Re: [Marxism] Russia/Trump

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Am I wrong in thinking that something like Karma or fate is closing around
Trump?  I think the Democrats are actually reluctant to challenge him but
events would seem to be getting out of control.  Lou's remarks about the
consequences of fucking with the CIA and the FBI are right on the money.
Comey is now outside the tent and he is clearly pissing in. CNN and the NYT
are at it too.

I don't think it is coordinated in any way, but it seems to me from this
distance that the flow of urine aimed at the White House could turn into a
tsunami that will sweep the Trump Administration away. Now wouldn't that be
an ironic fate for Old Pee Pee?

comradely

Gary


On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:32 AM, Thomas via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> The explanation below assumes Trump is capable of organized thought.
>
> T
>
>
> -Original Message-
> >From: Anthony Boynton via Marxism 
> >Sent: May 15, 2017 11:42 PM
> >To: Thomas F Barton 
> >Subject: [Marxism] Russia/Trump
> >
> >  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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> >*
> >
> >*Reading the tea leaves*
> >
> >
> >This list has a tea leaf reading session going on about why FBI Director
> >Comey was fired by President Donald Trump.
> >
> >
> >After stirring them again, and examining them under a magnifying glass, I
> >have come up with the following reasoning.
> >
> >First of all Donald Trump is in deep trouble over the issue of Russia.
> It’s
> >not just the Democrats who have an anti-Russia program, it is the
> >“internationalist” Republicans of the John McCain ilk. In fact, there is
> >little evidence that any significant sector of the Republican party
> >supports Trump’s Russian turn.
> >
> >
> >The Russian intervention into the elections was not an invention of
> >hysterical Democrats or of the New York Times. Cyber-warfare has been
> going
> >on world-wide for some time among businesses and states. The North Korean
> >cyber-attack against the Sony Films picture *The Interview *may have been
> >the funniest moment, but there have been plenty of serious moments
> >including the very recent attack against hospitals in the UK. In any case,
> >Trump’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin and Putin’s support for Trump were
> >both on the record in the media of the world. Why wouldn’t Putin try to
> >help Trump? He would have been an idiot not to.
> >
> >
> >The Russian state remains a competitor to the American state in
> >geopolitics. It has the only nuclear arsenal that can compete with that of
> >the USA, and it is aggressively countering US/NATO pressure on it: most
> >notably by its land grab in the Ukraine and its genocidal role in Syria.
> >
> >
> >Although both US and Russian imperialism are counter-revolutionary through
> >and through, that does not mean that their geopolitical interests are
> >identical. The French and German empires of 1914 were thoroughly
> >counterrevolutionary, but their geopolitical interests clashed.
> >
> >
> >What interests are at stake?
> >
> >
> >First of all client states. Every client state an imperial power has is a
> >client! Who buys arms from the biggest arms merchant in the world? (that
> >would be the USA) It’s client states!
> >
> >
> >Who buys arms from the Russians? Not too many client states these days,
> but
> >the market of the old Soviet Union is still holding up. Oh, and then there
> >is Syria.
> >
> >
> >Nevertheless, a significant sector of big US corporations are heavily
> >invested in Russia, and the GOP is still the party of business despite the
> >Clinton’s efforts to bring them all into the Democratic party family.
> >Corporations heavily invested in Russia include not only Mr. Tillerson’s
> >alma mater Exxon, but Boeing, Pepsi, Ford, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's,
> >Mondelez International, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Cargill, Alcoa,
> >General Electric, and Morgan Stanley.
> >
> >
> >They would like to have their cake and eat it, too. Keep the geopolitical
> >power of the United States, diminish Russian power 

[Marxism] "Leninism" and Scientology [was: Reflections on the “party question”]

[Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism]

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OK, So out of 11,287,933 vanguard parties from 1917 to 2017, four --or 
was it five?-- actually led revolutions that expropriated the capitalists.


Unfortunately they turned into such complete catastrophes that working 
people acceded to return to capitalism.


I wish fucking soi-dissant Marxists would take off a year or ten from 
braying about "the party" and actually read and study what Marx, Engels 
and Lenin (but not Trotsky, sorry, Trotsky was a Zinovievist just like 
Stalin circa 1925) actually said and thought about "the party."


Starting with this: When Marx and Engels originally wrote about the 
workers forming their own party, political parties as we know them had 
barely begun to emerge and they were NOTHING like what we mean by 
"party" (even a bourgeois "party"). Go read about the Chartists which 
Marx and Engels hailed as the first workers party and explain to me the 
difference between them and the Occupy Movement.


Marx and Engels were talking about the development of the worker's 
movement: a whole bunch of people who shared a similar disfavored 
position in civil society recognizing that reality and therefore saying, 
well let's change our status in society.


It was a self-and-other recognized SIDE to a dispute or conflict, which 
emerged organically in the course of the struggle, not something that 
could be --absolutely the worst abomination of all-- "built."


Talking about "the party question" as the Leninist left does is IDIOCY. 
There is no such question. It is CULTISM. The cult of the organization: 
"building" the party magically becomes an all-saving formula good 
everywhere for all eternity.


This overarching fetish of "the party" abstracted from all time, place 
and circumstance, is a religious hallucination, a distilled, ethereal 
essence that encompasses everything from guerrilla bands to invading 
armies to national movements and we dump them all into "the party" 
category on account of in all these countries there are political 
struggles and that means political sides and political outcomes and if 
we want our side to win it needs a political expression, "the party."


If you REALLY want to understand the ESSENCE of "the party question" as 
its been practiced in my experience, go look at Leah Remini's series on 
Scientology and the Aftermath.


Because this sort of "Leninism" is RELIGION not Marxism

On 5/16/2017 2:27 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:

No party is perfect. Nonetheless, in the 20th century parties played a central 
role in every single liberation struggle and in the revolutions that broke most 
with capitalism. To be sure, these revolutions became ossified; they gave rise 
to bureaucratic regimes and then yielded way for the revival of capitalism. 
This had multiple causes that I can’t go into here.


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[Marxism] Wannacry was North Korean? Bullshit

[Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism]

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In Arthur Penn's classic 1970 movie/Little Big Man,/Allardyce 
Merriweather tries to teach Dustin Hoffman's title character the 
honorable profession of snake oil salesman:


   Listen to me, a two legged creature will believe anything, and the
   more preposterous the better: whales speak French at the bottom of
   the sea. The horses of Arabia have silver wings. Pygmies mate with
   elephants in darkest Africa. I have sold all those propositions.

Well, I've got one that's even better: North Korea was behind's last 
Friday's computer virus attack.


https://hatueysashes.blogspot.com/2017/05/bullshit-mountain-north-korea-created.html


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[Marxism] Assadist contradictions

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Interesting contradictions. British Maoist Sukant Chandan remains loyal 
to Assad and a romanticized vision of Gaddafi blasts the Vanessa 
Beeley/Eva Bartlett/Tim Anderson wing of the Baathist amen corner on FB:


Here I argue in 2mins that there are many who advocated on Press TV and 
RT etc years that Trump would be 'better' than Hilary,that these people 
invited the man who bombed Syria and Afghanistan, humiliated Russia, 
went to the brink of war with Korea and China, that these people should 
either apologise publicly and conduct some serious self critique (I made 
a wrong analysis on Obama, have apologised for that many times and 
critically self analysed a lot publicly for years), or they should be 
chased out of our circles and all platforms should be taken away from 
them. They advocated for the guy who bombed two of our homelands and 
threatened total war against China and Korea. These people are mainly 
those organised around far-right/alt-right/fascist circles and those 
collaborating with them around things like: Centre for Syncretic Studies 
(and all individuals and organisations involved, which is easily found), 
Katehon, New Resistance, The Duran, Saker, Fort Russ, 21st Century Wire, 
Sputnik, and others. These are forces who are directly in alliance with 
blatant neo-Nazi and western far right and openly fascist forces. The 
rise of fascist oriented forces and leaders like Trump are *not* friends 
of ours but fascist imperialist enemies of our peoples.

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[Marxism] Immigrants in Detention Centers Are Often Hundreds of Miles From Legal Help - ProPublica

[Richard Sprout via Marxism]

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https://www.propublica.org/article/immigrants-in-detention-centers-are-often-hundreds-of-miles-from-legal-help?utm_source=pardot_medium=email_campaign=dailynewsletter


Sent from my iPhone

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[Marxism] A migrant poem defies “anti-poem toxins” | resistance words

[Richard Sprout via Marxism]

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https://resistancewords.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/a-migrant-poem-defies-anti-poem-toxins/


Sent from my iPhone

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Re: [Marxism] Russia/Trump

[Thomas via Marxism]

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The explanation below assumes Trump is capable of organized thought.

T


-Original Message-
>From: Anthony Boynton via Marxism 
>Sent: May 15, 2017 11:42 PM
>To: Thomas F Barton 
>Subject: [Marxism] Russia/Trump
>
>  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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>*
>
>*Reading the tea leaves*
>
>
>This list has a tea leaf reading session going on about why FBI Director
>Comey was fired by President Donald Trump.
>
>
>After stirring them again, and examining them under a magnifying glass, I
>have come up with the following reasoning.
>
>First of all Donald Trump is in deep trouble over the issue of Russia. It’s
>not just the Democrats who have an anti-Russia program, it is the
>“internationalist” Republicans of the John McCain ilk. In fact, there is
>little evidence that any significant sector of the Republican party
>supports Trump’s Russian turn.
>
>
>The Russian intervention into the elections was not an invention of
>hysterical Democrats or of the New York Times. Cyber-warfare has been going
>on world-wide for some time among businesses and states. The North Korean
>cyber-attack against the Sony Films picture *The Interview *may have been
>the funniest moment, but there have been plenty of serious moments
>including the very recent attack against hospitals in the UK. In any case,
>Trump’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin and Putin’s support for Trump were
>both on the record in the media of the world. Why wouldn’t Putin try to
>help Trump? He would have been an idiot not to.
>
>
>The Russian state remains a competitor to the American state in
>geopolitics. It has the only nuclear arsenal that can compete with that of
>the USA, and it is aggressively countering US/NATO pressure on it: most
>notably by its land grab in the Ukraine and its genocidal role in Syria.
>
>
>Although both US and Russian imperialism are counter-revolutionary through
>and through, that does not mean that their geopolitical interests are
>identical. The French and German empires of 1914 were thoroughly
>counterrevolutionary, but their geopolitical interests clashed.
>
>
>What interests are at stake?
>
>
>First of all client states. Every client state an imperial power has is a
>client! Who buys arms from the biggest arms merchant in the world? (that
>would be the USA) It’s client states!
>
>
>Who buys arms from the Russians? Not too many client states these days, but
>the market of the old Soviet Union is still holding up. Oh, and then there
>is Syria.
>
>
>Nevertheless, a significant sector of big US corporations are heavily
>invested in Russia, and the GOP is still the party of business despite the
>Clinton’s efforts to bring them all into the Democratic party family.
>Corporations heavily invested in Russia include not only Mr. Tillerson’s
>alma mater Exxon, but Boeing, Pepsi, Ford, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's,
>Mondelez International, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Cargill, Alcoa,
>General Electric, and Morgan Stanley.
>
>
>They would like to have their cake and eat it, too. Keep the geopolitical
>power of the United States, diminish Russian power still further, but get
>rid of the sanctions against Russia so that they could get on with business.
>
>
>Fat chance.
>
>
>One significant overlap of ideology and interest between Putin and Trump is
>on global warming. It doesn’t exist! But, if it did, opening up the arctic
>to oil exploration and development would be just that much easier. Why not
>make the Arctic Ocean navigable – and drillable - 365 days a year!
>
>
>So far there is no evidence that President Trump is a deep thinker or
>strategist. Trump appears to be a blow-hard idiot and a bully who was the
>right man, in the right place at the right time. His Russia turn could be
>no more than admiration and attraction for other blow-hard bullies.
>
>
>But, maybe the man is more than he seems.
>
>
>At the very least, he is a cunning and corrupt real estate developer.
>Certainly, he has been attracted to doing business with the cunning and
>corrupt operators in Moscow. Apparently, he has made no big deals in
>Russia, but Trump is a man who has not released his income tax returns, and
>who has built an opaque business empire of interlocking private
>partnerships that no one has yet deciphered. What kinds of dirty deals are
>hiding in that labyrinth can only be guessed at, but 

[Marxism] Reflections on the “party question”

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4979


No party is perfect. Nonetheless, in the 20th century parties played a central 
role in every single liberation struggle and in the revolutions that broke most 
with capitalism. To be sure, these revolutions became ossified; they gave rise 
to bureaucratic regimes and then yielded way for the revival of capitalism. 
This had multiple causes that I can’t go into here.

Intransigent critics of revolutionary parties would do well to consider what 
happened to revolutions without parties. And indeed what continues to happen to 
them into the present day. We have rarely seen a popular uprising as massive 
and covering as vast a geographic zone as what is somewhat inaccurately 
referred to as the “Arab springtime”. The sudden surge of the “masses” into the 
political realm was spectacular, and the struggle waged against a range of 
counter-revolutionary forces quite remarkable. It continues to deserve our full 
support; but it’s now the opposing camp that has the wind in its sails. The 
struggle often persists in appallingly difficult conditions, such as in the 
Iraqi-Syrian theatre of operations.

* * * * *

The debate on “Lenin’s conception of the party” (as if he only had one) has 
often gotten bogged down in simplistic interpretations of What is to be done? 
(Lenin 1902; Draper 1999). And yet one needs a careful understanding of the 
rapidly evolving historical context and a complex interpretation (Le Blanc 
1989; Löwy 1991) of Lenin’s never concluded activist and intellectual 
trajectory (Vercammen 1989) – and of the role assigned to politics and the 
relationship between strategy and tactics (Bensaïd 1997).
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[Marxism] Fwd: Media Expert on Syria Attack an Accused Kidnapper

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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This is an article defending Assad against charges of using sarin gas in 
Khan Sheikhoun from something called pjmedia.com. It epitomizes the 
continuity between Islamophobia 2003 and Islamophobia 2017 once you 
realize that pjmedia is the same thing as Pajamas Media, a website that 
was a staunch supporter of Bush's invasion of Iraq. Among its columnists 
are Ronald Radosh, who like David Horowitz is a leftist turned neocon, 
and Michael Ledeen, the primary ideological influence on Trump's 
one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn who was paid $40,000 to 
attend an RT.com banquet.


https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/04/06/on-chemical-weapons-attack-international-media-turn-to-syrian-doctor-accused-of-kidnapping-journalists/
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[Marxism] A forgotten classic - A Face in the Crowd revisited in the age of Trump

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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Despite being directed by stool pigeon Elia Kazan, this film and excellent
review is a very insightful presentation of what home-grown American
fascism would look like, thanks to the ability of TV to "reduce the
attention span of the average American to that of a goldfish."


http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/16/punchlines-and-glamour-a-face-in-the-crowd-revisited-in-the-age-of-trump/
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[Marxism] Fwd: 2611. How to Stop the Sixth Extinction: A Critical Assessment of E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The anthropogenic Sixth Extinction is an existential threat to much of 
life on Earth, including the human species.  In this essay, I critically 
examine the renowned entomologist, naturalist, and conservationist E. O. 
Wilson’s proposal in his recent book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for 
Life (2016), to stop and reverse it.  In section I, I will outline what 
is meant by biodiversity and why it matters, and provide the basic facts 
about the Sixth Extinction and its salient causes.  In section II, I 
will outline Wilson’s proposal identifying tensions in his arguments for 
its efficacy.  In particular, I will show the tension between Wilson’s 
love for the natural world and his knowledge of biology and ecology on 
one hand and his inadequate understanding of human history, in 
particular, the capitalist civilization, which results in wishful 
thinking.  The Half-Earth proposal is necessary but not sufficient for 
stopping and reversing the Sixth Extinction. Finally, I conclude with a 
brief outline of what I consider to be necessary in order to make 
Wilson’s proposal effective.


full: 
http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2017/05/2611-how-to-stop-sixth-extinction.html

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[Marxism] A Strong Case Against a Pesticide Does Not Faze E.P.A. Under Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(With a president functioning as if he were in the movie "Idiocracy", it 
comes as no surprise that his EPA director overrides his own scientists 
to allow a pesticide to be used that causes children to have lower IQ 
scores.)



NY Times, May 16 2017
A Strong Case Against a Pesticide Does Not Faze E.P.A. Under Trump
By RONI CARYN RABIN

Some of the most compelling evidence linking a widely used pesticide to 
developmental problems in children stems from what scientists call a 
“natural” experiment.


Though in this case, there was nothing natural about it.

Chlorpyrifos (pronounced klor-PYE-ruh-fahs) had been used to control 
bugs in homes and fields for decades when researchers at Columbia 
University began studying the effects of pollutants on pregnant mothers 
from low-income neighborhoods. Two years into their study, the pesticide 
was removed from store shelves and banned from home use, because animal 
research had found it caused brain damage in baby rats.


Pesticide levels dropped in the cord blood of many newborns joining the 
study. Scientists soon discovered that those with comparatively higher 
levels weighed less at birth and at ages 2 and 3, and were more likely 
to experience persistent developmental delays, including hyperactivity 
and cognitive, motor and attention problems. By age 7, they had lower IQ 
scores.


The Columbia study did not prove definitively that the pesticide had 
caused the children’s developmental problems, but it did find a 
dose-response effect: The higher a child’s exposure to the chemical, the 
stronger the negative effects.


That study was one of many. Decades of research into the effects of 
chlorpyrifos strongly suggests that exposure at even low levels may 
threaten children. A few years ago, scientists at the Environmental 
Protection Agency concluded that it should be banned altogether.


Yet chlorpyrifos is still widely used in agriculture and routinely 
sprayed on crops like apples, oranges, strawberries and broccoli. 
Whether it remains available may become an early test of the Trump 
administration’s determination to pare back environmental regulations 
frowned on by the industry and to retreat from food-safety laws, 
possibly provoking another clash with the courts.


In March, the new chief of the E.P.A., Scott Pruitt, denied a 
10-year-old petition brought by environmental groups seeking a complete 
ban on chlorpyrifos. In a statement accompanying his decision, Mr. 
Pruitt said there “continue to be considerable areas of uncertainty” 
about the neurodevelopmental effects of early life exposure to the 
pesticide.


Even though a court last year denied the agency’s request for more time 
to review the scientific evidence, Mr. Pruitt said the agency would 
postpone a final determination on the pesticide until 2022. The agency 
was “returning to using sound science in decision-making — rather than 
predetermined results,” he added.


Agency officials have declined repeated requests for information 
detailing the scientific rationale for Mr. Pruitt’s decision.


Lawyers representing Dow and other pesticide manufacturers have also 
been pressing federal agencies to ignore E.P.A. studies that have found 
chlorpyrifos and other pesticides are harmful to endangered plants and 
animals.


A statement issued by Dow Chemical, which manufactures the pesticide, 
said: “No pest control product has been more thoroughly evaluated, with 
more than 4,000 studies and reports examining chlorpyrifos in terms of 
health, safety and environment.”


A Baffling Order

Mr. Pruitt’s decision has confounded environmentalists and research 
scientists convinced that the pesticide is harmful.


Farm workers and their families are routinely exposed to chlorpyrifos, 
which leaches into ground water and persists in residues on fruits and 
vegetables, even after washing and peeling, they say.


Mr. Pruitt’s order contradicted the E.P.A.’s own exhaustive scientific 
analyses, which had been reviewed by industry experts and modified in 
response to their concerns.


In 2015, an agency report concluded that infants and children in some 
parts of the country were being exposed to unsafe amounts of the 
chemical in drinking water, and to a dangerous byproduct. Agency 
researchers could not determine any level of exposure that was safe.


An updated human health risk assessment compiled by the E.P.A. in 
November found that health problems were occurring at lower levels of 
exposure than had previously been believed harmful.


Infants, children, young girls and women are exposed to dangerous levels 
of chlorpyrifos through diet alone, the agency said. Children are 
exposed to 

[Marxism] The World Is Getting Hacked. Why Don’t We Do More to Stop It?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(By a former Marxmailer.)

NY Times Op-Ed, May 16 2017
The World Is Getting Hacked. Why Don’t We Do More to Stop It?
by Zeynep Tufekci

The path to a global outbreak on Friday of a ransom-demanding computer 
software (“ransomware”) that crippled hospitals in Britain — forcing the 
rerouting of ambulances, delays in surgeries and the shutdown of 
diagnostic equipment — started, as it often does, with a defect in 
software, a bug. This is perhaps the first salvo of a global crisis that 
has been brewing for decades. Fixing this is possible, but it will be 
expensive and require a complete overhaul of how technology companies, 
governments and institutions operate and handle software. The 
alternative should be unthinkable.


Just this March, Microsoft released a patch to fix vulnerabilities in 
its operating systems, which run on about 80 percent of desktop 
computers globally. Shortly after that, a group called “Shadow Brokers” 
released hacking tools that took advantage of vulnerabilities that had 
already been fixed in these patches.


It seemed that Shadow Brokers had acquired tools the National Security 
Agency had used to break into computers. Realizing these tools were 
stolen, the N.S.A. had warned affected companies like Microsoft and 
Cisco so they could fix the vulnerabilities. Users were protected if 
they had applied the patches that were released, but with a catch: If an 
institution still used an older Microsoft operating system, it did not 
receive this patch unless it paid for an expensive “custom” support 
agreement.


The cash-strapped National Health Service in Britain, which provides 
health care to more than 50 million people, and whose hospitals still 
use Windows XP widely, was not among those that signed up to purchase 
the custom support from Microsoft.


They were out in the cold.

On May 12, a massive “ransomware” attack using one of those 
vulnerabilities hit hospitals in Britain, telecommunication companies in 
Spain, FedEx in the United States, the Russian Interior Ministry and 
many other institutions around the world. They had either not applied 
these patches to systems where it was available for free, or had not 
paid the extra money for older ones.


Computer after computer froze, their files inaccessible, with an ominous 
onscreen message asking for about $300 worth of “bitcoin” — a 
cryptocurrency that allows for hard-to-trace transfers of money. 
Ambulances headed for children’s hospitals were diverted. Doctors were 
unable to check on patients’ allergies or see what drugs they were 
taking. Labs, X-rays and diagnostic machinery and information became 
inaccessible. Surgeries were postponed. There was economic damage, too. 
Renault, the European automaker, had to halt production.


The attack was halted by a stroke of luck: the ransomware had a kill 
switch that a British employee in a cybersecurity firm managed to 
activate. Shortly after, Microsoft finally released for free the patch 
that they had been withholding from users that had not signed up for 
expensive custom support agreements.


But the crisis is far from over. This particular vulnerability still 
lives in unpatched systems, and the next one may not have a convenient 
kill switch.


While it is inevitable that software will have bugs, there are ways to 
make operating systems much more secure — but that costs real money. 
While this particular bug affected both new and old versions of 
Microsoft’s operating systems, the older ones like XP have more critical 
vulnerabilities. This is partly because our understanding of how to make 
secure software has advanced over the years, and partly because of the 
incentives in the software business. Since most software is sold with an 
“as is” license, meaning the company is not legally liable for any 
issues with it even on day one, it has not made much sense to spend the 
extra money and time required to make software more secure quickly. 
Indeed, for many years, Facebook’s mantra for its programmers was “move 
fast and break things.”


This isn’t all Microsoft’s fault though. Its newer operating systems, 
like Windows 10, are much more secure. There are many more players and 
dimensions to this ticking bomb.


During this latest ransomware crisis, it became clear there were many 
institutions that could have patched or upgraded their systems, but they 
had not. This isn’t just because their information technology 
departments are incompetent (though there are surely cases of that, 
too). Upgrades come with many downsides that make people reluctant to 
install them.


For example, the more secure Windows 10 comes with so many privacy 
concerns that