Re: [Marxism] Trump defends abandoning Kurds by saying they didn't help US in WWII - Business Insider

[ioannis aposperites via Marxism]

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Στις 10/10/19 5:14 π.μ., ο Gary MacLennan via Marxism έγραψε:

But seriously how did we come to this?  How did the bourgeoisie allow
cretins to take over politically? 


A badly aging capitalism, a declining imperialist superpower, well, it's 
not only about the material basis and it not even ends with Trump. From 
a bourgeois point of view the personal quality of the world political 
leaders is, in most countries, clearly inferior of what it used to be, 
say, 60 years before. And it going to get rather worst than better...


JA
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[Marxism] Cuomo Blocking Unemployment Benefits to 3,400 GM Strikers – Payday Report

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://paydayreport.com/cuomo-blocking-unemployment-benefits-to-3400-gm-strikers/
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[Marxism] Venezuelan diplomat speaks on US blockade (Green Left Weekly)

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/venezuelan-diplomat-speaks-us-blockade

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[Marxism] Hands off Greta Thunberg!

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/10/hands-off-greta-thunberg/
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[Marxism] HDP'sTemelli: speak out against the invasion!

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/hdp-temelli-speak-out-against-the-invasion-38242

The HDP (Peoples Democratic Party) was the only party in the Turkish parliament 
to oppose the invasion.  The CHP, sometimes described as social democratic, 
supported the ivasion.

Chris Slee
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[Marxism] US collusion with Turkish invasion

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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Thinking about the events leading up to the Turkish invasion of northeastern 
Syria, I believe that the US colluded with Turkey to prepare the ground for the 
invasion.

In the preceding months, US military officers met separately with Turkey and 
the SDF, and arranged a deal which included some concessions by the SDF.  For 
example, regular SDF troops were withdrawn at least 5 kilometers from the 
border.

I assume that, in return for this weakening of its defensive position, the SDF 
would have received assurances that the US would take measures to deter a 
Turkish invasion.  For example, the US could have imposed a no-fly zone over 
northeastern Syria.

Instead the US suddenly withdrew its ground troops from the area.  At around 
the same time Trump gave Erdogan the green light to go ahead with the invasion.

This indicates that Trump was not acting as an erratic individual, but was 
acting in coordination with the US military leadership.

>From the standpoint of US imperialism, restoring good relations with Turkey is 
>a logical course of action.  They are not concerned with the human cost of the 
>invasion.

Chris Slee
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Re: [Marxism] PG electricity shutdown in N. California

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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It is an outrage.

>From @CorbettOToole via Facebook on #PGEshutoff: 

Folks who need power. If you do not have a back up power system (generator, 
etc) and you need power, the Emergency Preparedness folks are saying Go to your 
local hospital (probably the ER waiting room) for power. 

https://twitter.com/SFdirewolf/status/1181866075710992384
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[Marxism] PG electricity shutdown in N. California

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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"Oh, the horror of it! The absolute scandal unfolding as over 100,000
Californians are having to go without electricity for several days.
Restaurants are having to close and some school children are having endure
the absolute nightmare of having their schools shut down. (I spoke with one
ten-year old whose school had remained open. She looked very sad… I assume
on behalf of the other kids who didn’t have the great joy of sitting in a
classroom for six hours on a beautiful, sunny fall day.) A caller to a news
show complained that she had had to undergo the unacceptable disruption to
her life because the gas station where she normally gets gas was shut down.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, ever the man of the people, expressed it
perfectly: “People are outraged as we (meaning himself) are.”"

"Get used to it. This is what capitalism has in store for us."
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/10/10/pge-electricity-shutdown-in-california/

-- 
*“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 Radical Guidebook Embraced by Google Workers and Uber Drivers

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(In the Business section, no less.)

NY Times, Oct. 10, 2019
The Radical Guidebook Embraced by Google Workers and Uber Drivers
By Noam Scheiber

Just before 20,000 Google employees left their desks last fall to 
protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment, a debate broke out 
among the hundreds of workers involved in formulating a list of demands.


Some workers argued that they could win fairer pay policies and a full 
accounting of harassment claims by filing lawsuits or seeking to unionize.


But the argument that gained the upper hand, especially as the debate 
escalated in the weeks after the walkout, held that those approaches 
would be futile, according to two people involved. Those who felt this 
way contended that only a less formal, worker-led organization could 
succeed, by waging mass resistance or implicitly threatening to do so.


This view, based on century-old ideas, did not emerge in a vacuum. It 
can be traced in part to a book called “Labor Law for the Rank and 
Filer,” which many Googlers had read and discussed.


Its authors are a longtime labor historian, Staughton Lynd, and an 
organizer, Daniel Gross. They identify with a strain of unionism 
popularized in the early 1900s by the Industrial Workers of the World, a 
radical labor group known as the Wobblies that defined itself in 
opposition to mainstream trade unions.


The book has been “incredibly helpful in thinking through options for 
action, ways of building collective power, and giving workers who often 
aren’t familiar with labor law some working knowledge that can guide 
decision making,” said Meredith Whittaker, a leader of the walkout who 
left Google in July after more than a dozen years at the company.


Staughton Lynd, a historian long active in labor and civil-rights 
causes, wrote the first edition of “Labor Law for the Rank and Filer” in 
1978. He turns 90 next month.CreditDustin Franz for The New York Times
And Googlers aren’t the only ones who have drawn inspiration from the 
book. Workers at the crowdfunding company Kickstarter, the site of a 
recent union campaign, have studied it. Organizers with one of the 
largest Uber driver groups say the ideas have influenced them as well.


Ares Geovanos, a longtime volunteer for the Tech Workers Coalition, 
which seeks to organize workers across the industry, said the book’s key 
contention — that a dedicated group of employees can accomplish more 
through actions like strikes than by formal efforts to certify a union — 
had gained traction partly because it reflects reality: Most tech 
workers have traditionally been reluctant to organize.


“A lot of the struggles will necessarily be with a strong minority due 
to the narratives around working in the industry and ideological baggage 
of the work force,” Mr. Geovanos said by email. He said he first 
stumbled across “Labor Law for the Rank and Filer” while searching 
online for a do-it-yourself guide to organizing. His group later led 
training sessions based on the book that Google workers attended.


Mr. Lynd and Mr. Gross lay out a practical guide for staging a kind of 
workplace revolution that upends the balance of power between management 
and labor.


They explain, for example, when striking workers enjoy strong legal 
protections (in taking aim at unfair labor practices like retaliation) 
and when they are more exposed (in strikes focused strictly on economic 
demands). They discuss the circumstances under which workers can take 
their concerns to the media, such as a news conference in which coffee 
shop employees disclosed evidence of rat and insect infestations.


But more broadly, the book serves as a polemic contrasting mainstream 
“business unions” with what the Wobblies refer to as “solidarity unions” 
— that is, worker-led groups that are not typically certified as 
exclusive bargaining agents under federal law and therefore don’t need 
to win majority support to exist.


The business union “is controlled from the top down by officers and 
staff (usually white males) who are not regularly employed at the 
workplace,” Mr. Lynd and Mr. Gross write. They complain that a business 
union is preoccupied with achieving a bargaining agreement that requires 
workers to give up the right to strike and any say in the company’s 
major decisions.


When there is trouble at the workplace, they write, “the union member 
calls a steward or business agent and hopes that some bureaucratic 
process disconnected from the rank and file will right the wrong.”


In a solidarity union, by contrast, the workers “decide together on a 
course of direct action to right the wrong, which the workers will 

[Marxism] Palestinian hunger striker details physical and psychological torture

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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https://mondoweiss.net/2019/10/palestinian-hunger-striker-details-physical-and-psychological-torture-in-israeli-prison/

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Re: [Marxism] Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nests

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 10/10/19 10:58 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

https://consentfactory.org/2019/10/04/trumpenstein-must-be-destroyed/




Oh, CJ Hopkins. The guy who defends his right to crosspost to UNZ.com, a 
neo-Nazi website. Hopkins has been writing the same article for the past 
4 years. Although I usually ignore this putz, I couldn't help but 
posting a comment about it:


CJ Hopkins: All he [Trump] really cares about is seeing his face on 
television and plastering his name on everything in sight, preferably in 
huge gold letters.


—

Not really. He also cares about gutting regulations on carcinogenic 
pesticides, making it impossible to get political asylum in the USA, 
opening up public lands that are refuges for endangered species to 
fracking, mining and cattle ranching, giving the green light to oil, gas 
and coal companies to go full blast even if means melting all the ice in 
the Arctic with disastrous results. I can go on and on but what’s the 
point? Hopkins is only interested in championing “populism” as if 
someone like Donald Trump had anything to do with common folk. By 
focusing on Rachel Maddow et al, he doesn’t seem to grasp that 
revolutionaries in the USA are trying to build a resistance to the Trump 
presidency based on mass action, such as the recent climate change 
protests that you unfortunately denigrated. This article, by the way, is 
number 113 of the same basic article Hopkins has been writing. If Rachel 
Maddow is a crushing bore with her Russiagate obsession, Hopkins is just 
as boring with his predictable anti-Maddow screeds. I wonder if he ever 
had even the slightest inclination to champion the left in his litany of 
anti-liberal posts. After all, there are people struggling to overthrow 
the capitalist system in the USA even if he has zero identification with it.

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Re: [Marxism] Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nests

[C. G. Estabrook via Marxism]

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https://consentfactory.org/2019/10/04/trumpenstein-must-be-destroyed/


> On Oct 10, 2019, at 9:34 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> NY Times Op-Ed, Oct. 10, 2019
> Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nests
> By Gail Collins
> 
> Two ways to judge anything Donald Trump does these days: A) Is it a good 
> idea? And B) Is it further evidence he’s going nuts?
> 
> Think about Turkey. Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 
> was preparing to attack our old Kurdish allies in northern Syria. The White 
> House announced late Sunday night that it was O.K. with the whole deal and 
> was pulling out the small American military contingent that’s been fighting 
> alongside the Kurds.
> 
> Nobody seemed to have run this by Defense Secretary Mark (Finally Confirmed!) 
> Esper, who sent out a tweet Monday morning opposing the Turkish operation. 
> Which was later deleted.
> 
> “If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider 
> to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of 
> Turkey,” Trump reassured the nation.
> 
> Well, we’ve always known he suffers from delusions of grandeur. (“There are 
> those that think I’m a very stable genius.”) And although the way the 
> administration handled the whole Turkey thing was wildly inept, we’ve known 
> for a long time there’s no ept in this White House.
> 
> But here’s the other part: Donald Trump is in the middle of a super 
> impeachment crisis, and he’s surviving in office only through Senate 
> Republicans’ support. And he chose this time to create a foreign affairs 
> uproar guaranteed to outrage and offend the Republican senators.
> 
> “Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump 
> Administration. This move ensures the emergence of ISIS,” tweeted Lindsey 
> Graham.
> 
> This from a fervid supporter. If Graham were, say, a miniature poodle, he’d 
> be the one trotting along, carrying the master’s socks in his mouth.
> 
> The president’s sudden decision to give a shout-out to the Turkish government 
> came after a phone call with Erdogan. By now there have been so many 
> phone-related disasters you’d think the family would have taken away his 
> communication devices. But Trump believes he’s always very careful and 
> conscious that tons of people are listening in. “My knowledge — I know all 
> about it,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.
> 
> The gathering degenerated into a yelling meltdown, during which our president 
> declared that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff “had some 
> kind of a mental breakdown.”
> 
> Nobody muttered “takes one to know one.”
> 
> Most of the Republicans are just sort of curled up under their beds, 
> quivering. Lately, the squad of across-the-board Trump defenders has dwindled 
> down to people like Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Perhaps you 
> remember Gaetz having argued that violence in America was not due to guns but 
> to “illegal aliens.” This time he said that the impeachment process was “a 
> kangaroo court and chairman Schiff is acting like a malicious Captain 
> Kangaroo.”
> 
> Well, you take whoever you can get and Trump does not currently have a lot of 
> universally enthusiastic troops. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming called 
> the American pullout from Syria a “catastrophic mistake.” Any daughter of 
> Dick Cheney is going to be a person who can overlook a whole lot. When you 
> lose her, you’re really down to … Matt Gaetz.
> 
> All this is going on while the White House is refusing to let Congress have 
> access to administration officials who have information on the whistle-blower 
> charges. Which, as of course you remember, stem from the time the man who 
> believes he knows all about being careful on phone calls tried to get the 
> Ukraine president to come up with some dirt on the foreign business dealings 
> of Joe Biden’s son.
> 
> The man who later demanded that China investigate Hunter Biden’s business 
> dealings there. Even China found that loony, a high standard for a country 
> that can’t even manage to have a reasonable relationship with basketball 
> teams.
> 
> And, of course, the president whose daughter and son-in-law have both been 
> working for the White House while raking in tens of millions of dollars from 
> their business dealings. Some came from the clothing Ivanka manufactured in 
> places like … China.
> 
> Why would he bring up children making money abroad? This isn’t just a guy who 
> makes stupid decisions. It’s a guy who’s off his rocker. Whose great pal is 
> Rudy Giuliani, the talking head whose TV appearances can terrify 

[Marxism] ‘An Exorcism Must Be Done’: An Anti-Putin Shaman Sets Off Unrest

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Oct. 10, 2019
‘An Exorcism Must Be Done’: An Anti-Putin Shaman Sets Off Unrest
By Anton Troianovski

ULAN-UDE, Russia — A long-haired shaman arrived on foot from the frozen 
north, dragging a cart with yurt poles and a stove, and preaching that 
the president is a demon. Days later, a cabby, invoking the shaman, 
strode up to the Kremlin-allied mayor of this Siberian city, yelled a 
string of grievances and posted his rant on YouTube.


Public protests erupted and continued for weeks, but the shaman kept 
walking west — headed to Moscow, “the heart of evil,” he said, to 
exorcise Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. Then, what he called 
“dark forces” — a SWAT team — packed him onto a plane to Yakutsk, a 
remote regional capital in eastern Siberia.


“My tales coincided with the desperation of Russians who live with 
injustice, poverty and destitution,” the shaman, Aleksandr Gabyshev, 
said in an interview at his sister’s one-room log cabin off a muddy road 
on the outskirts of Yakutsk.


That a mystic and a video-blogging taxi driver could touch off prolonged 
unrest in Ulan-Ude, a city of 400,000 people, underscored the depth and 
breadth of a new season of Russian discontent.


A spike in dissent nationwide shows that after years of economic 
stagnation, Russians’ patience with their government is wearing thin. 
Pollsters report a sustained slump in Mr. Putin’s approval ratings in 
the last 12 months and a growing rejection of state television’s 
propaganda drumbeat. Waves of protest have roiled Moscow since June, 
resulting in thousands of arrests and prompting the Kremlin to make rare 
concessions.


There is no unified nationwide protest movement that might threaten Mr. 
Putin’s two-decade rule, but in a growing number of flash points, years 
of pent-up grievances are being unleashed by previously unknown figures, 
or by one indignity too many. And despite the threat of arrest, 
dissenters like Mr. Gabyshev are willing to hold Mr. Putin directly 
responsible for their problems.


In an echo of how the Soviet Union treated dissidents, the shaman now 
faces incarceration in a mental institution. His lawyers say the Federal 
Security Service, a successor to the K.G.B., told them last week that 
their client required psychiatric treatment.


“This is most terrifying — what we really feared,” said one of the 
lawyers, Boris Andreyev.


Mr. Gabyshev’s team says it will fight the attempt to commit him, a 
process that could take months. In the meantime, he is under orders not 
to leave Yakutsk.


The patriotic fervor that overshadowed Russia’s economic problems in the 
wake of the Crimea annexation of 2014 has largely dissipated, and 
disposable incomes are effectively below what they were in 2013. 
Emboldened by cheap, expanding and mostly uncensored high-speed internet 
access, Russians are becoming braver in speaking out, knowing that even 
if the state news media ignores their voices, millions can hear them online.


That’s why Dmitry Bairov, the cabby whose tirade drew more attention to 
Mr. Gabyshev, rarely leaves home without two smartphones in his gray 
shoulder bag, a battery pack at his hip and a tripod clip dangling from 
a carabiner.


“I see that there is injustice — I hear it, I see it, and I talk about 
it,” Mr. Bairov said, adding that YouTube “is the only medium of — 
what’s it called? — freedom of speech.”


Mr. Gabyshev, 50, is a former welder, plumber and carpenter who took up 
shamanism in the tradition of his people, the Sakha, more than a decade 
ago, after his wife died. He said he had lived as a hermit in the 
Siberian forest for more than two years.


By the time he reached Ulan-Ude in late August, he had traveled for 
nearly six months, covering 1,600 miles. He predicted that thousands 
would join him along the two-year, 5,000-mile march to Moscow, to help 
exorcise Mr. Putin.


Passers-by spread word of his journey, posting videos showing his wispy 
beard and singsong speech.


Mr. Bairov learned about Mr. Gabyshev from other video bloggers on 
YouTube. He used a cabby chat group in the messaging app Viber to help 
organize support for the shaman as he approached Ulan-Ude.


After the authorities detained one of Mr. Gabyshev’s supporters, Mr. 
Bairov accosted Mayor Igor Shutenkov on Sept. 9 next to the city’s most 
famous landmark, a 25-foot-tall head of Lenin.


Mr. Shutenkov, backed by Mr. Putin’s United Russia party, had just 
beaten a popular Communist candidate in an election that critics called 
rigged. After Mr. Bairov parked his car at the central square to protest 
the treatment of the shaman’s group, the Communists parked a minivan 
nearby 

[Marxism] Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nests

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Op-Ed, Oct. 10, 2019
Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nests
By Gail Collins

Two ways to judge anything Donald Trump does these days: A) Is it a good 
idea? And B) Is it further evidence he’s going nuts?


Think about Turkey. Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip 
Erdogan was preparing to attack our old Kurdish allies in northern 
Syria. The White House announced late Sunday night that it was O.K. with 
the whole deal and was pulling out the small American military 
contingent that’s been fighting alongside the Kurds.


Nobody seemed to have run this by Defense Secretary Mark (Finally 
Confirmed!) Esper, who sent out a tweet Monday morning opposing the 
Turkish operation. Which was later deleted.


“If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, 
consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the 
economy of Turkey,” Trump reassured the nation.


Well, we’ve always known he suffers from delusions of grandeur. (“There 
are those that think I’m a very stable genius.”) And although the way 
the administration handled the whole Turkey thing was wildly inept, 
we’ve known for a long time there’s no ept in this White House.


But here’s the other part: Donald Trump is in the middle of a super 
impeachment crisis, and he’s surviving in office only through Senate 
Republicans’ support. And he chose this time to create a foreign affairs 
uproar guaranteed to outrage and offend the Republican senators.


“Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the 
Trump Administration. This move ensures the emergence of ISIS,” tweeted 
Lindsey Graham.


This from a fervid supporter. If Graham were, say, a miniature poodle, 
he’d be the one trotting along, carrying the master’s socks in his mouth.


The president’s sudden decision to give a shout-out to the Turkish 
government came after a phone call with Erdogan. By now there have been 
so many phone-related disasters you’d think the family would have taken 
away his communication devices. But Trump believes he’s always very 
careful and conscious that tons of people are listening in. “My 
knowledge — I know all about it,” he told reporters at a press 
conference last week.


The gathering degenerated into a yelling meltdown, during which our 
president declared that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam 
Schiff “had some kind of a mental breakdown.”


Nobody muttered “takes one to know one.”

Most of the Republicans are just sort of curled up under their beds, 
quivering. Lately, the squad of across-the-board Trump defenders has 
dwindled down to people like Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. 
Perhaps you remember Gaetz having argued that violence in America was 
not due to guns but to “illegal aliens.” This time he said that the 
impeachment process was “a kangaroo court and chairman Schiff is acting 
like a malicious Captain Kangaroo.”


Well, you take whoever you can get and Trump does not currently have a 
lot of universally enthusiastic troops. Representative Liz Cheney of 
Wyoming called the American pullout from Syria a “catastrophic mistake.” 
Any daughter of Dick Cheney is going to be a person who can overlook a 
whole lot. When you lose her, you’re really down to … Matt Gaetz.


All this is going on while the White House is refusing to let Congress 
have access to administration officials who have information on the 
whistle-blower charges. Which, as of course you remember, stem from the 
time the man who believes he knows all about being careful on phone 
calls tried to get the Ukraine president to come up with some dirt on 
the foreign business dealings of Joe Biden’s son.


The man who later demanded that China investigate Hunter Biden’s 
business dealings there. Even China found that loony, a high standard 
for a country that can’t even manage to have a reasonable relationship 
with basketball teams.


And, of course, the president whose daughter and son-in-law have both 
been working for the White House while raking in tens of millions of 
dollars from their business dealings. Some came from the clothing Ivanka 
manufactured in places like … China.


Why would he bring up children making money abroad? This isn’t just a 
guy who makes stupid decisions. It’s a guy who’s off his rocker. Whose 
great pal is Rudy Giuliani, the talking head whose TV appearances can 
terrify toddlers. I’m not saying Trump is the only unbalanced person in 
this story. Just that he’s the only one who controls our nuclear weapons.


In a happier time Americans went about their lives, complaining about 
Washington, then sort of shrugging and moving on to a discussion of the 
World Series. 

[Marxism] If You Take Away Freedom, All Four Seasons and I Will Die

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/if-you-take-away-freedom-all-four-seasons-and-i-will-die-the-forty-first-newsletter-2019/
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Re: [Marxism] Trump defends abandoning Kurds by saying they didn't help US in WWII - Business Insider

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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In hindsight, we should have started a catalogue of these idiocies when
Trump took office.

We should add to this the comment of Rep. Matt Gaetz that the Democrats
were running their inquiries like a "kangaroo court" presided over by a
"malicious Captain Kangaroo."  Next up, Rep. Jim Jordan will demonstrate
string theory by tying his shoes.

The ruling class has always had a barely disguised contempt for the
people.  Since the 1980s, the Republicans have turned that into a
successful political formula with a coalition that validates the
self-confident arrogance of the dumbest and the least informed, harnessed
to the most short-sighted and self-interested, including more-or-less
openly criminal enterprises.

And it's in the nature of the two-party partnership that the Democrats have
been enabler of this at every step.
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[Marxism] Joker: Cause Without a Rebel - CounterPunch.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/10/joker-cause-without-a-rebel/
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[Marxism] You’ve heard of the gig economy, but what about the 'Gig Academy'?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Kezar and her colleagues describe the gig academy in a way that at first 
sounds like Uber, not academe: “A cheap and deprofessionalized 
workforce, fissured workers through outsourcing, automation and uses of 
technology to reduce labor costs, offloading reproduction costs onto 
employees, an ethic of micro-entrepreneurship, and managerial control 
over labor supply and demand.”


But as Kezar continues to describe how academic labor has shifted over 
the past two decades from approximately 70 percent of professors being 
tenured or tenure track to 70 percent non-tenure track today, the 
metaphor becomes apt. Adjunct or part-time faculty salaries, in 
particular, are low, and many adjuncts have the job security of 
fast-food workers.


full: 
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/10/you%E2%80%99ve-heard-gig-economy-what-about-gig-academy

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[Marxism] Fox News Poll: Record support for Trump impeachment | Fox News

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Not a good sign when Trump's most loyal network poll states this.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-record-support-for-trump-impeachment
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[Marxism] The Workers That Built America | The Nation

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Review of:

WORKERS ON ARRIVAL: BLACK LABOR IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
By Joe William Trotter Jr.

https://www.thenation.com/article/black-working-class-history-joe-william-trotter-book-review/
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[Marxism] With friends like these: the deepening links between climate denial and conservative politics | Overland literary journal

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://overland.org.au/2019/10/with-friends-like-these-the-deepening-links-between-climate-denial-and-conservative-politics/
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[Marxism] Solidarity with UAW Strikers

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Local 222 was at one time a local of the UAW, later the Canadian Auto Workers.
It is now a local of Unifor.  Unifor is a general trade union in Canada and the 
largest private sector union in Canada. It was founded in 2013 as a merger of 
the Canadian Auto Workers and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers 

https://socialistproject.ca/2019/10/solidarity-with-uaw-strikers/ 

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Re: [Marxism] The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

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And I have to add: when Fleck is invited to De Niro’s tv show it is to play the 
clown, to entertain and, most of all, to be ridiculed, laughed at, not with. 
Hardly a sign of white privilege, but perhaps more like non-white artists and 
non-white culture were often treated historically.
 
Website: http://filmint.nu/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FilmInt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/FilmInt



> 10 okt. 2019 kl. 09:29 skrev Daniel Lindvall via Marxism 
> :
> 
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> 
> Wow, what BS. Racism is obviously a matter of fact. But to imply that the 
> main driving force here is Fleck being spoilt by white privilege makes no 
> sense. Throughout most of the film he does his shitty, precarious, low pay 
> job and asks and expects basically nothing at all. On the contrary, he tries 
> to make his mum realize the Waynes of this world don’t give a damn about 
> them, white or black. Only when he has reason to believe he actually IS 
> Wayne’s biological son he comes to think for a moment that this will make a 
> real difference (a rather human reaction, I’d say). This arch-conservative 
> review, posing as anti-racist, is just a version of the line that the kind of 
> decent working conditions and welfare that the labour movement created are 
> themselves at their very core about white privilege and have spoilt white 
> workers who need to get over them and accept capitalism (”nature”, ”life”) as 
> it is. It is intended to silence and split workers.
> 
> Re ”Joker”, I went to see it expecting to hate it, as I hate the Nolan films 
> (thinly disguised fascism, here’s my review: http://filmint.nu/?p=5351). It 
> is far from perfect and, yes, it could have treated its black characters 
> differently. But nevertheless this actually is the complex, intelligent film 
> that many claim the wildly overrated Nolan films to be. Class and 
> exploitation are at the heart of it, not white privilege. 
> 
> 
>> 10 okt. 2019 kl. 01:59 skrev Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>> :
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Marxism] The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

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Wow, what BS. Racism is obviously a matter of fact. But to imply that the main 
driving force here is Fleck being spoilt by white privilege makes no sense. 
Throughout most of the film he does his shitty, precarious, low pay job and 
asks and expects basically nothing at all. On the contrary, he tries to make 
his mum realize the Waynes of this world don’t give a damn about them, white or 
black. Only when he has reason to believe he actually IS Wayne’s biological son 
he comes to think for a moment that this will make a real difference (a rather 
human reaction, I’d say). This arch-conservative review, posing as anti-racist, 
is just a version of the line that the kind of decent working conditions and 
welfare that the labour movement created are themselves at their very core 
about white privilege and have spoilt white workers who need to get over them 
and accept capitalism (”nature”, ”life”) as it is. It is intended to silence 
and split workers.

Re ”Joker”, I went to see it expecting to hate it, as I hate the Nolan films 
(thinly disguised fascism, here’s my review: http://filmint.nu/?p=5351). It is 
far from perfect and, yes, it could have treated its black characters 
differently. But nevertheless this actually is the complex, intelligent film 
that many claim the wildly overrated Nolan films to be. Class and exploitation 
are at the heart of it, not white privilege. 


> 10 okt. 2019 kl. 01:59 skrev Louis Proyect via Marxism 
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> 


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