighters attacked the small American and Afghan bases using rifles, machine guns, grenades and rockets, according to U.S. military officials. By Sunday morning, when the U.S. military made the attack public in a statement, the area was "largely secure but I do think there is still some activity," said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman. In addition to the eight soldiers killed, several others were injured, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, but he did not specify the number. The American soldiers called in ground reinforcements, along with attack helicopter, airplanes and surveillance drones during the fighting. U.S. forces eventually repelled the attack while inflicting "a significant amount of casualties" on insurgents, Smith said. Due to the "very challenging terrain," the insurgents had "pretty effective firing positions," Smith said. "It was obviously a very, very difficult day." "Virtually everything that could be thrown at it was thrown at it," Smith said of the American response to the attack. The U.S. military said it was not immediately clear how many insurgents were involved in the fighting. The attack involved Taliban fighters and appeared to be led by a local commander of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujaheddin leader during the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The attack took place in a sparsely populated area of forested mountains near the town of Kamdeysh. The deputy police chief of Nurestan province, Mohammad Farouq, said the insurgents intended to seize control of the Kamdeysh area and that hundreds took part in the fighting. He said more than 20 Afghan soldiers and police have gone missing since the fighting began and may have been taken hostage. "Americans always want to fight in Afghanistan," said Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, who took credit for the attack by telephone. "If the Americans want to increase their troops, we will increase our fighters as well." He said the battle began about 6 a.m. Saturday and involved 250 Taliban fighters. He claimed that dozens of American and Afghan soldiers were killed, along with seven Taliban fighters. Mujahid also claimed that the district police chief and intelligence chief were among the hostages, but that could not be confirmed. Farouq, the deputy police chief, said the attack, the biggest his province has seen, was highly organized and began by taking out the police radio system. "Since the attack began I've been unable to communicate with the police chief. We are still trying to find out where he is," Farouq said. The American soldiers from this outpost were scheduled to depart the area as part of the new U.S. strategy to focus on securing areas with larger populations. Capt. Mathias said the soldiers at the outpost were not expected to leave this month and had not yet begun to prepare for their departure when they came under attack. Smith, who did not specify the number of American soldiers at the outpost, said such isolated bases at times have only "limited impact" against the insurgents. The provincial governor, Jamaluddin Badar, said that Taliban had regularly attacked American and Afghan government facilities in the Kamdeysh area. The Taliban leadership has appointed a shadow governor in the province, Mullah Dost Muhammad, and has opened a training camp in the forest, he said. "I have already warned the central government to help us and send more Afghan soldiers, and I warned the American soldiers they need to be more serious and stop the Taliban," Badar said in a telephone interview. "But unfortunately, nobody listened to me." American deaths in Afghanistan have risen sharply this year as Taliban militiamen have gained in strength and numbers and more U.S. forces are involved in operations to combat them, in places such as southern Afghanistan's Helmand province. American soldiers have had to confront an expanding insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, where fighters can easily slip across the Pakistani border to take refuge. In a separate incident Saturday, another U.S. serviceman was killed in eastern Afghanistan in a bombing. The Nurestan province attack -- in its severity and location -- bore a striking resemblance to a deadly battle in July 2008 in the tiny village of Wanat, in the same region, which left nine U.S. soldiers dead and 27 wounded after several hours of fighting. That battle prompted three investigations and was cited by many as an example of what was wrong with the American military approach to fighting the insurgency. The Wanat attack contributed to the change in strategy to move soldiers from remote areas where they didn't have the forces to defeat the insurgents and move them to safer, more populated areas. After the fighting began Saturday, the Afghan military sent a battalion of reinforcements by helicopter to the area, and began searching houses, said Gen. Zahir Azimi, a Defense Ministry spokesman. Afghan officials said at least one policeman and one soldier died in the fighting, and at least one other Afghan soldier was injured. Badar, the provincial governor, said he was unaware of American plans to abandon their outpost in the area. He said that his province has a shortage of Afghan soldiers and an incompetent police force. The province is at risk of falling to the Taliban if the Americans pull out, he said. "I request that they stay. If they leave, it will be very dangerous for Nurestan," he said. Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report. From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 06:47:49 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:47:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 Message-ID: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew-mercedes-sosa5-2009oct05,0,5593730.story Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 The latest album by the "voice of Latin America" is nominated for three prizes in next month's Latin Grammy awards in Las Vegas. Associated Press 4:22 AM PDT, October 4, 2009 BUENOS AIRES, Argentina ? Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, the "voice of Latin America" whose music inspired opponents of South America's brutal military regimes and led to her forced exile in Europe, died today, her family said. She was 74. Sosa was best known for signature tunes such as "Gracias a la Vida" ("Thanks to Life") and "Si se calla el cantor" ("If the Singer Is Silenced"). She had been in the hospital for more than two weeks with liver problems and had since been suffering from progressive kidney failure and cardiac arrest. Her latest album, "Cantora 1," is nominated for three prizes in next month's Latin Grammy awards in Las Vegas, including album of the year and best folkloric album. Affectionately dubbed "La Negra" or "The Black One" by fans for her mixed Indian and distant French ancestry, Sosa was born July 9, 1935, to a poor family in the sugarcane country of northwest Tucuman province. Early on she felt the allure of popular traditions and became a teacher of folkloric dance. When she was 15, friends impressed by her talent encouraged Sosa to enter a local radio contest under the pseudonym "Gladys Osorio." She won a two-month contract with the broadcaster -- the first of many accolades over a career that continued until her final days. "I didn't choose to sing for people," Sosa said in a recent interview on Argentine television. "Life chose me to sing." By the 1970s she was recognized as one of the South American troubadours who gave rise to the "nuevo cancionero" (New Songbook) movement -- singers including Chile's Victor Jara and Violeta Parra, Argentina's Victor Heredia and Uruguay's Alfredo Zitarrosa who mixed leftist politics with poetic musings critical of the ruling juntas and their iron-fisted curtailment of civil liberties and human rights abuses. In 1972, Sosa released the socially and politically charged album "Hasta la Victoria" ("Till Victory"). Her sympathies with communist movements and support for leftist parties attracted close scrutiny and censorship at a time when blending politics with music was a dangerous occupation -- Jara was tortured and shot to death by soldiers following Chile's 1973 military coup. In 1979, a year after being widowed from her second husband, Sosa was detained along with an entire audience of about 200 students while singing in La Plata, a university city hit hard by military rule. "I remember when they took me prisoner," she told The Associated Press in late 2007. "I was singing for university kids who were in the last year of veterinary school. It wasn't political." She walked free 18 hours later under international pressure and after paying a $1,000 fine, but was forced to leave her homeland. "I knew I had to leave," Sosa told the AP. "I was being threatened by the Triple A (a right-wing death squad that terrorized suspected dissidents during the 1976-83 military junta). The people from the navy, the secret services were following me." With three suitcases and a handbag she headed to Spain, then France, becoming a wandering minstrel. Her pianist and musical director, Popi Spatocco, said exile was exceedingly harsh for a woman who loved Argentina. Sosa returned home to wide acclaim in 1982 in the final months of the dictatorship, which she would ultimately outlive by a quarter-century. The following year she released the eponymous album "Mercedes Sosa," which contained several tracks considered among her greatest hits: "Un son para Portinari" and "Maria Maria"; along with "Inconsciente colectivo" by Charly Garcia; "La maza" and "Unicornia" by Silvio Rodriguez; "Corazon maldito" by Violeta Parra; and "Me voy pa'l Mollar," together with Margarita Palacios. Late in life, with South America's military regimes consigned to the dustbin of history, Sosa remained relevant by tapping powerful, universal emotions, singing about stopping war and ending poverty, about finding love and losing loved ones. "There's no better example of artistic honesty," her nephew and fellow singer Chucho Sosa said in 2007. "Her songs reflects how she is in life." Sosa won Latin Grammy Awards for Best Folk Album for "Misa Criolla" in 2000, "Acustico" in 2003 and "Corazon Libre" in 2006. She also acted in films such as "El Santo de la Espada," about the life of Argentine independence hero Gen. Jose de San Martin. Early this decade she took a two-year hiatus to recover from a series of falls -- one of which, she said, nearly left her paralyzed. Sosa returned to the stage in 2005 and went on to perform in some of the most prestigious venues throughout Latin America, the U.S., Canada and Europe. All told Sosa recorded more than 70 albums; the latest, a double CD titled "Cantora 1" and "Cantora 2," is a collection of folkloric classics performed with contemporary Latin American stars such as Shakira, Fito Paez, Julieta Venegas, Joaquin Sabina, Lila Downs and Calle 13. Copyright ? 2009, The Los Angeles Times From bbauerly at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 06:48:21 2009 From: bbauerly at gmail.com (brad bauerly) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 08:48:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] NYT- American Apparel forced to fire undocumented Message-ID: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> This article highlights the Obama admin's new undocumented immigrant enforcement plan, which is going to focus on putting pressure on employers to fire all employees that it cannot prove are documented US Citizens or have valid visa's. What I found interesting is that it occurred at American Apparel which is known for its good (well better) treatment of employees, its marketing scheme of being made in the USA, and its CEO's politics to 'legalize LA'- "Dov Charney, the company?s chief executive, has campaigned, in T-shirt logos and eye-catching advertisements, to ?legalize L.A.,? by granting legal status to illegal immigrants, a policy President Obamasupports." Wondering if folks have thought tactically how to deal with this shift in policy or could point me in the direction of people who are. Thanks, Brad http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/us/30factory.html?sq=immigrantcrackdown&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 07:06:33 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:06:33 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] NYT- American Apparel forced to fire undocumented In-Reply-To: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AC89DD9.7070000@panix.com> brad bauerly wrote: > This article highlights the Obama admin's new undocumented immigrant > enforcement plan, which is going to focus on putting pressure on employers > to fire all employees that it cannot prove are documented US Citizens or > have valid visa's. What I found interesting is that it occurred at American > Apparel which is known for its good (well better) treatment of employees, > its marketing scheme of being made in the USA, and its CEO's politics to > 'legalize LA'- "Dov Charney, the company?s chief executive, has campaigned, > in T-shirt logos and eye-catching advertisements, to ?legalize L.A.,? by > granting legal status to illegal immigrants, a policy President > Obamasupports." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Charney Annie Hall Billboard Lawsuit In May 2007, American Apparel posted two billboards (in New York and Los Angeles) featuring a still image of actor Woody Allen from his 1977 movie Annie Hall. They were removed at Allen's request within a week; he subsequently sued American Apparel on various grounds (including rights to privacy, and property rights). According to Charney, the billboard, which featured a photo of Allen as an Orthodox rabbi and "cheeky" Yiddish text ("The High Rabbi"), was a commentary on the tabloid coverage he received from several unproven sexual harassment lawsuits and the way that he and Allen - both Jews - had been treated by the media. In an article published in The Guardian he wrote: There are no words to express the frustration caused by these gross misperceptions, but this billboard was an attempt to at least make a joke about it. American Apparel's insurance company settled the case for U.S. $5 million (half of what Mr. Allen was seeking in damages) on the eve of trial. Charney insisted that settlement was not his decision and expressed regret at being unable to defend in court what he believed to be speech protected by the First Amendment. Company IPO and sale In December 2006, Charney entered into an agreement to sell American Apparel for $360 million to the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Endeavor Acquisition as a way of taking the company public. As a result of the agreement, Charney was named President and Chief Executive Officer of the publicly traded company known as American Apparel, Inc. He remained the majority shareholder, and all full-time employees of American Apparel were promised up to 500 shares of stock depending on length of employment. Charney has been the subject of several sexual harassment lawsuits, none of which were proven. The company and others have publicly accused a lawyer representing a majority of the suits against American Apparel of extortion and of "shaking the company down." On the eve of trial in one case, the plaintiff confessed that she had not been subjected to sexual harassment and agreed to go to an arbitration hearing aimed at clearing Dov Charney's name. However, the plaintiff failed to show up to the hearing and a ruling was unable to be reached. As a result, the settlement was dissolved and the matter reemerged as a negative media controversy for Charney. In 2004, Claudine Ko of Jane magazine published a controversial essay narrating multiple sexual exchanges that occurred while spending time with Charney. The article's publication brought extensive press to the company and Charney, who later responded that he believed that the acts had been done consensually, in private and outside the article's bounds. From durable at earthlink.net Sun Oct 4 08:05:08 2009 From: durable at earthlink.net (Barry Brooks) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:05:08 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] Empire of Illusion Message-ID: <4AC8AB94.5000403@earthlink.net> Don't miss the Chris Hedges interview on CSPAN2 book TV:After Words on his new book "Empire of Illusion" Repeated at the following times Sunday Oct 4 10am central Sunday Oct 4 8pm central Monday Oct 5 2am central Saturday Oct 10 9pm central Sunday Oct 11 11am central Sunday Oct 11 5pm central Sunday Oct 11 8pm central Sunday Oct 11 11pm central From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Sun Oct 4 07:18:03 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:18:03 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> Wondering if folks have thought tactically how to deal with this shift in > policy or could point me in the direction of people who are. =======> Join the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. http://www.nnirr.org/ Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook http://librarian.lishost.org/ ===== On 4 Oct 2009 at 8:48, brad bauerly wrote: > This article highlights the Obama admin's new undocumented immigrant > enforcement plan, which is going to focus on putting pressure on employers > to fire all employees that it cannot prove are documented US Citizens or > have valid visa's. What I found interesting is that it occurred at American > Apparel which is known for its good (well better) treatment of employees, > its marketing scheme of being made in the USA, and its CEO's politics to > 'legalize LA'- "Dov Charney, the company?s chief executive, has campaigned, > in T-shirt logos and eye-catching advertisements, to "legalize L.A.," by > granting legal status to illegal immigrants, a policy President > Obamasupports." > > Wondering if folks have thought tactically how to deal with this shift in > policy or could point me in the direction of people who are. > > Thanks, Brad > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/us/30factory.html?sq=immigrantcrackdown&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print From sandia1980 at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 07:55:09 2009 From: sandia1980 at gmail.com (sandia) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 09:55:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> Message-ID: <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> I got into a discussion with a friend last night. She is a daughter of immigrants, lives in an immigrant neighborhood, does historical work on the 1930s-1950s Bracero Program. She is critical of Obama, but she basically argued that -- as shitty as he is on immigration -- she feared that a Republican prez would have vastly increased the possibility of a guest worker program (like the Bracero program) being implemented (among a few other things). To my friend, this is the worst possible outcome, for a number of reasons. There was not much I could say. My friend did not try to argue that Obama was any kind of progressive -- just that he would be hard, but less hard, on immigrants. The whole conversation made me lament the utter lack of a substantive, real left that could offer legitimate alternatives to people. Without this, good-minded people will of course go with the lesser evil -- it is in their immediate interests, so why shouldn't they? They might agree with someone like Michael Moore, but what does that mean, concretely, when their is no legitimate political vision/platform that they feel like they can attach themselves to, that they see their selves reflected in? While someone like my friend agrees with me, in principle, about the fucked-uped-ness of the Dems, this doesn't translate into anything concrete. Just a ramblin' thought... I believe that the primary task of the left is to reconstruct something broad that can make a politics to the left of the Dems -- that has a whole different set of assumptions, a whole different worldview based on socialist principles and values -- viable to ordinary people. On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 9:18 AM, wrote: > Wondering if folks have thought tactically how to deal with this > shift in >> policy or could point me in the direction of people who are. > =======> > > > Join the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. > http://www.nnirr.org/ > > > ?Kathleen de la Pe?a McCook > http://librarian.lishost.org/ > ===== > > On 4 Oct 2009 at 8:48, brad bauerly wrote: > >> This article highlights the Obama admin's new undocumented immigrant >> enforcement plan, which is going to focus on putting pressure on employers >> to fire all employees that it cannot prove are documented US Citizens or >> have valid visa's. ?What I found interesting is that it occurred at American >> Apparel which is known for its good (well better) treatment of employees, >> its marketing scheme of being made in the USA, and its CEO's politics to >> 'legalize LA'- "Dov Charney, the company?s chief executive, has campaigned, >> in T-shirt logos and eye-catching advertisements, to "legalize L.A.," by >> granting legal status to illegal immigrants, a policy President >> Obamasupports." >> >> Wondering if folks have thought tactically how to deal with this shift in >> policy or could point me in the direction of people who are. >> >> Thanks, Brad >> >> >> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/us/30factory.html?sq=immigrantcrackdown&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sandia1980%40gmail.com > -- sandia From nmgoro at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 07:55:33 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 10:55:33 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 In-Reply-To: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> References: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550910040655j671157d6p173970b6c7eeaecd@mail.gmail.com> Yes, Mercedes is dead. A saddest thing, indeed. But her voice and songs will remain forever. There are lots that I love, but perhaps the one I like best is the song she dedicated to the guerrilla woman of the Alto Per? during the wars of Emancipation, Juana Azurduy. "Juana Azurduy, flor del Alto Per?, no hay otro capit?n m?s valiente que t?" And there is another beautiful song to "Manuela la tucumana", dedicated to Manuela Pedraza, a woman leader during the same wars who was later forgotten, in the end because she was a woman... Her political role has been somewhat amplified beyond her own compromises, perhaps. There are other great Arg female singers, who have suffered at least the same amount of persecution that Mercedes has, and perhaps more. One of them is Nelly Omar, persecuted after 1955 to the point that when some TV manager (Alejandro Romay) suggested her to return to the stage she didn?t have clothes worth the ocassion and had to go to scene covering herself with a red poncho that Romay gave her. She has been acting with that poncho forever since. She is still alive, however, and nearly 100 years old. Her voice, in a magical turn of life, is as full and brilliant as it was decades ago. Her sin? She sang "La Descamisada", a song to the Peronist woman, during the 1945-1955 era of Per?n. 2009/10/4 Louis Proyect : > latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew-mercedes-sosa5-2009oct05,0,5593730.story > > Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 > The latest album by the "voice of Latin America" is nominated for three > prizes in next month's Latin Grammy awards in Las Vegas. > > Associated Press > > 4:22 AM PDT, October 4, 2009 -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From re2goj2 at ymail.com Sat Oct 3 14:24:32 2009 From: re2goj2 at ymail.com (fgbh rhrge) Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 13:24:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] John Holloway speaking in London this month. Message-ID: <148981.89626.qm@web24911.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Two London events with John Holloway in October. Please publicise widely: ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR/MUTE MAGAZINE DISCUSSION,?????????? 4-6pm, Saturday 24th October, London Capitalism?s Present Crisis - How Will It End? ? The capitalist system is facing years of crisis and social instability. This raises two questions: 1) what caused the crisis? Was it ?greedy bankers?, the natural tendencies of the capitalist system, or the resistance of the working class? 2) how will the crisis end? Will it be with more state regulation, more cuts in living standards or with working class revolution? The Anarchist Bookfair and Mute magazine have invited three speakers to debate these issues: Paul Mason, a presenter on BBC?s Newsnight, and author of Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed John Holloway, author of Change The World Without Taking Power and Crack Capitalism (forthcoming). NB See below for further John Holloway event. William Dixon, Mute magazine contributor. The discussion will take place at the Skeel Lecture Theatre, Anarchist Bookfair, Queen Mary & Westfield college, Mile End Road, London E1, Mile End tube. For further information on the Anarchist Bookfair, including a roster of many other talks, go to: http://www.anarchistbookfair.org ??????????????????????????????????????????????? *-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ????????? CRACK CAPITALISM - A DISCUSSION WITH JOHN HOLLOWAY???????????????????????????? 7-9pm, Monday 26th October, London At the height of the anti-capitalist movement, John Holloway?s book Change The World without Taking Power provoked an international debate*. Eight years later, after the failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the failure of the capitalist economy, anti-capitalism is back on the agenda. John Holloway will introduce his forthcoming book, Crack Capitalism, followed by a discussion on how we can change the world without repeating the tragedies of twentieth century socialism. Come and join the debate. *To read the debate around the book Change The World Without Taking Power, go to: http://www.herramienta.com.ar/debate-sobre-cambiar-el-mundo/presentacion-e-indice-de-articulos ? Venue: The Octagon Room*, Queen's Building, Queen Mary & Westfield College, Mile End Road, London E1, Mile End Tube. (The event will be followed by a social at the Half Moon pub, 213-233 Mile End Road, London E1)? Supported by Mute Magazine and the Queen Mary & Westfield School of Business and Management *NB There is a small chance that the room in which the event is held may be altered. Check metamute.org for up to date information closer to the date. From sabocat59 at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 08:23:47 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 10:23:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Undocumented Message-ID: <6e42edf00910040723o59a5ed37k15ce7ca5cce0e9a3@mail.gmail.com> Piggybacking Kathleen, here are a few other groups who are active. Unite Here is particularly focused, not only on hotel workers unionization (for which it is most widely known), but having come out of the ILGWU, it also organizes sweatshop workers in the garments industry. On campus, there is also the students against sweatshops group. http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/ http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/ http://www.ciw-online.org/ http://www.unitehere.org/ Greg McDonald From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 08:31:28 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:31:28 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> sandia wrote: > Just a ramblin' thought... I believe that the primary task of the left > is to reconstruct something broad that can make a politics to the left > of the Dems -- that has a whole different set of assumptions, a whole > different worldview based on socialist principles and values -- viable > to ordinary people. > > Yeah, that's one of the primary reasons for the existence of this mailing list, at least for its American component. I feel that it is useful to have such a space on the Internet even if some subscribers are hell-bent on convicting of it of racism, sexism, homophobia, catering to imperialism, and other assorted high crimes and misdemeanors. From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 08:51:10 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 10:51:10 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] John Holloway speaking in London this month. In-Reply-To: <148981.89626.qm@web24911.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <148981.89626.qm@web24911.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I freed janitor's closet in the hallway outside my dormroom as an autonomous space. I also broke dress code at work **twice** last week. Consider the dictatorship of capital over comrades. From swpmre at yahoo.com Sun Oct 4 09:20:33 2009 From: swpmre at yahoo.com (martin empson) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 08:20:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Marek Edelman, antifascist fighter, dies In-Reply-To: <2fa1449b0910030502h7df20132vb256e66bcc32e796@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <590582.50148.qm@web37001.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Marek Edelman's classic and utterly inspirational account of the Uprising, "The Ghetto Fights" is still in print and available from the publisher, Bookmarks, for ?5. It's well worth a read. ? Contact details for the shop at www.bookmarks.uk.com Martin --- On Sat, 10/3/09, Andrew Pollack wrote: From: Andrew Pollack Subject: [Marxism] Marek Edelman, antifascist fighter, dies To: "Martin Empson" Date: Saturday, October 3, 2009, 1:02 PM I sent this to the list of my group, Al-Awda-NY: Palestine Right to Return Coalition, thus the emphasis on his antiZionism. If you google his name you'll turn up lots of more general biographical detail on him, including his account of the ghetto uprising. Andy ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis. He died in Warsaw, where he stayed after the war, refusing to move to Israel. His political party, the Bund, was antiZionist. He referred to Israel as "a historic failure," and was involved in a comradely dialogue with Palestinian liberation fighters about their tactics (he was mistaken tactically, but the point is he saw them as comrades). He and the Bund weren't the most revolutionary force among Jewish workers in Europe, but they were a far sight better than the Zionist quislings in Warsaw who counseled silence and practiced betrayal, all in pursuit of their hopes to eventually become colonizers in their own right. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/swpmre%40yahoo.com From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 09:22:49 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:22:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] John Holloway speaking in London this month. In-Reply-To: <148981.89626.qm@web24911.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <148981.89626.qm@web24911.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4AC8BDC9.6080902@panix.com> > At the height of the anti-capitalist movement, John Holloway?s book Change The World without Taking Power provoked an > international debate*. Eight years later, after the failure of the wars in Iraq > and Afghanistan, combined with the failure of the capitalist economy, > anti-capitalism is back on the agenda. > > John Holloway will introduce his forthcoming book, Crack Capitalism, > followed by a discussion on how we can change the world without repeating the > tragedies of twentieth century socialism. > > Come and join the debate. > > *To read the debate around the book Change The World Without Taking > Power, go to: > http://www.herramienta.com.ar/debate-sobre-cambiar-el-mundo/presentacion-e-indice-de-articulos My critique of Holloway is there. It contains my characteristic impudence. From jbustelo at bellsouth.net Sun Oct 4 11:24:39 2009 From: jbustelo at bellsouth.net (Joaquin Bustelo) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 13:24:39 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] FW: To Count and be Counted: Latinos and the 2010 Census Message-ID: <3F586460E3D0471E9D0F8AD5B70BBABA@albanta> ________________________________ From: Mexican American Political Association [mailto:newsletter at mapa-ca.org] Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 3:48 PM To: jbustelo at bellsouth.net Subject: To Count and be Counted: Latinos and the 2010 Census October 02, 2009 Greetings! To Count and be Counted: Latinos and the 2010 Census Center for Migration and Development Wallace Hall Princeton University, NJ Speech by: Nativo Vigil Lopez, National President, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) - nativolopez at mapa-ca.org. Culpable, culpable, culpable, guilty, guilty, guilty - 85 times guilty. This is what I observed in a recent trip to Tucson, Arizona, the current epicenter of anti- immigrant laws, policies, and practices - the laboratory as we call it - when I attended the federal court hearing of the day of the recent batch of immigrant detainees who allegedly attempted to enter the U.S. without inspection. This is a daily occurrence, an average of 85 individuals, who are legally processed through the government's program called "streamline," which results in their incarceration and eventual removal to their country of origin. Annually the number comes to 25,000 such summary hearings and removals. On that particular day all of the detainees were of Mexican origin, but one, and ten were women. All were clearly of indigenous stock, rural workers; one-fourth only spoke their native language, not fluent even in Spanish. They were held in a private detention facility, a nice name for a prison, which has a contract with the government that brings down $13 million monthly to its owner. Within one hour all 85 individuals had been advised of their rights by the judge, a Latina, counseled by their court-appointed attorneys (some Latinos), entered their guilty pleas, and been sentenced to time served, 30, 60, 120, and 180 days - after which they will be turned over to the Immigration and Custom Enforcement for deportation. They were ushered out of the hearing room by Latino federal marshals. And, if per chance they are detained again they could face up to ten years in federal prison. Their crime - seeking to work in the U.S. This is what we refer to as the criminalization of immigrant workers and the criminalization of work. And, boy, did I feel proud about the ultimate success of affirmative action for Latinos - judges, attorneys, marshals, interpreters, clerks, even prosecutors. Yes, we have truly arrived. I point this out today due to the impression it made on me - the streamlined manner in which immigrants detained at the border are incarcerated and processed for removal, and the use of private prisons in this mix; and the collateral relationship with the issue we are addressing today. In fact, deportations are up over any quarter during the Bush administration; removal hearings are up beyond the Bush experience; enforcement of employer sanctions and the resulting terminations are up; yes, the trains run on time under the Obama administration. Google the word ENDGAME and you will conclude that the more things change the more they remain the same - at least as this applies to immigration law enforcement from one administration to another, irrespective of political party. The ENDGAME strategy was designed by the Department of Homeland Security under President Bush and its operational objective is the physical removal of millions of undocumented persons from the U.S., obviously preceding any eventual legalization program. An August 3rd article by Julia Preston for the New York Times reminded us that, "After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration's tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor." I made the trip purposely last week to witness Obama's streamline program for myself; the renunciation of legal rights by indigenous immigrants; their inability to obtain bond while they prepare for their defense (this has been disallowed in such hearings); and the use of private prisons subsidized by the American taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, annually. If I ever had any doubts about the correctness of the tactic of noncooperation and noncompliance with the U.S. Census, Tucson, Arizona removed them from my mind. Tucson, the old outpost cowboy town of bandits, cattle smugglers and rustlers, made it crystal clear that we are on the right road in not cooperating with an immoral and bad government. But I was not always of this mind-set. In April of this year I was quoted as follows by the newspaper, Orange County Register, "I'm absolutely elated that there are pastors more radical than me but I think the target is misplaced." The article went on to relate that my organization, the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, would instead encourage the undocumented to participate and be counted. If not, I warned that immigrant communities will not get their fair share or resources and representation, which is based on population data. "Just for the very reason that a sizable percentage of our population hides in the shadows, their goal is politically counterproductive; it would be disastrous for us to do that." Well, that was then, and much has happened since April 2009, while we waited patiently as good obedient political loyalists for the Obama administration to make its move. And, move it did, but not in the direction that we had hoped for or in a direction of change promised to us. After a radio interview debate with the good Reverend Miguel Rivera wherein I took the opposing view to that espoused by him, I was left feeling not triumphant, but intrigued. I told myself that I had a moral obligation to consult with my constituency, present both sides objectively, and then shut up and listen, and then listen some more. After a series of large public assemblies with immigrants I was astonished at what I heard and what I learned. And, I was won over, 180 degrees so, to a different perspective - one dictated by the life experiences and simple logic articulated by the immigrants that I serve. One after another they took the floor to expound their views. Nativo (they would call out directly to me), I've worked at Overhill Farms for 20 years and I was just fired along with 300 of my compatriots because the employer claimed that there was a discrepancy with my social security number, and now I have no recourse for employment - I DO NOT COUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT. Nativo, I was losing y home to foreclosure due to fraud committed against me like so many millions of others. I went to the Legal Aid Services office for legal help and I was turned away for lack of legal papers - I DO NOT COUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT. Nativo, I also was recently fired from my job from American Apparel, the largest clothing manufacturing company in the U.S., along with 1,800 of my friends and other family members - including my husband, son, and brother - due to employer sanctions enforcement by Mr. Obama; and then my husband was picked up by ICE and deported - I DO NOT COUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT. Nativo, my daughter just completed high school with the highest honors and was accepted to some of the most prestigious universities, yet she was unable to attend due to her legal status and no available financial aid to her. I brought her to this country as a new-born and she has worked ever so hard with great expectations and hopes for a brighter future then that of my previous fate. Now, she DOES NOT COUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT. Nativo, my husband just had his car impounded. This is his fifth vehicle confiscated in the city of Los Angeles due to the lack of a driver's license. This is just one of our dilemmas since 1994 in California and now this is the situation throughout the U.S. We thought that a new Latino mayor and city council members could change this situation at least in Los Angeles, but they too have ignored us. MY HUSBAND DOES NOT COUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT. And, on and on, example after example was presented, and I was told that the government not only does not count the immigrant, but in fact systematically pursues, persecutes, maligns, and denigrates the immigrant. Some, however, hypocritically sing their praises when it is politically convenient to them, but then pursue contrary policies and practices. To the person I was emphatically, but politely, told that "if we cannot count on the government, the government shall not count on us, and we will not be counted." We have given our lives in hard menial, but valuable labor; we have given up our sons and daughters to fight the government's wars in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and continue to do so; our children for the most part have behaved themselves and studied hard, but have been denied access to higher education as the "Negro" and "Mexican" of a previous era of segregation and American apartheid; we have repeatedly demonstrated that there is no backbreaking, dangerous, filthy, degrading, miserly paid, job that we are not willing to perform. What more does the government want from us before we are accorded civility and fairness codified in a federal statue called legalization - a fair and humane immigration reform? This was my epiphany ladies and gentlemen, about how I came around to take up the census boycott. As a person of faith and integrity to the constituency that I serve I could not do otherwise. Their logic was not esoteric, but quite simple and direct - very compelling, and premised not on an entertaining television reality show, but the life and death experiences of salt of the earth most common working poor immigrants - yes, the stock of which America is made. Present to us all of the statistics, economic reasoning, devolution of tax dollars from the federal government to local communities, infrastructure, health and human services, even investment in education, more favorable congressional seats through redistricting - old and new-fangled arguments, many that I myself previously used, to counter the census boycott, and all of these are quite puny juxtaposed to the immigrant's logic. This is why the census boycott - noncooperation and noncompliance, is winning. It is as simple as staying at home, remaining silent - the lion's growl of no confidence in an immoral government. It is the epitome of non-violent action through inaction, which undermines the moral credibility of a political regime and its political party leadership that urgently seeks the immigrant's participation, cooperation, and compliance. Herein lays the beauty and simplicity of the immigrant's leverage. The government and party leaders want something that the immigrant has; and this is the something that the immigrant can withhold until she gets what she wants in return - a fair exchange. To use a pun, it is Adam Smith's idea of the free market in the era of globalization. It is a nodal point of vulnerability in the political regime that the immigrant can turn to his advantage. The Obama "hard-line" enforcement-only pursuit of immigrants must be met with a counter-veiling response that brings to the fore the political character of the policy, but also demonstrates its immorality and objectionable nature to millions of immigrant families and their U.S. citizen and permanent resident relatives, and Americans generally who find favor with immigration reform in poll after poll. Refusing to cooperate with the U.S. census count is a political act of noncooperation and noncompliance in the best of Gandhian tradition conducted for the purpose of pressuring the political regime that pursues the persecution of immigrants on a daily basis at all nexus of social connection. This action seeks to dissociate ourselves from this repugnant and immoral policy, which strikes at the heart of the immigrant family. The immediate objective of this tactic is to secure a moratorium of the current policy. Second, the medium- range objective is to win a fair and humane immigration reform, which results in legalizing the estimated 12-15 million persons without authorized status, but also overhauls other areas of the law - including the repeal of employer sanctions and mothballing the e-verify program. Third, and most importantly, the campaign is designed to raise the civic awareness and political consciousness of the immigrant community and its family members - irrespective of status - with regard to their own inherent power as contributing members of society in all its dimensions, and express the same in an organized concerted way to send a message of disfavor with the president and the leadership in the U.S. Congress. At a time when the federal government is spending millions of dollars to insure a "full count" and especially reach into the cracks and shadows of social life to enumerate the hardest to reach individuals, noncooperation and noncompliance appears as the greatest leverage available to immigrants in their own pursuit of fairness and justice. It is the equivalent of a vote abstention for those who do not have the right to vote - their vote of no-confidence. Immigrants will send a clear message to Mr. Obama that they will not step out of the shadow only to be counted by the census enumerators and then be told to step back in the shadow when it comes to benefits, services, and rights. Their resounding demand is - before you count you must legalize us! This will be their clearest expression of political power. ________________________________ ________________________________ Join us in this prolonged campaign for driver's licenses and visas for our families. The first step in making change is to join an organization that pursues the change we desire. We welcome you to our ranks. Other organizations leading this movement include: Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), MAPA Youth Leadership, Southern California Immigration Coalition, Liberty and Justice for Immigrants Movement, National Alliance for Immigrant's Rights, and immigrant's rights coalitions throughout the U.S.. CONTACT: Nativo V. Lopez, National President of MAPA (323) 269-1575 Join the Mexican American Political Association mailing list Email: Join the Mexican American Political Association mailing list Email: Sincerely, Mexican American Political Association ________________________________ email: nativolopez at mapa-ca.org phone: 323-269-1575 web: http://www.mapa.org From meisner at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 4 11:26:10 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:26:10 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Marek Edelman, antifascist fighter, dies In-Reply-To: <2fa1449b0910030502h7df20132vb256e66bcc32e796@mail.gmail.co m> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091004192610.04fc5670@pop.xs4all.nl> At 08:02 03/10/09 -0400, Andrew Pollack wrote: > >Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against >the Nazis. Yes, thank you for posting this! I am not a historian, so please feel free to correct me. But I have a little trouble with this: > but they were a far sight better than the Zionist >quislings in Warsaw who counseled silence and practiced betrayal, all >in pursuit of their hopes to eventually become colonizers in their own >right. There was indeed a despicable police force consisting of Jews who not only collaborated with the nazis but were complicit in the deportation of other ghetto residents to death camps. They surely met the definition of "quisling" and almost any other pejorative term you could throw at them. But I'm not sure if they were particularly "Zionist" as you have written. Is that not quite an oversimplification, at best? While it is true that the Zionist movement had little interest in fighting fascism per se (after all, they agreed with the nazis on "separation of the races"!), I would have trouble believing that they delivered Jews to the nazis in order that other Jews could conquer Palestine. I can't believe the main thing on their mind when they filled this despicable role, was the effect it would have on the Zionist project in Palestine. I had never heard that the divisions among the ghetto residents (which were very great, involving violence) were split over the question of Zionism and emigration to Palestine (which had ended before 1943), for they had more immediate concerns (to put it mildly). Again, I'd be interested in any further historical data in this regard. I realize that the wording you used would resonate with the Palestinians who you say you were sending that to. At one time I would have just been happy to read something so "politically correct." But I now have less patience for that, and when discussing history, I think "historical correctness" is more important. I think the Palestinians are smart enough to appreciate not only the politically correct position of anti-fascist anti-zionists, but also the actual historical alignments which are never so neat and tidy. - Jeff From fajardos at ix.netcom.com Sun Oct 4 11:33:47 2009 From: fajardos at ix.netcom.com (Juan Fajardo) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:33:47 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 In-Reply-To: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> References: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> Message-ID: <4AC8DC7B.9080806@ix.netcom.com> T'is a sad day. She was hugely important in her time, helping -along with Atahualpa Yupanqui and Violeta Parra- inspire the whole Nueva Cancion movement, which came to be best exemplified by Victor Jara, Quilapayun, and Inti Illimani. There are fewer and fewer composers and performers from that time still alive and active, and it is all rapidly fading into memory ... - Juan From fajardos at ix.netcom.com Sun Oct 4 11:39:10 2009 From: fajardos at ix.netcom.com (Juan Fajardo) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:39:10 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa dies at 74 In-Reply-To: <2fa158550910040655j671157d6p173970b6c7eeaecd@mail.gmail.com> References: <4AC89975.4090509@panix.com> <2fa158550910040655j671157d6p173970b6c7eeaecd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4AC8DDBE.9080809@ix.netcom.com> N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > One of them is Nelly Omar, persecuted after 1955 to the point that > when some TV manager (Alejandro Romay) suggested her to return to the > stage she didn?t have clothes worth the ocassion and had to go to > scene covering herself with a red poncho that Romay gave her. She has > been acting with that poncho forever since. She is still alive, > however, and nearly 100 years old. Her voice, in a magical turn of > life, is as full and brilliant as it was decades ago. Her sin? She > sang "La Descamisada", a song to the Peronist woman, during the > 1945-1955 era of Per?n. Nelly Omar - "La Descamisada" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIH6EdUJyVg&feature=related - juan From meisner at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 4 11:50:12 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:50:12 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Victory for Jose Maria Sison against EU "terrorist list"! Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091004195012.044349e8@pop.xs4all.nl> Good news for once! Since about 7 years ago, the Philippine communist Jose Maria Sison has been under attack by the Dutch government and then the entire EU, both of which placed him on their respective "terrorist lists," causing him great personal hardship (and constricting his political role, surely the intent). About 2 years ago the Dutch government (in cooperation with the Philippine government or parties) even had him charged on some fabricated murder charges! Those were eventually dropped, basically because they were proven to be nonsense. But getting off a "terrorist list" is a bit trickier, and I wasn't very optimistic about that struggle. However a small but very hard working committee mainly of Philippine ex-pats in Utrecht has nevertheless succeeded! Here is their press statement: ---------------------------------------------------- Press Release 1 October 2009 EUROPEAN COURT REMOVES SISON FROM EU TERRORIST BLACKLIST The European Court of First Instance (ECFI) annulled yesterday all decisions and a regulation of the Council of the European Union (EU) that had maintained Prof. Jose Maria Sison in its so-called terrorist blacklist. The removal of the name of Prof. Sison from the blacklist is the essence or main point of the ECFI judgment on Case T-341/07 of Prof. Sison against the Council of EU. It directly unfreezes Sison's funds in his small bank account and allows him to engage in financial dealings like any ordinary person. To annul the acts of the Council in blacklisting Prof. Sison and freezing his account, the ECFI ruled that the national decisions done in The Netherlands and relied upon by the Council did not relate to the instigation of investigations or prosecution or to a conviction for terrorist activity, contrary to the requirements of European Community Law. Aside from unfreezing the funds of Prof. Sison, the ECFI judgment opens the way for him to assert and enjoy all his rights that have been restricted or suppressed due to the false charge of terrorism. He can benefit from the judgment in the following ways: 1. To claim back the social payments for living allowance, housing, health insurance and old age pension which have been withdrawn from him since 2002; 2. To seek gainful employment or render professional services with remuneration; 3. To secure legal admission as a refugee and a residence permit; 4. To travel freely without restrictions; 5. To be free from being labelled and stigmatized as a terrorist; and 6. To claim moral and material damages for what he has suffered since 2002. The International DEFEND Committee is calling on all its adherents, supporters and friends to celebrate the legal victory of Prof. Jose Maria Sison in the European Court and at the same time to become more determined than ever before in demanding that the Dutch government and Council of the EU change their hostile policy towards him. The Dutch government and the Council of the EU must cease and desist from being the vehicles of false charges and tools of persecution of the US and Philippine governments against Prof. Jose Maria Sison. He must be allowed and encouraged to act freely and fruitfully as the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.### For reference please contact: Ruth de Leon International Coordinator-Committee DEFEND Telephone: 00-31-30-8895306 Email: defenddemrights at yahoo.com From meisner at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 4 12:43:12 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:43:12 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> References: <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> At 10:31 04/10/09 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: > >I feel that it is useful to have such a space on the Internet even if >some subscribers are hell-bent on convicting of it of racism, sexism, >homophobia, catering to imperialism YOU ARE NOT EVEN FUNNY. But you did tell me one thing. The same thing that I always "learn" when someone reacts in this way. When a legitimate discussion, in this case about insensitivity to sexual assault, is met with mocking of the "charges" ("convicting [marxmail] of....") and arbitrary augmentation of the supposed "charges" (try to document that list of charges!!) in order to make light of the whole matter. And to preempt any further DISCUSSION of issues which could plausibly be portrayed as an escalation of those "charges." Defensiveness speaks volumes! - Jeff From farmelantj at juno.com Sun Oct 4 13:06:08 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 15:06:08 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK Message-ID: <20091004.150608.7116.1.farmelantj@juno.com> Rosa Lichtenstein replies to Richard Levins and to Leonard Kosloff, here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/replies_to_two_critics.htm ____________________________________________________________ Medical Billing Careers Click here for a Medical Billing Career. Get free info & Apply Today! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=iEdIfzq6E0vTmoTzJQrzggAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQAAAAFAAAAAHjNsD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABNldAAAAAA= From mikedjyates at msn.com Sun Oct 4 13:43:30 2009 From: mikedjyates at msn.com (MICHAEL YATES) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 12:43:30 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Blog Post: Whither the National Parks? Message-ID: Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org In light of the interest in the national parks of the United States generated by Ken Burns' new PBS documentary, I thought that readers might be interested in what I wrote about the parks in my book, Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist?s Travelogue. I will have some additional thoughts after I view the entire series. I welcome reader comments. I have placed some new explanatory remarks in brackets. The Addendum provides a sketch of one of the main National Park concessionaires. Whither Our National Parks Between early May and late August [of 2004. Since then, we have been to many more parks and monuments], we visited Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, Rocky Mountain, Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Glacier, Mt. Rainier, and Olympic National Parks, and Walnut Creek, Tuzigoot, Sunset Crater Volcano, Wupatki, Bandelier, and Colorado National Monuments. All are national treasures; each one has scenery as dramatic as most persons will ever see: natural bridges and arches, waterfalls, fantastic canyons, buttes, monoliths, and hoodoos, and astonishing rapids. We were in these parks dozens of times. Seldom were we disappointed; almost always we were exhilarated. It is impossible to see the Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch in Arches, Grand View in Canyonlands, the sand beaches and lush foliage in the Narrows in Zion, the thousand-year-old trees in Rainier?s Grove of the Patriarchs, or the eight-hundred-year-old petrified lava flows at Sunset Crater and not be mindful of the vast indifference of nature and our insignificant part in it. The human world, with its relentless injustices and inequalities, is put in sharp relief and made all the more intolerable. In the face of such beauty, it is surely an unforgivable crime for any society to let its people live in misery. But if the parks are beautiful, they are also the products of the social structures that created them. Yellowstone was our first national park, established in 1872. Already when George Catlin [painter, author, and traveler, 1796-1872] was waxing eloquent about establishing ?a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes,? white settlers and the government had begun brutal campaigns to remove the natives from their land. The history of the national parks is marked by systematic and, for the most part, successful efforts to remove indigenous people from them. In Yellowstone, for example, many Indians traversed what is today the park to hunt, but a cornerstone rule in the national parks is that there cannot be any hunting. In some cases the ?treaties? entered into by the U.S. government guaranteed the Indian nations traditional hunting rights, but these agreements were routinely broken. (I put treaties in quotes because these treaties were ordinarily faits accomplis made after white settlers had entered and taken possession of land and the government stood ready to ratify this theft by force if necessary.) From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 13:49:44 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:49:44 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Blog Post: Whither the National Parks? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4AC8FC58.3030509@panix.com> MICHAEL YATES wrote: > Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org > > > This is in line with Michael's analysis: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/indian/blackfoot.htm I want to conclude this article with an examination of an obscure moment in American history that involves the Blackfoot and the environmentalist movement. It is, as far as I know, one of the first instances of eco-imperialism on record and evokes more recent clashes between outfits like Sea-Shepherd and the Makah, or Greenpeace and the Innuit. The facts on this appear in Mark David Spence's "Crown of the Continent, Backbone of the World: The American Wilderness Ideal and Blackfeet Exclusion from Glacier National Park," an article in the July, 1996 edition of "Environmental History." The eastern half of Glacier National Park was once part of the Blackfoot reservation and the tribe insists that an 1895 treaty allowed them certain ownership privileges. These lands are of utmost importance to the Blackfoot because they contain certain plants, animals and religious sites that are of key importance to the cultural identity. The federal government considered the land to be one of its "crown jewels" and thought that the Blackfoot would tarnish it through their intrusions. This separation between man and nature of course goes against Indian wisdom. The park founders idea of "wilderness" owed more to European romanticism than it did to the reality of American history. The indigenous peoples and the forests, rivers and grasslands lived in coexistence and codetermined each other's existence thousands of years before Columbus--the first invader--arrived. The mountains within Glacier National Park contained powerful spirits such as Wind Maker, Cold Maker, thunder and Snow Shrinker. One of the most important figures in Blackfoot religion, a trickster named Napi or Old Man, disappeared into these mountains when he left the Blackfoot. The park is also the source of the Beaver Pipe bundle, one of the "most venerated and powerful spiritual possessions of the tribe." "Chief Mountain, standing at the border of the reservation and the national park, is by far the most distinct and spiritually charged land feature within the Blackfeet universe." While pre-reservation life was centered on the plains and bison-hunting, the resources of the mountains and foothills contained within the park were also important to their livelihood. Women and youngsters dug for roots and other foodstuffs in the parklands at the beginning of the spring hunting cycle. At the conclusion of the bison hunting season, which was marked by the Sun Dance ceremony, the various bands would retreat to the mountains and hunt for elk, deer, big horn sheep, and mountain goats. They would also cut lodge poles from the forests and gather berries through the autumn months. All of these activities were as important to them spiritually as economically. By denying them this, the park administrators were cutting them off from something as sacred as the whale is to the Makah. What gives the banning of the Blackfoot from Glacier National Park a special poignancy and sadness was that its architect was none other than George Bird Grinnell. Grinnell was not only a park administrator, but a friend of the Blackfoot. He won the trust of Blackfoot story-tellers and this allowed him to put into print the "Blackfoot Lodge Tales." Although Grinnell said in the preface to the collection that "the most shameful chapter of American history is that in which is recorded the account of our dealings with the Indians," this did not prevent him from declaring Glacier National Park off-limits to a people he supposedly admired. Of course, without any self-consciousness he also states in this preface that "the Indian is a man, not very different from his white brother, except that he is undeveloped." Also, "the Indian has the mind and feelings of a child with the stature of a man." When you stop and consider that Grinnell was a leading supporter of American Indian rights, it is truly frightening to consider the depths of racism that must have existed during the late 1800s, when he was collecting his tales from the Blackfoot while banning them from the park. Spence has an astute interpretation of Grinnell's contradictory attitudes. He says that for Grinnell the parks represented a living resource for American civilization. It would be a place for tourists to come and take photographs of the natural splendors. As for the Blackfoot, they were an important part of America's past. They would live on through the "Blackfoot Lodge Tales" and dioramas at places like the Museum of Natural History. Spence concludes his article with a description of how the clash between park administrators never really went away: "By 1935, relations between the Blackfeet and the National Park Service had reached an impasse that remains in place to this day. On one side, the park service, tourists, preservationists largely made Glacier into the uninhabited wilderness that continues to inform potent ideas about nature and national identity. Blackfeet use of park undermined this idealized notion of wilderness and the tribe's resistance to Glacier's eastward expansion limited its physical expression. Tension between Indians and the park service subsided over the next few decades, but the issue of Blackfeet in the eastern half of Glacier never disappeared. "By the 1960s, few Blackfeet actually hunted near the park, and fewer still went to the mountains to gather traditional plant foods and medicines. But the continuing importance of the Backbone of the World never depended on how many people went to the mountains. Although the Glacier region provided the tribe with a large portion of its physical sustenance in the 1890s, the issue of Blackfeet rights in the area always reflected concerns about cultural persistence and tribal sovereignty. In conjunction with the 'Red Power' movement of the 1970s, these concerns arose again as Blackfeet leaders pushed for recognition of tribal rights in the park. Their efforts met strong opposition from both park officials and environmentalists, who resisted the Blackfeet 'threat' as fervently as they did plans to mine coal and explore for oil in the park. The state of near-war that once characterized relations between the Blackfeet and park officials resurfaced in the early 1980s; the two sides only narrowly armed conflict on several occasions. Ultimately, continued Indian protests, ongoing risk of violence, and Blackfeet proposals for joint management of the eastern half of Glacier forced the National Park Service to revisit issues its leaders had been buried in the 1930s." A program for sweeping social and economic change in the United States has to put indigenous rights in the forefront. If the Indian is the canary in the mine, whose survival represents survival for everybody, then no other group deserves greater solidarity. Part of the enormous job in allying all the diverse sectors of the American population against an increasingly reactionary and violent government is explaining that the Indian comes first. This means that Sea-Shepherd and Greenpeace activists must understand that preservation of the "wilderness" makes no sense if the Indian is excluded. The best way to restore the United States to ecological, economic and spiritual health is to reconsider ways in which the pre-capitalist past can be approximated in a modern setting. Just as it makes sense for the Makah to use whatever weapons they deem necessary in pursuit of the whale, it might make sense for the entire northwestern plains states to be returned to the bison under the stewardship of the Blackfoot Indian. They have a much better track record on taking care of resources than do the agribusiness corporations who despoil the land for profit. Timothy Egan thinks that this makes sense, as does Ernest Callenbach, the author of "Bring Back the Buffalo: A Sustainable Future for America's Great Plains." (Island Press, 1998) I will conclude with his suggestion for a new relationship between indigenous peoples and the land and animals that were once theirs: "The basic Indian goal is the reestablishment on the reservations of the natural ecological balance or reciprocity among humans, plants, and animals that existed before Euro-American occupation. On the Plains, a restored population of bison would be a sign that things had been put back together again on a sustainable basis. As Fred DuBray puts it, 'We recognize that the bison is a symbol of our strength and unity and that as we bring our herds back to health, we will also bring our people back to health.' In Mark Heckert's view, this could be called sustainable agriculture 'because you can get what you need to survive without inordinately disrupting the system,' and the result would be self-governing tribes in which the bison are thriving again, the ceremonies have been revived, and the bond between Indian people and the bison has been reestablished. At Pine Ridge there is an ongoing program of teaching stewardship: grandparents go into the schools and explain to the children that all the parts of the natural order are necessary and interrelated; they pass on the store of traditional knowledge that has been kept in the memories of the elders of the community The comeback of the sacred bison--and, more specifically, the appearance of a one-in-a-million white bison--would 'mean a spiritual recharge for our people,' as Alex White Plume puts it. 'There's talk locally that the time is approaching, so people are beginning to get ready, learning the old songs and revitalizing the ritual that they need to go through. It might be within the next ten years. I hope it's during my time.'" From pt_costello at yahoo.com Sun Oct 4 15:53:21 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 14:53:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] undocumented (thank you, brother!) Message-ID: <168162.8490.qm@web63106.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Jeff wrote in response to LP: At 10:31 04/10/09 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: > >I feel that it is useful to have such a space on the Internet even if >some subscribers are hell-bent on convicting of it of racism, sexism, >homophobia, catering to imperialism YOU ARE NOT EVEN FUNNY. But you did tell me one thing. The same thing that I always "learn" when someone reacts in this way. When a legitimate discussion, in this case about insensitivity to sexual assault, is met with mocking of the "charges" ("convicting [marxmail] of....") and arbitrary augmentation of the supposed "charges" (try to document that list of charges!!) in order to make light of the whole matter. And to preempt any further DISCUSSION of issues which could plausibly be portrayed as an escalation of those "charges." Defensiveness speaks volumes! - Jeff Thank you, my brother! He jests at a scar that never felt a wound. It seems that for some, Marxism is simply an intellectually interesting conversation, internet cocktail chatter. For some of us, it really is more than an intellectual excercise. I know there are good brothers out there like you and S. Artesian who understand. Perhaps in good marxmale style i should be witty and sardonic right now but it is simply tiresome isn't it? can't we just be real about oppression? about what it feels like? can't we just care about our fellow beings who are suffering it? Could i ever jeer at someone who wants to help me understand what it feels like to be African American or Latino or Native American in this culture? I really hope someone punctures my self importance if I ever go there. Thank you, brother, for understanding. From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 16:23:14 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 18:23:14 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: I have no idea of what people expect of an open email list. Anybody of any background or here for any motive can claim to be anything they want and say absolutely anything and be outraged about anything...rightly or wrongly. It's just the nature of the beast that it can't be anything more than an electronic beer tent at the county fair. Despite the fact that periodic shortcomings in sanitation, some of us do see some value in having such a "place"...if only to nurse a beer and listen. If you want something more, the floor's yours to propose some CONCRETE AND SERIOUS MEANS by which to make an email list something more. ML From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 16:28:20 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:28:20 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <4AC92184.4070605@panix.com> Mark Lause wrote: > I have no idea of what people expect of an open email list. Actually, Pat accidentally told us what she was looking for--or not looking for--as soon as she showed up. http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w36/msg00212.htm Hello James! I agree with you about Marxmail. It is just a talk club. I imagine that a few Marxmailers have not even conversed with a working class person in years. Personally, I just read it mostly for the information. The people i know who are activists do not have the time to write lengthy hairsplitting screeds on the internet. Try not to take Marxmail too seriously. There are many good, hardworking people on the American left. They just generally do not post on Marxmail. Best regards, Pat Costello --- So, all you bad people with easy jobs. Just keep on posting... From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 16:53:28 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 18:53:28 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <4AC92184.4070605@panix.com> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> <4AC92184.4070605@panix.com> Message-ID: But it's the nature of the beast that this works the other way, too. Unless you actually know the writer, it's all bursts of electrons across the screen, isn't it? Except in those cases, race, gender, class, etc. are actually unknown. And nobody knows who's been a Maoist or a Trotskyist for forty years or an anarchist who has no use for anyone here or a Republican troll or a crazy or a cop or anything. The value or lack of value of what someone says has to be considered on its own merits. I'm sympathetic to people who find it a difficult medium, but I don't know what can be done about it...other than to use it for what it's worth and not expect more from it than it can deliver.... ML From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 16:55:24 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:55:24 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Swans Release: Oct. 5, 2009 Message-ID: <4AC927DC.7020704@panix.com> > Swans Commentary > http://www.swans.com/ > October 5, 2009 > > FUNDRAISING TIME: Gentle-hearted readers, do you remember what Swans is > about? "In a time of revisionism, faux-semblant, spinning news, and skewed > information, Swans is about thinking, questioning, observing, and providing > ideas that are lacking in the mainstream media." (It's also about Arts & > Culture.) An insightful observer once noted, "In sum, Swans is an ad-free > rational island in an ocean of commercial make-believe." Please help us reach > our $3,000 goal for 2009. Donate now! -- > http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html > > @ @ @ @ @ > > Note from the Editors: When Edmund Burke wrote in 1756 that "No passion so > effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear," > he could not have imagined that over 250 years later, vitriolic fear- > mongering would be so successfully waged against the notion of providing for > people's health and well being. While the War on Health may appear unreasoned > and reactionary on the surface, behind the scenes is a well coordinated, > financed, strategic attack. Gilles d'Aymery continues his analysis of this > debate, uncovering the influence-meddlers, pundits, and demagogues hard at > work to preserve, not reform, the US for-profit sick care system. We cannot > be mere spectators on this important debate; nor can we sit passively while > the case for an attack on Iran is manufactured. Aymery hits hard against > perpetual war and the ignorant masses that swallow the propaganda, from Iraq > to Iran and beyond. > > It's not only the *legal* drug trade for which the mainstream media > manufactures consent for capitalist prerogatives -- Michael Barker delves > beyond a book on the CIA, the Australian drug trade, and the Mackay murder > that has been all but banned by the media. Nigerian corruption is also far > from the news, so Femi Akomolafe takes task with the government officials who > fill their coffers and bury their heads in the sand with no accountability > while the nation suffers from lack of electricity, environmental devastation, > and assaults by militant youth. Activist Martin Murie considers how our very > minds and bodies succumb to acquiescence, relating to rock climbers and > laborers who transcend physical demands and care for the other. Yet from > Nigeria to New Orleans, recalling Hurricane Katrina and the lack of care for > the other, we learn from Garry Potter just how dystopian realities already > found in much of the Third World have begun to visit the First. > > Moving on to counter-cultural matters, Steve Shay tells of stuffing his > hundred-pound dog in the Volkswagen and making a cross-country move from > suburban Chicago to life on a boat in Washington State; Peter Byrne considers > the profound collection of the exiled national poet of Palestine, Mahmoud > Darwish; and Charles Marowitz reviews a book on the complexity of poet and > mystic-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Jeffery Klaehn presents a love > poem in seven chapters, from the promise of love to the ultimate decision, > and circling back to health care and the impact of obesity in America, Raju > Peddada would like to impose a punitive approach on the obese to cut the fat > from both the population and the Medicare budget, though having read *Fast > Food Nation,* the editors would rather punish the food industry for its > fattening and addicting products. As always we close with your letters, > demonstrating the diversity that Swans provides, from cartoons to music, > culture, and international politics. > > # # # # # > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/desk091.html > Blips #91 - From the Martian Desk - Gilles d'Aymery > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/ga273.html > Iran: War Madness - Gilles d'Aymery > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker32.html > The CIA, Drugs, And An Australian Killer Cop - Michael Barker > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/potter01.html > New Orleans And Katrina: Past Prediction, Future Dystopia - Garry Potter > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/murie80.html > Climbing, Work, Activism - Martin Murie > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/femia20.html > Yar'adua Fiddles While Nigeria Burns - Femi Akomolafe > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/sshay01.html > Old Macho And The Sea - Short Story by Steve Shay > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/pbyrne110.html > The Poet Who Would Not Be Expelled From History - Book Review by Peter Byrne > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/cmarow148.html > Coleridge: Journey Through Heaven And Hell - Book Review by Charles Marowitz > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/klaehn04.html > Red, Red Roses - Poetry by Jeffery Klaehn > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/rajup21.html > We Are A Fat Country! - Raju Peddada > > http://www.swans.com/library/art15/letter175.html > Letters to the Editor > > # # # # # > > Swans (aka Swans Commentary), ISSN: 1554-4915, is a bi-weekly non- > commercial ad-free Web-only magazine which provides original content to > its readers. We encourage pulp publications to republish Swans' Work in > print format. Please contact the publisher at . > Please, do not repost Swans' Work on the Web and other mailing lists: > "Hypertext" links to any pages of Swans.com are authorized; however, > republication of any part of this site, inlining, mirroring, and framing > are expressly prohibited. We welcome your comments and suggestions. When > writing to Swans, please indicate your first and last name as well as your > city and state (country) of residence. > > You are receiving this E-mail notification for you have expressed your > interest in Swans and the work of its team. If you wish not to receive > these short notifications, simply reply to this E-mail (delete the > content) and enter the word REMOVE in the subject line. We do NOT share > your E-mail address with anyone. > > Cordially, > Gilles d'Aymery > -- > Swans > > "Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht > > From pt_costello at yahoo.com Sun Oct 4 17:00:09 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:00:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] undocumented Message-ID: <681045.10051.qm@web63107.mail.re1.yahoo.com> You went to all the trouble of trying to dig up something on me and that's the worst you could come up with? Pardon me but BWA HA HA! I think Jeff is really on to something here: Defensiveness speaks volumes! LP wrote: Actually, Pat accidentally told us what she was looking for--or not looking for--as soon as she showed up. http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w36/msg00212.htm Hello James! I agree with you about Marxmail. It is just a talk club. I imagine that a few Marxmailers have not even conversed with a working class person in years. Personally, I just read it mostly for the information. The people i know who are activists do not have the time to write lengthy hairsplitting screeds on the internet. Try not to take Marxmail too seriously. There are many good, hardworking people on the American left. They just generally do not post on Marxmail. Best regards, Pat Costello --- So, all you bad people with easy jobs. Just keep on posting... From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 17:02:47 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:02:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> <4AC92184.4070605@panix.com> Message-ID: <4AC92997.3020208@panix.com> Mark Lause wrote: > But it's the nature of the beast that this works the other way, too. > > Unless you actually know the writer, it's all bursts of electrons across the > screen, isn't it? Except in those cases, race, gender, class, etc. are > actually unknown. Actually, on the Marxism list that preceded this one we had a subscriber named Ralph Dumain who wrote in such a way as to lead to the impression that he was an African-American. When all sorts of good-hearted subscribers sent him public and private notes to the effect that they sympathized with his plight living in racist America, he never admitted that he was a yid just like me. It all reminds me of that New Yorker Magazine cartoon with two dogs. One is sitting at a computer and the other is looking over his shoulder. The one at the computer is saying, "Nobody knows that you are a dog on the Internet." From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 17:04:47 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:04:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <681045.10051.qm@web63107.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <681045.10051.qm@web63107.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4AC92A0F.5040904@panix.com> Pat Costello wrote: > Actually, Pat accidentally told us what she was looking for--or not > looking for--as soon as she showed up. > > http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w36/msg00212.htm > It is not meant to make you look bad. It was meant to demonstrate that you think Marxmail is anti-working class and sexist. Surely, this is what you believe. We are the wicked ones, not you. From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 17:15:53 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:15:53 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] ADL plays "anti-Semite" card against Honduran popular movement Message-ID: <4AC92CA9.7080305@panix.com> The New York Times October 4, 2009 Anti-Jewish Statements Raise Concern on Honduras By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:51 p.m. ET TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) -- A Jewish civil rights organization is expressing alarm over conspiracy theories claiming Jews and Israel aided the ouster of the Honduran president and attempts to dislodge him from his refuge in the Brazilian Embassy. The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League cited statements made by ousted President Manuel Zelaya as well as the news director of a radio station that was closed by the interim government in Honduras and by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, among others. Most of the comments repeat widely circulated rumors that Israeli soldiers -- or in some versions, mercenaries -- worked with the troops backing interim President Roberto Micheletti, allegedly supplying some form of tear gas used at the embassy and providing other assistance. The interim government, which came to power after the military arrested Zelaya and flew him to exile in Costa Rico on June 28, has denied receiving any Israeli help or using any tear gas at the embassy. Journalists who have covered the political crisis say they have not seen any sign of Israeli involvement. The Jewish group also criticized Chavez for claiming at the United Nations that Israel is the only country to recognize the coup-installed government, something Micheletti's administration has denied. The ADL also cited an interview with The Miami Herald in which Zelaya said that ''Israeli mercenaries are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.'' ''We know from history that at times of turmoil and unrest, Jews are a convenient scapegoat,'' ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman, said in a statement released Sunday. ''And that is happening now in Honduras, a country that has only a small Jewish minority.'' ''We know from history that at times of turmoil and unrest, Jews are a convenient scapegoat,'' ADL national director Abraham H. Forman said in a statement released Sunday. ''And that is happening now in Honduras, a country that has only a small Jewish minority.'' The group estimates the Central American country is home to less than 100 families in a population of about 8 million -- and says it has no real history of anti-Semitism. Chavez, a Zelaya ally, has repeatedly criticized Israel, while insisting he is not anti-Semitic. Zelaya was forced from office with the backing of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court for trying to hold a referendum on rewriting the constitution. His opponents charged he wanted to lift the charter's provision limiting presidents to a single term. He denied that. With the backing of much of the international community, including the U.S. government, Zelaya is seeking to be reinstated to serve out his term, which ends in January. He has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy with dozens of supporters since slipping back into Honduras on Sept. 21. A copy of the ADL report was sent to Zelaya through one of his associates inside the Brazilian Embassy but there was no immediate comment. Among the remarks criticized by the ADL is a statement by David Romero, news director of Radio Globo, which supports Zelaya. On Sept. 25, commenting on the rumors alleging Israeli involvement in the crisis, Romero referred on air to the ''famous Holocaust'' and added that ''I believe it should have been fair and valid to let Hitler finish his historic vision.'' Romero apologized for the remarks Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press, saying that they were ''stupid'' statements made in the heat of the moment and that don't reflect his real views. He said his grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from Czechoslovakia who came to Honduras to escape persecution in Europe. ''I apologize to the Jewish community here and throughout the world,'' Romero said. Radio Globo was shut down and its equipment confiscated by security forces after Micheletti issued an emergency decree banning large-scale demonstrations and limiting civil liberties, including freedom of the press. The interim president, who has come under increasing pressure at home and abroad over the restrictions, is expected to decide Monday whether to lift the decree. There have been some signs of progress in the bitter standoff, with Zelaya and the interim government negotiating through intermediaries ahead of a visit set for Wednesday by the secretary general of the Organization of American States and regional foreign ministers. Victor Rico, an OAS official organizing the summit, told reporters Sunday that he saw reason for ''reasonable optimism'' with the discussions in recent days. ''I think the moment has arrived that all sides start to think about the suffering that this is causing for the Honduran people.'' From pt_costello at yahoo.com Sun Oct 4 17:23:55 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:23:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] undocumented Message-ID: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Is this not your typical tactic? as soon as someone is the least bit rambunctious, you dig up something, hopefully damning, from the archives? In this case you were not successful. You at least admit that my comments were "accidental". They were intended to be offlist and you should also note that i immediately apologized. We are all allowed our (hopefully) private thoughts, yes? Also, I note this because it has never been my intention to offend. As for my "accidental" remarks about Marxmale, I am very willing to be convinced that i am wrong. I would really like to see a place where men AND WOMEN can discuss marxist politics on the internet. How about you? Would you like to see more women posting here? Would you do anything to make that happen? I dare not say any more until after midnight. i am sure i am uncharacteristically close to reaching my daily limit of 5 posts. Pat Costello wrote: > Actually, Pat accidentally told us what she was looking for--or not > looking for--as soon as she showed up. > > http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w36/msg00212.htm > It is not meant to make you look bad. It was meant to demonstrate that you think Marxmail is anti-working class and sexist. Surely, this is what you believe. We are the wicked ones, not you. From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 17:31:07 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 19:31:07 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <4AC92A0F.5040904@panix.com> References: <681045.10051.qm@web63107.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <4AC92A0F.5040904@panix.com> Message-ID: As I've said earlier, I share Pat's stated concerns on male insensitivity, but I have asked three or four times whether she or anyone else has any suggestions as to how they proposed to address them.... Dead silence. About a year ago, we had a similar exchange. Pat denounced the list as middle class and male, which makes you wonder how that could be done on an email list. It was because not enough of it was supporting Gloria La Riva for president. So, you didn't have to actually KNOW anything about the people you disagreed with over the matter. You could simply channel knowledge about them based on positions they took.... That is, those who didn't vote for La Riva and favored Nader or McKinney, for example, were revealing their obviously middle class and male natures . . . . Still, it wasn't the sociological determinism or the magical instant sociological analysis that struck me so much as Pat's being "offended." And an unwillingness to make concrete arguments. Once you've read one post and gauge that she's offended by something, there's nowhere to go with it. The one thing that an email list could be good for, then, isn't getting used for that purpose here. I repeat the request for a concrete and serious proposal. Otherwise, this whole things becomes as circular as a discussion with a drunken anarchist...or a sober Walter Lippman... ML From ian at ianpace.com Sun Oct 4 17:29:39 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 00:29:39 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5B00B526D0B4458CAB8E27D144A7B7C1@IanPacePC> From: "Pat Costello" > As for my "accidental" remarks about Marxmale, I am very willing to be > convinced that i am wrong. I would really like to see a place where men > AND WOMEN can discuss marxist politics on the internet. In light of the other comments, would you not be happier if their activism did not give them time to post on here? Solidarity, Ian From ian at ianpace.com Sun Oct 4 17:34:16 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 00:34:16 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented (thank you, brother!) In-Reply-To: <168162.8490.qm@web63106.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <168162.8490.qm@web63106.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: From: "Pat Costello" > Perhaps in good marxmale style i should be witty and sardonic right now > but it is simply tiresome isn't it? can't we just be real about > oppression? about what it feels like? I would say those are complicated questions. > can't we just care about our fellow beings who are suffering it? > I thought that as Marxists we would want to know what conceivably could be done to alleviate their situation, rather than merely extending sympathy (which is of course in itself important). Solidarity, Ian From lnp3 at panix.com Sun Oct 4 17:35:05 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:35:05 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4AC93129.3050802@panix.com> Pat Costello wrote: As for my "accidental" remarks about Marxmale, I am very willing to be convinced that i am wrong. I would really like to see a place where men AND WOMEN can discuss marxist politics on the internet. How about you? Would you like to see more women posting here? Would you do anything to make that happen? --- Okay, I'm game. Tell me how more women would post here. Does it involve banning the comments of Shane Mage, Ian Pace, and the two French subscribers on Polanski that were supposedly vile expressions of hatred toward women? No thanks. I would prefer to keep the list *exactly* the way it is rather than to suppress ideas that you hate, or for that matter, ideas that you express that others hate. This is a free speech forum and I plan to keep it that way, even at the risk of letting messages be posted that are offensive to some subscribers. From pt_costello at yahoo.com Sun Oct 4 17:51:24 2009 From: pt_costello at yahoo.com (Pat Costello) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:51:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] A concrete and serious proposal for more gender equality on this list Message-ID: <728449.42898.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Let me assume that we all would like to see more gender equality in terms of the discussion here. I modestly propose a few items. Would love to hear what others think. As a woman, here are the issues as i see them: 1. Women have less time for internet discussions 2. I have reason to believe that women do not feel welcome here. 3. You might have to "adjust" the character of Marxmail to have more women posters. (Big generalization: Women are put off by insults and chest beating) Proposal: INVITE WOMEN! send out a post that says that our sisters in Marxism are invited to converse about matters of political importance to women and other oppressed people. post articles that pertain to women's political interests. DISCUSS those articles with respect. While you are writing, imagine that the person who is reading is a dear comrade, a gentle person who has ideas and opinions but has suffered a lifetime of being ignored and feeling unworthy, of always being interrupted and talked over, who feels that her only worth is in her appearance, not in her ideas. Can you do this, my brothers? Can you make a bit of allowance for the sisters? From sartesian at earthlink.net Sun Oct 4 17:50:22 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 19:50:22 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented References: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Can we call a halt to this, please? Louis hardly made a blistering attack. He was defending the list, as a list, as a forum fundamentally dedicated to understanding the sources of exploitation in the world, past, present, and future, and maybe finding a mechanism, some immanent force for the removal of that exploitation.. The list is supposed to be a reasonably open forum. We, the participants, bring to it what we are, warts and all, even if we think they're dimples. We have an issue? OK hash it out. Fight about it. Tell somebody to go pound sand, turn blue, etc. But let's be clear what is at issue. Let's establish some point of reference for the next time around. I think that point of reference is that as women make up growing sections of the working class, their exploitation grows in intensity, and brutalization expands extensively. We need only look at the deaths of what? more than 300 young women in and around Ciudad Juarez-- deaths that somehow go "unexplained." With such a social "background," it is not unusual for any and every expression of sympathy, or insistence on "due process" for a man who has engaged in such brutalization, on personal, domestic, or social levels to be more than just regarded as "insensitive" by women, but be considered tolerance in continuing that brutalization, that exploitation. That's the point. You want to tell women they're wrong? That's a fool's errand. Women won't be "wrong" until the relations of power have changed and the everyday brutalization that is excused, hidden, tolerated is eliminated. Point of analogy: Malcolm X was not wrong when he expressed no remorse for the death of JFK and described it as chickens coming home to roost. So.., so perhaps one task, IMO, to improve the "health" of the list, is to explicate a little more closely what is going on with women workers; what toll is being taken on women in Africa with the dismantling of what little development there has been; what are the elements of that have taken such a toll on the "new face of the poor." ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Costello" From ian at ianpace.com Sun Oct 4 18:03:38 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 01:03:38 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: References: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <780406B0A8254021B3F13425A4A45B94@IanPacePC> From: "S. Artesian" > > With such a social "background," it is not unusual for any and every > expression of sympathy, or insistence on "due process" for a man who has > engaged in such brutalization, on personal, domestic, or social levels to > be more than just regarded as "insensitive" by women, but be considered > tolerance in continuing that brutalization, that exploitation. That's the > point. > The 'due process' is about establishing whether that man (or woman) has indeed engaged in such a thing. To give another example, there has recently been a case of a woman teacher in a girls' school in London who received an 18 month custodial sentence for having a lesbian relationship with a 15-year old girl at that school. The girl defended their relationship to the last, but I think the crime was statutory rape. Obviously the case looks very different to that of Polanski, but the thing this woman has been convicted of is similar. I think the sentence was disproportionate in this case. But if that sort of case can be questioned, then so can another where the affirmed charge is the same. Once again, if you don't like insistence on 'due process', do you think that alleged offenders in such cases should be deemed guilty until proved innocent? Would anything other than such a view be insensitive and demeaning towards women? Solidarity, Ian From meisner at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 4 17:54:50 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:54:50 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091005015450.04119444@pop.xs4all.nl> At 18:23 04/10/09 -0400, Mark Lause wrote: >I have no idea of what people expect of an open email list. Anybody of any >background or here for any motive can claim to be anything they want and say >absolutely anything and be outraged about anything...rightly or wrongly. I have no idea who you are addressing, but your various observations about email lists have NOT A THING to do with the discussion at hand! The substantive replies have been in response to the IDEAS which have been expressed, regardless of whether they had been sent by email or written on a wall, even regardless of whether the person who wrote them was expressing their actual opinions or just pretending to believe them, regardless of whether the person is who they say they are or someone else completely. When certain things are WRITTEN, then one can respond to the CONTENTS of that writing with more writing. It wouldn't even matter if I DIDN'T REALLY EXIST: you still are reading this and can't help but listening to what you read. There is one aspect, though, that DOES have to do with the "medium" of an email list and an actual person: the moderator who has the power to control discussion on the list. In response to my very serious and carefully written post he responded: >This is unmitigated bullshit..... > >When you accuse one side of >being misogynist, it cuts off discussion. Period..... > > We need to keep these kinds of charges to an >absolute minimum if we are generally interested in a free exchange of ideas. The sad thing is that I actually agree with him that thoughtless name-calling and making personal charges (such as misogyny) are harmful to a discussion and should be avoided in the interests of "a free exchange of ideas." The PROBLEM is that my making such "charges" was totally imagined! Instead, I could only see that this hallow call for me to cease and desist, supposedly to allow for "a free exchange of ideas," was ITSELF a way of stopping the very discussion I had begun! And that pattern continues. Louis had to make a quip in a totally unrelated reply about others (me?) being "hell-bent on convicting [the list] of racism, sexism, homophobia....." again all without substance. And when I called him on that, we get another flurry of emails that again dance around the substantive issues in order to concentrate on the problems of email lists! Well I challenge any of you to write about the SUBSTANCE of the original discussion. Oh, you already forgot? Well Pat is gently trying to remind you here: >Could i ever jeer at someone who wants to help me understand what it feels >like to be African American or Latino or Native American in this culture? If your answer is a clear "no," then you must explain why it IS alright to take such an attitude in the case of women (another oppressed group) and victims of sexual assault. That is where the discussion started, about insensitivity to rape and the effects of that insensitivity, and that is where it should continue. That is, if you actually had something to say about it. And if you don't, then quit trying to shoot the messenger. - Jeff From eindeoc at freenet.de Sun Oct 4 18:11:06 2009 From: eindeoc at freenet.de (Einde O'Callaghan) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:11:06 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] The real issue in the Polanski arrest Message-ID: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de> For me the real issue for me on the Polanski arrest at this particular point of time isn't whether he is innocent or guilty of rape - I have no truck with the type of behaviour he is accused of - or what attitude the woman he forced his attentions on under whatever circumstances while she was underage forgives him or not, but the fact that in country after country people can now be arrested on American warrants and deported to the USA to face the not so tender mercies of the US "justice" system without the substantive case being examined by a court before the deportation. Einde O'Callaghan From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 18:13:18 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 20:13:18 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] A concrete and serious proposal for more gender equality on this list In-Reply-To: <728449.42898.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <728449.42898.qm@web63104.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Women can have as much time as they want for internet discussion on this list. While I can see why they might not feel welcome here, it's a sense that many of us share periodically.... What does that do. The call "to 'adjust' the character of Marxmail to have more women posters" means NOTHING without some suggestion as to how to do that. You aren't making one by simply pointing out that women "are put off by insults and chest beating." Of course, every sentient being is offended by such things, and you're blanket condemnations of the list don't encourage civil discourse. On this list, among us, a blob of electrons identifying themselves as female can poison the discussion with complete equality as anything a blurb of electrons identifying themselves as male does..... So the real objections you have to the list is that it has not invited "our sisters in Marxism are invited to converse about matters of political importance to women and other oppressed people." The list should "send out a post".... But where? When? To who? While we're at it, we have to reach significant numbers of this target audience, maybe we can bypass this email list entirely and move towards organizing something in the real world.... ML From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 18:18:52 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 20:18:52 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091005015450.04119444@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091005015450.04119444@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: I have no idea who Jeff thinks he's responding to but, aside from the first bit, none of these words are mine.... And I don't like having him tack my name onto words I've not written. Talk about being careless and insensitive in discourse..... ML From sabocat59 at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 18:52:51 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 20:52:51 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Factory Orders in the U.S. Drop Message-ID: <6e42edf00910041752j477e63d9q9c7e8895fde1a84c@mail.gmail.com> Factory Orders in U.S. Drop 0.8%; Ex-Transport Rises 0.4% http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHoCIz1cbXzY By Courtney Schlisserman Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Orders placed with U.S. factories fell unexpectedly in August, restrained by long-lasting items such as commercial aircraft, construction machinery and electrical equipment. Bookings fell 0.8 percent after a revised 1.4 percent increase in July that was larger than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Excluding transportation equipment, orders rose 0.4 percent. Today?s report follows others this week that showed manufacturing contracted or slowed in September. With excess capacity close to a record, companies have less reason to ramp up production until they see stronger gains in demand. While the ?cash for clunkers? program boosted automakers? output in August, it?s now expired, pointing to an uneven rebound. ?We could have a choppy recovery,? Benjamin Reitzes, an economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, said before the report. ?Employment is still falling, and until that turns around the economy is going to have trouble gaining any momentum.? Factory orders were forecast to be unchanged, after an originally estimated 1.3 percent gain in June, according to the median of 65 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Projections ranged from a decrease of 1.7 percent to an increase of 2.1 percent. Employers cut more jobs than forecast last month and the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high, Labor Department data showed today, calling into question the sustainability of the economic recovery. Durable Goods The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since 1983, from 9.7 percent in August. Payrolls fell by 263,000, following a revised 201,000 decline the prior month that was less than previously reported. Orders for durable goods, which make up 47 percent of total factory demand, fell 2.6 percent, the biggest drop since January. The government last week estimated they had dropped 2.4 percent. Demand for transportation equipment, which tends to be volatile, fell 9.1 percent, led by a 43 percent decline in commercial aircraft and parts. Autos increased 2 percent. Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co. are among automakers that cited the popularity of the cash-for- clunkers plan as they announced production increases for the coming months. Clunkers Program The program, which ended Aug. 24, offered auto buyers discounts of as much as $4,500 to trade in older cars and trucks for new, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The plan produced almost 700,000 auto sales before it ended, the Transportation Department said Aug. 26. Auto sales fell 35 percent in September from the previous month to a 9.2 million annual rate, after the clunkers plan expired, according to Bloomberg data. Sales had reached the highest level in more than year a month earlier. Bookings for capital goods excluding aircraft and military equipment, a measure of future business investment, fell 0.9 percent after dropping 1.3 percent in July. Shipments of those goods, used in calculating gross domestic product, decreased 2 percent. Economists earlier this week said the end of the clunkers incentive may have helped fuel a weaker-than-forecast September reading for the Institute for Supply Management- Chicago?s business survey, which found activity dropped. The Chicago group is not affiliated with the national Institute for Supply Management. Factory Stockpiles The Institute for Supply Management yesterday said its factory gauge edged down to 52.6, from 52.9 in August. Readings above 50 signal expansion. Another Commerce Department report this week showed the record drop in stockpiles in the second quarter was even larger than previously estimated, paving the way for gains in manufacturing in the second half of the year. Today?s report showed factory stockpiles fell 0.8 percent in August, the smallest drop since May, after falling a revised 0.9 percent a month earlier. Manufacturers had enough goods on hand to last 1.38 months -- the lowest since October -- at the current sales pace, down from 1.39 months in July. Micron Technology Inc., the biggest U.S. producer of computer-memory chips, this week reported a narrower loss after an industry glut eased and product prices rebounded. Bankruptcies and factory shutdowns have helped the memory industry pare an oversupply of chips, pushing up prices closer to the cost of production. Micron makes dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, for personal computers, as well as Nand flash chips, which store data in devices such as Apple Inc.?s iPhone. Job Cuts Timothy Main, chief executive officer of Jabil Circuit Inc., the Florida electronics manufacturer, said this week that the worst of the recession had likely passed. Even so, the company stepped up a job-cutting program. Jabil now expects to eliminate 4,500 positions, up from the 3,000 already planned. Today?s factory report showed orders of non-durable goods gained 0.8 percent. The increase may have been influenced by an 8 percent gain in wholesale energy costs in August, according to Labor Department figures released Sept. 15. To contact the reporter on this story: Courtney Schlisserman in Washington at cschlisserma at bloomberg.net. From sartesian at earthlink.net Sun Oct 4 19:05:25 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 21:05:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented References: <151133.28524.qm@web63103.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <780406B0A8254021B3F13425A4A45B94@IanPacePC> Message-ID: <084E7B2BA34B4E09BB8AE00895EDAB3B@dmsthinkpad> Ron Jacobs summed up that issue awhile ago. I really don't care to resume that discussion. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Pace" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 8:03 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] undocumented > From markalause at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 19:50:21 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 21:50:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] undocumented In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091005015450.04119444@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <55868ddf0910040548je2bcbefs906c76502677a36@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8684B.14537.C6F9001@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> <2ed7e4ad0910040655t35e6a411g2069a394bb6d33ef@mail.gmail.com> <4AC8B1C0.1020105@panix.com> <3.0.3.32.20091004204312.04434318@pop.xs4all.nl> <3.0.3.32.20091005015450.04119444@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: I apologize to Jeff for the very specific accusation that he misattributed quotes to me. ML From stuartmunckton at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 22:01:13 2009 From: stuartmunckton at gmail.com (Stuart Munckton) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:01:13 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] Lockerbie bombing witnesses paid millions, newly released legal papers say Message-ID: <2c6145850910042101s33a7a775j40b5f576c8123003@mail.gmail.com> Lockerbie witnesses paid up to $3.5m to give evidence SEVERIN CARRELL October 5, 2009 http://www.smh.com.au/world/lockerbie-witnesses-paid-up-to-35m-to-give-evidence-20091004-ghw3.html ** *LONDON: *Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $US3 million ($3.5 million) in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US government, according to newly released legal papers. The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. Megrahi abandoned his appeal last month after the Libyan and Scottish governments struck a deal to free him on compassionate grounds, because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Now in hospital in Tripoli, Megrahi said he wanted the public to see the evidence which he claims would have cleared him. ''I continue to protest my innocence - how could I fail to do so?'' he said. ''I have no desire to add to the upset of many people I know are profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie. My intention is only for the truth to be made known.'' The documents published by Megrahi's lawyers on Friday show that the US Justice Department was asked to pay $US2 million to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave evidence suggesting Megrahi had bought clothes found in the suitcase that allegedly held the bomb. The Justice Department was also asked to pay a further $US1 million to his brother, Paul, who did not give evidence but played an important role in identifying the clothing and in ''maintaining the resolve of his brother''. Their rewards could be increased, the Justice Department said, and they were also eligible for the US witness protection program, the documents said. The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which returned Megrahi's conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi's lawyers said, but not their official notebooks. The commission was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the Justice Department's ''reward for justice'' program, but found it was after Megrahi's trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out. A memo written by ''[Detective Inspector] Dalgleish'' to ''ACC Graham'' in 2007 confirms the brothers received ''substantial payments from the American authorities''. The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Mr Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial. In 23 police interviews, Mr Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person's age, appearance and the date of purchase. * * *Guardian News & Media* -- A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." ? Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?" ? Jarvis Cocker From dwaltersMIA at gmail.com Sun Oct 4 23:11:14 2009 From: dwaltersMIA at gmail.com (nada) Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:11:14 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Marek Edelman, antifascist fighter, dies Message-ID: <4AC97FF2.7020707@gmail.com> Poland is one country where the Zionists participated in the resistance in an organized fashion. There is little evidence that the Kapos of the Jewish Police and Jewish "Councils", set up by the Nazis, were Zionists or anti-Zionist. At any rate they represented a small segment of the Jewish ghettoized residents. The Revisionist Zionists were run out of the Warsaw ghetto, but still often enough participated in armed struggles there. At any time, the Zionists were a smaller segment of the Resistance relative to Communist, Bundist and unorganized Jewish resistance cells in Poland and, of course, in other countries. D. From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 5 01:01:48 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:01:48 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] [UCE] What's new at Links: Honduras, S. Africa, Fidel Castro, Venezuela, Mexico's La Jornada, Guatemala, India, Portugal, East Timor, Thailand Message-ID: <4AC999DC.9040500@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Honduras, S. Africa, Fidel Castro, Venezuela, Mexico's La Jornada, Guatemala and Canada, India - Lalgarh, Portugal, East Timor, Thailand * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * On the spot in Honduras: The people are still on the streets! By *Pedro Fuentes*, international secretary of the Party Socialism and Liberty (PSOL, Brazil) September 29, 2009 -- Honduras -- "Blood of martyrs, seeds of freedom" was the slogan at the burial of Wendy, who died as a result of tear gas this weekend. All "awakening has its price" and "Honduras has awoken", an activist from a Communist Party background involved in the resistance told me at the ceremony for the comrade, held September 28 at the national cemetery. Using Marxist terms, the comrade said that in Honduras this awakening has meant that the movement has taken "a qualitative leap forward". * Read more South Africa: `The ANC has invaded Kennedy Road' shack settlement /Statement by Abahlali baseMjondolo president S'bu Zikode. S'bu and his family have been living as refugees since the September 26-27 violence by the African National Congress targeting Abahlali leaders at Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban, South Africa. He appeals for continued support for the Shack Dwellers Movement in these dire times of government repression and lies. It can be said without exaggeration that the so-called democratic government of South Africa is attempting to silence and disband the country's largest social movement of the poor. / * Read more (Updated October 2) Honduras: Dictatorship steps up reign of terror, resistance pushes on By *Fred Fuentes*, Caracas October 1, 2009 - The dictatorship in Honduras, which overthrew the elected government of Manuel Zelaya in a military coup on June 28, has stepped up its reign of terror. A state of siege remains in place. However, the ongoing resistance has caused further cracks to open within the pro-coup forces as support for the resistance spreads. * Read more Venezuela plans deeper popular democracy to address economic crisis By *Federico Fuentes*, Caracas September 24, 2009 -- Faced with the growing impact of the global economic crisis, Washington's intentions to establish seven military bases in Colombia and growing challenges in solving structural problems, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed the need to build a new state. * Read more Mexico's leftist 'La Jornada': 25 years of rabble rousing By *John Ross*, Mexico City September 27, 2009 -- Seven mornings a week, Vicente Ramirez's battered aluminium kiosk on Cinco de Mayo Street in this city's old quarter is plastered with the front pages of 22 daily newspapers. All day handfuls of pedestrians pause to gawk at the incendiary headlines slapped to the siding, often engaging in animated debate about the nature of the news. * Read more Photo essay: Guatemalan Indigenous communities resist violent eviction by Canadian mining company Story and photo essay by *James Rodr?guez*, Barrio La Union, El Estor, Izabal, Guatemala September 28, 2009 -- As a result of a frustrated eviction attempt in the community of Las Nubes in El Estor, Izabal, Adolfo Ich Xaman (middle in photograph above) was brutally shot and killed by private security guards subcontracted by the Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN), local subsidiary of HudBay Minerals Inc., a Canadian mining company. * Read more India: Lalgarh's battle for dignity and justice By the *Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation* September 27, 2009 -- The following appeared as the editorial in the July 2009 issue of /Liberation/, the central organ of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) -- CPI (ML). Since then, while the paramilitary campaign in Lalgarh has ended, repression against the /adivasi/ (tribal) people of Lalgarh continues, with incidents of rape and violence reported. * Read more Portugal: Boost for left as Left Bloc doubles its representation / /*Left Bloc*, Portugal Portugal's parliamentary elections, held on September 27, 2009, have changed the political landscape. The Socialist Party (SP), which had an absolute majority in 2005 with 45% of vote, lost more than half a million votes and fell to 36.56%. Even as the winner, it is in a minority in parliament, the only political force which lost seats in relation to 2005 (96 down from 121). * Read more East Timor: The struggle for full independence --- 10 years on / /By *Mericio Akara*, translated by *Vannessa Hearman* September 30, 2009 -- Dili -- What is commemorated as Timor Leste's (East Timor) "liberation" is the United Nations-facilitated referendum on August 30, 1999. East Timor, which had been a Portugese colony, was already an independent country, as a result of the pro-independence political party Fretilin declaring East Timor independent on November 28, 1975. But barely days after the independence proclamation, on December 7, 1975, the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia used all its military firepower to invade Timor Leste. * Read more Philippines: Flood relief appeal from Partido Lakas ng Masa By *Reihana Mohideen*, international desk, *Partido Lakas ng Masa* (Party of the Labouring Masses) September, 28, 2009 -- Typhoon Ondoy swept through the Philippines on September 26, displacing some 250,000 people and, according to the most recent reports, has left some 86 people dead. Urban centres, such as Metro Manila, were also badly affected with more than 80% of the city under water. In some areas the water was around 4'-5' deep. Apparently one month's rainfall poured down in a matter of a few hours. We are conducting relief operations through our own networks and we are appealing for funds to support our relief work. * Read more Thailand: When King Pumipon dies ... By* Giles Ji Ungpakorn* September 25, 2009 -- Many Thais, whether they are royalist ``Yellow Shirts'' or pro-democracy ``Red Shirts'', are waiting for King Pumipon Adunyadet [often spelled Bhumipol Adulyadej in the Western press] to die. It may take years. Their feelings will be different, either positive or negative. This is because Pumipon has influenced Thai society for years. But the issue to discuss is whether this influence is created by others or based on the king's own power? * Read more Fidel Castro on Honduras: A revolution in the making By *Fidel Castro* September 24, 2009 -- Last July 16, I said that the coup d'?tat in Honduras "was conceived and organised by unscrupulous characters on the far-right -- officials who had been in the confidence of George W. Bush and were promoted by him"... I then indicated that the Yankee base at Soto Cano [Honduras] had provided the main backup to the coup and that "the idea of a peace initiative from Costa Rica was transmitted to the president of that country [Oscar Arias] from the State Department when Obama was in Moscow and was declaring at a Russian university that the only president of Honduras was Manuel Zelaya." * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From stuartmunckton at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 01:03:46 2009 From: stuartmunckton at gmail.com (Stuart Munckton) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:03:46 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] Honduras: More killings, yet protests still continue Message-ID: <2c6145850910050003y61af0b1akd81666986ecc56d6@mail.gmail.com> http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4727 4 October, 2009 HONDURAS: PROTESTS CONTINUE DESPITE MORE KILLINGS Filed under: Honduras ? admin @ 6:11 pm By Calvin Tucker Five hundred Hondurans yesterday defied the dictatorship?s ban on public demonstrations and gathered near a sports stadium in the working class district of El Pedregal in south Tegucigalpa. The meeting was organised mainly by word of mouth and through the social networking website Facebook. The last remaining independent media outlets, Radio Globo and TV channel 36, both of which had played a key role in organising resistance, were raided by armed soldiers last week and forced off air. In the hope of confusing the military authorities, the National Resistance Front had asked people to assemble at nine o?clock in the morning but did not provide any further details of their plans. Those who managed to make it to the designated location were treated to an impromptu concert put on by artists and singers who offered their services free of charge. Many protesters wore green ribbons signifying their opposition to military control and censorship. A small group of policemen hovered nearby but made no attempt to break up the concert. Local residents volunteered their homes as refuges should the army be called in to disperse the crowds. A 24 year old medical student from Tegucigalpa told 21st Century Socialismthat many people had been intimidated into staying at home. ?I have heard that the next group to be persecuted will be the university students,? she said. ?The people are angry, but sometimes I?m scared. I have to change my identity,? added the student. Residents with internet access tuned in to Radio Globo which is now broadcasting online from a safe location outside the capital, and some broke the news blackout by placing the speakers in their doorways facing the street. Shortly after midday a contingent from the concert left to join other protesters who were gathering outside the Brazilian embassy, now home to the elected president Manuel Zelaya. The embassy has remained surrounded by hundreds of soldiers and riot police ever since the president made his dramatic return to Honduras last month. They are under orders to shoot or detain any demonstrators. On Friday, another two supporters of the Resistance were killed. Mario Fidel Contreras, a 50 year old teacher, died in Tegucigalpa after being shot in the head. The regime denies responsibility, claiming that Mr Contreras was murdered by an unidentified common criminal. Later, the body of Antonio Leiva, a resistance leader from western Honduras, was discovered in the Santa Barbara district. According to some sources, Mr Leiva, who had ?disappeared? some days previously, had been brutally tortured. The Western media have not reported either death. Meanwhile, thirty eight peasant farmers have begun a hunger strike after they were seized from a government building on Thursday and charged with sedition. -- A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias." ? Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?" ? Jarvis Cocker From marvgandall at videotron.ca Mon Oct 5 05:14:19 2009 From: marvgandall at videotron.ca (Marv Gandall) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:14:19 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The capitalist state as (un)"contested terrain" Message-ID: (Rich is another principled liberal whose plaintive appeals to Obama - see his last paragraph - increasingly lack conviction) October 4, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist The Rabbit Ragu Democrats By FRANK RICH New York Times IN the annals of American excess, there often arrives a moment when those with too much money, too much clout and too much hubris just can?t stop themselves from tempting the fates. They throw an over-the-top party in public, or parade their wealth and power before the press, and the next thing you know their world, and sometimes ours, has crashed. In the go-go Reagan 1980s, the junk bond king Michael Milken bedazzled investors with lavish Predators? Balls in Beverly Hills. Sure enough, he and Wall Street would end the decade in ruin. Back East, the financier Saul Steinberg celebrated his 50th birthday in 1989 with a $1 million party in the Hamptons. ?Honey, if this moment were a stock, I?d short it,? he said when toasting his wife. He would soon suffer a stroke and see his company go bankrupt. Steinberg sold his vast New York apartment to the private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman. In February 2007, Schwarzman marked his 60th birthday with a highly visible multimillion-dollar bacchanal in the Park Avenue Armory. Though Schwarzman hasn?t suffered much since ? he is tied for 50th on the new Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans ? his bash presaged the bust to come. He became, as James Stewart wrote in The New Yorker, ?the designated villain of an era on Wall Street ? an era of rapacious capitalists and heedless self-indulgence.? It?s in this context that you have to wonder what some of the Obama era?s most moneyed and White House-connected lobbyists were thinking as they preened before a Washington Post reporter recently for two lengthy articles. We?re not even nine months into the new administration, yet these swaggering, utterly un-self-aware influence peddlers seem determined to prove that nothing except the party affiliations has changed in the Beltway?s pay-for-play culture since Tom DeLay. If these lobbyists were stocks, I?d short them. One of the articles focused on Heather Podesta ? ?The It Girl of a New Generation of Lobbyists? ? who lobbies for health care players like Eli Lilly, HealthSouth and Cigna. Podesta is half of what The Post has called a ?mega-lobbying? couple. Her husband, with his own separate (and larger) lobbying shop, is Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, the Clinton White House chief of staff who ran the Obama transition. Back in November, Tony Podesta told The Times that only ?very unsophisticated? clients would hire his firm because of his brother?s role in assembling the new administration. That encyclopedic and ever-expanding list of ?unsophisticated? clients includes Amgen and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity ? and that?s just among the A?s. His business was up 57 percent from last year in the first six months of 2009. Heather Podesta?s was up 65 percent. When we first meet Heather Podesta in The Post, she is being bussed on the cheek by Charles Rangel at his August birthday party at New York?s Tavern on the Green. In keeping with the usual pattern of blowback, it took only one day after the article appeared for The Times to report that Rangel, the ethically challenged chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was guilty of yet another lapse: He?d neglected to list at least $500,000 in assets on his 2007 Congressional disclosure form. As if that were not karmic retribution enough, Tavern on the Green filed for bankruptcy just days after that. The second Post article, on the front page two weeks ago, described the scene, as well as the rabbit ragu, at Ristorante Tosca, the lobbyists? hangout on F Street in downtown Washington. The Post did not mention that it is just four blocks away from the location of the now defunct Signatures, the restaurant whose owner, Jack Abramoff, was the go-to fixer of the DeLay ?K Street project? before scandal brought him down. The stars of Tosca?s ?Power Section,? we learned, include the Podestas, Tom Daschle (?not technically a registered lobbyist? but, as The Post put it, ?a ?special policy adviser? ? wink wink?) and Steve Elmendorf (who ?eats lunch out only at Tosca?). Elmendorf was chief of staff to the former Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt. A quick visit to opensecrets.org reveals that Elmendorf Strategies? client list includes Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, among other players in the coming battle over financial regulation reform. Then again, as The Nation details in its current issue, Gephardt has also lobbied for Goldman, among many other corporate clients in opposition to the populist policies he once championed. Barack Obama promised a change from this revolving-door, behind-closed-doors collaboration between special interests and government. He vowed to ?do our business in the light of day? ? with health care negotiations broadcast on C-Span ? and to ?restore the vital trust between people and their government.? He said, ?I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.? That those lobbyists would so extravagantly flaunt their undiminished role shows just how little they believe that a new sheriff has arrived in Dodge. In his scathing Wall Street Journal column on The Post articles last week, Thomas Frank crystallized the gap between Obama?s pledge and this reality. ?There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery?s version of the Barack Obama ?Hope? poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists.? That?s no joke: It was donated by Tony and Heather Podesta. Obama?s promise to make Americans trust the government again was not just another campaign bullet point; it?s the foundation of his brand of governance and essential to his success in office. At the first anniversary of the TARP bailout of the banks, we can see how far he has to go. Americans? continued suspicion that Washington is in cahoots with powerful interests in joints like Tosca is contributing to their confusion and skepticism about what?s happening out of view in the battle over health care reform. The public is not wrong. The administration?s legislative deals with the pharmaceutical companies were made in back rooms. Business Week reported in early August that the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business. UnitedHealth?s hired Beltway gunslingers include both Elmendorf Strategies and Daschle, a public supporter of the public option who nonetheless does some of his ?wink, wink? counseling for UnitedHealth. The company?s in-house lobbyist is a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader. Gephardt consults there too. But it?s not as if the Republicans now have the public?s back. DeLay may be reduced these days to violating public taste rather than the public trust on ?Dancing With the Stars,? but back on Capitol Hill, his successors keep the K Street faith. In their campaign to kill the public option, G.O.P. leaders often cite data from the Lewin Group, a research company, which has projected that 88 million Americans might quit their private insurance plans if given a government alternative. (The Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at the far less earthshaking 10 to 11 million.) Lewin, which repeatedly insists it?s still a nonpartisan outfit, was actually bought by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth in 2007. The Huffington Post reported in August that John Boehner and Eric Cantor ? who use Lewin?s findings to scare voters about a ?government takeover? of health care ? are big recipients of UnitedHealth campaign cash. Next up will be the overhaul of financial regulations. With job seekers now outnumbering job openings 6 to 1 in America, many still wonder why most of the big-dog culprits who helped speed the national meltdown ? from lying and gambling bankers to shyster subprime mortgage packagers to executives at delinquent ratings agencies ? have not shared their pain. In his speech marking the anniversary of Lehman Brothers? failure, Obama chastised Wall Street for having taken irresponsible risks. But of course it is already back doing exactly that. Meanwhile, we?re hearing of behind-the-scenes Congressional softening of perhaps the most promising component of the White House?s modest financial regulatory package, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Real-estate brokerages are being exempted from its purview, and banks will not be required to offer ?plain vanilla? mortgages. As in health care, the question of what the White House will really fight for in financial reform remains open. While the ostentatious daily predators? ball at Ristorante Tosca is a bad omen, we don?t know yet whether that omen is for the lobbyists, or the Obama administration, or both. This is history that the president still has the power to write. It will be written in the bills he will or won?t sign into law. We can only hope that he learned an important lesson from his stunning failure to secure Olympic gold for his political home of Chicago last week. If the Olympic committee has the audacity to stand up to a lobbyist as powerful as the president of the United States, then surely the president of the United States can stand up to the powerful interests angling to defeat his promise of reform. From intnsred at golgotha.net Mon Oct 5 06:16:53 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 08:16:53 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The Mean Country Message-ID: <200910050816.53137.intnsred@golgotha.net> The Mean Country By David Glenn Cox Last winter I wrote a story about the number of people who were dying in house fires after having their utilities turned off. I began to do some research on the growing numbers of tent cities springing up across America. How, I wondered, will these people deal with the coming months of winter cold? But, as I find is so often the case, I start off on one story and end up doing another. Officially there are over fourteen million unemployed in America. That is the official number that the politicians will own up to; in actuality the number could be as high as twenty million. I have been unemployed myself for well over a year. I have twenty years of management experience, and I have a great track record with a proven record for results. However, I am over fifty years old and to prospective employers that is the kiss of death. They perceive you as about to keel over from a heart attack at any moment. There are very few jobs to be had; the department of labor reports six people looking for every one job available. Because of the economy I became homeless and now live in a garage. I am not an alcoholic, and I?m not hooked on drugs. I?m just unemployed. So as I began to research the tent cities across the country, what surprised me, although it really shouldn?t have, was the attitudes of my countrymen towards their fellow homeless Americans. Several years ago I read a book about a woman who was a holocaust survivor. She described how she would drag out the dead bodies from the barracks in the morning so that she could have the corpse's clothing. She could then trade the clothing for extra food or necessities. She said something that has always stuck with me. ?Many people gave up on life because this was a world where it was very easy to give up on life. When you gave up then you just died.? When you are homeless it is very easy to give up on life. Every activity is an uphill struggle, cooking food, doing laundry, looking for work, etc. The industry in which I worked has virtually ceased to exist. Many unemployed workers were employed in industries that have now ceased to exist. Their jobs and careers are gone, and yet the public sneers, ?Get a job.? They also offer up the following helpful solutions, direct quotes all. ?As others have said..does it really help the homeless by providing them with a free home? I bet not. There are other solutions. I notice that when I give things to my children it does not tend to make them more responsible.. Just the opposite.? ?I don?t know the actual number, but what, isn?t it like 70-80 percent of all homeless people have drug/addiction problems? Even if it?s less how is tent city doing anything but enabling this problem? I know this is more about tent cities in general but honestly giving someone a free place to live along with free meals is not really motivating them to change.? ?The poverty pimps will not allow the homeless to be housed without 24/7 babysitting. Without the babysitting the homeless could move on with their live and thrive; NO MONEY IN THAT FOR THE POVERTY PIMPS!? Homeless people are not children. For the most part they want the same things that any other citizen of this country wants. In my two decades in management I have had to deal with employees with both drug and mental problems. Mental problems are sometimes masked by drug problems; just stopping the drugs does nothing to solve the emotional issues. It is not uncommon for a widower or a divorcee to struggle with depression and to then medicate themselves with drugs or alcohol. Why should it be so difficult to understand that a person who has lost everything they?ve owned and worked for to use the same treatment? Many of these people have lost husbands, wives, and children. Why is it so hard to understand their pain? These people are not made of wood or stone; they are breakable. ?Many people gave up on life because this was a world where it was very easy to give up on life.? ?You don't have to go beyond the first page of a Google search for "homelessness and criminal behavior" to find several links to studies, which find much higher rates of drug use, crime, and mental illness among the chronically homeless. It's sad, but some people are truly beyond saving.? ?I understand unemployment is up and some people have lost homes and need a hand to get back on their feet. These tent city's are not for these people. History shows that this is just a party camp for the homeless. Help the people who want to help themselves not the ones who just want a hand out to support their criminal activity.? What is truly sad is how these people tend to view crime. They worry about the homeless man who might steal their purse but don?t give a thought to the corporate executives who might steal their pension. They want all drug abusers locked away in prison because they are beyond saving. Then they listen to and watch talk show hosts with long and chronic histories of drug abuse and bob their heads, agreeing in unison. ?If I lost my job and house, I would literally have 10 options as to where to stay til I got back on my feet. I understand I am lucky for having a good support system. But how does someone get to the point where there is not even a couch or friends garage they can crash in? the only answer I can come up with is Drugs. You guys can paint these people as business men down on their luck all you want, an it might be the case for a very tiny minority of them, but last I checked McDonald?s is still hiring.? Almost ten million homes have been foreclosed on in the last three years. That means forty million Americans have been dispossessed. That number does not include renters who have also been evicted. So maybe these people are living with relatives but maybe the relatives also enforced conditions. ?You can stay but that good for nothing husband or lazy, fat-ass wife can?t!? Take your choice, live with mom and dad by yourself? Or live in the street with your spouse? If children are involved what real choice is there? As I peruse the want ads each day, I see many jobs that literally don?t pay enough money to keep the lights on. I had written about the job offered by the storage facility. Be available 24/7 to do sales, bookkeeping, maintenance and janitorial work at any facility in Atlanta. $300 per week, no mileage, no gas money, no benefits, no promise of steady work. I read an ad yesterday to rewrite 400-word articles for five dollars each. I thought to myself that at ten or twelve thousand words a day I could make a decent living. McDonalds and many large corporations take applications to keep a current stock of applicants on hand, but it doesn?t mean that they are hiring. When Chrysler went through its recent bankruptcy I read about thousands in Chrysler management who had been permanently laid off. Most had worked their entire adult lives in the automobile industry, and I thought, "Where will these people find new jobs?" The problem is not drugs or alcoholism or even homelessness; the problem is jobs. Strange, isn?t it, that when America had a strong manufacturing base and a strong job market that we had few so-called defective people. I live in the South and there are a great many literal Biblical believers who take the Bible at face value. I?ve always tended to view it in the same way as the Old Testament was written, in the form of parables. The stories are told in a way to make us see ourselves in them. Why else would they dwell on Christ?s long walk to Calvary? Dragging his cross, an innocent man convicted by society. As the onlookers heckle and throw things at him, mocking his burden, only one of the multitude stopped to offer him any kindness or assistance. As Lenny Bruce said, ?If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.? This is a mean country that calls the victims criminals and the criminals innocents. So I?ve stopped worrying about the coldness of winter, as it will never blow colder than an American?s heart. -- Fast fact: Since the mid-1970s, the richest one percent of households have doubled their percentage of the US national wealth. As the 2nd richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, bluntly said, "If[sic] class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning." From acpollack2 at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 06:27:48 2009 From: acpollack2 at gmail.com (Andrew Pollack) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 08:27:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The real issue in the Polanski arrest In-Reply-To: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de> References: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de> Message-ID: <2fa1449b0910050527m5d6a9a4eg485e9b1966530615@mail.gmail.com> A perfect example of the situation Einde describes is that of Sheikh al-Moayad of Yemen, who was kidnapped by the US government and framed up on terrorism charges, and released only recently. Andy On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Einde O'Callaghan wrote: > For me the real issue for me on the Polanski arrest at this particular > point of time isn't whether he is innocent or guilty of rape - I have no > truck with the type of behaviour he is accused of - or what attitude the > woman he forced his attentions on under whatever circumstances while she > was underage forgives him or not, but the fact that in country after > country people can now be arrested on American warrants and deported to > the USA to face the not so tender mercies of the US "justice" system > without the substantive case being examined by a court before the > deportation. > > Einde O'Callaghan From ecosocialism at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 06:42:56 2009 From: ecosocialism at gmail.com (Ian Angus) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 08:42:56 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] New at Socialist Voice, Oct. 5, 2009 Message-ID: <733b65360910050542i4fbd8d3dq30b74fb07062958d@mail.gmail.com> SOCIALIST VOICE Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century http://www.socialistvoice.ca New articles, October 5, 2009 B.C. GOVERNMENT PREPARES TO AXE SOCIAL PROGRAMS http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=652 Health care, education and arts face cuts while corporations get tax breaks and subsidies CRUCIAL DAYS IN HONDURAS http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=649 A presentation by carlos Torchia to the Sept. 26 Toronto teach-in on the mass resistance in Honduras to the June 28 military coup HONDURAS: THE THREAT OF FOREIGN MILITARY OCCUPATION http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=654 LeftViews: an activist in the Honduran resistance meditates on the danger his country faces of a Haiti-style foreign military intervention. ************************* Other recent articles: FIDEL: SUPPORT THE HEROIC STRUGGLE IN HONDURAS! http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=640 HOW TO REALLY FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=638 PALESTINE SOLIDARITY VICTORIES ALARM PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=634 BRITAIN?S CONQUEST OF QUEBEC: 250 YEARS LATER http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=615 ************************* SOCIALIST VOICE Web: http://www.socialistvoice.ca Email: socialistvoice at sympatico.ca Editors: Ian Angus, Roger Annis, John Riddell Associate Editor: Mike Krebs Readers are encouraged to forward or distribute Socialist Voice as widely as possible. To subscribe, send a blank email to Socialist-Voice-subscribe at yahoogroups.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Socialist-Voice-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com FEEDBACK: Socialist Voice welcomes questions, comments and debate on the articles we publish. Please use the `Feedback' box at the bottom of each article on our website. LINK DOESN'T WORK? Some email programs block links to websites. If clicking on a link in Socialist Voice doesn't work, try holding down the CTRL key as you click, or copy the link address into your browser. From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 08:10:43 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 10:10:43 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Brenner on the "crisis" Message-ID: Haven't read this yet, but it's available for download: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/cstch/ From davidrail68 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 5 08:25:49 2009 From: davidrail68 at yahoo.com (David Walsh) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 07:25:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Forum on Honduras and the Mass Response Message-ID: <12273.61909.qm@web45314.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRLAxK0aaMc From phantasmagorias at yahoo.com Mon Oct 5 08:54:04 2009 From: phantasmagorias at yahoo.com (Debordagoria) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 07:54:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <4AC93129.3050802@panix.com> Message-ID: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> This is not a "free speech forum." I have over the years seen people summarily (and permanently) dismissed for comments (rightly) deemed anti-semitic and sexist, just to name two instances that come to mind. So why not just take on the "Marxmale" issue head on, instead of hiding behind the phony free speech thing? Michael D. --- On Sun, 10/4/09, Louis Proyect wrote: > From: Louis Proyect > Subject: Re: [Marxism] undocumented > To: phantasmagorias at yahoo.com > Date: Sunday, October 4, 2009, 7:35 PM > Pat Costello wrote: > As for my "accidental" remarks about Marxmale, I am very > willing to be > convinced that i am wrong. I would really like to see a > place where men > AND WOMEN can discuss marxist politics on the internet. How > about you? > Would you like to see more women posting here? Would you do > anything to > make that happen? > > --- > > Okay, I'm game. Tell me how more women would post here. > Does it involve > banning the comments of Shane Mage, Ian Pace, and the two > French > subscribers on Polanski that were supposedly vile > expressions of hatred > toward women? > > No thanks. > > I would prefer to keep the list *exactly* the way it is > rather than to > suppress ideas that you hate, or for that matter, ideas > that you express > that others hate. > > This is a free speech forum and I plan to keep it that way, > even at the > risk of letting messages be posted that are offensive to > some subscribers. > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a > message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/phantasmagorias%40yahoo.com > From lueko.willms at t-online.de Mon Oct 5 09:11:10 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:11:10 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] Bernard-Henri Levy bandwagon In-Reply-To: <4AC7065D.5756.7090566@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> References: <4AC7065D.5756.7090566@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> Message-ID: <000.703a0f0000bcc94a.005@lws-media.de> kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) wrote on 2009-10-03 at 08:07:57 in about [Marxism] Bernard-Henri Levy bandwagon: forwarding an article by a Katha Pollit from "The Nation", a US bourgeois magazine. What we see here is the class hatred against those nasty artists, who are so free that they even dare to make fun of the real ruling class, the heredetary owners of our means of subsistence, and their faithful booklickers. Roman Polansky, even worse, was born and raised, and made his first sucessful films in communist (!!!) Poland, a polack, that is. Not a real "American". If he were a Morgan, or Rockefeller, or Du Pont, or even a Kennedy, he would be treated otherwise, wouldn't he? > It's enraging that literary superstars who go on and on > about human dignity, and human rights, and even women's > rights (at least when the women are Muslim) either > don't see what Polanski did as rape, or don't care, > because he is, after all, Polanski--an artist like > themselves. That some of his defenders are women is > particularly disappointing. Don't they see how they are > signing on to arguments that blame the victim, minimize > rape, and bend over backwards to exonerate the > perpetrator? Error of youth, might have mistaken her > age, teen slut, stage mother--is that what we want > people to think when middle-aged men prey on ninth- > graders? > > The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal > cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may > make great movies, write great books, and design > beautiful things, they may have lots of noble > humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all > the right principles: equality under the law, for > example. But in this case, they're just the white > culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by > R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who > automatically support their favorite athletes when > they're accused of beating their wives and raping hotel > workers. You see: those intellectuals are not better than the proles. Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From lueko.willms at t-online.de Mon Oct 5 09:13:54 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:13:54 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains In-Reply-To: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> S. Artesian (sartesian at earthlink.net) wrote on 2009-10-03 at 11:22:23 in about Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains: > > > We know that in the steel industry, overcapacity for the domestic market in China is around 25% with the export market severely impacted by the global contraction. Who is "we" and how do they "know" that? All other "we"s know that China's demand for steel was what drove the world market prices up, before the capitalist crisis, that is. I can't believe that China is actually _exporting_ steel. I think they need(ed) more steel than they could produce themselves and therefore had to _import_ steel. Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From lueko.willms at t-online.de Mon Oct 5 09:29:35 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:29:35 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski - why so much passion about it? In-Reply-To: <4AC74BCB.1030801@panix.com> References: <4AC749F5.2040605@charter.net> <4AC74BCB.1030801@panix.com> Message-ID: <000.301b0f00d80cca4a.006@lws-media.de> Louis Proyect (lnp3 at panix.com) wrote on 2009-10-03 at 09:04:11 in about Re: [Marxism] Polanski: > > > obviously there is a lot of passion about it. It would be interesting to discuss why this is the case. Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From schaffer at optonline.net Mon Oct 5 09:32:40 2009 From: schaffer at optonline.net (Les Schaffer) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:32:40 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] server coming back up Message-ID: <4ACA1198.1010106@optonline.net> we had some problems at the Utah server last night, you will start seeing marxmail posts again in a bit. please do not resent posts you sent earlier until a couple hours have passed, in all likelihood your original post will make it through. Les From lnp3 at panix.com Mon Oct 5 09:53:23 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:53:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4ACA1673.9030403@panix.com> Debordagoria wrote: > So why not just take on the "Marxmale" issue head on, instead of hiding behind the phony free speech thing? As moderator, I have the power to decide what crosses the boundaries into racist or sexist language. In my view, there was nothing that--for example--Einde O'Callaghan said in his last post that crossed that boundary: For me the real issue for me on the Polanski arrest at this particular point of time isn't whether he is innocent or guilty of rape - I have no truck with the type of behaviour he is accused of - or what attitude the woman he forced his attentions on under whatever circumstances while she was underage forgives him or not, but the fact that in country after country people can now be arrested on American warrants and deported to the USA to face the not so tender mercies of the US "justice" system without the substantive case being examined by a court before the deportation. Einde O'Callaghan --- What we are dealing with is a certain zealousness of some subscribers to rule such a viewpoint as crossing the boundaries of acceptable speech. It seems that unless you are willing to side with calls to extradite Polanski to LA, you are objectively supporting child rape. The key word here is objectively. In the Marxist movement, this adverb has led to all sorts of terrible abuses. For example, I have been accused repeatedly of "objectively" aiding US imperialism because I side with the protesters against Ahmadinejad. Now, there are examples of crossing the boundary that I have taken action on. For example, I removed Henry Liu from this mailing list around five years ago because he posted material here from a neo-Nazi website about the "Jewish question". As much as I admired Henry, I could not accept this. I hope this answers your questions. From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 10:40:57 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 12:40:57 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Israeli Vice PM cancels UK trip over arrest fears In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910050940m1c8218c6t58e6ba47ffb6d246@mail.gmail.com> > > http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=229833 > From marvgandall at videotron.ca Mon Oct 5 12:07:17 2009 From: marvgandall at videotron.ca (Marv Gandall) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:07:17 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> Message-ID: <170D6054293D4A8CAAE3869D4FE3B496@MARV> The issue is not really whether there is Chinese overcapacity in steel - the Chinese themselves admit to it - but whether they will be able to make the necessary planned adjustments or whether it is going to lead to crisis in the Chinese economy, as Artesian has consistently warned with respect to this and other sectors. The debate over the sustainability of China's economic growth on the list has mirrored the debate within academic circles, corporate head offices, central banks, and finance ministries worldwide. Here is a report on the Chinese authorities' recognition of the problem and their response to it. Artesian may have already linked to it: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crash-and-recovery/china-orders-crackdown-on-industrial-overcapacity/article1306489/ Here is John Ross, the China specialist (and former IMG leader) on the debate about China's economic prospects. http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2009/09/new-york-times-recognises-success-of-chinas-economic-stimulus-package.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "L?ko Willms" To: "Marv Gandall" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 11:42 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains S. Artesian (sartesian at earthlink.net) wrote on 2009-10-03 at 11:22:23 in about Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains: > > > We know that in the steel industry, overcapacity for the domestic market > in China is around 25% with the export market severely impacted by the global contraction. Who is "we" and how do they "know" that? All other "we"s know that China's demand for steel was what drove the world market prices up, before the capitalist crisis, that is. I can't believe that China is actually _exporting_ steel. I think they need(ed) more steel than they could produce themselves and therefore had to _import_ steel. Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/marvgandall%40videotron.ca From bhandari at berkeley.edu Mon Oct 5 12:16:40 2009 From: bhandari at berkeley.edu (Rakesh Bhandari) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:16:40 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector In-Reply-To: <4AC810B5.6080606@berkeley.edu> References: <4AC6C861.3050304@berkeley.edu> <4AC810B5.6080606@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <4ACA3808.8080305@berkeley.edu> Interesting short piece on China's nationalized sector in recent YaleGlobalonline by Pranab Bardhan. By the way, it's insulting to Arar and others to think Polanski's arrest is similar to their extraordinary renditions. Polanski is a fugitive who was given due process rights. And I say that thinking that Pianist is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. And I enjoyed no movie more than the one with he did with Depp. > From markalause at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 13:16:04 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:16:04 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <4ACA1673.9030403@panix.com> References: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4ACA1673.9030403@panix.com> Message-ID: The "Marxmale" issue has come up frequently, and usually in the least productive way...that is, in the form of a wholesale, blanket dismissal of the list. I think this is a serious issue, but every time it has come up, nobody's really come forward with a workable, concrete proposal to do something that could address the problem. I frankly admit that I don't know how to address these problems. I think that one reason fewer women participate in this list is not because they've not been invited. Simply put, the problem of incivility and electronic strutting just endemic to open email lists. When people don't need to identify themselves, they have far less a sense of responsibility for what they say...and they feel (quite accurately) no accountability for any of it. Certainly, these things seem to work out in a gendered way. However, the problems seem unavoidable for a Marxism List with public archives, because this means that only a minority of us are going to identifying ourselves. If we consider the practical dimension of this problem, maybe somebody can think of a way to structure things better. But I can't. Maybe these issues might be avoided with a private, closed, tightly moderated list where everybody is known. Doing this will lose many of the advantages of an open, public list. Perhaps we need both, but I wouldn't want to throw out the latter, for all the problems it poses. ML From lnp3 at panix.com Mon Oct 5 13:38:28 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:38:28 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Worker owned? Message-ID: <4ACA4B34.4000304@panix.com> First, here's a link to a review of "Capitalism: a Love Story" from a real anti-capitalist (ie, a socialist): http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1169 For those who have either seen the movie or plan to see it, there are two worker-owned companies that Moore hails as an alternative to capitalism. One is a bakery in the Bay Area, which does seem to incorporate that region's ethos. The other is a robotics firm in Wisconsin that I had a devil of a time tracking down. Here's a CNN report on how they are coping during a financial crisis. Apparently in this company, all workers are equal but some are more equal than others: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/smallbusiness/0909/gallery.worker_owner_coop.smb/3.html When workers take charge Isthmus Engineering in Madison, Wis. is a custom designer and builder of factory machines. The company was formed in 1980 and morphed into a worker-owned shop three years later. Ownership has since expanded to 28 ?directors? who share democratic control, and this has helped company ride out the recession, said John Kessler, an engineer and one of four co-founders. Isthmus laid off two paid-by-the-hour workers earlier this year, but it still employs *20 non-owner assembly workers*, he said. The directors have avoided further layoffs by agreeing to accept a lighter profit, and by juggling schedules between the machining, assembly and engineering departments. ?As a worker-owned company, we can make the decisions to take work at a lesser margin in order to keep people,? said Kessler. ?We have reshuffled duties to keep the work that we do have from going out the door, while also spreading out the pain as much as possible.? From fred.fuentes at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 13:57:21 2009 From: fred.fuentes at gmail.com (Fred Fuentes) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:27:21 -0430 Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: Brazilian Parliamentarians: 'Freeze Israel - Mercosur Free Trade Pact' In-Reply-To: <4ACA4F2E.1010001@telus.net> References: <4ACA4F2E.1010001@telus.net> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kimball Cariou Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:25 PM Subject: [pr-x] Brazilian Parliamentarians: 'Freeze Israel - Mercosur Free Trade Pact' To: "RTL, project-x: it's ALL THE SAME" , COAL OF COAL Brazilian Parliamentarians: 'Freeze Israel - Mercosur Free Trade Pact' From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Oct 5 09:29:38 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:29:38 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: The Brazilian Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Relations and National Defense has recommended that the parliament should not ratify the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Mercosur and the State of Israel until "Israel accepts the creation of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders". This decision is an explicit act of pressure on Israel to comply with international law, and a rejection of years of incessant Israeli lobbying, pressuring for a vote to ratify the agreement. This decision is an enormous blow for Israel's economy and foreign relations. It poses a massive stumbling block for the enactment of the agreement, which since its signing in 2007, has been stalled due to a lack of ratification by Mercosur member countries. The Mercosur is one of the world's most quickly expanding markets and the fifth largest economy in the world. Israeli exports to the Mercosur amounted nearly 600 million dollars in 2006. Israel has invested heavily in pushing for the agreement, focusing particularly on Brazil, the Mercosur's largest economy and most powerful political player. Brazil alone, even without an FTA, is Israel's third largest export destination. In 2005, Ehud Olmert, the trade minister at the time, visited Brazil to get President Lula's support for the agreement. A little over a month ago, Israeli minister of foreign affairs, Avigdor Liberman traveled to Brazil to urge the ratification of the agreement. Since the beginning of the negotiations of the FTA, Mercosur civil society summits have rejected the trade deal. On behalf of the Palestinian National BDS Committee (BNC), the Palestinian Grassroots Anti- Apartheid Wall Campaign has worked together with Brazilian intellectuals, social movements, parties and politicians to block the ratification of the FTA. The Front for the Defense of the Palestinian people and the Parliamentary Front against the ratification of the FTA were formed to back the Palestinian call against the FTA. In January a letter by the BNC was handed over to President Lula. As a result, the Commission agreed to listen to a public hearing before the voting process yesterday. Oscar Daniel Jadue, vice-president of the Palestinian Federation of Chile, intervened and called for the rejection of the bill. He argued that the ratification of the agreement is a violation of international law, to the benefit of a country that does not respect the human rights of Palestinians. "I invite reflection on what would reward the government of Israel and opens of the Latin American market to a country that annihilates the Palestinian people", said Jadue. Arlene Clemesha, professor of Arab History at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and part of the United Nations Coordinating Network on Palestine, argued against the tokenism of ratifying the agreement with the exclusion of settlement products, warning that it is impossible to separate the two as Israel has a history of marketing settlement products as Israeli ones. Instead, she said, the path to peace requires international forces to compel Israel to end the military occupation of Palestinian territory. The members of the parliamentary commission agreed with Clemesha and Jadue and recommended the freezing of the agreement as a means of political pressure. "It will be a small contribution, but be specific. The agreement can only be valid if approved by the Mercosur countries. As Uruguay has already approved, we will work with Argentina and Paraguay. The Lula government has been courageous and it has to say publicly that the agreement is frozen until the resumption of peace negotiations", said Mr Nilson Mourao (PT-AC). Jamal Juma', coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign comments: "After years of campaigning, we are extremely happy with this decision. It is a major victory that has been made possible only by large and determined civil society support in Brazil. This decision has shown that Latin America's democratic governments are allies for justice and are ready to take up a principled stand on Palestine, even when under Israeli pressure. Lieberman's delegation tried to lure Brazil with the illusion they could become `mediators' in the region if they would proof `impartial' and backed Israeli interests with the FTA. However, Brazilian politicians did not fall into the trap. We now ask the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority to ensure that the `No' to the FTA will be a priority for their regional foreign policies." The struggle against the FTA is not over yet; the project will still be analyzed by the commissions on Economic Development and Trade and Industry, and the parliament. It will then head to the senate. However, yesterday's decision is unlikely to be reversed and has turned the ratification process of the FTA by Brazil and other Mercosur into an effective instrument of pressure on Israel. http://palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1072 --------------------------- Project-x at lists.resist.ca https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/project-x Project-X list: initiated for the (re)building of the Left. From meisner at xs4all.nl Mon Oct 5 14:09:44 2009 From: meisner at xs4all.nl (Jeff) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:09:44 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <4ACA1673.9030403@panix.com> References: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20091005220944.04a90c74@pop.xs4all.nl> I'm really getting tired of answering these distortions of posts by me and others which call attention to matters of sexism. But it would be worse just to allow them to stand! So..... At 11:53 05/10/09 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: > >As moderator, I have the power to decide what crosses the boundaries >into racist or sexist language. In my view, there was nothing that--for >example--Einde O'Callaghan said in his last post that crossed that boundary No there wasn't in HIS post, otherwise I would have spoken out at that time! So bringing up HIS post in this context is a distraction from the legitimate issue that Debordagoria posed. Or I should say "one more distraction." >What we are dealing with is a certain zealousness of some subscribers to >rule such a viewpoint as crossing the boundaries of acceptable speech. Again, this never had to do with "speech," that is, the expression of ideas. It had to with the ideas themselves! And again, Einde's post was never in that category of offensive posts. So this sentence contains multiple errors. >It seems that unless you are willing to side with calls to extradite >Polanski to LA, you are objectively supporting child rape. Oh is that what you think I think?? Because according to that EVERY PERSON on this list "objectively supports child rape." Because none of us are in the extradition business; that wasn't the issue of contention. Rather we are troubled by the attitude of some who jumped to his defense (both on and off this list) using justifications which displayed an indifference to the criminal behaviour he was accused of (and almost surely guilty of, even beyond his plea bargain). And that this was probably a manifestation of sexist ideology. >The key word >here is objectively. A word I never used, so again you are attacking the wrong straw-man. >Now, there are examples of crossing the boundary that I have taken >action on. Yes great, you threw a nazi off the list. That is so far from the current discussion I can't believe it. No one has tried to limit speech on this list. That is the same as when we denounce a racist and then we are accused of "political correctness" which is then said to be tantamount to restriction of free speech. You have just taken the game plan from David Horowitz et. al. and used it against US who are concerned with insensitivity to women's oppression. You never asked me, but if you had I would have said that I WANT people to express their sexist ideas on this list! I want honesty. Not to shift the discussion to some legal technicalities as Ian Pace tries to. No, I WANT the sexist ideas expressed SO THAT THEY CAN BE DENOUNCED by those of us who know better. And if the discussion doesn't reverse their sexism, then at least maybe they will get an idea of what type of ideas are offensive to woman and will refrain from expressing those ideas OUT OF SHAME. And that means that they won't cause "Marxism" to be associated with male chauvinism. And that will help the image of Marxism, even if they haven't actually reformed themselves. And by the way, that is how all bigotry gets defeated. Not by everyone changing their attitudes overnight. But by bigoted speech becoming unacceptable (I didn't say outlawed!), thus allowing more space for liberating ideologies. And in this case, creating a safer space for women to participate on the list, as Pat has so well expressed. I can't believe that this isn't obvious. - Jeff From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 14:13:27 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:13:27 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in currentgains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> Message-ID: <60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> Luko, Thank you for yet another opportunity to provide you with some information that actually has some connection to the real world. The "we" is those of us who actually pay attention to the numbers reported by China's National Bureau of Statistic and other information provided by the Financial Times, theWall Street Journal, the World Bank, Statistical Abstracts, China's Iron and Steel Association, etc.etc. etc. China is overproducing in many areas, as the article Marvin refers to shows [yes, a similar article was cited in my original post on this matter]. Besides aluminum, chemicals, wind-powered electrical generating apparatus, cement, and solar panels, apparently executions are also being overproduced, as on July 30, 2009 the Chinese government announced it would reduce the number of executions in the current year [the government did not specify calendar or fiscal] from 2008's number of 1718 executions. I don't know how you feel about that, given your infatuation with big, bigger, biggest, and with the fact that China has 1.4 billion people and therefore should be NUMBER 1 WITH A BULLET on the hit parade of.... well, hit parades, but that was the government's announcement. But back to steel-- China entered the year with approximately 500 million tons of production capacity. In February, the China Iron and Steel Association predicted that steel consumption in China would measure about 430 million tons. In July 2009, KPMG China [Chinese branch of KPMG Consultants] reported that consumption, based on figures to date would be 427 million tons. Fixed asset investment in steel however has grown at about a 10-11% rate according to China's National Bureau of Statistics-- so assuming, and yes, I'm assuming by converting that 10% directly and totally into production capacity-- we, the we being those of us who are still reading the post-- get 550 million tons. So then we take our co-branded solar-powered Sharp-New York Yankees calculator [made in China, by the way] in hand and divide 430 by 550, we get a ratio of consumption to capacity of .78 or 78 percent-- or about 22% of overcapacity. I was rounding off in the earlier post, I could have said 20% overcapacity, and if that makes you feel better, please feel free to use that figure. And that's how we roll..... From lnp3 at panix.com Mon Oct 5 14:13:54 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:13:54 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20091005220944.04a90c74@pop.xs4all.nl> References: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3.0.3.32.20091005220944.04a90c74@pop.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <4ACA5382.9020708@panix.com> Jeff wrote: > You never asked me, but if you had I would have said that I WANT people to > express their sexist ideas on this list! I want honesty. Not to shift the > discussion to some legal technicalities as Ian Pace tries to. No, I WANT > the sexist ideas expressed SO THAT THEY CAN BE DENOUNCED by those of us who > know better. What a sanctimonious idiot. From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 14:32:02 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:32:02 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The real issue in the Polanski arrest References: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de> <2fa1449b0910050527m5d6a9a4eg485e9b1966530615@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0A2EF113D5894D2AAB81EFCC84060737@dmsthinkpad> We were supposed to bring this issue to a close, remember? But we can't. This is like a Bunuel movie. Don't like the food, the guests scare me, there are sharp objects all around and still I can't get up from the tabele. OK, we want go through more of this? I've got one more go-round in me: 1. This is "no perfect" example, no example at all. Polanski has not been kidnapped. The Sheikh, to my knowlege did not agree to plead guilty to lesser charges then flee the country. 2. This is not a "new policy" of the US govt. Requests for extradition by one country to another have a long tradition. Agreeing to them and rejecting have an equally long history. 3. This is a request for extradition, not an extraordinary rendition. I know the two words share a lot of the same letters, but the acts are quite different 4. Regarding civil suits-- it's unclear if Polanski ever paid any of the $500,000 he agreed to pay to his victim back in 1993 [stand up guy, that Polanski, only takes the victim what 16 years to get a settlement- that's due process for you]. As of 1996, he had paid squat, and the amount with interest was around $605,000. 5. As for due process-- Polanski was afforded "due process," certainly as much as any rich white connected male can expect to be afforded in the US. He was indicted on charges of rape and sodomy based on the grand jury testimony of the victim. Possible defendants are allowed to testify to grand juries, but are generally not required to so testify. I don't know if Polanski did, and as with everything else, I really don't care. Polanski then was afforded due process after indictment, was arrested, released on bail, obtained legal counsel and negotiated a plea bargain to plead guilty to lesser charges-- sex with a minor-- and avoid the charges of rape and sodomy. Polanski on the advice of legal counsel agreed to this deal in the hope, not the guarantee that the prosecutors would be able to persuade the judge to agree to the reduced sentencing and all that jazz. The judge did not agree. Polanski then, according to due process, could have withdrawn his guilty plea, and could have asserted his innocence of the more severe charge and faced a trial and the decision of a jury of his peers. He elected instead to process a little due on his own and flee the country. He has lived well in France and Switzerland for some 30 odd years, and I don't care about that either. 6. I do not believe that those defending Polanski, or expressing "concerns" about this process are supporters of child molestation, excusers of rape. I do think those who express those concerns are, however, wasting their time and ours, by maintaining that there is some "overstepping" of legality, there is some witch-hunt going on. Polanski is what he is-- a child-abuser I do think those who excuse Polanski, based on his age, his "creative contributions," his tragic past [give us break on that one, please], are in fact excusing child rape. To my knowledge, no one on this list is arguing that. 7. Those who think, however, that this event says anything at all one way or the other about the US judicial and/or political system, are making something out of nothing, or in this case, something out of a scumbag. Literally. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Pollack" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] The real issue in the Polanski arrest >A perfect example of the situation Einde describes is that of Sheikh > al-Moayad of Yemen, who was kidnapped by the US government and framed > up on terrorism charges, and released only recently. > Andy > > On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Einde O'Callaghan > wrote: >> For me the real issue for me on the Polanski arrest at this particular >> point of time isn't whether he is innocent or guilty of rape - I have no >> truck with the type of behaviour he is accused of - or what attitude the >> woman he forced his attentions on under whatever circumstances while she >> was underage forgives him or not, but the fact that in country after >> country people can now be arrested on American warrants and deported to >> the USA to face the not so tender mercies of the US "justice" system >> without the substantive case being examined by a court before the >> deportation. >> >> Einde O'Callaghan > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net From lnp3 at panix.com Mon Oct 5 14:39:34 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:39:34 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Moderator's note In-Reply-To: <0A2EF113D5894D2AAB81EFCC84060737@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de> <2fa1449b0910050527m5d6a9a4eg485e9b1966530615@mail.gmail.com> <0A2EF113D5894D2AAB81EFCC84060737@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4ACA5986.8020309@panix.com> It is entirely my fault for allowing a new spasm of this Polanski shit to pollute the list when I sniped at those who view the list as tainted with sexism or whatever else. I put in too much time and energy into this forum to be viewed as the host of a stag party or David Letterman or whoever. I should have just sucked it in and let it die. My bad for being subjective. In any case, the Polanski discussion is *over*. And for those who object to the "sexism" of Marxmale, I invite you to unsub. If that is too much of a chore, I will gladly do it for you. I have tried to help steer the direction of this mailing list in a positive direction for 11 years now without any kinds of material feedback. But I'll be damned if I put up with any more accusations of sexism. Or racism. Or whatever. And that's that. From kmccook at tampabay.rr.com Mon Oct 5 14:57:03 2009 From: kmccook at tampabay.rr.com (kmccook at tampabay.rr.com) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:57:03 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski -pedophile In-Reply-To: <0A2EF113D5894D2AAB81EFCC84060737@dmsthinkpad> References: <4AC9399A.6060100@freenet.de>, <0A2EF113D5894D2AAB81EFCC84060737@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4ACA255F.25224.1DE9814@kmccook.tampabay.rr.com> For anyone who believes in the rights of young females the discussion ends at Polanski's conviction. He anally raped a 13 year old child after drugging her. On 5 Oct 2009 at 16:32, S. Artesian wrote: > We were supposed to bring this issue to a close, remember? But we can't. > This is like a Bunuel movie. Don't like the food, the guests scare me, > there are sharp objects all around and still I can't get up from the tabele. > OK, we want go through more of this? I've got one more go-round in me: > > 1. This is "no perfect" example, no example at all. Polanski has not been > kidnapped. The Sheikh, to my knowlege did not agree to plead guilty to > lesser charges then flee the country. > > 2. This is not a "new policy" of the US govt. Requests for extradition by > one country to another have a long tradition. Agreeing to them and > rejecting have an equally long history. > > 3. This is a request for extradition, not an extraordinary rendition. I > know the two words share a lot of the same letters, but the acts are quite > different > > 4. Regarding civil suits-- it's unclear if Polanski ever paid any of the > $500,000 he agreed to pay to his victim back in 1993 [stand up guy, that > Polanski, only takes the victim what 16 years to get a settlement- that's > due process for you]. As of 1996, he had paid squat, and the amount with > interest was around $605,000. > > 5. As for due process-- Polanski was afforded "due process," certainly as > much as any rich white connected male can expect to be afforded in the US. > He was indicted on charges of rape and sodomy based on the grand jury > testimony of the victim. Possible defendants are allowed to testify to > grand juries, but are generally not required to so testify. I don't know if > Polanski did, and as with everything else, I really don't care. Polanski > then was afforded due process after indictment, was arrested, released on > bail, obtained legal counsel and negotiated a plea bargain to plead guilty > to lesser charges-- sex with a minor-- and avoid the charges of rape and > sodomy. Polanski on the advice of legal counsel agreed to this deal in the > hope, not the guarantee that the prosecutors would be able to persuade the > judge to agree to the reduced sentencing and all that jazz. The judge did > not agree. Polanski then, according to due process, could have withdrawn > his guilty plea, and could have asserted his innocence of the more severe > charge and faced a trial and the decision of a jury of his peers. He > elected instead to process a little due on his own and flee the country. He > has lived well in France and Switzerland for some 30 odd years, and I don't > care about that either. > > 6. I do not believe that those defending Polanski, or expressing "concerns" > about this process are supporters of child molestation, excusers of rape. I > do think those who express those concerns are, however, wasting their time > and ours, by maintaining that there is some "overstepping" of legality, > there is some witch-hunt going on. Polanski is what he is-- a child-abuser I > do think those who excuse Polanski, based on his age, his "creative > contributions," his tragic past [give us break on that one, please], are in > fact excusing child rape. To my knowledge, no one on this list is arguing > that. > > 7. Those who think, however, that this event says anything at all one way > or the other about the US judicial and/or political system, are making > something out of nothing, or in this case, something out of a scumbag. > Literally. > From rfls12802 at blueyonder.co.uk Mon Oct 5 15:04:51 2009 From: rfls12802 at blueyonder.co.uk (Paul Flewers) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 22:04:51 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Bernard-Henri Levy bandwagon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003701ca45ff$7b2fd5f0$718f81d0$@co.uk> Re L?ko's comments re Polanski. I find it remarkable that self-styled human-rights campaigners Levy and Kouchner come out in defence of a child-rapist, not least because they have self-righteously posed as defenders of Enlightenment Decency against barbarism; does anyone else remember their pronouncements during the Yugoslav wars? I think that it's that they instinctively come to the defence of someone who is a creative artistic genius. I can't see them providing such eloquent defences of, say Gary Glitter, the plebeian British popular music singer who was convicted of child prostitution in Vietnam. It's caste snobbishness; were it a lumpen hooligan who had committed the crime rather than Polanski, our cultured johnnies would be demanding that his wedding tackle be chopped off with a rusty sickle. If you're an iconoclast, on the other hand, the artistic pseuds will make excuses for almost anything that you do. Paul F From markalause at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 15:10:23 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 17:10:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Free Speech Defense: was: undocumented In-Reply-To: <4ACA5382.9020708@panix.com> References: <435448.9271.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3.0.3.32.20091005220944.04a90c74@pop.xs4all.nl> <4ACA5382.9020708@panix.com> Message-ID: The subject curiously strobes. It's about sexism and being dismissive of the list's failures to address sexism...save when someone else tries to address sexism, in which case they are dismissively brushed off for not addressing the real issue. The only common denominator seems to me the dismissiveness. I've written on the problems with an open, public email list several times but that's evidently not the issue either... Also done that privately to the persons complaining, but I've gotten a keystroke of interest from Jeff or Pat--publicly or privately--about how we might address the practical problems. Clearly, my insights and suggestions, offered off and on list are just so fucking insane that I should just stop wasting electrons on it... At this stage, I honestly have no clue what they're on about, am unsure that they do, and am fairly sure that they're not on about the same thing . . . other than grousng about the shortcomings of the list's moderation. But my patience is at an end with what looks for all the world to me like some kind of passive-aggressive version of an email pissing contest. ML From nmgoro at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 15:24:25 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:24:25 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in currentgains In-Reply-To: <60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> <60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com> I am astonished at the idea that in a world where at least 2 billion people lack the most essential goods to barely eke out a decent living there are Marxists who believe that China, or Japan, or the US of America or Bangla Desh "overproduce" something! 2009/10/5 S. Artesian : > Luko, > > Thank you for yet another opportunity to provide you with some information > that actually has some connection to the real world. > > The "we" is those of us who actually pay attention to the numbers reported > by China's National Bureau of Statistic and other information provided by > the Financial Times, theWall Street Journal, the World Bank, Statistical > Abstracts, China's Iron and Steel Association, etc.etc. etc. From d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr Mon Oct 5 16:07:50 2009 From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr (Daniel Koechlin) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:07:50 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Last post on Polanski Message-ID: <4ACA6E36.9000201@wanadoo.fr> Maybe there is another, obscurer, motive at play for defending Polanski. Namely, the psychological impulse to "protect" someone who has succesfully escaped the law for 32 years. People tend to have positive feelings towards a fugitive that manages to survive being hunted down. It's a case of "32 years on the run" ! They feel that the fugitive has somehow managed to outsmart the authorities, something that strikes a deep chord in many psyches. And this is my last post on the subject of Polanski. From mina.khanlar at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 16:15:53 2009 From: mina.khanlar at gmail.com (Mina Khanlarzadeh) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:15:53 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing Message-ID: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> I would appreciate it if someone could let me know the name of this song of Mercedes Sosa: "I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I am, risen from the dead. . . . Here I am, out of the ruins the dictatorship left behind. We're still singing." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100400918.html From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 16:22:09 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:22:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role incurrentgains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad><000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de><60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> Then Nestor, you really need to sit down and reread your Marx. Overproduction is always the overproduction of capital; the overproduction of commodities beyond the ability of the market, the relations of production, to provide the required return. Overproduction is not underconsumption. Capital is not organized around production for use; production for need. It, capitalist production is about, and is only about the expansion of value. I'm astonished that as a Marxist you aren't aware of that fundamental aspect of Marx's analysis. It's like, not it's not like, it is exactly not understanding the dual role, the dual existence of the commodity. ----- Original Message ----- From: "N?stor Gorojovsky" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 5:24 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role incurrentgains >I am astonished at the idea that in a world where at least 2 billion > people lack the most essential goods to barely eke out a decent living > there are Marxists who believe that China, or Japan, or the US of > America or Bangla Desh "overproduce" something! From d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr Mon Oct 5 16:38:45 2009 From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr (Daniel Koechlin) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:38:45 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] re : Crime Message-ID: <4ACA7575.2000800@wanadoo.fr> As regards Mao, I (and most non-maoists) don't know where to begin. That he started off in the Kuomintang, rose up the ranks, then switched to the CCP when he could go up no further, then rose up the ranks of the CCP, then had an entire CCP army massacred so that he could blame the generals and get control of another CCP army, then purged that army of all dissenters to his rule (35% of the soldiers were executed), was then sacked by the rest of the (alarmed) CCP leadership, then rejoined the Kuomintang, then betrayed the Kuomintang but managed to keep hold of an army, then made deals with local warlords so that he could force march his army across China away from the pro-Russian CCP leadership, then proceeded to once more execute 40% of his soldiers, then betrayed the rest of the CCP leadership before becoming chairman of the Politburo. From 1923 to 1949, Mao killed 3.7 million people in his "red bases". But his power was not absolute within the CCP, and in the early 60s he began to be marginalized. He clung on to power and mobilized the students to eliminate all opposition ("the cultural revolution"). In so doing, he became the greatest mass murderer in known history. An estimated 74 million people died during the 1955-1975 period. Unlike Stalin or Hitler, Mao never seems to have really believed in anything else apart from his own well-being. While his soldiers were on the march, he always comandeered the most luxurious properties to stay the night in. He had three well-trained personal physicians always on attendance. He would always observe a battle from afar, a radio operator nearby, so that he could either radio a triumphalist message or be the first to blame his lieutenants for any mishap. He kow-towed to Stalin, heaping lavish and hypocritical praises on the "father of socialism" while it suited him. And when it did not, he had ALL former members of the CCP shot overnight. He considered himself a poet in his youth, then a philosopher (in his 30s), and finally a great thinker (in his 50s), and had his little red book distributed to every household. That such a man is worthy of anything but utter contempt is beyond me. From shmage at pipeline.com Mon Oct 5 16:46:44 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:46:44 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] impulse to "protect" In-Reply-To: <4ACA6E36.9000201@wanadoo.fr> References: <4ACA6E36.9000201@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: <67F74330-97A7-41C0-A843-D9DCE4E2F371@pipeline.com> On Oct 5, 2009, at 6:07 PM, Daniel Koechlin wrote: > the psychological impulse to "protect" someone who has > succesfully escaped the law for 32 years. People tend to have positive > feelings towards a fugitive that manages to survive being hunted down. Among some people--obviously far from all--there is a "psychological impulse" to feel just a little compassion for an artist, a holocaust survivor, who has seen his mother, his wife, and his unborn child murdered in the most horrible ways. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From billyoc at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 16:52:55 2009 From: billyoc at gmail.com (Bill O'Connor) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:52:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing In-Reply-To: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> (Mina Khanlarzadeh's message of "Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:15:53 -0400") References: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <87iqetpi60.fsf@t22.Belkin> Mina Khanlarzadeh writes: > I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I > am, risen from the dead. ?We?re Still Singing" http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/mercedes-sosa-dead-at-74/ -- In Solidarity, Billy O'Connor From lnp3 at panix.com Mon Oct 5 16:57:59 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:57:59 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] On Marek Edelman Message-ID: <4ACA79F7.5020304@panix.com> http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/10/marek-edelman.html From mina.khanlar at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 17:01:31 2009 From: mina.khanlar at gmail.com (Mina Khanlarzadeh) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:01:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing In-Reply-To: <87iqetpi60.fsf@t22.Belkin> References: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> <87iqetpi60.fsf@t22.Belkin> Message-ID: <3d5371650910051601v3d661db4kc7676591f3e4713d@mail.gmail.com> Thanks, Bill. Do you know the name of the song in Spanish? On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Bill O'Connor wrote: > Mina Khanlarzadeh writes: > > > I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I > > am, risen from the dead. > > ?We?re Still Singing" > > http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/mercedes-sosa-dead-at-74/ > > -- > In Solidarity, > Billy O'Connor > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/mina.khanlar%40gmail.com > From edgeorge1963 at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 17:53:38 2009 From: edgeorge1963 at gmail.com (Ed George) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:53:38 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing Message-ID: <4ACA8702.20201@gmail.com> Working backwards from the translation, the song you're thinking of is 'Como la Cigarra' (you can see it, and her, here: ). The words, I don't have time to transcribe them, nor check them, but a bit of googling gives me this: (there's a bit of slippage between these and the version she sings in this video). Nice song, anyway. Tantas veces me mataron, tantas veces me mor?, sin embargo estoy aqu? resucitando. Gracias doy a la desgracia y a la mano con pu?al, porque me mat? tan mal, y segu? cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, despu?s de un a?o bajo la tierra, igual que el sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra. Tantas veces me borraron, tantas desaparec?, a mi propio entierro fui, sola y llorando. Hice un nudo del pa?uelo, pero me olvid? despu?s que no era la ?nica vez y segu? cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, despu?s de un a?o bajo la tierra, igual que el sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra. Tantas veces te mataron, tantas resucitar?s cu?ntas noches pasar?s desesperando. Y a la hora del naufragio y a la de la oscuridad alguien te rescatar?, para ir cantando. Cantando al sol, como la cigarra, despu?s de un a?o bajo la tierra, igual que el sobreviviente que vuelve de la guerra. From edgeorge1963 at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 18:26:05 2009 From: edgeorge1963 at gmail.com (Ed George) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:26:05 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing Message-ID: <4ACA8E9D.4020003@gmail.com> Looking back now at Louis' article, 'We're still singing' must refer to 'Todav?a cantamos' (), which I like rather more. My favourite Merecedes Sosa is her rendition of 'Solo le Pido a Dios', however (version here: ). I think she sang this at a solidarity concert in 1983 (?) in Managua, which I heard on a tape (album 'April in Managua' (?)) I used to have. Electrifying. From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Mon Oct 5 19:57:54 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 01:57:54 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for the heads up Jim, I started to write a response but it was getting kind of drawn out, so I?ll keep it to a single simple CLEAR question, and we?ll see if we can do more later, like I said, I?m not in the position to comment on this at any length and that?s why I refer to the literature, which, of course, must be read critically; speaking of which, Rosa?s ban of Zeleny?s book sounds a li?l dogmatic for a Wittgesnteinian-Trotskyist, no? Rosa did get something right out of my comment, which wasn?t intended as a ?totalistic? critique of all her writings, which I haven?t read, but were only my impressions of the debate at the Marxist Humanist Initiative. Alas, it was only one thing: it was off topic. That?s because according to Marx?s materialist conception of history, or any possible reading of it I can think of, -by the way, Marx never had a grand theory of historical materialism- taken in its full literal sense, ?social being determines consciousness?, so that to ask for a ?clear? (where does this ?clarity? come from? who?s clarity is it, Wittgenstein?s? Giaquinto?s? Priest?s? Or could this rather be your alienated consciousness which doesn?t recognize the abstract image in which it must represent itself so that it, by necessity, reproduces the capitalist mode of production?) explanation of dialectical contradiction is an abstract fixation; it?s the wrong topic (!). We could talk about the dialectical method, someday, but the point is you give logic, clarity, or what have you, an independent existence; is that not the essence of idealism? But please, don?t take it from me, here is the old man himself, in historical materialist mode, ?When, for instance, wealth, state-power, etc., are understood by Hegel as entities estranged from the human being, this only happens in their form as thoughts ... They are thought-entities, and therefore merely an estrangement of pure, i.e., abstract, philosophical thinking. The whole process therefore ends with absolute knowledge. It is precisely abstract thought from which these objects are estranged and which they confront with their presumption of reality. The philosopher ? who is himself an abstract form of estranged man ? takes himself as the criterion of the estranged world. The whole history of the alienation process [Ent?u?erungsgeschichte] and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e., absolute) thought ? of LOGICAL, speculative thought.? And, with regard to the materialist conception of history, "Therefore, to the kind of consciousness ? and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness ? for which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production ? which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside ? whose product is the world; and ? but this is again a tautology [SIC] ? this is correct in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head?s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, SOCIETY, must always be kept in mind AS THE PRESSUPOSITION." Rosa says she agrees with this conception, but this is only from a proto-idealist standpoint. For where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall from the sky? Are we to believe that on the basis of neoclassical economics, along with the puny game theory of ?analytical Marxism?, etc., etc., all but blatant manifestations of an inverted consciousness which doesn?t take society as the presupposition but directly starts from the imposition that society ?should? conform to the pure form of logic, and have served as the instrument of domination for the ruling classes, compels us all to pay homage to formal logic, because of how, it, coming from an abstract netherworld, and whose movement APPEARS as the real act of production, has developed nice purrrty technologies? Yeah let?s read Von Neumann before Marx, ?johnny boy?, as they called him, was such a radical, making atomic bombs and shit? Where does logic come from Rosa? p.s. thank you so much for bashing me next to Richard Levins. Awesome! _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 20:21:49 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 22:21:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK References: Message-ID: Well, I've been having fun over at: http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectics-and-political-t118934/index5.html My approach is a little difference, because it isn't philosophy that's at stake here, it's historical accuracy as she claims Marx "extirpated" Hegel and dialectics in Vol 1 of Capital. I started out actually trying to be nice, figuring she might actually know something, something to break through the over-aggrandizing that goes on [sometimes] with proclamations of "dialectical materialism." But in the end, I think she knows actually very little about Marx, the development, method, and content of his work. I mean I think she probably hasn't even read much Marx. I don't know that to be a fact, can't prove it, but just the circular nature of the discussions, the hair-splitting, the inaccuracies, the parsing even of commas in Marx's preface to the 2nd edition of Volume 1, makes me think she just hasn't expended much time or effort on the work itself. Probably has a great background in philosophy of language, and vice-versa... as if that's a plus. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leonardo Kosloff" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 9:57 PM Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK Thanks for the heads up Jim, I started to write a response but it was getting kind of drawn out, so I?ll keep it to a single simple CLEAR question, and we?ll see if we can do more later, like I said, I?m not in the position to comment on this at any length and that?s why I refer to the literature, which, of course, must be read critically; speaking of which, Rosa?s ban of Zeleny?s book sounds a li?l dogmatic for a Wittgesnteinian-Trotskyist, no? From nmgoro at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 20:27:30 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:27:30 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing In-Reply-To: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> References: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACAAB12.9000207@gmail.com> It is not OF Mercedes Sosa. It is "Todav?a cantamos" (we`re still singing). But nobody sang it like her. Mina Khanlarzadeh escribi?: > I would appreciate it if someone could let me know the name of this song of > Mercedes Sosa: > > "I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I > am, risen from the dead. . . . Here I am, out of the ruins the dictatorship > left behind. We're still singing." > From nmgoro at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 20:31:08 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:31:08 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role incurrentgains In-Reply-To: <22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad><000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de><60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com> <22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: <4ACAABEC.3080302@gmail.com> I absurdly have read lots of Marx on overproduction. What I have not absurdly accepted (as Marx didn?t) were capitalist economic categories. When one criticizes Chinese "overproduction" one is speaking Friedmanese. I try to speak Marxism, thus I don?t criticize "overproduction" as if it was wrong that China produces more steel than the world market can swallow. I want to end with the markets so that all the steel that is necessary is produced. And humankid needs more steel than what we have now. Of course, the capitalist mode of production doesn?t. But I don?t care about that mode of production. S. Artesian escribi?: > Then Nestor, you really need to sit down and reread your Marx. > Overproduction is always the overproduction of capital; the overproduction > of commodities beyond the ability of the market, the relations of > production, to provide the required return. > > Overproduction is not underconsumption. Capital is not organized around > production for use; production for need. It, capitalist production is > about, and is only about the expansion of value. > > I'm astonished that as a Marxist you aren't aware of that fundamental aspect > of Marx's analysis. It's like, not it's not like, it is exactly not > understanding the dual role, the dual existence of the commodity. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "N?stor Gorojovsky" From nmgoro at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 20:34:08 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:34:08 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing In-Reply-To: <4ACA8702.20201@gmail.com> References: <4ACA8702.20201@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACAACA0.7020907@gmail.com> Yes, the "formal" name of the song is "Como la cigarra", but everybody knows it as "Todav?a cantamos". It was a hit during the early 80s, when the last dictatorship left. I think that the author is V?ctor Heredia. Ed George escribi?: > Working backwards from the translation, the song you're thinking of is > 'Como la Cigarra' (you can see it, and her, here: > ). > The words, I don't have time to transcribe them, nor check them, but a > bit of googling gives me this: (there's a bit of slippage between these > and the version she sings in this video). Nice song, anyway. > > Tantas veces me mataron, From marvgandall at videotron.ca Mon Oct 5 20:49:34 2009 From: marvgandall at videotron.ca (Marv Gandall) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:49:34 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key rol incurrentgains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> <60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com> <22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: On crises of overproduction (and underconsumption): "Starting from these profound but unsystematic remarks, many interpretations of the ?marxist theory of crises? have been offered by economists who consider themselves marxists. ?Monocausal? ones generally centre around ?disproportionality? (Bukharin, Hilferding, Otto Bauer) - anarchy of production as the key cause of crises - or ?underconsumption? - lack of purchasing power of the ?final consumers? as the cause of crises (Rosa Luxemburg, Sweezy). ?Non-monocausal? ones try to elaborate Marx?s own dictum according to which all basic contradictions of the capitalist mode of production come into play in the process leading to a capitalist crises (Grossman, Mandel). "The question of determining whether according to Marx, a crisis of overproduction is first of all a crisis of overproduction of commodities or a crisis of overproduction of capital is really meaningless in the framework of Marx?s economic analysis. The mass of commodities is but one specific form of capital, commodity capital. Under capitalism, which is generalised commodity production, no overproduction is possible which is not simultaneously overproduction of commodities and overproduction of capital (overaccumulation)." -Ernest Mandel, "Marx's Theory of Crisis" http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article289 ----- Original Message ----- From: "S. Artesian" To: "Marv Gandall" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 6:22 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role incurrentgains Then Nestor, you really need to sit down and reread your Marx. Overproduction is always the overproduction of capital; the overproduction of commodities beyond the ability of the market, the relations of production, to provide the required return. Overproduction is not underconsumption. Capital is not organized around production for use; production for need. It, capitalist production is about, and is only about the expansion of value. I'm astonished that as a Marxist you aren't aware of that fundamental aspect of Marx's analysis. It's like, not it's not like, it is exactly not understanding the dual role, the dual existence of the commodity. ----- Original Message ----- From: "N?stor Gorojovsky" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 5:24 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role incurrentgains >I am astonished at the idea that in a world where at least 2 billion > people lack the most essential goods to barely eke out a decent living > there are Marxists who believe that China, or Japan, or the US of > America or Bangla Desh "overproduce" something! ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/marvgandall%40videotron.ca From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 20:53:29 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 22:53:29 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad><000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de><60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com><22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> <4ACAABEC.3080302@gmail.com> Message-ID: You may have read a lot, but you understand very little. If you've got a problem with identifying China's expansion of capitalism based on fixed asset investment, initially in the export sector, but most recently under the stimulus program in the "heavy" state/collective industry sector, as overproduction, then you should address your problem to China's State Council that issued the rules based on it's, the council's, concerns about overproduction and overcapacity, not my concerns about China's overproduction. . If you think that's Friedmanese, not only are you ignorant of Marx, not only are you ignorant of Friedman, but you are also ignorant of the great respect, admiration, honor and celebrity status accorded Friedman in China by over very same overproducers, and worriers about overproduction, the State Council.. Nobody has criticized overproduction of steel in China as "wrong" because the market can't swallow it. Nobody has criticized overproduction at all. It is a fact of capitalism. It is a fact of China's integration into world capitalism. China is not overproducing steel to flood the world market and drive out its Japanese, Korean, Indian, European competitors. Exports from China , Nestor, have plunged, although maybe you haven't heard. Humankind needs more steel than it has now? That remains to be determined by humankind. Right now, the steel that is being produced isn't being produced for humankind, not in China, not in Korea, not in Vietnam, Japan, Argentina, anywher. It's being produced for VALUE, and as a consequence overproduction occurs, increases in the midst of austerity, and expands with imposed scarcity. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 10:31 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains I absurdly have read lots of Marx on overproduction. What I have not absurdly accepted (as Marx didn?t) were capitalist economic categories. When one criticizes Chinese "overproduction" one is speaking Friedmanese. I try to speak Marxism, thus I don?t criticize "overproduction" as if it was wrong that China produces more steel than the world market can swallow. I want to end with the markets so that all the steel that is necessary is produced. And humankid needs more steel than what we have now. Of course, the capitalist mode of production doesn?t. But I don?t care about that mode of production. From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 5 21:06:14 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:06:14 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] Honduras: Interview with leader of the National Resistance Front | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal Message-ID: <4ACAB426.6020809@greenleft.org.au> By *Pedro Fuentes*, Tegucigalpa October 1, 2009 -- ?We will not stop. We will continue to be against the coup until the last day they are in power,? Juan Barahona said in an interview at the headquarters of STYBIS, the beverage workers? trade union. Barahona is the principal leader of the resistance, together with Carlos Reyes, president of the trade union, a close comrade of Barahona and an independent candidate for the next presidential election. Reyes is injured and cannot participate, which makes Juan appear to be most visible face of the resistance. Barahona is 55 years? old and began his activism in 1975 in the student movement. In 1977 he joined the Communist Party of Honduras. He was active in the party until it was dissolved. It is worth recalling that the party dissolved itself following the fall of the Berlin Wall. But this did not stop Barahona being active. A large chunk of the cadres and activists of the Honduran CP were left without an organisation until they formed the Tendencia Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Tendency, TR) in 1995. TR formed following a meeting with El Salvadoran activists involved with the Tendencia Revolucionaria that was part of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN) in El Salvador. The Tendencia Revolucionaria later left the FMLN as [TR claimed it] began to shift towards electoralism and opportunism. Juan Barahona never rests. He was able to take time out for this interview in the offices of STYBIS, which is part of the Federation of Honduran Workers (FUT), which Barahona presides. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1286 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From shmage at pipeline.com Mon Oct 5 21:57:42 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 23:57:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8A308570-D5FD-4C65-B567-4A48190DE02D@pipeline.com> On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:57 PM, Leonardo Kosloff wrote: > ...where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, > whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall > from the sky?... It is the most obvious of mistakes to ask for the "social origins" of valid scientific concepts, whose only origin is the structure of reality to which they perforce conform. The "origin" of "formal logics" is mathematics, the method by which mathematical truth (the key to science) is discovered. More immediately, the origin of formal logic is *dialectic*, as anyone who has read Platon and his pupil Aristoteles cannot be unaware. Formal logic's propositions apply to *one* side of reality--the reality of unchanging, atemporal, structure. They are thus inherently in tension with the other side of reality--the reality of constant flux in which all material "things" participate. Dialectical logic unites these two "opposite" sides of reality. From that all else follows. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From billyoc at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 21:51:04 2009 From: billyoc at gmail.com (Bill O'Connor) Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:51:04 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Mercedes Sosa- We are still singing In-Reply-To: <3d5371650910051601v3d661db4kc7676591f3e4713d@mail.gmail.com> (Mina Khanlarzadeh's message of "Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:01:31 -0400") References: <3d5371650910051515i6118e6b2n6e4cefb47165fe3c@mail.gmail.com> <87iqetpi60.fsf@t22.Belkin> <3d5371650910051601v3d661db4kc7676591f3e4713d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <87eiphp4d3.fsf@t22.Belkin> Mina Khanlarzadeh writes: > Thanks, Bill. Do you know the name of the song in Spanish? "Todav?a Cantamos" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaWkEZHzukE -- In Solidarity, Billy O'Connor From shmage at pipeline.com Mon Oct 5 22:07:32 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 00:07:32 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: <8A308570-D5FD-4C65-B567-4A48190DE02D@pipeline.com> References: <8A308570-D5FD-4C65-B567-4A48190DE02D@pipeline.com> Message-ID: On Oct 5, 2009, at 11:57 PM, Shane Mage wrote: > > On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:57 PM, Leonardo Kosloff wrote: >> ...where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, >> whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall >> from the sky?... > > It is the most obvious of mistakes to ask for the "social origins" of > valid scientific concepts, whose only origin is the structure of > reality to which they perforce conform. The "origin" of "formal > logics" is mathematics, the method by which mathematical truth (the > key to science) is discovered. More immediately, the origin of formal > logic is *dialectic*, as anyone who has read Platon and his pupil > Aristoteles cannot be unaware. Formal logic's propositions apply to > *one* side of reality--the reality of unchanging, atemporal, > structure. They are thus inherently in tension with the other side of > reality--the reality of constant flux in which all material "things" > participate. Dialectical logic unites these two "opposite" sides of > reality. From that all else follows. > Addendum: Dialectical logic is to Formal logic as calculus is to algebra. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From sartesian at earthlink.net Mon Oct 5 22:19:34 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 00:19:34 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK References: <8A308570-D5FD-4C65-B567-4A48190DE02D@pipeline.com> Message-ID: I've heard that one before, now if I can only remember where... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shane Mage" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 12:07 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK > > On Oct 5, 2009, at 11:57 PM, Shane Mage wrote: > >> >> > Addendum: Dialectical logic is to Formal logic as calculus is to > algebra. > > Shane Mage > From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Mon Oct 5 22:37:18 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 04:37:18 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Shane Mage wrote: ? > ...where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, > whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall > from the sky?... It is the most obvious of mistakes to ask for the "social origins" of valid scientific concepts, whose only origin is the structure of reality to which they perforce conform. The "origin" of "formal logics" is mathematics, the method by which mathematical truth (the key to science) is discovered. More immediately, the origin of formal logic is *dialectic*, as anyone who has read Platon and his pupil Aristoteles cannot be unaware. Formal logic's propositions apply to *one* side of reality--the reality of unchanging, atemporal, structure. They are thus inherently in tension with the other side of reality--the reality of constant flux in which all material "things" participate. Dialectical logic unites these two "opposite" sides of reality. From that all else follows.? Shane, before this quote of mine, I had quoted Marx saying that ?society must always be kept in mind as the presupposition?, but silly me, thinking that Marx had a say on a Marxism list? p.s. I respect you a lot Shane, no kidding. p.s.s. It is only too ironic that I don?t have time to criticize mathematics more fully, I have to study drift-diffusion equations! I?m not saying, at all, that mathematics doesn?t have a role in science, or more precisely, in the production of an objective consciousness, but please, check out the work of Sohn-Rethel to get a stab at what I mean with more elaboration. There?s also some articles in Spanish and English which I might translate, if the authors permit me, and share them on here, but that won?t be soon. Also the short, but insightful book on the history of mathematics, by Dirk J. Struik, who founded the journal ?Science and Society?. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From lueko.willms at t-online.de Mon Oct 5 23:01:19 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:01:19 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] Polanski polish films (was: China's nationalized sector) In-Reply-To: <4ACA3808.8080305@berkeley.edu> References: <4AC6C861.3050304@berkeley.edu> <4AC810B5.6080606@berkeley.edu> <4ACA3808.8080305@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <000.202a0600094aca4a.012@lws-media.de> Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari at berkeley.edu) wrote on 2009-10-05 at 11:16:40 in about [Marxism] China's nationalized sector: > > > Polanski > I say that thinking that Pianist is one of the greatest movies > I have ever seen. And I enjoyed no movie more than the one > with he did with Depp. Have you seen "N?z w wodzie"? His first film? A real polak film... in English its called "Knife in the Water". Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From lueko.willms at t-online.de Mon Oct 5 23:01:19 2009 From: lueko.willms at t-online.de (=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:01:19 -0000 Subject: [Marxism] =?iso-8859-1?q?China=27s_nationalized_sector_has_key_ro?= =?iso-8859-1?q?le_in_current=09gains?= In-Reply-To: <170D6054293D4A8CAAE3869D4FE3B496@MARV> References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> <170D6054293D4A8CAAE3869D4FE3B496@MARV> Message-ID: <000.602b0b00ee47ca4a.009@lws-media.de> Marv Gandall (marvgandall at videotron.ca) wrote on 2009-10-05 at 14:07:17 in about Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains: > > > The issue is not really whether there is Chinese overcapacity in steel - the > Chinese themselves admit to it - Do you have sources for that claim? > but whether they will be able to make the necessary > planned adjustments or whether it is going to lead to crisis in > the Chinese economy, to a certain extent, namely the extent that capitalist market forces can act freely, there is bound to be crisis. But the article you linked to > writes that the Chinese government tries to curb exactly those market forces and control the development: "Without controls, 'it will be hard to prevent vicious market competition and increase economic benefits, and this could result in facility closures, layoffs and increases in banks' bad assets,' the Cabinet said on its Web site." Until now, China has managed to avoid a larger crisis, end has survived even the current worldwide crisis with continued growth. One might say, that China is saving world wide capitalism from deeper crises, but I prefer China growing than starving so that the working masses in the imperialist countries fall into misery. I have never been a follower of the "the worse the better" strategy. Cheers, L?ko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Mon Oct 5 23:14:17 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 05:14:17 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: S. Artesian wrote: "But in the end, I think she knows actually very little about Marx, the development, method, and content of his work." No doubt, but not only that. This whole anal retentiveness with contradiction in the end, as I see it, leads to a direct inversion, hidden as it is in 'no bullshit', in language, to say the least, of the very materialist conception. Let's see what Gerry Cohen says in his defence of Marx's theory of history: "To personify capital is to practice the principle (the capitalist principle, the use of exchange value to increase exchange value) and POSSESS the mentality (the capitalist mentality, the quest for exchange value which is not controlled by a DESIRE for use-value, or not at any rate by a desire to exchange it for use-value.)" Now, you?ll excuse my Spanish, when the f**k was it that the capitalist got to ?choose? which mentality he?s going to POSSESS?, no sir, it is the 'mentality', the alienated consciousness, (and I bet 9 times out of 10, a 'No Bullshit' Marxist will explain the mentality as the DESIRE, and the Desire?...as the Mentality,) which possesses the capitalist. Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From jayroth6 at cox.net Tue Oct 6 01:05:06 2009 From: jayroth6 at cox.net (jayroth6) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 03:05:06 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? Message-ID: At a recent political meeting I attended, some activists expressed their fear of whether Obama could remain in office if he denied General Stanley McChrystal's demand for 40 thousand more U.S. combat troops for Afghanistan. I thought their fears were absurd on the face of it: no president has been a bigger booster of Washington's course of war and plunder at home and abroad than Obama. Why else would he have the job? And now I read here http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o06.shtml : "Growing tensions between sections of the military brass and the Obama administration have emerged openly in the conflict between the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, and the White House. "McChrystal's increasingly strident demands for as many as 40,000 additional troops, capped by his speech last week in London before the International Institute for Strategic Studies, drew rebukes Sunday from Obama's national security adviser, retired Marine General James L. Jones, and Monday from the secretary of defense, Robert Gates. "Although neither official mentioned McChrystal by name, both made it clear that his public campaigning for more troops, ahead of a decision by President Obama, was a violation of the norms of subordination of serving military officers to the civilian commander in chief. "In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Jones was asked whether it was appropriate for a uniformed officer to publicly campaign for a specific policy choice in war. Jones answered by declaring, "Ideally, it's better for military advice to come up through the chain of command." "Gates made an even more categorical statement on Monday, telling an Army convention in Washington that both civilian and military officials had an obligation to keep their opinions private while they were engaged in advising the president." Well, the next step had to be floated somewhere, and it has been. A former FEMA official named John L. Perry wrote this http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/rightwing-columnist-considers-anti-obama-military-coup/ : "Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making. "Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible. "Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later." "In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass." This bloody shirt of Obama's "radical ideal" is a stalking horse to sow division and distract working people from a clear understanding of the class basis of the current, and growing, economic crisis: that private property's brake on social production presents us with a future of permanent crises of overproduction, unemployment, union-busting, and growing attacks on democratic rights. Perry and others on the right are busting the sod for some very dangerous developments in U.S. politics as the economic crisis deepens and blame for its toll is focused on oppressed nationalities, women, and immigrant workers. These rightist cop- and officer-lovers are starting out with a few trial balloons against what they call "socialism" and "Obama's radical ideals." What they really target is the working class and the labor movement itself. They are not strong enough to take to the streets against picket lines and defenders of abortion clinics yet, but they understand that it is necessary today to prepare. In a recent article http://www.workers.org/2009/us/unity_1001/ Workers World Party leader Fred Goldsten wrote: "The social and political soil for further inflaming racism is fertile. There are short-term, specific economic interests that the health care industry and Big Oil (ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc.) have in fomenting anti-Obama sentiment, and there are long-term strategic interests that the ruling class as a whole has in stirring up racism. "As far as the right and the ultra-right are concerned, as long as there is an African-American president in the White House and an increase in unemployment, bankruptcies and economic hardship, the basis for racist mobilization will continue to exist. "At the same time, the economic crisis, which is striking relentlessly at the entire multinational working class, provides a profound and powerful basis for a united working-class fightback. Preparations must begin now to mount a strong, anti-racist, pro-working-class counterattack against both the economic crisis and racist division." Whatever political activities we participate in, communists need to bring with them a militant united front perspective. In our unions, in our anti-war coalitions, in our abortion rights work, and on campuses, we need to calmy and concretely lay-out a perspective to defend our class interests. This is also the most uncompromising way to defend democratic rights for all. "The road to beating back the racists today is the same as the road to beating back the effects of the capitalist crisis-the united class struggle and mass mobilization of a labor-community alliance," Goldstein wrote in the same article quoted above. "White workers must recognize that racism is the tool of the class enemy. As Karl Marx wrote 150 years ago in the first volume of "Capital": "In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the Black it is branded." "An injury to one is an injury to all." From jayroth6 at cox.net Tue Oct 6 01:24:06 2009 From: jayroth6 at cox.net (jayroth6) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 03:24:06 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Job training for the police state Message-ID: Twitterist ??????? ? (http://twitter.com/tovX) recently made me aware of these articles, which all seem to have the same underlying theme: Job training for the U.S. police state http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/10/nation/na-spy-highschool10?pg=2 "It's the fastest growing field in academia," -- Boy Scouts train for badge in anti-terrorism - Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5331188/Boy-Scouts-train-for-badge-in-anti-terrorism.html Around 35,000 "Explorer" scouts aged from 14 to 21 are currently in the "law enforcement exploring" programme across America. Dressed in combat fatigues and armed with air guns firing tiny plastic pellets, they are taught how to assault buses, raid marijuana fields and rescue terrorist hostages from buildings. -- Girl Scouts Emergency Preparedness Patch Program "Can you think of an emergency that was caused by other people? Answers may include terrorist attacks, bombings, contaminated food (e-coli), arson (intentionally starting a fire), etc. This topic may be the most challenging for girls to comprehend, depending on their background experience and knowledge, and their age. *In the kit, there are some news clippings of specific man-made hazards like the events of September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, and the 2001 Anthrax scare. It may be worthwhile to check out the kit and review these clippings (or your own online search) if girls need a frame of reference for this discussion." http://www.gscnc.org/files/pdf/program/Girl%20Scouts%20Emergency%20Preparedness%20Patch%20Program%20-%20Policy%20Comments_FINAL.pdf The Patch Program manual, excepting the passage quoted above, has mostly benign content, leaving one to wonder about the goodies in "the kit." Still, considering both the DHS sponsorship of this program, and the larger context of militarizing youth and training them as agents of the police state, this recruiting effort among the 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the US is deplorable. -- From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Oct 6 05:24:25 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 11:24:25 GMT Subject: [Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK Message-ID: <20091006.072425.14847.0@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> See: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/yet_more_replies.htm ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=IfAYi6mQ2AlB5R5Rju9JdAAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA= From marvgandall at videotron.ca Tue Oct 6 06:00:22 2009 From: marvgandall at videotron.ca (Marv Gandall) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:00:22 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad> <000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de> <170D6054293D4A8CAAE3869D4FE3B496@MARV> <000.602b0b00ee47ca4a.009@lws-media.de> Message-ID: <11B0C648EEE648AD8316F59A90360757@MARV> Luko writes "one might say, that China is saving world wide capitalism from deeper crises, but I prefer China growing than starving so that the working masses in the imperialist countries fall into misery. I have never been a follower of the "the worse the better" strategy." ========================================= Me neither. I assume you meant to say "so that the working masses in the imperialist countries don't fall into misery." From avvakum at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 06:29:08 2009 From: avvakum at gmail.com (Thomas Campbell) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:29:08 +0300 Subject: [Marxism] How Things Were Done in Leningrad: The Gazprom Skyscraper Message-ID: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1927550,00.html?xid=rss-world The Battle Over a New Skyscraper for St. Petersburg By SIMON SHUSTER / MOSCOW Tuesday, Oct. 06, 2009 Imagine if the Empire State Building were to be placed smack in the middle of Venice or Jerusalem. Jutting out from the ancient streets, a skyscraper of that size would seem absurdly out of sync with the iconic beauty of the cities. Developers would likely never get such a proposal approved. But in Russia the rules are different. Last month, officials in St. Petersburg approved the construction of a 400-meter-tall skyscraper in the historic center of the city. The city's beautiful Baroque and neoclassical architecture, much of it built in the 18th and 19th centuries when St. Petersburg was Russia's capital, will soon be dwarfed by the Okhta Center, which will house an arm of the state gas monopoly Gazprom. [clip] http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=29955 March Plans Meet Official Resistance By Sergey Chernov City Hall has effectively banned the planned March for the Protection of St. Petersburg, organized to protest the local authorities? decision to approve the Okhta Center?s planned 400-meter skyscraper, or Gazprom Tower. [clip] *************************** I've sent these two links about the controversy over the planned 400m-high Gazprom tower in Petersburg because I'm a (very peripheral) member of the coalition against the project and against the rampant, destructive "renovation" that is making the city a mess and the lives of ordinary folks there hell. For more on the issue on general, you can read a article in the journal Mute that I wrote with a Petersburg sociologist and activist: http://www.metamute.org/en/Anti-Viruses-And-Underground-Monuments I have two questions for list members. First, do you have any ideas about what non-Russian organizations and groups we could turn to for solidarity and publicity in our campaign? Second, can anyone suggest literature about successful "anti-renovation" campaigns as well as about the economics and politics of rampant redevelopment (including skyscraper construction)? I should note that the anti-skyscraper coalition is a mix of liberals and communists. The local legislative assembly deputy mentioned in the Time article, Sergei Malkov (one of only three people on the city's land use commission to vote against granting Gazprom a waiver on height restrictions) is a member of the CPRF. From shmage at pipeline.com Tue Oct 6 06:33:51 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 08:33:51 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK In-Reply-To: <20091006.072425.14847.0@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> References: <20091006.072425.14847.0@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: On Oct 6, 2009, at 7:24 AM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/yet_more_replies.htm RL writes: "And FL does not apply to any "side of reality", since it's the study of inference." As I pointed out, mathematics is entirely a process of inference. If mathematics does not deal with reality, neither does science. Does RL deal with reality? Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From shmage at pipeline.com Tue Oct 6 06:57:35 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 08:57:35 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 6, 2009, at 12:37 AM, Leonardo Kosloff wrote: > Shane Mage wrote: > ? > ...where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal > logics, >> whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall >> from the sky?... > It is the most obvious of mistakes to ask for the "social origins" of > valid scientific concepts, whose only origin is the structure of > reality to which they perforce conform. > > ...before this quote of mine, I had quoted Marx saying that ?society > must always be kept in mind as the presupposition?, but silly me, > thinking that Marx had a say on a Marxism list? "Presupposition" and "Origin", in my Realist usage at least, mean different things. Society would be presupposition in that human thought is social and so all human thought presupposes human society. But the ultimate origin of any *true* proposition, of any valid scientific thought about any reality, would be the reality which that thought reflects. That's what I meant by the "origin" of thought, not the sense of "origin" as being-originated-by-some-agent. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 06:59:48 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:59:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie Message-ID: <4ACB3F44.1000903@panix.com> http://wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/capi-o06.shtml Michael Moore?s Capitalism: A Love Story By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh 6 October 2009 Veteran documentary filmmaker Michael Moore?s Capitalism: A Love Story sets out to examine the recent financial collapse. His aim, he suggests, is a critique of the existing economic set-up. ?This time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene is wider than Flint, Michigan,? observe the film?s production notes, a reference to Moore?s first documentary, Roger & Me, made twenty years ago. The new film is Moore?s fifth major documentary, three of which, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, are among the largest-grossing non-fiction films. Moore has developed a following as a result of the concern he demonstrates for working people and their difficulties. There will no doubt be a popular response to Capitalism. That a film offering a criticism of the profit system opens in nearly one thousand movie theaters in the United States is obviously an unusual and noteworthy occurrence. There is certainly a connection between this and a growing popular radicalization under conditions of economic devastation. But what is the precise connection? Moore and his greatest admirers see him as the vanguard of some oppositional movement (whose character, however, is left remarkably vague). Is this the reality? The filmmaker maintains a certain independence from the mass media where lies and misinformation dominate. He has shown backbone on a number of occasions. Capitalism is concerned with nothing less than ?the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world),? according to the film?s press notes. In other words, Moore comes before his audience as a political individual with something to say, and we will judge him and his film primarily in that light. A number of elements in the film are to his credit. First, as noted above, genuine sympathy for a suffering population. The documentary, for instance, counters the claims of the media pundits and the Obama administration that the victims of predatory lending by the banks are in part to blame for the economic collapse. Instead, Moore demonstrates how the wages, pensions and healthcare of the working class have been decimated in the last quarter century as a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite has taken place. Capitalism begins by facetiously comparing ancient Rome to present-day America?vast social inequality, slave labor, and a regime that employs torture (an image of former Vice President Dick Cheney appears onscreen). The film?s overall format is familiar, perhaps too familiar. Moore does the narrating, as well as the interviewing and provoking. Through the sometimes clever use of television and movie clips he makes his points and those of his talking heads. He focuses on some of the crimes of the system. Early on in film, a family in Lexington, North Carolina, is shown videoing their own eviction by a police force that descends upon them in excessive numbers. The next scene takes place in Detroit. A carpenter is boarding up the residence of an angry and distraught family?their home of 41 years. ?This is capitalism?a system of giving and taking?mostly taking,? says Moore in a voice-over. ?In a country run like a corporation,? other incidents are highlighted in the film: *A disabled railway worker?s family in Peoria, Illinois, lose their home of 20 years. In a further humiliation, the bank hires the family to empty and clean the foreclosed property for $1,000. *In December 2008, workers occupy Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago over monies owed them by a company shuttering its doors. They eventually win an average of $6,000 per person, although the plant closes. *Airline pilots for regional and commuter airlines make so little that they have to be warned by employers not to apply for food stamps while in uniform. The co-pilot on Continental Connection Flight 3407, which crashed in February 2009, earned a little over $16,000 the previous year. *Banks and corporations take out so-called ?dead peasant? life insurance policies on rank-and-file employees, whose payoffs are to the companies, not the employees? surviving family members. *Thousands of young people were unjustly incarcerated in a privatized juvenile detention center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on the order of two judges who were receiving millions in kickbacks from the facility?s owners. The footage of these events and the moving comments of those involved are by far the Capitalism?s strongest features. Moore makes the legitimate point that much of the country now resembles the wretched conditions in Flint, Michigan, he documented in Roger & Me. Without being unduly harsh to Moore, one must say that his films stand out in large measure by default: because the fairly elementary truths he points out are systematically and disgracefully concealed by the news media?and Hollywood, for that matter. But what does Moore make of these basic facts of American (and global) life? Here his severe limitations as a thinker, and an artist, present themselves. The confusion and eclecticism, of course, are not simply his, but one must say what is?that it is impossible to see one?s way out of the present crisis on the basis of his analysis. Little is added to an understanding of the present situation by more of the usual Moore antics: putting crime scene tape around AIG?s headquarters; driving a truck up to Citibank demanding the return of public money disbursed under the federal government?s TARP plan; trying to gain entrance to the GM headquarters in Detroit?once again. The gimmick of attempting a ?citizen?s arrest? of a corporate looter has worn very thin. A few of the gags, his or other people?s, are still amusing. A mock musical appeal to tourists to visit Cleveland makes its point: ?See our river that catches on fire?. It?s so polluted that all our fish have AIDS?. See the sun almost three times a year?. Buy a house for the price of a VCR.... Our main export is crippling depression.... But at least we?re not Detroit!? The film is disjointed and jumbled. Moore has great difficulty separating the essential from the inessential. There is no shortage of social atrocities in America. The filmmaker indignantly introduces us to the ?condo vultures? and ?bottom feeders? who for 25 cents on the dollar grab up foreclosed properties. What does the filmmaker expect? Too much moralizing, sentimentality, and even manipulation go on. Moore has an unpleasant tendency of letting his camera linger on the distressed faces of his social victims. The most serious weaknesses, however, involve his continued support for the Democratic Party, and Obama, and his inability to advance any serious alternative to the capitalism system. His film is dominated by an internal contradiction: between the harsh social facts he presents and the paltriness of his political solution. Capitalism: A Love Story absurdly advocates the ?elimination? of the profit system at the same time as it praises one of the parties, and that party?s leading figure, who preside over that system. While he excoriates the obviously corrupt individual Democrat (Christopher Dodd, Richard Holbrooke), he gives a platform to other of its spokespeople, especially those who posture as ?populists.? For example, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is given wide coverage in the film. Kaptur, like a Dennis Kucinich, is capable of any amount of demagogy about Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, but she is staunchly pro-military, a protectionist, a ferocious anti-communist, and an opponent of abortion. As for Obama, Moore is obliged to mention in passing that Goldman Sachs was the largest private contributor to his 2008 presidential campaign. Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, the brain trust of Obama?s ?Government Goldman,? come under fire?but without any mention of the president himself. Capitalism refers to events that occurred in the spring of 2009, by which time the right-wing character of the Obama administration had shown itself, both on the domestic and foreign fronts, and Moore is entirely silent on that. He is one of those who invariably invoke Franklin D. Roosevelt as the ultimate reformer. Roosevelt, a canny representative of the American bourgeoisie, lived in another era. What remains of the Democratic Party?s legacy of social reform, particularly in the form of healthcare ?reform,? is under attack today by a president whom Moore refers to as?potentially?the 21st Century Roosevelt! The filmmaker presents himself as a kind of ?Christian socialist.? He offers a forum to various bishops and priests in ravaged areas like Detroit and Chicago, where the Church plays on the misery and illusions of the some of the poorest of the poor, to pontificate about social ills. The bishop of Chicago is filmed sermonizing and giving communion to the Republic workers during their occupation. His argument, repeated a number of times, that capitalism is ?evil,? is false. It is a socio-economic system that arose under certain objective conditions and was thoroughly revolutionary and progressive in its day. The parasitic character of contemporary capitalism is bound with its historical decay, and not, in the first place, the moral depravity of its leading figures. At the film?s climactic moment, Moore calls for the replacement of capitalism?by ?democracy.? What does that mean? It means more than anything else that he hasn?t the political courage to mention socialism. To the extent that Moore believes the ahistorical, eclectic views he espouses in Capitalism: A Love Story, he is deluding himself. To the extent that he attempts to sell them to a broad audience, he is deluding others. From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 07:02:55 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:02:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Inside the corporate university Message-ID: <4ACB3FFF.9050106@panix.com> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/06/wannabe 'Wannabe U' October 6, 2009 Want to know what faculty members really think about administrators these days? You may want to check out Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (University of Chicago Press). The book contains a discussion of the way faculty members look down on those who lead the university's divisions and colleges, viewing them as "corporate administrators" and not scholars. The professors check out the publication records of new administrators and gossip about how sparse or old they are. "When he wants to discuss research, he has to talk about his dissertation. He apparently hasn't done any research since then," quips a faculty member of one administrator. Another says of an administrator: "I don't know how many times I have heard him mention that he is a biologist. It's as though he mentions his field when he talks to [a group of faculty leaders] so that we will know he is intelligent." Welcome to Wannabe University, an unnamed, but not terribly well disguised, state university that is the subject of Gaye Tuchman's new book. Tuchman, a sociologist, spent six years interviewing faculty members and administrators and observing campus life -- from presidential addresses at convocations to the most mundane of faculty meetings. Under the terms approved (and in some cases insisted upon) by her institutional review board, no real names are given for those at Wannabe. In fact, she said in an interview that she "promoted and demoted people" and changed personal details to hide their identities. She told those she interviewed about the nature of her research, and took steps (such as typing loudly on her laptop) when observing public events to draw attention that someone was documenting the events. At the end of an interview on the book, she went out of her way to stress that she believes Wannabe is emblematic of many institutions, and that her aim is not to skewer it. "The people who work at Wannabe University are like the people who work everywhere else in higher education and a lot of them are very fine and decent people," she said. But that doesn't mean the picture is flattering -- for Wannabe or its peers. In her concluding chapter, she calls Wannabe "a conformist university," with an emphasis on "doing what must be done to elbow its way up the rankings." She writes that the administration is imposing "an accountability regime" on faculty members. And she notes that while professors still have much more freedom than most American employees, "as the decades pass, working at a university will become more and more like working in the corporate world" and administrators will be hired for their ability to carry out corporate-style management. (While the book's barbs tend to find administrators as targets, it also criticizes professors, particularly for their lack of interest in teaching issues as compared to research agendas.) The examples in the book portray an administration much more concerned with making the university look outstanding than actually becoming outstanding. And measures that Tuchman writes are of dubious value (U.S. News & World Report rankings, for example) appear to count much more than the vibrancy of intellectual life or the student learning experience. For example, an increase in enrollment leads to meetings not about how to meet the need for students to interact with professors, but how to prevent the student-faculty ratio from going up in a way that would affect the formula used by U.S. News. The solution? Hire adjuncts, who could keep the student-faculty ratio under control while not having the job security or support from the university to provide continuity in the educational experience. (An administrator is quoted as saying that these adjuncts would likely all get jobs at liberal arts colleges within a few years, and keep being replaced.) Or there is discussion of a one-credit course on how to be a freshman, a course started in part to teach study skills and thus to keep retention rates high (also important in U.S. News rankings, administrators were quick to note). The course sections are kept small (generally not even 20 students) and some faculty question the priority given to a course that they aren't sure should be counted for academic credit. The answer they hear back is that U.S. News gives points for every section that doesn't exceed 20 students, so Wannabe is getting credit for these courses, even though they don't represent how students are experiencing academic disciplines, and the time involvement (befitting a one-credit course) is quite limited. Relations between faculty members and administrators are described as frustrating. Wannabe's leaders want more emphasis on teaching (for U.S. News), more students (for the revenue their tuition dollars bring) and more research (to earn prestige for the institution). Professors are described as split on the research/teaching balance that would be appropriate, but in wide agreement that they are seeing more demands on their time (without commensurate support) year after year. Beneath discussions of everything from how academic programs are selected to how faculty members are evaluated, Wannabe is described as a place focused on the bottom line. Administrators talk over and over again (and the book covers periods before the collapse of the economy in the last year) about revenue streams, bringing money into the university, efficiency, etc. "Business-like concerns" dominate the life of the mind, Tuchman writes. All of these trends shouldn't be viewed simply as a sign of economic challenges, but as a historic shift, Tuchman argues. "Here's what matters: These and other treatments of grand trends insist that higher education is one of the last revered Western institutions to be 'de-churched'; that is, it is one of the last to have its ideological justification recast in terms of corporatization and commodification and to become subject to serious state surveillance," she writes. "Universities are no longer to lead the minds of students to grasp truth; to grapple with intellectual possibilities; to appreciate the best in art, music, and other forms of culture; and to work toward both enlightened politics and public service. Rather they are now to prepare students for jobs. They are not to educate, but to train." In an interview, Tuchman said that she has not been heavily involved in campus governance issues and didn't pay much attention to higher education policy before starting to work on the book. Nor did her academic work focus on academe -- she is the author of Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality and Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. But she said that she started to notice change in the university environment and wanted to explore what was going on. She also said that she recognizes that administrators at Wannabe and elsewhere face fiscal realities that reflect the (misplaced) values of American society. "Higher education should be seen as a public good" and supported accordingly, she said. When states spend so much money on criminal justice, and when the health care system is so flawed, she said, it's not surprising that there's not enough money to adequately fund higher education. "It's not simply a question of how you fix the universities, but what happens in the country that has put the universities in this position," she said. "It's a combination of factors, including the assumption that everything can be fixed by market forces." In discussions about the project with her IRB, Tuchman said that the key issue was protecting identities of her informants. She said that as she started her research, she asked those who spoke to her not to mention the project to others. But after a while, she said, she didn't worry about that, and assumed that senior administrators at Wannabe knew what she was up to. An abundance of evidence points to Wannabe's identity as UConn, Tuchman's employer. UConn and Wannabe's size and history are consistent, and a number of the points match. Wannabe is described as having a rural location (UConn is in Storrs), with its law and social work schools in one urban area away from the main campus (UConn's are in Hartford), and its medical and dental schools in yet another city (UConn's are in Farmington). Wannabe has five regional campuses (UConn has five). Wannabe is also described as having the unusual distinction of being a land grant that was not originally its state's land grant but had to "wrest the status" from a private university. (Here's the story of how UConn obtained its land grant status from Yale University.) Asked about all the similarities, Tuchman stated simply that she would not confirm Wannabe's identity. But asked if she could name another university with the qualities she describes in the book, she declined to do so. The book comes well blurbed, with praise from Troy Duster of New York University and Gary Rhoades of the American Association of University Professors, among others. Most administrators haven't seen it yet. But one who has -- James C. Garland, the retired president of Miami University, in Ohio -- gave it a mixed review in two posts on his blog. He praises the perspective Tuchman provides as one who is not a decision maker on campus. "Wannabe U made me squirm at times, because many of the examples paralleled my own experiences. And therein lies the book?s value. I hope my administrative colleagues will read this book, not because they will agree with it, or even because it is, as the dust cover asserts, 'an eye-opening expose of the modern university.' They should read it because people in power seldom understand how their actions are viewed by others, and why their good deeds and intentions often provoke suspicion and mistrust," he writes in his first post. In the second post, he challenges Tuchman on attitudes that he believes are common among professors, and that he thinks unfairly characterize as "corporate" some policies that may well help students and promote research. "I fear Professor Tuchman and her faculty colleagues may have it backwards. Increasing productivity and efficiency are ways to reduce class sizes, teaching loads, and busywork, not increase them. When productivity goes up, it means the quality of the institution can be maintained by fewer people, none working harder or longer than before," he writes. "Efficiency and productivity improvements can?t solve all problems, of course, and when money is running out, a university has few options but to make cuts in services that lower quality and put additional stresses on faculty and staff. But successful efforts to make an organization more efficient and productive can moderate undesirable changes." And administrators, he writes, have valid, education-related reasons to focus on metrics. "Like it or not, the fundamental responsibility of all senior academic administrators is to improve their institution, by which is typically meant emulating more highly regarded institutions having a similar mission," Garland writes. "However, benchmarking one university against another naturally invites metrics of comparison. For example, if Berkeley chemistry professors publish more research articles, win more awards, garner more federal funds, give more invited papers at conferences, write more textbooks, and serve on more national commissions than do chemistry professors at Wan U, then tabulating changes in these measurable quantities is a way to see whether the chemistry department at Wan U is becoming more or less Berkeley-like." As for UConn, the reaction there is restrained. Michael Kirk, a spokesman, said that the university has made "tremendous advances" over the period of time Tuchman describes. "Some people prefer things be the way they used to be," he said. "They are entitled to their opinion." (Kirk also did not dispute that UConn is Wannabe.) One piece of evidence offered by Kirk would actually fit right in at Wannabe U: He noted, as UConn's Web site boasts, that U.S. News has declared it the top public university in New England. ? Scott Jaschik From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 07:05:02 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:05:02 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The demise of the dollar Message-ID: <4ACB407E.6060709@panix.com> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html The demise of the dollar In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading By Robert Fisk Tuesday, 6 October 2009 In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning ? along with China, Russia, Japan and France ? to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years. The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place ? although they have not discovered the details ? are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil ? yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves. The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power ? along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system ? which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states. Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East. China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq ? blocked by the US until this year ? and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures. Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro. Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements ? the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system ? America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency. The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar." Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018. The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets. "These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate." Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq. From markalause at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 07:46:06 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 09:46:06 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: While it's interesting and telling that the professional goons (well, goon reenactors, really) on the idiot box have raised this spectre of a military coup, it couldn't be more groundless and absurd. Every time the Democrats decide to sleep with the Devil "just this once," they come up with rationalizations. One of them--was it Kucinich?--explained the Democratic fear of impeaching Bush as rooted in a concern that the Republicans would declare martial law. The Democrats have to go to war, liberals claim, not because they actually favor war but because the Republicans will assault their character if they don't. Most importantly, all of this assumes that the country will sit by for removing the authority of a seated president with an elected government. The last time any section of the ruling class played with the idea was probably the 1930s and it just didn't get any traction. The last time they made a serious attempt to do this was after the 1860 election of a president some of them denounced as racially mixed. The ruling class has used the civicly insane fifth of the population to set the tone in American politics. This has worked essentially because most of the rest of country has been too lazy, too apathetic, and too preoccupied with making a living not to indulge them. The mind boggles at how quick that would come to an end should they attempt a military coup ML From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 07:51:44 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:51:44 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4ACB4B70.4050502@panix.com> Mark Lause wrote: > While it's interesting and telling that the professional goons (well, goon > reenactors, really) on the idiot box have raised this spectre of a military > coup, it couldn't be more groundless and absurd. Actually, if I have some time today, I plan to blog about McChrystal within the historical context of the military opposing the president, Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War the classic example. I don't think that any of this has any domestic implications in terms of, for example, the French generals revolting during the Algerian war of independence. More to follow... From markalause at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 08:07:44 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:07:44 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Video of 1948 Progressive Party campaign song... Message-ID: I've been playing around lately with putting videos together and posting them on YouTube.... The last one puts together material from the 1948 campaign of Henry A. Wallace with a song from that bid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC_ydKzioxM&feature=channel I posted the lyrics for this earlier, but they're short enough to merit repeating.... The donkey is tired and thin. The elephant thinks he'll move in. They yell and they fuss But they ain't foolin' us 'Cause they're brothers right under the skin. Refrain... It's the same, same merry-go-round, Which one will you ride this year. The donkey and elephant bob up and down On the same merry-go-round. The elephant comes from the North The donkey may come from the South If you look you may find The donkey's behind But they've got the same bit in their mouth. REFRAIN If you want to end up safe and sound Get off the merry-go-round To be a real smarty Just join the new party And get your two feet on the ground. REFRAIN ML PS: I'm entirely new at this sort of thing and assume that material from 1948 is so old that it's all in the public domain. However, if someone complains, YouTube takes it down, so.... From adambrichmond at yahoo.com Tue Oct 6 08:17:28 2009 From: adambrichmond at yahoo.com (Adam Richmond) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:17:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie In-Reply-To: <4ACB3F44.1000903@panix.com> Message-ID: <782199.17204.qm@web112619.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> As usual, a smug, condescending review of another film from WSWS. ?I don't dispute any of their facts. ?It is their approach that is so appalling.? This film helps bring into focus a growing restlessness with the status quo. Does it bring it completely into view and point to the solutions? No. ?So far we know that Mr. Moore is not a revolutionary socialist. But what Michael Moore has done is to bring the economic system into question, something that has not been done in a major public forum, perhaps since the 1930s.? That fact is lost on the ultralefts of the WSWS. It is up to the revolutionaries to see the film and take Michael Moore as the real thing. ?It opens the door for a new way of seeing the basic facts of US politics. ? From nmgoro at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 08:38:06 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:38:06 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains In-Reply-To: References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad><000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de><60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com><22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> <4ACAABEC.3080302@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACB564E.6060306@gmail.com> Since the reproduction of value seems to be the single issue in your head, got nothing else to say. Don?t care about defeatists, either. S. Artesian escribi?: > You may have read a lot, but you understand very little. > > If you've got a problem with identifying China's expansion of capitalism > based on fixed asset investment, initially in the export sector, but most > recently under the stimulus program in the "heavy" state/collective industry > From markalause at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 08:42:04 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:42:04 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie In-Reply-To: <782199.17204.qm@web112619.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <4ACB3F44.1000903@panix.com> <782199.17204.qm@web112619.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The other night, while doing other things, the shows of Rachel Maddow, Bill Mahrer and Jon Stewart passed over the screen. Terms like capitalist and capitalism / socialist and socialism had managed to work their way into each one of them. They weren't using it the way we would, but it capitalism was clearly identified with the mess the world faces now and socialism with the idea of being socially responsible. As opposed to what popular culture in America has cranked out for us through my lifetime, I'm rather pleased with what we're getting now.... ML From sartesian at earthlink.net Tue Oct 6 08:43:25 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:43:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The demise of the dollar References: <4ACB407E.6060709@panix.com> Message-ID: <9FE25199F29548988E3B7DCA1762BE10@dmsthinkpad> I don't see exactly how this squares with the fact that China and Japan have increased their purchases of US Treasurys, but hey, you never know what the bourgeoisie will come up with in their grand game of beggar thy neighbor. In any case, first a correction, or addendum to Fisk's presentation. Iraq has blacklisted Sinopec from bidding on concessions in the next round after Sinopec bought Swiss oil company Addax Petroleum. Perhaps Russia does want to get away from the dollar, and Iran did announce its determination to price its oil in Euros, but I don't see any exporter accepting a basket of currencies for payment that includes the recently collapsed rouble, particularly when corporations in Russia are increasingly unable to make payments on their debts to European banks. And oil importers? Why would Japan, or the EU want oil currency priced in appreciating euros and yen, thereby effectively raising the price of their oil? To further appreciate the value of their currencies? Doesn't quite make sense, given the statements of the ECB "worrying" over the recent appreciation of the euro and its negative impact on exports and overall growth, and the critical role dollar depreciation played in the US, and global recovery, 2003-2007. I don't accept that "currency rivalry" will cause greater competition in the Mideast, or between the US and China. For one thing, for the yuan, or its foreign trade form the renminbi, to operate in a basket of currencies, the yuan would have to become fully convertible with other currencies--- and when that occurs, US private hedge funds, currency traders, etc. with many more hard currency reserves than all the central bankers in the world, will start whipsawing the yuan through the markets, eventually ripping a hole in the thin tissue supporting China's economic miracle, and then the run will start-- with capital flight and the ensuing economic disorder putting an end to that miracle. However, I do think that these notions of "currency rivalry" reflect the drastic decline in profits for the oil exporters, the oil majors due to the overproduction of oil, and for 35 years nothing has worked against and hand-in-hand with overproduction to boost profits like increasing tensions, threats, then promises and the delivery of war. I too do not believe that things have to get worse to make things better, but I have no doubt things are going to get much worse, with much more hostility being directed at China. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 9:05 AM Subject: [Marxism] The demise of the dollar http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html The demise of the dollar In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading By Robert Fisk From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Oct 6 08:43:16 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:43:16 GMT Subject: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie Message-ID: <20091006.104316.21360.0@webmail07.vgs.untd.com> I think my comments from 2004 concerning Moore's film "Farenheit 9/11" apply here too: http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w27/msg00023.htm Jim F. ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Adam Richmond Subject: Re: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:17:28 -0700 (PDT) As usual, a smug, condescending review of another film from WSWS. ?I don't dispute any of their facts. ?It is their approach that is so appalling.? This film helps bring into focus a growing restlessness with the status quo. Does it bring it completely into view and point to the solutions? No. ?So far we know that Mr. Moore is not a revolutionary socialist. But what Michael Moore has done is to bring the economic system into question, something that has not been done in a major public forum, perhaps since the 1930s.? That fact is lost on the ultralefts of the WSWS. It is up to the revolutionaries to see the film and take Michael Moore as the real thing. ?It opens the door for a new way of seeing the basic facts of US politics. ? ____________________________________________________________ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYebipymAEa70msN6AWuZRBFbRS1iANzTV1VxcSHBogqgo0NPtG/ From sartesian at earthlink.net Tue Oct 6 08:57:18 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:57:18 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains References: <87A3D826CFD9440F8572AA0F7FF5B74D@dmsthinkpad><000.b0fa090059b5c94a.001@lws-media.de><60C63400BC554465BFBD4626014FE418@dmsthinkpad> <2fa158550910051424n5091703bj7b33761822b4270e@mail.gmail.com><22195FF100604CDDBBD2E8C36C855253@dmsthinkpad> <4ACAABEC.3080302@gmail.com> <4ACB564E.6060306@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7F39FC30131B4876956B6CB22BF17127@dmsthinkpad> With a statement like yours below, Nestor, do you seriously expect anyone to believe you've ever read anything of Marx's? You got nothing to say because basically you've got nothing to say. You accuse me of criticizing China's "overproduction," when it's China's own State Council that issued these new guidelines in order to counter overproduction. You issue the slander and slur accusing me of "Friedmanese," when it's again China's own State Council that invited Friedman to China after his Nobel Prize and treated him as a hero. I don't take kindly to slurs and slanders associating me with a man who welcomed the triumph of Pinochet. I have repeatedly stated that behind every one of Friedman's free markets stands a death squad. Perhaps I shouldn't let it upset me that much since clearly you don't have the slightest clue as to what Marx, Friedman, and you yourself are talking about. But I do. Sue me. Nobody's perfect. You think somehow production of things, objects is going on separate and apart from their production as commodities; and that somehow these things, object are in and of themselves the satisfaction of the needs of humankind. You're singing an aria in the opera of your own ignorance. The reproduction of value is not an "issue in my head," it's the issue that defines capitalism. It's the single issue that contains, determines, informs every other issue in the origin, development, survival, and consequently, possible abolition of capitalism.. In case nobody has told you that before, I'm telling you that now, because it is certainly clear you've never read it in Marx. Take your slanders somewhere else. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains Since the reproduction of value seems to be the single issue in your head, got nothing else to say. Don?t care about defeatists, either. S. Artesian escribi?: > You may have read a lot, but you understand very little. > > If you've got a problem with identifying China's expansion of capitalism > based on fixed asset investment, initially in the export sector, but most > recently under the stimulus program in the "heavy" state/collective > industry From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Tue Oct 6 09:00:36 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:00:36 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Rosa wrote: ?What of this question, though? ?Where does logic come from Rosa?? Don't you know? As far as we can tell, from that ruling-class theorist, Aristotle. But so what?? And Aristotle and the whole mode of thinking of Greek society, obviously, fell from the sky. So Rosa, the Historical Materialist, can?t be bothered with explaining why logic came about as a product of the necessities of life, and instead gives us this accidental, bourgeois, at the very root, view that logic was the particular fancy of this particular philosopher which happens to work according to the ordinary language standard of clarity, which Rosa takes for granted. Remember? It is PEOPLE who make their own history, it is their actions, not your whimsical taste for clarity. And Marx, well he just happened to be a particular communist, but no relation to the historical conditions in which he lived though, no siree. The anal retentiveness is YOUR anal retentiveness, because lacking a formal model where to fit the dialectic, and reduce it to YOUR sterile mind games, (I don?t mean to scare you by putting YOUR in caps, I only want to stress these are your actions, it is time for you to understand where they come from as pertains your social being) you think advancing the interests of workers is a question of convincing comrades of your philosophy, which is bourgeois pragmatism in disguise, instead of, as it were, engaging in the real movement, or more to the point, the production of an objective consciousness. Until we are clear on what our social being is, we can?t even start talking about dialectics in a materialistic fashion. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Tue Oct 6 09:01:51 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:01:51 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don?t think we are in disagreement Shane. By social origins I mean the REAL social necessities of life which give origin to a mode of thought; as Sohn-Rethel argues, it is the real abstraction of exchange (because exchange precludes use in reality), from which the thought abstraction derives. This is perfectly in line with Marx as I see it, and I dare say, it?s the correct perspective. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 09:44:10 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:44:10 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Useful classes for Marxmail moderators? Message-ID: <4ACB65CA.10906@panix.com> Classroom Training Refund Policy for Columbia University Participants Each half-day course costs $70, and full-day courses are $140. If it becomes necessary to cancel registration, please do so by sending an e-mail to hrlearning at columbia.edu, at least five (5) business days before the course. Advance notification gives wait-listed participants the opportunity to attend. The cancellation notice must be received by the Learning & Development department at least (5) five business days in advance in order for the full cost of the course to be waived. If the cancellation notice is not received within five (5) business days, the full cost of the course will be charged to the registrant. E-mail Etiquette Price: $70 Location: Room 469 Studebaker Building Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Time: 1:30 p.m. ? 4:30 p.m. Register for this course. Target Audience: All Faculty and Staff looking to improve their e-mail communications skills. Maximum Class Size: 20 participants per session By the end of this program, participants will learn how to: * Create polished, professional emails and replies. * Craft useful subject lines and calls to action. * Be in command of your tone. * Handle angry writers and ?hot? messages. * Determine when to use alternatives to email. ---- Dealing with Difficult Situations Price: $70 Location: Room 469 Studebaker Building Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009 Time: 9:30 a.m. ? 12:30 p.m. Register for this course. Target Audience: All staff looking to better handle conflicts in the workplace. Maximum Class Size: 25 participants per session By the end of this program, participants will: * Understand what difficult situations are, where they come from and why they are important to manage. * Be able to use the two main skills in managing difficult situations: empathy and assertiveness. * Learn different conflict management styles and be able to adapt your style based on the situation. * Learn a process for handling difficult situations using collaboration. From sartesian at earthlink.net Tue Oct 6 09:55:36 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 11:55:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Useful classes for Marxmail moderators? References: <4ACB65CA.10906@panix.com> Message-ID: <6F64E190CABC4F2FAB029AC4E14AA3F8@dmsthinkpad> I'll contribute if you wish to attend, Louis. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 11:44 AM Subject: [Marxism] Useful classes for Marxmail moderators? From schaffer at optonline.net Tue Oct 6 09:58:32 2009 From: schaffer at optonline.net (Les Schaffer) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:58:32 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Useful classes for Marxmail moderators? In-Reply-To: <4ACB65CA.10906@panix.com> References: <4ACB65CA.10906@panix.com> Message-ID: <4ACB6928.3050403@optonline.net> Louis Proyect wrote: > By the end of this program, participants will learn how to: > > * Create polished, professional emails and replies. > * Craft useful subject lines and calls to action. > * Handle angry writers and ?hot? messages. > i'll keep you company. long as we go out to dinner afterwards.... Les From schaffer at optonline.net Tue Oct 6 10:16:58 2009 From: schaffer at optonline.net (Les Schaffer) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:16:58 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4ACB6D7A.30308@optonline.net> Leonardo Kosloff wrote: > p.s.s. It is only too ironic that I don?t have time to criticize mathematics more fully, I have to study drift-diffusion equations! I?m not saying, at all, that mathematics doesn?t have a role in science, or more precisely, in the production of an objective consciousness, it's role in the drift-diffusion equation is NOT one of logic and inference. in this case it offers a quantitative scheme for taking two seemingly disparate processes, random walks and directed motion, and unifying them under one tent. this happens in such a broad range of fields, from electrochemistry, pulse propagation in nerve fibers, semiconductor physics, to astrophysics from planetary rings through galaxy dynamics, and much more. for a physicist, hard to imagine a science without mathematics. other sciences the math is sometimes overplayed. but to speak of mathematics in the sciences as all about logic and inference is to miss one of its primary missions. Les From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 10:27:37 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 12:27:37 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] the complicity of Israeli intellectuals in the Gaza massacre In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910060927o4ad021e2i996feffabba786ff@mail.gmail.com> from Jewish Voices for Peace - > > For years, Israel dismissed the legal applicability of the Fourth Geneva > Convention to the West Bank and Gaza, claiming that they were and are not > under occupation but rather "liberated" or at least "disputed" territories. > For the most part, this verbal/legal sleight-of-hand did not and has not > convinced world civil society. But it joined other strategies, such as the > active erasure of the 1949 armistice "green" line by Jewish settlement and > infrastructure projects, in obfuscating reality for a sufficient number of > Israelis to uphold a sense of public indignation at accusations of > illegality. > > Almost as old as the occupation itself, the basic strategy of word-washing > and mind-tricks has been reused repeatedly by Israel, also assisting its > evasion of International Humanitarian Law as well as other international > standards and conventions. > > The opinion piece below is a vehement, pointed accusation leveled by > journalist Gideon Levy against the extensive group of Israeli philosophers, > thinkers, lawyers, jurists and leading academics who have, over many years > now, readily and faithfully provided the language and concepts for these > strategies of evasion. First and foremost among the conscience-clearers, he > writes, is Prof. Asa Kasher who is "the one responsible for that toxic 'IDF > spirit' ? which holds that when ? protecting soldiers, anything goes". > > As Levy intimates, despite his seminal importance, Kasher, who "glossed > over every transgression during this war" [i.e. Israel's last major assault > against Gaza] is just a single, though prominent, instance of the complicity > and collaboration of a vast community of intellectuals in maintaining > Israel's freedom and capacity to go on enforcing a criminal, horrific > occupation and committing war crimes with impunity. > > Rela Mazali > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Lincoln Shlensky adds: > > Eliot Weinberger, the American translator and political critic, turns a > sardonic eye on the use of white phosphorus by US forces in his widely > disseminated anti-war essay "What I Heard about Iraq in 2005," published in > The London Review of Books http://bit.ly/zySZc (an excellent article by > Scott Saul on Weinberger's three decades-long role as a cultural critic > appears in the September 30 issue of The Nation ): > > "I heard that, in Fallujah and elsewhere, the US had employed white > phosphorus munitions, an incendiary device, known among soldiers as ?Willie > Pete? or ?shake and bake?, which is banned as a weapon by the Convention on > Conventional Weapons. Similar to napalm, it leaves the victim horribly > burned, often right through to the bone. I heard a State Department > spokesman say: ?US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for > illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy > positions at night, not at enemy fighters.? Then I heard him say that ?US > forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they > could then be killed with high explosive rounds.? Then I heard a Pentagon > spokesman say that the previous statements were based on ?poor information?, > and that ?it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.? > Then I heard the Pentagon say that white phosphorus was not an illegal > weapon, because the US > had never signed that provision of the Convention on Conventional Weapons." > > As Weinberger's commentary on the US-led war in Iraq emphasizes, Israel is > not the only country recently to have used white phosphorus in violation of > international humanitarian law -- signed or, as in this case, unconscionably > unsigned. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Haaretz, Sunday October 4 2009 > > It's all kosher for Kasher > by Gideon Levy > http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118638.html From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 10:35:37 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:35:37 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] =?windows-1252?q?Peg_Mullen=2C_92=2C_Who_Fanned_Her_Ang?= =?windows-1252?q?er_Over_Son=92s_Death_Into_Antiwar_Drive=2C_Dies?= Message-ID: <4ACB71D9.5000804@panix.com> NY Times, October 6, 2009 Peg Mullen, 92, Who Fanned Her Anger Over Son?s Death Into Antiwar Drive, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Peg Mullen, an Iowa farm wife who made herself a living symbol of loss after her son was killed in Vietnam, as she sharply questioned the military?s explanations and became an outspoken antiwar crusader, died Friday in La Porte City, Iowa. She was 92. Her family announced the death. After her son Michael was killed by shrapnel from United States artillery on Feb. 18, 1970, Mrs. Mullen did not disguise her rage. She used his death benefit to buy two half-page advertisements in The Des Moines Register, each with more than 700 crosses, one for each Iowan killed in the war. C. D. B. Bryan, an author and journalist, wrote about the suffering of Mrs. Mullen and her family in ?Friendly Fire,? a book that was serialized in The New Yorker and received wide attention when published in 1976. In 1979, the book was made into a television movie starring Carol Burnett as Mrs. Mullen. It won an Emmy for best drama special. Mrs. Mullen from the start refused to believe the Pentagon?s account of Michael?s death, that he was killed in an accident. Mr. Bryan?s investigation eventually laid out considerable evidence that the official story was, indeed, true. Mrs. Mullen remained skeptical. She wrote her own book in 1995, ?Unfriendly Fire: A Mother?s Memoir,? expanding on her doubts. Around 40 of her son?s letters added poignancy to the story. Mrs. Mullen?s obstinacy, distrust of officialdom and wicked humor characterized her decades of antiwar activity, including those following the Vietnam War. An e-mail message she wrote to a columnist for The Register in 2002 showed her raw emotional power. ?I have no idea of your age,? she wrote the columnist, ?but I hope you never have to stand in a quiet corner of an airport and say goodbye to a son in uniform, knowing in your heart that you?ll never see him again. ?I hope you never suffer the horror of a military man sitting at your kitchen table trying to tell how your son died ? then wait 10 days for his body to be returned and his casket unloaded in a darkened corner of the same airport.? Mr. Bryan suggested in his book that the Mullen family?s pain might be seen as a larger lesson of the Vietnam War, ultimately more important than definitively assigning blame for Michael?s death. Writing of the atmosphere in which the Mullens and similarly stricken families lived, Mr. Bryan wrote of ?those sounds which were not spoken at all: the slam of a hand hitting the table in rage, the breath caught because an onrushing memory was causing too much pain.? Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Michael?s commander in Vietnam, met with Mrs. Mullen and her husband and tried to answer her questions as clearly as he could. But he could not satisfy them. ?To me, the death of Michael Mullen was not just one tragedy, but two: the needless death of a young man, and the bitterness that was consuming his parents,? the general wrote in his autobiography. Margaret Goodyear was born in Pocahontas, Iowa, in 1917, and after graduating from high school moved to Des Moines to work in various federal jobs. In 1941, she married Oscar Mullen, known as Gene. They settled on the 120-acre farm near La Porte City that had been in the family for four generations. In addition to farming, Mr. Mullen worked for Rath Packing and John Deere. Mrs. Mullen worked at J. C. Penney and Santa Claus Industries. Mrs. Mullen?s mother had been county Democratic chairwoman in the 1920s, and she herself was an active Democrat, serving as a delegate at the party?s 1964, 1968 and 1972 national conventions. Her forebodings about Vietnam were solidifying into opposition before the death of Michael, who had been a graduate student in biochemistry when he was drafted in 1968. In an interview in 2005 with The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., she remembered trying to comfort a friend whose son had died in the war by saying, ?He died for our country.? The friend snapped that Mrs. Mullen should never say that to anyone again. ?You can?t justify what?s going on,? the friend said. After Michael was killed, Mrs. Mullen refused a military funeral and spurned her son?s medals. She returned President Richard M. Nixon?s letter with the note, ?Send it to the next damn fool.? She declined a free grave marker with a military inscription. She bought a tombstone, and used the verb ?killed? rather than ?died.? Mr. Mullen died in 1986. Mrs. Mullen is survived by another son, John; her daughters, Patricia Hulting and Mary DeJana; and six grandchildren. Mrs. Mullen?s militancy never abated. At 74, she rode a bus for 38 hours to protest the first Persian Gulf war. In 2005, at 88, she said she was furious that she could not join Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost a son in the Iraq war, in Ms. Sheehan?s protest outside President George W. Bush?s ranch in Texas. From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 10:37:31 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:37:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Pacifica Network madness Message-ID: <4ACB724B.4000202@panix.com> Counterpunch, October 6, 2009 From Farce to Tragedy The New Crisis at Pacifica By IAIN BOAL On September 17 the Governance Committee of the Pacifica National Board passed a resolution expressly designed to find out whether Amy Goodman?s Democracy Now! program is getting CIA funding through covert channels like the Ford Foundation for suppressing the ?truth? about the 9/11 ?over-up? The author of the resolution, Chris Condon, made it clear that he wrote a motion on funding disclosure specifically to find out "where the hell Amy Goodman's money is coming from". Condon?s campaign for reelection to the KPFK Local Station Board in Los Angeles is endorsed by the current interim Executive Director of Pacifica and chair of the Pacifica National Board, Grace Aaron. Despite being thrown out of the Church of Scientology, Aaron still publicly identifies herself as ?a follower of the teachings of L Ron Hubbard?. What on earth is going on here? Listeners to the largest independent radio network in the US, whose broadcast signals are powerful enough to reach a fifth of the entire population, are no strangers to faction fights among staff and local boards, especially at the largest stations, WBAI (New York), KPFA (Berkeley), and KPFK (Los Angeles). But veterans of the now legendary 1999 crisis could be forgiven for thinking that Pacifica had safely resumed its mission of promoting understanding between peoples and individuals through peaceable dialogue. Many will be dismayed to learn that Pacifica is once again on the edge of the abyss. In some ways it?s 1999 redux, when a faction under the leadership of Mary Frances Berry, then chair of the Pacifica National Board and former chair of the US Civil Rights Commission, staged a power grab that involved intimidation, lockouts, secret surveillance, armed guards, firings at the local stations, and a barrowload of lawsuits. The takeover triggered a grassroots campaign to save Pacifica, with its epicenter in Berkeley (a ?rat?s nest?, declared Berry) but vitally dependent on the strategic sense and tactical savvy of a trio of campaigners on the East coast, Juan Gonzalez, Dan Coughlin and Denis Moynihan. The obstreperous street-level resistance came as a shock to the chair of the Board, who knew little about radio and even less about the original vision that impelled the founders of Pacifica. Their idea of exploring the springs of human conflict through radical dialogics was born in the camps and prisons that housed conscientious objectors to World War 2. The invention of ?listener sponsorship?, the Cold War rhetoric of ?free speech? and the identitarian fetish of ?community? all came later. Pacifica?s deeper, intertwined taproots were anarcho-syndicalism and Kierkegaardian poetic witness. NPR?not. A history of the airwaves reveals their special attraction to junior military officers, state propagandists, authoritarians of various stripes, and people with something to sell. Many of the footsoldiers in the 1999 putsch at Pacifica did indeed have their eyes on the microphones, but there was another far larger prize now in sight, although publicly denied ? the broadcasting licenses themselves. The network?s five licenses were immensely valuable in the newly deregulated media market, the result of Clinton?s Telecommunications Act of 1996. The New York license alone, with its powerful transmitter on the Empire State Building and massive earprint across a vast metropolitan area, was reckoned to be worth up to $250 million in the hot new radio market. Seize the Pacifica airwaves in order to sell them: a very neoliberal coup! The 1999 takeover ultimately failed, after more than a year of fierce struggle, thanks to the efforts and energies of thousands of listeners and supporters across the country, and an outpouring of support from around the globe. The coalition was ad hoc and fragile but at the end of it, everybody agreed that such a thing should never happen again. The banner under which many fought to defend the network was ?democratize Pacifica?, whatever that was taken to mean. Ironically the ?new democracy? installed at Pacifica, following the debacle of 1999, has resulted in the very outcome it was intended to prevent. Under the revised governance structure and byelaw changes, a small number of listener-subscribers and staff elect biannually a 25 member Local Station Board. The logic of such ?democracy? entails a tiny fraction of listeners electing a board with a great deal of power. In the name of proportional representation, through the liberal mechanism of the single transferable vote, a disproportionate weighting is given to the esperantists, propeller heads, world government paranoiacs, and stranded Maoists who are regularly elected with as few as two hundred votes out of the many tens of thousands of listeners at each station. A case of crackpot electoralism beyond parody, the last election cost upward of $700,000, including the inevitable attendant lawsuits - a grotesque misuse of listeners? money, who expect their subscriptions to go to programming. If the Save Pacifica movement of 1999 included some exotic creatures from the wilder shores of American political culture, this time around an unholy alliance of truthists, sectarians, and voting system fanatics, led by an unwilling reject of the Church of Scientology, have used the new governance structure to take control of the commanding heights of Pacifica?s management. The results are dismal. The current regime at Pacifica champions fiscal responsibility, but the reality is quite different. Since Aaron?s cabal has come to power, the financial situation has markedly deteriorated. Spending on salaries and consultants at the Pacifica National Office has jumped by 40 per cent; these positions have mostly gone to board cronies without even a pro forma gesture towards open hiring. Pacifica is behind in payments to Free Speech Radio News and Democracy Now. In just the month of July, WBAI (where the General Manager doubles as Pacifica?s Chief Financial Officer) was almost $50K over budget. Under Aaron?s tenure, the stations have been under serious pressure to increase listenership and fundraising by offering miracle cures and 9/11 conspiracist DVDs as donor ?thank you gifts?. Pacifica station WBAI in New York made tens of thousands of dollars on gifts promising protection from fungus-causing aerosols that the government is supposedly spraying on its population. It is also symptomatic that at the same time that Aaron favors depoliticized self-help shows, she is reported to fulminate against ?pro-Palestinian, pro-immigrant? public affairs programming on the network. Notwithstanding elements of farce and a descent into snake oil peddling, there is an enormous amount at stake in the struggle for the soul of Pacifica. Despite the ascendancy of the internet, radio is still the most accessible mass medium, and the Pacifica network is the only mass medium in the US that belongs to antagonists of the present order. For this reason alone, if we care about the fate of ?the left?, then we should care about Pacifica as a space of opposition to capital and empire. In a commercial desert, it has over the years been a beacon of the radio arts, and it continues to be home to such oases of passionate analysis and lucid exchange as C.S.Soong and Eddie Yuen?s Against the Grain and Doug Henwood?s Behind the News. Nowhere else could Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans? eye witness accounts of the occupations, have been aired. Even in its weakened state and in the face of further plunder and enclosure of the spectrum and the fading of the high hopes for indymedia, Pacifica is worth fighting for. To be sure, the battle for Pacifica is being fought on ground not of our own choosing. The entire landscape of communications needs to be contested. The major historic defeat, resulting in wholesale privatization of the spectrum, happened back in 1934. I stand by remarks I made in front of the Federal Communications Commission [reported in CounterPunch, May Day 2003] at a hearing on media ownership in the wake of the fresh round of looting of the public airwaves that followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act: ?The FCC is not the cause of this disaster; in its current condition it is just another symptom?Regulation at this stage is disreputable; it is like demanding regulation of the slave-quarters, instead of abolition. The 1934 Act was bad enough; the1996 Telecommunications Act is a scandal. The whole thing stinks; the corpse is rotten. Let us take it out for burial, and start over.? My conclusion before the commissioners that day seems no less true now: ?The flourishing of life in this country and around the planet now depends on the reappropriation of the commons, and that includes - because the means of communication without limits is the very condition of possibility of all else - the seizing back of the electromagnetic spectrum, the de-commodification of the airwaves.? Iain A. Boal is a historan of the commons, associated with Retort, and co-author of Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (Verso). He can be reached at boal at sonic.net. From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 10:38:48 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:38:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Mike Whitney response to Robert Fisk article on dollar demise Message-ID: <4ACB7298.3050907@panix.com> Counterpunch, October 6, 2009 Is the Sky Really Falling? Dollar Hysteria By MIKE WHITNEY Robert Fisk lit the fuse with his hyperventilating narrative which appears in Tuesday's UK Independent which went viral overnight spreading to every musty corner of the Internet and sending gold skyrocketing to $1,026 per oz. Now every doomsday website in cyber-world has headlined Fisk's "shocker" and the blogs are clogged with the frenzied commentary of bunker-dwelling survivalists and goldbugs who're certain that the world as we know it is about to end. From Fisk's article: "In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning ? along with China, Russia, Japan and France ? to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. ?Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. ?The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place ? although they have not discovered the details ? are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. ?Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable,? he told the Asia and Africa Review. ?We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security.?? "International cabal"? C'mon, Fisk, you're better than that. Reports of the dollar's demise are greatly exaggerated. The dollar may fall, but it won't crash. And, in the short-term, it's bound to strengthen as the equities market reenters the earth's gravitational field after a 6 month-long ride through outer-space. The relationship between falling stocks and a stronger buck is well established and, when the market corrects, the dollar will bounce back once again. Bet on it. So why all this bilge about Middle Eastern men huddled in "secret meetings" stroking their beards while plotting against the empire? Isn't that the gist of Fisk's article? Yes, the dollar will fall, (eventually) but not for the reasons that most people think. It's true that the surge in deficit spending has foreign dollar-holders worried. But they're more concerned about the Fed's quantitative easing (QE) program which adds to the money supply by purchasing mortgage-backed securities and US Treasuries. Bernanke is simply printing money and pouring it into the financial system to keep rigor mortis from setting in. Naturally, the Fed has had to quantify exactly how much money it intends to "create from thin air" to placate its creditors. And, it has. (The program is scheduled to end by the beginning of 2010) That said, China and Japan are still buying US Treasuries, which indicates they have not yet "jumped ship". The real reason the dollar will lose its role as the world's reserve currency is because US markets, which until recently provided up to 25 percent of global demand, are in sharp decline. Export-dependent nations--like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea--already see the handwriting on the wall. US consumers are buried under a mountain of debt, which means that their spending-spree won't resume anytime soon. On top of that, unemployment is soaring, personal wealth is falling, savings are rising, and Washington's anti-labor bias assures that wages will continue to stagnate for the foreseeable future. Thus, the American middle class will no longer be the driving force behind global consumption/demand that it was before the crisis. Once consumers are less able to buy new Toyota Prius's or load up on the latest China-made widgets at Walmart, there will be less incentive for foreign governments and central banks to stockpile greenbacks or trade exclusively in dollars. Here's a clip from the Globe and Mail cited on Washington's Blog: "A UBS Investment Research report says that while it would be wrong to write off the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, its roughly 90-year iron grip on that position is loosening. ?The use of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency is in decline,? said UBS economist Paul Donovan. ??The market share of the dollar in international transactions is likely to decline over the coming months and years, but only persistent policy error ? or considerable fiscal strain ? is likely to cause the dollar to lose reserve currency status entirely.? "The UBS report maintains that the gradual slide of the U.S. dollar is being driven not by the world?s central banks, but by the private sector, as individual companies increasingly abandon the greenback as their international currency of choice. ??The private sector?s use of reserves is more important than official, central bank reserves ? anything up to 20 times the significance, depending on interpretation,?? Mr. Donovan said. ?There is evidence that the move away from the dollar as a private-sector reserve currency has been accelerating since 2000.?? As private industry veers away from the dollar, governments, investors and central banks will follow. The soft tyranny of dollar dominance will erode and parity between currencies and governments will grow. This will be create better opportunities for consensus on issues of mutual interest. One nation will no longer be able to dictate international policy. So-called "dollar hegemony" has added greatly to the gross imbalance of power in the world today. It has put global decision-making in the hands of a handful of Washington warlords whose narrow vision never extends beyond the material interests of themselves and their constituents. As the dollar weakens and consumer demand declines, the United States will be forced to curtail its wars and adjust its behavior to conform to international standards. Either that, or be banished into the political wilderness. So, what exactly is the downside? Superpower status rests on the flimsy foundation of the dollar, and the dollar is beginning to crack. Fisk is right to this extent; big changes are on the way. Only not just yet. Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewghitney at msn.com From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 11:29:08 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 13:29:08 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] 3 theories why Abbas caved and put Goldstone on the shelf Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061029u73304943p5682a43b185dc494@mail.gmail.com> > > < > http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016604176?Competing%20Palestinian%20Conspiracy%20Theories%20Put%20Abbas%20in%20Hot%20Water > > > From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 11:37:49 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 13:37:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] CIA reveals - Posada Carriles built bombs for/ informed on Mas Canosa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061037m3a5ad340i9bce33a610b3277d@mail.gmail.com> > > http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB288/index.htm > From marxistfront at yahoo.co.in Tue Oct 6 11:55:20 2009 From: marxistfront at yahoo.co.in (marxist front) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 23:25:20 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Marxism] About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong Message-ID: <935668.19006.qm@web94801.mail.in2.yahoo.com> About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong Source: The Soviets Expected It, The Dial Press, New York, 1941, pp. 46-64 ? YEARS AGO, when I first lunched with President Roosevelt just after he had seen H? G. Wells, I found that of all the subjects in the Soviet Union the one that interested him the most was the personality of Stalin and especially the technique of ?Stalin?s rule.? It is a natural interest; I think it interests most Americans. The unbroken rise of Stalin?s prestige for twenty years both within the Soviet Union and beyond its borders is really worth attention by students of politics. Yet most of the American press brags of its ignorance of Stalin by frequently alluding to the ?enigmatic ruler in the Kremlin.? Cartoons and innuendo have been used to create the legend of a crafty, bloodthirsty dictator who even strives to involve the world in war and chaos so that something called ?Bolshevism? may gain. This preposterous legend will shortly die. It was based on the fact that most American editors couldn?t really afford to understand the Soviet Union, and that Stalin himself was usually inaccessible to foreign journalists. Men who had hit the high spots around the world and chatted cozily with Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even Chiang Kai-shek were irritated when Josef Stalin wouldn?t give them time. The fact of the matter was that Stalin was busy with a job to which foreign contacts and publicity did not contribute. His job, like that of a Democratic National Chairman, was organizing the ruling party and through it the country. http://proletarianalternative.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-dreaded-stalin.html Lal Salam (Red Salute) Damodar?(India) www.geocities.com/marxistfront marxistfront at yahoo.co.in "When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist." --Dom Helder Camara ***** Keep up with people you care about with Yahoo! India Mail. Learn how. http://in.overview.mail.yahoo.com/connectmore From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 12:10:31 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:10:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Resistance to the IMF in Istanbul Message-ID: <4ACB8817.4070202@panix.com> The resistance to the annual meetings of IMF-WB in Istanbul was strong. The protests will continue tomorrow. Here is the link for some photos from today's protests: http://www.bianet.org/galeri/taksimdeki-imf-db-protestosuna-polis-sert-mudahale-etti From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 12:14:11 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:14:11 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] [Jewbonics] Vote Hamas? In-Reply-To: <31e21cd2f5371c1374324841269e5c43@www.maxajl.com> References: <31e21cd2f5371c1374324841269e5c43@www.maxajl.com> Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061114q16e33e10q83475ff7b4f4d1e3@mail.gmail.com> > Jewbonics has posted a new item, 'Vote Hamas?' > > Suppose you're a Palestinian. One-fifth of your countrymen are herded into > a > concentration camp, subject to rampant de-development, bombed with > high-explosive weapons, burned by white phosphorus, teetering on the brink > of an > epidemic. The keeper of the keys barely lets out cancer patients for > treatment, > tries to turn them into informants; barely lets in trucks [...] > > You may view the latest post at > http://www.maxajl.com/?p=2172 > > From sabocat59 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 12:27:01 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:27:01 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong, Message-ID: <6e42edf00910061127k49f1a3a7le2b10f73f80dcdb9@mail.gmail.com> Marxist Front wrote: "His job, like that of a Democratic National Chairman, was organizing the ruling party and through it the country." I guess by "organize" you mean killing off most of the old Bolshevik leadership, along with the best generals? Greg McDonald From sartesian at earthlink.net Tue Oct 6 12:50:55 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:50:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] =?windows-1252?q?Peg_Mullen=2C_92=2C_Who_Fanned_Her_Ang?= =?windows-1252?q?er_Over_Son=92s_Death_Into_Antiwar_Drive=2C_Dies?= References: <4ACB71D9.5000804@panix.com> Message-ID: <149B5F9B7E304A3A98CF6C199A04186B@dmsthinkpad> More women like her, and fewer men like Johnson, Bush, Schwarzkopf is a key step in my personal transitional program. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 12:35 PM Subject: [Marxism] Peg Mullen, 92, Who Fanned Her Anger Over Son?s Death Into Antiwar Drive, Dies From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 14:24:49 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:24:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] UN MUST ACT ON GOLDSTONE AND THE PA MUST BE DISSOLVED In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061324g4cd2ad8fi9f19a10ded9d5eda@mail.gmail.com> > > UN MUST ACT ON GOLDSTONE AND THE PA MUST BE DISSOLVED > By Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009 > > Succumbing to US pressure and unabashed Israeli blackmail, > Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Ramallah Palestinian > Authority (PA), was reportedly personally responsible for > the decision to defer UN Security Council consideration of > the Goldstone report. This dashed the hopes of > Palestinians everywhere as well as those of international > human rights organizations and solidarity movements, that > Israel would finally face a long overdue process of legal > accountability and that its victims would have a measure > of justice. > > http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10812.shtml > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > PALESTINE : OPINION/EDITORIAL: > > TIME TO RE-ENGAGE WITH PEOPLE POWER > By Saree Makdisi, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009 > > Bereft of any credible or legitimate leadership, the > Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to > continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. > Indeed, their struggle has been at its best, for example, > during the first intifada of the 1980s, when the official > leadership -- at the time in exile in Tunis -- was > actually least involved in it. Saree Makdisi comments for > The Electronic Intifada. > > http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10811.shtml > From epoliticus at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 14:31:51 2009 From: epoliticus at gmail.com (Politicus E.) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:31:51 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: CPI(M) Intensifies State Repression in Kolkata Message-ID: Sanhati Statement on arrest of activists involved with the Lalgarh movement 6 October 2009 We strongly condemn the political witch-hunt that the West Bengal government has launched, arresting activists involved in the Lalgarh movement and charging them under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), alleging their links with Maoists. We deplore the atmosphere of fear that the West Bengal government has built up in the state, talking about ?lists of people? to be arrested, threatening intellectuals and students who had expressed support for the Lalgarh movement and arresting activists based on fabricated charges. The democratic fabric of West Bengal is in grave danger from these actions of the government; we appeal to everyone to protest against these actions for which the only description can be: State Terrorism. List of arrested: Prasun Chattopadhyay, Raja Sarkhel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statement on the arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato by Radical Socialist 6 October 2009 The police terror in Lalgarh has now been compounded by attempts to extend the terror to other parts of West Bengal, including Calcutta. The arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato, leader of the peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) was done in a flagrantly illegal manner, with police dressed as journalists arresting him, rather than being in uniform, and not providing the arrest memo in accordance with a Supreme Court judgement. He has subsequently been subjected to a media trial, instead of being given fair opportunity to defend himself. Every day, the police are releasing supposed news about what he has confessed, while he is held incommunicado and not being allowed to confer with a lawyer. The police have also planted about 20 cases against Mahato. It is worth noting that till June 13, 2009, the Government was in regular dialogue with the PCAOPA. So the allegation that there are so many cases against him is clearly a police plant. After his arrest, his so-called confessions are being used to on one hand carry out his character assassination, by alleging that he has a Rs. 1 crore (Rs. 10 million or about $ 209950) life insurance policy, and on the other hand trying to terrorise all those who have supported the peoples? movement in Lalgarh, by alleging that they have aided Maoist terrorism and so forth. No confession can stand in a court of law as evidence against the accused. So it is the criminal intent of the senior police officials and the home secretary and the chief secretary of the Government of West Bengal to influence the court and the public opinion even before the commencement of the legal proceedings on Mahato in the court of law. On October 3, 2009, the Chief Secretary of West Bengal declared that anyone extending support to the Lalgarh movement would be viewed as law violators. This is a bid to create terror and destroy the massive support enjoyed by the Lalgarh movement. Following this tactics, every evening, media persons are being granted ?leakages?, stating one day that a civil liberties activist was suspected, on another day that a noted female author was suspected, so that intellectuals and activists who are fighting for civil liberties and supporting Lalgarh draw back. We unconditionally condemn this state terrorism. We demand the immediate scrapping of UAPA, and the release of all those who have been arrested under UAPA. We also extend solidarity to all those rights activists who are being threatened by the police and the state for their defence of civil liberties. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For an extended discussion of this movement, please see http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/#1. From epoliticus at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 14:43:58 2009 From: epoliticus at gmail.com (Politicus E.) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:43:58 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: Some News from the Indian State's War Against the Adivasis Message-ID: f.y.i. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article appeared in Sakshi newspaper dated 18 September 2009 [Original in Telegu. In the interest of transparency, I must disclose that I have not translated this article.] Andhra Jyothy & Eenadu Saturday, 19-9-2009 Dandakaranya reverberated with gun fire on Friday spilling blood on the forest trees turning green leaves into red. Based on information 600 CoBRA jawans with the guidance of Chhattisghar armed police, SPO?s and Salwa judum activists started Operation Green Hunt as a part of Oparation Dandakaranya. An encounter took place in the forest at Palachelma village around 15Km from Gollapalli in which 6 Maoists have been killed. The firing between the Maoists and CRPF continued from Thursday night till Friday evening. The CoBRA?s suffered 9 causalities including an assistant commandant Ranjan Singh. The CoBRAs surrounded a gun servicing centre of the Maoists in which there were 150 to 200 Maoists. The firing between two sides lasted a few hours and police recovered several 12 bore and country made guns. Earlier an encounter tool place at Bootamthong near Chintalnar village which is about 12 km from Palachelma in which 12 Maoists were killed. It is suspected that around 30 Maoists have been killed. On the side of CRPF/CoBRA jawns along with Assistant Commandant Manoranja Padey and 5 other jawans, 3 SPO?s were killed. The dead and injured security personal were air lifted and taken to Jagdalpur. The bodies of the dead Jawans were flown to Raipur. The Police could recover only 8 bodies of the Maoists and these bodies were sent to Konta. The entire operation was supervised by the SP Dantewara Mr. Amrish Mishra. He reached Gollapalli police station on Friday morning. Food for the Jawns was air lifted from Dantewara who had been combing the forests for three days. Fearing the intervention by National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, National Human Rights Commission, Civil Rights groups and Civil Society the police is preventing the media presence. The SP Dantewara issued oral orders to shoot at media persons. Although the Maoists took roots in the 1990s in Bastar the violence between the Maoists and the police increased only after the formation of Salwa Judum in 2005. Since then there is unabated Dance of Death in South Bastar?s Dantewara and Bijapur districts. Last year ie. 2008 in the cross fire between Security forces and Maoists in Dantewara district alone 294 people died- 85 police jawans,157 civilians and 52 Maoists and their sympathisers. This year till now 78 police jawans, 22 SPO?s, 25 civilians, 43 Maoists and their sympathisers totalling 168 have died. Andhra Jyothy, Eenadu & Saakshi ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article is written by Bibhuti Pati, a citizen journalist at merinews.com. It is provided as contextual information. Source: http://www.merinews.com/article/tribal-development-in-lanjigada-road-panchayat-a-joke/15785197.shtml WE DREAMT that our village would develop, we would get gainful employment, our agricultural land would be full of crops, greenery would come to our village and all the villagers would lead happy lives. But our dreams were shattered. Our agricultural lands became barren. Our groundwater level touched rock-bottom. Our air got polluted and we experienced unprecedented acid rain in our villages and it is wreaking havoc on the health of our populace. We have lost our means of livelihood!" These are the emotional reactions of the villagers of Lanjigad Road Panchayat where the multinational Vedanta Alumina Ltd (VAL) company has been established. A local educated girl Manashree Kar says, ?The Vedanta advertisement slogan is: ?A few smiles make our day?. But if somebody sees the reality of Lanjigad, Vedanta?s slogan is only a contradiction in terms. It is more appropriate to say: ?A few smiles ruin our day?. She added, ?What Vedanta is doing and highlighting in the name of peripheral development of Lanjigad is little in comparison to what they have destroyed incessantly in the local area.? Surya Shankar Das, an Oriya documentary film-maker, Debabrata Swain a local youth and Iteeshree Rout an agriculturist claim that whatever bit Vedanta is doing for few locals is being blown out of proportion by their officials. They rather than developing the areas, are damaging them. ?Our traditional agriculture has come to a virtual standstill, while the company claims that the tribals are growing strawberries. This does not hold water, at all, as the prevailing climate does not permit it. The hereditary trade of the locals and tribals is deteriorating at a fast pace, while they claim that they are training local women in phenyle production. It is surprising to note that we have no playground, yet Vedanta sponsors the Ranji Trophy cricket league?, they added. Vedanta, according to locals, is least concerned about promoting traditional art, culture and folk dance of the Dongaria Kondhs, but they have funds to organise beach festivals. Das, Swain and Rout state, ?It seems that the Vedanta officials have successfully cultivated the government and its administration to further its own interests even at the cost of the lives of the poor inhabitants as well as the sylvan terrain of Niyamagiri.? The chief minister's declaration that the establishment and entry of MNCs into Orissa would be an overnight positive change in the lifestyle of the locals, has proved farce, much to the chagrin and dismay of local inhabitants of Lanjigada Road Panchayat. Jagannath Jhankar, a 60 year old is on the brink of death due to abject poverty and acute undernourishment. Sasmita, an educated widow, whose husband died in a road accident by a Vedanta vehicle, is till date awaiting some source of sustenance for herself and her infant daughter. Due to the paucity of medicines and lack of medical attention Sarojini, a septuagenarian is waiting to breathe her last in excruciating pain. Sarpanch Fakir Majhee and the-then Sarpanch Nilamadhab Mahapatra of Lanjigada recall that when Naveen Patnaik had visited Kasipur, he had declared at a public meeting that with the establishment of the plant, the drinking water and unemployment problem would be solved and education facilities would improve. Nila and Fakir are now a much disillusioned duo. They said, ?Apart from a few shabby water cisterns which are not as yet connected with pipes we have nothing. Thereafter the company took water from our river and streams and diverted it to its own plant. After a great deal of chaos and confusion over employment, only five of the 16 villagers got jobs as daily wage labourers. This is a cruel joke.? ?We had requested them for a little bit of furniture for our Tribal Lower Primary school, for which they bluntly refused. Is this Vedanta?s development policy??, asked Chakradhar Majhee. Incidentally, while the problem of unemployment among educated youths was expected to be resolved after the launch of Vedanta Alumina, the induction of locals there still remains a faraway dream. According to a report of VAL regarding employment details, 771 persons are employed and among them only 115 are from within Kalahandi district. 432 are from other parts of the state and 224 are from outside Orissa in technical and non-technical jobs. Apart from it, 3618 persons are employed with different project contractors of VAL as per the report. Among them 2062 are from outside the state, 992 are from other districts of the State and only 564 are from Kalahandi. In this scenario, it is hoped that with the introduction of ancillary and down stream industries at Lanjigarh at least some more unemployed youths will be inducted, but so far, there is no active initiative by the district administration to set up ancillary units. Like Tankadhar Majhee and Fakir Majhee several of the villagers have given an ultimatum to the elected representatives, government and Vedanta that as they have lost everything and their livelihood is at stake now it is a ?do or die situation?. They are prepared for a revolution similar to the unforgettable one against Louis XVI. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 15:23:22 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:23:22 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] The end of fish Message-ID: <4ACBB54A.50407@panix.com> A surprisingly hard-hitting piece from the neoliberal New Republic magazine: http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/aquacalypse-now?page=0,0 From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Tue Oct 6 16:06:49 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 22:06:49 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Les wrote: "for a physicist, hard to imagine a science without mathematics. other sciences the math is sometimes overplayed. but to speak of mathematics in the sciences as all about logic and inference is to miss one of its primary missions." Most definitely, that?s why ?I?m not saying, at all, that mathematics doesn?t have a role in science?, and of course mathematics isn?t a subfield of logic as Godel proved. I'm not trying to put down mathematics, much less science; I know Marxists are sometimes masochistic, but trying to find decay estimates for the scattering of drift-diffusion equations, mine actually come from fluid mechanics, while considering this some kind of unreal fruitless chore, nah, that's not me...yet. But what I mean by criticizing mathematics, or more correctly, hinting at a critique of it, is that science, and so mathematics, are relegated to the imperatives of capital, and so one ought to trace the material roots of abstract thinking to understand their social function. It's not that capital is this God hovering over people and so science is some kind of illegitimate surrogate endeavor, what I'm saying is that science is the modality of production of an objective consciousness, and qua production, it develops in capitalism. To cut a long story short, is not that science, mathematics, nor even logic, if understood as the science of thought and not its inversion as the thought which creates science, is mere abstraction and should be denigrated; it's that capitalism denigrates it by making it subject to its world of abstractions. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ From PoliticNow at aol.com Tue Oct 6 16:38:24 2009 From: PoliticNow at aol.com (PoliticNow at aol.com) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 18:38:24 EDT Subject: [Marxism] About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong Message-ID: The head of the Democratic National Committee is generally relatively ignorant of the complexities of cultural and economic life of the working class and more aware of the needs of economic elites than the masses. Yes, Stalin did have much in common with them in that sense. In another sense he was of course much more of a violent tyrant than any DNC chairman, and has perhaps single handedly done more to undermine Marxism than any political figure in any country in any time and killed more good Communists than any anti-Communist dictator. No form of historical revisionism or wishful thinking is going to change that view. Mark In a message dated 10/6/2009 12:00:36 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, marxism-request at lists.econ.utah.edu writes: Message: 4 Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 23:25:20 +0530 (IST) From: marxist front Subject: [Marxism] About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition Message-ID: <935668.19006.qm at web94801.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 About The "Dreaded" Stalin-- -- by Anna Louise Strong Source: The Soviets Expected It, The Dial Press, New York, 1941, pp. 46-64 ? YEARS AGO, when I first lunched with President Roosevelt just after he had seen H? G. Wells, I found that of all the subjects in the Soviet Union the one that interested him the most was the personality of Stalin and especially the technique of ?Stalin?s rule.? It is a natural interest; I think it interests most Americans. The unbroken rise of Stalin?s prestige for twenty years both within the Soviet Union and beyond its borders is really worth attention by students of politics. Yet most of the American press brags of its ignorance of Stalin by frequently alluding to the ?enigmatic ruler in the Kremlin.? Cartoons and innuendo have been used to create the legend of a crafty, bloodthirsty dictator who even strives to involve the world in war and chaos so that something called ?Bolshevism? may gain. This preposterous legend will shortly die. It was based on the fact that most American editors couldn?t really afford to understand the Soviet Union, and that Stalin himself was usually inaccessible to foreign journalists. Men who had hit the high spots around the world and chatted cozily with Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even Chiang Kai-shek were irritated when Josef Stalin wouldn?t give them time. The fact of the matter was that Stalin was busy with a job to which foreign contacts and publicity did not contribute. His job, like that of a Democratic National Chairman, was organizing the ruling party and through it the country. http://proletarianalternative.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-dreaded-stalin.html Lal Salam (Red Salute) Damodar?(India) From Paula_cerni at msn.com Tue Oct 6 16:54:43 2009 From: Paula_cerni at msn.com (Paula) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:54:43 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Mike Whitney response to Robert Fisk article on In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Fisk is right - it most certainly is an 'international cabal'. And Whitney's question - 'what exactly is the downside? - is naive. Look at the last hundred years of history and you will see the downside of powerful capitalist cabals conspiring against each other. "The soft tyranny of dollar dominance will erode and parity between currencies and governments will grow. This will be create better opportunities for consensus on issues of mutual interest", says Whitney. Yes, that must be the reason for all the disarmament going on in the world right now ... Paula From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 16:58:02 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:58:02 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Repression directed against anarchist twitter Message-ID: <4ACBCB7A.5000302@panix.com> NY Times, October 5, 2009 Arrest Puts Focus on Protesters? Texting By COLIN MOYNIHAN As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police said he was found in a hotel room with computers and police scanners while using the social-networking site Twitter to spread information about police movements. He has denied wrongdoing. American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people used a system called TXTmob to share information. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations. And police and government officials appear to be increasingly aware of such methods of communication. In 2008, for instance, the New York City Law Department issued a subpoena seeking information from the graduate student who created the code for TXTmob. Still, Mr. Madison, who was released on bail shortly after his arrest, may be among the first to be charged criminally while sending information electronically to protesters about the police. A criminal complaint in Pennsylvania accuses him of ?directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.? ?He and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20,? Mr. Madison?s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said on Saturday. ?There?s absolutely nothing that he?s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.? A search warrant executed by the F.B.I. at Mr. Madison?s house authorized agents and officers looking for violations of federal rioting laws to seize computers and phones, black masks and clothes and financial records and address books. Among the items seized, according to a list prepared by the agents, were electronic equipment, newspapers, books and gas masks. The items also included what was described as a picture of Lenin. Since the raid, no other charges have been filed against Mr. Madison. On Friday, Mr. Stolar argued in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that the warrant was vague and overly broad. Judge Dora L. Irizarry ordered the authorities to stop examining the seized materials until Oct. 16, pending further orders. Mr. Stolar said that the reason for the Jackson Heights raid would not be clear until an affidavit used to secure the search warrant was unsealed. But he said that commentary among agents indicated that it was related to Mr. Madison?s arrest in Pittsburgh, where he participated in the Tin Can Comms Collective, a group of people who collected information and used Twitter to send mass text messages describing protest-related events that they observed on the streets. There were many such events during the two days of the summit. Demonstrators marched through town on the opening day of the gathering, at times breaking windows and fleeing. And on both nights, police officers fired projectiles and hurled tear gas canisters at students milling near the University of Pittsburgh. After Mr. Madison?s arrest, other Tin Can participants continued to send messages, now archived on Twitter?s Web site. Many of those messages tracked police movements. One read: ?SWAT teams rolling down 5th Ave.? Another read: ?Report received that police are ?nabbing? anyone that looks like a protester / Black Bloc. Stay alert watch your friends!? But even as protesters were watching the police, it appeared that the police were monitoring the protesters? communications. Just after 1 p.m. on Sept. 24, a text message stated: ?A comms facility was raided, but we are still fully operational please continue to submit reports.? Nine hours later, a text read: ?Scanner just said be advised we?re being monitored by anarchists through scanner.? On Sunday night Mr. Madison said that the search of his home was an effort to ?stifle dissent,? and added that several groups in Pittsburgh, including the summit organizers, had used Twitter accounts to describe events related to the meetings. ?They arrested me for doing the same thing everybody else was doing, which was perfectly legal,? he said. ?It was crucial for people to have the information we were sending.? From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 16:59:42 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:59:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Repression directed against anarchist twitter In-Reply-To: <4ACBCB7A.5000302@panix.com> References: <4ACBCB7A.5000302@panix.com> Message-ID: <4ACBCBDE.5050707@panix.com> Louis Proyect wrote: > NY Times, October 5, 2009 > Arrest Puts Focus on Protesters? Texting > By COLIN MOYNIHAN > > As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online > social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. > > On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, > Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the > raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among > protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. Democracy Now feature on this: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/6/twitter_crackdown_nyc_activist_arrested_for From epoliticus at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 17:02:18 2009 From: epoliticus at gmail.com (Politicus E.) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 19:02:18 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Breman: Myth of the Global Saftey Net Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Oct 5 09:29:38 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:29:38 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------ Media reports on the economic meltdown have mainly concentrated on the impact of the crisis on the rich nations, with little concern for the mass of the population living in what used to be called the Third World. The current view seems to be that the setbacks in these =91emerging economies=92 may be less severe than expected. China=92s and India=92s high growth rates have slackened, but the predicted slump has not materialized. This line of thought, however, analyses only the effects of the crisis on countries as a whole, masking its differential impact across social classes. If one considers income distribution, and not just macro-calculations of gdp, the global downturn has taken a disproportionately higher toll on the most vulnerable sectors: the huge armies of the poorly paid, under-educated, resourceless workers that constitute the overcrowded lower depths of the world economy. To the extent that these many hundreds of millions are incorporated into the production process it is as informal labour, characterized by casualized and fluctuating employment and piece-rates, whether working at home, in sweatshops, or on their own account in the open air; and in the absence of any contractual or labour rights, or collective organization. In a haphazard fashion, still little understood, work of this nature has come to predominate within the global labour force at large. The International Labour Organization estimates that informal workers comprise over half the workforce in Latin America, over 70 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa and over 80 per cent in India; an Indian government report suggests a figure of more than 90 per cent. [1] Cut loose from their original social moorings, the majority remain stuck in the vast shanty towns ringing city outskirts across the global South. Recently, however, the life of street hawkers in Cairo, tortilla vendors in Mexico City, rickshaw drivers in Calcutta or scrap mongers in Jakarta has been cast in a much rosier light. The informal sector, according to the Wall Street Journal, is =91one of the last safe havens in a darkening financial climate=92 and =91a critical safety net as the economic crisis spreads=92. [2] Thanks to these jobs, former imf Chief Economist Simon Johnson is quoted as saying, =91the situation in desperately poor countries isn=92t as bad as you=92d think=92. On this view= , an admirable spirit of self-reliance enables people to survive in the underground circuits of the economy, unencumbered by the tax and benefit systems of the =91formal sector=92. These streetwise operators are able to get by without expensive social provisions or unemployment benefit. World Bank economist W. F. Maloney assures the wsj that the informal sector =91will absorb a lot of people and offer them a source of income=92 over the next year. The wsj draws its examples from Ahmedabad, the former mill city in Gujarat where I conducted fieldwork in the 1990s. Here, in the Manek Chowk market=97=91a row of derelict stalls=92, where =91vendors peddle everything from beans to brass pots as monkeys scramble overhead=92=97Surajben =91Babubhai=92 Patni sells tomatoes, corn and nuts f= rom a makeshift shelter: =91She makes as much as 250 rupees a day, or about $5, but it=92s enough to feed her household of nine, including her son, who recently lost his job as a diamond polisher.=92 Enough: really? Five dollars for nine people is less than half the amount the World Bank sets as the benchmark above extreme poverty: one dollar per capita per day. Landless households in villages to the south of Ahmedabad have to make do with even less than that=97on the days they manage to find work. [3] Earlier this year I returned to the former mill districts of the city to see how the economic crisis was affecting people there. By 2000, these former working-class neighbourhoods had already degenerated into pauperized quarters. But the situation has deteriorated markedly even since then. Take the condition of the garbage pickers=97all of them women, since this is not considered to be man=92s work. They are now paid half what they used to get for the harvest of paper, rags and plastic gleaned from the waste dumps on their daily rounds. To make up the loss, they now begin their work at 3 am instead of at 5 am, bringing along their children to provide more hands. The Self-Employed Women=92s Association, which organizes informal-sector workers in the city, reports that =91incomes have declined, days of work decreased, prices have fallen and livelihoods disappeared=92. [4] Their recent newsletter presents the following table, testifying to the crash in prices for the =91goods=92 collected on the dumps. A sewa activist based in Ahmedabad reports on the anguish she met when visiting local members. One of these, Ranjanben Ashokbhai Parmar, started to cry: =91Who sent this recession! Why did they send it?=92 I was speechless. Her situation is very bad, her husband is sick, she has 5 children, she stays in a rented house, she has to spend on the treatment of her husband and she is the sole earner in the family, how can she meet her ends? When she goes to collect scrap she takes along her little daughter, while her husband sits at home and makes wooden ice-cream spoons, from which he can earn not more than 10 rupees a day. In the industrial city of Surat, 120 miles south of Ahmedabad, half the informal labour force of the diamond workshops was laid off overnight at the end of 2008, with the collapse of worldwide demand for jewels. Some 200,000 diamond cutters and polishers found themselves jobless, while the rest had to contend with drastic reductions in hours and piece-rates. A wave of suicides swept the dismissed workers, who=97with a monthly income of little more than $140=97were reputed to belong to the most skilled and highest paid ranks of the informal economy. These bitter experiences of the recession-struck informal economy in Gujarat can be repeated for region after region across India, Africa and much of Latin America. Confronted with such misery it is impossible to concur with the World Bank=92s and Wall Street Journal=92s optimism about the sector=92s absorptive powers. As for their praise for the =91self-reliance=92 of those struggling to get by in these conditions: living in a state of constant emergency saps the energy to cope and erodes the strength to endure. To suggest that these workers constitute a =91vibrant=92 new class of self-employed entrepreneurs, ready to fight their way upward, is as misleading as portraying children from the chawls of Mumbai as slumdog millionaires. Rural rope=92s end The second option currently being touted by the Western media as a =91cushion for hard times=92 is a return to the countryside. As an Asian Development Bank official in Thailand recently informed the International Herald Tribune, =91returning to one=92s traditional village in the countryside is a sort of =93social safety net=94=92. The complacent assumption is that large numbers of rural migrants made redundant in the cities can retreat to their families=92 farms and be absorbed in agricultural work, until they are recalled to their urban jobs by the next uptick of the economy. The iht evokes a paradisial rural hinterland in northeast Thailand. Even in the dry season, there are still plenty of year-round crops=97gourds, beans, coconuts and bananas among them=97that thrive with little rainwater. Farmers raise chickens and cows, and dig fish ponds behind their homes . . . Thailand=92s king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, has long encouraged such self-sufficiency. [5] Similar views were published at the time of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Then, World Bank consultants assumed that agriculture could act as a catchment reservoir for labour made redundant in other sectors, based on the notion that the army of migrants moving back and forth between the country and urban-growth poles had never ceased their primary occupation. The myth persisted that Southeast Asian countries were still essentially peasant societies. These tillers of the land might go to the city to earn extra wages for cash expenditure, but if they lost their jobs they were expected to reintegrate into the peasant economy with no difficulty. This was far from the case, as I wrote then. [6] Returning to the localities of my fieldwork in Java this summer, I listened to the latest stories of men and women who had come back to the village, having lost their informal-sector jobs elsewhere, and find no work here, either. Of course not: they were driven out of the village economy in the first place because of lack of land or other forms of capital. There is no family farm to fall back on. The departure of the landless and the land-poor was a flight, part of a coping strategy. Now that the members of this rural proletariat have become redundant in Jakarta or Bangkok, or as contract workers in Taiwan or Korea for that matter, they are back to square one, due to an acute and sustained lack of demand for their labour power in their place of origin. A comparable drama is taking place in China. Out of the 120 to 150 million migrants who made the trek from the rural interior to the rapidly growing coastal cities during the last twenty-five years, official sources report that about 10 to 15 million are now unemployed. For these victims of the new economy, there is no alternative but to go back =91home=92 to a deeply impoverished countryside. The Asian village economy is not capable of accommodating all those who possess no means of production; nor has the urban informal sector the elasticity to absorb all those eager to drift into it. According to policymakers=92 notions of cross-sectoral mobility, the informal economy should swallow up the labour surplus pushed out of higher-paid jobs, enabling the displaced workforce to stick it out through income-sharing arrangements until the economic tide turned again. I have never found any evidence that such a horizontal drift has taken place. Street vendors do not turn into becak drivers, domestic servants or construction workers overnight. The labour market of the informal sector is highly fragmented; those who are laid off in their branch of activity have no alternative but to go back =91home=92, because staying on in the city without earnings is next to impossible. But returning to their place of origin is not a straightforward option, given the lack of space in the rural economy. Nevertheless, my informants do not simply lay the blame for their predicament on the economic meltdown. From the perspective of the world=92s underclasses, what looks like a conjunctural crisis is actually a structural one, the absence of regular and decent employment. The massive army of reserve labour at the bottom of the informal economy is entrapped in a permanent state of crisis which will not be lifted when the Dow Jones Index goes up again. New economic order The transformation that took place in nineteenth-century Western Europe, as land-poor and landless peasants migrated to the towns, is now being repeated on a truly global scale. But the restructuring that would create an industrial-urban order, of the sort which vastly improved the lot of the former peasants of the Northern hemisphere, has not materialized. The ex-peasants of the South have failed to find secure jobs and housing on their arrival in the cities. Struggling to gain a foothold there, they have become mired for successive generations in the deprivation of the shanties, a vast reserve army of informal labour. In the 1960s and 70s, Western policymakers viewed the informal sector as a waiting room, or temporary transit zone: newcomers could find their feet there and learn the ways of the urban labour market. Once savvy to these, they would increasingly be able to qualify for higher wages and more respectable working conditions. In fact the trend went in the opposite direction, due in large part to the onslaught of market-driven policies, the retreat of the state in the domain of employment and the decisive weakening of organized labour. The small fraction that made their way to the formal sector was now accused of being a labour aristocracy, selfishly laying claim to privileges of protection and security. At the same time, the informal sector began to be heralded by the World Bank and other transnational agencies as a motor of economic growth. Flexibilization became the order of the day=97in other words, dismantling of job security and a crackdown on collective bargaining. The process of informalization that has taken shape over the last twenty years saw, among other things, the end of the large-scale textile industry in South Asia. In Ahmedabad itself, more than 150,000 mill workers were laid off at a stroke. This did not mean the end of textile production in the city. Cloth is now produced in power-loom workshops by operators who work twelve-hour days, instead of eight, and at less than half the wages they received in the mill; garment manufacture has become home-based work, in which the whole family is engaged day and night. The textile workers=92 union has all but disappeared. Sliding down the labour hierarchy has plunged these households into a permanent social and economic crisis. It is not only that the cost of labour at the bottom of the world economy has been scaled down to the lowest possible level; fragmentation also keeps the under-employed masses internally compartmentalized. These people are competitors in a labour market in which the supply side is now structurally larger than the=97constantly fluctuating=97demand for labour power. They react to this disequilibrium by trying to strengthen their ties along lines of family, region, tribe, caste, religion, or other primordial identities which preclude collective bargaining on the basis of work status and occupation. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by their enforced rootlessness: they are pushed off the land, but then pushed back onto it again, roaming around in an endless search for work and shelter. The emergence of the early welfare state in the Western hemisphere at the end of the nineteenth century has been attributed to the bourgeoisie=92s fear that the policy of excluding the lower ranks of society could end in the collapse of the established order. [7] The propertied part of mankind today does not seem to be frightened by the presence of a much more voluminous classe dangereuse. Their appropriation of ever-more wealth is the other side of the trend towards informalization, which has resulted in the growing imbalance between capital and labour. There are no signs of a change of direction in this economic course. Promises of poverty reduction by global leaders are mere lip service, or photo-opportunities. During his campaign, Obama would once in a while air his appreciation for Roosevelt=92s New Deal. Since his election the idea of a broad-based social-welfare scheme has been shelved without further ado. The global crisis is being tackled by a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. The logic suggests a return to nineteenth-century beliefs in the principle and practice of natural inequality. On this view, it is not poverty that needs to be eradicated. The problem is the poor people themselves, who lack the ability to pull themselves up out of their misery. Handicapped by all kinds of defects, they constitute a useless residue and an unnecessary burden. How to get rid of this ballast? From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 17:15:48 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:15:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] More photos from anti-IMF protests in Istanbul Message-ID: <4ACBCFA4.9080305@panix.com> http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/pictures-of-the-day-tuesday-oct-6/?hp From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Oct 6 18:11:04 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:11:04 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies Message-ID: <20091006.201104.7176.0.farmelantj@juno.com> http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm ____________________________________________________________ Obama Raises Pell Grants Get Your Degree with Government Grants and Scholarships! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=o-Nhj9ChKEDNUkzY6MP_ZgAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQAAAAFAAAAAM_gYz4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABI2RwAAAAA= From sabocat59 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 18:23:49 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:23:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Fox's Shep Smith arguing for Public Option in what's left of the Health Care Debate Message-ID: <6e42edf00910061723r3fac80e0sfef4a9702bedc42b@mail.gmail.com> http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/fox-newss-shep-smith.php?ref=fpb I know this is a liberal vs. conservative debate, but I find it compelling that Fox's Shep Smith has just stepped forward to argue forcefully and convincingly in favor of a real public option to private health car in the USA. Pretty interesting clip. From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 18:27:43 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:27:43 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] did Abbas encourage Israel to kill Gazans? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061727t3faecb73ub1b565605ad65998@mail.gmail.com> > > > > > From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Tue Oct 6 18:30:36 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:30:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Palestinian fury over Abbas' complicity with Israel over Goldstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910061730h26d74d0ak74e2ea8558c00640@mail.gmail.com> > > > < > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/middle-east/Palestinians-angry-as-President-Mahmoud-Abbas-drops-Israel-war-crimes-case/articleshow/5087230.cms > > > > > http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118941.html > > > http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2082.shtml > > > http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1005/p06s16-wome.html > > > anger at Abbas - video > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0tc4WkqXU > > > > > > > From elishastephens at hotmail.com Tue Oct 6 18:34:45 2009 From: elishastephens at hotmail.com (Eli Stephens) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 17:34:45 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire Message-ID: A new book by Richard Becker (of ANSWER and the PSL), an extremely knowledgeable speaker and writer on the subject: http://www.pslweb.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PalestineBook An extensive book introduction tour is about to begin: http://www.pslweb.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PalestineBook_events _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 19:15:36 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:15:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Asian economic realities Message-ID: <4ACBEBB8.4030806@panix.com> http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/roach061009.html From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 19:16:52 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:16:52 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Another review of Michael Moore movie Message-ID: <4ACBEC04.3000808@panix.com> http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/vogel061009.html From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 19:30:18 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:30:18 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Victor Serge memoir Message-ID: <4ACBEF2A.7020508@panix.com> The New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 16 ? October 22, 2009 Orphan of History By J. Hoberman Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, translated from the French and with an introduction by Richard Greeman New York Review Books, 341 pp., $15.95 (paper) Singular and solitary, the novelist Victor Serge (1890?1947) appears as an orphan of history, a chance survivor improbably clinging to the coffin of the Bolshevik Revolution. The main characters of Unforgiving Years, Serge's final novel, written in Mexico, the place of his own final exile, are his fictional brothers?disillusioned Soviet agents surviving the hell of wartime Europe only to be thrown, like he, into some hitherto unimagined Atlantic void. Unforgiving Years begins with D, a dedicated revolutionary with a cyanide capsule adhered to his scalp who now believes himself hunted by Stalin's agents. Looking for a way out of 1938 Paris, he contemplates his "final break with all the reasons for living?ideas, cause, motherland, unity in danger, invisible battle for the future, vision of a forward-marching world!" After D escapes to Mexico, his spiritual comrade Daria follows him on a westbound freighter, seven years and considerable suffering later. She's "traveling on her last passport, her last money; outside every law, very possibly pursued, free, free!"?and naturally, for a Serge character in such circumstances, contemplating her extinction. Creatures of thought as well as action, D and Daria are descendants of the talkative nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia. Even (or perhaps especially) as the world falls apart, they are absorbed with the workings of their minds. "I'm turning into a character out of a novel for intellectuals," D jokes to himself. During the siege of Leningrad, Daria hastens over blackened snow amid exploding shells, wondering if she is "still thinking within the material truth of history." Stalin appears only as a poster in a government office; his name is never mentioned?nor are those of Lenin and Trotsky?but D and Daria spend considerable time pondering past associations, turning their service to the Party and Revolution over and over in their thoughts. During his last night on earth, D mentally revisits the Central Asian scene of a youthful exploit in the Russian civil war and poses the essential question: "How did we?insurgent, united, uplifted, and victorious?bring about the opposite of what we wanted to do?" Little Bookroom / Sonoma These characters may not speak for Serge but theirs are the voices that haunted him. D, the same age as Serge, muses that an entire historical epoch was required to shape him. Born in Brussels to revolutionary parents, brought up in one exile and dying in another, Serge passed his life in a succession of prisons and left-wing political parties. A participant in three European revolutions, he became familiar with millennial expectation and catastrophic loss. Only after he ceased to be a professional revolutionary did he become a novelist. His first book, Men in Prison, was set in France, written in German (and Germany), finished in Moscow, then mailed piecemeal back to France for publication. His best-known novel, The Case of Comrade Tulayev, was begun in Paris, then continued while he was on the run through France, crossed the Atlantic, and detained in the Dominican Republic. The book was finally completed in Mexico and published in France a year after the writer's death. He was buried in Mexico City's French cemetery, a "Spanish Republican." Victor Serge may not be a household name but neither is he completely unknown. His devastating analyses of Stalin's Soviet Union were first translated by American Trotskyists in the late 1930s and were reprinted into the 1970s. Partisan Review published his essays and fiction. The Case of Comrade Tulayev was well received, if deemed by some critics inferior to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, when it appeared in English in 1950. In The Nation, Irving Howe called Serge's novel "the best fictional portrait we have of Stalinist Russia, richly credible in atmospheric detail and bound by a coherent view of what Stalinism means." (Writing in The New International, a sectarian Trotskyist publication, Howe was less detached, cautioning readers that "the material is so close to us, the point of view so congenial, the pathos so unbearable...that we are emotionally defenseless against the entire impact of the book.") Despite his arguments with Trotsky, Serge was a Trotskyist hero. If he was largely forgotten by cold war liberals en route from youthful Trotskyism to mature neoconservatism, the British publication of Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary, written in 1941 with the encouragement of Dwight Macdonald, stimulated his rediscovery by the New Left. Beginning in 1967, Richard Greeman translated and introduced Serge's early novels, which at the same time had been reissued in France.[1] The memoirs are crucial, for Serge's greatest story was his life. His father, Lvov Kibalchich, was a noncommissioned officer of the Russian imperial guard with ties to the extremist revolutionary Narodniks who in 1881 assassinated Alexander II. (Indeed, his assignment was to shoot the Tsar should Alexander survive the first attempt on his life.) Serge's parents escaped and took refuge in a Brussels slum. "On the walls of our humble and makeshift lodgings there were always the portraits of men who had been hanged," their son would recall. By age fifteen, Victor Kibalchich, as Serge was then known, had begun living on his own?as a photographer's apprentice, a draftsman, and a linotype operator, organizing all the while for the Belgian Socialist Party. A few years later, having read Peter Kropotkin's Appeal to the Young, he toured utopian colonies in Belgium and France. At nineteen, he moved to Paris and, working intermittently as a printer and translator, threw himself into the fringe political scene. Serge was a precursor of the New Left before he even joined the old one: he followed from the start anarchism's most extreme line, asserting that not class warfare but the individual's total revolt against the strictures of society would serve as the engine of social change. Calling himself Le R?tif (The Unbroken One), Serge wrote for L'anarchie and later, as the journal's editor, went on to defend the violence of a few colorful motorcar-driving bank robbers known as the Bonnot Gang. The police searched L'anarchie 's offices and in 1911 found two revolvers; the fiery young editor was arrested, charged with harboring the bandits he had publicly defended, and imprisoned for five years (an experience he would describe in his first novel, Men in Prison). Released in the midst of World War I, now calling himself Victor Serge, the twenty-seven-year-old anarchist made his way to neutral Barcelona to join up with the syndicalist organizer Salvador "Sugar Boy" Segu?. A rebellion broke out (and was crushed) but Serge was already en route to Russia; or rather, already on his way to a French prison camp where, although he then had no connection other than sentiment to the Russian Revolution, he would be detained for over a year as a Bolshevik agent. The uprising in Barcelona, the World War, and his abortive journey home provided material for Serge's second novel, Birth of Our Power. The Russian Revolution would be the supreme event of Serge's life. He arrived in Red Petrograd, capital of the motherland he'd never seen, in early 1919; by May Day, he had become a functionary of the Communist Party. Serge criticized Lenin's intolerance and his faith in the power of the state but he was also a realist?or so he thought at the time. "Within the current situation of Europe, bloodstained, devastated, and in profound stupor, Bolshevism was," in his eyes, "tremendously and visibly right. It marked a new point of departure in history." Serge fought in defense of Petrograd, attacked twice that year by the White Army. He taught political education courses, working under Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Setting up the Com- intern publishing house and running its Romance-language section, editing international journals and cataloguing the archives of the tsarist secret police, Serge knew everyone?he moved in Petrograd's ruling circles, while keeping in touch with Mensheviks, Left Social-Revolutionaries, and members of the so-called Workers' Opposition. (He was the lone Bolshevik to attend the funeral of Kropotkin, the anarchist-Communist whose books had sent him off in search of Utopia as a teenager.) The Bolsheviks' massacre of thousands of sailors following the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion shook Serge's faith. Requesting to be sent on a mission to the West, he was dispatched to Berlin to edit the Comintern's European press service?and also to serve as an agent of the German Communist Party. Spirited out of Berlin with the failure of the Communists' 1923 Hamburg putsch, Serge returned to the Soviet Union in 1926. Two years later, having written an imprudent article that described the recent expulsion of Trotsky and the oppositionists as a "grave error," Serge was himself expelled from the Party and shortly thereafter arrested by the secret police for "anti-Soviet activity." He nearly died of an intestinal occlusion twenty-four hours after leaving prison. It was then, approaching forty, that Serge resolved to become an artist, mentally sketching a series of documentary novels about what he had seen and experienced?the extreme circumstances of prison, revolution, and political persecution. Over the next few years, Serge completed Men in Prison and two other novels, Birth of Our Power and Conquered City (a nightmarish account of Red terror), as well as a history, Year One of the Russian Revolution?all composed in fragments and mailed to friends in Paris so that if their author was again arrested (as he eventually would be), the assembled manuscripts could be published abroad (as they were). In their tone, the novels have the immediacy of battlefield reports. The nameless narrators of Men in Prison and Birth of Our Power, and even that of the more personal Memoirs of a Revolutionary?itself a series of snapshot portraits?are observers. Apparently blessed with total recall, Serge excelled at character vignettes; his books are remarkable for their swarming casts. Notwithstanding a talent for describing different personalities, he took seriously the notion of a collective hero, writing in his memoirs: Individual existences were of no interest to me?particularly my own?except by virtue of the great ensemble of life whose particles, more or less endowed with consciousness, are all that we ever are. In early 1933, Serge was deported to a prison camp in Orenburg, on the border of Kazakhstan (the setting for his later novel Midnight in the Century). But by now he was a known figure in Paris. Intellectuals rallied to his cause; he was released in the spring of 1936 (a favor Stalin granted the French fellow traveler Romain Rolland) and expelled from the Soviet Union. Two complete novels?one an account of the pre-war French anarchists, the other a sequel to Conquered City?as well as a book of poetry and the continuation of his history, Year Two of the Russian Revolution, were confiscated by the secret police before he left. The Spanish civil war broke out shortly after he arrived back in the West. Weeks later, Stalin charged his old Bolshevik comrades with treason. That summer, the first major show trial opened, with Serge's erstwhile boss Grigory Zinoviev, an early Bolshevik and former supporter of Trotsky, accused along with fifteen coconspirators of the murder of Sergei Kirov and planning the death of Stalin, among other crimes. Serge's remaining family members in the Soviet Union began to vanish; in Paris, he set up a Committee for Inquiry into the Moscow Trials and, for a time, served as Trotsky's French translator. Some anti-Stalinists mistrusted Serge; he was one of the few oppositionists to survive the purges and perhaps the only one to escape to the West; but his inside accounts of the Soviet system were widely read. An edition of Russia After Twenty Years even appeared in English, translated by the Trotskyist leader Max Schachtman. Still, Serge was something of an oppositionist within the opposition. Highly critical of the sectarian feuding within the Fourth International, he insisted that the anti-Stalinist movement was not essentially Trotskyist ("we regarded the Old Man only as one of our greatest comrades"). By the time Stalin and Hitler made their pact in 1939, Serge had been denounced by the Trotskyists as well as the Popular Front. The nomination of Midnight in the Century, his novel about exile in Kazakhstan, for the 1939 Prix Goncourt provided little solace. Less than a year later, he was forced to flee Paris as the Germans entered the city, and worked on The Case of Comrade Tulayev while awaiting an American visa in Marseilles. In March 1941, he crossed the Atlantic, along with Andr? Breton, Anna Seghers, Wilfredo Lam, Claude L?vi-Strauss, and another 350 passengers on a boat with cabin space for seven. Denied entry to the US, he found asylum in Mexico where, one year before, Trotsky had been murdered by Stalin's agents. There Serge spent the remaining six years of his life, poor and isolated, organizing protests, publishing analyses of the international situation, dodging the sporadic attacks of Mexican Communists, writing his memoirs, and completing The Case of Comrade Tulayev as well as two other novels, The Long Dusk and Unforgiving Years. Only the The Long Dusk would be published in Serge's lifetime. In November 1947, he hailed a Mexico City taxi, got in, and died.[2] Written as they were in the aftermath of revolutionary failure, Serge's novels all concern crises of faith. "What is 'conscience'?" D wonders as he prepares to break with the Party, noting that he's "behaving almost like a believer"?which, of course, he is. Conquered City, published in 1932, inaugurated this final, increasingly self-conscious phase in Serge's writing, which culminated with Unforgiving Years. With these books, he trades the anonymous first-person narrator of his earlier work for the personal perspective of a single, dedicated revolutionary. Conquered City introduces this penultimate Sergeian character type in the form of Ryzhik, a reluctant member of the Cheka, the early version of the KGB. Ryzhik next appears in Midnight in the Century, exiled beyond the Urals but no less devoted to the Revolution, and turns up for the last time two thirds of the way through The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Serge's fictionalized account of the Sergei Kirov murder and its aftermath. A chapter titled "The Brink of Nothing" has Ryzhik held in solitary confinement on a Black Sea collective farm?and thus spared arrest in the rigged, worldwide manhunt that follows the assassination of the Chief's right-hand man. (Tulayev's actual killer, an obscure clerk with an obscure motive, was also ignored.) Ryzhik is the last of his kind: Prison had providentially protected him for over ten years, from 1928 on. A series of pure chances, such as save a single soldier out of a destroyed battalion, kept him out of the way of the great trials, of the secret investigations, and even of the "prison conspiracy"! These three Ryzhik novels, directly preceding Unforgiving Years and forming a kind of Bolshevik trilogy, show how the experience of the old revolutionaries suggested the basis for a strange underground faith. Lost in the Gulag and deliberately starving himself to death, Ryzhik hallucinates about a powerful collective intelligence?the Bolshevik spirit that "brought together thousands of brains to perform its work during a quarter of a century, now destroyed in a few years by the backlash of its own victory, now perhaps reflected only in his own mind." Serge began writing Unforgiving Years in September 1945, hardly more than a month after the atomic bomb brought World War II to a close. The following January, writing to the French leftist Daniel Gu?rin, he referred to his current project as "a rather terrifying novel on the problems of consciousness in wartime," and Unforgiving Years is the most self-conscious of Serge's novels. The prose is thick with literary effects. The characters are acutely self-questioning, engaged as much with the effect of war on human consciousness as with the struggle of consciousness to change existing conditions when those conditions include war. Serge told Gu?rin that the novel was causing him physical pain; and D, like Serge, is suffering migraines. "Truth, stripped of its metaphysical poetry, exists only in the brain," he thinks. "Destroy a few brains, quickly done!" D shares Ryzhik's martyr-like self-consciousness, but lacks his absolute purity. Instead, it is Daria, nineteen years old in 1919, who is the keeper of the faith. D associates her with the memory of fierce, dogged, uncomplicated zealotry: once upon a time, in the Revolution's infancy, there was "surprise that enthusiasm could exist, that the new faith could be stronger than all else, action more desirable than happiness and ideas more real than old facts; that the world could be more alive than the self." Her confidence in history ebbing as she speaks with a comrade in the ruins of Europe, Daria nonetheless echoes Ryzhik, her literary forebear, prophesying that "we have no life beyond working for a great common destiny." Serge's female characters often seem abstract and Daria is no exception. But she is also something new in Serge's fictional world. She's a writer, albeit an amateur, with highly conventional thoughts on literature: "Let the imagination of poets and novelists put on a uniform and obey orders." Exiled to Kazakhstan, however, Daria disciplines herself by keeping a journal that, as described by Serge, suggests a French new novel avant la lettre : A curious document, this journal, whose carefully chosen words sketched out only the outer shapes of people, events, and ideas: a poem constructed of gaps cut from the lived material, because?since it could be seized?it could not contain a single name, a single recognizable face, a single unmistakable strand of the past.... Since it cannot express the least trace of sorrow or doubt or ideological thought, Daria finds working on this "thought puzzle in three dimensions" (with an "undefinable and secret" fourth one) exhilarating work. Pure as she is, perhaps even more so than Ryzhik, Daria writes not for the desk drawer but for the abyss. Summoned to Leningrad when the city comes under German siege, she burns her notebooks "without a twinge of regret." Daria is something of a literary critic as well. Her initial job in Leningrad is evaluating letters confiscated from German prisoners. Among these she discovers a tragic love story and, moved by a soldier's hopeless passion for the doomed niece of a Ukrainian partisan, suggests to her superior that, revised by a writer, this narrative could be usefully published. The colonel is unimpressed: "Let our unionized pencil pushers do their own writing, they know their business." Unforgiving Years is composed of four linked sections. The first is a political thriller set in France a few months after the Munich Pact. Thereafter, Serge focuses on the war, as experienced by the inhabitants of two ravaged European cities. The novel's second section belongs to Daria, exiled to Kazakhstan most likely as a result of her contacts with D in Paris. Four years later, she is released to work as an intelligence operative during the siege of Leningrad. ("Here the front line is everywhere, I warn you," her unimpressed superior informs her.) The scene of Leningrad's frozen rubble segues to one of utter urban destruction. Vaulting over the Eastern Front for the novel's third and longest section, Serge describes the war's final days as they are played out in a devastated suburb of Berlin. ("'We're going to be baked like potatoes in ashes,' an old man calmly remarked.") In a postwar coda, "Journey's End," Daria finally finds D himself, hiding from the NKVD on a coffee plantation in deepest Mexico. Serge's final book, like all of his novels, is characterized by a visceral sense of historical process. Birth of Our Power celebrated the newborn revolution by describing it as if through a child's eyes. Conquered City opened in "prehistoric gloom" with Red Petrograd visualized as a settlement of cave dwellers, the action unfolding in the "primordial night" of Marxist prehistory, as Bolsheviks huddle in "oases of electricity" and engage in the primal bloodletting of the terror. Unforgiving Years (which had the elemental working title Sands, Snows, Fire) takes an even longer view. Paris slumbers under sentence of death, as oblivious as a city in the first reel of a Hollywood disaster film. Only D is cognizant of impending doom: "The avalanche rolls onward, and we're in its path," he warns his lover Nadine. Daria flies into a Leningrad that, despite the mastodon-sized truck that greets her, is not only pre- but post-historic: There were caved-in roofs, whole stories exposed to the air and clogged with snow, gaping bays, stage-set fa?ades of wood and sailcloth with rows of windows painted sketchily across them. A faded inscription read INTREPID CITY! TOMB OF??. As the banner was torn, its last words missing, the city could be the tomb of whoever you liked.... Daria notes the absence of the customary huge images of the Chief and finds it hard to imagine one in this setting: How would he look? Standard confident smile, full cheeks, bushy mustache? No portraitist would dare to give him the only face appropriate for this city?hollow as a death's-head, wet with tears. Assigned work as a translator, Daria accompanies a commando unit on a mission to capture stray Germans. Beyond the city is a void where distant explosions amplify "the absolute silence of uninhabited expanses," and the snow dunes suggest total extinction. ("The landscapes of dead planets must look like this," she thinks; the novel's metaphors often suggest science fiction.) After a confused skirmish on the white desert of the Neva River, the Soviets take a German prisoner; interrogated in a rude shelter, he turns out to be mad. Daria emerges from her evening's work as if "from a grave," into "a vast tomb." Serge then moves from Daria asleep in her makeshift communal apartment, dreaming that she is "a half dead woman," to the vast necropolis of Berlin?a "ghostly city bristling with the skeletons of churches lashed by sky, wind, rain, and fire," where after the previous night's "hurricane," the streets are "buried under a desert of scorched, blackened rubble, dusted with a powder as fine and light as mineral dew." The prospect suggests nothing so much as Max Ernst's epic canvas Europe After the Rain, painted between 1940 and 1942 when the artist, like Serge, was on the run from France to the New World. Unforgiving Years has something of Ernst's discomfiting lushness as well. Just as "the bogus reality of civilization reverted back to first principles" in bombed-out Germany, so the novel ends with a regression to the primal Mexican landscape. Lush and magical, populated by angelic Indian children, it is a "riotous disorder," an unstable cosmos, the site of ancient sacrificial altars. These are given meaning by the images of death gods ("stark, attentive, abstract") who, in another world, presided over Leningrad. It may be that for Serge, the most terrifying aspect of Unforgiving Years was his own despair: If there ever had been, if there ever were, somewhere in the world, another reality, it now remained in human memory as no more than a recollection, tinged more by doubt and sadness than by nostalgia. "The past marked the older people most deeply," he writes of the civilians huddled in a German bomb shelter. "People who seemed to have lived through so many events in the half century that they were probably exaggerating...." As the war ends in Germany, a friend of D's, wandering in the ruins of Europe, looks to the heavens for a new revolutionary program. "But where are the men? Where are the grand ideas? Perhaps ideas are nothing but ephemeral stars. They point the way while they last, and then they go out...." Notes [1]Since then, The Case of Comrade Tulayev has returned to print (New York Review Books, 2004), while various small presses have brought out anthologies of Serge's political pamphlets, his correspondence with Trotsky, and even his poems. An English-language biography, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope (Verso) by Susan Weissman, was published in 2001. [2] That Serge evidently never told the driver his destination is appropriate to the speculation that surrounds the political thinking of his last months. Where would Serge's anti-Stalinism have taken him? To judge from his American publications, his wartime politics oscillated between the left-wing social democracy of the Socialist Call and the right-wing social democracy of The New Leader. That Serge hoped to return to France may explain the ambiguous letter he wrote in 1947 to his onetime Popular Front enemy Andr? Malraux, now a hero of the French Resistance and adviser to General de Gaulle: Had I been in France I would myself have been among the Socialists collaborating with the movement you are in. I consider the electoral victory of your movement a great step towards the immediate salvation of France. Although many assume that Serge would have cast his lot with cold war liberalism, it's striking that in his last published essay Serge wrote, reminiscing about the Russian Revolution's idealistic beginnings: For the first time, through the advent of Bolshevism,...the masses' feeling of inferiority gave way to confidence, pride, a new optimism. Some roots of Stalinism are still embedded in the soil of these feelings. Alan Wald has published a detailed discussion of Serge's late political views, "Victor Serge and the New York Anti-Stalinist Left, 1937?47," in The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment (Humanities Press, 1992). From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 19:33:29 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:33:29 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Vanessa Redgrave backtracks on Zionism Message-ID: <4ACBEFE9.1010001@panix.com> NY Review of Books Volume 56, Number 16 ? October 22, 2009 Let Israeli FIlms be Shown By Vanessa Redgrave, Julian Schnabel, Martin Sherman To the Editors: A group of prominent filmmakers has protested the Toronto Film Festival's choice of Tel Aviv, in its "City to City" section showcasing films from and about a particular city, as "a propaganda campaign on behalf of...an apartheid regime."[*] Their letter declared that the signatories were not protesting against the Israeli filmmakers who were included or their films. Their stand seems to us to be improperly thought out and to have distressing implications. The protesters use the term "apartheid regime." We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter. In their letter the protesters say that "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages." True. Just as much of America is built on obliterated Indian property. Are they implying that Tel Aviv should not exist? At least not in its present form? Which would mean that the State of Israel (the original State of Israel, not including the occupied territories) should not exist. Thousands of Palestinians have died through the years because the Israeli government, military, and part of the population fervently believe that the Arab states and, indeed, much of the world do not want Israel to exist. How then are we halting this never-ending cycle of violence by promoting the very fears that cause it? The injustice and cruelty inflicted upon the Palestinians over decades are immense. Many great powers, most notably the Soviet Union and Great Britain, have collaborated in this injustice, just as, if only by their silence, they played havoc with the lives of Jews during the Third Reich and the ensuing Holocaust. Many Israelis are aware of this history. Many citizens of Tel Aviv are particularly cognizant of the situation of the Palestinians and are concerned about their government's policies and their country's future. And none more so than the Tel Aviv creative community. This is exemplified by Israeli films that criticize their government's behavior, and some startling Israeli theater pieces, such as the Cameri Theatre's Plonter, seen earlier this year in London. The Israeli peace bloc, Gush Shalom, and many Israeli human rights groups and advocates are based in Tel Aviv. Some 10,000 Israeli citizens demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the military attack on Gaza in January this year, a fact not reported by the BBC World News or CNN. These citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged. Their presence and their continued activity is reason alone to celebrate their city. Cultural exchanges almost always involve government channels. This occurs in every country. There is no way around it. We do not agree that this involvement is a reason to shun or protest, picket or boycott, or ban people who are expressing thoughts and confronting grief that, ironically, many of the protesters share. If attitudes are hardened on both sides, if those who are fighting within their own communities for peace are insulted, where then is the hope? The point finally is not to grandstand but to inch toward a two-state solution and a world in which both nations can exist, perhaps not lovingly, but at least in peace. The year 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Barenboim-Said West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. We hope that those who protest Israeli inclusion in film festivals will take note of this example of the power of art freely expressed and available to all, and reconsider their position. Vanessa Redgrave Julian Schnabel Martin Sherman Notes [*]Editors' note: The Toronto Film Festival ran from September 10 to September 19; a list of Israeli films featured in the City to City section is available at www.tiff.net/filmsandschedules/programmes/citytocity. For the full text of the protest letter and a list of its signers, see torontodeclaration.blogspot.com. From lnp3 at panix.com Tue Oct 6 19:55:09 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:55:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Review of Engels biography Message-ID: <4ACBF4FD.1000703@panix.com> Volume 56, Number 16 ? October 22, 2009 He Kept Marx Going By Adam Kirsch Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt Metropolitan, 430 pp., $32.00 The traffic of pilgrims to the grave of Karl Marx, in London's Highgate Cemetery, may not be as large as it once was. But at least the grave still exists, presided over by the enormous black bust erected by the British Communist Party in the 1950s, after so many statues of Marx's heirs have been destroyed. "His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work," said Friedrich Engels in a speech at Marx's funeral, on March 17, 1883; and even if the second part of that prophecy seems doubtful today, the first is surely beyond dispute. But what about Engels himself? Anyone wishing to visit his resting place will find no place to go. When he died, twelve years after Marx, Engels ordered that his body be cremated and his ashes thrown into the English Channel. It was as if he wanted to make certain that, as Tristram Hunt writes at the end of Marx's General, "in death as in life there was nothing to detract from the glory of Marx." Such self-effacement was the constant theme of Engels's relationship with his best friend, collaborator, and alter ego, from the beginning of their partnership, when they were in their mid-twenties, until its end a lifetime later. "Marx was a genius," Engels declared, "we others were at best talented." Such self-deprecation does not make Engels sound like a very urgent subject for a new biography. The problem is compounded by the fact that, for twenty years, Engels's primary contribution to the birth of Marxism was to retire from writing and organizing so that he could earn money to support Marx and his family. After 1848, when their activities during the failed German revolution made them personae non grata on the Continent, Marx and Engels moved to England, whose liberalism sheltered them even as they attacked it. Marx's story during the next two decades is one of great intellectual and human drama. Living in dire poverty in a Soho slum, enduring the deaths of children and his own tormenting illnesses, he gave painful birth to Capital and asserted doctrinal control over the burgeoning Communist movement. Little Bookroom / Culinary Tuscany Engels, on the other hand, spent that crucial period working at Ermen and Engels, the family cotton-spinning business in Manchester, sending part of his income to Marx, and living pretty well on what was left over. As Hunt writes, Engels's existence was that of "a leading Manchester merchant?a sophisticated, high-bourgeois world of dinners, clubs, charitable events, and networking." It was a double life, not just ideologically but domestically, too. Engels was officially unmarried, and maintained a respectable bachelor apartment for receiving guests, but he was actually living with Mary Burns, a working-class Irishwoman who was effectively his wife. It was a ticklish situation for a man who railed against the sexual exploitation of working women by their employers. "The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers," Engels complained, but his arrangement with Mary?and the way that, after her death, he filled her place with her sister, Lizzy?itself has a rather feudal feel. That the basis for Engels's pleasures and Marx's work was, ultimately, the exploitation of the proletariat?the very thing the two men dedicated their lives to ending?makes Engels's Manchester years appear not just undramatic but potentially hypocritical. Engels does not sound very indignant, for instance, when writing to Marx about a day he spent with the Cheshire Hunt: "On Saturday I went out fox-hunting?seven hours in the saddle... At least twenty of the chaps fell off or came down, two horses were done for, one fox killed (I was in AT THE DEATH)." Engels's pleasure in this aristocratic pastime is not fully explained by the fact that it was supposedly good training for the cavalry maneuvers he would be called upon to lead, come the revolution. But he refused to be embarrassed by his inconsistencies. "Would it ever occur to me to apologise for the fact that I myself was once a partner in a firm of manufacturers?" Engels wrote after his retirement. "There's a fine reception waiting for anyone who tries to throw that in my teeth!" Engels's doubleness, which offers such a striking contrast to Marx's single-mindedness, is why he proves to be a surprisingly fruitful subject for Tristram Hunt. The book's original title in the UK was The Frock-Coated Communist, and Hunt makes much of the piquancy of the juxtaposition: the revolutionary in a respectable frock coat, the militant who indulged his taste for wine and women. Engels, Hunt suggests, proves that communism is not just a matter of party congresses and five-year plans, or even of Marx's boils and pawnshops. "Neither a Leveler nor a statist," Hunt writes, this great lover of the good life, passionate advocate of individuality, and enthusiastic believer in literature, culture, art, and music as an open forum could never have acceded to the Soviet communism of the twentieth century, all the Stalinist claims of his paternity notwithstanding. As this shows, part of Hunt's case in Marx's General is that Engels should not be held "responsible for the ter- rible misdeeds carried out under the banner of Marxism-Leninism." And certainly all the crimes of twentieth-century communism seem far away from the gem?tlich Sunday afternoons at Engels's house in London in the 1870s, after he had retired from business: The house specialty was a springtime bowl of Maitrank, a May wine flavored with woodruff. There would be German folk songs round the piano or Engels reciting his favorite poem, "The Vicar of Bray," while the cream of European socialism?from Karl Kautsky to William Morris to Wilhelm Liebknecht to Keir Hardie?all paid court. Such appealing vignettes, Hunt suggests, can help us rehabilitate Marxism from the avenging prophet Marx by casting it in the more amiable image of Engels. In the same vein, Hunt quotes Engels's responses to "the highly popular mid-Victorian parlor game 'Confessions,'" asked him by Marx's daughter Jenny. "Favourite virtue: jollity," "Idea of happiness: Chateau Margaux 1848," "Favourite hero: None"?these answers of Engels are charmingly liberal. Hunt could have shown this even more effectively if he had contrasted them with Marx's own to the same questionnaire, which Francis Wheen gives in full in his 1999 biography Karl Marx: "Favourite virtue: Simplicity," "Idea of happiness: To fight," "Favourite hero: Spartacus." Yet if there is a gulf separating Marx from Engels, and Engels from Marxism-Leninism, there is also a connection, which Marx's General makes it possible to trace. For while Engels found more pleasure in life than Marx, he was no less committed to revolutionary struggle. It did not take Marx or Marxism to turn him into a Communist. And the more likable Engels seems as a man, the more terrible his theoretical ruthlessness becomes. It was Engels, not Marx, who wrote that "history is about the most cruel of all goddesses, and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses." Friedrich Engels was born on November 28, 1820, the first son and namesake of a prosperous manufacturer in Barmen, in the Rhineland. The Engelses were Pietists, uniting a severe Calvinist discipline with a sharp eye for business. Hunt quotes a letter Engels's grandfather wrote to his father before he was born, setting out a Max Weberian creed: "We have to look to our own advantage even in spiritual matters." In such a home, even the most trivial infraction was treated as a soul-endangering sin. When Engels's father was scandalized by discovering "a dirty book" in the fourteen-year-old's desk, it was not the kind of book we might think, but merely "a story about knights in the thirteenth century." This was bad enough for Engels senior to write, "May God watch over his disposition, I am often fearful for this otherwise excellent boy." He had reason to be afraid; he was rearing his would-be destroyer. In the 1840s, when Engels was openly preaching communism around Barmen, his father told a friend: "You can't imagine how much this grieves a father: first my father endowed the Protestant parish in Barmen, then I built a church and now my son is tearing it down." "That's the story of our times," the friend replied. Indeed, Engels's relationship with what he called "my fanatical and despotic old man" seems to prefigure those of the Kirsanovs in Fathers and Sons or the Verkhovenskys in The Possessed. The difference is that Engels was too much of a realist?and too devoted to his mother?simply to break with his family, which would have meant condemning himself to a life of poverty. Rather, his revolutionary education took place within the establishment, in tandem with his progress in his bourgeois career. In 1837, Engels left the Gymnasium to begin working in the family firm. The next year he went to Bremen, where he apprenticed as a clerk in a linen-exporting company, while also making his first mild experiments with rebellion. At this stage, Hunt shows, this mainly took the form of growing a mustache, and writing a poem about it: "We are not philistines, so we/Can let our mustachios flourish free." Things became more serious when Engels moved to Berlin, where he performed his required year of military service. This was the start of his lifelong interest in military matters, which earned him the nickname "General," to which Hunt's title alludes. (Marx was "Moor," for his dark complexion.) More important, Engels was also attending lectures at the University of Berlin, especially those of Friedrich Schelling, Hegel's great antagonist. "Ask anybody in Berlin today on what field the battle for dominion over German public opinion is being fought," Engels wrote, "and if he has any idea of the power of the mind over the world he will reply that this battlefield is the University, in particular Lecture-hall No. 6, where Schelling is giving his lectures in the philosophy of revelation." As Hunt notes, this was no understatement: in addition to Engels, the audience included Jacob Burckhardt, Mikhail Bakunin, and S?ren Kierkegaard. At the university, Engels made contact with the Young Hegelians and cemented his hostility to the established order in Germany. Earnest as his politics were, they did not make him humorless: he had a dog named Nameless, whom he trained to growl at anyone Engels identified as an aristocrat. In fact, when Engels first met Marx, in 1842, Marx disdained him as a typically frivolous coffeehouse revolutionary. Marx, who was two years older than Engels, had just become editor of the Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, and hoped to transform it into a forum for serious discussion of communism. He wanted nothing to do with what he called the "rowdiness and blackguardism" of Engels's Berlin circle, and when Engels visited the paper's offices, his reception by Marx was "distinctly chilly." But Engels was about to prove that he was a much more serious Communist than Marx had thought. From late 1842 until the summer of 1844, Engels lived in Manchester, sent there by his father to learn the intricacies of the international cotton trade; "Manchester Exchange," he wrote, "is the thermometer which records all the fluctuations of industrial and commercial activity." But he was also exploring the realities of life among the victims of the industrial revolution, to which his intimacy with Mary Burns gave him unusual access. Engels was hardly the only writer to engage in what Hunt calls "favella tourism" in Manchester. On the contrary, the city had already become a symbol of the power and the misery of the new industrial order, and everyone who thought seriously about the condition-of-England question had to come to grips with it. Carlyle's Past and Present, Disraeli's Sybil, Dickens's Hard Times, and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South were among the literary treatments of the subject, and they drew on a host of official reports on the poverty, sickness, ignorance, and despair afflicting the city's workers. What set The Condition of the Working Class in England apart from all these books was that Engels's was not intended to cajole or shame the rich into doing their duty by the poor. Rather, Engels promised while writing it, "I shall be presenting the English with a fine bill of indictment. I accuse the English bourgeoisie before the entire world of murder, robbery and other crimes on a massive scale." And he was certain that only a violent revolution could put an end to those crimes. "The war of the poor against the rich will be the most bloodthirsty the world has ever seen," Engels predicted, and no parliamentary legislation or Dickensian sentimentality could avert it. "Even if some of the middle classes espouse the cause of the workers?even if the middle classes as a whole mended their ways?the catastrophe could not be avoided." In fact, while most of Engels's book is devoted to the plight of the working class, its motive force?the animus that makes it such electric reading, even today?is his feelings about his own class, the bourgeoisie. For while Engels gathered the material for the book in Manchester, he actually wrote it in his family home in Barmen, in late 1844. That summer, on the way back from England, he had stopped in Paris and met Marx again. This time, he recalled, "our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became evident," and their great friendship began. Now, back in his provincial, pious home, the memory of Manchester and the excitement of Paris catalyzed Engels's overwhelming disgust with his father and his father's class. As he wrote to Marx in January 1845: ...Barmen is too hideous, the waste of time is too hideous, and what is particularly hideous is to remain not only a bourgeois but actually a factory owner, a bourgeois actively engaged against the proletariat. A few days in my old man's factory led me once more to realize fully this hideousness which I had begun to overlook.... If I did not have to record in my book each day those ghastly stories from English society I believe I would have begun to get into a rut, but that at least has kept my anger on the boil. That boiling can be heard in Engels's repeated insistence that the bourgeoisie is beyond redemption. "The members of the bourgeoisie are imprisoned by the class prejudices and principles which have been ruthlessly drummed into them from childhood. Nothing can be done about people of this sort," he writes. Indeed, the incorrigibility of the bourgeoisie is central to Engels's vision of class conflict. It is not a matter of the hard-heartedness of this or that factory owner, or even of all the factory owners; the problem is a capitalist system that is structurally oppressive. That is why only revolution, not reform, can help the proletariat. It creates an interesting tension in Condition, then, when the reader realizes how consistently Engels's evidence for the malfeasance of the bourgeoisie is drawn from bourgeois sources. Take this passage, on homelessness and prostitution in London's parks: But let all men, whether of theory or of practice, remember this?that within the most courtly precincts of the richest city on GOD'S earth, there may be found, night after night, winter after winter, women?young in years?old in sin and suffering?outcasts from society?ROTTING FROM FAMINE, FILTH AND DISEASE. Let them remember this, and learn not to theorize but to act. The opposition of theory and practice sounds Marxist; but in fact this call to arms is quoted from an editorial in The Times. Likewise, many of Engels's lurid details and damning statistics come from official reports like Edwin Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, which was commissioned by a Whig government and published under a Tory one, in 1842. Indeed, while Engels insists that the workers cannot hope for redress from a bourgeois-aristocratic Parliament, he can't help but note that "although the middle classes at the moment are the main?indeed the only?power in Parliament, nevertheless the last session (1844) was in effect a continuous debate on working-class conditions." All this suggests that far from being obdurate, England's ruling classes were taking action?slowly and as yet inadequately?to solve the problems caused by the industrial revolution. These problems were, it is useful to remember, totally unprecedented, not just in English but in human history. The sudden eruption of vast polluted slums in the North of England baffled both the institutions of government and the prevailing theories of economics and society. Engels was writing at perhaps the worst period in Manchester's history, before the introduction of free trade, the expansion of the franchise, unionization, and regulation of factory work and child labor helped to improve the lives of the workers. Yet he insisted that what he witnessed in Manchester were "working class conditions in their 'classical' form," and that things could not get better without getting worse. The Condition of the Working Classin England was the first expression of Engels's lifelong belief that revolution was just around the corner. The cycle of boom and bust, he wrote in the book's conclusion, meant that the next [economic] crisis should (on the analogy of previous crises) occur in 1852 or 1853.... But before that crisis arrives the English workers will surely have reached the limits of their endurance.... Popular fury will reach an intensity far greater than that which animated the French workers in 1793. The year 1853 came and went, and Engels postponed the reckoning: "This time there'll be a day of wrath such as has never been seen before...all the propertied classes in the soup, complete ruin of the bourgeoisie.... I, too, believe that it will all come to pass in 1857," he wrote to Marx. In 1865, when the American Civil War had cut off cotton exports to England and devastated Manchester, Engels was sanguine again: "I imagine by next month the working people themselves will have had enough of sitting about with a look of passive misery on their faces." It is impossible, reading such prophecies, not to be reminded of the disappointed members of some chiliastic cult, constantly recalculating the date of the apocalypse. And here lies the most significant aspect of Engels's story. There was only one Marx; but there have been many millions of Marxists, and Engels was the first of these. His dilemma was the same one faced by generations of committed revolutionaries since: How should one live in a dying world that is on the verge of transformation? For Engels, this was an even more difficult problem than it was for, say, the Seventh-Day Adventists (whose prophet, William Miller, initially predicted that 1843 would be the end of days). For, like Marx, Engels inherited from Hegel the paradox that history at once requires and negates the freedom of individual men. In the influential 1878 polemic known as Anti-D?hring, in which Engels offered an accessible restatement of Marxist principles (and, less happily, tried to use the theory of dialectical materialism to explain nature and mathematics), he attempted to heal this paradox by redefining freedom: "Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence of natural laws, but in the knowledge of those laws and in the possibility thus afforded of making them work systematically towards definite ends." But this only sharpens the dilemma, for what could be more absurd than "working systematically" to implement a natural law, like gravity? The implications of this question for Engels's work on behalf of Marx and Marxism were, of course, profound. Engels had nothing but contempt for the idea that socialism could be the gift of an inspired prophet, as the followers of Fourier and Saint-Simon seemed to believe. He was careful to praise Marx not as a lawgiver, but as the discoverer of laws that had always been in operation. "Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature," he said in his eulogy, "so Marx discovered the law of development of human history." Yet the analogy is crucially flawed, for while The Origin of Species did nothing to accelerate or divert the course of evolution, TheCommunist Manifesto was an intervention into the very class conflict it diagnosed. As Engels went on to say: Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat. It was only because Marx was uniquely capable of advancing that cause that Engels willingly devoted his life to him. To Hunt, as to most writers on the subject, Engels's decision to spend the prime of his life doing work he disliked in order to support Marx's labors inspires admiration and pity. "In truth, the middle decades of Engels's life were a wretched time...an era of nervous, sapping sacrifice," Hunt writes. Edmund Wilson said the same thing in To the Finland Station, likening Marx and Engels to the positive and negative poles of a battery: "Marx was to play the part of the metal of the positive electrode, which gives out hydrogen and remains unchanged, while Engels was to be the negative electrode, which gradually gets used up." Reading Marx's General, however, makes one wonder whether Engels really was stuck at the negative pole of the partnership. For surely it was Marx who piled up the "misery" and "agony of toil," at his desk in London, and Engels who enjoyed the "accumulation of wealth." The difference between them was brought out most starkly in the autumn of 1848, the year of revolutions, when Marx and Engels thought they might actually be seeing their dreams come true. Marx had started a new radical newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in Cologne, with Engels and other comrades. After Engels gave a fiery speech to an open-air workers' meeting, he was threatened with arrest and forced to flee the city, while Marx stayed behind, agitating for democratic revolution even as the reaction gathered force. But instead of going to Paris, or Venice, or one of the other battlefields of the continent, Engels set out on a long walking tour of the French countryside. He drank wine ("What a diversity, from Bordeaux to Burgundy,...from Petit Macon or Chablis to Chambertin"), slept with country girls, and admired the trees. When he got to Auxerre, he joked that the town looked like a "red republic with all its horrors," when in fact it was simply streaming with the juice of the wine harvest. This sudden holiday, in the middle of the revolution for which he had been waiting his whole life, led Wilson to remark on the "Jekyll-and-Hyde personality" that Engels displayed: ferocious and acerbic with Marx, amiable and pleasure-loving when on his own. This was, perhaps, Engels's solution to the problem of waiting out a dying world. He would not live in the agony of historical expectation, like Marx, but savor the fallen present, deferring the rigors of salvation into the ever-receding future, where other people would have to endure them. Kierkegaard, Engels's old classmate at the University of Berlin, summarized his objection to Hegel by comparing him to a man who, having constructed a grand palace, decides to live in a shed next door; the palace was the absolute future, the shed the existential present. Engels, one might say, did just the reverse. The Communist future would be an enormous shed; but till it came, he would enjoy the little palace of the present. Appropriately enough, this tension appears even in Engels's last will and testament. After making a large bequest to Germany's Social Democratic Party, to advance the proletarian revolution, he went on to instruct the party leader August Bebel: "Drink a bottle of good wine on it. Do this in memory of me." From shmage at pipeline.com Tue Oct 6 20:49:29 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 22:49:29 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies In-Reply-To: <20091006.201104.7176.0.farmelantj@juno.com> References: <20091006.201104.7176.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <8C1B1EBB-9402-457C-9AF8-18ACA420CB3D@pipeline.com> On Oct 6, 2009, at 8:11 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote: > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm "But, mathematics "deals with reality" only if one is a Platonist. Where in the world, for example, is a Hermite polynomial, a partial differential equation or even an Abelian Group? And, are we to suppose that in a Scalar Field there are Real and/or Complex numbers (many of which are infinitely long decimals!) floating about in space? Or that in a Vector Field there are little arrows all pointing in certain directions? Or even that there are Geodesics, everyone of which is infinitely thin, made of nothing at all -- and yet infinitely strong --, running throughout the entire universe, along which all objects in a gravitational field must move, as if they were glued on to tram lines?" Where in the world? It is Wittgenstein who said "Die Welt ist Alles dass der Fall ist"--The world is everything that is the case. *If* the mathematical propositions that Rosa refers to are correct, then *they are the case*. If they are the case they are part of the world just as we are--except even more so, because we will die and no longer be the case while they will continue to be the case forever. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Tue Oct 6 22:38:47 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 04:38:47 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, I said what I wanted to say and Rosa keeps evading my remarks to the effect that she wants to understand dialectics only from the speculative standpoint because, and I say this in a comradely way, she can only read them abstractly, so I think I'll put it to rest. The discussion at revleft shows this too on Rosa's part. But I appreciate she addresses me as a comrade, and so as a comrade, I'll leave her a quote from one of my favorite singers "Que no te den la raz?n los espejos, que te aproveche mirar lo que mir?s." --Joaqu?n Sabina which means "Don't let mirrors be the ones who prove you right, let looking that which you're looking at be of benefit to you." _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft?s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 03:06:46 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 09:06:46 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: <8A308570-D5FD-4C65-B567-4A48190DE02D@pipeline.com> References: Message-ID: So folks who do not subscribe to Marxism and "dialectics" are hidebound formalists incapable of any kind of nuanced or dynamic thinking? I remember Tim Wohlforth was big on these pretentions during his career as a sectarian cult leader. But what did he know about this stuff in reality? C'mon, only people with the mentality of simple minded religious believers subscribe to such formalism or are impressed with that critique of it. actually all that mumbo-jumbo reminded me a kind of extreme, ossified formalism, memorized cant. Maybe Dr. Irwin Corey can expound on this, he certainly would make more sense than Wohlforth did. What do they take people for? But then again, without subscribing to all of H.L. Mencken's reactionary views, this kinda brings to mind comment about Bible Thumpers, Prohibitionists, Patent Medicine Quacks and Socialists. > logic is *dialectic*, as anyone who has read Platon and his pupil > Aristoteles cannot be unaware. Formal logic's propositions apply to > *one* side of reality--the reality of unchanging, atemporal, > structure. They are thus inherently in tension with the other side of > reality--the reality of constant flux in which all material "things" > participate. Dialectical logic unites these two "opposite" sides of > reality. From that all else follows. > > Shane Mage > > > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > > > Herakleitos of Ephesos > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tcod%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 03:15:59 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 09:15:59 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies In-Reply-To: <8C1B1EBB-9402-457C-9AF8-18ACA420CB3D@pipeline.com> References: <20091006.201104.7176.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: C'mon, applied math is at the heart of science and engineering and lots more so it has a lot of "materiality"; a powerful human ideology that has transformed the world, technical though it may be. You don't have to be an expert, Red or otherwise, to see that. > On Oct 6, 2009, at 8:11 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote: > > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm > > "But, mathematics "deals with reality" only if one is a Platonist. > Where in the world, for example, is a Hermite polynomial, a partial > differential equation or even an Abelian Group? And, are we to suppose > that in a Scalar Field there are Real and/or Complex numbers (many of > which are infinitely long decimals!) floating about in space? Or that > in a Vector Field there are little arrows all pointing in certain > directions? Or even that there are Geodesics, everyone of which is > infinitely thin, made of nothing at all -- and yet infinitely strong > --, running throughout the entire universe, along which all objects in > a gravitational field must move, as if they were glued on to tram > lines?" _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft?s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 03:21:38 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 09:21:38 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: sounds like a straw man argument to me; I mean, who thinks that on here? Who denies the social context of history? give us a break. > From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com > Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:00:36 +0000 > Subject: [Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK > > And Aristotle and the whole mode of thinking of Greek society, obviously, fell from the sky. So Rosa, the Historical Materialist, can?t be bothered with explaining why logic came about as a product of the necessities of life, and instead gives us this accidental, bourgeois, at the very root, view that logic was the particular fancy of this particular philosopher which happens to work according to the ordinary language standard of clarity, which Rosa takes for granted. Remember? It is PEOPLE who make their own history, it is their actions, not your whimsical taste for clarity. > > And Marx, well he just happened to be a particular communist, but no relation to the historical conditions in which he lived though, no siree. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 03:29:01 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 09:29:01 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In other words its a tool or technology or ideology of the same that arose under certain circumstances and under a certain mode of production. The same could be said of the steam engine and the factory system. We all know that, what else is new? > From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com > Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 22:06:49 +0000 > Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK > > But what I mean by criticizing mathematics, or more correctly, hinting at a critique of it, is that science, and so mathematics, are relegated to the imperatives of capital, and so one ought to trace the material roots of abstract thinking to understand their social function. It's not that capital is this God hovering over people and so science is some kind of illegitimate surrogate endeavor, what I'm saying is that science is the modality of production of an objective consciousness, and qua production, it develops in capitalism. To cut a long story short, is not that science, mathematics, nor even logic, if understood as the science of thought and not its inversion as the thought which creates science, is mere abstraction and should be denigrated; it's that capitalism denigrates it by making it subject to its world of abstractions. > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tcod%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 05:02:09 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 07:02:09 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Another review of Michael Moore movie In-Reply-To: <4ACBEC04.3000808@panix.com> References: <4ACBEC04.3000808@panix.com> Message-ID: I'll add Chris Maisano's to the list http://theactivist.org/blog/two-cheers-for-michael-moore On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 9:16 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/vogel061009.html > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/bhaskar.sunkara%40gmail.com > From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 05:05:23 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 07:05:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Fox's Shep Smith arguing for Public Option in what's left of the Health Care Debate In-Reply-To: <6e42edf00910061723r3fac80e0sfef4a9702bedc42b@mail.gmail.com> References: <6e42edf00910061723r3fac80e0sfef4a9702bedc42b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Bill O'Reilly made an argument for the public option a while back too http://savingcache.com/?p=117 Smith is by far the most tolerable of the Fox News characters. On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: > > http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/fox-newss-shep-smith.php?ref=fpb > > I know this is a liberal vs. conservative debate, but I find it > compelling that Fox's Shep Smith has just stepped forward to argue > forcefully and convincingly in favor of a real public option to > private health car in the USA. Pretty interesting clip. > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/bhaskar.sunkara%40gmail.com > From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 06:58:25 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:58:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Antiwar movement revival? Message-ID: <4ACC9071.5050703@panix.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603714.html For Antiwar Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell? By Eli Saslow Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 7, 2009 The protesters convened for a final planning meeting, already triumphant, convinced that nine months of preparation was about to pay off. Antiwar organizers who had come to Washington from 27 states exchanged hugs inside a Columbia Heights convention hall and modeled their protest costumes: orange jumpsuits, "death masks," shackles and T-shirts depicting bloody Afghan children. Then Pete Perry, the event organizer, stood up to deliver a welcome speech. "This is a great moment for our movement," he said. "We are continuing an incredible tradition." "Like Gandhi," said the next speaker. "Like Martin Luther King," said another. A Sunday meeting and a Monday protest -- that was the agenda planned in advance of Wednesday's eighth anniversary of the start of the Afghan war. There had been other protests in Washington over the course of the conflict, dozens of them, but this time organizers believed they could revive the beleaguered antiwar movement, once such a force in U.S. policy. The next 48 hours would put their optimism on trial. With public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans opposing the war, organizers wanted at least 1,000 people to march through downtown, risk arrest by creating a ruckus at the White House and draw President Obama across the manicured North Lawn to meet with them. "The goal of this action is to hand-deliver a letter to Obama," Perry reminded the group. "We want a meeting to demand an end to this senseless violence." It would also set the stage for 42 rallies and protests scheduled to take place Wednesday around the country. After decades of decline in the antiwar movement -- from throngs of half a million to fringe rallies to almost nothing at all -- the job of organizers in Washington was to generate momentum for a historic week. Their work started Sunday afternoon, when about 50 organizers met to discuss final plans for a rally with a scope to match their ambition. They included veterans and pacifists, hippies and anarchists, feminists and Catholic workers. In total, there were more than a dozen "affinity groups," and each had choreographed its own demonstration for Monday's event. Some protesters would be shackled inside a cage, in solidarity with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some would reenact the deaths of U.S. soldiers near the White House fence. Some would read the names of civilians killed in Afghanistan. Some would carry cardboard coffins. "We have to be organized, or nobody will hear anything," Perry said. As the meeting progressed, there were signs of discord. Some groups wanted to chant while they marched to the White House; others argued that a solemn, single-file procession would convey a "better sense of suffering," one protester said. Some wanted to take bathroom breaks during the protest; others argued that participants could wait until they were in jail, after their arrests. Some planned to misidentify themselves to police; others said they would simply refuse to answer questions. "Lying is dumb," one protester shouted. "Just because my resistance is different than yours doesn't mean I'm dumb," another yelled back, standing now, clenching his fist. "We are all traveling down our own paths to peace." * * * Every faction agreed on at least one goal for Monday's rally, knowing all too well that the survival of the movement depended on it: This was the time to attract new protesters, with the war in Afghanistan continuing to dominate the news and Obama debating his next move. After Sunday's meeting, Perry, the organizer, held a training session for first-time demonstrators in the sanctuary of a church. He arrived prepared for a crowd, with a co-teacher and a thick stack of handouts. Instead, four people came. Three were experienced activists. Only one was a newcomer. Joan Wages, a mother of two, had driven five hours from Floyd, Va., to attend her first rally. She had voted for Obama but become disillusioned. Now she hoped to set an example for her children by "making my actions consistent with my beliefs," she said. "I've done a few really little protest things, but that's it," Wages told the instructors. "I really don't know what to expect." The instructors gave a brief lesson on the history of nonviolent resistance and then read motivational quotes from Buddhist monks. At the end of the class, they asked Wages to hold a make-believe vigil at the White House while the instructors mimicked angry right-wing activists and tried to bait her. Wages closed her eyes, set her hands in prayer and started singing. "We should run you over with a big war tank!" the instructors yelled. "We should shoot you with our guns!" they shouted. Wages continued to sing, undaunted, until the instructors broke from character to applaud. "You're ready," Perry said. "Just remember that nonviolence is a way of life," said Susan Crane, the co-instructor. "And that police officers are our brothers and sisters, too," Perry said. Wages thanked them and left the training seminar, but she struggled to fall asleep later that night. The session had been helpful in a "philosophical kind of way," she said later, but she still had logistical concerns about Monday's protest. Like: "Who will pick me up from jail?" And: "After we all pretend to die in front of the White House, can I get up and move or does everyone have to stay totally still?" * * * The protesters met Monday morning in McPherson Square, a slab of grass in downtown Washington named after a war hero. They had hoped to fill the park, but instead 176 protesters gathered in one corner. The crowd was all familiar faces from the antiwar movement, except for a homeless man sleeping on a bench, a bicyclist eating a scone and a Street Sense newspaper salesman who saw a business opportunity in the gathering. Eve Tetaz, 78, stood near a small sound stage and zipped up her orange jumpsuit. She had a trial pending from another protest, but she still planned to risk arrest Monday -- something she had done so often that preparing for jail was part of her routine. Phone numbers of fellow protesters were inked on her forearm so she could call from jail. A neighbor in Adams Morgan had agreed to watch her two cats. Her glaucoma medicine was packed underneath her jumpsuit. She wore a heavy sweatshirt that itched in the heat but would make for a fantastic pillow in a cell. "Jail is a little uncomfortable," Tetaz said, "but so is the dentist." On the stage in front of her, a rotation of speakers tried to excite the crowd. Two women strummed guitars and sang a folk song. Then a man recited a poem. Then a woman spoke about the persecution of blacks in Southeast Washington. Then another poet, and another singer, and a woman banging a tambourine, and a keynote speaker, and another folk song, this time performed in Hebrew. "We should be going soon," Tetaz said. Finally, an organizer stepped to the microphone and told the protesters to form a single-file line for the march to the White House. They were instructed to walk slowly, heads down, in absolute silence. "A solemn march," the speaker said. As the group departed, a few protesters smiled and chatted with nearby police officers. "Please everybody, a solemn march," the speaker reiterated, louder this time. "Solemn. Solemn." * * * The protesters arrived at the White House and quickly realized they were entering into a ruckus, not just creating one. A construction crew was at work on Pennsylvania Avenue, removing excess water with two loud industrial vacuums. Smaller protest groups -- one demanding to see Obama's birth certificate, another enraged about health care -- shouted chants of their own. A maintenance worker used a chain saw to trim a tree on the White House grounds. Inside the building, press secretary Robert Gibbs was telling reporters that leaving Afghanistan was "not something that had ever been entertained." The antiwar group launched into its demonstration, undeterred. One protester pretended to waterboard a war prisoner, screaming, "Tell me your secrets or else" as he poured distilled bottled water onto a friend's face. A woman wore shackles and a black bag over her head, the toenails on her bare feet painted a deep autumn red. Cindy Sheehan, a tireless protester, read from her International People's Declaration of Peace, and then, sensing an inattentive crowd, said, "I am going to skip a couple paragraphs and just go to the end." The marchers marched, the singers sang, the chanters chanted. Tourists turned their cameras away from the White House to take pictures of the protest. But there was a problem. "Why aren't the police doing anything?" one demonstrator asked, referring to the 15 uniformed officers who stood casually in the distance. The protesters wanted to engage them, so 15 activists wearing orange jumpsuits chained themselves to the White House fence. "Off the fence!" a police officer yelled, but the chains were locked. Five officers rode over on horseback. Five more put on black gloves and came with wire cutters. Now the Secret Service was clearing the sidewalk, and the Park Police was issuing a warning for the protesters to disperse, then a second, then a third. "We will have to arrest anyone who does not clear this area immediately," an officer announced over a megaphone. Sixty-two protesters stood their ground, and the police walked over slowly with plastic handcuffs. Sheehan was arrested at 1:11 p.m., and she smiled as police frisked her. Tetaz, the 78-year-old, was arrested at 1:14, ready for another trip to jail. Wages, the newcomer, pretended to be a dying soldier and remained motionless as she waited for arrest, only to be forcibly removed instead. Police loaded the protesters onto a Metro bus and drove them away from Pennsylvania Avenue. Those who had avoided arrest tallied the rally's impact: 62 arrests, 23 others forcibly removed. "A success," Perry said. As the protesters walked away from the White House, they made plans to leave for other rallies across the country Wednesday. One was headed to an action in New York, another to Austin and another to San Francisco. Two planned to attend an event in Chicago, where the organizer, John Beacham, expected a big crowd and possibly more arrests. "We think this could be a turning-point kind of moment," he said. From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 07:00:42 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:00:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] FARC recruits indigenous youth Message-ID: <4ACC90FA.4080700@panix.com> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-children7-2009oct07,0,3985173.story Colombia rebel groups recruiting indigenous youths A recent study found that 64% were 14 or younger when recruited, an expert on armed groups says. Many, eager to escape poverty and isolation, become prime targets for guerrilla recruiters. By Chris Kraul October 7, 2009 Reporting from Toribio, Colombia Craving adventure and escape from his broken home, Jerson enlisted with leftist guerrillas when he was in his early teens. He saw it as a way to emulate Che Guevara and bring social justice to this impoverished region of Colombia. Plus the rebels offered him new clothes and a cellphone. So three years ago the indigenous youth found himself in the Sixth Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which patrols the mountains of Cauca state. Two months later, chafing under strict rules and horrified by the killing of a childhood friend and fellow recruit by Colombian soldiers, he fled the rebel ranks. "I was just a mule forced to carry water to the camps, look for firewood and move things to keep a step ahead of the army. All you do is obey orders," said Jerson, now a 17-year-old high school student in Toribio, a town 150 miles southwest of Bogota, the capital. "But I couldn't forget how my friend was killed. I knew death was waiting for me if I stayed." Studies by Colombia's public defender and independent researchers indicate that the FARC and other armed groups increasingly are focusing their recruiting efforts on youths like Jerson, who declined to give his full name for fear of reprisal. Their success underscores the difficulty of ending the country's decades-long violence. Based on interviews with 8,000 rebels who have been captured or have surrendered since 2002, a recent study found that 64% were 14 or younger when recruited, said Natalia Springer, a dean at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota and an expert on children and armed groups. The FARC, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug traffickers see young people as prime candidates for recruitment because of their poverty, poor education opportunities and isolation, Springer said. Even the military at times presses youths to serve as informants or spies, human rights groups say. "The kids are attracted by the arms, the uniforms, the adventure and the money they are offered," Springer said in an interview in Bogota. "But they don't have the intellectual tools or maturity to make a decision by themselves. They are seduced." Young people living on Indian reservations, which provide indigenous Colombians with a degree of autonomy, are increasingly targeted by recruiters. Springer said nearly half of all those joining armed groups have indigenous backgrounds. "Armed groups don't just recruit anyone anywhere," she said. "They take a strategic approach in targeting vulnerable communities." "It's a general problem not limited to rebels or paramilitary groups," said an official with the Assn. of Indigenous Councils of North Cauca, a regional advocacy group known by its Spanish initials, ACIN. "The army and police are using us as informants and militia members." He spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The thousands of minors now believed to be fighting with armed groups put Colombia in the top tier of countries beset by the problem, which includes Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Colombian public defender's office calls it "a grave human rights crisis," and UNICEF has said that protecting youths is key to ending the nation's four-decade civil war. Youths from the estimated 100,000 transient families dedicated to seasonal harvesting of coca leaves, coffee, cotton and other crops in Colombia are also vulnerable to recruitment. Many are illiterate, homeless and prone to accept offers of an education, or of food when crops fail, Springer said. Toribio, an isolated farming town 90 minutes' drive up a winding mountain road east of the Pan-American Highway, is ripe recruiting ground for the FARC. The rebels, who maintain camps nearby, move cocaine through here to Pacific ports to the west and rely on numerous informants in the town. "The guerrillas circulate easily here," said the official with ACIN. "They can walk right up to people's houses, talk to the youths, offer economic resources that the families don't have." Julian, 19, an indigenous Toribio resident who joined the FARC three years ago, said the rebels recruit youths here because "people in the country can withstand hardship better than the white people down in the valley. We are more resistant and ready to risk everything." But Julian, who enlisted to escape family problems, fled the FARC after only three weeks. He also requested that his last name not be used for fear of retribution. "Life with the rebels is hard," he said. "You don't sleep, you're always hungry and if you make a mistake, they bring you before a war council. The penalties can be doing more guard duty or going before a firing squad." Jerson and Julian said it was easy to join because FARC informants and militia members are everywhere in the Toribio area and are active in the recruitment process. A few days after Jerson was interviewed last month, rebels attacked the town and briefly took up positions in the school where he had spoken with The Times, firing at the police station before army troops arrived in helicopters. None of the 1,000 children who attend the school were hurt. "They're always around and they have a better image than the army, which only comes up here to bother people," Jerson said of the FARC presence. With help from the United Nations and a Dutch social group called IKV Pax Christi, ACIN has begun a program called "Come Home" to reintegrate young ex-rebels into the community with education and economic support. About 60 former guerrillas from the Toribio area are participating, and an additional 250 would join if the program had more resources, ACIN officials said. The FARC usually does not allow desertions but tolerates the participation of demilitarized youths in the ACIN program in part because the guerrillas are seeking good relations with the indigenous community, officials said. Julian said the ACIN program helped him finance the construction of a small house and has paid him a small monthly stipend. His goal is to become a computer technician. "I'm thinking only about life now, not war," he said. Kraul is a special correspondent. From rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in Wed Oct 7 07:20:21 2009 From: rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in (Rajesh Roy) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 06:20:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: Some News from the Indian State's War Against the Adivasis In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <895142.98512.qm@web8406.mail.in.yahoo.com> It sounds so one-sided when titled this way.. how about the massacres of innocent Adivasis and villagers by the Maoists? How is that justified? Is Sanhati a Maoist mouthpiece ? ----- Original Message ---- From: Politicus E. To: rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in Sent: Wed, 7 October, 2009 2:13:58 AM Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: Some News from the Indian State's War Against the Adivasis f.y.i. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article appeared in Sakshi newspaper dated 18 September 2009 [Original in Telegu. In the interest of transparency, I must disclose that I have not translated this article.] Andhra Jyothy & Eenadu Saturday, 19-9-2009 Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rajeshcherian%40yahoo.co.in Now, send attachments up to 25MB with Yahoo! India Mail. Learn how. http://in.overview.mail.yahoo.com/photos From rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in Wed Oct 7 07:22:42 2009 From: rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in (Rajesh Roy) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 06:22:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: CPI(M) Intensifies State Repression in Kolkata In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <31554.21545.qm@web8404.mail.in.yahoo.com> Sanhati ought to first explain the massacre and witchhunt of CPI(M) cadres by the ultra-left-wing right-wing combo of the Maoist-TMC alliance over the past few months.. in effect, Sanhati is turning out to be a mouthpiece for Mamta Banerjee.. ----- Original Message ---- From: Politicus E. To: rajeshcherian at yahoo.co.in Sent: Wed, 7 October, 2009 2:01:51 AM Subject: [Marxism] [Sanhati] India: CPI(M) Intensifies State Repression in Kolkata Sanhati Statement on arrest of activists involved with the Lalgarh movement 6 October 2009 Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rajeshcherian%40yahoo.co.in Try the new Yahoo! India Homepage. Click here. http://in.yahoo.com/trynew From farmelantj at juno.com Wed Oct 7 07:22:30 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 13:22:30 GMT Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies Message-ID: <20091007.092230.21939.0@webmail23.vgs.untd.com> Note that Rosa has added some additional responses on the following page. http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm ____________________________________________________________ House Rescue Bill Passed $133,000 mortgage under $679/mo. Compare rates and save! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=sjT4bXvEvpS8_zdsQHDRRgAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQAAAAFAAAAACK2lD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaTcQAAAAA= From ecosocialism at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 08:11:28 2009 From: ecosocialism at gmail.com (Ian Angus) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 10:11:28 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Reading from the Left - Economic Crisis Message-ID: <733b65360910070711s6a1649b6labea0e2c209d16c3@mail.gmail.com> READING FROM THE LEFT http://www.readingfromtheleft.com A non-commercial project to promote socialist pamphlets and books from a wide range of publishers. We make available full texts of pamphlets, and chapters of socialist books, as free PDF downloads. Online Now: New Publications on the Economic Crisis THE ABCS OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS: WHAT WORKING PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW, by Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates (Monthly Review Press) (Preface and first two chapters, PDF) FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: CANADA, THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND POLITICAL STRUGGLE 17 articles by Leo Panitch, David McNally, Greg Albo, Adam Hanieh and others (Socialist Project) (Full text, PDF) COSTS OF EMPIRE: 'TIME-BOMBS,' ANARCHY, GUNS AND THE NEW DEPRESSION by Eddy Laing (Kasama Project) (Full text, PDF) MELTDOWN! A SOCIALIST VIEW OF THE CAPITALIST CRISIS by Tony Iltis, Lee Sustar, John Bellamy Foster, Phil Hearse, Adam Hanieh, Dave Holmes (Resistance Books) (Full text, PDF) +++++++++++++ Finding What You Want: Reading from the Left now has four online catalogs to help you find what's online. You can search for all titles by publisher, books by title, pamphlets by title, or pamphlets by subject. From avvakum at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 08:14:46 2009 From: avvakum at gmail.com (Thomas Campbell) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 17:14:46 +0300 Subject: [Marxism] Partisan Songspiel: A Belgrade Story (new video film by Chto Delat) Message-ID: http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/partisan-songspiel-a-belgrade-story/ A video film by Chto Delat Music by Mikhail Krutik Director: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya) Assistant Directors: Vladan Jeremi?, Rena R?dle, Dmitry Vilensky Script and Stage Design: Vladan Jeremi?, Tsaplya, Rena R?dle, Dmitry Vilensky Costume Design: Natalya Pershina (Gluklya) Choreography: Nina Gasteva Editing and Post-Production: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya) and Dmitry Vilensky Production was done in Belgrade in July 2009 by Biro Beograd za Kulturu i Komunikaciju. The film presents an analysis of a concrete situation: Partisan Songspiel begins with a representation of the political oppression (forced evictions) the government of the city of Belgrade visited on the Roma people inhabiting the settlement of Belleville, on the occasion of the summer Universiade Belgrade 2009. It also addresses a more universal political message about the existence of the oppressors and the oppressed: in this case, the city government, war profiteers and business tycoons versus groups of disadvantaged people ? factory workers, NGO/minoritarian activists, disabled war veterans, and ethnic minorities. At the same time the film establishes something that we can call the ?horizon of historical consciousness,? which is represented through the choir of ?dead partisans? who comment on the political dialogue between the oppressors and the oppressed. From sartesian at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 08:26:52 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 10:26:52 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies References: <20091007.092230.21939.0@webmail23.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <9FD14B4E26824F21AAC18C79E0BB5926@dmsthinkpad> Besides the sheer repetitiveness of Rosa's answers, her distortions of what Marx wrote, her rigid schemes that serve her arguments by ignoring the totality of Marx's work-- correspondence not permitted, only those parts of unpublished works that agree, reinforce Rosa's distortion of published works allowed, her insistence when presented with the elements of the contradictions of capital that Marx analyzed as contradiction, as the dialectic of capital, that Marx was only coquetting with the words dialectic and contradiction, AND that noone can explain what a dialectical contradiction is--- besides all that, it is her contention that: 1) dialectic, contradiction, etc. are ruling class ideologies designed to obscure the...what? The actual content of the class domination? Perhaps, but if it is an ideology designed to do just that, then the appearance of the class domination, how the bourgeoisie presents, administers, and is in turn compelled by its capitalism, its relation to its property, must be opposed to that actual content, and since both must be grounded in the material conditions, the social organization of labor, we are right back to Marx's dialectic of history, Hegel's tension, antagonism, contradictiion whatever you want to call between appearance and essence, actual and potential, and on and on we go. 2. And there's more.... that this insidious ideology has in fact led Marxism to defeat over the last 100-150 years. The fact that Lenin, for better or worse, took up the study of Hegel and apparently found it helpful in a profound apprehension of the real dynamics of the only successful, self-conscious, proletariant revolution in history, is not of course evidence to the contrary. The actual material of the defeat of the revolution, profoundly non-ideological, existing in tactics, strategy, actual material organization of the proletariat-- that doesn't matter either because you see the failures in tactics, strategy, material organization are all the result of infection with Hegelian herpes [and I'm sure Rosa will adopt that faux description of dialectic as one of her "characterizations" of dialectic]. 3. And there's more: She has nothing to say about capitalism, about capital. Not a word about any of the issues Marx analyzes in Vol 1; not a word about the subjects undertaken, but certainly not exhausted in Vol 2 and Vol 3; not a shred of examination about how and why capital functions as it does anywhere, and anytime, past or present. Nothing. No demonstration of how her assertion of Marx's extirpation of Hegel in Vol 1, not to mention Vols. 2,3 is actually carried out in his concrete analysis of wage-labor and capital. And in fact although she denies it, she is in fact doing nothing but repeating Althusser's argument of an epistemological rupture in Marx by claiming as she does-- that prior to Capital, Marx was influenced, tainted, by Hegel, but not in Vol 1, and not after... except when "coquetting." Of course, Marx practices safe coquetting, otherwise he'd get herpes. And... this transformation happens, apparently, all at once, because Rosa engages in no historical examination of Marx's work itself-- she shows no transition, no development of anti-Hegelianism [how could she? first none exists, secondly if it did exist, if it did develop-- why that itself might be evidence of dialectic, especially of the gradual changes accumulated to the point where Marx achieved a breakthrough--- then we'd have the old quantity into quality thing, and good-bye Rosa]. 4. And there's more In fact all of Rosa's efforts serve either to a) satisfy her need for self-aggrandizement-- she knows the truth, she grasps the reality b) duel with the ghost of Hegel, utilizing her popgun of positivism to recuperate actual history, the examination of the dialectic of the relations of production and the means of production, into speculative consciousness; into language philosophy. It is not a discussion we engage with Rosie the derivator, it is a tic... ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 9:22 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies > > Note that Rosa has added some additional > responses on the following page. > > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm From sebastian at amadeobordiga.u-net.com Wed Oct 7 09:00:31 2009 From: sebastian at amadeobordiga.u-net.com (Sebastian Budgen) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 17:00:31 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Now Out. HM 17.3 Message-ID: <4FAE7FB6-C934-4943-BE6C-57CE73560892@amadeobordiga.u-net.com> www.brill.nl/hima To subscribe, write to: historicalmaterialism at soas.ac.uk Historical Materialism Research in Critical Marxist Theory Volume 17 Issue 3 2009 CONTENTS Articles Massimo de Angelis and David Harvie ?Cognitive Capitalism? and the Rat-Race: How Capital Measures Immaterial Labour in British Universities Iain Pirie The Political Economy of Academic Publishing Maria Turchetto Althusser and Monod: A ?New Alliance?? Reflections on ?Gewalt? (contd.) Vittorio Morfino The Syntax of Violence. Between Hegel and Marx Archive David Fernbach Editorial Introduction to Paul Levi?s Our Path: Against Putschism and What Is the Crime: The March Action or Criticising It? Paul Levi Our Path: Against Putschism Paul Levi What Is the Crime: The March Action or Criticising It? Interventions Alberto Toscano Partisan Thought Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho Twixt Ricardo and Rubin: Debating Kincaid Once More Jim Kincaid The Logical Construction of Value Theory: More on Fine and Saad-Filho Review Articles Christian H?gsbjerg on Frank Rosengarten?s Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society and Brett St Louis?s Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics: C.L.R. James? Critique of Modernity Robert T. Tally Jr on Loren Goldner?s Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic Man: Race, Class, and the Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology in the American Renaissance Writer Seongjin Jeong on Iain Pirie?s The Korean Developmental State: From Dirigisme to Neo-Liberalism Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism Peter Thomas Catharsis From sartesian at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 10:11:00 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 12:11:00 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] How About That?! Message-ID: <84C144F92C6F4ADAA50FEF582DC486C9@dmsthinkpad> Second estimates for the second quarter of 2009 Euro area GDP down by 0.2% and EU27 GDP down by 0.3%, -4.8% and -4.9% respectively compared with the second quarter of 2008 Euro area1 (EA16) GDP fell by 0.2% and EU271 GDP by 0.3% during the second quarter of 2009, compared with the previous quarter, according to second estimates from Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. In the first quarter of 2009, growth rates were -2.5% in the euro area and -2.4% in the EU27. In comparison with the same quarter of the previous year, seasonally adjusted GDP declined in the second quarter of 2009 by 4.8% in the euro area and by 4.9% in the EU27, after -4.9% and -4.8% respectively in the previous quarter. In the second quarter of 2009, among Member States for which seasonally adjusted GDP data are available, Slovakia (+2.2%) recorded the highest growth rate compared with the previous quarter, followed by Slovenia (+0.7%) and Poland (+0.5%). Variation in components of GDP In the second quarter of 2009, household2 final consumption expenditure increased by 0.1% in the euro area and decreased by 0.1% in the EU27 (after -0.5% and -0.9% respectively in the previous quarter). Investments fell by 1.5% in the euro area and by 2.3% in the EU27 (after -5.4% and -6.0%). Exports fell by 1.5% in the euro area and by 1.7% in the EU27 (after -9.2% and -8.6%). Imports decreased by 2.9% in both zones (after -7.9% and -8.3%). From: Eurostat As Mel Allen used to say 'How About That?! And... How About Those Yankees! Who says money can't buy love? I love the Yankees, all $240 million payroll worth, all 1 billion in tax free bonds that I'll pay taxes on to cover the coupon, all that and beers for $11 a pop? How lucky can a guy get? But I really do love the Yankees. Sue me. Nobody's perfect. Caveat emptor-- inside every Yankee there's a little bitty George Steinbrenner just dying to come out. From farmelantj at juno.com Wed Oct 7 10:31:03 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:31:03 GMT Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies Message-ID: <20091007.123103.22280.1@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> Also, www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1564605&postcount=97 and www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1564633&postcount=98 ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "farmelantj at juno.com" To: farmelantj at juno.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 13:22:30 GMT Note that Rosa has added some additional responses on the following page. http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm ____________________________________________________________ House Rescue Bill Passed $133,000 mortgage under $679/mo. Compare rates and save! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=sjT4bXvEvpS8_zdsQHDRRgAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQAAAAFAAAAACK2lD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaTcQAAAAA= ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/farmelantj%40juno.com From sartesian at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 10:53:42 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 12:53:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies References: <20091007.123103.22280.1@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: There are two questions at stake in this whole "discussion." Is there any substance, any real content to Hegel's logic, or is it all as Rosa argues "mysticism," "irrationality"? Whatever the answer to the first question, did Marx think there was any real content to Hegel's logic, to dialectic, or did Marx consider it to be all mysticisim and irrationality? The first question is posed in terms that Rosa might like, but that make it impossible to answer, as the answer has to be found in the concrete-- in actual history. The second question? If you read, actually read Marx's work, the published and unpublished works, Vol 1,2,3, Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse, the correspondence with Engels, the German Ideology, etc.etc.etc., there is no doubt about the answer to that. Marx is explicit on the "method" of dialectics, and the rationality of dialectics, finding and extracting the rational kernel of Hegel's dialectic. I do not mean to discourage anyone from challenging Rosa. On the contrary, have at it. But there is simply nothing to be learned by engaging in a discussion with Rosa. It's like arguing with Ayn Rand-- or a positivist. . ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 12:31 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Rosa's latest replies From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 10:54:02 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:54:02 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Calm down Tom, I think you?re jumping in on the discussion a tad late. It's not a question about you or Rosa ?accepting?, in the abstract, the historical roots of Aristotle's logic. The question Rosa answered, abstractly and only too evasively, by saying ?it came from aristotle, so what??, was ?where does logic come from Rosa??. It wasn't a question of ?facts?, and I could care less as to how we should label Aristotle, and labeling seems all that Rosa can do. It's about explaining these social material roots by investigating what were the material neccesities which gave rise to the common assumptions and concepts which logic starts from, because otherwise one is bound to get lost in an opinionistic maze of ahistorical abstractions and tautologies. My point was that Rosa's pseudo-Kantian (Kant, ?the philosopher of the french revolution?, Marx called him) "quibble" with the metaphysical obscurantism of the dialectic is only done from an abstract ahistorical point of view. To start criticizing metaphysics with pure logic one has to show first that logic pressuposes no metaphysical assumptions (which only unfortunately for the pure formalism of Rosa, it does,) for practical purposes, let's just say these are 'un-provable' assumptions from which logic must start from. Unless you want to say that criticizing ideas for being metaphysical with another metaphysics is reasonacle. These are justified, Rosa claims, by being ?common-sense? or ?clear? (like Rosa?s paraconsistent and deontic logic, or Ludwig?s tractatus), but this is shibboleth. It?s to start from the purely formal, unconscious, and uncritical standpoint. Where's the historical necessity, where do we see an argument which shows how these assumptions were necessary for the materialization of labor? It?s hardly a simple problem I admit, and at no point do I mean that the investigation, which is empirical and scientific, should be dismissed as saying that logic is ?abstract? just like that, that's why I referred to the literature, and that involves dealing with the atomism of analytic philosophy. I think a critique of this is well-argued in the beginning of Errol Harris? ?Formal, Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking?. As for the common sense assumptions and concepts, I referred to the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel which argues that the abstrat mode of thinking derives from the real abstraction of exchange (it being abstract because exchange must be separated from use,) leading all the way up to the fetishism of intellectual labor, do you have a better suggestion? _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ From dgn.gcmn at googlemail.com Wed Oct 7 11:29:03 2009 From: dgn.gcmn at googlemail.com (Dogan Gocmen) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:29:03 +0300 Subject: [Marxism] Turkish Journal of Political Economy Message-ID: For Turkish readers: The advert issue of the Turkish Journal of Political Economy (Ekonomi Politik:Uluslararas? Ele?tirel Katk?lar) has just come out. Anybody interested can order a copy or copies for free from *Dipnot Yay**?**nlar**?*** Selanik Cad. No: 82/32 K?z?lay / Ankara Tel: (0 312) 4192932 / Faks: (0 312) 4192532. If you want to support us you are always welcome to donate. Thank you for your interests... -- Dogan G?cmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, London&New York 2007 From d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr Wed Oct 7 12:34:59 2009 From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr (Daniel Koechlin) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:34:59 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics Message-ID: <4ACCDF53.3050906@wanadoo.fr> Marx was a profoundly nuanced, non-dogmatic thinker. His thinking was made up of many strands, his insights into the concrete workings of capitalism and its eventual breakdown (or lack thereof) were ever evolving. Nevertheless, he was deeply aware of the contradictions between appearences and reality, between exchange-value and use-value, between the capitalist imperative to expand and the resistance of the working class. He jeered at the farce of vulgar bourgeois economics, whose real agenda has always been upholding the status quo. But he never got down to finishing Capital and actually spelling out which (out of the many) contradictions of capital, would ultimately lead to its replacement by communism. I suspect he never had the time to actually formulate a precise theory of economic crisis. We are left, in Capital III, with the law of diminishing profits due to increases in constant capital ( at the C-M level), with a theory of disproportionality between sectors I and II (in Capital II), with an understanding of the struggle over surplus-value between workers and capitalists (Capital I). Marx doesn't seem to have seriously subscribed to the underconsumptionist, Sismondian, Keynsian, view that wages were insufficient to realize profits. Anyway, Marx was a very subtle dialectician, always careful not to ascribe one single, absolute, cause to any single phenomenon. I myself find Marx's extant writings (both published and unpublished during his lifetime) to be much closer to anti-authoritarian, libertarian communism than to so-called Marxism-Leninism. I don't think he quite envisioned "proletarian dictatorship" as individuals vying for power by manipulating a political party or their influence in the armed forces. He thought that the working class should become the dominant class, and that workers should emancipate themselves from the shackles of class oppression. Had Marx had time to complete his work on the State, he would probably have lambasted any notion that the State should become the overseer of the working class and deny the working class any say in the managing of its own affairs. As far as I am concerned, Lenin is quite anti-marxist in this respect. From sartesian at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 12:46:26 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 14:46:26 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics References: <4ACCDF53.3050906@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: I agree and enjoy much of what you say, Daniel-- but not all, not the part where you say Lenin is anti-marxist in the respect that the state should deny the working class any say in the managing its own affairs. First because I don't believe you can find Lenin saying that, or arguing that, and if the argument that Lenin actually did that, then my second objection kicks-- namely that you are attributing to Lenin what really needs to be attributed to history, to the material forces the revolution had to encounter, indeed the material forces that while making the revolution possible, made that revolution limited without its completion through revolution in the advanced countries. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Koechlin" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 2:34 PM Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics > Marx was a profoundly nuanced, non-dogmatic thinker. > > His thinking was made up of many strands, his insights into the concrete > workings of capitalism and its eventual breakdown (or lack thereof) were > ever evolving. > > Nevertheless, he was deeply aware of the contradictions between > appearences and reality, between exchange-value and use-value, between > the capitalist imperative to expand and the resistance of the working > class. > > He jeered at the farce of vulgar bourgeois economics, whose real agenda > has always been upholding the status quo. > > But he never got down to finishing Capital and actually spelling out > which (out of the many) contradictions of capital, would ultimately lead > to its replacement by communism. > > I suspect he never had the time to actually formulate a precise theory > of economic crisis. We are left, in Capital III, with the law of > diminishing profits due to increases in constant capital ( at the C-M > level), with a theory of disproportionality between sectors I and II (in > Capital II), with an understanding of the struggle over surplus-value > between workers and capitalists (Capital I). Marx doesn't seem to have > seriously subscribed to the underconsumptionist, Sismondian, Keynsian, > view that wages were insufficient to realize profits. > > Anyway, Marx was a very subtle dialectician, always careful not to > ascribe one single, absolute, cause to any single phenomenon. > > I myself find Marx's extant writings (both published and unpublished > during his lifetime) to be much closer to anti-authoritarian, > libertarian communism than to so-called Marxism-Leninism. I don't think > he quite envisioned "proletarian dictatorship" as individuals vying for > power by manipulating a political party or their influence in the armed > forces. > > He thought that the working class should become the dominant class, and > that workers should emancipate themselves from the shackles of class > oppression. Had Marx had time to complete his work on the State, he > would probably have lambasted any notion that the State should become > the overseer of the working class and deny the working class any say in > the managing of its own affairs. As far as I am concerned, Lenin is > quite anti-marxist in this respect. > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net From russo.matthew9 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 13:19:02 2009 From: russo.matthew9 at gmail.com (Matthew Russo) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 12:19:02 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? Message-ID: <1b7033e60910071219y26176a5l9d59085bac4987e1@mail.gmail.com> Well, clearly the military brass sense that Obama is just plain weak, and having seen the successes of first Wall Street and then the "health care" cartel, are stepping up for their turn in line to bully the Wimp in Chief. The sharks smell blood, and circle the waters. There will be no "coup", as one is not necessary. All such talk probably emanates from the conspiracy minded Democratic Party Left, as conspiracy theorizing is always the substitute for an absence of strategy. -Matt Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 03:05:06 -0400 From: "jayroth6" Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? To: Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" At a recent political meeting I attended, some activists expressed their fear of whether Obama could remain in office if he denied General Stanley McChrystal's demand for 40 thousand more U.S. combat troops for Afghanistan. I thought their fears were absurd on the face of it: no president has been a bigger booster of Washington's course of war and plunder at home and abroad than Obama. Why else would he have the job? And now I read here http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o06.shtml: From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 13:23:49 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:23:49 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? In-Reply-To: <1b7033e60910071219y26176a5l9d59085bac4987e1@mail.gmail.com> References: <1b7033e60910071219y26176a5l9d59085bac4987e1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACCEAC5.9000602@panix.com> Matthew Russo wrote: > Well, clearly the military brass sense that Obama is just plain weak, and > having seen the successes of first Wall Street and then the "health care" > cartel, are stepping up for their turn in line to bully the Wimp in Chief. > > The sharks smell blood, and circle the waters. There will be no "coup", as > one is not necessary. All such talk probably emanates from the conspiracy > minded Democratic Party Left, as conspiracy theorizing is always the > substitute for an absence of strategy. > I am too damned busy with work to get to blogging about this, but agree totally with Matthew's analysis. In fact, I plan to quote his earlier post explaining the weakness of Obama in historical terms vis-a-vis FDR's boldness. Maybe tomorrow if I can get my stupid syperl script working. From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 13:28:06 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:28:06 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: hmmm . . . the origins of private property, family and the state by Engels? Clearly human ideology, including "common sense", has material roots in the evolution of humankind as does the much maligned "pragmatism", a new word for an old way of thinking I think William James characterized it, but worthy nonetheless, like "trial and error" or the "scientific method" more generally, unless we work backwards, like "Ptolemaic" medieval astronomers and creation scientists from conclusions and precepts to cherry pick facts to support our particular shibboleths. It's good that, to the extent I'm following you at this point, you're not doing that, as I've seen plenty of sectarian ideologues do that over the years. Also, to say that scientific theory has material roots, does not mean that it must have a "class character" in some mechanical way, except perhaps in a more broad way that for example, Galileo's ideas were part of the world outlook of the rising bourgois or merchant class in conflict with the ossified feudal world etc.(and which Henry VIII's destruction of the monastaries was, for good or ill, part of) Otherwise we wind up like TD Lysenko and end up wrecking the independent scientific research and work that is needed to advance society. Metaphysical assumptions? hey, if you're living in a primitive hunter gatherer society, those suppositions, based on the level of empirical knowledge of the world available to humans at the time and their level of scarcity that did not have surplus enough for specialized division of labor, surely seemed not too irrational and were precisely rooted in those material conditions and level of literacy. To give the devil its due, however, certain ideas are metaphysical to this extent, even though they arose in a certain material context, they can be proved as mathematical or geometrical proofs without direct reference to the physical material world, whose relations they are an abstract expression of. In fact, now that I think about it, all ideas are metaphysical theories to the extent they are human ideas, the question is to what extent do they approximate and accurately reflect reality. God in Heaven, well, maybe not; the history of all hitherto society is one of class struggle, the fair approximation which "social science" can aspire to; 2+2=4, a reflection of reality to what we call a "scientific certainty" although nothing is necessarily immutable I guess. > From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com > Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:54:02 +0000 > Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) > To: tcod at hotmail.com > > > Calm down Tom, I think you?re jumping in on the discussion a tad late. It's not a question about you or Rosa ?accepting?, in the abstract, the historical roots of Aristotle's logic. The question Rosa answered, abstractly and only too evasively, by saying ?it came from aristotle, so what??, was ?where does logic come from Rosa??. It wasn't a question of ?facts?, and I could care less as to how we should label Aristotle, and labeling seems all that Rosa can do. It's about explaining these social material roots by investigating what were the material neccesities which gave rise to the common assumptions and concepts which logic starts from, because otherwise one is bound to get lost in an opinionistic maze of ahistorical abstractions and tautologies. > My point was that Rosa's pseudo-Kantian (Kant, ?the philosopher of the french revolution?, Marx called him) "quibble" with the metaphysical obscurantism of the dialectic is only done from an abstract ahistorical point of view. To start criticizing metaphysics with pure logic one has to show first that logic pressuposes no metaphysical assumptions (which only unfortunately for the pure formalism of Rosa, it does,) for practical purposes, let's just say these are 'un-provable' assumptions from which logic must start from. Unless you want to say that criticizing ideas for being metaphysical with another metaphysics is reasonacle. These are justified, Rosa claims, by being ?common-sense? or ?clear? (like Rosa?s paraconsistent and deontic logic, or Ludwig?s tractatus), but this is shibboleth. It?s to start from the purely formal, unconscious, and uncritical standpoint. Where's the historical necessity, where do we see an argument which shows how these assumptions were necessary for the materialization of labor? > It?s hardly a simple problem I admit, and at no point do I mean that the investigation, which is empirical and scientific, should be dismissed as saying that logic is ?abstract? just like that, that's why I referred to the literature, and that involves dealing with the atomism of analytic philosophy. I think a critique of this is well-argued in the beginning of Errol Harris? ?Formal, Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking?. > As for the common sense assumptions and concepts, I referred to the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel which argues that the abstrat mode of thinking derives from the real abstraction of exchange (it being abstract because exchange must be separated from use,) leading all the way up to the fetishism of intellectual labor, do you have a better suggestion? > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tcod%40hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ From d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr Wed Oct 7 13:38:05 2009 From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr (Daniel Koechlin) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:38:05 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin Message-ID: <4ACCEE1D.2070408@wanadoo.fr> I've seen a reference to Daniel Guerin on this list, in the post on Victor Serge's ( a famous anarchist-communist) novels. So I thought I would take this opportunity to remind readers of who Daniel Geurin really was. Daniel Guerin was quite an influential thinker. Since the 1930s, he strove to reconcile anarchism and marxism, his own position being that of "libertarian Marxism". Like many French Trotskyists of the 1930s-1950s, he was dissatisfied with the glib treatment of Stalinism by mainstream Trotskyites. Many other French "Libertarian Marxists" began to challenge the views held by Bolsheviks. Cornelius Castoriadis and Simon Lefort started "Socialisme ou Barbarie" (Socialism or Barbarianism) which was interested in race relations, cultural imperialism, advertising, productivism and the emergence of a non-productive "sales force" class. Guy Debord and Raoul Vanneigem started the Situationist International. All these groups sought to rehabilitate the "left-communists" of the 20s (Pannenkoek, Luxemburg, Gross...), the 19th century anarcho-communists (Kropotkin and Malatesta) and vent their disappointment with the way Trotskyism was heading. They were also in contact with such figures as Victor Serge, Paul Mattick and the remnants of the Workers' Opposition in exile. Well, back to Daniel Guerin. His blending of anarchism and Marxism proved extremely popular in France before and after 1968. Unfortunately, translations of his works into English are rare. I might actually attempt to translate his prolific body of work, if I find the time that is. Daniel Guerin helped found AL (Libertarian Alternative - Union of Libertarian Communist Workers) the largest current Anarchist organization in France. He was also openly gay and was one of the first thinkers to defend gay-rights (at a time when the Communist Party defined homosexuality as a "bourgeois perversion"). His most famous writings include "Marx the Anarchist", "Anarchism and Marxism", "Towards Libertarian Communism", "Black people on the march" and "Fascism and Big Business". From russo.matthew9 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 13:40:05 2009 From: russo.matthew9 at gmail.com (Matthew Russo) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 12:40:05 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] At last, something of use from NLR Message-ID: <1b7033e60910071240y389f7923ub62dc97b4f4ee790@mail.gmail.com> Hope it is accessible: http://www.newleftreview.org/A2799 Gopal Balakrishnan SPECULATIONS ON THE STATIONARY STATE Now to plow thru both this and Brenner's 75 page essay. 2/3rds the way thru the latter, it is so far largely an empirical study to bolster the case for a manifest tendency for the falling rate of profit in what Balakrishnan is now calling the "long 1970's". I'm in fundamental agreement with the thesis, of course, but note that Brenner has had little to say so far about the "counter-tendential" case, China. In this regard it tends to dwell a bit too much on the dynamics of financial "bubblenomics" and hence tends to see the world capitalist economy through too much of a U.S. centric lens. -Matt From naskha3 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 13:45:59 2009 From: naskha3 at gmail.com (Nasir Khan) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:45:59 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] UN MUST ACT ON GOLDSTONE AND THE PA MUST BE DISSOLVED In-Reply-To: <53a1ffe70910061324g4cd2ad8fi9f19a10ded9d5eda@mail.gmail.com> References: <53a1ffe70910061324g4cd2ad8fi9f19a10ded9d5eda@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <18d70e600910071245o6397e43eo8382a7c0245515a8@mail.gmail.com> Comrade Brasky, your postings are always on-spot and provide much information. I deeply appreciate your meaningful contribution to the cause of an oppressed and subjugated people. It is not secret that Zionists have too many collaborators and sympathizers in the seemingly Left circles. But Palestinians have some sincere friends in the Left, too. In solidarity Nasir Khan On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Dennis Brasky wrote: >> >> UN MUST ACT ON GOLDSTONE AND THE PA MUST BE DISSOLVED >> By Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009 >> >> Succumbing to US pressure and unabashed Israeli blackmail, >> Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Ramallah Palestinian >> Authority (PA), was reportedly personally responsible for >> the decision to defer UN Security Council consideration of >> the Goldstone report. This dashed the hopes of >> Palestinians everywhere as well as those of international >> human rights organizations and solidarity movements, that >> Israel would finally face a long overdue process of legal >> accountability and that its victims would have a measure >> of justice. >> >> http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10812.shtml >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------- >> >> PALESTINE : OPINION/EDITORIAL: >> >> TIME TO RE-ENGAGE WITH PEOPLE POWER >> By Saree Makdisi, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009 >> >> Bereft of any credible or legitimate leadership, the >> Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to >> continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. >> Indeed, their struggle has been at its best, for example, >> during the first intifada of the 1980s, when the official >> leadership -- at the time in exile in Tunis -- was >> actually least involved in it. Saree Makdisi comments for >> The Electronic Intifada. >> >> http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10811.shtml >> > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/naskha3%40gmail.com > From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 14:08:18 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:08:18 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics In-Reply-To: <4ACCDF53.3050906@wanadoo.fr> References: <4ACCDF53.3050906@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: No beef with Marx, actually he and Engels weren't half as pretentious or obscurantist in their style as many of their epigones, all too many of whom are talmudic and ossified in their thinking and thus unduly marginalized in their social and political life as a result, something that's fine with the ruling class obviously. Neither did Marx and Engels write in the style of say, "post modern literary criticism", which as even Christopher Hitchens has pointed out, is basically an "inside baseball" psuedo social critique that while talking "deconstruction" actually seeks to reify and mystify the nihilistic ideas and interests of privileged intellectuals as yuppie nabobs and which winds up as so much self-serving bullshit for that reason. In trying to deconstruct "permanent revolution" I went to the Wikipedia article on it, for example, which roots in Marx's "Holy Family", excellent pamphlet job perusing European history back to Bonaparte, the original one, and all the moralistic calumny that was heaped on him by the reactionary classes at the time as part of their crusade (The Holy Alliance) against him and the legacy of the French Revolution or Wage Labor and Capital etc. Lenin and Mao were also excellent "popular" writers in this style. Moreover, I think Marx was influenced by actual common workers and unionists he knew (Moses Hess?) Isaiah Berlin's brief bio of Marx is excellent, the author while not a Marxist, clearly understands his subject and his era and the contribution of Marx in battering down feudal ideology and setting modern social and historical thinking on a materialist, sociological basis and not on the basis of the sanctification or demonization of individual leaders as good or bad people or other mysterious forces. And of course any analysis of social reality must not be limited to or even oriented around the study of sacred texts but focused on investigating material reality today. Thus way too much gloss on Capital that makes the eyes glaze over and way too little on the current economic situation. "Bourgois economics" may be a vulgar farce indeed, but where's the marxist analysis of it, we could use more of it. That's what workers and people really need from intellectuals in this period. Skip Vol 3, talk about derivatives and hedge funds, the collapse of the housing market etc. Sartesian had a gook link to a comic book on this, besides that I haven't seen too much on here about these burning issues. For example, why was Marx's father a convert to Christianity? Simple, in the wake of the triumph of counter revolution and the return to "legitimacy" in 1815, the laws liberating the jews were rescinded, they were expelled from all professions and ordered back into their ghettos, something his attorney father was not too keen to accept after twenty years. reactionary? yeah, the word itself originates from this period. > Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:34:59 +0200 > From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr > Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics > To: tcod at hotmail.com > > Marx was a profoundly nuanced, non-dogmatic thinker. > > His thinking was made up of many strands, his insights into the concrete > workings of capitalism and its eventual breakdown (or lack thereof) were > ever evolving. > _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222984/direct/01/ From tcod at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 14:13:22 2009 From: tcod at hotmail.com (Tom Cod) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:13:22 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: <4ACCEE1D.2070408@wanadoo.fr> References: <4ACCEE1D.2070408@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: Below is an excellent exchange between two authors on issues related to Marxism and Anarchism: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/Proyect.html http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/Proyect_reply.html Moreover, I think most of us are aware of Guerin's excellent "Fascism and Big Business". _________________________________________________________________ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ From shmage at pipeline.com Wed Oct 7 14:41:14 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:41:14 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: <4ACCEE1D.2070408@wanadoo.fr> References: <4ACCEE1D.2070408@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: On Oct 7, 2009, at 3:38 PM, Daniel Koechlin wrote: > > Daniel Guerin helped found AL (Libertarian Alternative - Union of > Libertarian Communist Workers) the largest current Anarchist > organization in France. He was also openly gay and was one of the > first thinkers to defend gay-rights (at a time when the Communist > Party > defined homosexuality as a "bourgeois perversion"). > > His most famous writings include "Marx the Anarchist", "Anarchism and > Marxism", "Towards Libertarian Communism", "Black people on the march" > and "Fascism and Big Business". > You leave out Gu?rin's 2-volume magnum opus: "Bourgeois et Bras Nus: La Lutte des Classes sous la Premi?re R?publique." Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From artkunkin at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 15:03:34 2009 From: artkunkin at gmail.com (Arthur Kunkin) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 14:03:34 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin and C.L.R.James Message-ID: Dear Friends, In the current thread on Daniel Guerin, there should be a mention of C.L.R. James. In the Summer of 1948 (1949?), I was a member of a small discussion group conducted by C.L.R. James during the time that James was translating into English Guerin's book on the Class Struggles in France. That unfinished manuscript is housed in the C.L.R. James collection at the University of Trinidad. I may have all or part of that manuscript. Art Kunkin (My blog is at artkunkin.com). -- *I can teach YOU how you MIGHT be able to stay alive, healthy and happy for 200 years or more. Seriously! A new insight into ancient science! Please see my fre-e 'Immortality & Health Blog" at artkunkin.com. My eBook is at www.alchemyrevealed. com. To "see" me, "roll-over" my name on top) * From sabocat59 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 15:22:55 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 17:22:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin Message-ID: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> I had read Guerin's fine book on anarchism many years ago, but had not read "Fascism and Big Business" until Shane mentioned it a few months ago on this list. Still working my way through it, but I must say it sure is an excellent book. Could you translate for us the other two titles that you mentioned, Shane? Greg McDonald From eindeoc at freenet.de Wed Oct 7 15:57:27 2009 From: eindeoc at freenet.de (Einde O'Callaghan) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:57:27 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> References: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACD0EC7.5050005@freenet.de> Greg McDonald wrote: > I had read Guerin's fine book on anarchism many years ago, but had not > read "Fascism and Big Business" until Shane mentioned it a few months > ago on this list. Still working my way through it, but I must say it > sure is an excellent book. > > Could you translate for us the other two titles that you mentioned, Shane? > There is a translation of "Bourgeois et Bras Nus: La Lutte des Classes sous la Premi?re R?publique" into English - however, I think it's an abridged version. It's quite a few years since I read it. It was published by Pluto Press in 1977. The cheapest copy I've found on the Abebooks website is about $90. Einde O'Callaghan From shmage at pipeline.com Wed Oct 7 16:04:25 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 18:04:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> References: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Oct 7, 2009, at 5:22 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: > I had read Guerin's fine book on anarchism many years ago, but had not > read "Fascism and Big Business" until Shane mentioned it a few months > ago on this list. Still working my way through it, but I must say it > sure is an excellent book. > > Could you translate for us the other two titles that you mentioned, > Shane? One title: "Bourgeois et Bras Nus: La Lutte des Classes sous la Premi?re R?publique." "The bourgeoisie and the shirtless ones: the class struggle during the First Republic." Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 16:08:47 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:08:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: <4ACD0EC7.5050005@freenet.de> References: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> <4ACD0EC7.5050005@freenet.de> Message-ID: <4ACD116F.3090301@panix.com> > There is a translation of "Bourgeois et Bras Nus: La Lutte des Classes > sous la Premi?re R?publique" into English - however, I think it's an > abridged version. It's quite a few years since I read it. It was > published by Pluto Press in 1977. The cheapest copy I've found on the > Abebooks website is about $90. > > Einde O'Callaghan > I read this about 5 years ago in the course of looking at the Brenner thesis, Comninel, etc. It is actually a lot drier than I expected it would be but very informative nonetheless. From gary.maclennan1 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 16:09:46 2009 From: gary.maclennan1 at gmail.com (Gary MacLennan) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 08:09:46 +1000 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? In-Reply-To: <4ACCEAC5.9000602@panix.com> References: <1b7033e60910071219y26176a5l9d59085bac4987e1@mail.gmail.com> <4ACCEAC5.9000602@panix.com> Message-ID: Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > I am too damned busy with work to get to blogging about this, but agree > totally with Matthew's analysis. In fact, I plan to quote his earlier > post explaining the weakness of Obama in historical terms vis-a-vis > FDR's boldness. Maybe tomorrow if I can get my stupid syperl script > working. > Well there were probably two elements to FDR's boldness. The first and most important was an increasingly militant working class driven by the possibility of a socialist alternative. The other was possibly FDR's patrician background. Obama arrives in the White House and has to keep pinching himself to make sure it is not a dream. The likes of FDR stroll in and wonder why it took so long to get there. Obama has only one card to play and that is he could go over the heads of the Washington elite and appeal to the people to rise up to help him. I have no doubt whatsoever that they would flock to his banner. But nothing terrifies a liberal more than the spectacle of the risen people. The elites know all this. They understand Obama will not take the steps necessary to save his presidency. Eyes wide open he will go down the path of escalation in Afghanistan. The rhetoric will get windier and windier and the bitterness in the mouth of the people will become truly terrible. The only surprise about any of this is that it has all happened so quickly. But then of course the rhythms of political time are not those of chronological time. Only the Middle Eastern fire storm that Wallerstein has predicted will interrupt this process. All eyes on the Egyptian working class. regards Gary From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 16:19:43 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:19:43 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Video of Herbert Marcuse interview (in German) Message-ID: <4ACD13FF.8070300@panix.com> http://entdinglichung.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/herbert-marcuse-die-historische-moglichkeit-zu-einer-neuen-lebensqualitat/ From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 16:20:33 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 18:20:33 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910071520q776437bg90f1d3cea9ccdd30@mail.gmail.com> > > > < > http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/oh-people-of-palestineif-not-bulletspray-tellwhere-are-your-shoes/ > > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/05/fatah-hamas-torture-trial > > > http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/798/re82.htm > From shmage at pipeline.com Wed Oct 7 16:21:42 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 18:21:42 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Is it "Seven Days in May" for Obama? In-Reply-To: References: <1b7033e60910071219y26176a5l9d59085bac4987e1@mail.gmail.com> <4ACCEAC5.9000602@panix.com> Message-ID: <05E8F7E5-BB40-4815-91F7-27E94B77EE48@pipeline.com> On Oct 7, 2009, at 6:09 PM, Gary MacLennan wrote: > Obama arrives in the White House and has to keep > pinching himself to make sure it is not a dream. The likes of FDR > stroll in > and wonder why it took so long to get there. FDR had no reason to wonder since the answers were all too familiar to him: (1) Wilson (who made his 1920 vice-presidential campaign a lost cause from the outset) (2) Polio (which cost him eight years) Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From lnp3 at panix.com Wed Oct 7 16:39:55 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:39:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] British transvestites kick the shit out of harrassers Message-ID: <4ACD18BB.8050103@panix.com> http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Cross_dressing_cage_fighters_beat_up_attackers&in_article_id=748957&in_page_id=34 From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 16:58:18 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 22:58:18 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Tom wrote: ?hmmm . . . the origins of private property, family and the state by Engels? Clearly human ideology, including "common sense", has material roots in the evolution of humankind as does the much maligned "pragmatism", a new word for an old way of thinking I think William James characterized it, but worthy nonetheless, like "trial and error" or the "scientific method" more generally, unless we work backwards, like "Ptolemaic" medieval astronomers and creation scientists from conclusions and precepts to cherry pick facts to support our particular shibboleths. It's good that, to the extent I'm following you at this point, you're not doing that, as I've seen plenty of sectarian ideologues do that over the years.? Talk about straw man. I?m not sure if you?ve read the posts on this thread which started last month, but the only one who?s been visceral about demonizing metaphysics, and sectarian at that by dismissing anything she doesn?t agree with as ?obscure? whether it came from Marx or whoever, is Rosa. To repeat myself, what I said was the attempting a critique of anything JUST for being metaphysical because of one?s own blindness to see that one?s argument is based on metaphysical assumptions is self-defeating, unless you think this (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm#Impossibility-Of-Any-Future-Metaphysics) does the job. As for pragmatism being bourgeois, it is so if the history of common sense assumptions and their meaning is veiled under the pretext that science is an infallible (abstract) ?thing? above man, as Rosa wants to keep it; and she won?t hesitate in cherry-picking quotes; when I quote Marx he?s being too obscure, when she quotes him he?s vomiting on Hegel?s grave! There?s quite a number of things to be learnt from Kant but his project to prove that metaphysics is impossible has the aim of establishing pure ahistorical form as the sole determinant of reality, and so goes in the direction of bourgeois speculation taken to its highest point. Tom wrote: ?Also, to say that scientific theory has material roots, does not mean that it must have a "class character" in some mechanical way,?? And I?ve never said that comrade. To repeat myself, that science develops in capitalism doesn't make it less objective or more evil, it is part of the development of capital, the barrier of which is itself, so that "capitalistic" science is cut back from its full expression. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 17:00:47 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 23:00:47 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Typo! above man and woman!, sorry sorry. From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com To: marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Rosa L. replies to RL and LK (@Tom) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 22:58:18 +0000 Tom wrote: ?hmmm . . . the origins of private property, family and the state by Engels? Clearly human ideology, including "common sense", has material roots in the evolution of humankind as does the much maligned "pragmatism", a new word for an old way of thinking I think William James characterized it, but worthy nonetheless, like "trial and error" or the "scientific method" more generally, unless we work backwards, like "Ptolemaic" medieval astronomers and creation scientists from conclusions and precepts to cherry pick facts to support our particular shibboleths. It's good that, to the extent I'm following you at this point, you're not doing that, as I've seen plenty of sectarian ideologues do that over the years.? Talk about straw man. I?m not sure if you?ve read the posts on this thread which started last month, but the only one who?s been visceral about demonizing metaphysics, and sectarian at that by dismissing anything she doesn?t agree with as ?obscure? whether it came from Marx or whoever, is Rosa. To repeat myself, what I said was the attempting a critique of anything JUST for being metaphysical because of one?s own blindness to see that one?s argument is based on metaphysical assumptions is self-defeating, unless you think this (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm#Impossibility-Of-Any-Future-Metaphysics) does the job. As for pragmatism being bourgeois, it is so if the history of common sense assumptions and their meaning is veiled under the pretext that science is an infallible (abstract) ?thing? above man, as Rosa wants to keep it; and she won?t hesitate in cherry-picking quotes; when I quote Marx he?s being too obscure, when she quotes him he?s vomiting on Hegel?s grave! There?s quite a number of things to be learnt from Kant but his project to prove that metaphysics is impossible has the aim of establishing pure ahistorical form as the sole determinant of reality, and so goes in the direction of bourgeois speculation taken to its highest point. Tom wrote: ?Also, to say that scientific theory has material roots, does not mean that it must have a "class character" in some mechanical way,?? And I?ve never said that comrade. To repeat myself, that science develops in capitalism doesn't make it less objective or more evil, it is part of the development of capital, the barrier of which is itself, so that "capitalistic" science is cut back from its full expression. Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now. _________________________________________________________________ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 17:09:03 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:09:03 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] =?windows-1252?q?control_in_occupied_territories_=91bre?= =?windows-1252?q?ach_of_the_prohibition_of_apartheid=22?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910071609g497796c3ge5962c8ed9999a81@mail.gmail.com> > > > < > http://mondoweiss.net/2009/05/landmark-study-finds-israeli-control-in-occupied-territories-a-breach-of-the-prohibition-of-aparthei.html > > > From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:02:56 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:02:56 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? In-Reply-To: <53a1ffe70910071520q776437bg90f1d3cea9ccdd30@mail.gmail.com> References: <53a1ffe70910071520q776437bg90f1d3cea9ccdd30@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550910071702y40f259fcw62fc91aac7fc4645@mail.gmail.com> Certainly the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs 2009/10/7 Dennis Brasky : >> >> >> < >> http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/oh-people-of-palestineif-not-bulletspray-tellwhere-are-your-shoes/ >> > >> >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/05/fatah-hamas-torture-trial >> >> >> http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/798/re82.htm >> From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:07:35 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:07:35 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? In-Reply-To: <2fa158550910071702y40f259fcw62fc91aac7fc4645@mail.gmail.com> References: <53a1ffe70910071520q776437bg90f1d3cea9ccdd30@mail.gmail.com> <2fa158550910071702y40f259fcw62fc91aac7fc4645@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910071707q2c85f56dg3ebb2e7f55bb3f91@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:02 PM, N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > Certainly the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs > > does anyone know how to translate "putz" into espanol;? From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:09:26 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:09:26 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: References: <6e42edf00910071422n203eae33n6b80353168ed3b8e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550910071709r159cff35iba8a37fb235ecae5@mail.gmail.com> 2009/10/7 Shane Mage : > > On Oct 7, 2009, at 5:22 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: > >> I had read Guerin's fine book on anarchism many years ago, but had not >> read "Fascism and Big Business" until Shane mentioned it a few months >> ago on this list. Still working my way through it, but I must say it >> sure is an excellent book. >> >> Could you translate for us the other two titles that you mentioned, >> Shane? > > One title: > > "Bourgeois et Bras Nus: ?La Lutte des Classes sous la Premi?re > R?publique." > "The bourgeoisie and the shirtless ones: the class struggle during the > First Republic." Wow. "La burgues?a y los descamisados: la lucha de clases durante la Primera Rep?blica". It would be most interesting if someone made a serious history of this issue in Argentina, understanding of course that the "First Republic", from the workers? point of view, has been the first Peronist government (1945 to 1955). The internal class struggle within the national front is a matter worth studying, indeed. Provided, of course, one does not establish as a given and first datum the idea that workers were stupid enough to be duped by the bourgeoisie, etc. -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:12:48 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:12:48 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? In-Reply-To: <53a1ffe70910071707q2c85f56dg3ebb2e7f55bb3f91@mail.gmail.com> References: <53a1ffe70910071520q776437bg90f1d3cea9ccdd30@mail.gmail.com> <2fa158550910071702y40f259fcw62fc91aac7fc4645@mail.gmail.com> <53a1ffe70910071707q2c85f56dg3ebb2e7f55bb3f91@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550910071712h873d123pebfa3474b081852b@mail.gmail.com> No need, Dennis. I know Yiddish, and I understand what you mean. BTW, in Spanish it is spelt "potz". And the translation is "pelotudo". Now, this for you. Up your ass. Sorry, Mr. Moderator, won?t do it again. 2009/10/7 Dennis Brasky : > On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:02 PM, N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > >> Certainly the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs >> >> does anyone know how to translate "putz" into espanol;? > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/nmgoro%40gmail.com > -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:20:39 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:20:39 -0300 Subject: [Marxism] A mistake Re: when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? Message-ID: <2fa158550910071720w147dcb5l8b2fcc6e15d786f3@mail.gmail.com> Brotherly exchange of insult aside, now I realize that my irksome mail lacked an essential word. I had wanted to write "Certainly BEFORE the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs", which implies some positive opinion on future events, and not "Certainly the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs", which is as true as it is abstract and fruitless. Of course all peoples will deal with their traitors some day or other. However, some seem prone to be smarter and quicker in that task. Not that they like the reasons why. But such is life. Now don?t answer again with your illuminated Anglo Yiddish, Brasky. Thank you. And just in case, does anybody know how to translate into English "Guei kakn" (Spanish spelling, Yddish can be transliterated to many different languages, Brasky)? Ah, and yet another issue with Brasky?s deep linguistics: we in Argentina don?t call "espa?ol" that thing which you USAmericans, quite as idyosincratically as you speak of "Hispanos" or "Hispanic", call "Spanish", simply because there are other languages in Spain; we say "castellano", that is "the language of Castilia" in the same way there is no "British" but "English" or "Welsh". Don?t mention it. 2009/10/7 N?stor Gorojovsky : > No need, Dennis. I know Yiddish, and I understand what you mean. > > BTW, in Spanish it is spelt "potz". > > And the translation is "pelotudo". > > Now, this for you. > > Up your ass. > > Sorry, Mr. Moderator, won?t do it again. > > 2009/10/7 Dennis Brasky : >> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 8:02 PM, N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: >> >>> Certainly the Israeli and USAmerican peoples deal with theirs >>> >>> does anyone know how to translate "putz" into espanol;? >> ________________________________________________ >> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. >> Send list submissions to: Marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu >> Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/nmgoro%40gmail.com >> > > > > -- > > N?stor Gorojovsky > El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a > -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From fajardos at ix.netcom.com Wed Oct 7 18:32:01 2009 From: fajardos at ix.netcom.com (Juan Fajardo) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:32:01 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] A mistake Re: when will the Palestinian people deal with the traitors? In-Reply-To: <2fa158550910071720w147dcb5l8b2fcc6e15d786f3@mail.gmail.com> References: <2fa158550910071720w147dcb5l8b2fcc6e15d786f3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACD3301.3050201@ix.netcom.com> N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > > Ah, and yet another issue with Brasky?s deep linguistics: we in > Argentina don?t call "espa?ol" that thing which you USAmericans, > quite as idyosincratically as you speak of "Hispanos" or "Hispanic", > call "Spanish", simply because there are other languages in Spain; we > say "castellano", that is "the language of Castilia" in the same way > there is no "British" but "English" or "Welsh". > That could be a result of Mexico's proximity. Mexicans call it "espa?ol" and every one I have ever met has initially looked at me weird when I've called it "castellano". - Juan From johnaimani at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 18:50:48 2009 From: johnaimani at earthlink.net (johnaimani) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 17:50:48 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics References: <4ACCDF53.3050906@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: <635D888C120B4F3591A97112ED15C6C6@D4PKYZ41> Totally agree. Especially with the last on Marx' anarcho-communism vis the state. There is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism, And this fundamental manifests itself in many different manners: the growth of organic compositin and the consequent fall in the rate of prfit; the accompanying overproduction (saturation of the market) of consumer goods; the lack of profitable investment outlets leading to a hoard of capital resulting in speculation and asset bubbles; the consequent imperial wars for markets and resources. Yet, like M Theory in string mechanics, all of these are manifestations of a deep underlying contradiction and that contradiction lies in the cheapening of the costs of production of labor-powers. I wrote about this in full at http://www.marxmail.org/Imani.htm -Decline in the Value of Labor-power which Louis was kind enough to host. JAI > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Daniel Koechlin" > To: "David Schanoes" > Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 2:34 PM > Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics > > >> Marx was a profoundly nuanced, non-dogmatic thinker. >> >> His thinking was made up of many strands, his insights into the concrete >> workings of capitalism and its eventual breakdown (or lack thereof) were >> ever evolving. >> >> Nevertheless, he was deeply aware of the contradictions between >> appearences and reality, between exchange-value and use-value, between >> the capitalist imperative to expand and the resistance of the working >> class. >> >> He jeered at the farce of vulgar bourgeois economics, whose real agenda >> has always been upholding the status quo. >> >> But he never got down to finishing Capital and actually spelling out >> which (out of the many) contradictions of capital, would ultimately lead >> to its replacement by communism. >> >> I suspect he never had the time to actually formulate a precise theory >> of economic crisis. We are left, in Capital III, with the law of >> diminishing profits due to increases in constant capital ( at the C-M >> level), with a theory of disproportionality between sectors I and II (in >> Capital II), with an understanding of the struggle over surplus-value >> between workers and capitalists (Capital I). Marx doesn't seem to have >> seriously subscribed to the underconsumptionist, Sismondian, Keynsian, >> view that wages were insufficient to realize profits. >> >> Anyway, Marx was a very subtle dialectician, always careful not to >> ascribe one single, absolute, cause to any single phenomenon. >> >> I myself find Marx's extant writings (both published and unpublished >> during his lifetime) to be much closer to anti-authoritarian, >> libertarian communism than to so-called Marxism-Leninism. I don't think >> he quite envisioned "proletarian dictatorship" as individuals vying for >> power by manipulating a political party or their influence in the armed >> forces. >> >> He thought that the working class should become the dominant class, and >> that workers should emancipate themselves from the shackles of class >> oppression. Had Marx had time to complete his work on the State, he >> would probably have lambasted any notion that the State should become >> the overseer of the working class and deny the working class any say in >> the managing of its own affairs. As far as I am concerned, Lenin is >> quite anti-marxist in this respect. >> >> >> >> >> >> ________________________________________________ >> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. >> Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu >> Set your options at: >> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net > > > > From sobuadhaigh at hushmail.com Wed Oct 7 18:53:32 2009 From: sobuadhaigh at hushmail.com (sobuadhaigh at hushmail.com) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:53:32 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] crime and history Message-ID: <20091008005332.33BAEB00B9@smtp.hushmail.com> David wrote: > >That he (Mao) started off in the Kuomintang, >rose up the ranks, then switched >to the CCP when he could go up no further, Have you read anyting on the history of the Chinese revolution (or the history of China for that matter) that was not a polemic? If so I would like to know where you got this fanciful "biography". From holmoff10 at hotmail.com Wed Oct 7 20:10:17 2009 From: holmoff10 at hotmail.com (Leonardo Kosloff) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 02:10:17 +0000 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anyone heard of an Anarchism vs. Marxism debate (or something along those lines) between Guerin and Mandel? I once saw this in a bibliography and tried to find it but couldn't, I'm not sure if it's only in French... _________________________________________________________________ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ From durable at earthlink.net Wed Oct 7 21:16:33 2009 From: durable at earthlink.net (Barry Brooks) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:16:33 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] crime and history In-Reply-To: <20091008005332.33BAEB00B9@smtp.hushmail.com> References: <20091008005332.33BAEB00B9@smtp.hushmail.com> Message-ID: <4ACD5991.70109@earthlink.net> > Have you read anyting on the history of the Chinese > revolution (or the history of China for that matter) > that was not a polemic? I suppose the "Red Star Over China," by Edgar Snow would fit that category, although it was removed from most libraries. I got a used copy stamped "removed from ..." that still had the checkout card etc... Barry From jnorem at cox.net Wed Oct 7 20:30:31 2009 From: jnorem at cox.net (John E. Norem) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:30:31 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Hardt/Negri's Commonwealth as reviewed in WSJ Message-ID: <4ACD4EC7.7070001@cox.net> Astonishingly, given the ruin associated with his name, Karl Marx is back in fashion. The global economic downturn has spurred sales of "Das Kapital" to an all-time high; Michael Moore with his latest movie rivals the Original Communist in denouncing the evils of capitalism; and for the past year the news media seem to have delighted in running obituaries for the owners of the means of production. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, then, are nicely positioned to take advantage of Marx's revival with the publication of "Commonwealth," which re-imagines Marxism for the 21st century. Mr. Hardt teaches literature at Duke University and is a postmodernism-steeped radical?that is to say, he is an American college professor. Mr. Negri, a political theorist, has a more unusual background. Three decades ago, the Italian government believed that he was the secret intellectual leader of the leftist terrorists called the Red Brigades and that he was the architect of the group's 1978 kidnapping and murder of Christian Democratic Party leader Aldo Moro. Unable to build a sufficient case to try Mr. Negri for murder?he has always denied the allegation?Italian authorities convicted him of "armed insurrection against the state." Facing 30 years in the slammer, Mr. Negri scooted to France, where he remained, a philosopher in exile, until 1997, when he returned to Italy to serve the remainder of a reduced sentence. He is a left-wing guru whose field work has occurred far from the faculty lounge. "Commonwealth" completes a trilogy that began in 2000 with "Empire" and continued with "Multitude" in 2004. The book is a witch's brew of contemporary radicalism. Capitalism deserves to die, Messrs. Hardt and Negri believe, for it has abused and corrupted "the common." The common isn't just "the fruits of the soil, and all nature's bounty," they tell us; it is the universe of things necessary for social life?"knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects." Under capitalism, nature is ravaged, society brutalized. Yet the conditions for people's emancipation are budding within capitalism, the authors believe (just as Marx believed in the mid-19th century). Unlike the factory laborer of yesterday, today's knowledge worker has less and less need for a boss. Companies extract the most value from the worker, we're told, when he is left alone to create, connect and collaborate as he sees fit. This is also true of "affective labor" that offers services to the public, "even in the most constrained and exploited circumstances, such as call centers." Messrs. Hardt and Negri propose getting rid of bosses, of course, but they also target another bugaboo of the hard left, private property. The possession of property supports unjust power structures?why not agree that the "common wealth" of the human and natural worlds should be everyone's responsibility, everyone's resource? Welcome to The Communist Manifesto 2.0. "Commonwealth" updates Marx's championing of the proletariat as the agent of revolution. The authors prefer "the multitude," which includes workers of all kinds, naturally, but also gathers the mighty forces of identity politics: black and Hispanic activists, radical feminists, "queer" transgressives and others purportedly harmed by global capitalism. They don't all get along, Messrs. Hardt and Negri admit, so the left must persuade this army-in-waiting to value the importance of "revolutionary parallelism." No Black Power movement that treats woman or homosexuals badly, for instance, will win the day. After the revolution, we're told, identity politics, like class warfare, will dissolve. For the revolution to succeed, three supposedly corrupt forms of the common must be destroyed. Some of the harshest language in "Commonwealth" targets the family: Mom, dad and the kids might not know it, but they are part of a "pathetic" institution, a "machine" that "grinds down and crushes the common" with "the blindest egoism." Messrs. Hardt and Negri cry: "Down with the family!" The two other killers of the world's spirit: the corporation and the nation. When the multitude seizes "control of the means of production and reproduction," we're promised, the evil trio will wind up on Marx's ash heap of history. The authors warn the rulers of the capitalist world that if they want to survive a little longer, they need to enact reforms, including global citizenship, a right to income for everyone and participatory democracy. But Messrs. Hardt and Negri don't think that their warning will be heeded. Revolution will erupt?and soon. It could be violent, a prospect that does not seem to trouble them: "What is the best weapon against the ruling powers?guns, peaceful street demonstrations, exodus, media campaigns, labor strikes, transgressing gender norms, silence, irony, or many others?depends on the situation." Pirates, the rioting Muslim banlieusards of Paris and the Black Panthers all are praised in "Commonwealth" as heroes of disruption. Messrs. Hardt and Negri make little effort to build arguments in support of their wild assertions and predictions. They write as if ignorant of the 20th century and of much else, including economics and social science. (They still quote Lenin and Mao as if they were sources of wise political and economic analysis.) How would abolishing private property not lead to a threadbare totalitarian state, as it has in the past? The authors promise it will be different this time, without explaining why. If you abolish the family, how will children grow into flourishing adults? We must take it on faith that the post-family world will be just fine. (The word "children" almost never appears in the book.) How do the authors explain away capitalist globalization's record of elevating millions of people out of poverty? Answer: They don't. "Commonwealth" is a dark, evil book, and it is troubling that it appears under the prestigious imprimaturof Harvard University Press. Countless millions were slaughtered by adherents of Karl Marx in the 20th century. God help us if the scourge returns in the 21st. *Mr. Anderson, the editor of City Journal, is the author of "Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents" and, with Adam Thierer, "A Manifesto for Media Freedom." http://tiny.cc/KDuJn From michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Wed Oct 7 20:37:40 2009 From: michael at ecst.csuchico.edu (michael perelman) Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:37:40 -0700 Subject: [Marxism] Rare Earths, Common Corruption Message-ID: <4ACD5074.9030203@ecst.csuchico.edu> An earlier note discussed the question about the possible impending scarcity of rare earth minerals. http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/a-different-environmental-threat-peak-rare-minerals-china-and-green-technology/ Shortly thereafter, the esteemed representative, Jerry Lewis (I prefer the other comedian) put a $3 million earmark for an already profitable US mining company in the House Defense Bill. Should one be surprised that, along with two private equity funds, Goldman Sachs is the owner? Allen, Jonathan. 2009. "Critics Blast $3m Mining Handout." Politico (6 October). http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/27947.html -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com From suarsos at alphalink.com.au Thu Oct 8 00:19:49 2009 From: suarsos at alphalink.com.au (Tom O'Lincoln) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 17:19:49 +1100 Subject: [Marxism] Video of Herbert Marcuse interview (in German) Message-ID: Thanks Lou, it took me right back. Fundamentally pessimistic. There can't be a revolution without the working class, and radical fringe groups can at best open up possibilities; but the working class living under affluent late capitalism can't do it. In his favour is the undoubted fact that in the decades since this interview, the working class certainly hasn't done it. It cut out just as he was about to say what he thought about Eurocommunism, which would have been interestiing. From ecosocialism at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 06:33:47 2009 From: ecosocialism at gmail.com (Ian Angus) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 08:33:47 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Socialist Voice: European Left Message-ID: <733b65360910080533u13b22ef4g4ef6d0fdb96e6f81@mail.gmail.com> SOCIALIST VOICE Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century http://www.socialistvoice.ca October 8 2009 POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EUROPEAN LEFT http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=696 LeftViews is Socialist Voice?s forum for articles related to rebuilding the left in Canada and around the world, reflecting a wide variety of socialist opinion. In this article, Socialist Voice co-editor Ian Angus outlines some recent positive developments in the European left. ************************* Other recent articles: B.C. GOVERNMENT PREPARES TO AXE SOCIAL PROGRAMS http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=652 CRUCIAL DAYS IN HONDURAS http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=649 HOW TO REALLY FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=638 PALESTINE SOLIDARITY VICTORIES ALARM PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=634 BRITAIN?S CONQUEST OF QUEBEC: 250 YEARS LATER http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=615 ************************* SOCIALIST VOICE Web: http://www.socialistvoice.ca Email: socialistvoice at sympatico.ca Editors: Ian Angus, Roger Annis, John Riddell Associate Editor: Mike Krebs Readers are encouraged to forward or distribute Socialist Voice as widely as possible. To subscribe, send a blank email to Socialist-Voice-subscribe at yahoogroups.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Socialist-Voice-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com FEEDBACK: Socialist Voice welcomes questions, comments and debate on the articles we publish. Please use the `Feedback' box at the bottom of each article on our website. LINK DOESN'T WORK? Some email programs block links to websites. If clicking on a link in Socialist Voice doesn't work, try holding down the CTRL key as you click, or copy the link address into your browser. ------------ From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 06:58:48 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:58:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Study group proposal for Utah residents Message-ID: <4ACDE208.7040509@panix.com> (Charles, your message bounced because it was posted as part of a reply to an entire digest. In the future, you should clip the digest otherwise your message will exceed the byte limit for Marxmail postings.) Would there be any interest in forming a Marx Study Group at Brigham Young University? I would be happy to sponsor it, and to provide a room. Any of you associated, now or in the past, with BYU -- please respond. Charles W. Nuckolls Professor Department of Anthropology BYU charles_nuckolls at byu.edu From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 07:01:30 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:01:30 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Review of new Trotsky biography Message-ID: <4ACDE2AA.9000804@panix.com> An idiotic review of an idiotic book. http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_10_09.html From acpollack2 at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 07:02:33 2009 From: acpollack2 at gmail.com (Andrew Pollack) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 09:02:33 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Daniel Guerin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2fa1449b0910080602r5ee427f4peb20df20aec204cd@mail.gmail.com> Another great book of his is "The Brown Plague," based on his travel to Germany shortly before and after the Nazis' rise to power. Its full of great quotes from workers he talked to and paints a clear picture of why the various workers' organizations failed to respond -- as well as inspiring depiction of workers who wanted to. And his sexual politics come through (in fact I picked it up at an NYC lesbian/gay bookstore). As for "Negroes on the March," I remember being struck by the prescience of his claim that Blacks would soon revolt, pointing among other things to the attitudes of returned vets. It's also useful as a critique of Myrdal's "American Dilemma." Andy From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 07:12:23 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:12:23 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Taliban: we are not a threat to the West Message-ID: <4ACDE537.8050000@panix.com> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/08/taliban-statement-denies-threat-west Taliban claim they pose no threat to west Statement on known Taliban website may indicate that leaders are retreating from alliance with al-Qaida by Jason Burke and James Sturcke Taliban fighters pose with weapons on 19 August. The leadership has posted a statement online saying they pose no threat to other countries. Photograph: Reuters The Taliban have issued an English-language statement claiming they pose no international threat ? a move that will fuel the debate among American and European policymakers over whether the hardline Afghan insurgent group can be split away from the international militants of al-Qaida. The statement came amid reports that Barack Obama's military advisers are shifting the focus of US operations to target al-Qaida in Pakistan while downplaying the threat posed to America by the Taliban. Published on the eighth anniversary of the first coalition strikes on Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban communique declares the militants' aim to be the "obtainment of independence and establishment of an Islamic system". "We did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe nor we have such agenda today," said the statement, which was posted on a known Taliban website on Wednesday. "Still, if you want to turn the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony, then know that we have an unwavering determination and have braced for a prolonged war." Though the statement's authenticity is yet to be confirmed, the claim would appear to be evidence at the very least that the Taliban are seeking to influence the strategic argument in the west. The statements may equally be a sign that senior Taliban figures are reassessing the movement's longstanding ? though often tense ? alliance with al-Qaida. In a recent exchange of emails with the Guardian, a Taliban spokesman avoided questions on the relationship between the Afghan insurgents and Osama bin Laden. The spokesman said the Taliban closely monitored public opinion in western Europe and policy arguments in the US. As Obama continues to reassess the Afghan war strategy, advisers have told the New York Times that he had been presented with an approach that might not require the increase in troop numbers in Afghanistan called for by the most senior US and Nato general in the region, General Stanley McChrystal. Obama will today meet with the secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, and vice-president, Joe Biden, who has been arguing for months that Pakistan is a greater priority than Afghanistan. The New York Times said that Clinton and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, have warned that the Taliban in Afghanistan remain linked to al-Qaida and would give its fighters haven again if the Taliban regained control of all or large parts of Afghanistan. "Clearly, al-Qaida is a threat not only to the US homeland and American interests abroad, but it has a murderous agenda," one senior administration official said. "We want to destroy its leadership, its infrastructure and its capability." The official contrasted that with the Taliban, which the administration has begun to define as an indigenous group that aspires to reclaim territory and rule the country, but does not express ambitions of attacking the US. "When the two [groups] are aligned it's mainly on the tactical front," the official said, adding that al-Qaida had fewer than 100 fighters in Afghanistan. Yesterday, the White House confirmed that Obama received McChrystal's troop reinforcements request a week ago. It is said to include a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 additional combat troops to McChrystal's strong preference for as many as 40,000. The renewed attention on Pakistan comes amid a recognition that the US can neither win the eight-year-old conflict in Afghanistan nor succeed more broadly against al-Qaida without help from Islamabad. Obama and some of his key aides are increasingly pointing to recent successes against al-Qaida through targeted missile strikes and raids in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere. Obama said on Tuesday that al-Qaida had "lost operational capacity" as a result. Serious doubts about the Afghan government have led some to question whether an effective counterinsurgency mission is possible. McChrystal's recommended approach calls for additional troops in Afghanistan for a counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the Taliban, build up the central government and deny al-Qaida its refuge. McChrystal, whose plan is reminiscent of Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq in 2008, says extra troops are crucial to turn around a war that probably will be won or lost during the next 12 months. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an alternative favoured most prominently by Biden would keep the American force in Afghanistan at around the 68,000 already authorised, including the 21,000 more troops Obama ordered this year, but increase the use of surgical strikes with Predator drones and special forces. From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 07:18:15 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:18:15 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] US troops in Afghanistan "depressed and deeply disillusioned" Message-ID: <4ACDE697.7000909@panix.com> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6865359.ece October 8, 2009 American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban. Many feel that they are risking their lives ? and that colleagues have died ? for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul. ?The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,? said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division?s 2-87 Infantry Battalion. ?They feel they are risking their lives for progress that?s hard to discern,? said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division?s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. ?They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.? The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not. The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains? assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped. ?We?re lost ? that?s how I feel. I?m not exactly sure why we?re here,? said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. ?I need a clear-cut purpose if I?m going to get hurt out here or if I?m going to die.? Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: ?If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don?t.? The only soldiers who thought it was going well ?work in an office, not on the ground?. In his opinion ?the whole country is going to s***?. The battalion?s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people?s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban. They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide. About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced. More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action. Living conditions are good ? abundant food, air-conditioned tents, hot water, free internet ? but most of the men are on their second, third or fourth tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, with barely a year between each. Staff Sergeant Erika Cheney, Airborne?s mental health specialist, expressed concern about their mental state ? especially those in scattered outposts ? and believes that many have mild post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ?They?re tired, frustrated, scared. A lot of them are afraid to go out but will still go,? she said. Lieutenant Peter Hjelmstad, 2-87?s Medical Platoon Leader, said sleeplessness and anger attacks were common. A dozen men have been confined to desk jobs because they can no longer handle missions outside the base. One long-serving officer who has lost three friends this tour said he sometimes returned to his room at night and cried, or played war games on his laptop. ?It?s a release. It?s a method of coping.? He has nightmares and sleeps little, and it does not help that the base is frequently shaken by outgoing artillery fire. He was briefly overcome as he recalled how, when a lorry backfired during his most recent home leave, he grabbed his young son and dived between two parked cars. The chaplains said soldiers were seeking their help in unprecedented numbers. ?Everyone you meet is just down, and you meet them everywhere ? in the weight room, dining facility, getting mail,? said Captain Rico. Even ?hard men? were coming to their tent chapel and breaking down. The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. ?The soldiers? biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It?s hard to catch someone you can?t see,? said Specialist Mercer. ?It?s a very frustrating mission,? said Lieutenant Hjelmstad. ?The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it?s for something [worthwhile], but it?s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There?s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It?s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.? Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: ?We want to believe in a cause but we don?t know what that cause is.? The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. ?You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they?re still going to lie to you. They?ll tell you there?s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,? said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia. Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague?s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle. The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. ?They?re a joke,? said one. ?You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It?s not enough to know which house the shooting?s coming from.? The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but ?I Suck At Fighting? or ?I Support Afghan Farmers?. To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. ?That?s very demoralising,? said Captain Masengale. The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers? private lives. ?They?re killing families,? he said. ?Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.? The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. ?All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,? said Captain Masengale. ?If we make it back with ten toes and ten fingers the mission is successful,? Sergeant Hughes said. ?You carry on for the guys to your left or right,? added Specialist Mercer. The chaplains have themselves struggled to cope with so much distress. ?We have to encourage them, strengthen them and send them out again. No one comes in and says, ?I?ve had a great day on a mission?. It?s all pain,? said Captain Masengale. ?The only way we?ve been able to make it is having each other.? Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87?s commanding officer, denied that his men were demoralised, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defence. He said the security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak province, not abandon it. He said, however, that the situation would have been catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway which dissects Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border. Above all, Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency ? winning the allegiance of the indigenous population through security, development and good governance ? was a long and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. ?These 12 months have been, for me, laying the groundwork for future success,? he said. At morning service on Sunday, the two chaplains sought to boost the spirits of their flock with uplifting hymns, accompanied by video footage of beautiful lakes, oceans and rivers. Captain Rico offered a particularly apposite reading from Corinthians: ?We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.? From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 07:24:57 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:24:57 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Ralph Nader Throws His Hope in with Enlightened Billionaires Message-ID: <4ACDE829.1060303@panix.com> (An astute critique undermined by the author's long-time support for the Democratic Party.) http://www.progressive.org/wx092809.html Ralph Nader Throws His Hope in with Enlightened Billionaires By Matthew Rothschild, September 28, 2009 I saw Ralph Nader yesterday, indefatigable as ever. He was on tour for his new book, and his first work of fiction, ?Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us.? The plot is about how seventeen famous billionaires, like Warren Buffett and Ted Turner, all of a sudden come to their conscience and spend some of their money to bring about the anti-corporate and pro-democracy changes that Ralph Nader has spent his life campaigning for. This is a Hail Mary pass for progressive change, and it is an expression of Nader?s frustration?even desperation?at our inability to tackle what he rightly calls ?the permanent corporate government? in Washington. His approach, in the book, is about as top-down as you can get, though he says it?s top-down, bottom-up?the billionaires spend the money so that people at the grassroots can effectively organize. He seems to have lost hope in the labor movement and the environmental movement and the citizen?s movement and the broad civil rights movement getting together or a new progressive movement rising up organically. Throughout most of his career, Nader acted on a theory of social change that centered around establishing citizen groups in Washington and across the country that could act as a counterforce to the corporate powers. Then, when that didn?t succeed, and when the Democratic Party became increasingly corporatized, Nader ventured into third party presidential politics. In 2000, he ran as a Green, and talked of establishing that as a durable third party that could act as centrifugal force against the Democratic Party moving ever rightward. But Nader became disenchanted with the Greens, and decided to go it alone the last two times. And in a sense, he?s going it alone this time in this book. Rather than rely on the citizen?s movement, rather than rely on the labor movement, or a unified progressive movement, Nader is relying on the George Soroses of this world to save us, as the title says. ?The progressive movement is good at documenting corporate power,? he said in his talk in Madison, Wisconsin. ?It?s good at diagnosing. It?s good at coming up with proposals. But that?s the end.? The problem, he says, is one of resources. ?You cannot fight trillions of dollars in big business money with a few millions and expect to win.? The citizen movement, he said, is ?totally amateurish? compared with how well organized and funded the corporations are. ?This mismatch is a disaster,? he said. ?The progressive movement is going nowhere if it does not address the problem of resources.? Nor does he have hope in a new youth movement. Nader was addressing a couple of hundred people in a classroom at the University of Wisconsin, but there weren?t many students there. Maybe that was a good thing, since he was harshing on them. ?If people are too busy updating their personal profiles on their facebook page,? they won?t engage in civic action, he said. ?The screen is the opium of the masses,? he said. He added that we have a whole generation living a virtual existence, and we haven?t come to grips with the negative consequences of that. He also criticized today?s students for their weak grasp of U.S. history. For them, ?The Vietnam War is like the Peloponnesian Wars.? Nader had some sharp criticism for Barack Obama, too. ?It?s very sad to see the continuity between Obama and Bush,? he said, rattling off ?Afghanistan, renditions, No Child Left Behind, and the faith-based initiative.? But he?s not surprised that Obama is doing the bidding of the corporate establishment. ?In 100 ways, he signaled he was their man? during the campaign, Nader said. ?Did ever talk about corporate crime, even when Wall Street was collapsing?? Nader said Obama ?learned too much from Bill Clinton? about the need to compromise with corporate power. And he said that Obama?s personality is not right for the times. Unlike FDR, Obama ?does not like conflict,? he said. Instead, he wants to please. There is a poignance in listening to Ralph Nader these days. Here is a man who, for the last 45 years, has hurled his body at the engine of corporate power. He?s dented it more than anyone else in America. But he knows it?s still chugging, even more strongly than ever. Nader understands that he?s losing. He understands that we?re losing?we who believe in democracy, we who care about justice. But if our only hope is with a handful of billionaires, we?re in a lot worse shape than I thought. From sabocat59 at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 07:30:12 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 09:30:12 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Geithner Talks To Select Group Of Bankers Every Day Message-ID: <6e42edf00910080630m4f79ca6ftdade856e7be5545b@mail.gmail.com> . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/geithner-talks-to-select-_n_313612.html Geithner Talks To Select Group Of Bankers Every Day MATT APUZZO and DANIEL WAGNER | 10/ 8/09 08:27 AM | AP WASHINGTON ? Even during his most frenzied days, when Congress is demanding answers or the president himself is calling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner makes time to talk to a select group of powerful Wall Street bankers. They are a small cadre of businessmen who have known and worked with Geithner for years, whose multibillion-dollar companies all survived the economic crisis with help from U.S. taxpayers. When they call, Geithner answers. He has spoken with them immediately after hanging up with President Barack Obama and before heading up to Capitol Hill, between phone calls with senators and after talking with the Federal Reserve chairman, according to a review by The Associated Press of seven months of his appointment calendars. The calendars, obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act, offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the continued influence of three companies ? Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ? whose executives can reach the nation's most powerful economic official on the phone, sometimes several times a day. There is nothing inherently wrong with senior Treasury Department officials speaking regularly with industry executives, or even with the secretary keeping tabs on the market's biggest players, even though critics say Geithner risks succumbing too much to these bankers' self-interested worldview. "It's appropriate for Treasury officials to keep in touch with those who work in the markets every day, particularly when the economy and the markets are so fragile," Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said. What the calendars show, however, is that only a select few can call the treasury secretary. After one hectic week in May in which the U.S. faced the looming bankruptcy of General Motors and the prospect that the government would take over the automaker, Geithner wrapped up his night with a series of phone calls. Story continues below First he called Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and CEO at Goldman. Then he called Jamie Dimon, the boss at JPMorgan. Obama called next, and as soon as they hung up, Geithner was back on the phone with Dimon. While all this was going on, Geithner got a call from Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat who serves on committees that help set tax and budget policies. Becerra left a message. In the first seven months of Geithner's tenure, his calendars reflect at least 80 contacts with Blankfein, Dimon, Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons or Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. Geithner had more contacts with Citigroup than he did with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the lawmaker leading the effort to approve Geithner's overhaul of the financial system. Geithner's contacts with Blankfein alone outnumber his contacts with Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Partly this is explained by the extraordinary clout of these companies. Goldman, JPMorgan and Citigroup are among the dominant players on Wall Street. Their executives can move not just markets but entire economies. Treasury invested heavily in all of them to keep the industry afloat. But size does not tell the whole story. Treasury has a huge financial stake in North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., but CEO Ken Lewis appears on Geithner's calendars only three times. Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack also appears three times. Geithner's relationship with Goldman, JPMorgan, Citigroup and their executives dates to his tenure as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As one of Wall Street's top regulators, Geithner worked closely with executives and built relationships he brought with him to his corner office at the Treasury Department. The prominence of those relationships is clear by the company they keep on Geithner's calendars. On March 24, just after Geithner announced plans to help banks sell off toxic debts left over from the housing market meltdown ? which stood to be a boon for big banks ? his calendars reflect a busy morning. He had a briefing on terrorism financing, a meeting on tightening financial regulations and a prep session for congressional testimony. Geithner emerged to take just three phone calls, from Vice President Joe Biden, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and shortly before heading to Capitol Hill, from Dimon. Officials at JPMorgan, Citigroup and Goldman had no comment on Geithner's calendars. Geithner's predecessor at Treasury, Henry Paulson, similarly kept in close touch with Wall Street power brokers. Though his calendars showed many contacts with bankers at the height of the banking crisis, they showed frequent calls with Blankfein at key times. Paulson came to Treasury from Goldman. At the New York Fed and then at Treasury, Geithner helped put together multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street investment firms, including Goldman, JPMorgan and Citi. Even banks that have repaid the money still enjoy massive subsidies. Their quick returns to record profits and million-dollar bonuses sparked outrage. Critics said the government was too quick to help the banks and was unwilling to let them suffer the consequences of their bad bets. Geithner's calendars could contribute to the perception that the treasury secretary is too close to Wall Street, said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist with the International Monetary Fund and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. "Your worldview in the middle of a crisis depends on whom you talk to and what their perspective is, and you need a broad cross-section of opinions to truly understand what's happening," Johnson said. By seeking information from such a narrow group of contacts, Johnson said, Geithner risks limiting his exposure to the views of his trusted banker colleagues. Geithner must believe he can set aside their inherent biases, he said, adding, "I don't see how you do that." Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/geithner-talks-to-select-_n_313612.html From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 08:05:51 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:05:51 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Honduran coup hires US lobbyists Message-ID: <4ACDF1BF.5090803@panix.com> (The "paper of record" finally covers a story that the left has been reporting on for months.) NY Times, October 8, 2009 Leader Ousted, Honduras Hires U.S. Lobbyists By GINGER THOMPSON and RON NIXON WASHINGTON ? First, depose a president. Second, hire a lobbyist. In the months since soldiers ousted the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, the de facto government and its supporters have resisted demands from the United States that he be restored to power. Arguing that the left-leaning Mr. Zelaya posed a threat to their country?s fragile democracy by trying to extend his time in office illegally, they have made their case in Washington in the customary way: by starting a high-profile lobbying campaign. The campaign has had the effect of forcing the administration to send mixed signals about its position to the de facto government, which reads them as signs of encouragement. It also has delayed two key State Department appointments in the region. Costing at least $400,000 so far, according to lobbying registration records, the campaign has involved law firms and public relations agencies with close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on foreign affairs. It has also drawn support from several former high-ranking officials who were responsible for setting United States policy in Central America in the 1980s and ?90s, when the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies that defined the cold war. Two decades later, those former officials ? including Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel W. Fisk ? view Honduras as the principal battleground in a proxy fight with Cuba and Venezuela, which they characterize as threats to stability in the region in language similar to that once used to describe the designs of the Soviet Union. ?The current battle for political control of Honduras is not only about that small nation,? Mr. Reich testified in July before Congress. ?What happens in Honduras may one day be seen as either the high-water mark of Hugo Ch?vez?s attempt to undermine democracy in this hemisphere or as a green light to the spread of Chavista authoritarianism,? he said, referring to the Venezuelan president. Mr. Noriega, who was a co-author of the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the United States embargo against Cuba, and who has recently served as a lobbyist for a Honduran business group, declined to comment for this article. Mr. Reich, who served in key Latin America posts for President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, said he had not lobbied officially for any Honduran group. But he said he had used his connections to push the agenda of the de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, because he believed that the Obama administration had made a mistake. And Mr. Fisk, whose political career has included stints on the National Security Council and as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under Mr. Bush, had been promoting the Micheletti government?s case until two weeks ago as an aide to retired Senator Mel Martinez of Florida. In addition to the support of such cold war veterans ? and partly because of it ? the de facto government has mobilized the support of a determined group of Republican legislators, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. They are holding up two State Department appointments as a way of pressing the Obama administration to lift sanctions against the country. ?We have made a wrong call here,? Mr. DeMint said in an interview with Fox News after returning from a trip to Honduras last Friday. Referring to the de facto government, he said, ?This is probably our best friend in the hemisphere, the most pro-American country, but we are trying to strangle them.? Chris Sabatini, editor of Americas Quarterly, a policy journal focusing on Latin America, said the lobbying had muddled Washington?s position on the coup. The administration has said publicly that it sees the coup in Honduras as a dangerous development in a region that not too long ago was plagued by them, he said. But, he added, to placate its opponents in Congress, and have its nominations approved, the State Department has sometimes sent back-channel messages to legislators expressing its support for Mr. Zelaya in more equivocal terms. ?There?s been a leadership vacuum on Honduras in the administration, and these are the people who?ve filled it,? he said of the Micheletti government?s backers. ?They haven?t gotten a lot of support, but enough to hold the administration?s policy hostage for now.? After the June 28 coup, President Obama joined the region in condemning the action and calling for President Zelaya to be returned to power, even though the Honduran president is an ally of Mr. Ch?vez, America?s biggest adversary in the region. But Congressional aides said that less than 10 days after Mr. Zelaya was ousted, Mr. Noriega and Lanny J. Davis, a confidant of Mrs. Clinton and a lobbyist for a Honduran business council, organized a meeting for supporters of the de facto government with members of the Senate. Mr. Fisk, who attended the meeting, said he was stunned by the turnout. ?I had never seen eight senators in one room to talk about Latin America in my entire career,? he said. As President Obama imposed increasingly tougher sanctions on Honduras, the lobbying intensified. The Cormac Group, run by a former aide to Senator McCain, John Timmons, signed on, records show, as did Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, a public relations firm. For his part, Mr. Reich sent his thoughts to members of Congress by e-mail. ?We should rejoice,? he wrote to one member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ?that one of the self-proclaimed 21st Century socialist allies of Ch?vez has been legally deposed by his own countrymen.? As is often the nature of lobbying, some messages have been sent without any names attached. Floating around Senate offices in the last few weeks, for example, was a list of talking points aimed at undermining the nomination of Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon as ambassador to Brazil. Two Congressional aides, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about matters related to the coup, said that Mr. Fisk wrote the talking points. Mr. Fisk denied having done so. He also dismissed the notion that he was operating from an old playbook. ?Someone else may be fighting over the ?80s,? he said. ?I?m not.? Barclay Walsh contributed research. From intnsred at golgotha.net Thu Oct 8 08:36:21 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 10:36:21 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] US troops in Afghanistan "depressed and deeply disillusioned" In-Reply-To: <4ACDE697.7000909@panix.com> References: <4ACDE697.7000909@panix.com> Message-ID: <200910081036.21561.intnsred@golgotha.net> > The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise > civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their > backs. ?They?re a joke,? said one. These guys don't get it. They think they're fighting a real war and don't realize they're fighting a war of occupation. There's a huge difference. Either way, since the people of Afghanistan are increasingly opposed to foreign troops, NATO will likely lose. -- "Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval." -- Karl Marx From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 08:39:14 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:39:14 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Bill Ayers punks rightwing bloggers over "writing Obama's book" Message-ID: <4ACDF992.9080005@panix.com> http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/stalking-william-ayers/ From sebastian at amadeobordiga.u-net.com Thu Oct 8 08:58:55 2009 From: sebastian at amadeobordiga.u-net.com (Sebastian Budgen) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:58:55 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] International Socialism Journal 124 now out References: <0D68991D-1512-42CC-823B-63B50DC0830A@swp.org.uk> Message-ID: <5E12B609-7912-40A0-B200-33CDB5F79825@amadeobordiga.u-net.com> > > International Socialism > > > The new issue of International Socialism journal (issue 124) is out > now. This issue includes: > ? Peyman Jafari on Rupture and revolt in Iran. > ? Special collection on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the > Berlin Wall, featuring Gareth Dale on the East German Revolution and > Adam Fabry on the fate of Eastern Europe since 1989. > ? Oliver Nachtwey on the rise of the German left party Die Linke. > ? Interview with Michael Bradley and Charlie Kimber on the latest > phase of class struggle in Britain. > ? Andrew Kliman reviews Chris Harman's latest book, Zombie > Capitalism. > ? John Molyneux gives his views on democracy and Leninist > organisation. > ? Neil Davidson examines Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. > ? David Renton on the rise of the industrial tribunal system. > ? Joseph Choonara on Goldman Sachs's estimates of profit rates. > ? Plus: reviews, analysis and pick of the quarter. > To browse through the full content, go to www.isj.org.uk > To order copies, email isj at swp.org.uk or phone 020 7819 1177. > Individual copies are ?5 plus p&p. > > > -- > International Socialism > www.isj.org.uk > +44 (0)20 7819 1177 From fred.fuentes at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 09:06:08 2009 From: fred.fuentes at gmail.com (Fred Fuentes) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 10:36:08 -0430 Subject: [Marxism] Ramonet - The daily press is dying Message-ID: The daily press is dying Wednesday, 07 October 2009 15:55 http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1235:the-daily-press-is-dying&catid=40:lastest-news&Itemid=59 By Ignacio Ramonet Le Monde Diplomatique The disaster is huge. Dozens of newspapers are bankrupt. In the United States, no less than 120 papers have shut down. And the tsunami is now striking Europe. Not even the former ?newspapers of reference? are safe. El Pa?s in Spain, Le Monde in France, The Times and The Independent in the United Kingdom, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica in Italy, etc. All of them are experiencing heavy economic losses, a collapse in distribution and a dizzying drop in advertising. (1) The prestigious New York Times had to ask for help from Mexican millionaire Carlos Slim; the publishers of The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, as well as the Hearst Corporation, owner of The San Francisco Chronicle, have gone bankrupt. The News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's powerful multimedia group, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, has suffered annual losses of 2.5 billion euros. To trim costs, many publications are reducing the number of their pages. The Washington Post folded its prestigious literary supplement, Bookworld; The Christian Science Monitor decided to end its newsprint edition and exist only on the Internet; the Financial Times is asking its staff to work three-day weeks and has drastically reduced its personnel. The firings are massive. Since January 2008, 21,000 jobs have been eliminated in U.S. newspapers. In Spain, ?between June 2008 and April 2009, 2,221 journalists have lost their jobs.? (2) The salaried press finds itself at the edge of the abyss and desperately searches for formulas for survival. Some analysts believe that that form of information is obsolete. Newser's Michael Wolf predicts that 80 percent of the American newspapers will disappear. (3) Even more pessimistic, Rupert Murdoch predicts that, within 10 years, all newspapers will cease to exist. What is so lethally aggravating the decline of the daily press? One current factor is the worldwide economic crisis, which is provoking a drop in advertising and a restriction of credit. And, at the most inopportune moment, that crisis has worsened the sector's structural ills: the marketing of information, an addiction to advertising, a loss of credibility, a drop in subscriptions, competition from the free (unpaid) press, the aging of readers. Add to this, in Latin America, the necessary democratic reforms initiated by some governments (Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela) against the ?media empires? created by private groups in the form of monopolies. And those reforms trigger a string of slander aimed at those governments and their presidents from the leading and disenchanted media and their usual accomplishes (in Spain, it is the newspaper El Pa?s, which keeps railing against Prime Minister Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero.) (4) The daily press continues to practice an economic and industrial model that doesn't work. The creation of large, international multimedia groups that took place in the 1980s and ?90s no longer works. It has been overtaken by the proliferation of the new modes of diffusion of information and entertainment via the Internet or cell phones. (5) Paradoxically, newspapers have never had a larger readership as they do today. With the Internet, the number of readers has grown exponentially. (6) But the newspapers' interfacing with the Web is unfortunate, because it creates an injustice. It forces the newsprint buyer to subsidize the computer user, who reads the online edition (more extensive and entertaining) for free. And because advertising in the Web version does not bring in enough revenue, since it is cheaper than in the newsprint version. (7) Losses and profits don't balance. Striking about like blind men, the newspapers search desperately for formulas to deal with the hyperchange and survive. Following the example of iTunes, some papers ask for minimal payment from their readers to allow them exclusive access to the news online. (8) Murdoch decided that, beginning in January 2010, he will demand payment for every access to The Wall Street Journal through any technology, including Blackberry or iPhone, Twitter or the Kindle electronic reader. Google is looking for a recipe that will permit it to charge for every reading of any digital newspaper, so as to revert a fraction of that cost to the publishing house. Will these Band-Aids be enough to save the terminal patient? Few believe that (read Serge Halimi's article ?The battle of Le Monde Diplomatique?), because the most worrisome factor is added to all the others: the collapse of credibility. The current obsession of newspapers to be first with the news causes them to multiply their mistakes. The demagogic request to ?reader-journalists? to upload to the newspaper's website their blogs, photos or videos increases the risk of disseminating misinformation. And defending the company's strategy as an editorial line (as the leading newspapers do today) imposes a subjective, arbitrary and partisan view of information. Confronted by the new ?capital sins? of journalism, citizens feel that their rights have been violated. They know that having trustworthy and quality information is more important now than ever before, for them and for democracy. So they ask themselves: where can we find the truth? Our regular readers know part of the answer: in the truly independent and critical press ? and, obviously, in the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique. Ignacio Ramonet is a journalist. From 1990 to 2008, he was editor of Le Monde Diplomatique. He is co-founder of the nongovernmental organization Media Watch Global , which he presides. Notes: (1) In?s Hayes, ?The world's main newspapers are bankrupt,? Am?rica XXI, Caracas, April 2009. (2) According to the Federation of Journalists' Associations of Spain, Madrid, April 13, 2009. (3) The Washington Post, April 21, 2009. (4) About El Pa?s? attacks against Zapatero, read Doreen Carvajal's "El Pa?s in rare break with socialist leader", The New York Times, Sept. 13, 2009. The Spanish version appears in www.internautas.org/ html/5722.html (5) Luis Hern?ndez Navarro, ?The crisis of the printed press,? La Jornada, M?xico, March 3, 2009. (6) Read the report : "Newspapers in Crisis": www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000552.aspx (7) In 2008, The New York Times? readership on the Internet was 10 times that of its printed version, but its advertising revenue from the Web was one-tenth that of its printed version. (8) Read: Gordon Crovitz, ?The future of newspapers on the Internet,? La Naci?n, Buenos Aires, Aug. 15, 2009. From spalmer999 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 8 10:04:47 2009 From: spalmer999 at yahoo.com (Steve Palmer) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 09:04:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] =?utf-8?q?Financial_Development_Report_shows_global_fin?= =?utf-8?q?ancial_centres=E2=80=99_lead_is_weakening?= Message-ID: <334478.39593.qm@web80402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> New York, USA, 8 October 2009 ? The world?s largest economies took the biggest hit in the World Economic Forum?s second annual Financial Development Report released today. Global financial centres still lead in the report?s Index, but the effects of financial instability have pulled down their scores compared to last year. The United Kingdom, buoyed by the relative strength of its banking and non-banking financial activities, claimed the Index?s top spot from the United States, which slipped to third position behind Australia largely due to poorer financial stability scores and a weakened banking sector. The Financial Development Report ranks 55 of the world?s leading financial systems and capital markets. It analyses the drivers of financial system development and economic growth in developed and developing countries to serve as a tool for countries to benchmark themselves and establish priorities for reform. ? Signs of weakness emerge among many global financial centres following crisis ? Developing countries show comparative financial stability, but also potential for improvement in other areas ? Report analyses 55 financial systems and capital markets around the world ? Report benchmarks financial system development to support economic growth in emerging markets ? The report, rankings and country highlights can be downloaded at: http://www.weforum.org/fdr From versomail at verso.co.uk Thu Oct 8 09:57:38 2009 From: versomail at verso.co.uk (Verso Mail) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:57:38 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] NEW TITLE: FRAMES OF WAR BY JUDITH BUTLER Message-ID: NEW TITLE: FRAMES OF WAR WHEN IS LIFE GRIEVABLE? Judith Butler OUT NOW ------------------------------- "Judith Butler is the most creative and courageous social theorist writing today. FRAMES OF WAR is an intellectual masterpiece." Cornel West "To propose that Judith Butler is one of the world's leading thinkers, a feminist philosopher whose writing has impacted on a wide domain of disciplinary fields inside the academy, as well as on political culture in the outside world, is hardly contentious. We are, many of us, deeply indebted to this body of work which has illuminated issues that are at the very core of life, death, sexuality and existence." Angela McRobbie, Times Higher Education Book of the Week Read the full review here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=407098 "Frames of War [is] an important contribution to what will no doubt be an ongoing philosophical and political discussion about the rights and wrongs of war." Nina Power, The Philosopher's Magazine Read full review here: http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=714 "Judith Butler's focus in this collection of five essays written and revised between 2004 and 2008 is the USA under George W. Bush, with Abu Ghraib and Guant?namo Bay looming in the background. The questions she addresses... have a clear bearing on the cultural politics of grief beyond the USA." Mark Fisher, Frieze Read the full review here: http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/frames_of_war_when_is_life_grievable ------------------------------- The most celebrated feminist in the world - Gender Trouble started the Queer Theory movement and sold over 100,000 copies - returns with this powerful analysis of the role of the media in the 'War on Terror'. In FRAMES OF WAR, Judith Butler explores the media's portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of "the living." This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, guilt, loss and indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life. In this urgent response to increasingly dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a reconceptualization of the Left, one united in opposition and resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence. ------------------------------- Praise for JUDITH BUTLER: "Judith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time." J.M. Bernstein Praise for PRECARIOUS LIFE: "It's clear that its author is still interested in stirring up trouble-academic, political and otherwise." -Bookforum "Hers is a unique voice of courage and conceptual ambition that addresses public life from the perspective of psychic reality, encouraging us to acknowledge the solidarity and the suffering through which we emerge as subjects of freedom." Homi K. Bhabha ------------------------------- JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of many highly influential books, including Giving an Account of Oneself, Precarious Life, and Gender Trouble. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISBN 9781844673339 ?14.99 / $26.95 / Hardback / 200 pages FRAMES OF WAR is available from all good bookshops and: http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/butler_judith_frames_of_war.shtml UK: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781844673339/Frames-of-War http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frames-War-When-Life-Grievable/dp/1844673332 US: http://www.amazon.com/Frames-War-When-Life-Grievable/dp/1844673332 ---------------------------------------- Visit Verso's new blog for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers. http://versouk.wordpress.com/ And get updates on Twitter too! http://twitter.com/VersoBooksUK ---------------------------------------- From versomail at verso.co.uk Thu Oct 8 09:57:05 2009 From: versomail at verso.co.uk (Verso Mail) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:57:05 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] NEW TITLE: FRAMES OF WAR BY JUDITH BUTLER Message-ID: NEW TITLE: FRAMES OF WAR WHEN IS LIFE GRIEVABLE? Judith Butler OUT NOW ------------------------------- "Judith Butler is the most creative and courageous social theorist writing today. FRAMES OF WAR is an intellectual masterpiece." Cornel West "To propose that Judith Butler is one of the world's leading thinkers, a feminist philosopher whose writing has impacted on a wide domain of disciplinary fields inside the academy, as well as on political culture in the outside world, is hardly contentious. We are, many of us, deeply indebted to this body of work which has illuminated issues that are at the very core of life, death, sexuality and existence." Angela McRobbie, Times Higher Education Book of the Week Read the full review here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=407098 "Frames of War [is] an important contribution to what will no doubt be an ongoing philosophical and political discussion about the rights and wrongs of war." Nina Power, The Philosopher's Magazine Read full review here: http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=714 "Judith Butler's focus in this collection of five essays written and revised between 2004 and 2008 is the USA under George W. Bush, with Abu Ghraib and Guant?namo Bay looming in the background. The questions she addresses... have a clear bearing on the cultural politics of grief beyond the USA." Mark Fisher, Frieze Read the full review here: http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/frames_of_war_when_is_life_grievable ------------------------------- The most celebrated feminist in the world - Gender Trouble started the Queer Theory movement and sold over 100,000 copies - returns with this powerful analysis of the role of the media in the 'War on Terror'. In FRAMES OF WAR, Judith Butler explores the media's portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of "the living." This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, guilt, loss and indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life. In this urgent response to increasingly dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a reconceptualization of the Left, one united in opposition and resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence. ------------------------------- Praise for JUDITH BUTLER: "Judith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time." J.M. Bernstein Praise for PRECARIOUS LIFE: "It's clear that its author is still interested in stirring up trouble-academic, political and otherwise." -Bookforum "Hers is a unique voice of courage and conceptual ambition that addresses public life from the perspective of psychic reality, encouraging us to acknowledge the solidarity and the suffering through which we emerge as subjects of freedom." Homi K. Bhabha ------------------------------- JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of many highly influential books, including Giving an Account of Oneself, Precarious Life, and Gender Trouble. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISBN 9781844673339 ?14.99 / $26.95 / Hardback / 200 pages FRAMES OF WAR is available from all good bookshops and: http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/butler_judith_frames_of_war.shtml UK: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781844673339/Frames-of-War http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frames-War-When-Life-Grievable/dp/1844673332 US: http://www.amazon.com/Frames-War-When-Life-Grievable/dp/1844673332 ---------------------------------------- Visit Verso's new blog for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers. http://versouk.wordpress.com/ And get updates on Twitter too! http://twitter.com/VersoBooksUK ---------------------------------------- From eindeoc at freenet.de Thu Oct 8 11:43:40 2009 From: eindeoc at freenet.de (Einde O'Callaghan) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:43:40 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] International Socialism Journal 124 now out In-Reply-To: <5E12B609-7912-40A0-B200-33CDB5F79825@amadeobordiga.u-net.com> References: <0D68991D-1512-42CC-823B-63B50DC0830A@swp.org.uk> <5E12B609-7912-40A0-B200-33CDB5F79825@amadeobordiga.u-net.com> Message-ID: <4ACE24CC.7020009@freenet.de> Sebastian Budgen wrote: >> International Socialism >> >> >> The new issue of International Socialism journal (issue 124) is out >> now. This issue includes: > >> ? Peyman Jafari on Rupture and revolt in Iran. >> ? Special collection on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the >> Berlin Wall, featuring Gareth Dale on the East German Revolution and >> Adam Fabry on the fate of Eastern Europe since 1989. Some time ago I referred to an article that I'd translated about DIE LINKE written by Oliver Nachtwey. This is the article: >> ? Oliver Nachtwey on the rise of the German left party Die Linke. It can be found at The article is called "Die Linke and the crisis of class representation" and it more or less reflects my position on DIE LINKE. Einde O'Callaghan From missmachetera at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 12:07:31 2009 From: missmachetera at gmail.com (Ma Chetera) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:07:31 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] Documentary on state repression at public universities in Colombia Message-ID: Ah, fall. The beginning of the university year. New classes. New students. New professors. New ideas. Death threats. Disappearance. Murder. Welcome to Colombian public university, where for at least the last ten years, the Colombian armed forces and paramilitaries associated with the (U.S. puppet) government of ?lvaro Uribe and that of Pastrana before him, have been rolling tanks, harassing, threatening and even killing students who dare to express their opposition to the regime. Meanwhile Colombian corporate media and politicians mock dissenting students who as a result, wish to conceal their identity and the universities quietly hand the government the databases it desires. The link which follows will take you to a video documentary (in 3 consecutive parts) which includes eyewitness accounts from the besieged Colombian university students. The contrast between the story these students tell and that which is presented by the media subservient to Uribe couldn't be clearer. The documentary was translated and subtitled by, naturally, the Tlaxcala global network of translators for linguistic diversity. Please redistribute it everywhere. http://www.tlaxcala.es/detail_artistes.asp?lg=&reference=359 http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/colombian-public-universities-as-a-laboratory-for-state-repression/ From joeandcaroline at msn.com Thu Oct 8 13:46:32 2009 From: joeandcaroline at msn.com (Joseph Callahan) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 14:46:32 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] Honduran repression stats Message-ID: Does anybody have or know of a good source of stats on the Honduran military's repression of the resistance against the coup - like numbers of people killed, arrested and injured? We're working on a flyer for some anti-coup actions. Joe Callahan From rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca Thu Oct 8 13:55:46 2009 From: rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca (Richard Fidler) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 15:55:46 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Honduran repression stats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Based on statistics gathered through Honduras Laboral, as of 10/2. 17 have been killed and 4,000 detained over the three months of protests. http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/ -----Original Message----- From: marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico.ca at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico.ca at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Callahan Sent: October 8, 2009 3:47 PM To: rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca Subject: [Marxism] Honduran repression stats Does anybody have or know of a good source of stats on the Honduran military's repression of the resistance against the coup - like numbers of people killed, arrested and injured? We're working on a flyer for some anti-coup actions. Joe Callahan ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rfidler_8%40sympati co.ca From fred.fuentes at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 14:32:26 2009 From: fred.fuentes at gmail.com (Fred Fuentes) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:02:26 -0430 Subject: [Marxism] Honduran repression stats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: some good stats on repression in Honduras (in spanish) Para no caer en irresponsabilidades, los datos que les dar? son datos registrados por CODEH, podr?n haber m?s, pero es lo que nosotros tenemos; desde el 28 de junio de 2005: 26 heridos con balas disparadas por la polic?a y militares que han necesitado hospitalizaci?n, 35 heridos con otros objetos que han necesitado hospitalizaci?n, 80 personas judicializadas por el tipo penal de sedici?n, da?os a la propiedad y riesgo social, m?s de 100 personas con lesiones por toletes, cadenas y otros objetos utilizados por la polic?a que no han llegado a hospitales, m?s de dos mil personas detenidas durante las marchas y toques de queda, detenciones por 4 y hasta 24 horas, se dice de m?s de 20 requerimientos fiscales en secretividad contra funcionarios del gobierno constitucional dirigido por el Presidente Manuel Zelaya, allanamientos de morada en horas de la noche 6, allanamientos a instalaciones de radio y televisi?n 2, decomiso de equipos de radio el?ctricos en violaci?n al articulo 73 de la Constituci?n de la Republica, sierre de radio Globo y canal 36, un sacerdote a quien le quitaron la parroquia y amenazado con cancelaci?n de nacionalidad, m?s de cuarenta toques de queda sin marco de ley, un Decreto que disminuye y menoscaba las libertades p?blicas, m?s de 105 homicidios en horas de los toques de queda sin que haya preocupacion por encontrar la autor?a de los cr?menes, un funcionario del Estado en prisi?n bajo la figura del cohecho con cauci?n suficiente para que su juicio se desarrolle en libertad, una campa?a medi?tica que pretende desmejorar la moral de los lideres que se oponen al golpe, 2 torturados, casas de lideres populares vigiladas. 12 amparos ante la Sala de lo Constitucional sin resultados hasta hoy, 1 denuncia ante el Ministerio P?blico por los delitos de allanamiento, violaci?n de los deberes de los funcionarios, traici?n a la patria y desobediencia sin resultados y sin proceso de investigaci?n, 17 Habeas Corpus con 1 resultado positivo, 2 denuncias en la fiscalia de derechos humanos sin resultados. Un operativo militar y policial de 100 d?as, la inversi?n para garantizar la consulta popular seria de unos treinta millones por dos d?as, lo que significa que el costo de la operaci?n anda por mil millones quinientos mil lempiras en 100 d?as, la mitad del Presupuesto de seguridad por un a?o, sin contar el gasto de la depreciaci?n del equipo y la maquinaria militar y policial, sin contar el gasto de combustible para los helic?pteros militares y polic?as, la alimentaci?n para los militares es suministrada por el ejercito, la polic?a no recibe esta ayuda, los polic?as tienen que comprar su propia comida; en ocasiones les dan alimento sectores que apoyan el golpe, los agentes de investigaci?n criminal no reciben esta ayuda. Docenas de escudos protectores da?ados; la mayor?a de estos escudos son de barriles de pl?stico y metal adaptados lo que podr?a ser una compra ama?ada por administraciones anteriores, cientos de bombas lacrim?genas disparadas con la consecuente contaminaci?n ambiental por gas pimienta con consecuencias nocivas para la salud. Que juzgue el mundo, pero mientras tanto pueblo yo te acompa?o. On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Richard Fidler wrote: > Based on statistics gathered through Honduras Laboral, as of 10/2. 17 > have been killed and 4,000 detained over the three months of protests. > http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/ > > > -----Original Message----- > From: marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico.ca at lists.econ.utah.edu > [mailto:marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico.ca at lists.econ.utah.edu] On > Behalf Of Joseph Callahan > Sent: October 8, 2009 3:47 PM > To: rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca > Subject: [Marxism] Honduran repression stats > > Does anybody have or know of a good source of stats on the Honduran > military's repression of the resistance against the coup - like > numbers of people killed, arrested and injured? > We're working on a flyer for some anti-coup actions. > > Joe Callahan > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options > at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rfidler_8%40sympati > co.ca > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/fred.fuentes%40gmail.com > From sartesian at earthlink.net Thu Oct 8 14:53:00 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:53:00 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] US troops in Afghanistan "depressed and deeplydisillusioned" References: <4ACDE697.7000909@panix.com> <200910081036.21561.intnsred@golgotha.net> Message-ID: Sounds like Vietnam to me, but what do I know? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Intense Red" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 10:36 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] US troops in Afghanistan "depressed and deeplydisillusioned" > The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise > civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their > backs. ?They?re a joke,? said one. From markalause at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 15:41:59 2009 From: markalause at gmail.com (Mark Lause) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 17:41:59 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Ralph Nader Throws His Hope in with Enlightened Billionaires In-Reply-To: <4ACDE829.1060303@panix.com> References: <4ACDE829.1060303@panix.com> Message-ID: This is probably less a political prescription on Nader's part than an employment of the age-old literary device. Solve the problem of funding frees your imagination to show what actually could be done right now. You not only find it common among the classical utopian writers, but Kurt Vonnegut used it very effectively with his Eliott Rosewater character. Of course, a political figure doing this is likely to cause some confusion, but I think it's usually limited by how many people there are out there looking for something with which to confuse themselves... ML From dan.dimaggio at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 15:55:11 2009 From: dan.dimaggio at gmail.com (Dan DiMaggio) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:55:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism] Ralph Nder Throws His Hope in With Enlightened Billionaires Message-ID: Hi, Here's a quick report I wrote last week after seeing Nader in Minneapolis on his book tour: ----------------- Ralph Nader spoke in Minneapolis Wednesday night as part of his book tour for his new work of fiction, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us." Many of you undoubtedly probably think that this title is satire, given that the super-rich are the problem. Unfortunately, it's not. Nader spoke to a crowd of a few hundred at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 34th and Dupont. He started out by repeating some of the excellent stuff he said when he spoke in Minneapolis on Day 4 of the RNC last year - how Americans suffer from low expectations, thanks in large part to the corporate-owned two-party system. He talked about how in a "modern, gigantic, rich, productive economy" like the U.S. (leaving out the word ... capitalist) poverty should have been eliminated, everyone should have health care, etc. But the reality is that despite massive increases in worker productivity, 13 million children go to bed hungry, and 45% of all kids in California live either in or near poverty. It is an inherently corrupt, rotten system. He explained how after World War II, unions and left-wing political parties in Europe and Canada had won rights like free higher education, universal healthcare, stronger union rights, and more. He talked about how in the U.S., Nixon was the "last president to ever fear liberals" thanks to the marches and demonstrations in the streets during the '60s and '70s, which forced Nixon to sign all sorts of bills (his record is more progressive than most Democrats in many ways). But since then "the rumble from the people has become dimmer and dimmer," and the Democrats and Republicans have become "one corporate party." He said he viewed his book in the tradition of "practical utopia," like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, which was written in 1886 (I think) and imagined a socialist future in the year 2000, helping inspire many in the socialist movement, including Eugene Debs that a different world was possible. Unfortunately Nader's book is quite different, and is "utopian" in the sense of totally unrealistic and opposed to reality. He spent the rest of the time outlining his "practical utopia," which essentially amounts to a few, older enlightened super-rich individuals like Warren Buffett (and Ted Turner, Phil Donohue, etc.) finally getting fed up with many of the injustices around us and pumping billions to fund grassroots social movements to save the environment, increase workers' rights, abolish poverty, provide single-payer universal healthcare, and take on corporate domination of our political system and economy. The title comes from a woman fleeing a hurricane or something who grabs Warren Buffett's hand and says, "Only the super-rich can save us!" Nader's motivation to write this book was that he says people can continue researching, writing books to expose the system - "but until we deal with the problem of MONEY" corporate power cannot be seriously challenged. He cited the examples of rich donors who helped fund the civil rights and abolitionist movements. These examples are important, and should not be neglected. Social movements will ultimately have to convince some wealthy people to support us, at the same time as fighting for the movements themselves to control that money. The Bolsheviks, for example, had some rich contributors, mainly children of the wealthy, who they called "angels." But the way Nader presents it, it comes across as the main strategy, almost as if movements can't be built or need to wait until we can convince these mega-rich to help us out. In addition, the main way we are going to raise money for movements is going to come from the self-sacrifice of ordinary people, who dedicate their time, money, and lives to changing the world. Imagine, for example, if instead of pumping $450 million into electing corporate Democrats in 2008 the labor movement had spent that money on building a party that represents ordinary people? As Nader pointed out, the richest 450 people in the world have wealth equal to the bottom 3 billion. This is INSANE - and it's possibly even more insane to imagine that they are going to fund movements to substantially change this. Nader claims that the super-rich are in a better position to make change than ever before, because "there are more powerful global tools than ever before because of the amassing of flexible capital and increase in information technology." This seems like the craziest thing he said. The amassing of flexible capital (i.e. finance capital) is a product of the massive expansion of production under capitalism, as well as the contradictions of capitalism ... I'd like to have an economist explain this point to me, but I'm a bit suspicious given that this flexible capital has helped cause the current crisis ... In Nader's book, these super-rich individuals start a "Clean Elections Party" to challenge the two-party system. Of course, this is the last thing they would ever do (although he does include Ross Perot). The 2-party system is a fundamental pillar of rule by the mega-rich. He also seemed to claim in the Q & A that the super-rich would also fund an effort to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Again, this is the LAST piece of legislation they would ever fund a movement against. Taft-Hartley, passed in 1947 under Truman, took away the most powerful weapons of the labor movement, developed in the 1930s and 1940s (the years immediately following World War II saw the biggest strike wave in U.S. history; over 5 million workers struck in 1946). As Wikipedia says, "The Taft-Hartley Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary or "common situs" picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. It also required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government. Union shops were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass "right-to-work laws" that outlawed union shops. Furthermore, the executive branch of the Federal government could obtain legal strikebreaking injunctions if an impending or current strike "imperiled the national health or safety," a test that has been interpreted broadly by the courts... The Taft-Hartley Act was seen as a means of demobilizing the labor movement by imposing limits on labor's ability to strike and by prohibiting radicals from their leadership, people who were typically more active in union activities." These "enlightened super-rich" might fund campaigns to alleviate poverty, by raising the minimum wage (or, more likely, by increasing the earned income tax credit), but they would never, ever legally restore to labor the weapons that they could use to end the rule of capital, like the solidarity strike, etc. (By the way, just because Taft-Hartley makes these illegal doesn't mean they can't be employed - the labor movement, civil rights movement, etc. were all built BY breaking the goddamn law!). These super-rich also run their businesses in a worker-friendly, environment-friendly manner - "they did the right thing" "because they could afford to." Here Nader again shows a complete ignorance of the laws of capitalism - which is the law of the jungle. These super-rich would no longer be super-rich if they ran their businesses that way for too long ... Apparently the super-rich owner of Price Club and Costco (who merge) also funds a campaign to unionize Wal-Mart. I don't even need to say anything about this, hopefully, for people to realize how messed up that is. Nader is fond of quoting Eugene Debs, the railroad union activist and socialist who ran for president 5 times between 1900 and 1920, even while he was in jail for speaking out against World War I. Debs, sadly, would be rolling over in his grave if he heard Nader's talk. Debs was at the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, whose preamble starts, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common." This is the fundamental principle upon which the labor movement and socialist movements are built (or should be built). Unfortunately, Nader's book promotes the exact opposite - a feeling among ordinary people that we are powerless, that "only the super-rich can save us." He mentioned feedback he got from the woman who typed the manuscript onto the computer (he still uses a typewriter, as you might remember from the Ralph Nader and Obama Girl show video). She's a single mom who works in a diner. She said, "I like this book because some rich powerful people care for us, ordinary people - and they gave us a role in changing society." But they really, really don't care ... The wealth of the super-rich is based on the massive exploitation of the labor of working people around the world, who they look down upon in condescension. As Michael Jackson put it, "All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us." (Brazilian version) This isn't even to get into Nader's ridiculous use of alliteration to form every name in the book (the villain: Lancelot Lobo ("He prefers to go by 'Lobo'"); the mascot of the super-rich: Patriotic Polly; the right-wing radio host: Bush Bimbo; etc.). As much as I love and respect the dude and his shining example in the way he has dedicated his entire life to challenging corporate power (and a lot of his jokes!!! he's actually a funny dude), he should really stick to doing research and writing non-fiction ... The Q&A was bizarre. The first guy talked about how the modern conservative movement got much of its start from the mega-rich backers who founded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. But this was a conscious decision on the part of big business to roll back the gains of the social movements and labor movement and restore profitability - which is in the interest of these backers ... Nader took things to new levels of ridiculousness when he said, "That's true - but this is on a bigger scale!" As if the mega-rich will fund a movement that goes against their ultimate interests on an even bigger scale than those who backed the conservative thinktanks ... John Peterson of the Workers' International League pointed out how Nader was looking to rich capitalists to fix things up, while Michael Moore's film has concluded that capitalism is the problem. Nader essentially ignored the question, but told John that he "has a very conventional left approach," then told him that Tony Mazzocchi (key founder of the Labor Party in the 1990s, which Nader was a supporter of, and leader of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers' Union) would've liked this book, and then implied that the super-rich would fund a campaign to repeal Taft-Hartley ... Nader also said, in terms of a new system of political economy other than capitalism, that after all the money the mega-rich put in to funding grassroots movements ($15 billion), "there will still be money leftover to seed a new political economy." I don't even want to start getting into just how far-fetched this is. Read everything Marx and Engels wrote on utopian socialists and other types of schematic reformers. I seriously *bashed* my head against the pew in the church after Nader finished answering/evading John's question, I was so frustrated. Well, as far as the alternative political economy goes, he proposes "community credit unions" to take on Bank of America, "community energy" to undermine Exxon, etc. etc. Again, these ideas are 19th century utopian ideas. We can't challenge capitalism by creating small-scale ethical examples, which will never be able to compete with the Exxons, Citigroups, Wal-Marts, etc. Instead, we should demand that the 500 (or 1500, according to Nader) corporations that essentially exercise a dictatorship over our economic and political system be taken into public ownership, under democratic working class control. To do this requires building a political movement behind this aim, including a new political party that is run by and in the interests of ordinary workers and youth. Unfortunately, Nader wants to limit himself to "Congressional Watchdog Groups," which essentially would be limited to lobbying - although he also raised the importance of running candidates for Congress, etc. - although he himself will not be at the forefront of starting a new party (as we've discovered over the last 8 years). For all these criticisms I have, I am still of the strong belief that Nader, despite his massive illusions in capitalism, has contributed more objectively to challenging capitalism in the U.S. than nearly anyone else over the last 9 years, through his presidential campaigns challenging and exposing the two-party system and its subservience to corporate power. His campaigns have educated millions, including myself, about the nature of the political system, the interests it serves, and the need to break from the Democrats and establish our own party. This will be his main legacy, not crappy fiction. From d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr Thu Oct 8 18:39:25 2009 From: d.koechlin at wanadoo.fr (Daniel Koechlin) Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:39:25 +0200 Subject: [Marxism] Who is interested in Mao ? Message-ID: <4ACE863D.90801@wanadoo.fr> As to where I picked up all the info on Mao. Well, from THE book, the definitive book on the subject. I am referring of course to Jung Chang's biography of Mao ("Mao : The unknown story"), which he wrote after consulting surviving friends, family members and all the available archives he could find. Most of these archives were from the ex-Soviet Union, because China does not allow access to Chinese archives on Mao. That is why his material on the 1920-1950 period is so precise. It took him twelve years to assemble the necessary documentation. And given Mao's tendency to obliterate all traces of his past, it is quite remarkable that such a biography exists at all. Mao constantly lied about his activities in the 1920s. He claimed to have been present at the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but that was just a big lie, because it was founded two years before Mao even took interest in Communism. Of course, he had all the school books re-written so as to include him as one of the founders of "Chinese Communism". Mao also lied as regards his involvement with the Kuomintang. Later in life, he denied ever having anything to do with the Nationalists. All these interesting snippets of info were also systematically deleted from Chinese archives. We are left with the testimonies of hundreds of surviving Kuomintang officials (in Taiwan) who all testify to the fact that Mao was indeed a member "at one point". The problem is, they can't agree on the dates. It seems Mao was a registered "spy" for the Kuomintang at one point, and then became a "special informant" (briefly), before becoming "the leader of communist activities in China". Well, I'll leave you to that excellent, aforementioned book on Mao. As for modern maoists (Are ? Kya aap mere doste hai ? Mai hindi bolte hu... ye bahut mushkil hai, hindi bolna.... Lekin, merelie, saach bahut important hai ). I am currently learning Hindi (is lie / that's why) I don't want to shock honest people. All I can say is, you had better devote your energies towards the true emancipation of the working class. Guns are only useful to unionism (trade-unionism) if they can bring about a change in society. I mean there are currently 12 000 naxalites in India (well actually, the number is closer to 9 000). The total population is 1 300 000 000 people. Naxalites can annoy the central authorities by regularly killing 10 members of the security forces (every week). There are 400 000 members of the security forces. The 10 000 to 20 000 naxalites (or 50 000 when one includes the "red bases") depend for their survival on local turf-wars. That's why they arm one group against another. In the 90s it was Christian tribes agaisnt Neo-Hindu tribes. Now, it is Advaisi agaisnt Advaisi. Local feuds are being settled through 12 bore shotguns, localy produced (that's all the weapons they have). The PCI(M) does posses a hard-core staff of dedicated revolutionists. They also have access to very advanced weapons (including a dozen or so SAM missiles). But heir hold on the vast territory of the Consolidated Revolutionary Zone is tenuous. I would really call on all anti-capitalists to work within their class, to create working-class alternatives to capitalism and definitely not to forget the importance of working-class democracy. Maoism, as all Marxist-Leninist ideologies, dismally fails on this account - providing genuine working-class support for would-be revolutionists. Maoists will find their own support, out of the barrel of a gun and out of indoctrination of 12 year-old Advaisis (peasents). From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 18:43:31 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:43:31 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Who is interested in Mao ? In-Reply-To: <4ACE863D.90801@wanadoo.fr> References: <4ACE863D.90801@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: <4ACE8733.40702@panix.com> Daniel Koechlin wrote: > As to where I picked up all the info on Mao. > > Well, from THE book, the definitive book on the subject. I am referring > of course to Jung Chang's biography of Mao ("Mao : The unknown story"), Are you aware that the co-author of this book, an ex-Marxist by the name of Jon Halliday, was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq and is a thorough reactionary today? From dmozart1756 at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 18:48:48 2009 From: dmozart1756 at gmail.com (Dennis Brasky) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 20:48:48 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] petition/open letter to Abbas re:Goldstone Message-ID: <53a1ffe70910081748u3e06d299xe7b77fc4b507fdc4@mail.gmail.com> We are a diverse group of Palestinians, solidarity activists, and supporters of human rights and international law. We write to join the Palestinian political parties, civil society groups, trade unions, and citizens that have condemned the recent decision at the UN Human Rights Council to withdraw Palestinian support for a resolution endorsing the report of the ?UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,? led by Richard Goldstone. We consider this decision a betrayal of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and of broader efforts to promote human rights and a just international system. Although we have no illusions that the Goldstone report would have guaranteed accountability for the atrocities committed in Gaza, we recognize it as an important tool in mobilizing the world community for the cause of peace and justice in the region. We also understand that Israel and its allies exerted pressure on you to bury the report. But by withdrawing support for a resolution in the Human Rights Council, you have done more to undermine these efforts than all of the sustained, high-level attacks by Israel and its allies combined. You have squandered the support of the world community for no good reason. We understand that you have appointed a committee to investigate how and why the Goldstone report was shelved. Such an inquiry is not needed to tell us that the person ultimately responsible for this disastrous decision is you. We are outraged that the self-described leader of a national liberation movement would seek to evade responsibility for such a reckless and damaging error. Furthermore, we believe this self-inflicted wound raises serious doubts about the soundness of your leadership and the authority of the diplomatic missions under your control worldwide to represent the interests of the Palestinian people. As Palestinians and non-Palestinian supporters of universal rights, our solidarity is first and foremost with the Palestinian people. We stand together for all actions that strengthen the national liberation movement and a just international system. Your most recent decision so egregiously undermines these goals that it leaves us with no choice but to clarify the contours of our solidarity ? to stand with the Palestinian people and against you. We demand that you restore full Palestinian diplomatic support for advancing the Goldstone report through the United Nations system, including to the Security Council and the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, we reiterate our support for efforts to restore the unity and legitimacy of the Palestinian national struggle. Until such unity is restored, any appeals for solidarity or support from you or your subordinates will carry no weight. Meanwhile, we pledge ourselves to redoubling our efforts for a just peace in the region based on respect for human rights and international law, including the right to self-determination ? with or without your help. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sign the petition - http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/lettertoabbas/ From ian at ianpace.com Thu Oct 8 19:01:38 2009 From: ian at ianpace.com (Ian Pace) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 02:01:38 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Who is interested in Mao ? In-Reply-To: <4ACE8733.40702@panix.com> References: <4ACE863D.90801@wanadoo.fr> <4ACE8733.40702@panix.com> Message-ID: <9410C3E978684E5589B7855C517BA455@IanPaceToshiba> Also, this book has been very severely criticised by many highly knowledgeable scholars of modern China (lots on this can be found via a bit of Googling). Nonetheless, I have little more time for Mao than I have for figures of the far right. Solidarity, Ian -------------------------------------------------- From: "Louis Proyect" Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 1:43 AM To: Subject: Re: [Marxism] Who is interested in Mao ? > Daniel Koechlin wrote: >> As to where I picked up all the info on Mao. >> >> Well, from THE book, the definitive book on the subject. I am referring >> of course to Jung Chang's biography of Mao ("Mao : The unknown story"), > > > Are you aware that the co-author of this book, an ex-Marxist by the name > of Jon Halliday, was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq and is a > thorough reactionary today? > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/ian%40ianpace.com From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 19:12:22 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:12:22 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Civilian control of the military Message-ID: <4ACE8DF6.9050205@panix.com> On October first, General Stanley McChrystal, the commanding officer in Afghanistan, made a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London that implicitly repudiated Vice President Biden?s proposals for refocusing the war as one against Al Qaeda in Pakistan rather than the Taliban in Afghanistan. In his speech, the General dismissed the claim that Afghanistan ?is a graveyard of empires? as ?untrue?. Given the deteriorating situation that, more than anything else, has prompted Biden?s ?dovish? stance, one wonders if McChrystal is whistling in the graveyard. If you read the speech, you will not find much in the way of Fox-TV rhetoric. Indeed, the main thrust against Biden took place in the Q&A when the General was asked whether he favored a strategy in Afghanistan of killing top insurgent leaders with unmanned drones and missiles that was associated with the peace-loving VP. He replied, ?The short, glib answer is no. You have to navigate from where you are, not from where you wish you were. ? A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.? read full article: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/civilian-control-of-the-military/ From lnp3 at panix.com Thu Oct 8 19:55:02 2009 From: lnp3 at panix.com (Louis Proyect) Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:55:02 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Financial crisis and anticonsumerism Message-ID: <4ACE97F6.5020603@panix.com> http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=1532 From bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com Thu Oct 8 22:15:10 2009 From: bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com (Bhaskar Sunkara) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 00:15:10 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Weekly Worker 788 (08/10/2009) Message-ID: Weekly Worker 788 - Thursday October 8 2009 The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/788 In this week's issue: VICTORY TO THE POSTAL WORKERS! An overwhelming vote for action is expected. Jim Moody gives the background LETTERS Military angle; Bottom up; Class act; Smash ?em; Sex and power; Rix fix; Disaster LISBON TREATY GETS THROUGH Ireland?s vote highlights the need for a clear, positive working class agenda, writes Anne Mc Shane NEW VISION FOR EUROPE WANTED James Turley argues that the bourgeoisie is incapable of uniting Europe on any secure basis WORK LONGER FOR LESS The Tory conference gave us a flavour of what a Cameron government will bring, writes Eddie Ford ROUGH RIDE FOR SERWOTKA? Dave Vincent thinks Serwotka?s campaign is utterly economistic DEMOCRACY OR OLIGARCHY? Paul Cockshott critiques Mike Macnair?s Revolutionary strategy and argues for a rethink on the question of a democratic republic SEARING INDICTMENT OF US CAPITALISM SPOILT BY NOSTALGIA FOR ROOSEVELT?S NEW DEAL Jim Creegan reviews Michael Moore?s (director) Capitalism: a love story 2009 (no UK release date yet) ENDING OF CPB TRUCE Dave Lynch expects full ?vote Labour? mode THINK AGAIN Robbie Rix wants to see some plastic A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/788/788web.pdf From rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com Fri Oct 9 05:53:27 2009 From: rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com (Rosa Lichtenstein) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 12:53:27 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) Message-ID: Rosa_L replies to Charles Brown here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/mr_b_up_to_his_old_tricks.htm Rosa Lichtenstein From rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com Fri Oct 9 05:57:45 2009 From: rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com (Rosa Lichtenstein) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 12:57:45 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] Rosa_L_replies_to_CB Message-ID: Rosa_L replies to Charles Brown: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/mr_b_up_to_his_old_tricks.htm Rosa Lichtenstein From sartesian at earthlink.net Fri Oct 9 06:13:55 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 08:13:55 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) References: Message-ID: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> Rosa, You said you have nothing to say to me, which of course is the logical derivative of your statement that we have nothing to say to each other. Don't send me anymore of your garbage emails. Sincerely, SA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 7:53 AM Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) > Rosa_L replies to Charles Brown here: > > > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/mr_b_up_to_his_old_tricks.htm > > Rosa Lichtenstein > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Fri Oct 9 06:53:05 2009 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 06:53:05 -0600 Subject: [Marxism] Down in the Cactus: The Darkest Pits in Sheriffism Message-ID: I've had occasion to know adversarily many "bad sheriffs" -- in many times and many settings. But Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Arizona sheriff. has to rank among the very worst -- and, from the standpoint of "fascist mentality" [a term I never use lightly], he takes some top laurels in that deplorable context. His ascendancy and retention as sheriff go back a number of years -- and say much about the social sickness that pervades the Phoenix metro area [and, given his range of national admirers, about that of the nation as a whole.] 'Way back in the Old Days, when my home state was so small population-wise that lots of people knew lots of others from the Utah border to that of Mexico and from the Colorado River to the New Mexico line, Phoenix -- never wildly close to the hearts of us in the northern part of the state ["too damn big" and "too much government"] was still pretty manageable. It was also a twelve hour drive from my home town of Flagstaff. Many of us were not too pleased when the Black Canyon Highway was constructed and the distance was shortened to three hours. In due course, Phoenix was discovered by much of the rest of the USA. Initially, it began to swell with retirees. A joke back in my high school days involved the "Iowa farmer who comes to Phoenix with bib-overalls and a twenty dollar bill and doesn't change either one." But it wasn't long before Other Things began to move in: run-away industries from the East seeking the benefits of low taxes and minimal unionism. And then came the far right wingers: Birchers, the followers of demagogic Billy James Hargis, even some latter day adherents of the essentially fascist Gerald L.K Smith. [This ultra-reactionary infection became so acute that Barry Goldwater denounced and repudiated it -- though not the corporate forces that had provided much of its fertile garden of evil.] But all of this rank and negative growth of poisonous weeds continued in Phoenix and Maricopa County -- and it continues right to this very moment. And one of its most socially lethal fruits is Joe Arpaio and Company -- foundationed by the voters who continue his reign. On this cold Idaho morning, I can find only two notes of consolation in this: Arpaio is NOT, whatever his drivers' license may say, an Arizonian. He's from Springfield, Massachusetts [and a tip of my apologetic hat to that fundamentally good state.] And he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. Yours, Hunter [Hunter Bear] (CNN) -- Federal authorities are moving to rein in the man dubbed "America's Toughest Sheriff" after complaints that immigration raids by his deputies amounted to unconstitutional roundups of Latinos. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio supervises an inmate relocation in Phoenix, Arizona. Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff's department have had an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security since 2007 that allows his department to enforce federal immigration laws. But Arpaio says the federal agency is moving to revise the agreement to limit that power to checking the immigration status of inmates already in his Phoenix jail. Arpaio has cultivated his image as "America's Toughest Sheriff," a nickname earned by his treatment of Maricopa County inmates. Many of his prisoners are housed in tents and forced to wear pink underwear, and he once boasted of feeding them on less than a dollar a day. Now he faces a Justice Department investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona is suing the sheriff over immigration raids conducted by his department. The class-action lawsuit alleges that Arpaio has abused the power delegated to him under his agreement with Homeland Security, known as the 287(g) program. "He's unconstitutionally acted to racially profile many persons in the community, persons who appear or are Latino," ACLU lawyer Dan Pochoda told CNN. Pochoda said the five-term sheriff has launched a series of high-profile raids to appeal to "his anti-immigration base." Arpaio told CNN's "American Morning" the allegations were "garbage" and said he would continue to use state laws to crack down on undocumented immigrants in his county. "We do not go on street corners and grab people that look like they're from another country," he said. "Pursuant to our duties, when we come across illegals, we take action." Watch what Arpaio has to say ? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who was Arizona's governor before taking her Cabinet post, told CNN that Arpaio is reacting prematurely to decisions that have not yet been finalized. But Arpaio says he's now become the poster boy of the emotionally charged immigration debate and is losing authority for political reasons. "They don't want to aggravate the Hispanic community, aggravate the businesspeople who hire the illegals, and they want amnesty," he said. Arpaio said he planned to continue his operations "with no changes." HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism [2009] And see Personal Narrative: http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm From rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com Fri Oct 9 06:56:07 2009 From: rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com (Rosa Lichtenstein) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 13:56:07 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> References: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: Same to you, too On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:13 PM, S. Artesian wrote: > Rosa, > > You said you have nothing to say to me, which of course is the logical > derivative of your statement that we have nothing to say to each other. > > Don't send me anymore of your garbage emails. > > Sincerely, > > SA > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" > To: "David Schanoes" > Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 7:53 AM > Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) > > > > Rosa_L replies to Charles Brown here: > > > > > > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/mr_b_up_to_his_old_tricks.htm > > > > Rosa Lichtenstein > > > > ________________________________________________ > > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > > Set your options at: > > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rosa.lichtenstein%40googlemail.com > From sabocat59 at gmail.com Fri Oct 9 07:29:41 2009 From: sabocat59 at gmail.com (Greg McDonald) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 09:29:41 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) Message-ID: <6e42edf00910090629g238e8dd8lcde6c1a6d89e0b00@mail.gmail.com> Glad you two agree on something. Rosa wrote: Same to you, too On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:13 PM, S. Artesian wrote: > Rosa, > > You said you have nothing to say to me, which of course is the logical > derivative of your statement that we have nothing to say to each other. > > Don't send me anymore of your garbage emails. > > Sincerely, > > SA > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" > To: "David Schanoes" > Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 7:53 AM > Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) > From rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com Fri Oct 9 08:14:10 2009 From: rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com (Rosa Lichtenstein) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 15:14:10 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <6e42edf00910090629g238e8dd8lcde6c1a6d89e0b00@mail.gmail.com> References: <6e42edf00910090629g238e8dd8lcde6c1a6d89e0b00@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Don't count on it. On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Greg McDonald wrote: > Glad you two agree on something. > > > Rosa wrote: > > Same to you, too > > On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:13 PM, S. Artesian > wrote: > > > Rosa, > > > > You said you have nothing to say to me, which of course is the logical > > derivative of your statement that we have nothing to say to each other. > > > > Don't send me anymore of your garbage emails. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > SA > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" > > To: "David Schanoes" > > Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 7:53 AM > > Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) > > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rosa.lichtenstein%40googlemail.com > From rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com Fri Oct 9 08:17:25 2009 From: rosa.lichtenstein at googlemail.com (Rosa Lichtenstein) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 15:17:25 +0100 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> References: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: I have just figured out what happened. I have just joined the MarxMail list, and when I posted a comment there, it automaticxally sent an e-mail to you. I had no intention of wasting an e-mail on you. Rosa! On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:13 PM, S. Artesian wrote: > Rosa, > > You said you have nothing to say to me, which of course is the logical > derivative of your statement that we have nothing to say to each other. > > Don't send me anymore of your garbage emails. > > Sincerely, > > SA > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" > To: "David Schanoes" > Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 7:53 AM > Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) > > > > Rosa_L replies to Charles Brown here: > > > > > > http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/mr_b_up_to_his_old_tricks.htm > > > > Rosa Lichtenstein > > > > ________________________________________________ > > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > > Set your options at: > > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net > > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rosa.lichtenstein%40googlemail.com > From sartesian at earthlink.net Fri Oct 9 08:30:36 2009 From: sartesian at earthlink.net (S. Artesian) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 10:30:36 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] (no subject) References: <15DBF04DEA3B4DA5ABF93B26CADFC457@dmsthinkpad> Message-ID: Well, Rosa-- it won't be wasted just on me. But a word of friendly advice, or two words. 1) clip all unnecessary text of the post to which you are replying [an uncharitable sort would suggest then that you clip your own unnecessary text and submit only blank emails to the list. Of course, I am not an uncharitable sort]. 2) avoid calling anyone on this list, for any reason, "class traitor." The moderator takes such slurs much more seriously than Revleft 3) I figured the same thing-- you joined the list, so I just put your name in the kill file. My problem solved. The list's problems are just beginning. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rosa Lichtenstein" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 10:17 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] (no subject) >I have just figured out what happened. I have just joined the MarxMail >list, > and when I posted a comment there, it automaticxally sent an e-mail to > you. From cpiml_elo at yahoo.com Fri Oct 9 09:13:05 2009 From: cpiml_elo at yahoo.com (CPI (ML) Intl Liaison Office) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 08:13:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Marxism] Petition: Withdraw Fabricated Cases against Indian Trade Union Leader Message-ID: <207094.86205.qm@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Please sign petition: (http://www.petitiononline.com/Pricol/petition.html) More details of the case: (http://www.cpiml.org/pgs/ml_upd/vol12/12_40.html) Petition: To The Hon?ble Chief Minister Government of Tamil Nadu Secretariat, Chennai - 9 Sir, We are writing to express our grave concern about the fabricated case brought against workers of Pricol Ltd, Coimbatore and Mr.S.Kumarasami, National President of AICCTU, and to request your urgent intervention in this matter. The tragic death of Mr. Roy George, Vice-president of Pricol Ltd., Coimbatore on 22 September 2009 occurred, as you are aware, against a background of deeply disturbing actions of management of Pricol Ltd Coimbatore. Not only has the company continually and openly flouted labour laws, Supreme Court directions, Chennai High Court directions, orders of the Government of Tamil Nadu, issued on 29th June 2009 that the demands of the workers are met, and the directions of the Labour Department of Government of Tamil Nadu, but it has continued to victimise and harass the workers. It has also pressurised and blackmailed them to try to force them to leave their union, the AICCTU. The workers however have refused to leave their union and have continued to struggle through a variety of peaceful and democratic means. The management has announced unilaterally 8.33% bonus for the workers who are with AICCTU and 20% for other workers for the year 2008 ? 2009. We urge you to intervene immediately to stop victimisation of workers. It is shocking that Mr.S.Kumarasami, the National President of a centrally recognized central Trade Union Organization, AICCTU and a practicing lawyer in the Tamil Nadu High Court has been falsely implic