Re: [Marxism] Trump Gave Putin Exactly What He Wanted

[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.
*

Looks like Trump may have sealed his fate with this.  I've been thinking
since his declaration of candidacy that his personal financial ties with
Russian bankers would not settle easily with the rest of the ruling class
or the government hierarchies, unless he really took pains to disconnect
himself--at least superficially--from his business.  It became increasingly
clear that his special blend of aggressive ignorance and arrogance was
going to make that impossible.  Even with the U.S. media preoccupied with
other things, a few investigative journalists anywhere in the world are
going to be able to peel back enough of this story to force the hand of the
government investigators.

As to this recent jaunt, he not only had a back-slapping good time hanging
with Vlad but publicly identifying his views with Putin & Co. on a range of
things.  Worse, he did so while he continued to behave as though he had
something to hide--and while gratuitously attacking the U.S,. media that
made him a celebrity, the intelligence community, the Congress, etc. .

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

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Socialisms]: Burton on Zewde, 'The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960-1974'

[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.
*

-- Forwarded message --
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Sat, Jul 8, 2017 at 5:42 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Socialisms]: Burton on Zewde, 'The Quest for
Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 1960-1974'
To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu


Bahru Zewde.  The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student
Movement, c. 1960-1974.  Eastern Africa Series. Oxford  James Currey
Ltd., 2014.  317 pp.  $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84701-085-8.

Reviewed by Eric Burton (Universität Wien)
Published on H-Socialisms (July, 2017)
Commissioned by Gary Roth

Socialist Students in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian student movement was one of the most influential
student movements in history, because of its profound and
long-lasting influence on Ethiopian politics, including the events
that led to revolution in 1974. Although it may in many aspects be
seen as part of the global 1968 movement, it grew out of domestic
factors. In Ethiopia, the student movement was the most potent force
of opposition against the imperial regime. Some of its central
demands, notably radical land reform, informed the policies of the
Dergue regime (1974-91), which was eventually overthrown by a
liberation movement that had itself grown out of student radicalism.
The ethno-federal structure of the post-1991 regime, a major source
of recent protests against the government, is another legacy of
theoretical struggles fought out in the student movement. In short,
the Ethiopian student movement is historically significant both for
its impact on the past and for its long-term effects, which can still
be felt today.

Despite its outstanding historical significance, the number of
extensive scholarly studies of the movement is fairly limited. Bahru
Zewde, the leading historian of Ethiopia's modern history, set out to
produce the standard work on these turbulent years. The aim of _The
Quest for Socialist Ethiopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement c.
1960-1974_ is to go beyond Randi Rønning Balsvik's comprehensive
study from 1985 (_Haile Selassie's Students: The Intellectual and
Social Background to Revolution, 1952-1974_; also, _The Quest for
Expression: State and the University in Ethiopia under Three Regimes,
1952-2005_ [2007]) and push back against Messay Kebede's more recent
interpretation of the movement (_Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation
in Ethiopia, 1960-1974_ [2008]). Bahru takes strong exception to
Messay's argument that the students' radicalism was a "cultural
dislocation" brought about by Marxism-Leninism. According to Bahru,
this is a misconstrued understanding that fails to acknowledge the
regime's structural problems. It also cannot explain why the
students' rallying calls--most notably, "Land to the tiller"--were
embraced by other segments of the population, leading to protests
that eventually overpowered the imperial regime's inflexible
structures. Radicalization, Bahru argues, resulted from the regime's
autocracy and failure to accommodate more moderate demands. Still, to
be fully understood, it also needs to be inserted into the global
political context.

Chapter 1, "Youth in Revolt," embeds the Ethiopian student movement
in a broader historical framework. Student movements originated in
quantitatively small groups, but wherever their rallying cries
appealed to broader sections of society, their impact could be
substantial. Alluding to the impact of student movements in Europe,
Egypt, Iran, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and elsewhere, Bahru suggests
that student activism is marked by its longevity (it has been with us
even since 1848) and universality (having occurred in all continents
and in both capitalist and communist countries). The Ethiopian
movement ultimately became part of the global 1968 movement with its
shared symbols, heroes, and methods of activism.

Chapter 2 returns to the national context and sketches the structural
contradictions of Haile Selassie's reign. Progressive measures of
political and fiscal centralization (1930-55) morphed into an
increasingly reactionary rule that brought about economic growth, but
not any substantial improvement in the standard of living (1955-74).
Increasing authoritarianism bolstered by a cult of personality
characterized Haile Selassie's reign ever since his return from exile
in 1941. The "land question," as it would become known in the student
movement, was the most important of these issues. The rigid class
divisions entrenched in patterns of landlordism, prevalent especially
in the country's South, held peasants in tenancy and left them
vulnerable to shocks like the 1973 famine. An important turning point
was the 1960 abortive coup d'état 

[Marxism] What Assad Has Won

[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 Op-Ed, July 8 2017
What Assad Has Won
By KAMEL DAOUD

ORAN, Algeria — The Arab springs are nearly all out of season; 
everywhere except in Tunisia, they are aging poorly.


In the beginning, after a popular uprising, it was the dictator who 
fled, by airplane, as did president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia 
in early 2011. Now it’s the opposite that is happening: It’s the people 
who are fleeing, for instance from Syria, by sea and land.


This reversal raises an essential question, both simple and tragic: Can 
one still call for democracy after the victory of President Bashar 
al-Assad of Syria, even if that victory turns out to be temporary, as 
some predict? What does it mean for the peoples of the Maghreb and the 
Middle East?


For many, the first lesson to be drawn from the Syrian case is obvious: 
One can’t always win the revolution, or at least not as fast as one 
would like. So far Assad has come out of the conflict alive, even 
strengthened — at the cost of the slaughter of half his people. His 
longevity goes to show that being wrong and facing fierce opposition 
from dissidents, an army and a large swath of the international 
community aren’t enough to unseat a dictator.


Assad, by killing so many Syrians, has also killed the dream of 
democracy for many other Syrians, as well as for plenty of people 
elsewhere in the Arab world. They can see that a revolutionary often 
ends up a martyr, a tortured prisoner, a militiaman in the pay of 
foreign forces or an unwelcome refugee. And neither his children nor his 
people are the better for it. That’s enough to sow doubt in even the 
most democratic of minds and the most fervent of revolutionaries.


And so here is the first Assad effect: The perception that democracy is 
costly — perhaps too costly.


Another consequence of Assad’s political survival is the notion that 
revolution invites predation from abroad. The political elites in the 
postcolonial Arab world, be they conservative or of the left, are still 
allergic to foreign support endorsing local calls for democracy: The 
memory of colonization taints any, or almost any, form of international 
assistance with suspicion.


For example, the Algerian government — very conservative, a police state 
and a quiet ally of Islamists — plays on the history of French 
colonialism to give credence to its claim that “a foreign hand” is only 
promoting freedom for the people the better to destabilize the leaders.


For President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, the Arab springs were 
“devastating conspiracies.” According to a private Egyptian television 
channel, even ‘‘The Simpsons’’ contained proof of untoward foreign 
designs in Syria. The political chaos in Libya has fanned distrust as well.


The foreign-intervention theory is used as a weapon against local 
dissenters. In 2016 Bouteflika, ailing and immobilized, announced that 
he would seek yet another term, after having the Constitution amended so 
that he could stay in office for the rest of his life. When his 
opponents countered his proposals by invoking democratic values, 
government media accused them of being traitors, Western agents or Zionists.


The case of Syria — subject to alliances with Iran or Russia and playing 
against Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United States — gives weight to such 
propaganda. It seems to demonstrate that any demand for democracy 
eventually translates into chaos, and chaos invites the return of 
colonialism. The same goes for Libya. Better then to submit to one’s 
dictators than compromise oneself with foreigners.


Curiously, the elites who reject intervention from the West close their 
eyes to an obvious fact: the threat of intervention from elsewhere. It’s 
a typical pitfall of the intellectual left in the Arab world to think 
that colonization is always Western, never Russian or Iranian. When 
Moscow or Tehran is involved, one prefers to speak instead of support or 
assistance. President Vladimir Putin is anti-Western, therefore he must 
be something of a liberator, or at least an ally, the wishful thinking goes.


Hence the second conclusion that’s being drawn from Syria’s experience: 
Democracy is the Trojan horse of Western neocolonialism.


Finally, there’s one more lesson, which has already taken root in the 
so-called Arab street: Better a dictator than a caliph. In newspaper 
editorials and on social media, Western interventions are often blamed 
for the monstrosity of the Islamic State: They destroyed the barrier 
that local governments formed against extremist sects.


Destabilizing the Syrian government opened the way for the Islamic 
State. But Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 

[Marxism] Defend Nancy MacLean! | LBO News from Doug Henwood

[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.
*

I haven't read McLean's book. And I don't know much about her. But her book is 
doing quite well. When I checked yesterday on Amazon, as she asked people to 
do, she had 96 Amazon reviews, with an average rating of four stars. From 
Amazon, I learned that the book is published by a top trade press, so she is no 
doubt getting good publicity help from them. Many top liberal scholars have 
heaped praise on it, and one review is from Oprah's magazine. She is a chaired 
professor at Duke, a school with a great deal of academic prestige. Given all 
of this, I don't see how the libertarians and the Koch Brothers' minions can 
destroy her reputation.  John Bellamy Foster has and is facing much worse at 
the University of Oregon. Hell, in my teaching career, I faced harassment, 
red-baiting, threatening phone calls, etc.  At Monthly Review, I have met 
comrades whose careers were destroyed, who had to leave the country to find 
work, who were tormented by all levels of government.  We've published books
  by comrades who have put their lives on the line in radical struggles around 
the world. So at least at this point, I can't get too exercised about professor 
Maclean's plight. I will continue to follow this, and as I learn more, perhaps 
I will temper my perspective.
_
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] Trump Gave Putin Exactly What He Wanted

[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 Op-Ed, July 8 2017
Trump Gave Putin Exactly What He Wanted
by Masha Gessen

While American news media offered differing interpretations of the 
meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of 
Russia, debating whether Mr. Trump had shown resolve or had fallen into 
a trap set by Mr. Putin, the Russian press disagreed on only one thing: 
the proper translation of the word “tremendous,” which Mr. Trump used to 
describe the meeting. Headlines in state-owned media, state-dominated 
media, and the lone independent Web-based TV channel offered 
translations that hewed closer to “grand,” “outstanding,” or “amazing.” 
Those distinctions aside, all agreed: The meeting was a triumph.


Mr. Putin has for years — 17 years, to be exact, for this is how long he 
has been in power — been clear about what he wanted from his 
relationship with the United States president: He wants to be treated as 
an equal partner on the world stage and not to be questioned about or 
pressed on the Russian government’s actions inside Russia or in what he 
considers his sphere of influence. Despite the friendly tenor of Mr. 
Putin’s relationship with George W. Bush and the offer of a “reset” made 
by Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Putin never achieved his objective 
— until now. His fourth American president has given him exactly what he 
wanted: respect, camaraderie and freedom from criticism.


The one accomplishment of the meeting — a limited cease-fire in Syria — 
is exactly what Mr. Putin wanted. Not the cease-fire, that is: He wanted 
an acknowledgment that the United States and Russia are equal 
negotiating parties in the Syrian conflict. He spent years cajoling and 
then blackmailing the Obama administration into accepting Russia’s 
decisive role in the Middle East. Now, Mr. Trump has handed him much 
more than that. He has demonstrated that Russia and the United States 
can negotiate Syrian life and death without involving any Syrians.


But what was really important was what was apparently missing from the 
meeting: any criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including its 
occupation of Crimea, and of the crackdown on political dissent inside 
Russia itself. In his accounting of the meeting, Secretary of State Rex 
W. Tillerson mentioned Ukraine only to say that a new United States 
representative on the matter would be appointed. He then managed to 
avoid answering the one question from a journalist about Ukraine and 
sanctions imposed in response to the Russian war there. Nor did the 
correspondents at the briefing appear concerned with getting answers on 
Ukraine. They were much more interested in the details of the two 
presidents’ discussion of Russian meddling in the American election. 
This is a topic that Mr. Putin clearly enjoys: It testifies to his 
political power, apparently unbounded by international borders.


What was entirely absent from the briefing, the reporters’ questions, 
and, it is probably safe to assume, the two-hour-and-15-minute meeting 
itself, was any discussion or even acknowledgment of any of the following:


■ Russia has intensified its crackdown on dissidents. Last month, more 
than 1,700 people were arrested for peaceful protest — the largest 
number of arrests in a single day in decades.


■ Aleksei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who plans to challenge 
Mr. Putin in the 2018 presidential election, has been attacked 
physically and is facing a slew of trumped-up charges. The night before 
the summit, his Moscow headquarters were raided and one of the staff 
members was beaten by police. The day after, as Mr. Navalny’s supporters 
campaigned around the country, dozens of them were arrested — more than 
30 people in Moscow alone.


■ More than a hundred gay men have been targeted by purges in Chechnya. 
Three deaths have been confirmed. Several men are still missing, and 
dozens more are in hiding elsewhere in Russia. In response to earlier 
international pressure, the government in Moscow has promised to 
investigate the matter, but nothing is known about the progress of this 
investigation.


■ A Moscow court has reached a guilty verdict in the case of five men 
accused of killing opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015. The 
court failed to interrogate their motives, however; nothing is known 
about who ordered the hit.


■ The number of political prisoners in Russia is growing. They include 
people arrested for peaceful protest and even for statements made on 
social media. They also include Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, 
who is serving a 20-year sentence on trumped-up charges of terrorism.


■ Most recently, law enforcement 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Modern Left, Right and the Russia Connection

[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.
*

Ross was also involved some years ago in a very stinky operation where he
called Michael Schmidt a fascist and did a very big production alongside AK
Books that had awful journalistic ethics and atrocious understanding of
South African history. I have a very distinct suspicion of his reliability
on these matters and think he needs to better understand what he is talking
about.

Message: 8
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2017 17:55:57 -0700
From: Steve Heeren 
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition

Subject: Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Modern Left, Right and the Russia
Connection
Message-ID: <6e74956d-c11c-4d39-7cde-df171b0b8...@shaw.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

I don't trust Alexander Reid Ross. He banned me and a fellow Palestinian
activist after we started asking whether "antifa" was anti-Zionist or
not, as we thought it ought to be. Even some Israeli citizens publicly
call Israel "fascist". We began to wonder where he was coming from
ideologically and he lapsed into a long tirade about the meanings of
Zion. Thinking he may be a closet Zionist we kept probing but all of a
sudden he banned us from his FB page. As of 4:15 PM PST today I remain
"banned". You may notice that a lot of his critique is of The Left. I
conjecture that, because it is FROM THE LEFT that the most legitimate
criticism of Israel comes (Israel as a settler colonialist state), it is
not so easy to discredit by labeling it as anti-semitic which is how
many Zionists try to handle criticism. Correct me if I'm wrong. Does he
have other virtues which override his possibly closet Zionist leanings?
--


-- 
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

[Marxism] Fwd: Phosphorus, phosphates, organophosphates and phospine | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[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.
*

The Assadist narratives on the Khan Sheikhoun sarin gas incident of 
April 4, 2017 have fallen into two categories. The first, similar to 
that put forward around the East Ghouta attack of August 21, 2013, 
claims that it was a “false flag” incident in which rebels gassed their 
own supporters to open the door for a “regime change” operation. The 
second, which has been put forward by various agencies and individuals 
such as Seymour Hersh, was that a legitimate bombing attack on a 
jihadist headquarters accidentally struck some materials that produced 
toxic fumes that killed 80 people and injured 600. For some such as 
Hersh, the materials were either relatively benign such as chlorine used 
to cleanse corpses in keeping with Islamic burial guidelines or 
fertilizers containing organophosphates—the same chemical compound that 
sarin gas is based on. (It happens that Muslims use soap and that it is 
pesticides that contain organophosphates, not fertilizers.) Others claim 
that the jihadist warehouse was a chemical weapons factory that 
incorporated phosphorus-based chemicals that were never intended to be 
used as pesticides or fertilizer but only to kill people—sarin gas on 
the cheap, so to speak.


full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2017/07/08/phosphorus-phosphates-organophosphates-and-phospine/

_
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] Defend Nancy MacLean! | LBO News from Doug Henwood

[Richard Sprout 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://lbo-news.com/2017/07/07/defend-nancy-maclean/?utm_source=feedburner_medium=email_campaign=Feed%3A+LboNewsFromDougHenwood+%28LBO+News+from+Doug+Henwood%29


Sent from my iPhone

_
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] Rachel Maddow’s Exclusive “Scoop” About a Fake NSA Document Raises Several Key Questions

[Richard Sprout 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://theintercept.com/2017/07/07/rachel-maddows-exclusive-scoop-about-a-fake-nsa-document-raises-several-key-questions/


Sent from my iPhone

_
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 Unraveling Middle East | Solidarity

[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://solidarity-us.org/site/node/5035
_
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: Confederate Monuments Down | Solidarity

[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 Derrick Morrison.

http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/5023
_
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: Has Bashar al-Assad Already Won?

[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.
*

Roy Gutman argues no.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/has-bashar-al-assad-already-won
_
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: Legacies of communism - bookforum.com / omnivore

[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.bookforum.com/blog/18189
_
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