[Marxism] The Korean crisis

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Here in Oz there is growing interest in the situation in Korea. Channel 9
though did give us the following

The new consensus is "that this problem is coming to a head. And so it's
time for us to undertake all actions we can, short of a military option, to
try to resolve this peacefully," Mr McMaster said.

It is dangerous to over interpret this remark.  But certainly there appears
to be wriggle room.  The Great Tweeter does not appear to have noticed that
but hopefully, he will be kept in a corner tweeting away and nothing more.

Why the crisis?  North Korea cannot possibly have the capacity to inflict a
nuclear strike on the States, otherwise the whole tone would be different.
This is surely an attempt to preempt the capacity to strike.

Pressure now will be very intense on the Chinese oligarchs to act like the
good business men they are and to fall in with America's wishes. But it is
all very fraught here, and the talk of hitting Australia with rockets is
making it even more so.

I was very interested to hear the Australian TV station talk about two of
the most volatile leaders in the world.  Trump was on a par with Kim.

A bit unfair that to Kim, I thought myself.

comradely

Gary
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[Marxism] assessing the Pink Tide

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article40758
originally published in Jacobin
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[Marxism] Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/upshot/evidence-that-
> robots-are-winning-the-race-for-american-jobs.html?smprod=
> nytcore-ipad=nytcore-ipad-share
>
> Researchers are surprised to see very little employment increase in other
> occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing.
>
>
>
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[Marxism] Public relations disasters

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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THE MYSTERIOUS GATHERING OF THE PUBLIC-RELATIONS FOOT-SHOOTERS
http://exclusivemedianews.com/2017/04/14/the-mysterious-gathering-of-the-public-relations-foot-shooters/

“We worked hard to ensure the ad was devoid of anything that might be mistaken 
for meaning of any kind! It’s not easy to construct something as recognizable 
as protest without suggesting that any of the sign-holding people presented in 
that tableau might be feeling remotely oppositional about anything – except 
maybe thirst!”


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[Marxism] Dilbert on the profit motive

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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I follow Dilbert on the business pages of The Globe and Mail.  Interesting that 
it would appear there.
ken h

http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-04-14

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[Marxism] Samah Selim: Translator’s Introduction to Arwa Salih’s The Stillborn | Mona Baker

[MF Kalfat via Marxism]

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http://www.monabaker.org/?p=6152

"​Arwa Salih was an Egyptian communist who came of political age in the
early 1970s; in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the end of
the Nasser era, and the beginning of Anwar Al-Sadat’s transitional regime.
She belonged to the transformative political moment instigated by the
radical student movement of that decade and the political generation known
as ‘the generation of the seventies’. She was a member of the central
committee of the Marxist-Leninist Egyptian Communist Workers Party, the
major Marxist group of the decade, and quickly acquired a reputation
amongst her mentors and comrades as a gifted and fiery young cadre. Though
she was known amongst her peers as a talented writer, her extant published
work is scant for reasons that partly have to do with the nature of the
underground political work of the times (she wrote mainly for the ECWP’s
paper) and the fact that she was a woman in a world of men. Apart from the
present short book, she published an Arabic translation of Tony Cliff’s 1984
 *Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation*. The only other published material
available to readers is a short and hastily edited selection of her papers
made in 1998, one year after her death. The volume includes an excerpt from
her memoirs, a long poem, and a study of the novelist Son’allah Ibrahim’s
fiction."
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[Marxism] universal basic income a "social vaccine" for technological displacement?

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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But it is not just working-class men in industrial jobs who are suffering.
Automation also affects jobs in other economic sectors. In fact, 38% of all
US jobs

 are at risk due to automation, including service sector work in fields
such as finance, transportation, education, and food services. Nor does is
technological displacement limited to the working class. Middle-class
workers also stand to lose jobs and wages.


At the same time, working people have become increasingly resistant to the
uncritical acceptance of workplace technology, and this contributes to the
populist backlash we’re seeing in the U.S. and across Europe. The Brexit
vote, the rise of right wing parties in Europe, and Trump’s election all
reflects people’s doubts about older economic paradigms and technological
determinism, especially in older working-class communities. Alongside
racism and xenophobia, these movements also reflect the anxieties of those
who are being left behind by economic development.


The economic displacement of the era of deindustrialization caused great
harm to working-class people and their communities. Decades later as
technological displacement threatens not only the working class but many in
the middle class as well, business and political leaders alike recognize
that it is in their interest to pay attention to the consequences of
economic change. Private and legislative initiatives around the universal
basic income may not succeed, and some are meeting clear resistance. The
European Parliament rejected

 a report urging them to “seriously consider” basic income as a response to
“the economic consequences of automation and artificial intelligence.”
Nonetheless, as political unrest grows as a result of technological change
such discussions lay the foundation for the new social policies we will
need for a future without good jobs.


https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2017/04/17/universal-basic-income-a-social-vaccine-for-technological-displacement/
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[Marxism] late 16th century England destroys its forests - coal to the rescue

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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"In [the late 1500s], ... there [began] a serious threat to [England's]
economic growth­ -- the trees on this small island nation were once again
disappear­ing. England's wool industry had become so lucrative that more
and more landowners were cutting down the native woodlands to make the
lovely green pastures that today seem so natural to the English landscape.
Also, the iron industry was gulping down huge amounts of charcoal, using up
the forests wherever the ironworks were located.

"During Elizabeth's reign, dozens of commissions were sent out by the
central government to investigate the wood shortage around the nation, and
each one confirmed the serious decline of the forests. Contemporary writers
were alarmed about this loss of England's woods, and they wrote of huge
forests that had been 'greatly decayed and spoiled.' This destruction meant
not only a fuel shortage, which in itself threatened everyone's domestic
comfort and the functioning of nearly every industry; it also meant a
shortage of the most important building material of the time. Wood was used
to construct just about everything, including homes, furniture, carts,
tools, containers, and, of course, ships. The navy considered the wood
shortage a national security threat. So laws were passed limiting the
taking of wood, and penalties for stealing wood became more severe. In
rural Essex, those caught 'hedgestealing' were to 'be whipped till they
bleed well.'

Full - http://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3313
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[Marxism] Translator's introduction to memoir of an Egyptian Marxist-feminist

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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A must read.
http://www.monabaker.org/?p=6152#_ftn1
Translator's introduction to memoir of an Egyptian Marxist-feminist
Arwa Salih. *The Stillborn: Notebooks of a Woman from the Student Movement
Generation in Egypt*
.
Trans. Samah Selim. London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, Forthcoming
2017.
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Re: [Marxism] Question

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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You can't imagine the Saudis flying a plane to drop a sarin bomb without the 
approval or knowledge of the US? They did something like that a few blocks from 
your house about 16 years ago now.

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2017 14:57:35 -0400
From: Louis Proyect 
To: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Question
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

On 4/16/17 2:46 PM, Andrew Stewart via Marxism wrote:
> 
> I have previously asked whether the Saudis could have done this without
> approval or knowledge of the Americans, which is extremely tenable given
> what we know about the links between Riyadh and other forces in the region
> besides the US. The Wikileaks cache from Podesta showed this clearly.

Done what? Sent secret agents into Khan Sheikhoun to kill a bunch of 
people to create a false flag?

I think it is more likely that the smoking man from X-Files was behind it.
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Re: [Marxism] Question

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 4/17/17 2:11 PM, Andrew Stewart via Marxism wrote:

You can't imagine the Saudis flying a plane to drop a sarin bomb
without the approval or knowledge of the US? They did something like
that a few blocks from your house about 16 years ago now.



Don't confuse the Saudi state with the 9/11 attackers. To start with, it 
was Yemenites who dominated the attack, even if they were Saudi citizens 
at the time.


For more background on this:

https://louisproyect.org/2016/05/17/was-saudi-arabia-behind-911/
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[Marxism] Shamus Cooke says stop whining about Assad on Counterpunch

[David McDonald via Marxism]

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https://davidbyrnemcdonaldiii.com/?p=638
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Re: [Marxism] Shamus Cooke says stop whining about Assad on Counterpunch

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 4/17/17 2:59 PM, David McDonald via Marxism wrote:

https://davidbyrnemcdonaldiii.com/?p=638


This was my comment about this on FB:

An incredible article from Shamus Cooke arguing that "most" of the left 
was focused on how evil Assad was. What left was he talking about? The 
people like him, Mike Whitney, John Wight et al that write for 
Counterpunch? Salon's Patrick L. Smith? The ubiquitous Vijay Prashad? 
Tariq Ali? The official British antiwar movement? ANSWER? The London 
Review of Books? Stephen F. Cohen or James Carden writing for The 
Nation? Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal in Alternet?


I think he probably means the ISO and New Politics, plus some cranks 
like me. I suppose if people like Cooke had any power, they'd have 
jailed me years ago.




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[Marxism] Fwd: SYRIA: The life and work of anarchist Omar Aziz in the Syrian revolution | The Free

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/omar-aziz-anarchism-in-syrian-revolution/
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Re: [Marxism] Shamus Cooke says stop whining about Assad on Counterpunch

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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I think Cooke misses the point that the most determined process of
demonisation was directed against the opposition to Assad.

comradely

Gary

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 5:04 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
> On 4/17/17 2:59 PM, David McDonald via Marxism wrote:
>
>> https://davidbyrnemcdonaldiii.com/?p=638
>>
>
> This was my comment about this on FB:
>
> An incredible article from Shamus Cooke arguing that "most" of the left
> was focused on how evil Assad was. What left was he talking about? The
> people like him, Mike Whitney, John Wight et al that write for
> Counterpunch? Salon's Patrick L. Smith? The ubiquitous Vijay Prashad? Tariq
> Ali? The official British antiwar movement? ANSWER? The London Review of
> Books? Stephen F. Cohen or James Carden writing for The Nation? Ben Norton
> and Max Blumenthal in Alternet?
>
> I think he probably means the ISO and New Politics, plus some cranks like
> me. I suppose if people like Cooke had any power, they'd have jailed me
> years ago.
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Going Postol: how an MIT professor ended up in Bashar al-Assad’s camp | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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Reminds me a lot of how big of a deal some of the cruder anti-imperialist
elements made about the guy from Brigham Young University who wrote a paper
suggesting that there were bombs in the Twin Towers. I don't recall his
name, but he was probably the only person with a chemical/engineering
background that supported the 9/11 conspiracy theories at the time. He
became their celebrity precisely because he was literally the only guy.

I can't say I was happy about how BYU treated him afterward -- even people
with crazy ideas should not be subject to career issues because of what
they say, in my opinion -- but I do remember the same effect: they brought
him into their fringe circle and slowly all these crank ideas got mixed in
with the aura of professional/scientific legitimacy.

Postol's decision to bring PartisanGirl into the mix is incredibly foolish.
The discussion between him and DK almost looked like a serious discussion,
especially for those of us who are not experts in this field. But
PartisanGirl is one of the Space-Lizards-Illuminati-type people and her
commentary is absurd. I think she has a lot of followers primarily because
she is good-looking. Same thing with some of the other millenial right-wing
mouthpieces.

- Amith

On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 5:58 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
>
>
> https://louisproyect.org/2017/04/17/going-postol-how-an-mit-
> professor-ended-up-in-bashar-al-assads-camp/
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[Marxism] More on Korea

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Trying to guess what is about to happen re Korea is extremely difficult of
course.  One has to factor in contingency and stupidity etc.   A former
Australian judge, Kirby, was on the radio this morning saying we should all
be worried.  I am not particularly anxious and as is the paranoid way of
the Irish that is making me anxious.

I also vividly recall being 19 years old and laughing at a CND student who
was nervous about the Cuban missile crisis. She told me the world could end
and I laughed out loud.  A long time later I learned about Vasili Arkhipov
and how he saved our collective asses.

So may be we should be worried.  I think though, and this might be a wild
and foolish  guess, that the US government has over-reached.  Could they
now be in a situation where they need China to save their face?  Are they
moving or are about to move from threatening China re currency manipulation
to begging them to do America a favor and make North Korea seem to back
down.

Pence is forced to do what Kissinger did with Nixon.  Kissinger framed
Nixon as a mad dog that he was keeping on a leash and the Vietnamese had ot
come to the party or else the leash would be taken off.

Now Pence is telling the Korean they should be worried about the new mad
dog, the Great Tweeter.

So brave as I am, I make the following pronouncements.  War will not break
out this week. China will scramble together a face saving deal for Trump.
But China will exact a p[rice and it might have to do with the South China
sea island bases. All threats to these bases will have to off the agenda.

So we will see.

comradely

Gary
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[Marxism] Fwd: Going Postol: how an MIT professor ended up in Bashar al-Assad’s camp | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://louisproyect.org/2017/04/17/going-postol-how-an-mit-professor-ended-up-in-bashar-al-assads-camp/
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