Re: [Marxism] New Journal of Working Class Studies

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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.
*

They do solid work.  I attended the last conference down in Texas and was
very impressed not only with the quality of scholarship but also at their
successful involvement of people in the community.

ML
_
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] Green Party identity question

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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 piece poses some very important questions.  I'm not sure that we can
clearly counterpose "a labor party that just so happens to not have a labor
movement or is it the materialization of an eco-socialist movement that
combines the praxis of environmentalism with socialism"  Asking "the class
question" about the Green Party echoes the arguments among socialists about
the nature of the SDS half a century ago. And i remember hearing this about
Occupy as well.   It was always related to how existing groups wanted to
relate to it.  In the U.S., there are many problems with the traditional
yardstick.

There are even more vagaries about how to hold that yardstick.  I'm not
sure about Andrew's distinction between what he calls a left wing and a
"parliamentary" one in the Greens.  In many respects, the left wing is the
parliamentary wing in the sense of wanting to function as a political
party, while what he calls the more 'parliamentary" one consists of the
flakes who think we're going to morally persuade the Democrats of our views.

Too, when Andrew suggests we could have been "focusing our energies over
the past six months on the matters we are only now getting to," it raises a
time-honored but questionable juxtaposition.  I don't know that what's
"we're now getting to" that couldn't have been gotten to earlier.

In the end, it's a question of alternatives.  I'm in a particularly putrid
local in a more conservative than average state party.  But, in spite of
that, the idea of an independent progressive alternative attracted 104,000
Ohioans in 2014 and around 3500 in this county alone voted Green in 2016.
Neither this local nor this state organization has any desire to organize
the Green voters.  Suggestions for a broad socialist initiative to take up
the slack have been regularly ignored.

So it's genuinely perplexing what the next move should be.

There are currently two initiatives from what Andrew calls the left-wing of
the party--a formation to press for independent political action against
those hoping to do deals with the Democrats and a drive to promote the
organization of a membership party which will have the same effect.  My
inclination is to suggest that we lend what support we can to these and
hope for the best, while involving ourselves in those struggles that are
genuinely non-electoral social movements . . . at least in the germ.

ML
 .
_
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] New Journal of Working Class Studies

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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 only know a handful of the names, but the gender balance looks good for
both editorial board and authors.
It would be interesting to know the journal's origins, as at least a few of
the participants have been involved with similar past efforts.
_
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] Who Put Trump in the White House

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  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.
*

Kim Moody's article is a perfect example of using statistics to obscure
reality. It is undeniable that the US working class is in a state of
confusion, that the traditions of class struggle have weakened greatly over
recent decades. While Moody cites all sorts of statistics, including the
voting statistics for union households, the one statistic he doesn't cite
is the percentage of union *members* who voted for Trump. I have not been
able to find any polls on that, but the president of the UAW estimated that
31% of all union members voted for Trump. I know several (union) carpenters
who did, including union activists.

How to explain this?

The reason Moody cannot explain it is that he has no serious critique of
the union leadership, to start with. We have a union leadership that for
decades has been preaching that the members' interests are the same as the
interests of their employers. See this article
,
for example.

Then there is something else: The traditions of class struggle don't just
float around in the ether; it exists in the minds of workers, especially
the more conscious and determined ones. But for decades the union
leadership has carried out an unrelenting war against exactly that sector
of their members who best retain those traditions and seek to bring them
back - in other words, who try to make the unions fight for the members.
The union leadership has belittled, ostracized and even collaborated with
the employers against exactly that sector of the membership.

To this we have to add the decline of heavy industry in the US - exactly
the sector where the class consciousness tends to be greatest. We saw a
similar result in the Brexit vote in Britain, where many ex coal miners
voted in favor of it.

So, is it any wonder that so many workers fell for the line that because
somebody has been a successful capitalist, he or she can "get the country
moving again... make it great again"?

How this will change is another question, but we do ourselves no favor by
sticking our heads in the sand.

John Reimann
-- 
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Asata Shakur
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com and //
www.facebook.com/WorkersIntlNetwork?ref=stream
_
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: Water war: Wadi Barada and Assad's latest weapon | Middle East Eye

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.middleeasteye.net/columns/valley-edge-collapse-272096511


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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] Is Globalization to Blame?

[Michael Yates via Marxism]

  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 idea that there are choices is the argument all of those (Robert Reich 
for example) use to argue that the US should take the "high road" policy of 
high wages, etc. This misses the basic dynamics of capitalism, one of which 
is that the global expansion of capital is capitalism's default position. 
Only when there is a powerful labor movement is there any chance of 
stalling the push of this default position. And even then, it has proven 
impossible to stop it. Sweden is a case in point. What this really means is 
that if there is no radical left, the kind Naiman stupidly derides, then 
there is little hope of ending capitalism, which today is our only real 
hope. Piecemeal changes, just a little good now, does not ever, and I mean 
ever, make for long-term radical change. Sadly the US labor movement is 
dead, led by a bloated fool who gets his while workers get the shaft.

On Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 8:06:11 AM UTC-7, lnp3 wrote:
>
>
>
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/12/is-globalization-to-blame/ 
>
> I find Dean Baker's arguments somewhat specious. He says: 
>
> "Among the many myths about globalization, the worst is that the loss of 
> large numbers of manufacturing jobs in the United States (and Europe) 
> was inevitable. Because the developing world is full of low-paid 
> workers, this argument goes, it was impossible for Americans to compete." 
>
> But he does not explain how there might have been an alternative. 
> Instead he is preoccupied with the overly high wages of doctors: 
>
> "Policymakers could have exposed more highly paid workers such as 
> doctors and lawyers to this same competition, but a bipartisan 
> congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose 
> to keep them largely protected." 
>
> Huh? 
>
> What does this have to do with GM building cars in Mexico? 
>
>
> -- 
> Support Louis Proyect biography project 
>
> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
>  
>
_
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: Is Globalization to Blame?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/12/is-globalization-to-blame/

I find Dean Baker's arguments somewhat specious. He says:

"Among the many myths about globalization, the worst is that the loss of 
large numbers of manufacturing jobs in the United States (and Europe) 
was inevitable. Because the developing world is full of low-paid 
workers, this argument goes, it was impossible for Americans to compete."


But he does not explain how there might have been an alternative. 
Instead he is preoccupied with the overly high wages of doctors:


"Policymakers could have exposed more highly paid workers such as 
doctors and lawyers to this same competition, but a bipartisan 
congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose 
to keep them largely protected."


Huh?

What does this have to do with GM building cars in Mexico?


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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] Daily stormer, white supremacist group, says they are postponing Montana march - CBS News

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

  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.cbsnews.com/news/daily-stormer-white-supremacist-group-postpones-montana-march/




_
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 Far Right’s ‘New Offensive Against Academia’

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Chronicle of Higher Education
The Far Right’s ‘New Offensive Against Academia’
By Goldie Blumenstyk

“What’s really, really terrifying is that organized white-supremacist 
groups organized a campaign, and that campaign pressured the university 
into acting.”


George Ciccariello-­Maher, an associate professor of politics and global 
studies at Drexel University, says he was being satirical when on 
December 24 he posted on Twitter: "All I Want for Christmas is White 
Genocide."


A scholar of revolutionary movements and a self-described social 
activist, Mr. Ciccariello-Maher is no stranger to Twitter furors. But he 
says the internet maelstrom that quickly engulfed him, his friends and 
family, and his university reflects "a new offensive against academia" 
by far-right and neo-Nazi groups.


"White genocide" is a term invoked by hate groups and white supremacists 
against interracial marriage and racial-diversity efforts. Mr. 
Ciccariello-­Maher says many of those who reported on his tweet either 
deliberately or out of ignorance failed to explain that, or to indicate 
that his tweet was mocking the concept.


Drexel itself was among those that appeared to miss the context. In the 
first of two statements, the university actually condemned the 
professor’s comment as "utterly reprehensible" and "deeply disturbing." 
A few days later the university acknowledged Mr. Ciccariello-Maher’s 
rights to free speech but reiterated that his tweets did not represent 
Drexel’s values. Platforms like Twitter, the statement said, are 
"limited in their ability to communicate satire, irony, and context, 
especially when referencing a horror like genocide." Drexel’s response, 
the professor counters, "put wind in the sails of fascist groups."


Mr. Ciccariello-Maher spoke with The Chronicle about what had prompted 
his tweet and how academe must brace itself for the fight of its life.


Q: So, it’s Christmas Eve, you’re sitting with your family, getting 
ready for the holiday. What set you off?


A: My tweet was a response to the virulent, racist backlash against a 
tweet from State Farm Insurance that showed a black man proposing to a 
white woman. I study these things, it shouldn’t be a surprise to me, and 
yet I was taken aback by the incredible racist content in reaction to 
this image. Many of these responses, which were saying, "This marks the 
end of the white race, you’re contributing to the downfall of your 
people," were hashtagged "white genocide."


It’s an idea that circulates in far-right-wing racist circles. It was an 
attempt to mock this nonexistent thing, which for these right-wing 
sectors means multicultural policies, it means intermarriage. There are, 
famously, the billboards that say, "Diversity is white genocide." Any 
policy that is not rooted in affirmation of white superiority is 
understood to be a contribution to the downfall of the pure white race.

What were the responses like?

The initial response was what I expected. It was an immediate backlash 
from people who knew perfectly well what I was talking about. In other 
words, these right-wing sectors who, I could tell, I had touched a nerve 
with. This is their code word for everything that’s bad in the world, 
and so making a mockery of it led to that. Usually these sorts of 
backlashes are Twitter feuds, They don’t last very long. But by the next 
day, clearly, this had taken on a life of its own, and we really need to 
think hard about why that was, what kind of machinery was set into 
motion, what kind of sectors picked it up and pushed it out and made it 
into the phenomenon that it was.


This began with organizations like Breit­bart, websites like Infowars, 
these far-right white-supremacist news outlets, but also discussion 
groups like Reddit, where I found pages and pages of people not only 
complaining about my tweet but also organizing what became a campaign of 
harassment against me and my employer, and my family — posting 
addresses, posting email addresses, and encouraging people to see what 
they could do to get me fired.


Q: How personal did it get to you and your family?

A: It was almost entirely personal. This is part of what’s very 
revealing. Some people who have spent time online, for example, know 
there’s a word, called "cuck," which has become a catchall insult of the 
right, for what’s perceived to be the soft men of the left. Without 
going into it, in its explicitness, it reveals a very deep sexual and 
racial anxiety among these groups. I was called cuck. I was called "low 
testosterone." They speculated that I’m Jewish, that I looked and act 
like a Jew. Of course, these things begin from 

[Marxism] Mad-dog the war criminal

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

  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.revealnews.org/article/did-defense-secretary-nominee-james-mattis-commit-war-crimes-in-iraq/
_
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: President-Elect Trump Is as Uninformed as Candidate Trump - Bloomberg View

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

(From the news service created by my old boss at Salomon Brothers who is 
one of America's wealthiest men and former mayor of NYC.)


https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-11/president-elect-trump-is-as-uninformed-as-candidate-trump


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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: [Column] The Russian Honeypot : Editorial & Opinion : News : The Hankyoreh

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 a 2013 speech, Vladimir Putin chastised the Euro-Atlantic countries 
for “rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that 
constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral 
principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious 
and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large 
families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in 
Satan.” He went on to excoriate “political correctness” and “unlawful 
migration.” He added, “One must respect every minority’s right to be 
different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question."


Here are all the themes of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign two 
years before Trump even launched it. More importantly, these themes can 
found in the campaigns of most far-right-wing political parties in 
Europe. It’s no surprise that Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front, 
Nigel Farrage of the UK Independence Party, and Prime Minister Viktor 
Orban of Hungary are all part of Putin’s widening circle of admirers.


full: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/777881.html


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: The Identity Politics Red Herring | Alternet

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

By Bill Fletcher Jr.

What passes for identity politics should actually be understood as 
social justice struggles that aim for consistent democracy and become, 
as a result, component parts of the larger class struggle.  These are 
not battles around one’s identity.  This is not self-indulgent activity 
by people who, for whatever reason, do not recognize the importance of 
economics.  This is what has made problematic several of the statements 
by Senator Sanders both prior to and following the November 8th election.


Shortly after the Election, in response to a woman who asked about 
becoming a Latina Senator, Sanders offered a complex answer.  He 
acknowledged the need for more women elected officials and more elected 
officials of color.  But he said that he wanted to make sure that they 
were focused on the working class.  He ended by suggesting the need to 
move away from identity politics.


One can agree with Senator Sanders that it is critical to move beyond 
any sorts of politics that is simply about “faces” in high places.  And, 
when looking at the totality of the Senator’s remarks, there is 
important value.  But because of the lack of a consensus about the 
actual nature of so-called identity politics, Sanders proposal to move 
away from it is, at best, confusing.  Identity politics, at least the 
way that it has been used as a term since the Election, describes a 
politics that asserts the need for representation of historically 
marginalized and oppressed populations; and the representation of their 
issues.  In that sense, what we are discussing is social justice and not 
something that should even be described as “identity politics.”  It is 
more a politics of inclusion and for democracy rather than a politics of 
distinctiveness or uniqueness.


full: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/identity-politics-social-justice


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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: Adam Shatz reviews ‘Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté’ by Frantz Fanon, edited by Robert Young and Jean Khalfa · LRB 19 January 2017

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Fanon submitted the manuscript of Black Skin, White Masks as his medical 
thesis, but it was rejected. Instead he wrote a 75-page thesis on 
Friedrich’s Ataxia, a hereditary neurological condition often 
accompanied by psychiatric symptoms. Fanon’s most reliable biographers – 
Cherki and the British historian David Macey, whose book also appeared 
in 2000 – have tended to dismiss the dissertation, but Young and Khalfa 
make a strong case for its importance. In the very last line of Black 
Skin, White Masks, Fanon wrote: ‘O my body, make of me always a man who 
always questions!’ In his thesis, reprinted here in its entirety, we see 
him cutting through the compartmentalising assumptions of his 
profession: the ‘systematic indifference’ of neurologists towards the 
‘psychiatric symptom’, the rigid opposition of mind and body, physical 
and mental. He is not yet prepared to call for a politicised psychiatry, 
but he insists on seeing ‘the human being … as a whole, an indissoluble 
unity’, and on the need to investigate what Marcel Mauss called the 
‘total social fact’ – the intricate web of relations, institutions and 
beliefs that forms social reality. The mentally-ill person, he writes, 
is above all an ‘alienated individual’ who ‘no longer finds his place 
among men’, and needs to be reintegrated into ‘the heart of the group’.


These ideas were very much in tune with the theories of the man who 
became Fanon’s mentor at the psychiatric hospital of 
Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole in the Massif Central. Like Fanon, François 
Tosquelles was both a doctor and a resistance fighter, having led the 
Spanish Republican Army’s psychiatric services before crossing the 
Pyrenees in 1939. Under Tosquelles’s leadership, Saint-Alban had become 
a sanctuary for partisans and left-wing intellectuals, including the 
poet Paul Eluard and the historian of science Georges Canguilhem. 
Tosquelles pioneered ‘institutional’ or ‘social’ therapy, which tried to 
turn the hospital into a recognisable microcosm of the world outside. 
The idea underlying social therapy – and Fanon’s thesis – was that 
patients were socially as well as clinically alienated, and that their 
care depended on the creation of a structure that relieved their 
isolation by involving them in group activities. Fanon spent 15 months 
at Saint-Alban, and observed there for the first time patients playing a 
part in their own recovery.



full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n02/adam-shatz/where-life-is-seized



--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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: Syria and the Left | Jacobin

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

On 1/11/17 10:23 PM, Nick Fredman wrote:

Ok, I didn't check Links as well as GL, fair enough Tony has used the
term "bandits and warlords". Not to characterize the FSA as a whole as
you first claimed, but as the trajectory "often" followed by commanders.


You don't seem to get the problem. What gave Tony the idea that this 
characterization was accurate even if it referred to "often" rather than 
"universally"? When I asked him to name a source, he replied that there 
"were too many to list". In other words, he had no fucking idea. Maybe 
Nick can do better.


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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: George Plimpton and Papa in Cuba – Guernica

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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.
*

Interesting.
On an overlapping note, Hunter S. Thompson had a piece (before his gonzo
phase began) on Cubans' attitude toward Hemingway. It's in one of his
anthologies.
_
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: George Plimpton and Papa in Cuba – Guernica

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Did Plimpton realize that he was making the defiantly leftist Hemingway 
into a US propaganda tool, even vaguely? Aldrich, for one, believed that 
Plimpton knew the CCF was a CIA front. The magazine wasn’t just engaged 
in the relatively harmless practice of syndicating Western authors for 
positive propaganda. The Paris Review had envisioned a symposium around 
the Pasternak controversy of late 1958, when the Soviets banned the 
publication in Russia of the original Russian text of his novel Doctor 
Zhivago. The CIA schemed to smuggle an edition into Russia, via the 
World’s Fair in Brussels, while Plimpton jumped at the chance to juice 
the controversy, writing to his colleagues that the Congress for 
Cultural Freedom might fund brochures and create a publicity campaign 
around it. When they first discussed it, The Paris Review’s editors, one 
of them transitioning to a position at the Congress for Cultural Freedom 
proper, may not have known how much danger Pasternak was in. Foreign 
visitors represented enough of a threat that the Soviets had Pasternak 
place a sign in English in front of his house that read: “no foreign 
visitors allowed.”


https://www.guernicamag.com/george-plimpton-and-papa-in-cuba/


--
Support Louis Proyect biography project
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/
_
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] How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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. 12 2017
How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump
By SCOTT SHANE, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

WASHINGTON — Seven months ago, a respected former British spy named 
Christopher Steele won a contract to build a file on Donald J. Trump’s 
ties to Russia. Last week, the explosive details — unsubstantiated 
accounts of frolics with prostitutes, real estate deals that were 
intended as bribes and coordination with Russian intelligence of the 
hacking of Democrats — were summarized for Mr. Trump in an appendix to a 
top-secret intelligence report.


The consequences have been incalculable and will play out long past 
Inauguration Day. Word of the summary, which was also given to President 
Obama and congressional leaders, leaked to CNN Tuesday, and the rest of 
the media followed with sensational reports.


Mr. Trump denounced the unproven claims Wednesday as a fabrication, a 
Nazi-style smear concocted by “sick people.” It has further undermined 
his relationship with the intelligence agencies and cast a shadow over 
the new administration.


Late Wednesday night, after speaking with Mr. Trump, James R. Clapper 
Jr., the director of national intelligence, issued a statement decrying 
leaks about the matter and saying of Mr. Steele’s dossier that the 
intelligence agencies have “not made any judgment that the information 
in this document is reliable.” Mr. Clapper suggested that intelligence 
officials had nonetheless shared it to give policymakers “the fullest 
possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”


Parts of the story remain out of reach — most critically the basic 
question of how much, if anything, in the dossier is true. But it is 
possible to piece together a rough narrative of what led to the current 
crisis, including lingering questions about the ties binding Mr. Trump 
and his team to Russia. The episode also offers a glimpse of the hidden 
side of presidential campaigns, involving private sleuths-for-hire 
looking for the worst they can find about the next American leader.


The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who 
strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington 
research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a 
dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, 
according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the 
opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile 
nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The 
identity of the donor is unclear.


Fusion GPS, headed by a former Wall Street Journal journalist known for 
his dogged reporting, Glenn Simpson, most often works for business 
clients. But in presidential elections, the firm is sometimes hired by 
candidates, party organizations or donors to do political “oppo” work — 
shorthand for opposition research — on the side.


It is routine work and ordinarily involves creating a big, searchable 
database of public information: past news reports, documents from 
lawsuits and other relevant data. For months, Fusion GPS gathered the 
documents and put together the files from Mr. Trump’s past in business 
and entertainment, a rich target.


After Mr. Trump emerged as the presumptive nominee in the spring, the 
Republican interest in financing the effort ended. But Democratic 
supporters of Hillary Clinton were very interested, and Fusion GPS kept 
doing the same deep dives, but on behalf of new clients.


In June, the tenor of the effort suddenly changed. The Washington Post 
reported that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, 
apparently by Russian government agents, and a mysterious figure calling 
himself “Guccifer 2.0” began to publish the stolen documents online.


Mr. Simpson hired Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer with 
whom he had worked before. Mr. Steele, in his early 50s, had served 
undercover in Moscow in the early 1990s and later was the top expert on 
Russia at the London headquarters of Britain’s spy service, MI6. When he 
stepped down in 2009, he started his own commercial intelligence firm, 
Orbis Business Intelligence.


The former journalist and the former spy, according to people who know 
them, had similarly dark views of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, 
a former K.G.B. officer, and the varied tactics he and his intelligence 
operatives used to smear, blackmail or bribe their targets.


As a former spy who had carried out espionage inside Russia, Mr. Steele 
was in no position to travel to Moscow to study Mr. Trump’s connections 
there. Instead, 

[Marxism] Green Party identity question

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

Please LIKE and SHARE this material via various social media networks and 
venues.

https://rimediacoop.org/2017/01/11/andrew-stewart-green-party-identity-question/

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
_
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