[Marxism] Argentina: The Left and Workers’ Front with another strong electoral showing
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. * Source: http://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Argentina-The-Left-and-Workers-Front-with-another-strong-electoral-showing After coming in third place in Mendoza the previous weekend, the Left and Workers’ Front finished in fourth place in Sunday's primary elections in Buenos Aires City and won two provincial legislator seats in the province of Neuquen. Zanon ceramics worker, Raul Godoy, was elected for the second time to the Neuquen Legislature. Buenos Aires held its primary elections Sunday, while in Neuquen, which does not have primaries, yesterday’s results were final. Buenos Aires City Mayor Mauricio Macri’s PRO party (center-right) won 47.34 percent of the votes (Horacio Rodriguez Larreta was elected as Mayor candidate); The ECO party (center-right) achieved second place with 22.26 percent (choosing Martin Lousteau); Frente para la Victoria (the party of President Cristina Kirchner) came in third place with 18.72 percent of the votes (Martin Recalde was the winning candidate). The Left and Workers’ Front came in fourth place and was the only left slate that will reach the general election. *The Left and Workers’ Front will be the left alternative in July’s general election* The slate headed by candidate for Mayor, Myriam Bregman, a human rights lawyer representing the workers of Zanon and Madygraf (both occupied factories) and a militant of the Socialist Workers Party (PTS), won 2.30 percent of the votes (the established minimum is 1.5 percent; any candidate below that percentage won’t move on to the general elections). The fifth election ballot will be the one headed by Luis Zamora, an independent candidate from Autodeterminación y Libertad (a coalition organized exclusively for elections). Sunday night, the Left and Workers’ Front addressed the press at the Bauen Hotel (occupied and run by its workers), a few blocks from Congress, and later they spoke to militants, activists and supporters gathering in front of the hotel. Myriam Bregman shared the press conference with Marcelo Ramal from the Workers Party (PO) and Patricio del Corro from the PTS, both candidates for legislator. Bregman noted that the Left and Workers’ Front wasn’t a local movement, but a national political force: “We are a national political force; we will have two legislators in Neuquen, where Raul Godoy from the Zanon factory has been elected again. We have also achieved great results in Mendoza and Salta; we came in third place in the governor’s races in both provinces’ ” Also, national Congressman Nicolas Del Caño came in second place in Mendoza City’s primary election for city Mayor. Compared to its 2011 results, last Sunday’s election has showed a step forward for the Left and Workers’ Front. In July of 2011, the left coalition reached just 0.78 percent for Mayor and 1.01 percent for City legislators. This year, the Left and Workers’ Front received three times that figure for Mayor, and doubled its previous number of votes for legislators. *Neuquen: new left and workers’ deputies* Elections in Neuquen came after the eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile last week. All of Patagonia, including the province of Neuquen, has been greatly affected. The current administration party (MPN, right-wing) got 37 percent of the votes. In second place was for Frente para la Victoria (Kirchnerist party). The Left and Workers’ Front had a strong showing in both the governor’s race (3.4 percent) and legislator’s race (4.7 percent), earning two seats in the legislature. Thanks to this electoral success, Left and Workers’ Front will have now two provincial deputies: Raul Godoy, Zanon worker and PTS militant, and Patricia Jure from the PO. *Left and Workers’ Front grows as the Left alternative* After coming in third place in Mendoza’s governor race the previous weekend, Left and Workers’ Front ended in fourth place in Buenos Aires City primary elections and got two provincial deputies in Neuquen. Zanon ceramics’ worker, Raul Godoy, got elected for the second time in Neuquen’s Legislature. Now, the left coalition prepares to get a wider support for the future local general elections in several provinces, and in presidential elections in August and October. _ 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 Left's Crime Against Humanity
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. * New from Linux Beach: The Left's Crime Against Humanity http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-lefts-crime-against-humanity.html _ 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] How to Attract Female Engineers
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. * Computer programming in its earlier days was a much more female-oriented profession than it is today. That was primarily because back during the Second World War, US government defense labs hired many recent female college graduates with math or science degrees to perform the laborious computations that were required for such things a compiling artillery tables and such. Back in those days the people who performed such computations were called computers. During the war the first electronic digital computers were built and so some of these young women were then redeployed to program the newfangled ,machines, so many of the earliest computer programmers were women. Thus, some of the most notables in computer science, for example, Admiral Grace Hopper, who invented the first compiler, was a developer of early programming languages and headed the committee that developed COBOL, and there were other people like Ruth Teitelbaum and Marlyn Meltzer, who were among the first programmers for the ENIAC, which was the first electronic digital computer. For a long time thereafter, women continued to play a leading role with programming. On the other hand, computer programming was not a particularly high status profession. Scientists and engineers, amongst others, tended to look down upon programming as glorified clerical work. Eventually, attitudes changed, and computer programming was re-conceptualized as an engineering discipline. Starting in the late 1960s, it started to become fashionable to call programmers, software engineers (the term having been coined by another female pioneer in computer science, Margaret Hamilton). With this reconcptualization of the discipline, the status (and pay) for programmers gradually went up. It was now seen as a field that was eminently suitable for men, so the numbers of women in the field declined. After all, in the popular imagination at least, engineers are supposed to be men. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math -- Original Message -- From: Andrew Pollack via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism] How to Attract Female Engineers Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:34:23 -0400 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. * Makes sense to me. It would be interesting to also look at how women are drawn to economics when their programs prioritize equally social-value oriented research projects (i.e. to analyze how capitalism fucks up work and family, and how that could be overcome). - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html?ref=opinion The Opinion Pages http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html | Op-Ed Contributor How to Attract Female Engineers By LINA NILSSONAPRIL 27, 2015 THE figures are well known: At Apple 20 percent of tech jobs are held by women and at Google, only 17 percent. A report by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee estimates that nationwide about 14 percent of engineers in the work force are women. As Sushi Safe to Eat? Learn Which 4 Fish to NEVER Eat #40;avoid these like the plague!#41; http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/553ecaafdfdb84aae320ast04vuc _ 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] How to Attract Female Engineers
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 04/27/2015 07:46 PM, Jim Farmelant via Marxism wrote: US government defense labs hired many recent female college graduates with math or science degrees to perform the laborious computations that were required for such things a compiling artillery tables and such. Back in those days the people who performed such computations were called computers. Yes, exactly. My great-uncle Donald was the mathematician in charge of the computing group for the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project. Under him were a group of women who did the grunt work. Some of them were scientists wives, according to the book cited, among other things,they work better and are cheaper. Today of course this work can be done in India and other places that are cheaper. Some things never change under capitalism. Jon Flanders https://books.google.com/books?id=Ys0N4rFgt6UCpg=PA99lpg=PA99dq=donald+flanders+manhattan+projectsource=blots=Kr_34L9Sdvsig=WIRievDupWm5lmTyVdMpcsZS7c0hl=ensa=Xei=_A4_VYrmGsbLsAS8qoGYBQved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepageq=donald%20flanders%20manhattan%20projectf=false _ 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] Writers withdraw from PEN gala, cite honor for Charlie Hebdo
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.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Writers-withdraw-from-PEN-gala-cite-honor-for-6225389.php _ 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: Capitalism, slavery and primitive accumulation | 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. * On Saturday morning I attended a panel discussion on Mike Zmolek’s newly published “Rethinking the Industrial Revolution” at the Historical Materialism conference at NYU. This is a 1000-page work based on his dissertation that he began 20 years ago on the suggestion of his adviser George Comninel that the Brenner thesis should be extended forward historically to account for the industrial revolution. While I am sure that the book has a lot of interesting research based on a cursory glance at the dissertation in Proquest, my reaction is to wonder why the Political Marxism tendency, to which Comninel and Zmolek belong, has so little interest in another kind of extension, namely geographical. How in the world can you continue to ignore economic and social developments in the colonial world in the period of early modernity? In some ways it reminds me of that famous New Yorker cartoon where you see a map of the USA in which all the states recede in size increasingly as you move westward from Manhattan with California finally the size of a postage stamp. Substitute the British Isles for Manhattan and you get the Political Marxism perspective. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/04/27/capitalism-slavery-and-primitive-accumulation/ _ 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] Euclid Tsakalotos Re: reshuffle in Greece's economic team: speculation Tsipras wants a deal
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’s reshuffle: step forward a non-erratic Marxist by Paul Mason Channel 4 News, April 27 http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/syrizas-reshuffle-step-nonerratic-marxist/3613 After a frantic weekend the Greek government sought to break the deadlock in its talks with lenders today by reshuffling its negotiating team. Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister who made the global headlines in the aftermath of Syriza’s election victory will take a back seat, while the lesser known economic specialist in the foreign ministry Euclid Tsakalotos will lead the talks. Though both men are western educated, fluent English speaking economists, their styles – and politics – are different. Mr Tsakalotos is a classic Marxist of the New Left who, when he addressed a meeting in the British parliament last month, brushed aside calls by left Labour MPs for Greece to ditch the Euro on the grounds that “national” economic programmes do not work. Mr Varoufakis once described himself as an “erratic Marxist”; Mr Tsakalotos comes from that school of Marxism which learned from the 1970s onwards to make compromises with capitalist reality. He is not only softer spoken; he is very attached to the idea of Syriza as a reforming left-social government and existentially committed to the Euro. What is more, he is a longstanding member of Syriza, with a surer feel for what the party’s members will accept in the compromise that he’ll have to craft. But the issue is urgent. Those who’ve seen the books in Greece say the country will be able to pay salaries and pensions this week, but that the cash flow of the government looks bleak in May. By draining the cash reserves of public bodies – local councils for example – Mr Varoufakis has been able to keep Greece afloat, but in a way that saps the resilience of such bodies – councils, hospitals etc – should Greece break decisively with the ECB. To be clear, Mr Varoufakis remains in charge of the finance ministry, and of the government’s economic strategy. But by placing Mr Tsakalotos – who’s been involved from the start – at the head of the negotiating team, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is sending the strongest possible signal that he wants a compromise to keep Greece inside the Euro. A sense of the frustration on the Greek side can be got from a briefing document, originating inside Mr Tsipras’ office, which Channel 4 News has seen. It speaks of “memorandum inertia”, complaining that Eurogroup negotiators have continually tried to unpick the agreement Mr Varoufakis signed on 20 February. . . . In a further concession to its lenders, Greece will facilitate the work of EU and IMF teams in Athens: it had insisted all discussions go via politicians rather than officials and it is this – procedural rather than substantial – spat that lay behind the fractious end to Friday’s Eurogroup meeting in Riga. . . . This misses a vital point: Mr Tsakalotos has decades of political capital with the inner core of a couple of thousands Syriza activists who will have to take the decision on whether to stomach the compromise Greece will need to do. He’ll have to face down the party’s left, which on the last count had 41 per cent of the votes for rejecting any deal with the Eurogroup. Given his non-party background, that was always going to be Mr Varoufakis biggest hurdle; now it will be jumped by someone else. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Inside Syriza’s economic brain [more on Tsakalotos] Paul Mason Channel 4 News, January 20, 2015 http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/greece-syriza-election/2941 Varoufakis Downsized as Tsipras Forms New Greek Negotiating Team by Philip Chrysopoulos The Greek Reporter, April 27 http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/04/27/varoufakis-downsized-as-tsipras-forms-new-greek-negotiating-team Despite his expressed trust to Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras proceeded with forming a new political negotiating team putting Varoufakis at the helm but appointing Deputy Finance Minister Euclides Tsakalotos as coordinator of the group. The setting up of a political negotiating group was decided on Sunday at a meeting at the Maximos Mansion, chaired by Tsipras. General Secretary of the Greek Government Spyros Sagias and General Secretary of Fiscal Policy Nikos Theocharakis complete the group. The latter was appointed to draft a plan for growth of the Greek economy. The plan will be the basis of negotiations for the June agreement, when the bailout program extension expires. Government Vice President and responsible for the government’s council of economic policy Yiannis Dragasakis, Economy Minister George Stathakis, State
