[Marxism] "We rise together, homie"

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Recently on some construction job in the mid west, a group of Latino
construction workers walked off the job. A black welder took a video of it
and posted it together with his comments on youtube. Evidently over a
million people watched it.

Here 
is an interview with this welder, together with a link to the video.

I think the walkoff, itself, is another indication of the relatively full
employment, especially in construction.

John Reimann

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] China Willing to Assist Syrian Army in Idlib Offensive – Ambassador to Syria

[Richard Taylor via Marxism]

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> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49974.htm 
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Sergio Cesaratto and Stavros Mavroudeas – Revelli, SYRIZA and giving to Caesar what it is due to him… – BRAVE NEW EUROPE

[Dayne Goodwin via Marxism]

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excellent, thank you

>
> Dear friends
> The following article by Sergio Cesarrato and me, published in BRAVE NEW 
> EUROPE 
> (https://braveneweurope.com/sergio-cesaratto-and-stavros-mavroudeas-revelli-syriza-and-giving-to-caesar-what-it-is-due-to-him
>  ), might be of interest to you.
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[Marxism] Sergio Cesaratto and Stavros Mavroudeas – Revelli, SYRIZA and giving to Caesar what it is due to him… – BRAVE NEW EUROPE

[Stavros Mavroudeas via Marxism]

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Dear friends

The following article by Sergio Cesarrato and me, published in BRAVE NEW EUROPE 
(https://braveneweurope.com/sergio-cesaratto-and-stavros-mavroudeas-revelli-syriza-and-giving-to-caesar-what-it-is-due-to-him
 ), might be of interest to you.

 

Best regards

 

Stavros

 

 

Stavros Mavroudeas

 

 

Stavros D. Mavroudeas

 

Professor (Political Economy)

Dept. of Economics

University of Macedonia

156 Egnatia

54006 Thessaloniki

Greece

e-mail:   sma...@uom.gr;   
sma...@uom.edu.gr 

web:   
http://stavrosmavroudeas.wordpress.com

  
www.facebook.com/stavros.mavroudeas 

off. Tel: +30-2310-891779

 

Recent books:

The Limits of Regulation

  
http://www.elgaronline.com/abstract/9780857938633.xml

 

Greek Capitalism in Crisis

  
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415744928/

 

 

 


Stavros Mavroudeas δημοσιεύθηκε: " Brave New Europe Politics and Economics: 
Expertise with a radical face 
https://braveneweurope.com/sergio-cesaratto-and-stavros-mavroudeas-revelli-syriza-and-giving-to-caesar-what-it-is-due-to-him
   Sergio Cesaratto and Stavros Mavroudea" 



Απαντήστε στην δημοσίευση γράφοντας στην επόμενη γραμμή

 




 



Νέα δημοσίευση στο Stavros Mavroudeas Blog 

  

 

 




  


 

 Sergio Cesaratto and Stavros Mavroudeas – Revelli, SYRIZA and giving to Caesar 
what it is due to him… – BRAVE NEW EUROPE


από   
Stavros Mavroudeas 


Brave New Europe


Politics and Economics: Expertise with a radical face


 

 
https://braveneweurope.com/sergio-cesaratto-and-stavros-mavroudeas-revelli-syriza-and-giving-to-caesar-what-it-is-due-to-him

 

 
 


Sergio Cesaratto and Stavros Mavroudeas – Revelli, SYRIZA and giving to Caesar 
what it is due to him…


  August 5, 2018  
 EU politics,  
 
EU-Institutions,  
 National 
Politics

While the EU, the IMF, and Syriza are trying to sale the tale of a Greek 
recovery, the facts reveal another story.


Sergio Cesaratto is Professor of Growth and Development Economics and of 
Monetary and Fiscal Policies in the European Monetary Union, University of Siena


Stavros Mavroudeas is Professor of Political Economy at the Department of 
Economics at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki


  

 

In a recent article Marco Revelli published in  

 Greek and   Italian – a 
habitual guest in Greece of SYRIZA and its government – made a diatribe against 
what he called ‘pseudo-left’ for considering Tsipras a traitor and SYRIZA’s 
economic policy a failure. In an uncalled-for polemic (that included one of the 
signatories of this reply,  

 here his article in New Brave Europe), he accused this ‘pseudo-left’ for being 
nationalist and for helping the populist and nationalist right-wing ND in 
Greece. Revelli gratuitously equates every left criticism of SYRIZA’s policies 
with the neoliberal one of ND.

Revelli uses as title of his piece (in Greek) the evangelic dictum (‘give 
Caesar what is due to him and give God what is due to him also’). Let us see if 
the dues he offers to his Caesar or God (in this case SYRIZA) are correct or 
not.

He begins by praising SYRIZA’s ability to manage better troika’s austerity 
program so as to avoid a greater social damage. The evidence he 

Re: [Marxism] Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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With all the fuss about alleged Russian interference in US elections the 
question of voter suppression seems to have been largely forgotten until now.  
I hope this will change.

Chris Slee

From: Marxism  on behalf of Louis Proyect 
via Marxism 
Sent: Sunday, 5 August 2018 10:07:34 PM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: [Marxism] Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.

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NY Times, Aug. 2, 2018
Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.
By Jack Healy

GRAHAM, N.C. — Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from
dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for
running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back
with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest.

As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and
taken to jail.

His crime: Illegal voting.

“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before
his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.”

Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North
Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016
presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony
convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies
a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.

While election experts and public officials across the country say there
is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, local prosecutors and state
officials in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and other states have
sought to send a tough message by filing criminal charges against the
tiny fraction of people who are caught voting illegally.

“That’s the law,” said Pat Nadolski, the Republican district attorney in
Alamance County. “You can’t do it. If we have clear cases, we’re going
to prosecute.”

The cases are rare compared with the tens of millions of votes cast in
state and national elections. In 2017, at least 11 people nationwide
were convicted of illegal voting because they were felons or
noncitizens, according to a database of voting prosecutions compiled by
the conservative Heritage Foundation. Others have been convicted of
voting twice, filing false registrations or casting a ballot for a
family member.

The case against the 12 voters in Alamance County — a patchwork of small
towns about an hour west of the state’s booming Research Triangle — is
unusual for the sheer number of people charged at once. And because nine
of the defendants are black, the case has touched a nerve in a state
with a history of suppressing African-American votes.

Local civil-rights groups and black leaders have urged the district
attorney to drop the prosecution, saying that black voters were being
disproportionately punished for an unwitting mistake. African-Americans
in North Carolina are more likely to be disqualified from voting because
of felony convictions; their rate of incarceration is more than four
times that of white residents, according to the Prison Policy
Initiative, a nonprofit organization.

“It smacks of Jim Crow,” said Barrett Brown, the head of the Alamance
County N.A.A.C.P. Referring to the district attorney, he added, “I don’t
think he targeted black people. But if you cast that net, you’re going
to catch more African-Americans.”

Mr. Nadolski said that race and ethnicity are not a factor in any case
he prosecutes.

The prosecution comes even as several states are reconsidering
longstanding laws that strip voting rights from an estimated 6 million
Americans who have been convicted of felonies. A growing national
movement is encouraging former felons to register to vote, or to push to
have their rights restored, with the hope of empowering them and
shedding the stigma of criminal convictions.

The North Carolina case also has become part of a partisan war over
voting rights ahead of this November’s midterm elections. At a rally on
Tuesday, President Trump — who has made baseless claims that millions of
people voted illegally in 2016 — renewed his calls for laws requiring
voters to show photo identification. He said, incorrectly, that shoppers
need to show identification to buy groceries, while people voting for
president and senator do not.

When asked Wednesday about the president’s comments, Sarah 

Re: [Marxism] South Africa Vows to End Corruption. Are Its New Leaders Part of the Problem?

[Patrick Bond via Marxism]

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On 2018/08/05 08:32 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

NY Times, August 5, 2018
South Africa Vows to End Corruption. Are Its New Leaders Part of the 
Problem? By Norimitsu Onishi and Selam Gebrekidan


A terribly misleading title, for it focuses on only one of the tsotsis 
the ruling class has entrusted to run South Africa: the deputy president 
David Mabuza. (Sure, that's a well-deserved critique.) (But sure, 
Ramaphosa would reply that if he hadn't made an electoral deal with 
Mabuza, he would have lost last December's party leadership vote to 
Jacob Zuma's pick, his ex-wife.)


Yet again - and now this is getting absurd - the NYTimes correspondents 
cannot bring themselves to address corruption by Cyril Ramaphosa or 
Pravin Gordhan, the two ANC centrists (both formerly Marxists) who are 
the darling of liberal international capital and local wicked capital.


Partial antidotes:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/20/in-south-africa-ramaphosa-rises-as-lonmin-expires-workers-women-and-communities-prepare-to-fight-not-mourn/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/khadija-sharife/south-africas-dirty-secre_b_576996.html

https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/south-africa%E2%80%99s-fight-between-hostile-brothers-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9Czuptas%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cwhite-monopoly-capital%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93
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[Marxism] Who Desegregated America’s Schools? Black Women

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Sunday Book Review, August 5, 2018
Who Desegregated America’s Schools? Black Women
By LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant

A GIRL STANDS AT THE DOOR
The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools
By Rachel Devlin
342 pp. Basic Books. $32.

April 13, 1947, holds little significance in the American historical 
memory, and yet that day was one in a long series that led to the legal 
desegregation of American schools. On that morning, Marguerite Daisy 
Carr, a 14-year-old black girl from Washington, D.C., attempted to 
enroll at Eliot Junior High School, the all-white middle school closest 
to her home. Carr’s efforts to integrate the school, which were 
supported by her family and local black community, preceded the landmark 
Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education by seven years.


Recognizing the young black girls and women who were at the forefront of 
the civil rights movement is the central achievement of Rachel Devlin’s 
meticulously researched history, “A Girl Stands at the Door.” Devlin’s 
interest in the role such women played in the struggle for desegregation 
leads her briefly back to 1850, to Sarah Roberts, a 5-year-old 
African-American who lived closer to several white schools than to the 
one designated for black students, and who became a plaintiff in the 
country’s first school desegregation case: Roberts v. City of Boston. 
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of Boston, which 
resisted the desegregation effort on the grounds that adequate 
provisions had been made for black students in the form of separate 
schools. Roberts’s case was later cited to support the “separate but 
equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, but it also shed public light on 
the underfunding and inadequate conditions prevalent in black schools — 
conditions that endured, virtually unchanged, for another 120 years. 
Devlin’s account is necessarily situated largely in the 20th century and 
includes the stories of Ruby Bridges and Melba Pattillo Beals (one of 
the “Little Rock Nine”), among many others; she reveals the creative 
tactics these young people used — sometimes successfully, sometimes not 
— to integrate public schools, a battle in which black girls outnumbered 
black boys as plaintiffs two to one.


Devlin, a historian at Rutgers, cites Carr’s case as one of the first of 
nearly a dozen that went to court before the N.A.A.C.P. resolved to 
tackle the contentious matter of school desegregation. The successful 
class-action suit the group eventually filed featured 13 mothers and 1 
father, acting on behalf of their children, and the question Devlin 
stresses is Why so many girls? Her answer, while somewhat 
unsatisfactory, is also revelatory: Like the young black American men 
who were inspired to serve in World War II, young black women 
experienced their own “call to arms” — an ethical obligation to 
participate in the struggle for integration. They maintained this sense 
of mission even when their families, aware of the verbal and physical 
abuse to which they were frequently subjected, encouraged them to give 
up their educational pursuits.


As Devlin wrestles with the question “Why girls?,” she offers readers a 
pill that is difficult to swallow. She detects “a strong, though 
unstated cultural assumption that the war to end school desegregation 
was a girls’ war, a battle for which young women and girls were 
especially suited.” Yet black girls were not obliged to serve because 
desegregation was considered feminine work. Rather, black girls’ 
familiarity with domestic servitude and the most intimate forms of 
racism gave them an uncanny, collective ability to cope with white 
violence; many endured harassment and worse with extraordinary deference 
and self-control.


Devlin reminds us that the task of publicly and constitutionally 
challenging racial discrimination in education was laid on the bodies of 
black girls. This is a reality with which America has yet to reckon. 
Sixty-four years after Brown v. Board, the promise of that decision, and 
of integration more generally, remains unfulfilled. “A Girl Stands at 
the Door” tells an important story about young black women who ushered 
in a movement. Just as black women “set the world on fire” — to quote 
the historian Keisha N. Blain — in global freedom struggles, young black 
girls took it upon themselves to stand up when others would not.


A Rough Rehearsal, a Suicide and a Broadway Show in Turmoil
LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant is an associate professor of Africana 
studies at Williams College.


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[Marxism] Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Imagining the Unimaginable in a Nuclear-War Novel - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Aug. 6, 2018
Q. & A.
Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Imagining the Unimaginable in a 
Nuclear-War Novel

By John Williams

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against 
the United States

A Speculative Novel
By Jeffrey Lewis
294 pages. Mariner Books. $15.99.

To write his first novel, Jeffrey Lewis had an unfortunate amount of 
material to draw on for research: Archival interviews with those who 
survived the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the chaos that 
unfolded on 9/11 and other grim historical realities. The title of Mr. 
Lewis’s work of ticktock speculative fiction is harrowingly plain: “The 
2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the 
United States.” It imagines the detailed reporting filed by a commission 
in 2023, three years after nuclear attacks on the United States, South 
Korea and Japan left millions dead. The novel includes wonky Pentagon 
details, eyewitness testimony and even a statement by “former” President 
Donald Trump, which includes this line: “Now the Democrats want to blame 
me for the Nuclear War (which was very terrible) and that they caused.” 
Below, Mr. Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program 
at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, 
talks about the book’s surprising source of drama, the inspiration he 
took from “Dr. Strangelove” and more.


When did you first get the idea to write this book?

I got the idea to tell a fictional version of how the United States and 
Korea might stumble into war when The Washington Post asked me to write 
a piece about that. I found I had trouble expressing to people how 
something crazy like that could happen. And then an editor at Houghton 
Mifflin, Alex Littlefield, called and asked if I ever thought about 
making it a book-length project.


I’ve always been intrigued by writing fiction because I’ve always 
enjoyed reading it, and it’s impossible to read it without sometimes 
thinking, “I would have done it a different way.” People who write 
nonfiction, all of us think we have a novel in us. Some of us are wrong 
about that. So I didn’t want to be a cliché, the academic who writes the 
terrible fiction book. I approached it with some trepidation. But I 
liked the idea of a novel that purports to be something it’s not; in 
this case, a government report. I found that liberating.


What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

I delved into North Korea’s cellphone infrastructure and was shocked to 
learn that, according to the man who ran it, the senior leaders don’t 
have a secure communication channel other than as part of the cellphone 
network. That scared the pants off me. I knew immediately how it would 
play into the novel if it were true, because I remember cellphones not 
working on 9/11, so it was not hard to imagine that if you were the 
leader of North Korea and your cellphone stopped working, you might jump 
to certain conclusions. It took me a while to feel satisfied that it was 
probably true; that they rely on an encrypted cellphone channel to 
communicate.


In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to 
write?


I imagined that the mechanics of the nuclear war would be dominant, 
rather than the fateful decisions leading up to it, but in fact it was 
the opposite way around. In fact, Alex had to ask me to go back and add 
in. I think I forgot to show the North Koreans actually launching the 
missiles. And he said, “Hey wait! You’re robbing me of my North Korean 
launch protocols.”


This will be terrible for sales, but in some ways it became a book about 
decision-making. It’s a book in which the scenes play out in little 
rooms. In the sense that there’s drama, it’s the drama of people having 
constrained access to information and making a decision that seems smart 
to them, but that the reader knows is terrible. And I didn’t know that 
the places where the decisions were made would become characters. 
Mar-a-Lago is a character in the book.


I always intended to rely on real-life people. The only instance where 
that got complicated was John Kelly, because he’s still there; but he’s 
been on the hot seat for months, and we weren’t sure how long he was 
going to last. So I created a fictional post-Kelly chief of staff who 
looks a lot like Kelly.


Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your 
work?


Stanley Kubrick. If you study nuclear strategy, for lack of a better 
word, “Dr. Strangelove” is a thousand times smarter than people realize. 
Much of what passes for comedy in it is direct quotes that he dug up 

[Marxism] An Astrophysical Approach to Our Environmental Crisis

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Review by Alan Lightman, the physicist whose Harpers article I have 
been sending comrades.)



NY Times Sunday Book Review, August 5, 2018
An Astrophysical Approach to Our Environmental Crisis
By Alan Lightman

LIGHT OF THE STARS
Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth
By Adam Frank
262 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95.

Near the beginning of his engaging and accessible book “Light of the 
Stars,” Adam Frank strikes a familiar environmental alarm bell: “It’s 
like we’ve been given the keys to the planet. Now we’re ready to drive 
it off a cliff.” Frank’s interesting new idea is to combine a history of 
climate change on Earth with recent astronomical data indicating the 
likelihood of a vast number of habitable planets in the universe, to 
suggest that we can strengthen our resolve to kick our bad environmental 
habits by viewing our terrestrial civilization from a cosmic 
perspective. For example, he cites evidence that Mars once had liquid 
water and a thick atmosphere — friendly conditions for life. Apparently, 
climates can drastically change over time.


An astrophysicist at the University of Rochester and a founder of the 
NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture, Frank argues that we earthlings 
should adopt a new narrative of our history and future. Rather than just 
continuing to procreate and exploit our capacities and resources on 
Earth, we should recognize that we and our planet are evolving together. 
Our planet might be viewed as a single living organism, coined Gaia by 
the scientist and futurist James Lovelock. We have entered a new 
geological age, what biologists call the Anthropocene, in which we, Homo 
sapiens, are altering the planet, and our survival depends on 
understanding this symbiosis. Frank asks: Have other civilizations 
elsewhere in the universe, evolving through their corresponding 
Anthropocenes, managed to survive? And by what strategy? Of course, we 
don’t know the answer to these questions, as we have not yet seen 
evidence of such civilizations beyond our own planet, and we may well 
not anytime soon. (“Soon,” here, is measured in tens of thousands of years.)


“Light of the Stars” traverses a wide terrain of geological, biological 
and astronomical science, with emphasis on the history of terrestrial 
climate change and the factors causing those changes, and includes 
portraits of such scientists as Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Lynn Margulis 
and others. Frank enlivens the text with his passion, opinions and even 
some of his own projections of our possible fates. He is also a good 
storyteller. We see the great physicist Enrico Fermi and several of his 
colleagues walking to lunch across the campus of the Los Alamos National 
Laboratory one warm summer day in 1950, wending their way along a “path 
lined by pine trees and juniper.” In the middle of lunch, Fermi asks the 
question: “But where are they?,” they being the extraterrestrials. If 
there are so many other life-forms out there in the cosmos, why haven’t 
we seen any of them? Could it be that such civilizations destroy 
themselves (by nuclear war or climate devastation) after only a few 
thousand years?


The book is divided into two parts. One is a review of environmental 
science and a history of climate change on Earth. The other concerns the 
new field of astrobiology, with results from the Kepler satellite, 
launched in 2009 with the specific mission of looking for undiscovered 
solar systems, but which also allowed researchers to identify which of 
those exoplanets were “habitable-zone planets” — those the right 
distance from their central stars to have liquid water. Here we learn, 
for example, that roughly 20 percent of all stars have habitable planets 
and that the universe is full of “super-Earths,” planets with masses 
that fall somewhere between the smaller, rocky Earth and the gaseous and 
icy Neptune.


Although both parts are interesting, I don’t quite agree with Frank’s 
overarching thesis that they are linked components of the same story. 
Isn’t the imperative to halt our possibly fatal march to annihilation 
via human-made environmental destruction the same regardless of 
extraterrestrial life? We don’t need membership in the galactic empire 
to understand the urgency of our situation here on Earth.



Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist and humanities professor at 
M.I.T. His latest books are “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” 
and “In Praise of Wasting Time.”

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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] What Happened When Fracking Came to Town

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Review by a veteran radical journalist and contributor to CounterPunch. 
At the end of the review, it states that she is working on a book about 
encounters with America in a time of crackup. Can't wait for that.)


NY Times Sunday Book Review, August 5, 2018
What Happened When Fracking Came to Town
By JoAnn Wypijewski

AMITY AND PROSPERITY
One Family and the Fracturing of America
By Eliza Griswold
318 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.

At Page 51 of “Amity and Prosperity,” Eliza Griswold’s saga of 
fracking’s impact on the town of Amity in southwest Pennsylvania, I made 
a note in the margin: “Why People Hate Government.” By then her 
protagonist’s son, Harley Haney, had suffered mouth ulcers, severe 
abdominal pain, nausea, swollen lymph nodes and dizziness. Wilting in a 
recliner, he had missed a year and a half of middle school. His dog had 
died. The neighbors’ dogs had died. The tap water was running black and 
smelled foul. The air reeked. A quarter-mile up the hill, workers in 
Hazmat suits had applied 819 pounds of a carcinogen to contain a 
bacterial outbreak at a waste pond for the gas wells near his home.


Harley’s mother, Stacey Haney, suffered headaches, rashes and fatigue. 
His younger sister, Paige, had stomachaches and nosebleeds. The 
neighbors were sick, too, and one, Beth Voyles, kept a dead puppy in her 
freezer as potential evidence. She had been complaining to the state 
Department of Environmental Protection for months. An agent there said 
that the hydrogen sulfide in the local air was naturally occurring. A 
representative of the company that owned the gas wells, Range Resources, 
told Stacey to boil her water before drinking it. Harley’s condition was 
finally diagnosed: arsenic poisoning. Staying home sick from school had 
only made him worse. Toxins accrue.


It’s at this point that Griswold writes: “Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, 
sliced the D.E.P.’s budget of $217,515,000 by 27 percent, one of the 
biggest cuts in its history. The governor also shaved 19 percent from 
the $113,369,000 budget of the Department of Conservation and Natural 
Resources” and “started leasing oil and gas rights on public land. In 
three separate sales, the state made $413 million by leasing 138,866 
acres. This marked the beginning of one of the largest public sell-offs 
in Pennsylvania’s recent history.”


Like the governor, like their neighbors sitting atop Appalachia’s 
gas-rich Marcellus Shale, like the federal government and many thousands 
of other people across rural America, Stacey and Beth had leased gas 
rights on their land. Something so ordinary must be safe, the two women 
figured. And the money the drillers offered was tantalizing. That’s part 
of the tragedy. However grand their dreams (farmers’ hopes that gas 
royalties would make them millionaires), or modest (Stacey’s wish for 
$8,000 to build a barn), or abstract (consumers’ faith in clean, cheap 
natural gas), almost everyone wanted to believe in the fantastic deal. 
Griswold aims to count the costs.


Hydraulic fracturing, as she demonstrates, entails as much violence as 
the name implies. Putting aside the burden on roads, tranquillity and 
social relations, to frack a gas well means taking roughly four million 
gallons of water, poisoning it with chemicals, some of them proprietary 
secrets, and forcing this brew, together with some three million pounds 
of clay pellets or silica sand, into a well that extends horizontally a 
mile or two through shale. The shale cracks. The results: gas, fractured 
bedrock, depleted freshwater supplies and toxic waste. Now fortified 
with bacteria, heavy metals and additional toxins, the fracking fluid 
that returns to the surface presents a problem with no good solution. 
Some of it stays underground, where it combines with methane and can 
migrate into aquifers, streams and private wells. Imagine this process 
multiplied. Stacey’s eight acres lay amid five wells; her county, 
Washington, has 1,146. The state of Pennsylvania has 7,788. The United 
States has more than 300,000.


Politicians still call it clean. In the early 2000s, Congress exempted 
fracking from provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and 
the Safe Drinking Water Act. Amid the wreckage of the financial crisis, 
President Obama touted it as a win for the economy and the environment. 
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton pushed it on the world. After 
leaving office, in 2011, Governor Rendell became a paid consultant to a 
private-equity firm with investments in fracking. His former deputy 
chief of staff, another deputy, his D.E.P. chief and other erstwhile 
regulators enlisted in the corporate 

[Marxism] Racism at American Pools Isn’t New: A Look at a Long History - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A good article that would be better if it mentioned Robert F. Williams's 
fight to desegregate swimming pools in North Carolina in 1957.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/sports/black-people-pools-racism.html
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[Marxism] South Africa Vows to End Corruption. Are Its New Leaders Part of the Problem?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(I was in Lusaka, Zambia in 1990 to do a needs assessment with the ANC. 
Our delegation met with Thabo Mbeki, who went on to become President. 
His father was a Communist and he was rumored to be one too. If you had 
told me back then that this is how the ANC would operate once they 
became the government, I'd have laughed in your face. I guess the joke 
was on me.)


NY Times, August 5, 2018
South Africa Vows to End Corruption. Are Its New Leaders Part of the 
Problem?

By Norimitsu Onishi and Selam Gebrekidan

MIDDELPLAAS, South Africa — The little girl hated going to the bathroom 
at school. The pit toilets were so dark, dirty and crumbling. Many 
children were so afraid of them that they simply relieved themselves in 
the schoolyard to avoid the ordeal.


But as she played with her best friend during recess, the girl, Ziyanda 
Nkosi, a 6-year-old first grader, really had to go. She stepped warily 
inside the closet-like latrine.


Even with the gentle pressure of her tiny frame, the floor caved in. 
Ziyanda flailed wildly, clinging to the edges of the hole, frantically 
trying to keep herself from falling in and drowning in the fetid pool below.


“Mommy! Mommy!” she screamed, managing to hold on long enough for an 
older boy to run in and save her.


Hundreds of parents, enraged that their warnings about the dilapidated 
school had been ignored for years, burst into protest a couple of days 
later, upending their quiet rural town for two weeks last August. They 
burned tires, blocked roads and demanded justice from the provincial 
government led by David Mabuza, a former math teacher who had become one 
of the most powerful figures in the African National Congress and was 
positioning himself to become South Africa’s deputy president.


One of the party’s historic promises had been to provide a good 
education for black people, who had been deliberately denied the 
opportunity under apartheid. A.N.C. leaders like Nelson Mandela often 
spoke about freeing black South Africans through school, and Mr. Mabuza, 
whose first big post in the province was education minister, got his 
political start by promising just that.


But under the A.N.C., the education system has been in shambles, so 
gutted by corruption that even party officials are dismayed at how 
little students are learning, in schools so decrepit that children have 
plunged to their deaths in pit toilets.


The rage in Ziyanda’s town grew so intense that protesters hurled stones 
at a local A.N.C. leader, who narrowly escaped by whipping out his 
handgun and shooting randomly into the crowd, wounding two children and 
roiling the community all the more.


Mr. Mabuza never came to the school or met with the parents — and for 
good reason, local officials contend. The dangerous conditions were a 
clear reflection of his control over the province, where millions of 
dollars for education have disappeared into a vortex of suspicious 
spending, shoddy public construction and brazen corruption to fuel his 
political ambitions, according to government records and officials in 
his party.


But the uprising and allegations against Mr. Mabuza did not crimp his 
political rise. To the contrary, only a few months later, as the A.N.C. 
tried to quash national outrage over misrule by its leaders, Mr. Mabuza 
scored his biggest triumph by far. He was picked to become 
second-in-command of the entire A.N.C., launching him into an even more 
prominent post — as South Africa’s deputy president, second only to the 
nation’s leader.


Mr. Mabuza may seem an odd choice, especially at a time when the A.N.C. 
is desperate to purge its reputation for graft and restore its image as 
the rightful heir to Mr. Mandela’s legacy. After all, Mr. Mabuza’s rural 
province, Mpumalanga, is fairly small, has little economic clout and is 
widely regarded as one of the country’s most corrupt.


But that is the vexing secret behind Mr. Mabuza’s spectacular climb, 
current and former A.N.C. officials say: He siphoned off money from 
schools and other public services to buy loyalty and amass enormous 
power, making him impossible to ignore on the national stage and putting 
him in position to shape South Africa for years to come.


“He didn’t become what he is now because of his political capability,” 
said Fish Mahlalela, a senior A.N.C. figure in the province and a 
national lawmaker.


“No, no, it was out of money and the manipulation,” he added. “Nothing 
else.”


Perhaps more than any other member of South Africa’s new government, Mr. 
Mabuza undercuts the promise of a “new dawn” in the country after the 
removal of President Jacob Zuma this year.


Besieged by 

Re: [Marxism] The Sixties: The Political and the Personal

[Mike Sola via Marxism]

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will do. I'll look at other corrections.
--

--

Michael Sola
38 High St.
Florence, MA  01062

413.588.4523

On 8/5/2018 10:26 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

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On 8/5/18 9:45 AM, Ron Jacobs via Marxism wrote:


http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-sixties-political-and-personal.html



I should try to find time to read "The Global Imagination of 1968: Revolution and 
Counterrevolution" by George Katsiaficas that Ron has reviewed.


He is a very sharp thinker. When I was writing a series of posts on the black bloc, I relied 
heavily on his "The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the 
Decolonization of Everyday Life", especially for observations like this:


The black leather jackets worn by many people at demonstrations and the black flags carried by 
worn by many people at demonstrations and the black flags carried by others signalled less an 
ideological anarchism than a style of dress and behavior — symbols of a way of life which made 
contempt for the established institutions and their U.S. “protectors” into a virtue on an equal 
footing with disdain for the “socialist” governments in Eastern Europe. Black became the color of 
the political void — of the withdrawal of allegiance to parties, governments and nations.

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[Marxism] Right wing austerity comes to Ontario

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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by John Clarke, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

After fifteen years of Liberal Governments in Ontario, the Conservatives
are back in power. The Liberal Party, ever the political chameleon,
delivered a brand of austerity by stealth in progressive packaging. Now,
however, the newly enthroned Tories will dispense with such pretensions and
intensify the attack dramatically.

In March of this year, the Ontario Tories, still in opposition, went
through a leadership race that saw the Party Establishment lose out to
maverick right wing populist, Doug Ford. Ford is a Toronto multimillionaire
and former City Councillor whose deceased brother, Rob, made international
headlines for his extraordinary behaviour while Mayor of the City.
Comparisons abounded between Doug Ford and Donald Trump by no means without
justification. Both are bigoted right wing rich men who make entirely
groundless claims to speak for ordinary people. Both are attack dogs for
the most ruthless and reckless elements within the ruling class. Outside of
the suburban Toronto district he lives in and a quirky support base in the
Tory Party, however, Ford’s populist following is probably less significant
than that of Trump.

*June Election Campaign*
As the campaign for the June 7 Ontario Election unfolded, it was abundantly
clear that the Liberals were a spent force. That they would be decimated
was a foregone conclusion. The social democratic New Democratic Party
(NDP), starting in third place, had consistently failed to offer a
political alternative clearly to the left of the Liberals. No Corbyn like
move to the left or rejuvenation of the Party base had occurred.
Nonetheless, with the Liberals in trouble and a right wing Tory Party
moving towards victory, the NDP leadership made a political calculation to
move left. Several candidates with serious social activist backgrounds set
a different stamp on the campaign. It was too little too late but the NDP
doubled its number of seats in the Legislature and had the Ford Tories
worried for a period. The Liberals were obliterated and reduced to a mere
six seats that fail to qualify them for official party status. Ford won
with a campaign that offered few details of his intentions and set of stock
phrases drawn from the populist song book."

*Read entire article:*
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/08/05/right-wing-austerity-comes-to-ontario/


-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] The apocalyptic tone of heatwave-reporting doesn’t go far enough – not when the issue is human extinction | The Independent

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Richard Seymour

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/heatwave-weather-report-human-extinction-issue-a8478271.html
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Re: [Marxism] The Sixties: The Political and the Personal

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 8/5/18 9:45 AM, Ron Jacobs via Marxism wrote:


http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-sixties-political-and-personal.html



I should try to find time to read "The Global Imagination of 1968: 
Revolution and Counterrevolution" by George Katsiaficas that Ron has 
reviewed.


He is a very sharp thinker. When I was writing a series of posts on the 
black bloc, I relied heavily on his "The Subversion of Politics: 
European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday 
Life", especially for observations like this:


The black leather jackets worn by many people at demonstrations and the 
black flags carried by worn by many people at demonstrations and the 
black flags carried by others signalled less an ideological anarchism 
than a style of dress and behavior — symbols of a way of life which made 
contempt for the established institutions and their U.S. “protectors” 
into a virtue on an equal footing with disdain for the “socialist” 
governments in Eastern Europe. Black became the color of the political 
void — of the withdrawal of allegiance to parties, governments and nations.

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[Marxism] The Sixties: The Political and the Personal

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-sixties-political-and-personal.html

-- 
Check out my newest books *Still Tripping in the Dark

*,* Capitalism
,
and Daydream Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s
 *
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[Marxism] Piling up: Drowning in a sea of plastic - CBS News

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/piling-up-drowning-in-a-sea-of-plastic/
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Re: [Marxism] Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama | Cornel West | Opinion | The Guardian

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

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It was good to read Cornel West;s piece but SAD to think that it could not
find a home in a US - based media outlet.I hope this will get wide
circulation.

My slight disagreement is with the idea that Obama had a serious character
flaw that led him to align with the neo-liberals and protect the banksters
(Bill Black's term) and war criminals from accountability.

I actually think Obama was (in his heart) supportive of attempts to
repudiate neo-liberalism.   Check out the first ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE
PRESIDENT issued by Obama's Council of Economic Advisers --- aside from not
promised to punish the banksters, the ANALYSIS of the cause of the
financial crisis and the emphasis on the increase in inequality was really
good.

Regardless of what Obama WANTED to do, West is absolutely correct in
identifying what he ACTUALLY did --- which in fact did pave the way for
Trump.

In Chapter 18 of Howard Sherman's and my principles text, we try to show
that the failure of the Obama Administration (trying to appease "deficit
hawks" in Congress) to push through a strong enough stimulus (a FAILURE to
be "good Keynesians") along with a failure to keep the coalition that
elected him mobilized for future political struggle led to a FAILED
recovery strategy that though it did not stop Obama's re-election gave aid
and comfort to the Tea Party and ultimately to Trump ...

Seriously missed opportunity --- and Obama bears the lion's share of the
blame 

(arguing that the Republicans were worse because of their total opposition
doesn't work -- Obama could have beaten them during the first two years of
his PResidency had he been bolder and stronger and kept his coalition
mobilized)

So sad!!!
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Re: [Marxism] Syria: Towards the Final Battle in Idlib

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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1. On HTS:

It does appear that relations between Turkey and HTS are currently hostile, 
despite the fact that Turkish troops were accompanied by HTS forces when they 
first entered Idlib province.

When SDF spokespeople said that "Jabhat al-Nusra" members participated in the 
invasion of Afrin, I assumed they were referring to HTS. But perhaps they were 
referring to former Nusra members recruited into Turkey's proxy forces.

In my most recent message I did not say that HTS is a Turkish proxy. I referred 
to Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham as proxy forces

I did however describe HTS as reactionary and hostile to the democratic goals 
of the 2011 revolution.


2. On speculation about a deal between the SDF and Assad:

I don't know what has been discussed between the SDF and the Assad regime.  But 
it seems to me that the SDF would only agree to military cooperation if it 
included action against the Turkish occupation of Afrin.

This would imply the breakdown of relations between the Assad regime and Turkey 
- in other words, the end of the Astana agreement.

This has not happened up to now.  It is a hypothetical possibility that the SDF 
might perhaps be exploring.

While unlikely, I would not rule it out completely.  Assad is probably not 
entirely happy with Turkey's occupation of a significant amount of Syrian 
territory.  If it appears that Erdogan wants to continue the occupation 
indefinitely, Assad might try to use support for the SDF as a pressure tactic 
to get him to withdraw.

Chris Slee


From: Marxism  on behalf of RKOB via 
Marxism 
Sent: Sunday, 5 August 2018 3:36:28 PM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Syria: Towards the Final Battle in Idlib

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Chris Slee criticized our article on the looming Assadist onslaught
against Idlib
(https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/syria-towards-the-final-battle-in-idlib/)

In reply I would like to say the following:

Chris Slee writes: “Michael Probsting describes Idlib as "the last
remainng liberated area". But the Turkish army has bases in Idlib, and
much of the province is controlled by groups which are Turkish proxies.”

To be precise, the Turkish army has 12 “observations positions” at the
demarcation line between the rebels and the Assadist/Russian/Iranian
forces. Yes, as we have explained in past articles, Turkey tries to get
influence over the region and instrumentalizes the Astana factions for
this purpose (see e.g.
https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/the-turkish-russian-invasion-against-idlib-has-begun/)

But if Turkey would really control Idlib, there would be much less
problems for Putin, Rouhani, and Erdoğan and they could implement their
Astana agreements in Idlib without major complications (as they have
just done in Deraa in the Southwest).

Chris Slee has always claimed that HTS is a proxy of Turkey. This has
been the propaganda line of the YPG/SDF – the servants of US
imperialism. We have always denied this and provided numerous facts for
this (see e.g.
https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/turkey-s-hidden-war-against-hts-in-idlib/)

I have no intention to repeat all what has been written. But it seems
particular silly to me that Chris Slee keeps this slander even now
instead of admitting that he was completely wrong! (I remember well how
Chris Slee even tried to defend the hilarious accusation of YPG/SDF that
the HTS would have joined Turkey’s attack on Afrin!) The whole world –
outside of the YPG/SDF bunker – reports about the demands of Damascus,
Moscow and Teheran on Erdoğan to clamp down on the HTS and their allies.
How can Chris Slee explain all those efforts of Turkey to unite the
various FSA factions against HTS? If all factions in Idlib would be
Turkish proxies it should be very simply for Ankara to unite them.
Obviously this is not the case!

Even our enemies are forced to accept this. Look what the Assadists are
saying themselves! Al-Watan, a regime paper, wrote yesterday:

“/Militants from Al-Nusra Front have rejected Turkey’s demand for
dissolution of the terrorist group’s units in Idlib province in Syria’s
northwest, according to the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan./

/The developments came after Ankara demanded that al-Nusra Front
militants join the so-called “Northern Syrian Army,” which 

[Marxism] Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama | Cornel West | Opinion | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-obama-legacy-presidency
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[Marxism] What Russia Understands about Trump | by Michael Weiss | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/08/02/what-russia-understands-about-trump/
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[Marxism] Donald Trump vs. Charles Koch Is a Custody Battle Over Congress | The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-vs-koch-is-a-custody-battle-over-congress
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[Marxism] China is Treating Africa The Same Way European Colonists Did

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/08/04/china-is-treating-africa-the-same-way-european-colonists-did/
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[Marxism] Q. and A.: Arrested and Jailed. For Voting. - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/us/arrested-jailed-for-voting-and-harvard-admissions-secrets.html
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[Marxism] Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Aug. 2, 2018
Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.
By Jack Healy

GRAHAM, N.C. — Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from 
dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for 
running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back 
with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest.


As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and 
taken to jail.


His crime: Illegal voting.

“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before 
his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.”


Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North 
Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016 
presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony 
convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies 
a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.


While election experts and public officials across the country say there 
is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, local prosecutors and state 
officials in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and other states have 
sought to send a tough message by filing criminal charges against the 
tiny fraction of people who are caught voting illegally.


“That’s the law,” said Pat Nadolski, the Republican district attorney in 
Alamance County. “You can’t do it. If we have clear cases, we’re going 
to prosecute.”


The cases are rare compared with the tens of millions of votes cast in 
state and national elections. In 2017, at least 11 people nationwide 
were convicted of illegal voting because they were felons or 
noncitizens, according to a database of voting prosecutions compiled by 
the conservative Heritage Foundation. Others have been convicted of 
voting twice, filing false registrations or casting a ballot for a 
family member.


The case against the 12 voters in Alamance County — a patchwork of small 
towns about an hour west of the state’s booming Research Triangle — is 
unusual for the sheer number of people charged at once. And because nine 
of the defendants are black, the case has touched a nerve in a state 
with a history of suppressing African-American votes.


Local civil-rights groups and black leaders have urged the district 
attorney to drop the prosecution, saying that black voters were being 
disproportionately punished for an unwitting mistake. African-Americans 
in North Carolina are more likely to be disqualified from voting because 
of felony convictions; their rate of incarceration is more than four 
times that of white residents, according to the Prison Policy 
Initiative, a nonprofit organization.


“It smacks of Jim Crow,” said Barrett Brown, the head of the Alamance 
County N.A.A.C.P. Referring to the district attorney, he added, “I don’t 
think he targeted black people. But if you cast that net, you’re going 
to catch more African-Americans.”


Mr. Nadolski said that race and ethnicity are not a factor in any case 
he prosecutes.


The prosecution comes even as several states are reconsidering 
longstanding laws that strip voting rights from an estimated 6 million 
Americans who have been convicted of felonies. A growing national 
movement is encouraging former felons to register to vote, or to push to 
have their rights restored, with the hope of empowering them and 
shedding the stigma of criminal convictions.


The North Carolina case also has become part of a partisan war over 
voting rights ahead of this November’s midterm elections. At a rally on 
Tuesday, President Trump — who has made baseless claims that millions of 
people voted illegally in 2016 — renewed his calls for laws requiring 
voters to show photo identification. He said, incorrectly, that shoppers 
need to show identification to buy groceries, while people voting for 
president and senator do not.


When asked Wednesday about the president’s comments, Sarah Huckabee 
Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Trump “wants to 
see the integrity of our elections system upheld.”


In separate interviews, five of the defendants in Alamance County said 
their votes were an unwitting mistake — a product of not understanding 
the voter forms they signed and not knowing the law.


They said they believed they were allowed to vote because election 
workers let them fill out voter registration and eligibility forms, then 
handed them ballots. They said they never would have voted if anyone had 
told them they were ineligible.


The case began after North Carolina elections officials ran an audit 
that found 441 felons 

Re: [Marxism] The World Abetted Assad’s Victory in Syria

[mkaradjis via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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Well, most of that quote is correct, and would answer the question:
"Russia also offered arms early on, and intervened directly with its
air force in 2015, when Assad looked vulnerable. This is what
ultimately turned the tide, allowing Assad to retake key regions from
the rebels."
But the "... and ISIS" bit? Actually on that bit the author mixes up
Russia and the US.

On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism
 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.
> *
>
> On 8/4/18 8:00 PM, Dennis Brasky via Marxism wrote:
>>
>>
>>   At one point, his defeat seemed imminent. Now he presides over a ruined
>> country. How did this happen?
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/assad-victory-syria/566522/
>
>
> Well, embedded deep in the article is this: "Russia also offered arms early
> on, and intervened directly with its air force in 2015, when Assad looked
> vulnerable. This is what ultimately turned the tide, allowing Assad to
> retake key regions from the rebels and ISIS."
>
> You could throw away the rest of the article and still have the question
> "how did this happen" answered.
>
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