Re: [Marxism] A Home for Every Russia: How Putin Delivers
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. * A comrade recommended this book on the job. It's written by someone who has studied the subject in depth, apparently. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100924090 In Housing the New Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines Russia's attempts to transition from a socialist vision of housing, in which the government promised a separate, state-owned apartment for every family, to a market-based and mortgage-dependent model of home ownership. In 1992, the post-Soviet Russian government signed an agreement with the United States to create the Russian housing market. The vision of an American-style market guided housing policy over the next two decades. Privatization gave socialist housing to existing occupants, creating a nation of homeowners overnight. New financial institutions, modeled on the American mortgage system, laid the foundation for a market. Next the state tried to stimulate mortgages—and reverse the declining birth rate, another major concern—by subsidizing loans for young families. Imported housing institutions, however, failed to resonate with local conceptions of ownership, property, and rights. Most Russians reject mortgages, which they call debt bondage, as an unjust overpayment for a good they consider to be a basic right. Instead of stimulating homeownership, privatization, combined with high prices and limited credit, created a system of “property without markets.” Frustrated aspirations and unjustified inequality led most Russians to call for a government-controlled housing market. Under the Soviet system, residents retained lifelong tenancy rights, perceiving the apartments they inhabited as their own. In the wake of privatization, young Russians can no longer count on the state to provide their house, nor can they afford to buy a home with wages, forcing many to live with extended family well into adulthood. Zavisca shows that the contradictions of housing policy are a significant factor in Russia's falling birth rates and the apparent failure of its pronatalist policies. These consequences further stack the deck against the likelihood that an affordable housing market will take off in the near future. _ 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] My analysis of 2 contradictiry political messages in Rihanna; 's song American Oxgyen!
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Re: [Marxism] Marxmail anniversary
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've been here from the beginning too. In the case of LBO-Talk, I think most of the discussion that used to take place there has gone over to social media instead. This list seems to have been less effected by this trend, but I don't think the volume here is as high as it used to be in years gone by. One advantage of an email list over social media like Facebook, is that everything here is archived, so its easy to find past posts. You can't say the same thing for Facebook. This list has certainly helped many people to become proficient writers. It is doubtful that without this list I would have bothered trying to write for publication. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math -- Original Message -- From: michael yates via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism] Marxmail anniversary Date: Fri, 1 May 2015 10:52:51 -1000 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. * Happy anniversary! I don't know where Louis gets the energy to have kept this going for so long. LBO started at the same time, but it is pretty much dead in the water. Pen-l, which is even older, is hanging in there. A revolutionary May Day salute to all! _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/farmelantj%40juno.com Forget the iPhone 6 1 little-known Apple supplier holds wealth-changing growth potential. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/55443f5d363d3f5b0bedst03vuc _ 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] Milonov on May Day in Petersburg: We will liquidate all homo-organizations
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. * https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/05/01/police-stop-the-author-of-russia-s-gay-propaganda-ban-from-disrupting-lgbt-rights-demonstrators Police stop the author of Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ ban from disrupting LGBT rights demonstrators 1 MAY 2015 FONTANKA.RU At a May Day parade in St. Petersburg today, police prevented city councilman Vitaly Milonov from disrupting a group of LGBT rights demonstrators. Milonov is considered the author of Russia’s controversial laws against “gay propaganda” in the presence of children. According to the news website Fontanka.ru, Milonov arrived at today’s May Day parade with a group of his supporters that included several children. When he spotted a group of LGBT rights activists carrying rainbow flags, he began making his way toward the demonstrators, apparently intending to interfere with their march. Before he could reach the activists, however, local police intercepted Milonov and kept him away, asking him calmly not to cause a disruption. In videos recorded at the demonstration, Milonov can be seen shouting abuse at the LGBT rights activists, as police keep him at a distance from the parade. After the incident, Milonov complained in a radio interview that demonstrations with LGBT flags are illegal and should be stopped. “These flags should have been removed,” he said, “and the people carrying them should have been detained. Leningrad stood up to the fascists [in World War II] for 900 days, and now here they are walking quietly through our streets. And they’re doing it openly. We oppose them. We will liquidate all homo-organizations.” _ 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 Spark group on killing of Freddie Gray
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[Marxism] Labourites versus migrant workers
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 developments in bourgeois politics in recent years has been that some traditionally conservative parties in the English-speaking imperialist world have become less xenophobic and Labour parties have become more so. In New Zealand now, you're much more likely to find the Labour Party attacking 'foreigners' than the National Party. Indeed, it's quite common to see National Party politicians criticising Labour for being xenophobic. In Britain, I see Labour has brought out an anti-immigrant mug (cup) as part of its election wares. See: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/british-elections-labour-attacks-migrant-workers/ Phil _ 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] Rihaan'as song American Oxgyen!
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[Marxism] May Day: World protests target capitalist austerity
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. * People around the world took to the streets on May 1 to mark May Day, the international workers' day. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/58910 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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. * Congratulations, Lou. The list has been essential link for me to the outside world. It has also fought the good fight for the kind of Marxist political organization that we so desperately need. No one knows how fast the pulse of political time will beat over the next few years. Should it quicken, then all of us and the list will have a role to play. comradely Gary On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 10:26 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: 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 list is now 17 years old and moving toward its 20th in 2018, inshallah. Best wishes to the veterans of this fecund swamp, the comrades who were here from the beginning: David Walters, Einde O'Callaghan, Phil Ferguson, Les Schaffer, Jon Flanders, and anybody else I might have forgotten. And most of all to Hans Ehrbar, without whom we would have been homeless back in 1998. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com _ 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] More articles on Baltimore
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. * NYT - N. D. B. CONNOLLY - Black Culture Is Not the Problem http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/opinion/black-culture-is-not-the-problem.html The problem is not black culture. It is policy and politics, the very things that bind together the history of Ferguson and Baltimore and, for that matter, the rest of America. Specifically, the problem rests on the continued profitability of racism. Freddie Gray’s exposure to lead paint as a child, his suspected participation in the drug trade, and the relative confinement of black unrest to black communities during this week’s riot are all features of a city and a country that still segregate people along racial lines, to the financial enrichment of landlords, corner store merchants and other vendors selling second-rate goods. __ WaPo - Terrence McCoy - Freddie Gray’s life a study on the effects of lead paint on poor blacks http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/freddie-grays-life-a-study-in-the-sad-effects-of-lead-paint-on-poor-blacks/2015/04/29/0be898e6-eea8-11e4-8abc-d6aa3bad79dd_story.html “In 1993, we found that 13,000 kids in Baltimore had been poisoned with lead, but we weren’t collecting at the levels that we are today,” said Ruth Ann Norton, the executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. “If we had, we would have found 30,000 poisoned kids.” Overall, more than 93,000 children with lead poisoning have been added to the state’s Department of the Environment lead registries over the past two decades, a time frame in which Baltimore and other cities have substantially reduced the number of houses with paint containing lead. Freddie Gray’s path toward such litigation began months after his birth in August 1989..It wasn’t long after that he was given the first of many blood tests, court records show. The test came in May of 1990, when the family was living in a home on Fulton Avenue in West Baltimore. Even at such a young age, his blood contained more than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood — double the level at which the Center for Disease Control urges additional testing. Three months later, his blood had nearly 30 micrograms. In June 1991, when Gray was 22 months old, his blood carried 37 micrograms. “Jesus,” Dan Levy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the effects of lead poisoning on youths, gasped when told of Gray’s levels. “The fact that Mr. Gray had these high levels of lead in all likelihood affected his ability to think and to self-regulate and profoundly affected his cognitive ability to process information.” ___ WaPo - Christopher Ingraham - 15 Baltimore neighborhoods have lower life expectancies than North Korea http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/30/baltimores-poorest-residents-die-20-years-earlier-than-its-richest/ Inequality in Baltimore...has roots that stretch deep into the past. It's been exasperated by bad policy decisions in the present-day. And it makes itself felt in every aspect of life in the city, from the racial composition of neighborhoods to the number of empty houses standing in them. For another illustration, let's look at a hypothetical case of two babies born on the same day this year in Baltimore. One is born in Roland Park, a wealthy neighborhood in the north of the city. The other is born just three miles away in Downtown/Seton Hill, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. The Roland Park baby will most likely live to the age of 84, well above the U.S. average of 79. The Seton Hill baby, on the other hand, can expect to die 19 years earlier at the age of 65. That's 14 years below the U.S. average. The average child born this year in Seton Hill will be dead before she can even begin to collect Social Security. Guardian - Hannah Giorgis - We need racial justice and economic justice. We can’t breathe if we can’t eat http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/30/racial-justice-economic-justice-baltimore-we-cannot-breathe-if-we-cannot-eat This civilian uprising in Baltimore has occurred against and because of the backdrop of Baltimore’s economic abandonment, which has left its primarily black residents vulnerable not only to police violence, but also to a dangerous lack of basic human services like water and affordable housing. Baltimore’s schools remain underfunded even though almost 85% of the city’s students come from households with incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. The impossible constraints the city’s residents must grapple with are as unique as they are emblematic of economic
Re: [Marxism] Marxmail anniversary
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. * Already, we can look back on this list and see how it has allowed for important contributions in many areas that would not otherwise have been made without it. Kudos to all its founders, sustainers, and contributors. _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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. * Louis, The credit for bearing the burden of running this marvelous website goes to you and Les. Congratulations and let us continue this.I know that participation from India is low, but I am trying to convince comrades that they have to spare their time and participate on Marxmail.Many Many Happy Returns of the Day, comrades!Vijaya Kumar Marla On Friday, May 1, 2015 8:22 PM, Mark Lause via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: 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. * Already, we can look back on this list and see how it has allowed for important contributions in many areas that would not otherwise have been made without it. Kudos to all its founders, sustainers, and contributors. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marlavk%40yahoo.com _ 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] Labor Leaders Detained in Iran as International Workers' Day Approaches
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. * Another short report: http://www.payvand.com/news/15/apr/1166.html 04/30/15 Labor Leaders Detained in Iran as International Workers' Day ApproachesSource: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran April 29, 2015-On the eve of International Workers’ Day on May 1, Iranian authorities have arrested at least five labor leaders. The arrests have taken place in the context of intensifying labor protests, strikes, and arrests of individuals organizing or participating in labor protests. Hundreds of workers protesting in front of the Iranian Parliament on January 7, 2015“The Government views any labor mobilization as a national security threat,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Campaign. “Workers should be allowed to peacefully defend their common interests, without risking years behind bars.” “Rouhani needs to turn his attention to the people of Iran. Workers are suffering and their demands need to be heard,” added Ghaemi. Tehran Security Police arrested two members of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, Ebrahim Maddadi and Davood Razavi, in their homes on April 29, and two other labor activists, Mahmoud Salehi and Osman Ismaili, were arrested in the city of Saqez in the Kurdistan Province on April 28. On April 25, plainclothes security agents in Sanandaj, Kurdistan, arrested the labor activist Reza Amjadi. On April 20, four days after thousands of teachers protested against low wages, Alireza Hashemi, head of the Iran Teachers Organization, was detained and transferred to Evin Prison to serve a five-year sentence originally handed out to him in 2013. cartoon by Mana Neyestani, Iran WireIndependent labor unions are banned in Iran, strikers are often fired and risk being detained, and labor leaders face long prison sentences on trumped up national security charges. Despite this, a growing wave of strikes and worker protests have roiled many sectors in Iran over the past year, as a combination of international sanctions and economic mismanagement has taken a heavy toll on the economy, with workers bearing the brunt of the economic pain. Some 70% of workers’ wages are now under the official poverty line in Iran, and approximately 90% of all contracts are temporary, affording workers no insurance or protections. Over the past year, workers in dozens of factories have experienced more than 6 months of unpaid wages. For example, 900 workers in the Ahvaz City Metro Construction project haven’t received their wages for more than four months. From March 2014 to March 2015, there were at least 233 protests throughout the country, with strikes occurring in the automotive industry, petrochemicals, mining, cement production, and other sectors. Protests by teachers, who are paid at rates well below the official poverty line in Iran, have been particularly widespread. On April 16, 2015, teachers gathered in silent protests over their wages in 37 cities nationwide. Punishment for any kind of organized labor protest is swift and severe. Instances of workers being fired after their participation in protests are numerous. For example, nearly 1000 workers at the Safa Rolling company in Saveh were fired in February 2015, and as the protests over unpaid wages continued, others who joined the strikers were fired as well. Summons to court frequently follow as well. For example, eleven workers at the Agh Dareh gold mine, who had protested the suspension of 350 of their co-workers, were forced to appear in court. At least 230 people were arrested in peaceful labor protests during the March 2014 to March 2015 period, and a number of leading labor activists are serving lengthy sentences in Iranian prisons. The teacher Rasoul Bodaghi sits in Rajaee Shahr Prison, serving a five-year sentence for “propaganda against the state,” and “assembly and collusion with the intent to disrupt national security.” The labor activist Reza Shahabi is serving six years in Rajaee Shahr Prison for “propaganda against the state,” and collusion with the intent to act against national security.” Shahrokh Zamani, also a labor activist, is serving ten years at Rajaee Shahr Prison for “forming an illegal anti-state organization,” “participating in propaganda against the state,” “assembly and collusion for committing crime against national security,” and “insulting the Supreme Leader.” Mahmoud Bagheri, a board member of the Teachers Union, is serving nine-and-a-half years for “assembly and collusion,” and “propaganda against the state” at Evin Prison. The International Labor Organization (ILO), of which Iran is a member, mandates the right of workers to
[Marxism] Fwd: Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby: Officers charged in death of Freddie Gray | MSNBC
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[Marxism] Ireland: Left discusses how to win a radical new republic
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[Marxism] [UCE] A Home for Every Russian: How Putin Delivers
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. * A postscript to my previous message on the Putinist housing boom miracle as revealed by the suddenly emergent (Beta Version) reliable news source known as Russian Insider. In 1975, when my wife's family moved into a three-room apartment in a newly built block of flats in one of Leningrad's central districts, the apartment was FREE. FREE. FREE. As in, my wife's family didn't have to pay kopeck for it. Not one kopeck. Similarly, my wife got a (terrific) free education at a specialized English-language school and, later, at the Slavic department at Leningrad State University. She didn't pay a kopeck for any of this, either. It was all FREE. Even more insanely, when my wife got ill as a child and young woman (she lived under this horribly oppressive state of affairs for half her life, by the way), the generally good medical care she got was also free. This system was called socialism. After 1991, my wife's family privatized their flat for a nominal fee, as did millions of other Russians around the same time In 2000, they sold it for around 25,000 dollars. That was the going rate then. At today's going rate, the same flat would probably sell for around 250,000 dollars. There is a fairly substantial class of people, although they are distinct minority, who could afford to buy my wife's family's old flat cash on the barrel head, but the vast majority of people living in Petersburg wouldn't be able to do this, unless they had their own, similarly priced, privatized flats that they could sell to generate the cash necessary to trade up (or down, for that matter) to another flat. There are still quite a few people in the big cities who have this important asset, a legacy from the Soviet era, and one could say to a great extent that it made life livable for many of these people in the lean years. But it also generated a real estate market, which didn't exist (or at least in this way) in Soviet times. And this real estate market has been as cutthroat as they come. In the 90s, when I worked for a Big Issue-style newspaper called Na Dne (The Depths), we did a special project where we advertised all over the city asking homeless people to come in and tell us their stories. (These stories were eventually published as an anthology, in Russian and English.) What we discovered was that easily over half these people had been swindled out of their flats and rooms in communal flats, to which they had been legally entitled, by so-called black realtors, many of whom were able to launder their ill-gotten gains and resell them on the legal estate market. As for the homes being touted by Russian Insider as proof that Putin delivers, they are not being handed out for free, as most of them would have been under socialism. (In the late Soviet period, there were also co-op houses paid and, to some extent, built by their inhabitants.) No, they're sold for the going rate. In September 2014, the going rate in Petersburg per square meter in newly built residential buildings was about 94,000 rubles, while the average price per meter in the four historic central districts (Central, Petrograd, Vasilyevsky Island, and Admiralty) hovered between 120,000 and 160,000 rubles, according to real estate website bsn.ru ( http://www.bsn.ru/analytics/liveestate/spb/17139_deshevye_metry/). At the then-current exchange rate, this translates into a price range between 2,600 and 4,500 dollars per square meter. A friend of mine who does IT work and has been trying to organize an independent IT workers union in Petersburg, wrote on his Facebook page the other day that, according to Headhunter.ru, the average (not the median) monthly wage in the city was 35,000 rubles. At current exchange rates this amounts to around 680 dollars. He also cited a screenshot, taken from Yandex's jobs page, that the average monthly wage for the fifty-five thousand some vacancies is currently listing, is 33,000 rubles per month, or 640 dollars. I should add that before the crisis set in, that is, during the boom times, the average wage in the city was better, but only marginally soon. So who could and can afford all the homes delivered by the international left's new kewpie doll, Vladimir Putin? A) the wildly and mostly illegally rich, including oligarchs, sub-oligarchs, and corrupt government officials, who need some place (lots of places, actually, if you think about the distorting effect they've had on real estate in London and New York, for example) to park their loads of cash; B) honest, hardworking people with average or higher than average salaries who, of course, would have take out loans, sometimes big loans, to afford these homes. In any case,
[Marxism] Fwd: Trial-by-Fire in Syria » 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. * Recently published by Verso Press, Jonathan Littell’s “Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising” is welcome both as an important document of Syria’s trial by fire as well as an indication of this august publisher’s willingness to break with the pro-Assad consensus that prevails on the left. Although Littell’s chronicle is hardly the work of an FSA partisan, he at least puts a human face on a movement that so many were willing to reduce to one fighter’s shocking act–eating the heart of a fallen Baathist soldier. Written between January 16 and February 2, 2012, Littell’s notebooks are literally that, a day by day diary of what he saw and what he did in Homs, a city that was a citadel of resistance to Bashar al-Assad, particularly in the working-class neighborhood of Baba ‘Amr, where Littell spent most of his time full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/01/trial-by-fire-in-syria/ _ 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] governing Greece: pensions, media, collecting taxes
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. * Greece struggles to make payments to more than 2million pensioners by Kerin Hope in Athens Financial Times, April 30 The Greek government was struggling on Thursday to complete payments to more than 2m pensioners after claiming that a “technical hitch” had delayed an earlier disbursement. Elderly Athenians waited at branches of the National Bank of Greece, the state-controlled lender handling the bulk of pension payments, which are staggered over several days. “Normally I only withdraw half the money at the end of the month, but today I’m taking it all,” said Sotiria Zlatini, 75, a former civil servant. “There are so many rumours going round because of the government’s problems and what happened two days ago.” The leftwing Syriza-led government scrambled to pay pensions and public sector salaries in February and March after failing to reach agreement with international lenders on unlocking €7.2bn of bailout aid. On Tuesday, the main state social security fund, IKA, delayed pension payments by almost eight hours. The heavily lossmaking fund relies on a monthly subsidy from the budget to be able to cover its obligations. “I went to the ATM in the morning before going to the supermarket but the money wasn’t there. . . I went back at eight in the evening feeling quite anxious, but it had arrived,” said Socrates Kambitoglou, a retired civil engineer. Dimitris Stratoulis, deputy minister for social security, said a technical problem with the interbank payment system had caused the delay. Payments were made normally on Wednesday, said a senior Greek banker. But an official with knowledge of the government’s cash position denied there had been a technical hitch. He said the payments were held up because the state pension funds “were still missing several hundred million euros on Tuesday morning”. Another official said inflows of €500m on Wednesday had eased the situation and €300m was due to be paid on Thursday. “We’re probably going to make it this month,” he said. . . . Trying to address the cash crunch, the government last week ordered 1,500 state entities, including local authorities, hospitals and universities, to hand over their cash reserves to the central bank to be deposited in short-term “repos” — repurchase agreements. But foot-dragging by some entities reluctant to lose control of their funds, among them local authorities run by mayors from opposition political parties, has meant that transfers have been delayed. Funds have so far been transferred by only one of the country’s 13 regional governors, amid concerns over whether the central government would be in a position to return them. Costas Bakoyannis, governor of central Greece, said more time was needed to clarify the measures and arrange the transfers without endangering payments to contractors and suppliers. “It’s agreed the money will be handed over, based on the government’s commitment that it’s a temporary measure,” said Mr Bakoyannis. Meanwhile, the state-controlled electricity utility PPC, which is listed on the Athens stock exchange, denied reports that it had been asked to help make up the shortfall. One person familiar with the issue said the government wanted to tap €200m of funds earmarked as a downpayment on a new €1.5bn power plant to be constructed in northern Greece. Greece: government reinstates public broadcaster ERT OK from Parliament, 1,500 fired workers about to be re-hired ANSAMed (Italy), April 29 http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2015/04/29/greece-government-reinstates-public-broadcaster-ert_809f9992-9285-4dd7-bff2-49cf29d21d2c.html ATHENS - The Syriza government on Wednesday reinstated the country's public broadcaster ERT after Parliament voted in favor of the measure. The broadcaster was shut down in 2013 by the previous government led by Premier Antonis Samaras as part of austerity measures in the crisis-stricken country. Parliament also voted to re-hire the over 1,500 employees from ERT who had been laid off. . . . The controversial initiative taken by Samaras led to a political earthquake which placed his cabinet at risk. At the time, government allies included the Socialist Pasok and the Democratic Left of Fotis Kouvelis, which left the alliance because it disagreed with the broadcaster's shutdown. . . . No signal: what is wrong with Greek media today? by Yannis Paradeisiadis openDemocracy, April 30 https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/yannis-paradeisiadis/no-signal-greek-media-tragedy Any explanation of the modern-day Greek tragedy is incomplete without mention of the country's news media. The fourth power is in dire straits, having seen a
[Marxism] Charlie Rose: Is NYPD's John Miller Incompetent or Lying?
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: Charlie Rose: Is NYPD's John Miller Incompetent or Lying? http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2015/05/charlie-rose-is-nypds-john-miller.html Dear Charlie Rose: On your show, *CBS This Morning*, today NYPD's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, and former CBS News senior correspondent, *John Miller* said many things that angered me in his discourse on the police murder of *Freddie Gray*, and one thing that I found incredulous, he said http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/nypds-john-miller-ive-never-heard-of-police-rough-rides/ /I've never heard of police 'rough rides'./ Yet the term and practise are well known on the streets and in police circles. A *Philadelphia Inquirer* investigation into the practise in that city published in 2001 reported http://articles.philly.com/2001-06-03/news/25322977_1_wagon-police-officer-police-van: Top commanders acknowledge that rough rides are an enduring tradition in the department. The practice even has a name - nickel ride, a term that harks back to the days when amusement-park rides cost 5 cents. An Inquirer investigation documented injuries to 20 people tossed around in wagons in recent years. Thompson was one of three who suffered spinal injuries, and one of two permanently paralyzed. The *New York Times* wrote http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/freddie-grays-injury-and-the-police-rough-ride.html?_r=0 yesterday about the phrase 'rough ride': The slang terms mask a dark tradition of police misconduct in which suspects, seated or lying face down and in handcuffs in the back of a police wagon http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/24/us/freddie-gray-and-the-baltimore-police-department-timeline.html, are jolted and battered by an intentionally rough and bumpy ride that can do as much damage as a police baton without an officer having to administer a blow. The *Baltimore Sun* wrote http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html#page=1 about the type of injuries Freddie Gray suffered: For some, such injuries have been inflicted by what is known as a rough ride â an unsanctioned technique in which police vans are driven to cause injury or pain to unbuckled, handcuffed detainees, former city police officer Charles J. Key testified as an expert five years ago in a lawsuit over Johnson's subsequent death. I could go on citing sources on this till the sun sets, but you get the picture. The term is well known and has a long history in law enforcement and media circles and yet John Miller comes on national TV and tells the world that he hasn't even heard the term! So my question to you, Charlie Rose, is: Do you think he is really that incompetent in matters of police intelligence or do you think he is lying? I'll tell you what I think. I don't think John Miller is that stupid or unaware. I think he is lying. I think he knows very well that Freddie Gray was most likely a victim of police violence but John Miller honors the police wall of silence. I think John Miller showed by telling this lie that he is part of the problem. He lacks basic integrity. He doesn't need to have any command authority in any police organization and you shouldn't have him on your show if you value your reputation. Regards, Clay Claiborne, a morning viewer _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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 want to add my appreciation to Louis (so generous a leader), Hans (who once helped me write an important piece) and all my fellow Marxists for educating and inspiring me so much. This is the best list on the planet. Happy 17th! In Solidarity, Brian McKenna On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 8:26 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: 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 list is now 17 years old and moving toward its 20th in 2018, inshallah. Best wishes to the veterans of this fecund swamp, the comrades who were here from the beginning: David Walters, Einde O'Callaghan, Phil Ferguson, Les Schaffer, Jon Flanders, and anybody else I might have forgotten. And most of all to Hans Ehrbar, without whom we would have been homeless back in 1998. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/mckennab%40umich.edu _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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. * eternal thanks to the originators of this list on this hallowed day but especially to louis for his tireless work in what is pretty much a thankless role. you've been instrumental in my education. The list is now 17 years old and moving toward its 20th in 2018, inshallah. Best wishes to the veterans of this fecund swamp, the comrades who were here from the beginning: David Walters, Einde O'Callaghan, Phil Ferguson, Les Schaffer, Jon Flanders, and anybody else I might have forgotten. And most of all to Hans Ehrbar, without whom we would have been homeless back in 1998. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Marxmail anniversary
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. * Just wanted to add my appreciation to Louis and all the others who keep this list going. As a long-time lurker, I find the list insightful, engaging, informative, irritating, frustrating, essential, and inspiring- sometimes alternately and sometimes all at once. But I'm glad to have the Digest appear in my inbox daily. May Day greetings to all. Stephen Harvey --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com _ 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: Cattle and neo-Malthusianism | 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. * Going through back issues of Harper’s, I ran into a February 2015 article by Christopher Ketcham titled “The Great Republican Land Heist: Cliven Bundy and the politicians who are plundering the West” triggered some thoughts about the role of cattle in our environmental crisis. As a food source whose resource intakes (water and land) are disproportional to its nutritional value and that is increasingly in demand as globalization allows easy access to beef everywhere, it must be assessed with a cool and exacting view even if that risks being tarred as a “neo-Malthusian”. Long before I began blogging, I wrote a piece titled “Cattle and Capitalism” that quoted an Alexander Cockburn from the April 22, 1996 Nation: Unsustainable grazing and ranching sacrifice drylands, forests and wild species. For example, semi-deciduous forests in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay are cut down to make way for soybeans, which are fed to cows as high-protein soycake. Humans are essentially vegetarian as a species and insatiate meat-eating bring its familiar toll of heart disease, stroke and cancer. The enthusiasm for meat also produces its paradox: hunger. A people living on cereals and legumes for protein need to grow far less grain than a people eating creatures that have been fed by cereals. For years Western journalists described in mournful tones the scrawny and costly pieces of meat available in Moscow’s shops, associating the lack of meat with backwardness and the failure of Communism. But after 1950, meat consumption in the Soviet Union tripled. By 1964 grain for livestock feed outstripped grain for bread, and by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, livestock were eating three times as much grain as humans. All this required greater and greater imports of grain until precious foreign exchange made the Soviet Union the world’s second-largest grain importer, while a dietary “pattern” based on excellent bread was vanishing. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/05/01/cattle-and-neo-malthusianism/ _ 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] May Day in Athens
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. * International Workers’ Day: resounding struggles from Greece to Russia [LeftEast interviewed six workers from Russia, Slovenia, Macedona, Croatia and Greece. I copied brief excerpts from the interviews with the two Greek workers which btw show that The Greek Reporter did not report on a third May Day demonstration in Athens initiated by Antarsya.] “For more than twenty years have the wage workers of this country begged and prayed their masters, the factory lords, to reduce their burdens. It has been in vain.” – this proclamation could easily have come from a 1st of May rally in 2015, as it remains equally relevant today. But it dates back to the 4th of May, 1886, when August Spies, one of the key protagonists of the Haymarket affair in Chicago incited the rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour-day, which spiraled into a mass protest and inspired the International Workers’ movement. 130 years on, as the struggle continues, LeftEast spoke with those familiar with workers’ conditions and Union organization in Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Macedonia and Russia. http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/international-workers-day-resounding-struggles-from-greece-to-russia interview with Sylvia Koilakou on International Workers Day by Left East http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/international-workers-day-greece Sylvia Koilakou works as a civil engineer in a technical enterprise. She is active in the union of technical employees and is a member of the Board of the Labor Center of Athens. She is a member of the anti-capitalist coalition ANTARSYA, on whose ticket she stood as a parliamentary candidate in the recent elections. . . . May Day in Greece is a day of struggle for trade unions, with demonstrations all over Greece. In Athens, three demonstrations are called. One by the tertiary confederations (GSEE and ADEDY), one by PAME (All-workers Militant Front, unions and unionists adjacent to the Communist Party of Greece), and one by the grassroots unions, marching towards the parliament and the EU offices. The forces of the anti-capitalist Left, ANTARSYA and autonomous labor collectives participate in the latter. These grassroots unions carry the logic of independent class unionism and grassroots coordination, which is far removed from the GSEE’s logic of unionism, which subordinates itself to the existing system, as well as from the partisan unionism of PAME. . . . This year’s May Day in Greece finds a labor movement that has faced 5 years of attacks on labor rights. At this instant, capital, the EU and IMF forces, maintain a rigid stance aimed at the signing of a new memorandum, which will include strict anti-labor measures. The SYRIZA-ANEL government is oriented towards a deal with the country’s borrowers, having accepted the obligation of paying the debt as well as the inviolable terms that the EU and the Euro-Zone have imposed. Thus, this year’s May Day is an important milestone for grassroots unions, in order to organize the counterattack of struggles against the new anti-popular agreements and in order to restore workers’ victories. full at: http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/international-workers-day-greece interview with Christos Tsadaris on International Workers day by LeftEast http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/international-workers-day-christos-tsadaris Christos Tsadaris has recently concluded his studies as a physicist, and is currently unemployed, searching for a job. He has been active in social movements of the youth in Greece and is a member of ATTACK, a youth collective against modern slavery, flexibility in work and unemployment. He is a member of the anti-capitalist coalition ANTARSYA. . . . ... the unions never choose to actually defend workers’ interests, but are most often led to compromises and submission to the dominant bourgeois block. What is crucial today is the overall objective of class reconstruction and the development of a mass, political labor movement, aiming to an overthrow of the current neoliberal attack, a counterattack of struggles, unraveling the memorandum of capitalist barbarism and reactionary reforms, gaining victories for the workers, in connection to the struggle for the objectives of the anti-capitalist program. . . . Regarding labour rights and specifically the collective contract agreements in Greece, the numbers are really shocking. In 2008 there were 161 sectoral and inter-professional collective agreement contracts, which could cover almost all workers in the private sector. Today only 18 contract agreements are active, while it is estimated that less than 15% of the workers occupied in the private sector is being covered by those
[Marxism] May Day in Athens
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. * Labor Day Action: Thousands of People and Ministers Participate in Rally by Ioanna Zikakou The Greek Reporter, May 1, 2015 http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/05/01/greek-labor-day-action-thousands-of-people-and-ministers-participate-in-rally Downtown Athens is closed as of this morning, Friday, for strike rallies to commemorate Labour Day (May 1). Participants of a rally by the umbrella labor unions of Greece, GSEE of the private sector and ADEDY of the public sector, who had gathered at Klafthmonos Square on Stadiou, are marching to Syntagma Square, as part of a strike action commemorating the day. An earlier rally by PAME, the Communist Party-affiliated labor union, at Syntagma has concluded. The second rally is being attended by Interior and Administration Reconstrunction Minister Nikos Voutsis, Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, Social Insurance Alternate Minister Dimitris Stratoulis and Attica Region Governor Rena Dourou among other officials. In a message as he arrived at the PAME rally, Communist Party of Greece General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas said on Friday that Labor Day’s message consists of leaving the memorandum policies and breaking with the European Union. The Day points us to the road away from the memorandum and its application laws, Koutsoumbas underlined as he arrived at the rally organized by the KKE-affiliated PAME labor union. It also points us towards the direction of expanding the labor movement to demand better wages for workers and collective work agreements, as well as towards breaking with the EU and the capital and its rule. In statements at Klafthmonos Square earlier, Lafazanis said that this year’s message on Labor Day was for struggle and resistance, and noted that Greece is negotiating toughly, the government will keep its commitments and the negotiations will have a positive outcome. Yanis Varoufakis became one with the crowd. He wore a simple T-shirt, a leather jacket and a carnation in his front pocket in order to participate in the rally that took place in central Athens. Varoufakis was cheerful as he spoke with the citizens who were commemorating Labor Day. Meanwhile, several reporters approached him in an attempt to get a statement. ### Labor Day 2015: Riots in Central Athens by Ioanna Zikakou Greek Reporter, May 1, 2015 http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/05/01/labor-day-2015-riots-in-central-athens Minor rioting incidents involving Molotov cocktails occurred in central Athens, Greece, after the Labor Day rally ended. Anti-authoritarians threw Molotov cocktails in Propylaea and police responded by throwing stun grenades. Then, the group moved to Exarchia, where they turned over garbage bins and set them on fire in an attempt to set up makeshift barricades on Stournari street. Greek police made two arrests in the area and the intensity eased a little after 4pm. Meanwhile, there was no tension during the standard Labor Day rally, despite the fact that a small anti-authoritarian group decided to throw Molotov cocktails to the riot police officers. A small incident also occurred outside the hotel Grand Bretagne in Syntagma Square, where once again anti-authoritarians threw Molotov cocktails, however, the riot police did not respond. _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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. * Happy anniversary! I don't know where Louis gets the energy to have kept this going for so long. LBO started at the same time, but it is pretty much dead in the water. Pen-l, which is even older, is hanging in there. A revolutionary May Day salute to all! _ 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: Paleogenomics Reconstructs Ancient Proteins | Quanta Magazine
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. * Life’s first epoch saw incredible advances — cells, metabolism and DNA, to name a few. Researchers are resurrecting ancient proteins to illuminate the biological dark ages. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150416-how-structure-evolved-in-the-primordial-soup/ _ 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: Freddie Gray protests: second prisoner in Baltimore police van comes forward | US news | The Guardian
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. * Investigators have said Gray and the other prisoner were separated by a wall and never saw each other. But the testimony of the second prisoner has become crucial in piecing together the circumstances of Gray’s death. Baltimore city officials have maintained it is likely Gray sustained his injuries inside the van. On Thursday, a leaked police document, reported by the Washington Post, stated that the second prisoner believed Gray “was intentionally trying to injure himself” by “banging against the walls”. But Allen, interviewed by CBS Baltimore, denied saying this. “And they’re trying to make it seem like I told them that, I made it like Freddie Gray did that to himself,” Allen said. “Why the fuck would he do that to himself ?” full: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/01/freddie-gray-protests-prisoner-police-van-donta-allen-baltimore _ 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] Marxmail anniversary
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 list is now 17 years old and moving toward its 20th in 2018, inshallah. Best wishes to the veterans of this fecund swamp, the comrades who were here from the beginning: David Walters, Einde O'Callaghan, Phil Ferguson, Les Schaffer, Jon Flanders, and anybody else I might have forgotten. And most of all to Hans Ehrbar, without whom we would have been homeless back in 1998. _ 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] In the wake of Sanders' announcement
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 revised my piece on his presidential run.. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/30/the-problem-with-bernie/ _ 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: Baltimore’s failure is rooted in its segregationist past: The city’s black community has never recovered.
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. * 1) Richard Rothstein wrote a similar piece on the Economic Policy Institute's blog: From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation http://www.epi.org/blog/from-ferguson-to-baltimore-the-fruits-of-government-sponsored-segregation/ 2) A Baltimore Sun journalist Antero Pietila wrote a very good book on this topic back in 2010 called Not In My Neighborhood. The Real News Network did a three-part interview with him back when it was published: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=31Itemid=74jumival=6967 3) George Lipsitz has a great essay in his How Racism Takes Place on how David Simon's The Wire completely obscures the origins of west Baltimore's housing blight. You can read it here: http://www.ramanujanramanujan.com/folder/Lipsitz%20-%20How%20Racism%20Takes%20Place%20%282011%29.pdf 4) It was a similar story in Ferguson: Why government policy — not personal prejudice — is to blame for Ferguson http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/15/why-government-policy-not-personal-prejudice-is-to-blame-for-ferguson/ Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2015 09:20:25 -0400 Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: Baltimore’s failure is rooted in its segregationist past: The city’s black community has never recovered. From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu To: shalva.eli...@outlook.com 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.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/04/baltimore_s_failure_is_rooted_in_its_segregationist_past_the_city_s_black.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/shalva.eliava%40outlook.com _ 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] May Day: Not a Victory But the Class Struggle.
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://beta.bodhicommons.org/article/may-day-not-a-victory-but-the-class-struggle Warmly, Vijay. _ 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] Articles on Baltimore
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. * In the otherwise informative article below, Michael Fletcher claims that, despite the stark inequalities that exist within the city, the problems that face Baltimore are not racial. To back up this claim, he makes reference to the prominence of blacks within various institutions of municipal governance and within law enforcement itself. While that may be true (although the black mayor's background hardly seems representative of the typical west Baltimorian, not least of all because her mother was a pediatrician), it hardly seems that non-whites who do gain entry to institutions like law enforcement do not in fact imbibe the prevailing (white-supremacist) norms of those institutions. As sociologist Alice Goffman reports in her recent ethnography on fugitive Black men in a Philadephia neighborhood, the local police - despite the seeming racial and gender diversity among its ranks - appears to be no less racist and misogynist than the typical all-white police forces of the Midwest. In discussing the strategies that police use to get women and other family members to inform on their loved ones, Goffman describes her own interrogation by aggressive police officers looking to elicit information from her about her contacts: I had dropped Mike and Chuck off on 6th Street and was heading toward the airport to pick up a friend. Two unmarked cars come up behind me..and I pull over. A cop walks over to my window and shines a flashlight in my face; he orders me to step out of the car and show him my license. Then one of the cops tells me I am coming with them. I leave the car...and get into the backseat of their car, a green Lincoln. On the way to the precinct, the white cop who is driving tells me that if I am looking for some Black dick, I don't have to go to 6th street; I could come right to the precinct at 8th and Vine. The Black cop in the passenger side grins and shakes his head, says something about how he doesn't want any of me; he would probably catch some shit. At the precinct, another white guy pats me down. He is smirking at me as he touches my hips and thighs. There is a certain look of disdain, or perhaps disgust, that white men sometimes give to white women whom they believe to be having sex with Black men - Black men who get arrested, especially. They take me up the stairs to the second floor, the Detective Unit. I sit in a little room for a while, then two white cops come in, dark green cargo pants and big black combat boots, and big guns strapped onto their legs. They remove the guns and put them on the table facing me. One cop leafs through a folder and puts pictures in front of me of Mike, then Chuck, then Reggie [i.e. the men she is observing for the study]...They question me for about an hour and a half. From what I remember many hours later: Is Mike the supplier? Do you think he'll protect you when we bring him in? He won't protect you! Who has the best stuff, between Mike and Steve, in your expert opinion? We know you were around here last week when all the shit went down. (What shit?) We saw you on 2nd Street, and we know you're up on 4th Street. What business do you have up on 4th Street? I hate to see a pretty young girl get passed around so much. Do your parents know that you're fucking a different nigger every night?...What is your daddy going to say when you call him from the station and ask him to post bail? Bet he'd love to hear what you are doing. Do you kiss him with that mouth? - Alice Goffman, On the Run:Fugitive Life in an American City, pp. 69-71 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/what-you-really-need-to-know-about-baltimore-from-a-reporter-who-lived-there-for-30-years/ The two maps below offer a striking look at the two Baltimores, one affluent and predominately white, the other impoverished and largely black...Slide between the two maps and you'll immediately notice that the wedge of white Baltimore, jutting down from the Northwest to the city center, is largely free of vacant buildings. But in the black neighborhoods on either side, empty buildings are endemic...Think of your neighborhood, and try to imagine what it would be like if one out of every three homes were boarded up. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/these-two-maps-show-the-shocking-inequality-in-baltimore/ _ There are — without a doubt — two Baltimores, as is the case with the District and most American cities...In Baltimore, the distance between the haves and the have-nots is less than four miles...That’s the distance between the breathtaking tulips and imposing
[Marxism] Fwd: You Will Be Surprised Who the Outside Agitators Really Are in Baltimore | Alternet
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. * According to data posted on the city of Baltimore’s OpenBaltimore website in 2012, over 70 percent of Baltimore Police Department officers live outside city limits, with at least 10 percent living over state lines, in places as far away as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. By contrast, almost all of those arrested in ongoing protests sparked by the police killing of the unarmed Baltimorean Freddie Gray reside firmly within the city. These facts were apparently lost on Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake when she blamed “outside forces” for all the looting of local businesses and attacks on cops. Similarly, the Baltimore Police Department claimed that outside agitators continue to be the instigators behind acts of violence and destruction,” even as it conceded in the same statement that “the vast majority of arrests reflect local residency.” No evidence of outside agitation was produced by the mayor or the police, and none was demanded by much of the media covering the ongoing troubles. full: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/you-will-be-surprised-who-outside-agitators-really-are-baltimore _ 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] Honor the Vietnamese, Not Those Who Killed Them
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. * This is one of the best essays I have ever written. A May Day salute to the people of Vietnam! http://monthlyreview.org/2015/05/01/honor-the-vietnamese-not-those-who-killed-them/ _ 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
