[Marxism] NYC top cop: machine guns necessary in future against police killings protests!
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Jan. 30 2015 N.Y.P.D. Plans Initiatives to Fight Terrorism and Improve Community Relations By J. DAVID GOODMAN The future of the New York Police Department will include patrol officers with more time to visit with community members and learn their concerns. It will also include more high-powered weapons for a new unit of specially trained officers focused on patrolling terrorist targets and protests. The twin initiatives, announced by Commissioner William J. Bratton in a speech on Thursday, highlighted the tensions in New York City between the desire of officials to put a friendlier face on officers’ day-to-day interactions with the public, and a rising fear of terrorism by lone actors. The speech, an annual State of the N.Y.P.D. address to the nonprofit Police Foundation, outlined Mr. Bratton’s vision of a police force better equipped to respond to big events, and also more understanding of local issues in high-crime areas where distrust of officers persists. “A new patrol model,” he called it during the speech, which also touched on a wide range of earlier proposals, from putting stun guns into the hands of more officers to replacing aging bulletproof vests and, eventually, outfitting the entire patrol force with body cameras. Improving frayed police-community relations has been Mr. Bratton’s mandate since returning last year to lead the department. Small efforts to that end have been underway since, even as the death of Eric Garner after an arrest on Staten Island in July deepened the divide. Rookie officers in the 47th Precinct in the Bronx, for example, have been tasked with making — and tracking — their local contacts. In other parts of the city, officers this week gave out movie tickets to young people for a showing of “Selma.” Among the most specific changes detailed by Mr. Bratton on Thursday, however, was the creation of a heavily armed unit to patrol areas of the city and respond to large-scale events, such as protests or terrorist attacks. Those duties are now often performed by officers drawn from precincts across the city who are temporarily assigned to terrorist targets, such as Times Square. The new unit, to be made up of roughly 350 officers and to be called the Strategic Response Group, will be created in the coming months, Mr. Bratton said. Officers assigned to it would be equipped with heavy protective gear and machine guns, and receive advanced training in counterterrorism tactics and “advanced disorder control,” he said. “It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” Mr. Bratton said, referring to the terrorist attacks in India in 2008 and in France this month, both carried out by small groups of men wielding assault rifles. The Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit has long handled many assignments requiring special weapons and tactics, but after the Sept. 11 attacks, the department also created heavily armed units known as Hercules teams. Plans for the new unit drew immediate criticism from some police reform advocates. It is “the opposite of progress,” Priscilla Gonzalez, organizing director of Communities United for Police Reform, said in a statement, to have “a more militarized police force that would use counterterrorism tactics against protesters.” In his speech, Mr. Bratton also said the department would test out a “highly localized neighborhood policing plan” in four precincts — two in Manhattan, two in Queens — in which officers focus on small sections of neighborhoods and are given more time to do so, without having to worry about responding to emergency calls. Mr. Bratton said he would reduce the number of patrol officers who currently find themselves either in specialty roles or “running from call to call” in a department that, he said, “does not have enough police officers.” Instead, he said, officers would have about a third of their day mostly free from the “tyranny” of the radio to focus on local crime concerns. A new challenge for the department will be tracking what officers do during that time. “There needs to be a way to measure effective community policing practices,” said Susan Shah of the Vera Institute of Justice, who has studied community policing policies nationally. As an example of what the new patrol model might look like on the street, Mr. Bratton drew from his own experience the day before: As he was getting his shoes shined, he observed a group of men, with “their booze stuffed in the two phone booths,” who were harassing people outside the shop, he told
[Marxism] A useful op-ed piece on Greek debt by Paul Krugman
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times Op-Ed, Jan. 30 2015 Europe’s Greek Test by Paul Krugman In the five years (!) that have passed since the euro crisis began, clear thinking has been in notably short supply. But that fuzziness must now end. Recent events in Greece pose a fundamental challenge for Europe: Can it get past the myths and the moralizing, and deal with reality in a way that respects the Continent’s core values? If not, the whole European project — the attempt to build peace and democracy through shared prosperity — will suffer a terrible, perhaps mortal blow. First, about those myths: Many people seem to believe that the loans Athens has received since the crisis broke have been subsidizing Greek spending. The truth, however, is that the great bulk of the money lent to Greece has been used simply to pay interest and principal on debt. In fact, for the past two years, more than all of the money going to Greece has been recycled in this way: the Greek government is taking in more revenue than it spends on things other than interest, and handing the extra funds over to its creditors. Or to oversimplify things a bit, you can think of European policy as involving a bailout, not of Greece, but of creditor-country banks, with the Greek government simply acting as the middleman — and with the Greek public, which has seen a catastrophic fall in living standards, required to make further sacrifices so that it, too, can contribute funds to that bailout. One way to think about the demands of the newly elected Greek government is that it wants a reduction in the size of that contribution. Nobody is talking about Greece spending more than it takes in; all that might be on the table would be spending less on interest and more on things like health care and aid to the destitute. And doing so would have the side effect of greatly reducing Greece’s 25 percent rate of unemployment. But doesn’t Greece have an obligation to pay the debts its own government chose to run up? That’s where the moralizing comes in. It’s true that Greece (or more precisely the center-right government that ruled the nation from 2004-9) voluntarily borrowed vast sums. It’s also true, however, that banks in Germany and elsewhere voluntarily lent Greece all that money. We would ordinarily expect both sides of that misjudgment to pay a price. But the private lenders have been largely bailed out (despite a “haircut” on their claims in 2012). Meanwhile, Greece is expected to keep on paying. Now, the truth is that nobody believes that Greece can fully repay. So why not recognize that reality and reduce the payments to a level that doesn’t impose endless suffering? Is the goal to make Greece an example for other borrowers? If so, how is that consistent with the values of what is supposed to be an association of sovereign, democratic nations? The question of values becomes even starker once we consider why Greece’s creditors still have power. If it were just a matter of government finance, Greece could simply declare bankruptcy; it would be cut off from new loans, but it would also stop paying off existing debts, and its cash flow would actually improve. The problem for Greece, however, is the fragility of its banks, which currently (like banks throughout the euro area) have access to credit from the European Central Bank. Cut off that credit, and the Greek banking system would probably melt down amid huge bank runs. As long as it stays on the euro, then, Greece needs the good will of the central bank, which may, in turn, depend on the attitude of Germany and other creditor nations. But think about how that plays into debt negotiations. Is Germany really prepared, in effect, to say to a fellow European democracy, “Pay up or we’ll destroy your banking system?” And think about what happens if the new Greek government — which was, after all, elected on a promise to end austerity — refuses to give in? That way, all too easily, lies a forced exit of Greece from the euro, with potentially disastrous economic and political consequences for Europe as a whole. Objectively, resolving this situation shouldn’t be hard. Although nobody knows it, Greece has actually made great progress in regaining competitiveness; wages and costs have fallen dramatically, so that, at this point, austerity is the main thing holding the economy back. So what’s needed is simple: Let Greece run smaller but still positive surpluses, which would relieve Greek suffering, and let the new government claim success, defusing the anti-democratic forces waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, the cost to creditor-nation
[Marxism] Fwd: Strange Times in Greece » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Syriza now has to govern, they are the party of government — not of revolution. The euphoria of the election was quickly tempered by the pragmatism of governance and the task at hand. They have yet to propose anything radical, instead they talk of minimum wage, eased debt payments, and social programs. These are important programs that may improve social conditions for many in Greece. There is no program of mass nationalizations or land appropriations. If one is looking for a party that will sweep away the state into a classless society, he is looking in the wrong place. In forming a coalition with ANEL, Tsipras is perhaps hearkening the advice of J.K. Galbraith when he told President Kennedy, “(p)olitics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” Tsipras must determine if governance is more palatable that principle. To forego the unpalatable, to take any kind of leap to the possible, Syriza needs to display a stronger mandate than it earned in the elections. Here it’s instructive that the Greeks remember their history. They last faced tyranny during the period of the military junta of 1967-1974. It was the student-led uprising at Athens Polytechnic that notably defied the dictatorship. The uprising was not itself successful at restoring democracy, but many believe it precipitated the falling of the dictatorship nine months later. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/strange-times-in-greece/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] GIGO
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Evgeny Morozov, fresh from his plagiarism of Eden Medina's work, has a lengthy interview in the current NLR, in which he proves yet again his inability to think independently. That is, whereas Medina had explained very clearly and simply how primitive computing could aid democratic socialist planning, Morozov blathers on and on about the hyper-advanced computing techniques of contemporary capitalism with not a word that I can see about what they could mean for a socialist society, i.e. what, to use his title, a real socialization of data centers would provide. https://newleftreview.org/II/91/evgeny-morozov-socialize-the-data-centres _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: The Cinema of Cruelty » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * As the Academy Awards draw near, it seems appropriate to write about three films light years removed from the Hollywood film industry that are united by the theme of cruelty to animals and that wear their art film credentials proudly (even though one film subverts pulp genres). One is “The Turin Horse”, the final film made by auteur extraordinaire Béla Tarr over a thirty-seven year career and that is inspired by an anecdote about Nietzsche coming to the aid of a horse being beaten by its livery cab owner. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, he was asked to name a film that had real quality. His answer was Aki Kaurismaki’s “Le Havre”, a film he “really loved”, as did I. ( When the Hollywood Reporter began mentioning that it might receive an Oscar for best foreign language film, Tarr interrupted him: Who cares about this stupidity? You know what I mean. This kind of quality is not for the Academy Awards. This kind of quality and sensibility is for you and the other people – for personal use. The others are just part of a fucked-up business, which is not my business. Béla Tarr came to mind after seeing “White God” at a press screening a while back. Directed by fellow Hungarian Kornél Mundruczó, it about the mistreatment of a teen girl’s beloved dog Hagen by various people and institutions. As such, I decided to write about the two films as well as about Robert Bresson’s “Au Hasard Balthazar”, a 1966 film about the abuse of a donkey—a work that I had somehow ignored despite Godard’s comment: “Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished…because this film is really the world in an hour and a half.” full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/the-cinema-of-cruelty/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Further on Greece and Ukraine
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I wonder how Tsiparas' views on the Ukraine will inform his approach to Cyprus and Macedonia. ken h http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece%E2%80%93Republic_of_Macedonia_relations Greece to gain from Cyprus solution: Turkish Cypriot FM http://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/458147--greece-to-gain-from-cyprus-solution-turkish-cypriot-fm Tsipras says Barbaros must leave for talks to resume http://cyprus-mail.com/2015/01/30/tsipras-visit-will-reaffirm-close-cooperation-between-greece-and-cyprus-palace-says/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Jan. 30 2015 A Deep, Dark Fight for Dignity James Green’s ‘The Devil Is Here in These Hills’ By DWIGHT GARNER THE DEVIL IS HERE IN THESE HILLS West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom By James Green Illustrated. 440 pages. Atlantic Monthly Press. $28. The story James Green has to tell in “The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom” is among the best and largely forgotten American stories. It’s about property rights versus human rights, about hard men and women and about violent conflict. It’s a tale about a working-class insurgency that’s as piney as an Appalachian ballad. One of those ballads, by Blind Alfred Reed, who lived in West Virginia, posed this question in 1929: “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” Mr. Green is a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who specializes in American labor. His best-known book is “Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America” (2006). He’s not a stylist. This book, like that one, is a bit pokey. But his dead-ahead sentences get a dirty job done. In “The Devil Is Here in These Hills,” Mr. Green opens the aperture wide. He lays down a brief history of coal mania in America, one that dates to before Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about the fuel in “Notes on the State of Virginia.” Capitalists from outside West Virginia, he notes, really began to exploit the state’s coal when trains cut through its hills in the 1870s. Mr. Green soon tightens that aperture. The bulk of his book is about two mine wars that took place in West Virginia in the early 20th century, stories rich with strikes and evictions, blacklists and machine guns, armed marches and aerial bombardment and blood on frozen ground. If you you’ve seen John Sayles’s evocative film “Matewan” (1987), you know a bit of this material. Mr. Green fills you in on the rest of what he terms “the largest working-class uprising in the nation’s history.” Almost from the start, there was fundamentally a master-slave relationship between the coal-mine owners and the miners, a substantial number of whom were black or recent immigrants from Italy and other countries. Most miners were forced to live in company towns, to shop in company stores, to use company scrip. Few coal towns had elected officials; private police forces kept crude order. Mine safety was an afterthought; an eight-hour workday was a distant dream; wage theft was frequent. Many West Virginia men went abroad to fight in World War I and returned to wonder why the freedoms they had fought for, including the right to speak freely and to congregate, weren’t available at home. Union men began to filter in. Mine owners, and the local government officials in their sway, dealt with them harshly and accused them of being Bolsheviks and anarchists. One of the best things about “The Devil is Here in These Hills” is that it brings to life many of the great, gruff, leonine union leaders, including John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960, and Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor. Eugene V. Debs, a founder of the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World) and a five-time Socialist Party candidate for president, also comes alive in these pages, as do many lesser-known union leaders. The most outsize presence is that of Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, who spent more than two decades, off and on, agitating in West Virginia mine country. She told miners to act like men, “not like cringing serfs.” She did not bring the kumbaya. After the murder of one striking miner, she told a crowd of mourners to get their guns, find the perpetrators and “shoot them to hell.” She spent time in prison for her fiery exhortations in West Virginia. “If she was the miner’s angel,” the novelist Mary Lee Settle has written, “she was the owner’s devil.” Owners called her the Old Hag. Mother Jones brought press attention to West Virginia. About her, Mr. Green writes: “Acting largely on her own, one woman had done more than the nation’s top union leaders to alert reformers to the suppression of civil liberties in industrial America.” “The Devil Is Here in These Hills” builds to its great set piece, the second of this book’s two mine wars, which played out in part in Mingo County, including Matewan, where there was a shootout in 1920 between miners and the hired men of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. The next year, in Logan County, some
[Marxism] Syriza and Europe: a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The Greek Earthquake Syriza will not easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. http://fpif.org/greek-earthquake by Conn Hallinan, January 29, 2015. . . . Syriza is closely aligned with Podemos, the new anti-austerity party that’s now polling ahead of the conservative ruling People’s Party in Spain. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe,” tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election. “Let’s go Alexis, let’s go!” Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people. Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein — now the third largest party in the Irish Republic — hailed the vote as opening “up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU.” Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate. Germany’s center-left Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika. But the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory, and Der Linke Party members marched with signs reading, “We start with Greece. We change Europe.” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — who has his own issues with the EU’s rigid approach to debt — also hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth. The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as “Good news for the French people,” and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Left Party called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President Francois Hollande made a careful statement about “growth and stability,” but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue. While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Marisa Matias — who represents the Left Bloc in Portugal’s delegation to the European Parliament — told a rally, “A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.” Time to Deliver In short, there are a number of currents in the EU. And there’s a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that the prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable. One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. It didn’t start with the Greek elections, but with last May’s European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, voters tended to go left when given a viable choice. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere, despite the headlines of the time, the left generally defeated its rightist opponents. . . . _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] City Watch radio Show on Mass Incarceration; Randy Martin died.
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * One of the editors of the special issue of Socialism and Democracy on mass incarceration will be interviewed on WBAI. I am sorry to report that the Marxist scholar and activist, Randy Martin has died after a long illness. Some of you have known Randy personally. His recent work on financialization has broken new ground.Randy had published a dozen books on a range of important topics. He will be remembered by many as a special human being. I will miss him greatly.. Randy died Wednesday night. George WBAI 99.5FM We are very Sorry about the passing of activist, dancer, scholar and friend Randy Martin. Bill's CityWATCH Jan. 31, 2015 10-11AM WBAI 99.5FM Host: Bill DiFazio 718-389-1018 (show) 917-750-8653 (Emergency) GUEST:JOHANNA FERNANDEZ, EDITOR AND AUTHOR OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE OF SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY,NOVEMBER 2014. THE ROOTS OF MASS INCARCERATION IN THE U/S: LOCKING UP BLACK DISSIDENTS AND PUNISHING THE POOR. Johanna Fernandez Phone: Opening music:Sonny Rollins. East Broadway Rundown Station Break 10:30 Music: JERRY BUTLER AND THE IMPRESSIONS, FOR YOUR PRECIOUS LOVE. Guest: Michael Pelias, Syriza, New York. Syriza Takes Power in Greece,and leads the battle against global austerity Closing: Illinois Jacquet, Leo Parker, Bottoms Up!. TORONTO 1947 -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups RGSD group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rgsd+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. PHR/P___ MLG-ICS mailing list mlg-...@lists.andrew.cmu.edu https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/mlg-ics _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Further on Greece and Ukraine
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 1/30/15 5:18 PM, ioannis aposperites via Marxism wrote: And this is the case, for almost the whole political spectrum in greece (except some minor organizations mainly from the trotskyiste tradition) are standing by their own bourgeoisie. For all of them Barbaros is (turkish) aggressivity while the greek bourgeoisie's claims are national interest, and no ecological problem exists whatever. I have no idea why you and Roger, for reasons of your own and having little in common with each other, are harping on secondary issues as if what Tsipras says about Ukraine or disputes over drilling rights is more important than the confrontation over debt. Is this what Antarsya is about? Scoring points? You should focus more on getting a broader base rather than exposing Syriza. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Against Manichaeism | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * For the past few years, and largely as a result of the wars in the Middle East and the Ukraine, there has been a tendency to view everybody fighting as proxies of Washington or Moscow. For most of the left, this means taking a position on those fighting based on where they stand in relationship to the rival powers. Like a chess game in which the black pieces are pure evil and the white pure good, geopolitics matters much more than the individual pieces. If a pawn is forced to align itself with the West, it matters little whether its cause is just. Ironically, Manichaeism was born in Persia, a country seen by most of the left as certainly pale in hue and pure as the driven snow. After all, how could a country be bad if it is hated so much by the USA? This, of course, is the same logic that drove so many new leftists into Maoist sects in the 60s and 70s. If Mao was such a universally despised figure, didn’t it make sense to follow Bob Avakian or Mike Klonsky? For some, Nixon’s trip to China complicated things to the point that these sects began to disintegrate in the 1980s. Manicheanism got its name from its founder—Mani. Mani is not a name like Louis but an honorific like “Sri” or “Bey”. Scholars view the religion as an offshoot of Gnosticism, a religion that fascinated me when I was a religion major at Bard. For the Gnostics, the world was divided between good and evil. You tended to dwell in the evil until you learned the truth about the world’s dualism. You can easily understand how Gnosticism was traceable back to Neo-Platonism, a philosophical cult and semi-religion that was inspired by Plato’s notion that philosophical reflections by philosopher-kings was a precondition for understanding the world. If you trace back the modern chess game left to its Platonic roots, you can see how little has changed. Instead of reading Plato’s Republic, the key to enlightenment is Robert Parry’s ConsortiumNews or WSWS.org full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/01/30/against-manichaeism/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Dijsselbloem: “You just killed Troika” – Varoufakis “WOW!” (video, pics)
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2015/01/30/dijsselbloem-you-just-killed-troika-varoufakis-wow-video-pics/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Further on Greece and Ukraine
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The first link is a chart of Cypriot EOZ https://avantgarde2009.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/aoz-cypr.jpg while the second is a chart of the claimed EOZ by the greek bourgeoisie https://i0.wp.com/www.efylakas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/kastelorizo-001.jpg It is very funny to realize that according to the greek bourgeoisie the Turks, by the international law , could hardly swim in their sea! The two rival Aegean bourgeoisies are disputing the privatization of the sea and the hydro-carbonates under it. Greeks are leading the score based on the Israel-Cyprus-Greece axis reinforced by all the multinational corporations of the sector.Those hydro-carbonates are the new holly grail of the greek bourgeoisie: Attention ca pique! Nobody is allowed to talk about the ecocide they are putting forward. And this is the case, for almost the whole political spectrum in greece (except some minor organizations mainly from the trotskyiste tradition) are standing by their own bourgeoisie. For all of them Barbaros is (turkish) aggressivity while the greek bourgeoisie's claims are national interest, and no ecological problem exists whatever. This kind of chauvinism is mainly defended by SYRIZA and KKE by the remnants of the peaceful coexistence Stalinist dogma. JA On 30/01/2015 06:48 μμ, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote: Tsipras says Barbaros must leave for talks to resume _ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: A Short History of Sniper Cinema » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * How about Jules Feiffer's Little Murders.?The CP author fails to mention one of the best of this genre I think, given the Eastwood film's popularity. The protagonists literally go mad and become random snipers in the city. Jon Flanders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Murders On 01/30/2015 11:53 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/a-short-history-of-sniper-cinema/ _ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: A Short History of Sniper Cinema » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * ah, yes. credibility. comparing military snipers with criminal snipers in a city and suggesting that there is contradiction in praising the former and vilifying the latter. how silly. all of the targets in this piece are vulnerable without stretching credulity. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu To: Charles Faulkner lacena...@comcast.net Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 8:53:33 AM Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: A Short History of Sniper Cinema » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/a-short-history-of-sniper-cinema/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/lacenaire%40comcast.net _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Conscripts' Relatives Fear They'll Be Sent to Ukraine Amid Alleged Coercion
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/conscripts-relatives-fear-they-ll-be-sent-to-ukraine-amid-alleged-coercion/515139.html ST. PETERSBURG — Russian army conscripts are being tricked or pressured into signing up to become contract soldiers, human rights groups say — and their relatives fear that once they turn professional, they run the risk of being secretly dispatched to fight in eastern Ukraine. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Review of Books, February 19, 2015 issue Libya Against Itself by Nicolas Pelham The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath edited by Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn Oxford University Press, 416 pp., $49.95 Gentle Islamism? Mahdi al-Herati is sipping his lemon tea in the open-air café beneath the grand Italian porticos of Algiers Square in Tripoli. He seems a little too casual to be either an international jihadi or the elected mayor of the capital city of a country supposedly rescued from Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and sliding into civil war. Still, Herati is both, although he prefers to call himself a Libyan revolutionary. Since becoming mayor last year, he tells me, he has invited his counterparts in Dublin and Rome to “twin” with Tripoli under its new rulers, the group called Libya Dawn. He has taken other steps to counter Libya Dawn’s reputation for Islamism. He speaks of his efforts to drum up support from local writers and actors for an arts festival he has planned promoting Tripoli as a cosmopolitan Mediterranean capital of culture. Herati plans to reopen the movie houses that Qaddafi closed in an earlier revolution. His men protect the national museum, he says, which is crammed full of ancient pagan statues. A new spa for women is opening. And yes, he tells me, his festival will include female as well as male performers and spectators. The capital, he says with only an occasional look over his shoulder and at his two security guards, is safe. The Libya Dawn coalition Herati belongs to overran the capital after six weeks of bombardment last summer. Many of its leaders are former militiamen from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the jihadi movement that after fighting the unbelievers in alliance with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan turned their guns on Qaddafi and his army. But allied with them are such unlikely bedfellows as merchants from Misrata, a Mediterranean port dependent on trade with Europe, and the Imazighen, or Berber revivalists, whose leaders are either secularists or adherents of a small reformist sect, Ibadiyya, dating back to the first decades of Islam, that opposed the supremacy of the Prophet Muhammad’s Arabian tribe and elected its own leaders. As in the time of Qaddafi, words and reality in postrevolutionary Libya often seem to inhabit separate spheres. Twenty minutes before landing in Tripoli, women returning from Egypt drape their highlighted hair and designer jeans in black cloth. The women at passport control have gone, and the man in charge of immigration is the one with the bushiest beard. Inside the city, Muslim iconoclasts are purging the capital of its colonial-era images. Soon after capturing the capital in August, they fired a shell through the belly of the Bride of the Sea, a sculpture of a bare-breasted mermaid entwined with a tender gazelle, which since Italian times had served as a backdrop for wedding photos. And last month they stole the sculpture itself. Herati only got it back because the thieves could be traced by the cameras Qaddafi hid in the capital’s roadside trees. For now, though, he says, it is safer for it to remain under wraps. Other monuments in the capital are disappearing too. The three tombs of Ottoman mystics that graced the entrance of the eighteenth-century Ahmed Pasha Qaramanli mosque at the entrance of the souk have been smashed, and replaced with an already overgrown patch of grass. Islamists have snapped off the antique Koranic inscriptions in the souk’s other old mosques, lest believers be led astray into polytheism by venerating the ornaments instead of God alone. Libya Dawn’s officials blame the attacks on the local followers of a Saudi scholar, Rabi’ al-Mudkhali. He works, says an official, with Saudi intelligence, seeking to tarnish the name of Islamist groups that do not follow Saudi’s puritanical doctrines or more importantly their politics. Others suggest that acolytes of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State, or ISIS, are finding a foothold thanks to Libya Dawn’s relaxed approach to Islamic extremists. I failed to find evidence of the Islamic State cadres that had been reported in Tripoli, but cafés frequented by couples have been torched and embassies car-bombed. A couple of days after I left Tripoli, a gunman shot dead an unveiled woman driving home near the city center. Lest anyone be tempted to investigate, in mid-November Libya Dawn raided the National Commission for Human Rights, seized its database, and padlocked its doors. Tripoli’s distraught population might have welcomed anyone bringing a semblance of order, including the ghost of
[Marxism] Fwd: How British universities helped mould Syriza’s political elite | World news | The Guardian
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[Marxism] Fwd: Steven Salaita's long-anticipated lawsuit against the U. of Illinois includes a twist. @insidehighered
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[Marxism] Fwd: A government of the Left in Greece: the coalition of SYRIZA with ANEL and what lies ahead | LeftEast
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[Marxism] Fwd: Anton Shekhovtsov's blog: Whither the Ukrainian Far Right?
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The problematic relationship between the Ministry of Inferior and the neo-Nazis is undermining the credibility of the newly formed Ukrainian government both internationally and domestically. It was most likely Avakov who suggested to Poroshenko to grant Ukrainian citizenship to Belarusian fighter of the Azov battalion Sergey Korotkikh who had been involved in the neo-Nazi movements in Belarus and Russia since the late 1990s. Furthermore, under Avakov, the police in Kyiv have already proved unable or unwilling to investigate a number of hate crimes. In July, far right thugs – not necessarily associated with the PU – attacked four black people in the underground, a gay club and a Jewish student by a synagogue. The police initiated two criminal cases, but so far nobody has been prosecuted. In September, the head of the Visual Culture Research Centre Vasyl Cherepanyn was beaten apparently by far right activists, but the police failed to investigate this attack too. The police is also unwilling to address the issue with the tortures of political opponents inflicted by the neo-Nazi C14 group during the revolution in winter 2013-2014. There is no ground to believe that the infiltration of the far right into the police will contribute to the efficiency of its investigations in general and of the hate crimes in particular. full: http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/whither-ukrainian-far-right.html#more _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Russia Update: Court Upholds Definition of Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg as ‘Foreign Agent’
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[Marxism] Fwd: Yannis Milios: It is necessary to restructure the Eurozone’s sovereign debt” | European LEFT
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[Marxism] Two films at Sundance - Eastern Europe and USSR
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Sundance: Russian Woodpecker, Chuck Norris vs. Communism debut http://www.canada.com/entertainment/Sundance+Russian+Woodpecker+Chuck+Norris+Communism+debut/10770850/story.html “Almost everyone in Ukraine believes Chernobyl was not an accident. Almost everyone believed it was the Americans who blew up Chernobyl. In fact, Fedor thought that might be true,” says Gracia. * * * * * * The first documentary feature from Romanian director Ilinca Calugareanu, Chuck Norris vs. Communism takes a look at the effect pirated western movies had on a captive audience behind the Iron Curtain. Hundreds of films, from Rocky to Last Tango in Paris, circulated through the country via a black market network, opening a window on an entirely different reality. “These movies gave people hope,” says Calugareanu, sitting in a Park City condo. “When you see Chuck Norris resist authority without fear, it makes you think you can do the same,” she says. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The US Presidency—Who Does It Serve? An Exchange With the Authors of The Unsustainable Presidency
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[Marxism] Syriza Russia
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.bne.eu/content/story/new-greek-government-russias-trojan-horse-inside-eu FYI: ...And whereas attention on Tsipras' Syriza party focussed during the election campaign on the party's opposition to the terms of Greece's EU €270bn bailout, the Greek protest on January 27 has now focused attention on Syriza's and its allies' ties to Moscow. BBC correspondent in Athens Gabriel Gatehouse was the first to sound the alarm, tweeting that the first foreign diplomat to meet Tsipras after he assumed the post of prime minister was Andrei Maslov, Russia's ambassador to Athens. This foregrounded Syriza's track record of support for Russia over the Ukraine crisis, including for Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014. Tsipras voiced support for the Crimean 'referendum' that paved the way for the annexation and a first round of Western sanctions on Russia: he said that the EU 'is shooting itself in the foot' by imposing sanctions and that Ukraine's pro-EU government contains 'neo-Nazis', as quoted by New Europe. Post-Crimean annexation, in May 2014, Tsipras visited Moscow to meet with Putin allies, such as Valentina Matvienko, chairwoman of Russia's Federation Council, and Aleksei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, both of whom were already under EU sanctions after Russia's annexation of Crimea. Only days after the visit, Syriza made its political breakthrough, winning first place in Greece in elections to the European Parliament on May 25, 2014. Since entering the European Parliament, Syriza's MEPs have consistently voted a pro-Moscow line, including voting against the European Parliament's ratification of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement on September 16, 2014. A Syriza foreign affairs spokesman openly called sanctions on Russia 'neocolonial bulimia', as quoted by the Financial Times, and has praised the military campaign waged in East Ukraine by Russian-backed rebels. Concerns over Greece are not restricted to Syriza, but also to the leftwing party's choice as coalition partner: nationalist party Independent Greeks (Anel), a party that has also taken a pro-Russian line, according to Ukrainian researcher Anton Shekhovtsov. Panos Kammenos, founder of Anel and Greece's new defence minister, was quoted in Greek media as saying in May 2014, in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, that 'we publicly support President Putin and the Russian government who have protected our Orthodox brothers in Crimea.' _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Russian Conscripts' Relatives Fear They'll Be Sent to Ukraine Amid Alleged Coercion
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Conscripts' Relatives Fear They'll Be Sent to Ukraine Amid Alleged Coercion By Sergei Chernov Jan. 29 2015 The Moscow Times ST. PETERSBURG — Russian army conscripts are being tricked or pressured into signing up to become contract soldiers, human rights groups say — and their relatives fear that once they turn professional, they run the risk of being secretly dispatched to fight in eastern Ukraine. Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg, an NGO that battles to uphold the rights of Russian military personnel and their relatives, said it had received a number of complaints regarding a military unit in Kamenka, a village in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region, around 100 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg. Soldiers' relatives called the organization's hotline, submitted complaints by e-mail and also came to its offices to file written reports, the NGO said. No state agency has either confirmed or denied the reported information, and the Western Military District's press service declined to comment immediately on the matter when called Thursday. When you see the news [about the conflict in eastern Ukraine] these days, it breaks your heart, said Irina, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her identity and that of her nephew, who is serving in Kamenka and who she said refused to sign a contract when ordered to earlier this month. They were assembled together in a room and told to sign contracts, Irina told The Moscow Times by phone on Tuesday. No physical force was used against them, of course, but there was psychological pressure. […] They were told, 'If you sign the contract, you'll be paid more.' Obviously, they were not told it had anything to do with events in Ukraine. Another soldier's father, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Alexei, said his son, who was called up in June to perform his military service in Kamenka, signed up for the professional army in December. No explanation was given; he was told 'You must sign it,' Alexei told The Moscow Times by phone on Tuesday. He was on assignment in the Tver region for three months, and when they came back, that same day or the next, their squadron was assembled in a room, handed out contracts and told to sign them. They were promised that the contracts would only be valid for the same duration as their national service. According to Alexei, no pressure was exerted on the soldiers in his son's case. He just bought it, [they were obedient] like a flock of sheep, and signed everything. Under Duress A written report from one of the parents of a soldier named Vladimir serving in Kamenka and submitted to the Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg — which was added to the foreign agent list of NGOs by the Justice Ministry on Aug. 28 — says that he was forced to sign a contract by means of threats and insults. Several e-mails from soldiers' relatives sent to Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg and seen by The Moscow Times this week, with the senders' names redacted, describe similar situations in Kamenka. One says that a conscript who had signed an army contract found that his military ID contained no record that he was now serving on contract, while he and his fellow soldiers who had signed the contracts were told they would be sent on Feb. 9 for military exercises for three months to the Rostov region, which borders Ukraine. Numerous reports have claimed that Russian soldiers have been sent across the border into eastern Ukraine to bolster the efforts of pro-Russian separatists fighting government troops there. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegations, insisting that any Russian troops fighting in Ukraine are there as volunteers. Another e-mail alleges that an officer blackmailed soldiers into signing contracts. We were told that we would be labeled traitors of the motherland and shot if war breaks out. That they would alter our military records so that we would never be able to get a job, the letter said. Another message, apparently concerning the same person, said that 10 other soldiers had signed contracts following the threats. False Pretenses According to Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg spokesperson Alexander Peredruk, the shortest term for a service contract under Russian legislation is two years, so the soldiers were apparently deceived when they were told that they would not have to serve as professional soldiers any longer than they would have as draftees. Compulsory military service in Russia lasts for one year. Aside from pressure, soldiers are also lured into signing contracts by promises of higher wages: at least 20,000 rubles ($295) a month for contract
