[Marxism] G20: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin agree to Syrian-led transition

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/g20-barack-obama-and-vladimir-putin-agree-to-syrian-led-transition

The United States and Russia have reached consensus at the G20 on the need for 
“a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition” following a sidelines 
meeting between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
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[Marxism] The Aftermath of Friday: for a Left Politics against Islamism.

[andrew coates via Marxism]

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To watch, to listen, as the slaughters in
 Paris unfolded, to read and to think, as they sank in, was to be 
overcome by sadness and fellow-feeling. As witnesses told their stories,
 still shaking, the dignity of the survivors stood out. Fluctuat nec mergitur! 
Paris is shaken but has not sunk.

These are moments of high emotions. Love,
 solidarity, loathing and compassion. For yesterday reason was, rightly,
 the slave of the passions. Today and tomorrow we have to cast a colder 
light on what has happened and what should happen.

That ISIS, the Islamic State, Daesh, was 
prepared to murder is not news. Their killings in Iraq, in Syria, in 
Africa, and now in Beirut – scene of a tragedy shortly before Friday, 
and Paris, are present in the minds of millions. ISIS joins, as Hannah 
Arendt described totalitarian parties, these “secret societies 
established in broad daylight’.” (1) Modern media have made that 
daylight darker.
https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/the-aftermath-of-friday-for-a-left-politics-against-islamism/


Andrew Coates 
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[Marxism] Shove Your Free Speech in Their Face

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/16/shove-your-free-speech-in-their-face/
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[Marxism] Statement by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria Regarding the Paris Attacks

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

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Statement by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria Regarding the 
Paris Attacks


https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/statement-by-the-local-coordination-committees-in-syria-regarding-the-paris-attacks/

The LCC condemns the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, which led to 
many casualties among innocent civilians. We assure the general public 
that the Syrian people are completely aware of the catastrophic 
consequences of barbaric violence. We have been subjected to 
comprehensive terror by Assad’s regime and his partners in crimes 
against humanity, including ISIS. We have been warning, since the 
beginning of the revolution for freedom, dignity, and democracy, that 
the Assad regime would export violence in an attempt to distract 
attention from his crimes inside Syria. Today, while we are overwhelmed 
with sorrow and the daily victims, as well as the destruction we 
witness, we offer our condolences to the families and loved ones of the 
victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, and share their pain. We 
continue to work through peaceful methods to overcome dictatorship in 
all its forms.
We hope the consequences of the tragic events will not have a negative 
impact on Syrian refugees, who fled their home because of the terrorism 
perpetrated by the Assad regime and ISIS. We stress as well the 
importance of the need to support the Syrian people, both inside the 
country and abroad, in order to help us achieve our right to be 
liberated from tyranny and terrorism. Acceptance of Assad remaining in 
power after his crimes against humanity will not help in the fight 
against terrorism; on the contrary, it maintains the source of 
terrorism.
No act of terror, no matter how extreme, will derail our objectives to 
achieve freedom, democracy, and dignity for all.
May hope and humanity replace fear and prejudice. May all victims of 
terrorism rest in peace. And let us endeavour, together, to achieve 
justice.
The Local Coordination Committees in Syria 


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[Marxism] Fwd: Entanglement: A Milestone for Quantum Mechanics | JSTOR Daily

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A Dutch research team has proven a long believed aspect of quantum 
mechanics, namely that two particles can influence each other even 
across great distances. Quantum mechanics seeks to explain the universe 
and matter through the actions of subatomic particles or units of energy 
(quanta). The ways these particles influence each other are foundational 
to the field. The long-distance influence of one particle on another was 
dubbed “spooky interaction at a distance” by none other than Einstein 
himself. Einstein did not believe in long distance interaction, but the 
new research suggests that this is one area where the world’s best-known 
physicist was wrong.


http://daily.jstor.org/entanglement-milestone-quantum-mechanics/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Breaking the Taboos: In the Wake of Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots - In These Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Zizek, the Lacanian Donald Trump...)

Taking control of the refugee crisis will mean breaking leftist taboos.
For instance, the right to “free movement” should be limited, if for no 
other reason then the fact that it doesn’t exist among the refugees, 
whose freedom of movement is already dependent on their class. Thus, the 
criteria of acceptance and settlement have to be formulated in a clear 
and explicit way—whom and how many to accept, where to relocate them, 
etc. The art here is to find the middle road between following the 
desires of the refugees (taking into account their wish to move to 
countries where they already have relatives, etc.) and the capacities of 
different countries.


http://inthesetimes.com/article/18605/breaking-the-taboos-in-the-wake-of-paris-attacks-the-left-must-embrace-its
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[Marxism] The Imperial Left's sarin song: still "Regime Change" after all these years!

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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New from Linux Beach:


 The Imperial Left's sarin song: still "Regime Change" after all
 these years!
 


More than two years ago we saw the reintroduction of mass poisoning 
into the class struggle on a massive scale when more than 1,400 people 
were killed by a sarin attack in and around the Damascus suburbs of 
East Ghouta. It had been one of the great victories of the progressive 
movements of the last century that a ban against such weapons was put 
in place after what they then called /"The Great War,"/ showed the 
world the true horror of these weapons. Before this war, they were 
gaining favor as a means of putting down insurrections while 
minimizing damage to capitalist property. The outcry against them 
after the war put an end to that and put in place a prohibition 
against their use that has largely held up for the better part of a 
century. It hadn't been used on such a massive scale in a 
quarter-century before its use against the Syrian uprising. That 
earlier use was in 1988 when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used sarin 
against the Iranians and the Kurds. Washington gave him a green light 
for those attacks. The US even provided targeting intelligence 
 
knowing sarin would be used. They would only become /"troubled"/ by 
his possession of chemical weapons 15 years later, when he didn't have 
any.
*More...* 




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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Entanglement: A Milestone for Quantum Mechanics | JSTOR Daily

[Jeff via Marxism]

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This article by a non-physicist is misleading, and in several respects 
outright wrong.



A Dutch research team has proven a long believed aspect of quantum
mechanics, namely that two particles can influence each other even
across great distances.


What is commonly called "entanglement" is not in dispute, but this is 
just one interpretation. If you had asked me, I would have limited 
myself to saying that the states of the two particles are "highly 
correlated." Most physicists do not literally believe that one entangled 
particle can actually "influence" another one at a distance. In 
particular, the resulting conclusion from that interpretation, that 
information can thereby be transmitted faster than the speed of light, 
is absolutely excluded by relativity theory. Which is why:



The long-distance influence of
one particle on another was dubbed “spooky interaction at a distance”
by none other than Einstein himself. Einstein did not believe in long
distance interaction, but the new research suggests that this is one
area where the world’s best-known physicist was wrong.


No, he wasn't wrong about that at all. Einstein did make a few mistakes 
during his life but mostly corrected them. The problem here is that 
quantum mechanics is not clearly understandable in a philosophical sense 
by any person, so there are (and long have been) different 
"interpretations" of its meaning, which reflects that difficulty. 
However the actual results of most experiments addressed by quantum 
mechanics are not in dispute, only philosophical ideas about what the 
correct predictions of the theory "mean." In other words a problem in 
human contemplation, not the equations which correctly describe every 
experiment.


Also, I think he is wrong where he says:

For one thing, entanglement can be induced in multiple particles
at once—not just two—creating entire networks that
can be connected instantly.


In fact I believe one of the very features of entanglement as applied to 
quantum cryptography is that only two particles are involved which 
removes the possibility of "snooping" on a communications, since you 
cannot copy the information, and if you intercepted it then the intended 
recipient would never get it (unlike the NSA reading your email but it 
still getting to your friend). And quantum teleportation (which I see 
there is a decent article about on Wikipedia) is a real thing but 
absolutely can NOT exceed the speed of light. Nothing happens 
"instantly."


But thanks anyway for spicing up the list with a physics topic. My next 
post happens to refer to an actual physicist writing in his own field.


- Jeff





http://daily.jstor.org/entanglement-milestone-quantum-mechanics/





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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Entanglement: A Milestone for Quantum Mechanics | JSTOR Daily

[Les Schaffer via Marxism]

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This is old news, the current experiment (cleverly) dotting the i and crossing 
the t of earlier tests of entanglement. It gets better, however: 

The quantum source of space-time 

Many physicists believe that entanglement is the essence of quantum weirdness — 
and some now suspect that it may also be the essence of space-time geometry

http://www.nature.com/news/the-quantum-source-of-space-time-1.18797


Les


> On Nov 16, 2015, at 10:10 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> A Dutch research team has proven a long believed aspect of quantum mechanics, 
> namely that two particles can influence each other even across great 
> distances. 
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[Marxism] 100 year aniversary of General Relativity

[Jeff via Marxism]

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2015 happens to be the 100th anniversary of Einstein's general theory of 
relativity, one of the most revolutionary physics advances of the 
century and the first advance in understanding gravitation since Isaac 
Newton's work two centuries earlier. On the occasion we had a speaker in 
the field (Pedro G. Ferreira, Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford 
University) who I would like to plug: he has written a popular book (you 
don't have to be a physicist to follow it) including both history of 
science and experimental/observational attempts at verification of the 
theory. His talk to physicists here was probably not much more technical 
than I expect his popular book is, which is why most of the people in 
the room weren't totally lost (general relativity being a very difficult 
and specialized study within physics). I found his presentation of the 
history of the last 100 years very interesting as well as his discussion 
of experimental challenges.


Here is the plug for his book on his website:
   
http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~pgf/Pedro_Ferreira/The_Perfect_Theory.html


I haven't seen the book but from what I gathered from hearing his talk, 
I believe it is probably worth reading by non-physicists (OR by 
physicists!) who have an interest in physics or history of science. A 
short excerpt from his book was published by Salon which you can judge 
by:


http://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/einstein_the_failure_how_historys_greatest_physicist_flirted_with_disaster

- Jeff



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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Understanding the rise of ISIS | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Mike Sola via Marxism]

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Louis,

"mujahideen, which is the Arabic word for “any person performing Jihad.”

fyi, "mujahideen" is a plural. "Mujahid" singular. Not "anyone," more correctly 
"someone."

--

Michael Sola

On 11/16/2015 3:34 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

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After George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the left followed the war with keen interest hoping against 
hope that the American military would be sent packing in the same fashion as Vietnam thirty years 
earlier. Even though there was little evidence of socialist ideology among the Sunni or the Shiite 
militias who fought the Americans more sporadically, the consensus was that they deserved our 
support.


Like some of the key battles in Vietnam such as the Tet Offensive of 1968, the battle for Fallujah 
became a turning point in the war. Writing for CounterPunch on November 13, 2004 Mike Whitney 
professed his admiration for the “mujahideen” quoting a Pepe Escobar article to the same effect. 
Both men were ready to hoist the fighters on their shoulders and Whitney went so far as to regard 
them as students of Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara:


"Former or retired Iraqi army officials have always been serious students of Viet Minh tactics and 
Che Guevara’s theory of the guerrilla foco (center of guerrilla operations). Now they are applying 
this to urban warfare."


Now, 11 years later, very few people would take up the cause of mujahideen, which is the Arabic 
word for “any person performing Jihad”. Even less so if the men carrying it out were retired Iraqi 
army officers who appear to be exactly those who are running ISIS’s military operations today. 
Apparently, when an armed struggle is being waged against Washington, it makes little difference 
if the ideology is Salafist or Marxist but when Bashar al-Assad is targeted, all bets are off. 
Ipso facto, shooting at Baathist soldiers makes you a fascist.


full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/11/16/understanding-the-rise-of-isis/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Understanding the rise of ISIS | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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After George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the left followed the war with keen 
interest hoping against hope that the American military would be sent 
packing in the same fashion as Vietnam thirty years earlier. Even though 
there was little evidence of socialist ideology among the Sunni or the 
Shiite militias who fought the Americans more sporadically, the 
consensus was that they deserved our support.


Like some of the key battles in Vietnam such as the Tet Offensive of 
1968, the battle for Fallujah became a turning point in the war. Writing 
for CounterPunch on November 13, 2004 Mike Whitney professed his 
admiration for the “mujahideen” quoting a Pepe Escobar article to the 
same effect. Both men were ready to hoist the fighters on their 
shoulders and Whitney went so far as to regard them as students of Ho 
Chi Minh and Che Guevara:


"Former or retired Iraqi army officials have always been serious 
students of Viet Minh tactics and Che Guevara’s theory of the guerrilla 
foco (center of guerrilla operations). Now they are applying this to 
urban warfare."


Now, 11 years later, very few people would take up the cause of 
mujahideen, which is the Arabic word for “any person performing Jihad”. 
Even less so if the men carrying it out were retired Iraqi army officers 
who appear to be exactly those who are running ISIS’s military 
operations today. Apparently, when an armed struggle is being waged 
against Washington, it makes little difference if the ideology is 
Salafist or Marxist but when Bashar al-Assad is targeted, all bets are 
off. Ipso facto, shooting at Baathist soldiers makes you a fascist.


full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/11/16/understanding-the-rise-of-isis/
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[Marxism] Video: How to Teach Marxism? Glad You Asked!

[Left Forum Videos via Marxism]

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From Left Forum 2015.

Liz Mestres, Chair — Co-Founder/Former Director of New York Marxist
 School/Brecht Forum;
Richard D. Wolff — Prof. Emer. Economics, University of Amherst;
   Currently visiting Prof. at New School University, NYC;
Bertell Ollman — Prof in the Dept. of Politics at New York University;
August Nimtz — University of Minnesota

https://youtu.be/UMbw0d-ebo0
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[Marxism] PFLP on Paris and Beirut bombings/killings

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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On Paris:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/palestinian-leader-paris-bombings-responsibility-of-imperialism-colonialism-and-reactionary-forces/

On Beirut:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/pflp-condemns-bombings-of-civilians-in-beirut/
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[Marxism] Qui profite? Who benefits from the Paris attacks?

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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New from Linux Beach:


 Qui profite? Who benefits from the Paris attacks?
 



From Wikipedia :

/*Cui bono*/ (/kwiː ˈboʊnoʊ/
), literally
"to whose profit?", is a Latin
 phrase which is still in
use^[1]  as a
key forensic question in legal and police investigation: finding
out who has a motive for a crime.

Cui bono, or Qui profite in French, is also a good starting point for 
understanding Friday's terror attack in Paris that took 129 lives and 
injured hundreds more. It is the most recent of a string of attacks 
claimed by Daesh that include 40 killed in twin Beirut bombings and 
the downing of a Russian passenger jet.


The avowed purpose of Daesh is to build an Islamic State or caliphate 
from the territories of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. These bold 
attacks, especially in the west, do a lot to build the groups 
notoriety which, paradoxically, helps its recruitment among young 
disaffected Muslims. That would appear to be the most significant, if 
not the only, benefit the group can expect from these attacks. It will 
have enhanced its reputation as an enemy of the West. But it is also a 
mixed bag for Daesh because these terrorist acts will mean the 
military attacks on its base and support for those fighting it in 
Syria and Iraq will be greatly intensified. Daesh may well have 
overreached itself here as there may be a backlash it can't handle. 
Perhaps they think all out war with the West is the best way to build 
their caliphate. If they do, I think they are wrong.


Whatever their motivation, ISIS has taken credit for the attack, so 
there would seem to be no need to look further for a culprit. At the 
same time, I think we would be well served to remember that not 
everything is as it first appears, particularly in the Middle East.


This morning both former CIA deputy director *Micheal Morrell*, 
representing US imperialism on *CBS This Morning* 
 
and *Vijay Prashad*, representing the Imperial Left on *Democracy Now* 
, 
used the Paris attacks to argue that the US should support and work 
with the Assad regime to defeat Daesh. This is also an argument being 
advanced by the Russians and Assad himself.


*More...* 




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[Marxism] Letter from Paris - France's 'war on terror' and the backlash

[John Passant via Marxism]

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Letter from Paris - France's 'war on terror' and the backlash

Nick Riemer in France writes about the terrorist attacks and the ruling 
class's warmongering response in Australian socialist magazine 
Solidarity. Among other things he says:


'The opportunism of France’s political leadership will be paid for in 
more tragic and avoidable blood-baths, whether in France or in Raqqa. As 
a worshipper at a northern Paris mosque told Libération, “If we consider 
ourselves as at war, then the terrorists will have won their battle”. 
The three mainstream parties have no interest in that lesson: ordinary 
people’s interests do not figure in their calculations. A new French war 
on terror won’t bring peace; it will only reinforce the power of the 
political establishment.


'Everyone else’s interests can only be safeguarded by a progressive and 
democratic movement from below. The radical, anti-capitalist left has a 
heavy responsibility, both in France and outside it.'


To read the whole article click here. 
http://enpassant.com.au/2015/11/16/letter-from-paris-frances-war-on-terror-and-the-backlash/


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