Re: [Marxism] Paul Jay's interview with Dem insider Bill Curry
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 5/4/16 6:16 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism wrote: > what he [Bill Curry] says about the permanent barriers to a third party that > have increasingly been built into the framework of our electoral system and > counting, including the prohibitive sums and the number of signatures it > takes to even gain access to the ballot in almost every state This premise of "permanent barriers to a third party" is wrong. I have gathered over 100,000 signatures for Green and other third party candidates over the last four decades. The barriers are difficult but not impossible for a left third party with a minimal core of activists. I sketched a ballot access plan for Jill Stein's Green Party campaign a year ago. For $750,000 at a dollar a signature, the Greens could get on every ballot with paid petitioners. One third of that budget would have been devoted to three states -- Georgia, Oklahoma, and North Carolina -- which had the highest petitioning requirements. Greens have won court cases in Georgia and Oklahoma since that significantly lowered the requirements. A case is pending in NC. We expect to get on in Georgia. In any case, upwards of 90% of American voters will see Jill Stein of the Green Party on their ballots. The inside path of "taking over" the Democratic Party has been tried and tried, not just by the reform Democratic clubs that Louis cited, but by labor's COPE, McGovern's new politics, Harrington's Democratic Socialists of America, Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, Dean's Democracy for American, Kucinich's Progressive Democrats of America, and many, many others, including the fusion parties in New York State over the decades: American Labor, Liberal, and Working Families. In every case, they failed. Worse, many of the reform Democrats went over the other side and became career Democratic regulars. McGovern's lieutenants like Gary Hart and Bill Clinton became leaders of the anti-worker neoliberal New Democrats. The Jackson legacy is a Congressional Black Caucus stuffed with corporate money that is almost universally in the Clinton camp. The operatives and the pols backed by the fusion parties in New York State have not only become embedded in corporate-financed Democratic politicians' organizations, many have been corrupted. Working Families Party kept backing Sheldon Silver, the fallen Speaker of the NYS Assembly (and Clinton Superdelegate), even after he was indicted for corruption. Silver was just sentenced to 12 years for selling his office for financial kickbacks and sexual favors. A top political aide to NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and former Working Families Party campaign manager, Emma Wolfe, has just been subpoenaed in a federal investigation of a scheme to skirt around New York State's campaign contribution limits. And on and on. No doubt we'll be reading in the future about Sanders activists who became careerists and corrupt in corporate Democratic organizations. Working class independence has been the first principle of socialist politics since 1848. There's no shortcut through the Democratic Party to building a mass party on the left. That "shortcut" is a dead end. Hopefully, many new activists energized by the Sanders campaign will come to the realization that road to "political revolution" for "democratic socialism" lies not inside the Democratic Party but in a left party that is opposed to and starts beating the Democrats. -- Howie Hawkins _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Donald W. Duncan, 79, Ex-Green Beret and Early Critic of Vietnam War, Is Dead
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, May 6 2016 Donald W. Duncan, 79, Ex-Green Beret and Early Critic of Vietnam War, Is Dead By ROBERT D. McFADDEN Donald W. Duncan, a Green Beret master sergeant who came home from Vietnam a disillusioned hero in 1965 and became a leading early opponent of the war, died in the obscurity of a small Midwestern town seven years ago, an all-but-forgotten soldier. He was 79. In an age of seeming information ubiquity, the news media will generally recall the lives of noteworthy people when they die. But Mr. Duncan’s death went largely unnoticed outside of Madison, Ind., the Ohio River town where he lived. His obituary in The Madison Courier said only that Mr. Duncan had once worked for a local nonprofit, which helped poor people find jobs. The crucial events of his life — the killings and brutalities of 18 months in Vietnam, the agony of conscience and conversion, and the years of antiwar struggle — had happened long ago and were not mentioned. Mr. Duncan’s daughters Valerie Casey and Luise Wilson confirmed this week that he died on March 25, 2009, at a Madison nursing home. In an America torn by protests against the war in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Duncan was often in the news, although not as prominently as the pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, the Roman Catholic priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan or the actress Jane Fonda, who was photographed laughing and applauding on an antiaircraft gun in Hanoi. (Daniel Berrigan died on April 30.) But in 1966, well before the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre stirred national discontent, Mr. Duncan was one of the first returning veterans to portray the war as a moral quagmire that had little to do with fighting the spread of Communism, as American leaders were portraying it. Sergeant Duncan, who went to war convinced it was an anti-Communist crusade, ended his Special Forces duty a changed man. A 10-year veteran, he rejected an offer of an officer’s commission and left the Army. Back home, he became a fierce critic of the war, writing articles and a memoir and speaking at rallies across the country with the singer Joan Baez, the writer Norman Mailer and the comedian Dick Gregory. In a 1966 cover article for Ramparts, a radicalized Roman Catholic political and literary journal, Mr. Duncan told of witnessing murders, torture and other atrocities by American forces in Vietnam in violation of all international laws; of refusing orders at An Khe to kill four enemy prisoners whose hands were tied behind them; and of rapes by South Vietnamese troops that were never reported, let alone punished. “The whole thing was a lie,” Mr. Duncan wrote. “We weren’t preserving freedom in South Vietnam. There was no freedom to preserve. To voice opposition to the government meant jail or death. Neutralism was forbidden and punished. Newspapers that didn’t say the right thing were closed down. People are not even free to leave, and Vietnam is one of those rare countries that doesn’t fill its American visa quota.” In 1967, Mr. Duncan joined the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., Dr. Spock, David Dellinger and other leaders of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, to plan and carry out huge protest rallies in New York, Washington, San Francisco and dozens of other cities, at which draft cards and American flags were burned and protesters clashed with the police. Mr. Duncan also testified that year at an unofficial “war crimes tribunal” organized by the philosopher Bertrand Russell in Denmark, and at a South Carolina court-martial, where he spoke in defense of Capt. Howard R. Levy, a Green Beret who had also turned against the war. Captain Levy was convicted of disobeying orders and attempting to incite disloyalty, and eventually served 26 months in prison. In 1968 Mr. Duncan, then the military editor of Ramparts, helped Mr. Dellinger, Mr. Gregory, Rennie Davis and other antiwar leaders plan protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The rallies and marches drew tens of thousands of protesters and led to hundreds of arrests and injuries, and to a circuslike trial of eight protest leaders on inciting-to-riot charges. In his Ramparts articles and a memoir, “The New Legions” (1967), Mr. Duncan detailed a military career that began in December 1954, when he was drafted by the Army in Rochester, a 24-year-old American who had been born in Canada and raised by a stepfather of Hungarian origin. “I was a militant anti-Communist,” Mr. Duncan wrote in Ramparts. “Like most Americans, I couldn’t conceive of anybody choosing communism over democracy. The
[Marxism] Socialist leadership of independent trade unions organized a 1 May march in Ukraine
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://zahist.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/the-1st-of-may-with-indepedent-trade-unions-dnepropetrovsk-ukraine/ More than 100 members of the independent trade union “ZAKHYST PRATSI” («Defense of Labour») and workers’ trade unions from different industrial plants held on a demonstration devoted to solidarity and struggle for the working class (employees) rights. Among them were regional representatives from The Southern engeneering plant, Dnipropetrovsk metallurgical plant of Petrovskiy, Dnipropetrovsk tube-rolling pl ant “Interpaip”, private research-and-production enterprise “Dnepropress” and the utility enterprise “Dneproelectrotransport”. Their demonstration had a great success. Despite big pressure, made on the organizers and the atmosphere of fear, the column of demonstrators held on the square near “Raketa” park. They marched along the city streets towards the city and the regional administrations where meetings took place. The participants of the action had trade union, national, red and black flags in their hands. In not a standard form they left a big resolution, which had the length 3 on 3 meters. During the march, the activists advanced different slogans, such as: “Oligarchs must be removed from power”, “More rights for workers to improve our life”, “Where our salary”, “No to the slavery labour codex”, “Yes to workers struggle, no – to capitalism”, “Gang must go away from Verchovna Rada”, “Freedom for working class” and other. Among the representatives several people made speeches. Alexei Simvolkov, Andrii Ishchenko, Igor Parhomenko, Andrii But and Eugene Derkach in their emochional speeches steered the masses to make more active protests against the slavery labour codex which oligarchy wanted to adopt in parliament in its interests, to continue working struggle and solidarity among the working class. They also proposed to expand the work of the independent trade unions. As the result of the 1st of May in Dnepropetrovsk we can make a conclusion that actions of independent trade unions and anti-oligarh protests unite people with different views. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Composer Frederic Rzewski: In His Notes, Protest and Politics
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, May 6 2016 The Composer Frederic Rzewski: In His Notes, Protest and Politics By ZACHARY WOOLFE It sounds like the setup for a joke: An eminent composer and pianist walks into a fish market and starts to play a Chilean protest anthem. But there it is on YouTube: a 2015 video of Frederic Rzewski pounding out his 1975 masterpiece, an hourlong fantasia on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated,” on an upright piano at Wholey’s, a Pittsburgh institution. “Well, it’s kind of strange,” Mr. Rzewski (pronounced ZHEV-ski) recently recalled thinking of the invitation from the market, where his son works as a cashier. “But why not?” From fish market to floating concert hall: On Friday, Ursula Oppens, who gave the premiere of “The People United,” will play it at the cozy Bargemusic, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, as part of a rare New York visit by Mr. Rzewski and a weekend-long immersion in his work, which is both rigorous and eclectic. And, crucially, political. Mr. Rzewski, who at 78 is flinty and opinionated yet warm, is one of many great American composers whom a vast majority of America has never heard, or even heard of. But of that group, he may be the one with the most to say to us now. He has, for decades, been making thought-provoking, heart-wrenching music about issues that dominate the headlines today: the perils of incarceration, the tension between the government and the governed, the struggle for gay rights, the decimation of the industrial working class. He may be particularly valuable at a moment when the political discourse produces only an unending, almost unlistenable, screech. Passionate but not strident, unsparing yet subtle, his work offers something increasingly rare: a space to be both angry and reflective. Take “Coming Together,” composed in the aftermath of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Lines from a letter written by Sam Melville, an Attica inmate who later died in the violence, are repeated, like incantations, over a seething, building din. When I heard it in 2011, performed outdoors in Bedford-Stuyvesant by the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Mos Def, it had a terrifying yet seductive force, the words retaining fierce integrity as the music churned around them. In “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues,” the melody of a workers’ folk song is gradually engulfed by music as ruthlessly propulsive as an industrial engine. Not a word is spoken, but the moral is poignant: A way of life has been cruelly taken away. “De Profundis,” a setting of Oscar Wilde’s prison cri du coeur, makes Wilde’s suffering disconcertingly personal and physical. While playing the dizzying solo part, the pianist also speaks the text, hits his or herself, whistles and seems to sob. Rzewski pieces like “Stop the War!” and “No More War” make no bones about their composer’s politics. But they’re not pamphlets in sound. They have wit, sensitivity. One of the dozens of what he calls “miles” that make up Mr. Rzewski’s sprawling solo-piano series “The Road,” “Stop the War!” bristles with crushing chords, and its performer even shouts out the title at one point. But the music keeps receding, as if stunned by the violence and rage it feels compelled to depict. The son of pharmacists, Mr. Rzewski was born in Westfield, Mass., and educated at Harvard and Princeton, centers of mid-20th-century composition. He moved to Europe, became an important new-music interpreter, and in 1966 helped found the ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva, which used widely available electronic instruments for exercises in collaborative improvisation. He now speaks a bit ruefully of those heady days. “Free improvisation was going to change the world,” he said of his generation’s 1960s dreams. “It was going to create an entirely new language, so that people could come together from different parts of the planet and instantly communicate.” He paused. “Well, of course, we were wrong.” But he hasn’t given up the fight. “This whole Black Lives Matter movement is very important,” he said. (Of course, ever the good socialist, he drew a distinction: “It’s not a party, it’s a movement.”) His influence can be felt in pieces by much younger composers, like “sweet light crude,” a brooding mock love song to fossil fuels by David T. Little, who has also performed Mr. Rzewski’s music. When Andrew Norman, in his “Split,” used a piano concerto to reflect on power, on how a group (the orchestra) can exert control over an individual (the soloist), the effect was Rzewskian, even if the sound world was not. Ted Hearne’s WikiLeaks oratorio “The Source,” a driving and
[Marxism] My anslysis of contradictions of Gerry Carroll to the NI assembly!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I don't know if Gerry Carroll is a member of the SP or SWP. He has a reactionary line of being neutral in the struggle between the nationalists or unionists! If he claims to be a Trotskyist his election to the North of Ireland assembly coming top in West Belfast cosntitency represents a siginificant radicalisation . It is ironic that someone claiming to be a Trotskyist has made these gains despite being reactionary on the national question. Traditional Trotskyists have upto now who support the struggle unconditionally to reunify Ireland as part of a struggle to establish a workers' state and oppose individual terrorism have failed to make a breakthrough, This could begin to change. If the SP or SWP start linking up with Unionists against Sinn Fein they could implode. If the national question erupts again Trotskyists can gain a mass base! _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Possible SPer Or Swper has won a seat in the North of Ireland assembly coming top in West Belfast constitency!
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. * (Anthony continues to have email problems.) On 5/6/16 2:35 PM, Anthony Brain via Marxism wrote: Belfast West (Assembly constituency) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_West_(Assembly_constituency) Belfast West (Assembly constituency) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia don't know if Gerry Carroll is a member of the SP or SWP. He has a reactionary line of being neutral in the struggle between the nationalists or unionists! If he claims to be a Trotskyist his election to the North of Ireland assembly coming top in West Belfast cosntitency represents a siginificant radicalisation . It is ironic that someone claiming to be a Trotskyist has made these gains despite being reactionary on the national question. Traditional Trotskyists have upto now who support the struggle unconditionally to reunify Ireland as part of a struggle to establish a workers' state and oppose individual terrorism have failed to make a breakthrough, This could begin to change. If the SP or SWP start linking up with Unionists against Sinn Fein they could implode. If the national question erupts again Trotskyists can gain a mass base! _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Possible SPer Or Swper has won a seat in the North of Ireland assembly coming top in West Belfast constitency!
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. * Belfast West (Assembly constituency) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | | | | || | | | | | Belfast West (Assembly constituency) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | | | | _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Kwame Montsho Ajamu Somburu ¡Presente!
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. * Kwame Montsho Ajamu Somburu ¡Presente! October 13, 1934 - May 3, 2016 By The Editors of Socialist Viewpoint Magazine We are saddened by the loss of comrade Kwame Somburu. He was a dear friend, revolutionary fighter, and a devoted distributor of Socialist Viewpoint magazine until he became too ill to continue. He had an amazing knowledge and memory of history—all of which he learned on his own by reading everything he could get his hands on and, of course, being a participant throughout his life in the struggle for freedom and human emancipation. He was an active member of the Socialist Workers Party from 1965 to 1983. From 1983 he became a founding member of Socialist Action, formed by former members of the SWP, who were either expelled or dropped out when the party deviated from the historic teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and James P. Cannon (founding member and leader of the SWP.) Kwame remained in Socialist Action until 1999. Then, in 2000, after a split in SA, Kwame helped form Socialist Workers Organization, the group that began publishing Socialist Viewpoint magazine. SWO dwindled down to a small core of activists whose numbers were insufficient for the crucial project of party building but continued to promote the building of a revolutionary Marxist working class political party through the pages of Socialist Viewpoint. Throughout his life, Kwame was part of the Civil Rights movement; the Vietnam Antiwar movement; the Black Liberation movement; the Women’s Liberation movement; he worked with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; he was a supporter of the Cuban Revolution; he fought against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he was anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian; and that’s just to name a few causes he was intimately involved in. He was an active fighter for socialism and a promoter of the power of worker’s solidarity until his last days. Saying it like it is He was in his best form speaking extemporaneously—debating and street-corner speaking, for which he was arrested many times in New York. One of his most memorable debates was the one he and Fred Halstead had with William F. Buckley on his show, Firing Line, in 1968.[1] Fred Halstead was the Presidential candidate and Paul Boutelle was the Vice Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party that year. (At that time, until 1979, Kwame went by his given name, Paul Boutelle. And, at the time, if a TV show interviewed a major candidate, they also had to give “equal time” to minority candidates. In 1968, the Socialist Workers Party was on the ballot in 19 states across the U.S. That’s how two revolutionary socialist candidates got an hour of prime time on TV.) Kwame, the scientific socialist and historian Kwame ruled the debate throughout with his profound knowledge of history and his quick wit. Buckley didn’t stand a chance. Halstead, to his credit, took a back seat to his running mate, who clearly had the upper hand on Buckley. Towards the end of the show, Kwame was pointing out that Buckley was defending the U.S. knowing that it was built by profiting off of slavery, the slaughter of the Native Americans and its never-ending wars—WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. Buckley was, again, trying to defend U.S. wars when he said, smugly, “I represent a country that went to war to liberate the Negroes a hundred years ago.” Kwame responded, “I know some people in Mississippi and Alabama that would like to hear that. Why don’t you take a trip down there this summer and tell them that they’re liberated. In fact I know some in the outskirts of Chicago that would like to hear, too, and Brooklyn—Bedford Stuyvesant…” Then Buckley said, “Put it this way, Mr. Boutelle, I’m sure that if I ran for office in Mississippi, I would have more Negroes voting for me than for you…” Kwame answered, “I’m sure of one thing, if you went down to Mississippi and told Black people they were free, you would be running, and it wouldn’t be for office.” The audience went crazy applauding and cheering Kwame. “It takes all five fingers to make a fist!” On April 27, 2014 Ill Box Media presented an ib Video Production of, Kwame Somburu, A Conversation with a Rabble Rouser?[2] This is a powerful history lesson covering years of U.S. imperialist oppression from the perspective of an active, self-taught, “scientific socialist” who not only knew what he was talking about, but was part of the on-going struggle against it. Kwame’s whole life was devoted to fighting oppression. He was a fighter for socialism and a strong promoter of worker’s solidarity. In this interview, more than once, he holds
[Marxism] Fwd: Aleppo in a time of monsters
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/5/6/aleppo-in-a-time-of-monsters _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Left Forum 2016: The Truth is Out There | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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. * Ever since I left the SWP in late 1978, I have been attending the yearly Left Forums in NY that were known as the Socialist Scholars Conference prior to a split in the leading bodies in 2004 over Yugoslavia. Veteran social democrat Bogdan Denitch, who died a few months ago, was viewed as a Serbophobe by the faction that would go on to form the Left Forum in 2005. That year there were two conferences, one in the name of the Socialist Scholars Conference and the other as the Left Forum. Next year there was only the Left Forum as many of the figures aligned with Denitch reconciled with their erstwhile ideological opponents. From 2005 until 2015 (excluding 2007 for some reason I can’t recall), I have written reports on the Left Forum and more recently produced videos of the sessions I attended. This year I have decided not to attend since it has reached the point where quantity has turned into quality as Plekhanov might have put it. Or more accurately, it has reached the point where quantity has turned into excrement. In a nutshell, the same sort of idiocy that has taken over the left on Syria has become so pervasive this year that I cannot justify spending $70 to attend. Are there panel discussions that would be worth my while? I suppose so but that is almost like someone trying to convince me to tune into WBAI. The station exudes such a stench that my hand refuses to obey my brain’s order to tune in to 99.5 on the FM band. In a very real sense, the Left Forum has been transformed into something resembling WBAI—leading to the pun that it has been subject to Pacification. The other night the hand got the upper hand over the brain and I listened to WBAI for a couple of minutes. I was not surprised to see that they were in the midst of one of their biweekly fund-drives. Nor was I surprised to see that they were offering premiums for a 5 DVD documentary titled “The Great Lies of History”. One, of course, is about 9/11. Another is: “Cancer: The Forbidden Cures”. It claims that the “drug-dominated medical profession” has suppressed cures including Mistletoe and Bicarbonate of Soda. I suppose they are geared to oral and stomach cancer respectively. I don’t think that Lew Hill had this in mind when he launched Pacifica in 1946. full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/05/06/left-forum-2016-the-truth-is-out-there/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Star Wars and Vietnam
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://moviepilot.com/posts/3531258 According to George Lucas's commentary on the 2004 re-release of *Return of the Jedi*, the Ewoks were directly inspired by the forces that successfully defeated the US and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War - the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Chanel Stages Fashion Show In Cuba
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 05/06/2016 12:51 AM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote: If it can be shown that the money from these events can ease the hardships of the Cuban people, then a responsible government should allow them. Isn't it obvious that tourism and its related ills are necessary for Cuba? Personally, after visiting Cuba, I'm finding Arnold August the most perceptive commentator on events there. I'm reading his book on the late nineties elections in Cuba at the moment. Here's a sample of his thinking. http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/anarchism-and-communism-in-cuba/ Jon Flanders _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Times pimps for Putin
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. * If you thought Declan Walsh's "embedded" puff pieces for the Times were sickening, you ain't seen nothing yet: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/world/middleeast/syria-russia-palmyra-isis-classical-music.html?_r=0 Reminds me of the scene in "The Pianist" where the Nazi officer plays the piano while his troops beat and murder Jews. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Moderate Syrian Rebels Torn Between Giving Up, Joining Islamic Extremists
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. * WSJ, May 6 2016 Moderate Syrian Rebels Torn Between Giving Up, Joining Islamic Extremists Cornered and weakened, they can accept a settlement with the Assad regime or fight alongside al Qaeda’s Islamist allies By Sam Dagher YAYLADAGI, Turkey—Ali Othman is among a shrinking band of Syrian rebels in the mountains across from this border town who face an agonizing choice: accept a settlement with a regime they revile or fight alongside al Qaeda’s Islamist allies. The Syrian army defector and his fellow fighters say they are weakened and cornered after enduring months of bombardment from Russian forces buttressing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Peace talks ended last month without progress amid a major escalation in violence in the northern city of Aleppo. On Thursday, a day after the U.S. announced a deal with Russia on a fresh cease-fire in Aleppo, Islamist groups targeted regime-held areas of the city with rocket, mortar and sniper fire, according to Syrian state media and U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “My wife begs me almost each day to leave the mountains,” Mr. Othman, 26 years old, said during a recent visit with his family in Turkey. “She keeps asking me: `Why are you still fighting?’” The fate of Syria’s moderate rebels is critical to American efforts in the region. If rebels quit the fight or join forces with Islamist extremist groups fighting the regime, the U.S. will lose leverage to shape the war’s outcome—and potential allies against Islamic State. Some rebel commanders close to the U.S. warn that the diplomatic deadlock and renewed airstrikes against rebel-held areas would push people into the arms of the extremists, including Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate that, like Islamic State, is designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council and excluded from any potential settlement with the regime. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday the cease-fire would only succeed if moderate rebels separated themselves from Nusra and other groups opposed to a settlement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed. “We want to have clarity here so that we are able to separate people,” he said. In northwest Syria—where Mr. Othman and others are trying to make a last stand—and elsewhere, moderate rebels occupy the same territory as Nusra and say they are compelled to coordinate and share scant resources with it, especially when they all come under assault from the regime and its allies. Nusra and six rebel groups in northern Syria said this week they would re-establish a joint command center to avenge regime actions. Both the regime and extremists are trying to lure rebels to their respective sides. Mr. Othman says Nusra is trying to recruit rebels with slick videos while the regime continues to drop leaflets on the handful of villages his group and others are clinging to in northwestern Latakia province, demanding they surrender or die. Mr. Othman says his group’s backers have included the U.S., France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But it now numbers less than 500 fighters, down from about 2,800 a year ago, he said. “Many people in my group are either dead or maimed,” said Mr. Othman. “We can’t fight alone,” he added, referring to the need to cooperate with Islamist factions like Nusra even though he and others might dread them. But Nusra’s opposition to the peace talks in Geneva has resonated with rebels who regard any concession to the regime as treason. In a 2015 photo taken in Syria, Ali Othman, at left in a blue and gray sweater, stands with another young rebel known for his skill firing missiles that rebels say were supplied by the U.S. PHOTO: ALI OTHMAN “For sure, the Nusra Front won’t accept a deal that includes Bashar al-Assad and will continue to fight him,” said Khaled Walyo, a 27-year-old construction worker-turned-rebel in the same group as Mr. Othman. “I will be the first one to join it.” He spoke in a rest house for wounded fighters, where he is tending to his 20-year-old brother, who lost both legs in October. He said he would return to the battlefield as soon as his brother gets prosthetic limbs. Most rebels are hesitant to fight Nusra because its ranks are filled with men from their towns and villages. Many, like Mr. Othman, are Sunni Muslims who rose up against a regime dominated by Mr. Assad’s Shiite-linked Alawite sect. Before popular revolts began in March 2011, Mr. Othman worked in an air-conditioning shop in Latakia. Like other young people, he protested what he saw as an unjust and corrupt police state. Mr. Othman said that
