[Marxism] Fwd: Rosa Lives | Jacobin
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://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/rosa-luxemburg-paul-buhle-clr-james-reform-revolution-german-spd/ _ 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 War for the West Rages On
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 2016 The War for the West Rages On By BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN Bozeman, Mont. — THE armed siege of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which continued Friday even after one of the occupiers was killed in a confrontation with authorities, is the latest battle in a Nevada family’s war with the federal government. It shows little sign of abating. Anger over the federal government’s control of hundreds of millions of acres across the West has been smoldering for over a hundred years. The takeover was part of a campaign that has its roots in the settlement of the West and the desire to transfer control of these lands — the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and rangeland — to the states. The Oregon confrontation was led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led an armed standoff of his own against federal authorities in 2014 over his illegal grazing on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Oregon Town Torn Apart by Protest at Wildlife RefugeJAN. 29, 2016 The difference between the Bundys and many other ranchers who rage over federal control of land is that they believe God is on their side. I visited the Bundy family last year on their remote ranch and melon farm in southeastern Nevada for research I’m conducting on the history of Mormon culture and the use of public land. The Bundys are Mormons and interested me because of their extreme position against the government and their engagement of militia groups in their cause. They were welcoming and eager to answer my questions. What emerged in our three hours of conversation in the living room of their modest ranch house was a passion and a sense of entitlement that they believe is anchored in their deep history in the region. They also embrace a strange amalgamation of Mormonism, libertarianism and a right-wing reading of the Constitution. The Bundys trace their roots to some of the first Mormons who settled along an isolated and rugged stretch of the Virgin River, in a place so desolate that it seems impossible to make a living there. But they did, and in doing so, they put their stamp on it, in the Bundys’ view. From the moment their ancestors’ horses took a sip of water or ate the grass, “a beneficial use of a renewable resource” was created, Cliven Bundy told me. “That’s how our rights are created,” he explained. “So now we have created them and we use them, make beneficial use of them, and then we protect them. And that’s sort of a natural law, and that’s what the rancher has done. That’s how he has his rights. And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now, it’s really protecting those three things: our life, liberty and our property.” In Mormon doctrine, the American Constitution is a divinely inspired text that must be protected. This view goes back to the days of the prophet Joseph Smith, who believed the Constitution existed to provide religious freedom and agency, the right of people to choose how they lived. In 1840, Smith warned that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin; this people will be the Staff upon which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.” The Bundy family sees itself as that Staff. Mr. Bundy carries in his pocket a copy of the Constitution, which he believes draws its inspiration from the Bible. He told me: “Don’t we believe that Jesus Christ is basically the author of the Bible? Well, if the Constitution is inspired, who is the author? Wouldn’t that author be Jesus Christ again?” Mr. Bundy’s reading of the Constitution has been heavily influenced by the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon, fervent anti-Communist and right-wing political thinker who believed that most federal landholdings are unconstitutional. The Los Angeles Times reported that many Bundy followers in Oregon carried with them a copy of the Constitution annotated by Skousen. “That’s where I get most of my information from,” Cliven Bundy told the paper. But while Joseph Smith focused on the First Amendment as a bulwark against the persecutions of Mormons, the Bundys are focused on the 10th Amendment, which they believe severely restricts the federal government’s power to possess land. (Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have condemned the Oregon takeover and said in a statement that they were “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they were doing it based on scriptural
[Marxism] The War for the West Rages On
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 have spent a great deal of time in Utah over the past ten years or so. And in may other Western states as well. There is a great deal of federal (public) land in the West, especially in Utah. The Bundys and others of their ilk, many of them Mormons, have no real concept of land belonging to all of the people. And it seems that some here can't conceive of this either. We should all take the view that this is, as Woody Guthrie sang, our land. It must be protected by all of us, and we must demand that wildlife be protected on such land and that it must not be logged, mined, and ranched, creating a situation where those who lease such land and who pay very little for this privilege come to believe that this land is theirs. The Mormons who run Utah lock, stock, and barrel, lust to control federal lands in the state. And I can guarantee you that if they did gain control over it, they would soon enough sell or lease it to private corporations who would mine, frack, and ranch it to its dea th. Already the once clean air in southern Utah, home to five splendid and amazing national parks and several national monuments, is almost always hazy and polluted. If the state gets the land, the air, water, and soil quality will diminish beyond recognition and good luck to the animals, other than cattle. Edward Abbey, who has been mocked by certain "left liberals" who neither know nor care about these matters but who waste their days bashing Hillary Clinton and praising Bernie Sanders (neither of whom give a shit about the environment either) was always willing to stand up to the cattle interests and the state and federal policies that have subsidized them for so long. We should emulate Abbey and stand up to all of the crackpots and capitalists whose very essence wreaks havoc on Mother Nature and demand that these lands belong to all of us and must be preserved, expanded, and cared for for all time. The Bundys and all like them belong in prison. The sooner the better. _ 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] A close look at the Hammonds
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. * Although I have mixed feelings about even referring to the batty cult I once belonged to, they have stood up for the Hammonds as victims of a vindictive federal government. Last week's Militant stated: "The capitalist state has been growing since the end of World War II. The Barack Obama administration has accelerated the expansion of federal regulation. In many Western states, where a majority of the land is under government jurisdiction, this leads to fights over access to grazing, water and other necessities for ranchers and farmers." Can you imagine that? "Communists" making a stink about excessive federal regulation when the DP head of the EPA in Michigan was complicit in the lead poisoning in Flint and after 8 years of Obama not a single banker has gone to prison. This week they continue their crusade for the Hammonds, using rhetoric as if they were Emmett Till or the Central Park Five. The Socialist Workers Party urges working people to join in demanding the U.S. government free Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond! We should also join in condemning the FBI and cop killing of Robert Finicum and the arrest of Ammon Bundy and other participants in the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge on conspiracy charges. The Hammonds have been imprisoned twice on the same frame-up arson charges for seeking to defend their ranch and livelihood from government interference and abuse. Their sentence was vindictively lengthened by the federal “justice” system through use of anti-working-class terrorism laws. They write this shit without even bothering to look into the actual history of these characters: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/04/the-mysterious-fires-that-led-to-the-bundy-clans-oregon-standoff/ The trouble with the Hammonds and fire began in 2001. That year, the government showed, Steven Hammond went hunting, killing deer on land under control of the Bureau of Land Management. What to do to erase evidence of this game violation? Break out the matches. “Jurors were told that Steven Hammond handed out ‘Strike Anywhere’ matches with instructions that they be lit and dropped on the ground because they were going to ‘light up the whole country on fire,'” a Justice Department account of the trial read. “One witness testified that he barely escaped the eight to ten foot high flames caused by the arson.” The result: More than 100 acres of public land were destroyed. But, the government said, Steven Hammond was ready with an explanation. Sure, he had started the fire, he said. But he never meant to burn any land his family didn’t own. “After committing the arson, Steven Hammond called the BLM office in Burns, Oregon, and claimed the fire was started on Hammond property to burn off invasive species and had inadvertently burned onto public lands,” the Justice Department wrote. “Dwight and Steven Hammond told one of their relatives to keep his mouth shut and that nobody needed to know about the fire.” --- In terms of the mandatory minimum sentences they received. I know a bit about this because my cousin Joel was sent to prison for five years for growing marijuana on his upstate NY estate for his personal use. I think that mandatory minimums are repressive and that drugs should be legalized. But in the case of the Hammonds the judge had no alternative except to follow the law. What galls me about these rightwing yahoos is their selective application of constitutionality. They walk around with a constitution in their back pocket but have the idea that they can pick and choose which laws apply to them. Ridiculous. _ 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] The Oregon Militia Spokesman Has Been Killed and Its Leaders Detained After FBI Confrontation
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 30/01/2016 06:49 πμ, Ken Hiebert wrote: Two excerpts from *ioannis aposperites followwd by my replies.* *ken h* IO That said, it is one thing to stop the occupation and another to enforce that specific law, even if its enforcement implies stopping the occupation. The difference lays into who makes the occupiers go. Is it a group of environmentally concerned citizens, a left wing collectivity perhaps, or is it the repressive apparatus of the state? KH When you use the expression "make the occupiers go," how do you envisage dong this? Armed force? A blockade of the occupation site? Some other way? IO For, the repressive apparatus of the state does NOT care about the environment. KH You may well be right. How should that affect our course of action? My reply would go like this: The question of "how" is inseparably linked with the question of "who" will "make the (armed fascists) occupiers" go. If the state's repressive apparatus is to do the job then there is nothing but violence or threat of violence. Yet violence is to cut their water supply off, and violence is to nuke them. It's a choice to be made here, and we know what the FBI did and what it is supposed to do (thanks to Hollywood): The FBI will seek for the cheaper, shorter and easier way to enforce the Law (and not that specific law) and in times when the police is shooting down unarmed teenagers for nothing in USA, you can not expect too much observation for human lives from the FBI either. The other way around is people's anti-violence. Instead of cutting off their water supply you must cut off their political support. I do not know much about Oregon but an occupation can not stand without political the support of at least a part of the locals. If a demonstration of environmentally concerned citizens -with its necessary wide local support- was to pay the occupiers a visit peacefully or not ( i do not seek to spare a fascist's life at any price) then you not only achieve your immediate goal, i.e stop the occupation, but in doing so by people's action, you hit the beast in the heart. The fascists would be removed not as heroes defeated by the superior power of the FBI, but politically strangled by the movement, as what they really are: as enemies of the oppressed. This is not to say that the people must not demand the area to be protected by the state; but they must also impose their way of action and make clear that a prohibition is not a protection. And if we really want the area to be protected, a whole set of preconditions must be fulfilled. I am referring here to issues like the local ranchers' problem (if it is a real one) and other of social and/or economic order that i suspect, but do not know. Of course the second option may be out of the reach today, because the locals support massively the occupiers, or because of any other reason. But then what about socialism? Are we to pass over them all in silence? After all what is "possible" is bounded not only to the pessimism of intelligence which analyzes and measures the concrete situation, but also to the optimism of will, as Gramsci would put it. As a leftist in Oregon i would stand up to advocate the second option and even after having failed to gather a critical mass of protesters, i would denounce the unnecessary violence of the FBI and at the same time reveal the political character of the occupation. There is no point for a leftist to get drown in an anxious wannabe governmentalism. Last, i think that our views have different gravity centers. If i get it right, our disagreement would lay on this: For you regarding this Oregon issue, the protection of that area is the final and ultimate (and in that last respect the liberal lawfulness comes to my mind) goal, while for me is just a necessary but intermediate one and consequently, i am not prepared to come in terms with the devil in order to achieve it. JA _ 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] Stalin nostalgia
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. * KEN LIVINGSTONE has recently set the cat among the pigeons by suggesting that Joseph Stalin the Soviet dictator was not all bad. His crimes and aggressions much exaggerated. Ken is evidently at one with Anatoly Utkin, a former director of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the editor of a teachers‘ manual on modern Russian history, who went so far as to compare Joseph Stalin’s erudition to the tardy efforts of those in the West: “Can you tell me”, Utkin asked in 2008, “of any other leader, an American president, for example, who read 10,000 books?” Utkin was drawing attention to the fact that Stalin, when he wasn’t initialling lists of people to be shot, got through at least one book every day between 1924 and 1953. Vladimir Putin is also backing the drift towards a revision of Stalin’s record with regard to both his victory over Hitler, and the industrialisation of the country during the nineteen thirties. Putin, despite much evidence to the contrary, favourably contrasts Joseph Stalin’s centralism to the dastardly ‘federalism’ of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, which he thinks explains the fragmentation of the Russian empire. It seems that Stalin, despite many errors and at times, excessive severity, ensured that Russian workers and peasants made the sacrifices necessary for the founding of modern industry and the consolidation of a great state. full: http://www.donmilligan.net/OTC_Column.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
[Marxism] Fwd: Putin in Syria: Even ISIS Says Russia Is Not Bombing ISIS
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.interpretermag.com/putin-in-syria-even-isis-says-russia-is-not-bombing-isis/ _ 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] Two-state, one-state
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 agree with you Phil that the Israeli state is brittle. The problem is the at the Zionist enterprise "a land without a people for a people without a land" was always a fiction, as was the central myth that there were returning to the Mother Country (Israel) from the Diaspora. the existence of Palestinians in Palestine (!) meant that ethnic cleansing was always, as in always, a necessary condition for success. A second round of ethnic cleansing is absolutely necessary for the Zionist project, but the political conditions for that project are not there. Netanyahu is on record at regretting the opportunities that have been missed- the Six Day war was one such opportunity but it was over so quickly that the Israelis did not have the time to organize the ethnic cleansing. So like the Protestants of Ulster they have a demographic time bomb ticking away. The two state solution was meant to solve that. But the Greater Israel mob remain in the political ascendancy and the territorial swaps needed to make both states viable cannot be sold to either side. So we have a long lasting "peace process" punctured regularly by slaughter to test the Palestinian will. But against all the odds it is increasingly clear that the Palestinians are heroically staying the course. Gradually as well the reputation of Israel has begun to stink until now it a scandal unto the nations and without a moral centre it cannot survive. comradely Gary On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Philip Ferguson 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. > * > > I used to tend to think of the Israeli government as pretty shrewd > operators. However, these days they seem to have maybe screwed up. Arafat > effectively surrendered to them and was willing to be their stooge - but > they destroyed him. They have done the same thing with the Palestinian > Authority. > > The Brits always played stooges and handed authority over the oppressed to > the stooges at some point. Ireland is a classic example. > > Most recently, the Brits figured out who in the Provos' leadership was up > for a deal and fastened on Adams (and McGuiness) and did a deal with them. > > But the Zionist leaders just don't seem interested in deals and handing > over some authority to stooges as the price for maintaining the overall > set-up - the method of reworking the set-up by a bit of exclusive > inclusiveness as it were. They just seem to want to humiliate *all* the > Palestinians, even the most supine people like the Fatah leaders. It's all > stick and no carrot, which doesn't seem a very clever and sophisticated way > for oppressors to operate. > On the other hand, folks like Netanyahu received their political education > in the US, whose rulers are less sophisticated operators than the old > British and French imperialists were. Since the stick usually worked well > for the US imperialists - well, up until Vietnam - perhaps they never > really learned the importance of the carrots, and so the Zionists they > trained didn't either. > > I think another element is that the Zionist state is, of necessity, pretty > brittle. It's one thing to use carrots when you're British imperialism and > your colonies are thousands of miles away, or across a stretch of sea in > the Irish case; it's quite another thing to use the carrot when the people > you're oppressing are among you and next to you. It seems that the Zionist > state, by its very nature, may have little negotiating room, little 'give' > in it. > > > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/is-there-a-two-state-solution-to-israel-palestinian-conflict-2/ > > A couple of other pieces on Redline folks might be interested in: > For a campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle: > > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/for-a-campaign-of-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-struggle/ > NZ interview with Leila Khaled: > > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/nz-solidarity-activist-interviews-leila-khaled-2010/ > Veteran Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover on Does Israel have a future?: > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/does-israel-have-a-future/ > Veteran British anti-imperialist and working class activist Tony Greenstein > on Israel: world's most racist state?: > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/israel-worlds-most-racist-state/ >
[Marxism] second general strike in Greece against SYRIZA government since september 2015
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. * Interview of Kostas Skordoulis academic and member of the leadership of OKDE-Spartakos "The new Syriza-Anel government, after the September election, is a continuation of the previous one with one exception, openly pro-austerity policies. We had defined the previous government as a class collaboration government led by a left reformist party. This government can be clearly described as a bourgeois government in the sense that it has a program to save the ‘national economy’ through the imposition of austerity measures on the working class. This government functions in the interests of Greek and European capital and has to be overthrown." Full at http://bolsevik.org/english/interview-kostas-skordoulissyriza-anel-government-has-to-be-overthrown.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
[Marxism] Michael J. Kennedy, Lawyer for Underdogs and Pariahs, Dies at 78
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 2016 Michael J. Kennedy, Lawyer for Underdogs and Pariahs, Dies at 78 By SAM ROBERTS Michael J. Kennedy, who as a criminal lawyer championed lost causes and deeply unpopular defendants — including John Gotti Sr., Huey P. Newton and Timothy Leary — and finally won freedom for Jean S. Harris, the convicted killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 78. The cause was complications of pneumonia, which developed while he was being treated for cancer, his wife, Eleanora, said. A steadfast defender of the underdog and the First Amendment, Mr. Kennedy represented radicals including Rennie Davis, Bernardine Dohrn and Mr. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His clients also included the Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, S.D., the family of the rogue real estate heir Robert A. Durst; Mr. Leary, the LSD guru; and Mr. Gotti, the mob boss. He also represented High Times magazine from its inception (and was later an owner) and shared its agenda to decriminalize marijuana possession. As matrimonial counsel for Ivana Trump in 1991, Mr. Kennedy publicly rejected as insufficient a divorce settlement — trumpeted by her husband, Donald J. Trump — in which she was to receive more than $10 million and their Connecticut home and Manhattan apartment. The settlement was renegotiated. Mr. Kennedy prided himself on membership in a reviled circle of radical lawyers from the 1960s on, including William M. Kunstler, Gerald B. Lefcourt and Michael E. Tigar, who could often afford to represent shunned clients at a discount because of the hefty fees they collected from defending organized crime figures. (Mr. Kennedy was said to have been paid $250,000 in the mid-1980s Pizza Connection drug-smuggling case; his client, a former Sicilian Mafia don, was convicted.) Mr. Kennedy was so aggressive as a guardian of constitutional rights that he sometimes needed a lawyer himself. In 1968, he was ejected from a congressional hearing investigating the violent demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The next year he was held in contempt with three other lawyers by Judge Julius J. Hoffman for failing to appear at the trial of eight leaders of the previous summer’s protests, including Mr. Davis. Mr. Kennedy was even the stuff of fiction. The actor Raul Julia consulted with him before playing the defense lawyer Sandy Stern in the 1990 movie version of Scott Turow’s novel “Presumed Innocent.” Michael John Kennedy was born in Spokane, Wash., on March 23, 1937, the son of Thomas Kennedy and the former Evelyn Forbes. He was sent to a Jesuit boarding school when he was 4. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and he graduated from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco. His first marriage, to Pamalee Hamilton, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, the former Eleanora Baratelli, who worked with him as a trial consultant, he is survived by their daughter, Anna Safir; two children from his first marriage, Lisa Kennedy and Scott Hamilton Kennedy, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker; and five grandchildren. Mr. Kennedy immersed himself in radical causes from the start, representing Cesar Chavez and his migrant farm workers’ union in their rent strike against California landlords who charged exorbitant rents for barely habitable shacks. In New York, as staff counsel for the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, he represented conscientious objectors, draft resisters and deserters, clogging the legal system by entering not guilty pleas and demanding trials. His clients included two Columbia University students — both of whom, he proudly pointed out, became judges — who were being disciplined for trying to shut down Columbia’s law school to protest the war in Vietnam. In 1980 he negotiated the surrender of Ms. Dohrn, the Weather Underground leader, after she eluded the law for more than 10 years. Federal charges against her had been dropped. She pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and bail jumping stemming from violent antiwar protests and was fined $1,500 and placed on probation for three years. In 1982, Mr. Kennedy persuaded a Brooklyn jury weighing charges against five men accused of conspiring to smuggle weapons to the Irish Republican Army that the Central Intelligence Agency had sanctioned their gunrunning. “It is up to the government to prove that the C.I.A. was not involved with the defendants,” Mr. Kennedy declared, “not our burden to prove that it
Re: [Marxism] Two-state, one-state
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 agree there has only ever been a one-state *solution* possible, but along the road the *two-state* strategy was pushed by major parts of the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s (not only by Fatah) as a step in that direction, with the meaning of a full liberation of all territories occupied in 1967 including Jerusalem. Of course, we could have separate discussion about whether or not such an eventuality would have been a step, or an obstacle, towards the one-state goal; suffice to say however that, even if many rejectionist claimed it was a device/trick to save Israel from its demographic bomb, no Zionist (Likud or Labour) or US imperialist leaders ever embraced it. Perhaps that is history now. However the problem I have with the argument that Israel has made it impossible due to its colonisation of the West Bank (there is so little space left for a viable Palestinian mini-state) is its implicit acceptance of this Zionist colonisation. Yes, Israel has thereby made it impossible from its own point of view; that's because Israel never wanted it. But surely, we don't accept the "reality" of colonisation do we? If a Palestinian mass movement with international solidarity were able to expel the Israeli political and military occupation (ie, a key demand of BDS), they would also have the right to expel all these illegal colonists, wouldn't they? (and send them to Antarctica or wherever). Of course, we might say "that would be almost impossible to achieve". Perhaps. But if so, isn't forcing the Zionist state to end Zionism altogether on all its territory even more impossible to achieve, at least as a first step? That's what seems to be the contradiction here. Unless one says, OK, let's forget about ending the occupation etc, instead let's just have an international campaign for equal voting and citizenship rights for all residents of all historic Palestine. I'm for that. But is there any such campaign, of any significance, either inside or outside Palestine? And does not that require an end to anti-occupation movements and indeed demand an outright Israeli annexation of WB and Gaza? Perhaps not, but it seems to me the exact nature of how to struggle for the one democratic secular state has never been clearly elaborated. -Original Message- From: Gary MacLennan via Marxism Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2016 11:57 AM To: Michael Karadjis Subject: Re: [Marxism] Two-state, one-state 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 agree with you Phil that the Israeli state is brittle. The problem is the at the Zionist enterprise "a land without a people for a people without a land" was always a fiction, as was the central myth that there were returning to the Mother Country (Israel) from the Diaspora. the existence of Palestinians in Palestine (!) meant that ethnic cleansing was always, as in always, a necessary condition for success. A second round of ethnic cleansing is absolutely necessary for the Zionist project, but the political conditions for that project are not there. Netanyahu is on record at regretting the opportunities that have been missed- the Six Day war was one such opportunity but it was over so quickly that the Israelis did not have the time to organize the ethnic cleansing. So like the Protestants of Ulster they have a demographic time bomb ticking away. The two state solution was meant to solve that. But the Greater Israel mob remain in the political ascendancy and the territorial swaps needed to make both states viable cannot be sold to either side. So we have a long lasting "peace process" punctured regularly by slaughter to test the Palestinian will. But against all the odds it is increasingly clear that the Palestinians are heroically staying the course. Gradually as well the reputation of Israel has begun to stink until now it a scandal unto the nations and without a moral centre it cannot survive. comradely Gary On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Philip Ferguson 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. * I used to tend to
[Marxism] The Oregon Militia Spokesman Has Been Killed and Its Leaders Detained After FBI Confrontation
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. * Aside from the present case of the occupation in Oregon I can think of two examples of the intervention of the state apparatus in a political conflict. One example I have already mentioned is the desegregation of schools and universities in the South. Federal troops enforced desegregation. Was there another way to bring about the end of segregation? Another example is the case of Elián Gonzalez. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez_custody_battle "In the pre-dawn hours of Easter eve, Saturday, April 22, pursuant to an order issued by a federal magistrate, eight agents of the Border Patrol's elite BORTAC unit entered the house." Should the left have proposed another course of action to return Elián to his father? No doubt there are other examples. Given time I may think of them, but I would welcome the thoughts of others on this topic. ken h _ 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] One-Third of Ecuador's Rainforests to Be Auctioned Off to Chinese Oil Companies
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://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34905-one-third-of-ecuadors-rainforests-to-be-auctioned-off-to-chinese-oil-companies _ 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] The War for the West Rages On
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. * Well said! comradely Gary On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 3:35 AM, Michael Yates 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. > * > > I have spent a great deal of time in Utah over the past ten years or so. > And in may other Western states as well. There is a great deal of federal > (public) land in the West, especially in Utah. The Bundys and others of > their ilk, many of them Mormons, have no real concept of land belonging to > all of the people. And it seems that some here can't conceive of this > either. We should all take the view that this is, as Woody Guthrie sang, > our land. It must be protected by all of us, and we must demand that > wildlife be protected on such land and that it must not be logged, mined, > and ranched, creating a situation where those who lease such land and who > pay very little for this privilege come to believe that this land is > theirs. The Mormons who run Utah lock, stock, and barrel, lust to control > federal lands in the state. And I can guarantee you that if they did gain > control over it, they would soon enough sell or lease it to private > corporations who would mine, frack, and ranch it to its death. Already the > once clean air in southern Utah, home to five splendid and amazing national > parks and several national monuments, is almost always hazy and polluted. > If the state gets the land, the air, water, and soil quality will diminish > beyond recognition and good luck to the animals, other than cattle. Edward > Abbey, who has been mocked by certain "left liberals" who neither know nor > care about these matters but who waste their days bashing Hillary Clinton > and praising Bernie Sanders (neither of whom give a shit about the > environment either) was always willing to stand up to the cattle interests > and the state and federal policies that have subsidized them for so long. > We should emulate Abbey and stand up to all of the crackpots and > capitalists whose very essence wreaks havoc on Mother Nature and demand > that these lands belong to all of us and must be preserved, expanded, and > cared for for all time. The Bundys and all like them belong in prison. The > sooner the better. > _ > 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
