[Marxism] After Catalan independence movement wins elections, Spanish state prepares new showdown

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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Dick Nichols writes from Barcelona:

Given the ongoing determination of the Spanish powers-that-be to crush the
movement for Catalan sovereignty, whatever arrangement is finally reached
between the pro-independence parties a new wave of disobedience sooner or
later seems inevitable.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/after-catalan-independence-movement-wins-elections-spanish-state-prepares-new-showdown



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Re: [Marxism] the soft tankie line on Iran

[mkaradjis . via Marxism]

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Also surprised and disappointed that this was John Riddell. Reading it
gave me dejavu. I felt like I was reading something from about half a
century ago. So glad I've long ago shrugged off that enforced
"anti-imperialist framework" stuff we used to think we could force the
real world into, regardless of the concrete realities of a situation.

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 10:36 AM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism
 wrote:
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>
> Striking quote in this:
>
>> In the years that followed, a partial counterrevolution unfolded in which 
>> repressive capitalist rule was firmly established.
>
> So it wasn't Khomeini who lead a counter-revolution... Instead Khomeini was 
> beat back later by the capitalists, resulting in the repression of workers?
>
> Where did he learn this history...
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[Marxism] Paul Robeson - NY Review of Books

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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In an epilogue that must have been painful for Sparrow—a man of the left—to
write, he acknowledges that Robeson’s endorsement of Stalin and Stalin’s
successors, his refusal to acknowledge what had been done in Stalin’s name,
is the tragedy of his life. And it is a tragedy for us, too, because
Robeson had an almost unique combination of gifts that enabled him to
articulate his cause in a way that spoke to all people. “Every artist,
every scientist must decide NOW where he stands,” he had said when he
returned from Spain. “He has no alternative. There is no standing above the
conflict on Olympian heights.”

As Sparrow describes it, it is a pitiful spectacle: this heroic figure,
striving for dignity for all of his fellow human beings, robbed of his own,
somehow baffled and cheated by the world. Sparrow quotes a trade unionist
who having met him said: “[Robeson] stands like a giant, yet makes you
feel, without stooping to you, that you too are a giant and hold the power
of making history in your hands as well.” To which Sparrow soberly adds:
“The disintegration of the movements for which Paul had been such an icon
had left behind a profound void from which we were yet to recover. We did
not feel ourselves giants; we did not feel capable of making history.”
History, he says, has become meaningless. “And a figure such as Paul became
almost incomprehensible.” On the contrary. Sparrow has made perfect and
haunting sense of him.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/02/08/emperor-paul-robeson/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Are We Heading for Another Economic Crash? – Radical Political Economy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://urpe.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/are-we-heading-for-another-economic-crash/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Cape Town's Water Crisis Day Zero: The Day the Taps Run Dry | Time

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://time.com/5103259/cape-town-water-crisis/
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Re: [Marxism] the soft tankie line on Iran

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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Striking quote in this:

> In the years that followed, a partial counterrevolution unfolded in which 
> repressive capitalist rule was firmly established.

So it wasn't Khomeini who lead a counter-revolution... Instead Khomeini was 
beat back later by the capitalists, resulting in the repression of workers? 

Where did he learn this history...
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[Marxism] the soft tankie line on Iran

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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John Riddell takes the soft-tankie line, lecturing the Iranian masses about
their anti-imperialist duty. ("Soft" only because he doesn't (yet?) call
for the regime to gun down its opponents. On the other hand, I don't see
much in the way of outrage on his part at recent regime atrocities.)

https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/protests-in-iran-the-international-dimension/

A couple years ago I heard John lecture on the early, revolutionary
Comintern - the documents and speeches of which he has done invaluable work
in compiling and commenting on. In the Q he showed his illusions in the
distinctly reformist Pink Tide of Latin America, and I had to shake my head
at the cognitive dissonance.

Here's more of the same.
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[Marxism] The Mad King Flies His Flag

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Op-Ed, Jan. 18, 2018
The Mad King Flies His Flag
by Timothy Egan

The emperor of the outdoors rode into town on a horse named Tonto, and 
soon demanded that his own special flag fly outside his headquarters 
whenever he was in Washington. He believes fracking is proof that “God 
loves us” and, despite being from Montana, doesn’t know how to properly 
set up his fly line when fishing in front of the cameras.


“He had rigged his reel backward,” Elliott D. Woods wrote of Interior 
Secretary Ryan Zinke in a wonderful profile in Outside Magazine. “Seems 
like an inconsequential thing, but in Montana, it’s everything.”


As it turned out, it was quite consequential. When the magazine next 
tried to dial into an Interior conference call, it was denied access.


You may think that Stormy Daniels is in charge of the natural world 
under Donald Trump. And yes, the boorish behavior of the president and 
the porn star makes for better reading than an account of the quack 
running Interior.


But if someone were trashing your house, you’d want to pay attention. 
And Trump, using the very strange Mr. Zinke, is going after the sacred 
foundations of America’s much-loved public lands, brick by brick.


Zinke has been called the Gulfstream Cowboy for his love of using 
charter planes to fly off to the nesting grounds of wealthy donors. But 
he’s more like a mad king. And this monarch has control over the crown 
jewels of America’s public land. They are not in safe hands.


Last month, the secretary attacked Patagonia, the outdoor retailer, 
after it protested the largest rollback of public land protection in our 
history with a website home page of a black screen and stark message: 
“The President Stole Your Land.”


It is your land, all 400 million acres of it, though you wouldn’t know 
by the way the Trump administration has ceded control to the private 
predators from the oil, gas, coal and uranium industries.


It is also your water, the near entirety of the outer continental shelf 
that Trump is opening to extractive drilling. Almost a dozen states have 
protested. The waters off the coast of Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, were 
given an exemption after Zinke met with the governor who said drilling 
was bad for tourism. Your public servant at work.


Zinke is upending a century of bipartisan values as part of a Trumpian 
culture war. When asked why the president shrank national monuments in 
the Southwest by two million acres, Zinke said it was a way to strike 
back against “an elitist sort of hunter and fisherman.” Huh?


Could this be the same regular guy who took a helicopter to ride horses 
with Mike Pence? The cabinet member who wants to charge $70 to get into 
our most iconic national parks? The man whose nomination was championed 
by Donald Trump Jr., elephant killer and dictionary definition of elite 
hunter and fisherman?


Defenders of public land have pushed back. This week, a majority of the 
nonpartisan National Park Service advisory panel resigned in 
frustration. The board, federally chartered to help guide the service, 
said Zinke had refused to convene a single meeting with them last year. 
Silly bird-lovers. Don’t they know you need to charter a plane for Zinke 
if you want to get his attention?


A much less-connected group, the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, 
responded with an essay from a board member who lives in a 
500-square-food abode in the Rocky Mountains. “We hunt, gather, garden, 
can, smoke, dry, jelly and pickle as much of our own food as we can,” 
wrote Tom Healy. “According to Mr. Secretary, I am an elitist.”


The writer is from Whitefish, Zinke’s hometown in Montana. Where have 
you heard that before? Ah, yes, a tiny energy company from Whitefish 
with two employees — three if you count Zinke’s kid when he was an 
intern on a side project — finagled a $300 million, no-audit, no-bid 
contract to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric grid. Zinke said he had 
absolutely, positively nothing to do with it.


Look, it could have been worse: Sarah Palin was an early favorite for 
interior secretary. Zinke is an ex-Navy SEAL, and looks the part. Enough 
nutty things come out of his mouth to make him a perfect Trump guy. “The 
government stops at the mailbox,” he said at a rally last year, “and if 
you come any further, you’re going to meet my gun.” Note to Mr. 
Secretary: Don’t shoot the sheriff, or the census taker.


It took a bribery scandal to bring down an Interior secretary in the 
Teapot Dome affair of the 1920s. Today, the corruption is all upfront. 
Energy Secretary Rick Perry gives bear hugs to coal barons, while doing 
all he can to have the government prop up 

[Marxism] Why are US prisons so afraid of this book?

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-prison.html
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[Marxism] Fwd: Morality Tales on the American Malaise: the Films of Rick Alverson | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Each November and December NYFCO members like me receive dozens of DVD 
screeners from film studio publicists that are meant to help us decide 
on our yearly awards. In order to help me participate meaningfully in 
the deliberations, I prioritize the films that are likely to be 
finalists, namely the big-budget Hollywood films from Sony, Fox, et al. 
This has meant that the kinds of films I prefer to cover get left in the 
lurch, particularly those that are sent from Magnolia, a conscientious 
distributor of quality films for various art houses around the country. 
I invite you to visit their website, which for a modest $4.99 per month 
allows you to see some first-rate films like “Entertainment” that was 
included in the 2015 batch that I only got around to seeing recently. To 
get straight to the point, Rick Alverson, the director of this dark 
character study of a middle-aged comedian playing to tiny and 
indifferent audiences in forlorn Southern California towns, is a major 
talent that deserves far more attention than any of those forgettable 
Hollywood blockbusters that routinely get awarded. He is a 47-year old 
Richmond native who has his fingers on the pulse of a dying civilization 
and is not afraid to tell the truth even if it is one that might not 
soothe you like the typical Saturday night escapist fare. Indeed, the 
last two films made by Alverson might be understood as a morality tale 
on how comedy itself might be key to the malaise that has gripped 
America for decades and shows no sign of letting up.


What follows is a survey of all of four films that have been made by 
Alverson since 2010, all of which are available as VOD. Having seen them 
over the past week or so has left me feeling like I have been through 
the mill, just like the four men at their center. Despite having a 
different life experience than theirs, I can share the existential 
crisis that has overcome them all, against a backdrop of a country that 
Robinson Jeffers described in “Shine, Perishing Republic” as settling 
“in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire”.


full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2018/01/19/morality-tales-on-the-american-malaise-the-films-of-rick-alverson/

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[Marxism] Sexual harassment in public housing

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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As I searched for this story, I saw that it is hardly a new story.  But it only 
came to my attention when I caught it recently on the BBC news.
ken h

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42404270 

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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It’s also not accurate to talk about muzzleloaders in 1866. Try Spencer
repeating rifles.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I don't think it's quite accurate to pose this issue as either all or
nothing.

The entire issue was inseparable from the idea of maintaining a popular
militia, which the ruling class abandoned after Reconstruction and the 1877
strike . . . and came to be essentially displaced as the key institution
for defense by the gargantuan military machine.  Rather than deal with this
as the NRA has defined the issue, I think we should discuss that machine.

Arguing about whether or not the masses have a right to keep their own
muzzle-loaders at home means little when we have a mall guards and campus
cops armed like swat teams, a militarized police, and a military fully
capable of calling in air strikes to deal with our commemorative 1871
barricade.

.





On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 9:30 AM, DW via Marxism  wrote:

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> *
>
> The idea that the 2nd Amendment is forever tarnished with "slave patrols"
> is silly. That's the only reason to raise it, correct? So that the anti-gun
> left can feel at ease at opposing one of the Amendments from the Bill of
> Rights. First, let me say I agree with Mark. There was far more application
> of this on an every day basis on the Frontier, "West of the Hudson" as it
> was noted in the beginning of the film, *The Last of Mahicans*, than were
> was with "slave patrols". As slave patrols only involved a very, very small
> percentage of slave states populations, popular settler ownership of
> muzzle-loading muskets was almost universal outside of the "big" cities.
>
> If you want to tarnish the 2A then the same can be said of the 1A as this
> was reserved *in practice* for white males. As was the whole of the Bill of
> Rights. Yet historically the left always defended it save for the 10th
> Amendment (States Rights). ALL the amendments represented a kind of
> compromise with the various 'stakeholders' of the white population. The 2nd
> Amendment had little do with 'slave patrols'. One wonders where this arose
> from? It DID have to do *in part* with maintaining slavery, at least from
> Jefferson's POV, but nothing so silly as the few thousand part time and
> full time members of southern slave patrols. It was to counter Hamilton's
> wish for a Federal controlled central standing army to protect the early
> U.S. from future British and French military (and economic) pressure on the
> new country. Jefferson feared that a permanent army *could* be used to
> squash states rights and thus wanted to counter-balance such an army with
> the state militia systems (which had provided about half the troops during
> the Revolution, though they didn't preform well against British regulars).
> Part of the argument also include a Federal imposed ban on Slavery in the
> future (no one as talking about Abolition in the immediate sense and when
> the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution).
>
> It should be pointed out that every Supreme Court decision has upheld the
> private gun ownership under the 2A and even a 1939 decision by SCOTUS
> upheld the "Militia" as being *distinct* from the newly organized National
> Guard units controlled by the States.
>
> The 2A was conceived as a counter-weight to a possible abusive federalizing
> centrality of any future gov't of the US (which included the unforeseen
> momentum of the Abolitionist movement of which their was no inkling of in
> the 1791 when the Bill of Rights was conceived).
>
> I think those of you who are anti-gun (and would like the current gov't to
> get rid of guns) should be more honest and say you would like to see the
> 2nd Amendment stricken from the Constitution. A few very honest lefty types
> have called for this. I went to a panel at the Zinn Book Fair in October
> (sponsored in large party by the ISO and Haymarket) which had a speaker
> advocating just that. We had an interesting debate on this issue. But it's
> funny how few people on the anti-gun left actually advocate for this. Odd.
>
> David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[DW via Marxism]

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The idea that the 2nd Amendment is forever tarnished with "slave patrols"
is silly. That's the only reason to raise it, correct? So that the anti-gun
left can feel at ease at opposing one of the Amendments from the Bill of
Rights. First, let me say I agree with Mark. There was far more application
of this on an every day basis on the Frontier, "West of the Hudson" as it
was noted in the beginning of the film, *The Last of Mahicans*, than were
was with "slave patrols". As slave patrols only involved a very, very small
percentage of slave states populations, popular settler ownership of
muzzle-loading muskets was almost universal outside of the "big" cities.

If you want to tarnish the 2A then the same can be said of the 1A as this
was reserved *in practice* for white males. As was the whole of the Bill of
Rights. Yet historically the left always defended it save for the 10th
Amendment (States Rights). ALL the amendments represented a kind of
compromise with the various 'stakeholders' of the white population. The 2nd
Amendment had little do with 'slave patrols'. One wonders where this arose
from? It DID have to do *in part* with maintaining slavery, at least from
Jefferson's POV, but nothing so silly as the few thousand part time and
full time members of southern slave patrols. It was to counter Hamilton's
wish for a Federal controlled central standing army to protect the early
U.S. from future British and French military (and economic) pressure on the
new country. Jefferson feared that a permanent army *could* be used to
squash states rights and thus wanted to counter-balance such an army with
the state militia systems (which had provided about half the troops during
the Revolution, though they didn't preform well against British regulars).
Part of the argument also include a Federal imposed ban on Slavery in the
future (no one as talking about Abolition in the immediate sense and when
the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution).

It should be pointed out that every Supreme Court decision has upheld the
private gun ownership under the 2A and even a 1939 decision by SCOTUS
upheld the "Militia" as being *distinct* from the newly organized National
Guard units controlled by the States.

The 2A was conceived as a counter-weight to a possible abusive federalizing
centrality of any future gov't of the US (which included the unforeseen
momentum of the Abolitionist movement of which their was no inkling of in
the 1791 when the Bill of Rights was conceived).

I think those of you who are anti-gun (and would like the current gov't to
get rid of guns) should be more honest and say you would like to see the
2nd Amendment stricken from the Constitution. A few very honest lefty types
have called for this. I went to a panel at the Zinn Book Fair in October
(sponsored in large party by the ISO and Haymarket) which had a speaker
advocating just that. We had an interesting debate on this issue. But it's
funny how few people on the anti-gun left actually advocate for this. Odd.

David Walters
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[Marxism] Whiteness and Working Folks-

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2018/01/whiteness-and-working-folk.html

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[Marxism] Warming, Water Crisis, Then Unrest: How Iran Fits an Alarming Pattern

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(I've been plagiarized.)

NY Times, Jan. 19, 2018
Warming, Water Crisis, Then Unrest: How Iran Fits an Alarming Pattern
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

UNITED NATIONS — Nigeria. Syria. Somalia. And now Iran.

In each country, in different ways, a water crisis has triggered some 
combination of civil unrest, mass migration, insurgency or even 
full-scale war.


In the era of climate change, their experiences hold lessons for a great 
many other countries. The World Resources Institute warned this month of 
the rise of water stress globally, “with 33 countries projected to face 
extremely high stress in 2040.”


A water shortage can spark street protests: Access to water has been a 
common source of unrest in India. It can be exploited by terrorist 
groups: The Shabab has sought to take advantage of the most vulnerable 
drought-stricken communities in Somalia. Water shortages can prompt an 
exodus from the countryside to crowded cities: Across the arid Sahel, 
young men unable to live off the land are on the move. And it can feed 
into insurgencies: Boko Haram stepped into this breach in Nigeria, Chad 
and Niger.


Iran is the latest example of a country where a water crisis, long in 
the making, has fed popular discontent. That is particularly true in 
small towns and cities in what is already one of the most parched 
regions of the world. Farms turned barren, lakes became dust bowls. 
Millions moved to provincial towns and cities, and joblessness led to 
mounting discontent among the young. Then came a crippling drought, 
lasting roughly 14 years.


In short, a water crisis — whether caused by nature, human 
mismanagement, or both — can be an early warning signal of trouble 
ahead. A panel of retired United States military officials warned in 
December that water stress, which they defined as a shortage of fresh 
water, would emerge as “a growing factor in the world’s hot spots and 
conflict areas.”


“With escalating global population and the impact of a changing climate, 
we see the challenges of water stress rising with time,” the retired 
officials concluded in the report by CNA, a research organization based 
in Arlington, Virginia.


Climate change is projected to make Iran hotter and drier. A former 
Iranian agriculture minister, Issa Kalantari, once famously said that 
water scarcity, if left unchecked, would make Iran so harsh that 50 
million Iranians would leave the country altogether.


Is water the reason for the latest unrest in Iran?

Not entirely. Water alone doesn’t explain the outbreak of protests that 
began in early January and spread swiftly across the country. But as 
David Michel, an analyst at the Stimson Center put it, the lack of water 
— whether it’s dry taps in the city, or dry wells in the countryside, or 
dust storms rising from a shrinking Lake Urmia — is one of the most 
common, most visible markers of the government’s failure to deliver 
basic services.


“Water is not going to bring down the government,” he said. “But it’s a 
component — in some towns, a significant component — of grievances and 
frustrations.”


Managing water, he said, is the government’s “most important policy 
challenge.”


How did it get this bad?

Like many countries, from India to Syria, Iran after the 1979 revolution 
set out to be self-sufficient in food. It wasn’t a bad goal, in and of 
itself. But as the Iranian water expert Kaveh Madani points out, it 
meant that the government encouraged farmers to plant thirsty crops like 
wheat throughout the country. The government went further by offering 
farmers cheap electricity and favorable prices for their wheat — 
effectively a generous two-part subsidy that served as an incentive to 
plant more and more wheat and extract more and more groundwater.


The result: “25 percent of the total water that is withdrawn from 
aquifers, rivers and lakes exceeds the amount that can be replenished” 
by nature, according to Claudia Sadoff, a water specialist who prepared 
a report for the World Bank on Iran’s water crisis.


Iran’s groundwater depletion rate is today among the fastest in the 
world, so much so that by Mr. Michel’s calculations, 12 of the country’s 
31 provinces “will entirely exhaust their aquifers within the next 50 
years.” In parts of the country, the groundwater loss is causing the 
land to sink.


Water is a handy political tool, and to curry favor with their rural 
base, Iran’s leaders — and particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guards 
Corps — dammed rivers across the country to divert water to key areas. 
As a result, many of Iran’s lakes have shrunk. That includes Lake Urmia, 
once the region’s largest saltwater lake, which has 

[Marxism] Fwd: Trump appointee Carl Higbie made racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments on the radio - CNNPolitics

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/politics/kfile-carl-higbie-on-the-radio/index.html
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 1/19/18 8:13 AM, Greg McDonald wrote:
The original klan went on a rampage to disarm freed slaves. It’s 
certainly easier to burn down a house when you’re not dodging lead.





Roxanne wrote this:

"The Klan burned homes, CONFISCATED THE GUNS OF FREEMEN, and, of course, 
inflicted punishment similar to slave patrols' beatings, but also had 
far more freedom to torture and murder, since the Black body no longer 
carried monetary value that the murderer would have to compensate for."


That's not good enough for you?
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 1/19/18 8:02 AM, Greg McDonald wrote:
She unwittingly reinforces the restrictive post-colonial interpretation 
of the 2nd amendment and thus finds herself in bed with the gun control 
Klan. It’s amazing I have to point this out btw.


What is the "gun control Klan"?

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[Marxism] Fwd: A House is Not a Hole: (Not) Caring about What Trump Says

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(David Roediger roaming far afield.)

I made it through life as a cultural studies scholar without seeing even 
one moment of Trump’s television hit The Apprentice but I did see, 
completely by happenstance, a Trump visit to shock radio personality 
Howard Stern’s long ago TV show. The episode goes back 15 years, to when 
Melania was Trump’s girlfriend, not wife. It was so bizarre that I kept 
awaiting its appearance during the campaign. It is now on the internet 
and you can check my memory, and perhaps your incredulity, for 90 seconds.


Trump puzzles Stern in the clip by saying how amazing it is that they 
both have partners who do not do “anything, like, bad.” The latter 
somehow thinks Trump means lesbianism but it turns out that the future 
U.S. president is recalling prior conversations in which Stern claimed 
his partner had never farted and only would “make a doody” annually. 
Trump proudly announces that this “applies to Melania” as well. The two 
then carry on at length about the “whiffs” of Trump’s ex-wives and the 
wonderful bowel control of their current women. Perhaps, they conclude, 
their partners save it up for after marriage.


full: 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/19/a-house-is-not-a-hole-not-caring-about-what-trump-says/

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I think the amendment was also grounded in the "self-defense" of whites on
the frontier of their settlement.  In other words, perceptions of race in
America are rarely aimed exclusively at one population of color.



On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 7:49 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> On 1/19/18 7:40 AM, Greg McDonald wrote:
>
>> Totally unsurprising that a liberal like Dunbar-Ortiz would be aligned
>> with the KKK in the post-civil war south.
>>
>
> What in god's name are you talking about?
>
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 1/19/18 7:40 AM, Greg McDonald wrote:
Totally unsurprising that a liberal like Dunbar-Ortiz would be aligned 
with the KKK in the post-civil war south.


What in god's name are you talking about?
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[Marxism] Fwd: Review of Michael S. A. Graziano, 'The Spaces Between Us: A Story of Neuroscience, Evolution and Human Nature'

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The brain, in other words, contained not only a map of the body itself 
but a dynamic, real-time model of the space around the body -- 
technically known as peripersonal space. Operating much of the time on 
automatic, just at or below the level of ordinary awareness, it is also 
intricately involved in how we navigate the terrain of social behavior. 
"Personal space" is more than a figure of speech. At the same time, it 
understates the complexity of the phenomenon. The author suggests that 
the brain "computes many kinds of sensory space near the body, each 
emphasizing a different type of action: a space for reaching, a space 
for grasping, a space for buffering the self against collision, a space 
for guiding eye movements, a space for guiding walking or running. No 
doubt these many types of space interact. The networks in the brain that 
compute these spaces may engage in some crosstalk, but the different 
networks appear to emphasize fundamentally different categories of action."


full: 
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/01/19/review-michael-s-graziano-spaces-between-us-story-neuroscience-evolution-and-human

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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Totally unsurprising that a liberal like Dunbar-Ortiz would be aligned with
the KKK in the post-civil war south.
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[Marxism] Fwd: United States Policing and "Gun Rights" Began With Slave Patrols

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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In Loaded, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz details the white supremacist background 
of the Second Amendment and the perennial NRA cry of gun rights. She 
reveals the irony of the gun lobby's equation of gun ownership with 
freedom. Guns, after all, she notes, were vital tools in the suppression 
and killing of the Indigenous population and Black people before the 
Bill of Rights was written. Get the book now with a donation to Truthout.


In the chapter "Slave Patrol," Dunbar-Ortiz provides the historical 
context for how militias that killed and oppressed slaves and Indigenous 
persons became the precedent for the militia cited in the Second 
Amendment. The following is the full-chapter excerpt.


full: 
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43260-united-states-policing-and-gun-rights-began-with-slave-patrol

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[Marxism] The NZ prime minister's baby

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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by Susanne Kemp

Forget the war and repression in Syria.  Forget the massive protests
against the theocratic regime in Iran.  Forget mass hunger and poverty
across the Third World.  Forget the millions of refugees.  Forget the women
(and men) of the world labouring for a pittance in horrendous conditions in
factories, mines and other workplaces across the Third World.


Jacinda Ardern’s ability to ‘work’ and give birth is very much a
middle/upper class privilege built, in part, on the super-exploitation of
the Third World; but don’t expect liberals to talk about this

For the NZ ‘mainstream media’ none of this counts for much.

You see, Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford are going to have a baby.
Judging by the gush it would appear that they are the first-ever
highly-privileged First World, white middle class couple to be doing so.

No First World, privileged, white, middle class people have ever had a baby
before.

Presumably this is why TV broadcaster Hillary Barry tweeted, “I think it’s
only right at this point that @jacindaardern take on the mantle of. . .

Full at:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/hold-the-news-first-ever-first-world-white-middle-class-couple-ever-to-have-a-baby-and-its-in-nz/
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