[Marxism] India: how and why the poor don't count
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 the World Bank, India’s nominal GDP crossed the $ 2 trillion mark in 20141, and is slated to grow at close to 8 per cent annually in 2016 and 20172. To put this in perspective: In 1991, the year the Indian economy was opened up and we embraced neoliberal policies, the Indian GDP was about $275 billion, which by the turn of the century had doubled to $481 billion. But the really rapid growth of the Indian economy has been in the last 15 years, which saw GDP increase by almost four-and-a-half times. One needs to remember that these include years which saw the greatest global recession since the 1930s. Thus, for the economy as a whole the promised ‘achche din’ seem to be happening and there are numbers to prove it. The policymakers who have been rooting for further opening up and freeing of the economy have been justifiably sporting a smug expression with this quantitative endorsement of their position. However, one vexing question for them is that some people continue to claim that all this growth has not translated into alleviation of poverty–the ‘poor’ have been stubbornly. . . full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/india-how-and-why-the-poor-dont-count/ _ 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: Deep in Brazil’s Amazon, Exploring the Ruins of Ford’s Fantasyland - The New York Times
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 start, ineptitude and tragedy plagued the venture, meticulously documented in a book by the historian Greg Grandin that I read on the boat as it made its way up the Tapajós. Disdainful of experts who could have advised them on tropical agriculture, Ford’s men planted seeds of questionable value and let leaf blight ravage the plantation. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/world/americas/deep-in-brazils-amazon-exploring-the-ruins-of-fords-fantasyland.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] More on the guy who is assisting Trump bring peace to Ukraine
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Dec. 17, 2007 Real Estate Executive With Hand in Trump Projects Rose From Tangled Past By CHARLES V. BAGLI It is a classic tale of reinvention, American style. Born in the Soviet Union in 1966, Felix H. Sater immigrated with his family to Brighton Beach when he was 8 years old. At 24 he was a successful Wall Street broker, at 27 he was in prison after a bloody bar fight, and at 32 he was accused of conspiring with the Mafia to launder money and defraud investors. Along the way he became embroiled in a plan to buy antiaircraft missiles on the black market for the Central Intelligence Agency in either Russia or Afghanistan, depending on which of his former associates is telling the story. But in recent years Mr. Sater has resurfaced with a slightly different name and a new business card identifying him as a real estate executive based on Fifth Avenue. And although he may not be a household name, one of the people he is doing business with is: Donald J. Trump. Mr. Sater — who now goes by the name Satter — has been jetting to Denver, Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and elsewhere since 2003, promoting potential projects in partnership with Mr. Trump and others. In New York, the company Mr. Sater works for, Bayrock Group, is a partner in the Trump SoHo, a sleek, 46-story glass tower condominium hotel under construction on a newly fashionable section of Spring Street. But much remains unknown about Mr. Sater, 41, and determining the truth about his past is a bit like unraveling the plot of a spy novel: Almost every character tells a different tale. A federal complaint brought against him in a 1998 money laundering and stock manipulation case was filed in secret and remains under seal. A subsequent indictment in March 2000 stemming from the same investigation described Mr. Sater as an “unindicted co-conspirator” and a key figure in a $40 million scheme involving 19 stockbrokers and organized crime figures from four Mafia families. The indictment asserted that Mr. Sater helped create fraudulent stock brokerages that were used to defraud investors and launder money. Mr. Sater and his lawyer, Judd Burstein, repeatedly refused to discuss in detail his role in the stock scam. But a onetime friend, Gennady Klotsman, who is known as Gene and who was accused with Mr. Sater as a co-conspirator, contends that they both pleaded guilty in 1998, and that Mr. Sater began cooperating with the authorities. Prosecutors are unwilling to discuss either the 1998 complaint or the 2000 indictment. “I’m not proud of some of the things that happened in my 20s,” Mr. Sater said in an interview. “I am proud of the things I’m doing now.” Mr. Sater, who has an untitled position at Bayrock, said he started spelling his name as Satter to “distance himself from a past” in an age when anyone can look up a name on Google. But he continues to use the name Sater on the deed to his house on Long Island. Mr. Burstein added, “He does not hide his past, and difficulties he had, from anybody he does business with.” But Alex Sapir, president of the Sapir Organization, a partner in Trump SoHo, said he was “not happy” to have just learned of Mr. Sater’s past on Thursday. “This is all news to me,” he said. Mr. Trump also said he was surprised to learn of Mr. Sater’s past. “We never knew that,” he said of Mr. Sater. “We do as much of a background check as we can on the principals. I didn’t really know him very well.” Mr. Trump said that most of his dealings with Bayrock had been with its founder, Tevfik Arif, and that his son Donald and his daughter Ivanka were playing active roles in managing the project. Neither Bayrock nor Mr. Trump has been accused of wrongdoing. Mr. Sater has generally kept a low profile on the Trump projects, although he mingled with guests and the owners at the September party introducing Trump SoHo. Mr. Trump and Mr. Sater were also together in Loveland, Colo., in 2005, where they were interviewed by a reporter for The Rocky Mountain News about potential development deals in nearby Denver. Mr. Trump said he did not recall Mr. Sater’s being there. “They seemed to get along just fine,” said Justin Henderson, a Denver developer who worked with Mr. Trump and Mr. Sater on an ultimately unsuccessful deal to build the tallest towers in Colorado. “It seemed that Mr. Trump relied heavily on Mr. Sater’s opinion on certain markets.” Mr. Sater’s latest transformation could prove to be a cautionary tale for Mr. Trump, who has carefully molded his image into an international brand that has extended from real estate to bottled water, men’s
[Marxism] Fwd: Legacy of Rio Olympics So Far Is Series of Unkept Promises - The New York Times
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Ditching the Deep State | 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. * Interesting article no doubt and my thanks for posting it. Myself tends to disagree with his conclusions but then what I think of as the "deep state" is not what he thinks the concept means. I grant the notion of the state as a strategic field and also the notion that there are factions etc within the state. But if we step back from that picture then we can see that the American state has had a broad directional unity. That unity is fracturing because of the crisis within the neoliberal paradigm. The same crisis had put the deplorables and the menagerie of misfits in the Oval Office. And there are some sections of the state that do not like that and are getting to like it even less. Whether we call them the Deep State or not does not exercise my mind overly. But then as I have often said I am Irish and we scatter words like drunken sailors spend dollars on a Saturday night. comradely Gary On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 3:33 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. > * > > > > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/deep-state-michael-flynn- > leaks-federal-bureaucracy-trump/ > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt > ions/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] [UCE] Fwd: The Rise and Fall of the Socialist Party of America | 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. * Long but interesting. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/rise-and-fall-socialist-party-of-america/ _ 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] Milo Yiannopoulos’s Pedophilia Comments Cost Him CPAC Role and Book Deal
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Feb. 20 2017 Milo Yiannopoulos’s Pedophilia Comments Cost Him CPAC Role and Book Deal By JEREMY W. PETERS WASHINGTON — Milo Yiannopoulos, the provocateur and Breitbart News editor, was under pressure on several fronts Monday after the publication of a video in which he condones sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and laughs off the seriousness of pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests. The organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference rescinded their invitation for him to speak later this week. Simon & Schuster said it was canceling publication of his forthcoming book, “Dangerous.” And there were calls online for Breitbart to sever ties with him. The episode, which unraveled quickly online over the weekend, put many conservatives in a deeply uncomfortable position. They have long defended Mr. Yiannopoulos’s attention-seeking stunts and racially charged antics on the grounds that the left had tried to hypocritically censor his right to free speech. But endorsing pedophilia, it seemed, was more than they could tolerate. The board of the American Conservative Union, which includes veterans of the conservative movement like Grover Norquist and Morton Blackwell, made the decision to revoke Mr. Yiannopoulos’s speaking slot and condemn his comments on Monday. “We initially extended the invitation knowing that the free speech issue on college campuses is a battlefield where we need brave, conservative standard-bearers,” Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, said in a written statement. Regarding Mr. Yiannopoulos’ comments, Mr. Schlapp called them “disturbing” and said his explanation of them was insufficient. After the video leaked on Twitter from a conservative group called the Reagan Battalion, Mr. Yiannopoulos denied that he had ever condoned child sexual abuse, noting that he was a victim himself as he blamed his “British sarcasm” and “deceptive editing” for leading to a misunderstanding. But in the tape, the fast-talking polemicist is clear that he has no problem with older men abusing children as young as 13, which he then conflates with relationships between older and younger gay men who are of consenting age. “No, no, no. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means,” Mr. Yiannopoulos says on the tape, in which he is talking to radio hosts in a video chat. “Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty,” he adds, dismissing the fact that 13-year-olds are children. The notion of consent, he says, is “arbitrary and oppressive.” Conservatives reacted with near unanimous disgust at the comments. Some expressed bewilderment that conference organizers would extend an invitation to Mr. Yiannopoulos in the first place, given his history of statements that have been offensive to blacks, Muslims and generally pushed the bounds of decency. Twitter has banned him. “Colossal misjudgment,” Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, wrote on Twitter. “Now CPAC has put itself in the role of ‘censor.’ And for what? Some clicks and headlines?” Guy Benson, the writer and radio host, who also happens to be gay, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Yiannopoulos seemed to have been “designed in a laboratory in order to perpetuate some of the ugliest stereotypes about gays and conservatives.” _ 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] "I am not your Negro"
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. * My wife and I saw "I am Not Your Negro" yesterday. Based on the writings of James Baldwin, it's one of the best movies I've seen in recent years. As opposed to almost all other Hollywood films, this movie has a subtlety to it. One brilliant point is makes - profound, really - is the relationship between a (white) culture that ignores the historic racism that is so intrinsic to our history and the sleek, plump shallowness of this consumer culture. It's not a "revolutionary" film in the sense that it doesn't put forward a strategy or program, etc., but it does what art is supposed to do: Make us think and help us see things in a new light... and hold our attention. You won't be "entertained" if you see it, but you'll be glad you did. (I don't know if it's playing in other countries, but if it is, seeing it will help a lot in terms of understanding the US.) 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
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Disaster Islamism | Salvage
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. * Actually, Louis, it is not *exactly* a duplicate posting. The take outs from the article was completely different. The second one is important. I've largely argued this same point...about the only one I've ever commented on regarding Syria at all, that regime change was never really part of the US agenda. It was some, but that was more wishful thinking on part of the U.S. I don't hold the position that the U.S. *supports* Assad, which is I know is popular among some on the left, but at least here, with regards to the actual 'support' the U.S. gave the FSA, it is absolutely correct. Perhaps the only exception was the 2013 or 2014 incident where the Saudis or Qataris supplied TOW II anti-tank missiles. Exactly 18 of them. And took out 18 Russian made T-72 and T-90 tanks. And that was that. Even more directly, and well before the Russians intervened with men and machines, the US could of taken out the Syrian fixed and rotary winged air force in 4 hours flat. Most of it's armor in 4 days. So the idea that the US was interested in regime change my questions is: why didn't they? I was challenged on this several time. Youtube video links were provided by pro-Assadists to me that showed several incidents of MANPADS being used. Since I'm somewhat educated on this from the technology POV, I replied that this was absolutely correct. But they were *Russian* made anti-aircraft missiles that were seized from Syrian troops or brought over by deserters from the army, not US supplied Stingers. David Walters _ 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: Disaster Islamism | Salvage
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. * Sorry for the duplicate posting. _ 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: Disaster Islamism | Salvage
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. * Contrast this with the supply of anti-aircraft MANPADS. Air power, first his own and then Russian, is the primary reason that Assad has not fallen. If you were intent on toppling a regime and were arming its bloodthirsty sectarian opponents to the teeth, would you not supply them with anti-aircraft weapons as a matter of urgency? Yet these have not been forthcoming, because US policy was, and remains, in the words of Obama’s deputy national security advisor quoted in the New York Times article above, to avoid the ‘transfer of heavier weapons’. The FSA desperately requested anti-aircraft weapons from the US to defend Aleppo in the summer of 2013. None were sent, nor offered. Not only this, but the US actively blocked attempts by Qatar to supply Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft weaponry, as reported in the New York Times article of 13 August 2013, ‘Arms Shipments from Sudan seen to Syria Rebels’. The US administration believed – probably accurately – that such weaponry might be used against American or Israeli interests. If this is an attempt to overthrow the regime, it is a rather poor show. Contrary to fantasy (based on misinterpretations of low-level intelligence revealed by Wikileaks), and allowing that there have been debates within US ruling circles, and that its strategies have been incompetent and/or incoherent, there is not, and never has been, an American imperial policy to overthrow the Ba’athist regime in Damascus. In December of 2011, by which time Assad’s inability to fully rule the country had become clear, the US recognised the Syrian National Council as the ‘leading and legitimate representative of the Syrian people’ for a period of ‘transition’. But the US preference for this ‘transition’ has always been that it be a ‘managed’ one from within the regime. The model for US policy on Syria was the ‘managed’ – now distinctly unmanageable – transition from the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. President Obama reiterated the point in his press conference in October 2015, stating that US policy in Syria was for an outcome that ‘keeps the state intact, that keeps the military intact’. The only difference with Russia was the status of Assad himself. David Petraeus, former US viceroy of Iraq and proponent of a more muscular US policy on Syria – and the man responsible for Sycamore Timber – was explicit to the Kurdish news organisation Rudaw in March 2015 that the priority was not Assad but ‘clearly ISIS because that supports the effort in Iraq’. full: http://salvage.zone/in-print/disaster-islamism/ _ 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: Disaster Islamism | Salvage
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. * To begin with, the model Syrian uprising → Islamist militias → ISIS is false. It is true that after five years of unconscionable slaughter and abandonment, Syrian opposition politics has come to be dominated by a form of Sunni Islamo-nationalism. The softer form of this trend is found in parts of the (still extant) Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, its hard sectarian Jihadi variant in Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the former Al-Qa’ida affiliate known previously as Jabhat Al-Nusra) with Ahrar al-Sham, the main militia in Northern Syria, occupying a continuum in between. This trend is, to say the least, deeply worrying for the future of any revival of the hopes of the Syrian revolution[*]. Besieged and bombed by not one but two imperial powers; assassinated by militias largely recruited from the non-Sunni minorities; abandoned and slandered by the external Left for their inconvenient uprising against a self-proclaimed ‘resistance’ regime – in this context the turn towards Sunni identity politics amongst the Syrian populace is a tragedy. It is not a surprise. ISIS is not, however, the inevitable outcome of that politics. The organisation’s exterminationist Sunni chauvinism against religious minorities, such as the Alawites from whom the core of the Syrian Ba’athist security apparatus are drawn, is undeniable. But in word, thought and deed ISIS has always considered its foremost enemy ‘apostasy’ (the revolution, the FSA and the anti-Assad opposition more generally) rather than ‘unbelief’ (the Assad regime). full: http://salvage.zone/in-print/disaster-islamism/ _ 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: Ditching the Deep State | 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/2017/02/deep-state-michael-flynn-leaks-federal-bureaucracy-trump/ _ 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: A Big Shoe Just Dropped
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. * More on Trump's shady connections to Ukrainian and Russian mob/financiers. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-big-shoe-just-dropped _ 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] Fukushima a lurking global catastrophe
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. * Without question, an old saw – what goes around comes around – rings true when it comes to radiation, and it should admonish (but it doesn’t phase ‘em) strident nuclear proponents, claiming Fukushima is an example of how safe nuclear power is “because there are so few, if any, deaths” (not true). As Chernobyl clearly demonstrates: Over time, radiation cumulates in bodily organs. For a real life example of how radiation devastates human bodies, consider this fact: 453,391 children with bodies ravaged, none born at the time of the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, today receive special healthcare because of Chernobyl radiation-related medical problems like cancer, digestive, respiratory, musculoskeletal, eye disease, blood disease, congenital malformation, and genetic abnormalities. Their parents were children in the Chernobyl zone in 1986 (Source: Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, USA Today, April 17, 2016). Still, the world embraces nuclear power more so than ever before as it continues to expand and grow. Sixty reactors are currently under construction in fifteen countries. In all, 160 power reactors are in the planning stage and 300 more have been proposed. Pro-Nuke-Heads claim Fukushima proves how safe nuclear power is because there are so few, if any, deaths, as to be inconsequential. That’s a boldfaced lie. Here’s one of several independent testimonials on deaths because of Fukushima Diiachi radiation exposure (many, many, many more testimonials are highlighted in prior articles, including USS Ronald Reagan sailors on humanitarian rescue missions at the time): “It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that, but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it,” Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba (Fukushima Prefecture), Fukushima Disaster: Tokyo Hides Truth as Children Die, Become Ill from Radiation – Ex-Mayor, RT News, April 21, 2014. full article - http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/20/fukushima-a-lurking-global-catastrophe/ _ 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: Segregation in the South - The Atlantic
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. * But what few people know is that the South wasn’t always so segregated. During a brief window of time between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, black and white people lived next to each other in Southern cities, creating what the historian Tom Hanchett describes as a “salt-and-pepper” pattern. They were not integrated in a meaningful sense: Divisions existed, but “in a lot of Southern cities, segregation hadn’t been fully imposed—there were neighborhoods where blacks and whites were living nearby,” said Eric Foner, a Columbia historian and expert on Reconstruction. Walk around in the Atlanta or the Charlotte of the late 1800s, and you might see black people in restaurants, hotels, the theater, Foner said. Two decades later, such things were not allowed. full: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/segregation-invented/517158/ _ 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 Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates
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 "associates" are like Trump: two-bit con artists or outright crooks.) NY Times, Feb. 20 2017 A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates By MEGAN TWOHEY and SCOTT SHANE A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. At a time when Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, and the people connected to him, are under heightened scrutiny — with investigations by American intelligence agencies, the F.B.I. and Congress — some of his associates remain willing and eager to wade into Russia-related efforts behind the scenes. Mr. Trump has confounded Democrats and Republicans alike with his repeated praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his desire to forge an American-Russian alliance. While there is nothing illegal about such unofficial efforts, a proposal that seems to tip toward Russian interests may set off alarms. The amateur diplomats say their goal is simply to help settle a grueling, three-year conflict that has cost 10,000 lives. “Who doesn’t want to help bring about peace?” Mr. Cohen asked. But the proposal contains more than just a peace plan. Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, who sees himself as a Trump-style leader of a future Ukraine, claims to have evidence — “names of companies, wire transfers” — showing corruption by the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that could help oust him. And Mr. Artemenko said he had received encouragement for his plans from top aides to Mr. Putin. “A lot of people will call me a Russian agent, a U.S. agent, a C.I.A. agent,” Mr. Artemenko said. “But how can you find a good solution between our countries if we do not talk?” Mr. Cohen and Mr. Sater said they had not spoken to Mr. Trump about the proposal, and have no experience in foreign policy. Mr. Cohen is one of several Trump associates under scrutiny in an F.B.I. counterintelligence examination of links with Russia, according to law enforcement officials; he has denied any illicit connections. The two others involved in the effort have somewhat questionable pasts: Mr. Sater, 50, a Russian-American, pleaded guilty to a role in a stock manipulation scheme decades ago that involved the Mafia. Mr. Artemenko spent two and a half years in jail in Kiev in the early 2000s on embezzlement charges, later dropped, which he said had been politically motivated. While it is unclear if the White House will take the proposal seriously, the diplomatic freelancing has infuriated Ukrainian officials. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly, said Mr. Artemenko “is not entitled to present any alternative peace plans on behalf of Ukraine to any foreign government, including the U.S. administration.” At a security conference in Munich on Friday, Mr. Poroshenko warned the West against “appeasement” of Russia, and some American experts say offering Russia any alternative to a two-year-old international agreement on Ukraine would be a mistake. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals about the conflict in Ukraine. But given Mr. Trump’s praise for Mr. Putin, John Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, said he feared the new president might be too eager to mend relations with Russia at Ukraine’s expense — potentially with a plan like Mr. Artemenko’s. It was late January when the three men associated with the proposed plan converged on the Loews Regency, a luxury hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan where business deals are made in a lobby furnished with leather couches, over martinis at the restaurant bar and in private conference rooms on upper floors. Mr. Cohen, 50, lives two blocks up the street, in Trump Park Avenue. A lawyer who joined the Trump Organization in 2007 as special counsel, he has worked on many deals, including a Trump-branded tower in the republic of Georgia and a short-lived mixed martial arts venture starring a Russian fighter. He is considered a loyal lieutenant whom Mr. Trump trusts to fix difficult
[Marxism] Texas Oil Fields Rebound from Price Lull, but jobs Are Left Behind
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 what accounts for the disappearance of good paying jobs, much more than trade deals.) NY Times, Feb. 20 2017 Texas Oil Fields Rebound from Price Lull, but jobs Are Left Behind The industry is embracing technology, and finding new ways to pare the labor force. But as jobs go away, what of presidential promises to bring them back? By CLIFFORD KRAUSS MIDLAND, Tex. — In the land where oil jobs were once a guaranteed road to security for blue-collar workers, Eustasio Velazquez’s career has been upended by technology. For 10 years, he laid cables for service companies doing seismic testing in the search for the next big gusher. Then, powerful computer hardware and software replaced cables with wireless data collection, and he lost his job. He found new work connecting pipes on rigs, but lost that job, too, when plunging oil prices in 2015 forced the driller he worked for to replace rig hands with cheaper, more reliable automated tools. “I don’t see a future,” Mr. Velazquez, 44, said on a recent afternoon as he stooped over his shopping cart at a local grocery store. “Pretty soon every rig will have one worker and a robot.” Oil and gas workers have traditionally had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs — just the type that President Trump has vowed to preserve and bring back. But the West Texas oil fields, where activity is gearing back up as prices rebound, illustrate how difficult it will be to meet that goal. As in other industries, automation is creating a new demand for high-tech workers — sometimes hundreds of miles away in a control center — but their numbers don’t offset the ranks of field hands no longer required to sling chains and lift iron. So while there is a general sense of relief in the oil patch that a recovery is gaining momentum, discussions at company meetings and family kitchen tables are rife with aching worries, especially among those who are middle-aged with no more than a high school education. Roughly 163,000 oil jobs were lost nationally from the 2014 peak, or about 30 percent of the total, while oil prices plummeted, at one point by as much as 70 percent. The job losses just in Texas, the most productive oil-producing state, totaled 98,000. Several thousand workers have come back to work in recent months as the price of oil has begun to rise again, but energy experts say that between a third and a half of the workers who lost their jobs are not returning. Many have migrated to construction or even jobs in renewable energy, like wind power. “People have left the industry, and they are not coming back,” said Michael Dynan, vice president for portfolio and strategic development at Schramm, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of drilling rigs. “If it’s a repetitive task, it can be automated, and I don’t need someone to do that. I can get a computer to do that.” Indeed, computers now direct drill bits that were once directed manually. The wireless technology taking hold across the oil patch allows a handful of geoscientists and engineers to monitor the drilling and completion of multiple wells at a time — onshore or miles out to sea — and supervise immediate fixes when something goes wrong, all without leaving their desks. It is a world where rigs walk on their own legs and sensors on wells alert headquarters to a leak or loss of pressure, reducing the need for a technician to check. And despite all the lost workers, United States oil production is galloping upward, to nine million barrels a day from 8.6 million in September. Nationwide, with a bit more than one-third as many rigs operating as in 2014, production is not even down 10 percent from record levels. Some of the best wells here in the Permian Basin that three years ago required an oil price of over $60 a barrel for an operator to break even now need about $35, well below the current price of about $53. Much of the technology has been developed by the aviation and automotive industries, along with deepwater oil exploration, over more than a decade. But companies drilling on land were slow to adapt until oil prices crashed and companies needed to get efficient quickly or go out of business. All the big companies, and many smaller ones, have organized teams of technicians that collect well and tank data to develop complex algorithms enabling them to duplicate the design for the most productive wells over and over, and to repair valves and other parts before they break down. The result is improved production and safety, but also a far smaller work force, and one that is increasingly morphing from muscle to brain power.
[Marxism] Fwd: An Economic Prophet for Our Time - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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. * Dale narrates Polanyi’s life through a series of internal contradictions. Born into a Jewish family, Polanyi came to identify strongly with Christian morality. He was a supporter of peasants but lived an almost entirely urban life. He has become one of the 20th century’s best-known social democrats but disliked much of the social democracy of his day. He was a humanist — as Dale puts it, "in the sense that he held that anything that violates human dignity should be subjected to theoretical criticism and practical obstruction" — but he frequently defended Stalin’s Russia, and he married a Bolshevik. He is remembered as a warm and generous friend and colleague but took himself to task in a letter to his brother as an "impossible person" who suffered periodic bouts of serious depression. full: http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Economic-Prophet-for-Our/239211 _ 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: Inequality after 150 years of Capital | Michael Roberts Blog
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://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/inequality-after-150-years-of-capital/ _ 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] New Zealand politics: Key and after Key
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 few people here may be interested in New Zealand. John Key recently stepped down as leader of the National Party and prime minister, to be replaced by his deputy-leader and finance minister Bill English. Key was to the left of the NZ Labour Party on a few important economic issues concerning workers' incomes and working hours' English is cut from the same cloth. Anyway, here are a few pieces on the state of the NZ economy and how National Party policy fits in. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/key-and-after-key/ _ 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
