[Marxism] Glenn Greenwald was cancelled from the Harper's Letter warning about "cancel culture" / Boing Boing
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[Marxism] Trump Leans Into False Virus Claims in Combative Fox News Interview
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, July 19, 2020 Trump Leans Into False Virus Claims in Combative Fox News Interview By Katie Rogers WASHINGTON — An agitated President Trump offered a string of combative and often dubious assertions in an interview aired Sunday, defending his handling of the coronavirus with misleading evidence, attacking his own health experts, disputing polls showing him trailing in his re-election race and defending people who display the Confederate flag as victims of “cancel culture.” The president’s remarks, delivered in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” amounted to a contentious potpourri more commonly found on his Twitter feed and at his political rallies. The difference this time was a vigorous attempt by the host, Chris Wallace, to fact-check him, leading to several clashes between the two on matters ranging from the coronavirus response to whether Mr. Trump would accept the results of the election should he lose. The Coronavirus The president made a litany of false claims about his administration’s handling of the virus, despite evidence that key officials and public health experts advising the president made crucial missteps and played down the spread of the disease this spring. In the interview, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the United States had “one of the lowest mortality rates in the world” from the virus. “That’s not true, sir,” Mr. Wallace said. “Do you have the numbers, please?” Mr. Trump said. “Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.” The United States has the eighth-worst fatality rate among reported coronavirus cases in the world, and the death rate per 100,000 people — 42.83 — ranks it third-worst, according to data on the countries most affected by the coronavirus compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Trump said that by increasing testing, his administration was “creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, ‘Oh, we have more cases.’” Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the coronavirus case rate in other countries was lower than in the United States because those nations did not engage in testing. When Mr. Wallace pointed out a low case rate across the European Union, the president suggested it was possible that those countries “don’t test.” And when Mr. Wallace pointed out that the death rate in the United States was rising, Mr. Trump replied by blaming China. “Excuse me, it’s all too much, it shouldn’t be one case,” Mr. Trump said. “It came from China. They should’ve never let it escape. They should’ve never let it out. But it is what it is. Take a look at Europe, take a look at the numbers in Europe. And by the way, they’re having cases.” Mr. Trump called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, an “alarmist” who provided faulty information in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. “I don’t know that he’s a leaker,” Mr. Trump said during the interview. “He’s a little bit of an alarmist. That’s OK. A little bit of an alarmist.” Mr. Trump said that Dr. Fauci had been against his decision to close the borders to travelers from China in January. That is misleading: While Dr. Fauci initially opposed the idea on the grounds that a ban would prevent medical professionals from traveling to hard-hit areas, he supported the decision by the time it was made. Mr. Trump also said Dr. Fauci had been against Americans wearing masks. Dr. Fauci has said he does not regret urging Americans not to wear masks in the early days of the pandemic, citing a severe shortage of protective gear for medical professionals at the time. Mr. Trump said he doubted whether Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was correct in predicting that the pandemic would be worse this fall. “I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said. “And I don’t think he knows.” He said public health experts and the World Health Organization “got a lot wrong” early on, including a theory that the virus would abate as the weather warmed — one that Mr. Trump himself had promoted repeatedly. Then the president reiterated his earlier claim, unsupported by science, that the virus would suddenly cease one day. “It’s going to disappear, and I’ll be right,” Mr. Trump said. “Because I’ve been right probably more than anybody else.” The Election Mr. Trump insulted Fox News pollsters as “among the worst” when presented with data that showed him trailing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, claiming that he had seen polls that showed him winning. “I understand you still have more than 100 days to this election, but at this point
[Marxism] Japan Cuts 2020 | 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. * Like other film festivals I’ve reviewed since the pandemic began, this year’s Japan Cuts (https://japancuts.japansociety.org/) is virtual. While nothing will ever match the experience of see a film on the big screen among other film buffs, the show must go on as they say in a Busby Berkeley film—can’t remember which one. At $99 for the entire festival or $7 per film, it is certainly worth it. In the past, when I have covered a NY film festival, I always regretted that many of my out-of-town readers will never be able to take part. Fortunately, for them and for the filmmakers who put so much time, money and energy making leading-edge cinema, virtuality has its benefits. Time constraints did not allow me to cover more than four films but based on what I have seen, this festival is a must for film buffs. Japanese films have been a mainstay of serious cinema for the past seventy years and it is still going strong. full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/07/19/japan-cuts-2020/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Unnatural Disasters | Ann Neumann
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. * Ending the poaching of chimpanzees, elephants, and other wild animals is a cause that the West can rally around, but it’s the symptom of a much larger problem: capitalist globalization has led international corporations to extract labor, hardwood, fish, and other resources from countries that are too weak or corrupt—due to legacies of colonial exploitation—to care for their own people. Last year, two American companies, Roseburg Forest Products and Evergreen Hardwoods, were charged with harvesting protected wood from West Africa. But such charges are infrequent, their penalties no real deterrent. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/unnatural-disasters-neumann _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Black people — many of them immigrants — make up less than 2 percent of Maine’s population but almost a quarter of its coronavirus cases
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. * Washington Post, JULY 18, 2020 ‘I’m scared’ Black people — many of them immigrants — make up less than 2 percent of Maine’s population but almost a quarter of its coronavirus cases Maine does not collect data for immigrants, following federal guidelines, but officials said contact tracing showed that many of those affected are immigrants or their children. The population of Lewiston, shown here, includes refugees. By Maria Sacchetti WESTBROOK, Maine — Workers at a red-brick factory called American Roots had to decide amid a pandemic whether to come back to work. Instead of the usual sweatshirts and knit caps, they would churn out masks to protect front-line workers from the novel coronavirus. Or they could take the safer route: Stay home and collect unemployment. Almost all were immigrants from Africa or the Middle East, and workers said none of them flinched when they gathered on the factory floor that morning in March. Everyone voted to keep stitching. “I’m not scared,” said Maria Lutina, 42, an asylum seeker from Angola and the factory’s head stitcher who helped design the masks. “Americans, they need it.” Immigrants and refugees help power Maine, America’s oldest and whitest state, by picking blueberries, packing meat and tending to the elderly far from the fancy resorts on Vacationland’s rocky coast. But in a state that has one of the lowest rates of coronavirus infections, a pattern has emerged: Black Mainers — many of them immigrants — have been infected at disproportionate rates, accounting for approximately 23 percent of the cases in a state where they are less than 2 percent of the population. American Roots has not been spared; state officials announced Thursday that 11 employees have tested positive for the virus. Two of the state’s 115 coronavirus deaths have been among black Mainers, who health officials said tend to be younger and less likely to exhibit symptoms of the virus’s disease, covid-19. But advocates for immigrants say many have been ill, and a state lawmaker warned that black residents in Maine and nationwide are facing the “twin pandemics” of systemic racism that hinders access to health care, and a virus that has disproportionately infected people of color. The most recent state data show that at least 836 of more than 3,600 Mainers who have had the coronavirus are black. Maine does not collect data for immigrants, following federal guidelines, but officials said contact tracing showed that many of those affected are immigrants or their children. Latinos account for a smaller number of cases, about 145 infections. Leaders of immigrant organizations said Maine initially was slow to offer testing, provide bilingual contact tracers and directly invest in immigrant organizations that know the communities best. Much of the initial funding went to mostly white-led organizations that subcontract with immigrant groups. State officials say they are scrambling to address the racial disparity by expanding testing and health care, and finding ways to provide direct aid to immigrant groups to prevent the virus’s spread. Officials are also hiring more bilingual staff members and have translated coronavirus information into at least 11 other languages. “We know we’ve had long-standing racial disparities in our health-care system, and we know that racism is a problem in Maine, as it is elsewhere,” said Jeanne Lambrew, the state’s Health and Human Services commissioner. “So we are trying to obviously act with urgency because we are trying to prevent what we’re seeing from getting worse.” Nationwide, the vast majority of black people are native-born U.S. citizens, according to the Census Bureau, but in more than a dozen states including New York, Massachusetts, the Dakotas and Minnesota, large shares of the black population are immigrants. They face racial discrimination and language or cultural barriers that can impede efforts to stop the coronavirus’s spread, such as public briefings about the pandemic that are only in English. Almost half the black people in Maine are immigrants, the highest share in the nation. Most are from African nations including Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. [Maine’s Vacationland hot spots are ghost towns as tourism struggles amid coronavirus] Although the spread of the coronavirus among black residents has slowed in recent weeks, advocates for immigrants warn that conditions in Maine are ripe for a spike in infections if officials do not reach immigrants directly. Ines Mugisha, a 34-year-old immigrant from Burundi, said her husband, a home health-care
[Marxism] The little-known role Sweden played in the colonial slave trade - The Local
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[Marxism] Capital Wars | Michael Roberts Blog
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[Marxism] Beyond Work? The Shortcomings of Post-Work Politics - COSMONAUT
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. * Mikael Lyngaas argues that post-work theorists ranging from Bob Black to Srnicek and Williams are utopian socialism for the current era. https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/07/18/beyond-work-the-shortcomings-of-post-work-politics/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Defense of free speech, debate met with slander and threats of reprisal – The Militant
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[Marxism] Forrest Hylton | Colombia’s Disappeared · LRB 16 July 2020
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[Marxism] 50 Nights of Unrest in Portland
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, July 18, 2020 50 Nights of Unrest in Portland Robert Evans of Bellingcat says the city “is being used as a bellwether to see what this administration can get away with.” By Charlie Warzel Mr. Warzel is an Opinion writer at large. Thursday night marked the 50th consecutive night of demonstrations in Portland, Ore. The protests began after the killing of George Floyd — tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest police violence and racial injustice. Since then, the protests have grown smaller, but clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters have escalated — on July 12, videos circulated of a federal officer shooting a protester in the head with a nonlethal munition, resulting in a skull fracture. Coverage of the unrest has caught the attention of President Trump, who vowed to “dominate” the protesters with federal law enforcement officers. According to recent reports from Oregon Public Broadcasting and other outlets, federal agents dressed in fatigues have been patrolling the city in unmarked vans, grabbing and detaining protesters, often with no indication of whether they’ve been charged with any crime. “This is an attack on our democracy,” Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, said. The Oregon senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, as well as Senator Chuck Schumer, have requested a formal federal investigation into the arrests. The Nation reports that the arrests have been carried out by Customs and Border Protection, acting on the president’s “Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.” To get a sense of what is unfolding in Portland and what it’s like to be covering protests each night for two months, I spoke with Robert Evans, a freelance journalist based in the city. Mr. Evans is a conflict reporter who has reported from Iraq and Ukraine. He covers far-right extremism for the investigative journalism site Bellingcat and hosts the Behind The Bastards podcast. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity: How many nights have you been out there covering these demonstrations? Of the last 51 or so nights I’m at somewhere around 30 that I’ve been out. It’s not going great. I had to have a sit-down talk with a 17-year old photo journalist because his hands won’t stop shaking and I know from prior experience in war zones that it’s an early sign of P.T.S.D.-like symptoms. I had to tell him: “You very likely have done permanent damage to your brain covering this stuff and now you’ll have to ask yourself how much damage you’re willing to incur.” What is happening in Portland right now? What is happening in Portland right now — and I say this as somebody who’s seen war in other countries — it’s as close up to the line as you can get to actual war without live rounds. It’s really hard for me to see how things go much further without people dying. The craziest night so far was July 4, where kids stockpiled thousands of dollars in illegal fireworks. They were in the center of downtown where the bulk of the protests happened around the Justice Center. It started as drunken party, more or less. At random, cops began shooting into the crowd. Protesters coalesced around the idea of firing commercial-grade fireworks into the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse. You had law enforcement firing rubber bullets, foam bullets, pepper balls and tear gas as crowds circled in around the courthouse firing rockets into the side of the building. That went on for a shocking length of time — there was this running three-hour street battle. I couldn’t tell whose explosions were whose. Just a constant series of concussions. The president started taking Portland personally after that. Federal law enforcement escalated after that, right? That’s the story that is making the rounds right now — the unmarked vans rounding up suspected protesters and arresting them. Since the feds got involved with police it’s gotten really brutal. I’d argue we’ve seen more police brutality in the last 50 days from Portland Police Department than anywhere else in the country. It’s brutal but it’s also predictable. There are rhythms to the way police work. It’s become an orchestrated dance with both sides. There are warnings and kicking people out of the demonstration area. But the feds have deliberately defied the rhythms. Last Saturday, the crowd was 100 or so. It was very chill — nothing going on beyond the now-normal occupation of the Justice Center. And feds came out grabbing people seemingly at random and beating people with sticks. There was the
[Marxism] Yascha Mounk and Osita Nwanevu debate the Harper’s letter on illiberalism: Gist with Mike Pesca transcript.
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[Marxism] Feds Vowed to Quell Unrest in Portland. Local Leaders Are Telling Them to Leave.
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, July 17, 2020 Feds Vowed to Quell Unrest in Portland. Local Leaders Are Telling Them to Leave. By Sergio Olmos and Mike Baker PORTLAND, Ore. — Federal agents dressed in camouflage and tactical gear have taken to the streets of Portland in unmarked vans, seizing and detaining protesters and unleashing tear gas in what Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon has called “a blatant abuse of power.” Since their arrival with the goal of tamping down persistent unrest, federal officers have shot one protester in the head with an apparent impact munition, leaving the man with severe head injuries and producing the image of blood dripping on Portland’s streets. One of the people detained, Mark Pettibone, said in an interview that an unmarked vehicle stopped right in front of him around 2 a.m. on Wednesday and four people in camouflage jumped out. Given the lack of markings or identification, he had no idea who they were. “One of the officers said, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ and just grabbed me and threw me into the van. Another officer pulled my beanie down, so I couldn’t see,” Mr. Pettibone said. Mr. Pettibone said he was terrified and that at no point was he told why he was arrested or detained, or what agency the officers were with. He said he was ultimately held for about two hours before being released. On Thursday night and into Friday morning — the 50th straight day of demonstrations — a line of federal officers in gas masks walked down Portland’s Third Avenue. They filled downtown corridors with tear gas, which a federal judge has barred the Portland police from using except in the case of a safety risk, and they also shot less-lethal munitions, which left people limping in pain. The aggressive federal posture has complicated the mission of the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has spent much of its history focused on foreign terrorism threats and is supposed to build collaborative relationships with local law enforcement partners. And it raises questions of whether it is appropriate for federal authorities to take up the policing of an American city against the wishes of local leaders. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland, who is also police commissioner, said the federal response was “irresponsible” and asked for those deployed to stay inside federal buildings or leave the city. The Multnomah County sheriff, Mike Reese, called the federal response a “significant setback” in efforts to calm tensions. Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon called it a “blatant abuse of power by the federal government.” But federal officials, starting with President Trump, have continued to stake a claim to the city’s law and order. The acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, arrived in the city on Thursday, calling the protesters a “violent mob” of anarchists emboldened by a lack of local enforcement. Portland’s protests began in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, drawing thousands of people to the streets to denounce police violence and racial injustice. On some nights, protesters would blanket the Burnside Bridge, each laying face down on the pavement for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in remembrance of Mr. Floyd. Those mass demonstrations have waned, but hundreds have continued on, clashing with the police almost nightly. They have set off fireworks, lit fires and attempted to create an autonomous zone similar to one that existed up Interstate 5 in Seattle. The persistent unrest has frustrated city leaders, including Mr. Wheeler, who has often been a target of the ire. Some Black leaders in the community have also expressed disappointment, suggesting that the predominantly white protest crowd was seizing an opportunity and detracting from the vital efforts needed to reform policing. City leaders have tried a variety of tactics to calm the tensions. Mayor Wheeler has pleaded for calm. The city’s police chief resigned, to be replaced with Chuck Lovell, who is Black. City commissioners have moved to cut some $16 million from the police budget. But the protests have continued. Mr. Trump has taken aggressive posture against demonstrations, vowing at one point to “dominate” protesters and mobilize federal agencies to operate in cities. Mr. Trump said last week that he had sent Homeland Security personnel to Portland because “the locals couldn’t handle it.” “It’s a pretty wild group, but you have it in very good control,” he told Mr. Wolf. The next day, video appeared to show one protester, Donavan La Bella, holding a sign across the street from the federal courthouse being struck in the head by an impact munition, leading
[Marxism] Thoughts on Bayard Rustin nostalgia | 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. * A Dustin Guastella article on Nonsite dated July 9th generated controversy because it opposed defunding the cops. Like Bernie Sanders, another opponent of defunding, Guastella proposed reforms that would satisfy everybody since they would lead to less crime. If there were massive increases in federal social spending, there would be more jobs and hence less desperation leading to crime. Such “class-based” measures might have made it possible for George Floyd to avoid being killed as Cedric Johnson argued in Jacobin: “His alleged use of counterfeit money reflects the criminally inadequate provision of income support.” What caught my eye in Guastella’s article was his reference to Bayard Rustin, who warned about activists’ “psychic inability to fend off leftwing slogans which result in right-wing policy.” One of those slogans is defunding the cops. Since polls indicate that defunding is unpopular with Blacks and whites alike, we are cutting off support. Of course, black lives matter wasn’t very popular a few years ago as well. For Guastella, the need is to rebuild the alliance between the Black movement and labor of the early to mid-1960s when Rustin was a key organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. This march concluded in a rally where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. Just as importantly, Rustin helped pull together the conference that met in the fall to adopt a Freedom Budget. In many ways, the Freedom Budget was the Green New Deal of its day. Just as the Green New Deal would abolish climate change, so would the Freedom Budget abolish poverty—both Black and white. To move forward with such ambitious projects, it was necessary to elect politicians who understood their needs. full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/07/17/thoughts-on-bayard-rustin-nostalgia/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Green New Deal(s): A Resource List for Political Ecologists – Undisciplined Environments
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[Marxism] Brace yourself for the latest COVID-19 predictions: You’re not going to like them – Alternet.org
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 Wednesday evening, county commissioners in Provo, Utah convened a meeting for the purposes of discussing a proposed mandate to wear a face mask when schools convene in the fall. That meeting ended up being almost immediately adjourned because more than 100 non-mask-wearing people crammed into the small meeting room, refusing to keep their distance from each other or commissioners. Even more people turned up for an anti-mask rally before the meeting. Comments from those who came to give the commissioners a face full of unfiltered breath included statements that wearing a mask would “break the mind” of children, claims that allowing kids to play in the dirt would boost their immune systems to fight off the disease, and at least one claim that “COVID is a hoax. It’s a lie. It’s a political stunt.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/brace-yourself-for-the-latest-covid-19-predictions-youre-not-going-to-like-them/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Democrats Will Never Choose Transformative Change – So Give Them No Choice | Black Agenda Report
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[Marxism] Or does it implode | Richard Seymour on Patreon
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. * Does the ruling class want to rule or not? If you own the world, and want to exploit it for the foreseeable future, oughtn't you work to secure the conditions of ongoing exploitability? That's in the nature of ruling, is it not? The biggest crisis in the history of global capitalism. Threatening enormous turmoil for years to come. You would think that the world's ruling classes would have formulated a somewhat coherent, standardised response to the threat of pandemics. Because of the global nature of the problem, only a globalised solution could work. Compare with the coordinated response to the global financial crash in 2008. In the medium-term aftermath of the crisis, there were significant strategic differences between the EU leadership over the timing and extent of stimulus and deficit-repayments. Nonetheless, there was significant convergence on the basic policy instruments of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and bailouts. https://www.patreon.com/posts/or-does-it-39380018 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Each Heartbeat Must Be Our Song; the Redness of Blood, Our Banner: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2020).
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. * Too little has been made of the fact that countries like Laos and Vietnam have been able to manage the coronavirus; there are no confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in either country. Both of these Southeast Asian states border China, where the virus was first detected in late December 2019, and both have thriving trade and tourist relations with China. India is separated from China by the high Himalaya Mountains, while Brazil and the United States have two oceans between themselves and Asia; nonetheless, it is the United States, Brazil, and India that have shocking numbers of infections and fatalities. What accounts for the ability of relatively poor countries like Laos and Vietnam to attempt to break the chain of this infection, while richer states – notably the United States of America – have floundered? https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/29-socialism-and-coronashock/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] What Black Lives Matter Has Revealed About Small-Town America
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, July 16, 2020 What Black Lives Matter Has Revealed About Small-Town America By Campbell Robertson CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — Nikki Wilkerson was used to thinking of herself as the “small brown girl” growing up in rural Pennsylvania. She has been eyed skeptically while out shopping and questioned by the police for no clear reason at all. But she had resigned herself to keeping quiet about racism, which her white friends never seemed to notice even when it happened right in front of them. Nobody around here ever talked about any of this. It’s just what it was. And yet there one afternoon in early June, right in the middle of the county seat, she happened upon it: a crowd of white people demanding justice for Black lives. They would be joined by Black high school students, children of Latino farmworkers, “gays, lesbians, queer, transgender, whatever,” Ms. Wilkerson, 34, said. “This was not the Chambersburg I grew up in. I had no idea. All of these people are just coming out of the woodwork.” The sight was inspiring, she said. But also frustrating. “Why weren’t we doing this a long time ago?” Black Lives Matter could be responsible for the largest protest movement in U.S. history, which sprang up in countless cities and small towns after George Floyd was killed by the police in May. While the street protests have tapered off in most places, newly minted activists in small towns are still discussing plans for new events or standing in the back of otherwise empty City Council meetings to make their demands for police reform. But beyond any policy changes, which could be slow in coming, a significant consequence of recent weeks could be the realization for many Americans in small towns that their neighbors are more multiracial and less willing to be quiet about things than most people had assumed. Across the state in Lehighton, Pa., a town that is 95 percent white, Montreo Thompson, 26, pulled a lawn chair into his driveway in early June and held up a Black Lives Matter poster. Within days he was helping lead marches in towns all over the region, and also protesting alongside Black people he had never seen before — some of whom lived down the street. “They were literally walking distance from our house and I never knew they were there.” Small-town America has never been racially or politically monolithic. After the 2016 election and especially in places where President Trump romped, thousands of women who were aghast at the result became politically active for the first time in their lives, meeting in library basements and organizing small but regular rallies. Still, that movement, powered chiefly by middle-aged, middle-class women in the suburbs and exurbs, was in many ways just a preamble to the mass wave of protests following Mr. Floyd’s death. For weeks, protesters in Chambersburg gathered on the sidewalk in front of Central Presbyterian Church, a bronze-steepled landmark dedicated in 1871, just seven years after the town was burned to the ground by Confederate soldiers. The Rev. Scott Bowerman, who has been pastor of the church for eight years, called Mr. Trump’s election “an apocalyptic moment.” It was a deliberate word choice, he said, based in the root meaning of apocalypse: a revelation. The 2016 election, Mr. Bowerman said, revealed that Franklin County, where Chambersburg sits, was not only conservative but enamored of a brand of America-first politics that truly electrified many of the white voters, who unfurled flags for Mr. Trump in a way they never had for any another candidate. Mr. Trump won the county by more than 45 points, 71 to 25 percent. But the election also revealed a silent minority, long quiet about their politics. Many already knew one another (“the usual suspects,” Mr. Bowerman said) but they began forming overtly liberal groups — Franklin County Coalition for Progress, Community Uniting, Concerned Citizens of Franklin County — planning events to celebrate Pride month, for instance, and digging into issues like redistricting reform. A new organization called Racial Reconciliation began holding discussion groups at the Presbyterian church, with mostly white attendees. But then the George Floyd demonstrations began. These protesters were not the Trump faithful, nor were they members of the so-called resistance. At first, nobody recognized them at all. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Linda Thomas Worthy, a founder of Racial Reconciliation and one of the county’s most outspoken figures on racial issues. She would drive through downtown during the first week of the protests to try to
[Marxism] The Case for Degrowth
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[Marxism] 'Bloodbath' at University of Akron
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[Marxism] What College Activists Want
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. * Chronicle of Higher Education, JULY 15, 2020 PREMIUM What College Activists Want Defunded police. Inclusive coursework. Faculty members who look like them. Students demand radical change for racial justice, and they’re not backing down. By Katherine Mangan and Marc Parry David Zentz, Andrea Morales, Dean Lavenson, and Mark Abramson for The Chronicle There was a time when stripping a racist’s name from a building would have been celebrated as a breakthrough for racial justice in higher education. Today, it’s accepted as a starting point. As the Covid-19 pandemic and outrage over police violence converge, college students are demanding radical change. They want Confederate symbols toppled, police departments defunded, coursework diversified, departments restaffed with people of color, and a host of other actions. “We’re past the point of conversation and reforms and panels,” said Maliya Homer, president of the Black Student Union at the University of Louisville. “We can’t panel our way out of this oppressive system that controls us.” For students like Homer, these issues are personal. On a daily basis, they face fear, frustration, judgment, and ostracism because of their race and ethnicity, and their demands are shaped by those common experiences. The Chronicle spoke with four student activists, each shedding light on a single demand. The demand: Sever ties with the police. The activist: Maliya Homer, president of the Black Student Union at the University of Louisville Dean Lavenson for The Chronicle When Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was shot to death by Louisville police officers who crashed into her apartment in the middle of the night, it was a jarring reminder for Maliya Homer of how vulnerable she felt as a Black woman. Homer, president of the University of Louisville’s Black Student Union, had been disturbed for years about accounts of local police officers questioning Black and brown students for behavior that wouldn’t have raised suspicion if they were white. A Mexican American friend, wearing a hoodie and walking to the library, was asked where he was heading. A white student driving with two Black passengers said a police officer pulled out her gun when they asked her for directions. But Taylor’s death marked a turning point for Homer. “Breonna’s murder was the last time I was going to even entertain ideas of reform,” she said. It “made me feel like Black women are dispensable.” On May 31, Homer and the Black Student Union called for the university to sever ties with the Louisville Metro Police Department. “Nothing about being in closer proximity to state-sanctioned violence makes us any safer," Homer wrote in the statement. Helping impoverished neighborhoods near the campus meet food and affordable-housing needs would be a more equitable and effective way, she said, to improve public safety. Policing, Homer believes, contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline. She might have ended up there herself if the police had been summoned during her years as a strong-willed middle-schooler, she said. Louisville’s president, Neeli Bendapudi, sympathized with Homer’s concerns but wrote in a response on the university’s website that cutting ties “would be an insufficient answer to a very complex problem.” The university relies on the local police to help investigate crimes, the president wrote. Its criminal-justice department houses a police-training institute. Bendapudi promised that campus police officers would lead most investigations and that de-escalation or cultural-sensitivity training would be required for all officers hired to work on campus. To Homer, those steps fall short. “It’s a slap in the face,” she said, “when you have Black and brown students asking you, begging you, telling you we don’t feel safe” with the metro police department, “and you talk about reform." The demand: Remove symbols of oppression. The activist: Tyler Yarbrough, student senator at the University of Mississippi Andrea Morales for The Chronicle Tyler Yarbrough couldn’t believe the image in his Twitter feed. The University of Mississippi student senator was about to drive from his college town of Oxford to his hometown of Clarksdale for a Juneteenth event marking the end of slavery. And his university had just released plans to build what looked to him like a “shrine to white supremacy.” The picture on his phone showed an artist’s rendering of the campus cemetery to which the university planned to relocate its statue of a Confederate soldier. The project involved upgrading the cemetery
[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] [UCE] Prefiguration and (Cosmic) Utopia with A. M. Gittlitz - COSMONAUT
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. * Remi and Rudy welcome A. M. Gittlitz, the author of I Want to Believe: J. Posadas, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism and producers of The Antifada podcast to discuss the role of utopias and prefiguration in historical and modern-day communist strategy. We cover topics from Russian Cosmism, the parallels between New World and Space Utopias, the relationship between the subjective and objective conditions for revolution, finding spaces where we can imagine a better world, and how to find hope in the end of the end of history. The episode ends with the opening of Cosmos: Carl Sagan’s hope for a brighter future https://secure-web.cisco.com/1mtcpsVcWYEgnqJQx2bKAFOCSRpBxNrj8oF_cfHo_bI8oXp5-HanZve38JYEBLDbMpaJuMIG4ddIK9qyGfTL0vkaFdKpKJqLJ2lVHeL-MCebrQSrHgrsPMpWIBU3yDvXjklhd6JoeWH9JOqUinM1ZOnIPrK4DPf11tjYKYnGdX7BCANDqdVqXQkN4s131WdrrDW7c83DerwBr3EYzMwD9t54heZHh1vpI9VkugWf0J1N02CiBCmVkvDzaZcA8aX0_1RIryimqqvxHavfcuAsk9QMsGQBuUXN6gWzNQY2ED_eLO-6b3uoqgF4F8LdrCnO2-3w7LODrYh-D5h1GP7Gyupef1Q0PgLR4OQSYBahCaldmabNOOUo1Uqw-V9CKC97e/https%3A%2F%2Fcosmonaut.blog%2F2020%2F07%2F15%2Fprefiguration-and-cosmic-utopia-with-a-m-gittlitz%2F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Chris Hedges: America faces a historic choice — "ugly corporate tyranny" or revolution | Salon.com
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[Marxism] The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a Meandering Monologue.
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. * (The transcript is here. Mind-boggling. https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-rose-garden-press-conference-transcript-july-14) NY Times, July 15, 2020 The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a Meandering Monologue. By Peter Baker WASHINGTON — In theory, President Trump summoned television cameras to the heat-baked Rose Garden early Tuesday evening to announce new measures against China to punish it for its oppression of Hong Kong. But that did not last long. What followed instead was an hour of presidential stream of consciousness as Mr. Trump drifted seemingly at random from one topic to another, often in the same run-on sentence. Even for a president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency. He weighed in on China and the coronavirus and the Paris climate change accord and crumbling highways. And then China again and military spending and then China again and then the coronavirus again. And the economy and energy taxes and trade with Europe and illegal immigration and his friendship with Mexico’s president. And the coronavirus again and then immigration again and crime in Chicago and the death penalty and back to climate change and education and historical statues. And more. “We could go on for days,” he said at one point, and it sounded plausible. At times, it was hard to understand what he meant. He seemed to suggest that his presumptive Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would get rid of windows if elected and later said that Mr. Biden would “abolish the suburbs.” He complained that Mr. Biden had “gone so far right.” (He meant left.) Even for those who follow Mr. Trump regularly and understand his shorthand, it became challenging to follow his train of thought. For instance, in discussing cooperation agreements with Central American countries to stop illegal immigration, he had this to say: “We have great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring killers out, they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want them. Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.” At another point, he took a jab at Mr. Biden’s mental acuity. “Let him define the word carbon, because he won’t be able to,” Mr. Trump said. That has been a theme of his lately, unsubtly implying that Mr. Biden has grown senile. Just last week, Mr. Trump, 74, boasted that he had recently taken a cognitive test and “aced it,” while insisting that Mr. Biden, 77, “couldn’t pass” such an exam. The disjointed monologue, however, may not have been the most convincing evidence. On Twitter, his critics quickly compared him to a grandfather who had broken into the sherry cabinet. “Trump is a truly sick individual,” wrote Jon Favreau, who was President Barack Obama’s chief speechwriter. Rick Wilson, a founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, called it “rambling verbal dysentery.” The appearance came on the same day that the president’s estranged niece, Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, published a scathing book questioning his mental health and asserting that pathologies stemming from his childhood are playing out now on the world stage. Mr. Trump has not commented about the book, but in the past he has rejected such contentions by describing himself as “a very stable genius.” The focus of the evening session with reporters took a turn after Mr. Biden received extensive television coverage earlier in the day for his $2 trillion climate plan, according to a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act, the ostensible reason for his appearance, was treated as an afterthought. In effect, the news conference turned into a campaign speech to substitute for the one Mr. Trump was scheduled to give last weekend in New Hampshire only to cancel amid concerns about flagging attendance, citing a possible storm at the site of the rally. While presidents as a general rule are not supposed to engage in overt campaigning from the White House itself, Mr. Trump made little effort to
[Marxism] What can we learn from Kautsky today? – International Socialism
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[Marxism] The QAnon Candidates Are Here. Trump Has Paved Their Way.
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, July 15, 2020 The QAnon Candidates Are Here. Trump Has Paved Their Way. The conspiracy theorists accuse Democrats and even fellow Republicans of being beholden to a cabal of bureaucrats, pedophiles and Satanists. President Trump has cheered them on. By Matthew Rosenberg and Jennifer Steinhauer A Republican Senate candidate recently declared herself “one of the thousands of digital soldiers” in service of QAnon, a convoluted pro-Trump conspiracy theory about a “deep state” of child-molesting Satanist traitors plotting against the president. A congressional candidate in Colorado who made approving comments about QAnon bested a five-term Republican incumbent in a primary last month. And then there is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who is perhaps the most unabashedly pro-QAnon candidate for Congress and has drawn a positive tweet from President Trump. She recently declared that QAnon was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.” More than two years after QAnon, which the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat, emerged from the troll-infested corners of the internet, the movement’s supporters are morphing from keyboard warriors into political candidates. They have been urged on by Mr. Trump, whose own espousal of conspiracy theories and continual railing against the political establishment have cleared a path for QAnon candidates. And even as party leaders publicly distance themselves from the movement, they are quietly supporting some QAnon-linked candidates — demonstrating the thin line they are trying to walk between radical elements among their base and the moderate voters they need to win over. Precisely how many candidates are running under the banner of QAnon is somewhat open to interpretation — estimates range to more than a dozen, with many more defeated in primaries — and nearly all are expected to lose in November. Some candidates have clear connections to the movement and use its language and hashtags on social media and in real-world appearances. Scores more have cherry-picked some of the movement’s themes, such as claims that Jews, and especially the financier George Soros, are controlling the political system and vaccines; assertions that the risk from the coronavirus is vastly overstated; or racist theories about former President Barack Obama. Many have appeared on QAnon-themed podcasts and in news outlets. On Monday Jeff Sessions, caught in a tight race to reclaim his former Senate seat in Alabama, recycled an old QAnon meme about himself in a Twitter post. All of the candidates, though, present a fresh headache for Republican leaders. They were already struggling to distance the party from conspiracy theories steeped in racist and anti-Semitic messaging. Now they must contend with candidates whose online beliefs have inspired real-world violence, including the killing of a mob boss. It is a development that threatens to further alienate the kinds of traditional Republican voters who typically care about lowering taxes, not chasing imaginary Satanists from the government. Democrats are eager to pounce. “We will point it out loudly and clearly,” said Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The moral of the story is the Republican Party is silent on all of this.” Yet Republican leaders also cannot afford to turn off voters who share those conspiratorial views if they hope to retain the Senate and retake the House. So while the party has publicly sought to keep its distance from most QAnon candidates, campaign finance filings show that some have clearly won its tacit backing. In April, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a high-profile lawmaker and a favorite of the president, donated $2,000 to Ms. Greene’s campaign. A political action committee with which Mr. Jordan is associated, the House Freedom Fund, gave her thousands of dollars more. A month earlier, the Republican National Committee gave $2,200 to Angela Stanton-King, a House candidate in Georgia who has repeatedly posted QAnon content and obscure hashtags, such as “#trusttheplan.” The Georgia Republican Party gave an additional $2,800 to Ms. Stanton-King, who was pardoned this year by Mr. Trump for her role in a car-theft ring. She is expected to be roundly defeated in her heavily Democratic district. Ms. Stanton-King has since denied believing in any QAnon conspiracies. Yet in recent days she was again tweeting about “global elite pedophiles,” as well as a new conspiracy theory
[Marxism] Monthly Review | Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism
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[Marxism] The Truth Behind Bari Weiss’s Resignation From the New York Times | Observer
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[Marxism] Warnings of Possible Cover-Up in Progress as Trump Orders Hospitals to Stop Sending Coronavirus Data to CDC | Common Dreams News
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[Marxism] The CDC Is Wrong, Testing is essential for colleges to reopen safely
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. * Chronicle of Higher Education The CDC Is Wrong Testing is essential for colleges to reopen safely By Carl T. Bergstrom July 14, 2020 PREMIUM Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated guidance for institutions of higher education in dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. In that report, the CDC failed to recommend testing for students returning to campus, and went one step further: It issued an explicit statement of nonrecommendation. "Testing of all students, faculty and staff for Covid-19 before allowing campus entry (entry testing) has not been systematically studied. It is unknown if entry testing in IHEs provides any additional reduction in person-to-person transmission of the virus beyond what would be expected with implementation of other infection preventive measures (e.g., social distancing, cloth face covering, hand washing, enhanced cleaning and disinfection). Therefore, CDC does not recommend entry testing of all returning students, faculty, and staff." The aim of such testing is to identify infected individuals with no or mild symptoms, and to isolate them to prevent them from transmitting disease to others. This is a proven means of disease control, and is being used everywhere from workplaces to our armed forces to the NBA to the White House. The CDC’s decision not to recommend such testing for higher education is inexplicable and irresponsible, particularly given that colleges are environments where Covid-19 spreads easily, and large outbreaks are likely. For example, a major cluster in fraternity housing at the University of Washington last week has infected more than 130 students, the University of Mississippi suffered an outbreak of over 160 cases associated with fraternity parties, the University of California at Berkeley had a large fraternity party cluster, and several college football teams have suffered sizable outbreaks already this summer. If we cannot contain outbreaks during the minimal campus activity of summer, we cannot expect to fare better in autumn. The language of the CDC statement makes a disingenuous appeal to an absence of evidence. It is true that we have never had students return to college amidst a Covid-19 pandemic, so we have no direct experience with the effects of testing in that specific scenario. But we know exactly what to expect. We have overwhelming evidence from numerous other settings that testing is effective above and beyond other measures at identifying infected individuals, and that by isolating such individuals we can reduce the spread of disease. The CDC’s rationale for inaction is akin to observing that seatbelts save lives in Cleveland but refusing to recommend them in Cincinnati because that’s a different city and “you never know." We lack direct insight into the CDC’s motivations. But the nonrecommendation poses serious cause for concern. The White House has discouraged widespread Covid-19 testing. The CDC has already capitulated to the White House on other aspects of its coronavirus guidance. In May, at the request of the West Wing, the agency walked back its meek suggestion that religious organizations "consider suspending or at least decreasing use of a choir/musical ensembles and congregant singing … if appropriate within the faith tradition.” Last week, in response to criticism from Vice President Pence and President Trump, Director Robert Redfield of the CDC stressed that his agency’s K-12 school guidelines were not binding and expressed a desire that they not be used to justify school closures. . Another possibility — not mutually exclusive — is that the CDC is concerned about the feasibility of entry testing, given the nationwide testing shortages. Rather than recommending against testing, the appropriate response would have been to issue a statement like: “The CDC recommends entry testing as a best practice for Covid-19 control on campuses. We recognize that this may not be feasible in some locations, but urge colleges to make every effort to implement such a program.” Unclear as the motives may be, the consequences of this decision are easy to anticipate. The CDC has provided considerable cover to colleges that do not wish to deal with the expense and logistical challenges of entry testing or continuing testing throughout the semester. Already we are seeing institutions justify their planned inaction by appealing to the CDC guidelines. As college students return to campuses around the country next month, they will bring coronavirus infections with them. Failing to take obvious precautions and carry out effective
[Marxism] Former COVID-19 data chief: Outbreak ‘much worse’ in Florida than DeSantis administration lets on – Alternet.org
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[Marxism] Wealth or income? | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * And when you use the gini index for both income and wealth for each country, the difference is staggering. Take a few examples. The gini index for the US is 37.8 (pretty high), but the gini index for wealth distribution is 85.9! Or take supposedly egalitarian Scandinavia. The gini index for income in Norway is just 24.9 but the wealth gini is 80.5! It’s the same story in the other Nordic countries. The Nordic countries may have lower than average inequality of income but they have higher than average inequality of wealth. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/wealth-or-income/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Resignation Letter — Bari Weiss
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[Marxism] Bari Weiss Resigns From New York Times Opinion Post
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, July 14, 2020 Bari Weiss Resigns From New York Times Opinion Post By Edmund Lee Bari Weiss, a writer and editor for the opinion department of The New York Times, has resigned from the paper, citing “bullying by colleagues” and an “illiberal environment.” In a nearly 1,500-word letter addressed to A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher, Ms. Weiss offered a deep critique of Times employees and company leadership, describing a “hostile work environment” where co-workers had insulted her or called for her removal on Twitter and in the interoffice communications app Slack. “I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public,” she wrote. Mr. Sulzberger declined to comment. In a statement, Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said, “We’re committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all.” After working at The Wall Street Journal and Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish culture and politics, Ms. Weiss joined The Times as an Op-Ed staff editor and writer in 2017 as part of the paper’s effort to broaden the ideological range of its opinion staff after President Trump’s inauguration. Ms. Weiss, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has been known to question aspects of social justice movements that have taken root in recent years. She was critical of a woman who described an uncomfortable encounter with the comedian Aziz Ansari and questioned whether the sexual assault charges leveled against Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh should disqualify him from the post. She was also criticized for a tweet suggesting that the California-born U.S. Olympic figure skating competitor Mirai Nagasu was an immigrant. (Ms. Weiss said in a later tweet that she knew Ms. Nagasu was a daughter of immigrants.) In 2018 she wrote on the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where she became a bat mitzvah, in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. The murder of 11 Jews led her to write the book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” which won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award. Ms. Weiss recently came under fire for online comments on the staff unrest that followed the publication of a Times Op-Ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton calling for a military response to civic unrest in American cities during the widespread protests against racism and police violence. More than 1,000 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the Op-Ed’s publication, and James Bennet, the editorial page editor, resigned days after it was published. An editors’ note was added to the essay, saying it “fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” The opinion department of The Times is run separately from the newsroom. In a tweet, Ms. Weiss described the turmoil inside the paper as a “civil war” between “the (mostly young) wokes” and “the (mostly 40+) liberals.” Many staff members objected on Twitter to her comment, saying it was inaccurate or misrepresented their concerns. In her resignation letter, which was posted on her personal website Tuesday, Ms. Weiss said “intellectual curiosity” was “now a liability at The Times.” She added: “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” Kathleen Kingsbury, the acting editorial page editor, said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion. I’m personally committed to ensuring that The Times continues to publish voices, experiences and viewpoints from across the political spectrum in the Opinion report.” _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Antibodies and anticapitalists | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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[Marxism] Bari Weiss Is Leaving the New York Times
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[Marxism] Should We Cancel "Cancel Culture"? - CounterPunch.org
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. * By Steven Salaita The limits of settler common sense are why members of a leftist publication like Grayzone can coordinate a bizarre, historically illiterate defense of Indian-killer Ulysses S. Grant and then respond to pushback by invoking Taibbi’s essay. And why an ostensible anti-imperialist like Pepe Escobar can share alt-right propaganda about thought police on campus as if it’s incisive social criticism. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/14/should-we-cancel-cancel-culture/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] There are no longer any bees in Volhynia | Richard Seymour on Patreon
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. * Two thirds of the earth's species are entomofauna, or insects. Like Darwin's worms, they are historical actors. They make an enormous contribution to civilisation. Worms prepare the soil for cultivation. They feed us and, when we die, they eat us. Insects pollinate, control pests, sustain wildlife, and recycle dead organic matter. They are a primary food for birds, amphibians, fish and reptiles, sustaining vital food webs. Among pollinators, while other insects are important, only the honey bee does the sort of work that sustains mass consumption. They pollinate buckwheat, broccoli, almonds, apples, cranberries, melons, blueberries, cherries, cashew, kiwi, turnip, coriander, watermelon, cardamom, macadamia, apricot, pear and raspberry. In principle, we could live on corn, soybeans and rice, which don't need pollination, but it would be an impoverished diet. A third of all the food we currently eat depends directly on such pollination. The Egyptians, who knew of only a fraction of this work, thought bees were divine. https://www.patreon.com/posts/there-are-no-any-39287921 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] ‘A Slap in the Face’: N.Y. Town Rejects Black Lives Matter Painting
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, July 14, 2020 ‘A Slap in the Face’: N.Y. Town Rejects Black Lives Matter Painting By Sarah Maslin Nir CATSKILL, N.Y. — The street painting would stretch about three blocks, from Village Pizza II to the stoplight at the southern end of Main Street, spelling out “Black Lives Matter” on the pavement. The proposal didn’t seem like too much of an ask; in the weeks since George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis, the phrase has been painted on streets from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C., and, on Thursday, even in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan. But village leaders in Catskill balked, offering several counterproposals instead, including one that would have allowed the painting, but in the Black area of town. “I knew it was going to be a no,” said Shirley Cross, 31, a member of the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition, which proposed the painting. “I just feel like it’s a slap in the face for Black people.” In cities across the nation, the civil unrest that followed Mr. Floyd’s death has heightened racial tensions and, in some cases, led to confrontations pitting protesters against the police and some community members. It has also caused flash points in many smaller communities. On Saturday, a Black Lives Matter march in Kinderhook, N.Y., about 20 miles northeast of Catskill, was interrupted by a white couple who brandished a gun at protesters outside their home. The couple were eventually taken into police custody, but no arrests had been made as of Monday. “Can you imagine if I pulled a gun on people protesting in front of my house?” Kamal Johnson, the mayor of the nearby city of Hudson, said in a Facebook video; Mr. Johnson was among those protesting on Saturday. “I’d be arrested and all over the newspapers.” In Saranac Lake, N.Y., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, the director of a state-sponsored Adirondack diversity initiative said she is moving because of racist graffiti that she believed was directed at her. The graffiti, which included profanity, said “go back to Africa” and was scrawled on a railroad bridge along a route she uses. As more examples of “Black Lives Matter” art have spread on streets and sidewalks, controversy has followed. In Chicago, one wording was painted over to read “All Lives Matter.” In Palo Alto, Calif., artists blocked the street around a freshly laid painting after officials moved roadblocks, allowing it to be driven over. And in Catskill, on the western banks of the Hudson River, the debate over whether to allow a Black Lives Matter painting directly on Main Street has only exacerbated racial tensions in a village where just over a fifth of the population is Black. Many Black residents live in crumbling public housing, in de facto segregation from the pockets of rural retirees and transplanted Brooklynites, an experience so starkly different they say they might as well be living in two different towns. And it has left some Black residents wondering: To Catskill, do they matter? Ms. Cross, a supervisor at a shoe store in town, says she no longer feels there’s a place for her in the village she has lived in since she was 12. She is now looking to move. “I kind of gave up,” she said. “Even with my voice, I gave up.” She spoke from a stoop where she lives in the Hop-O-Nose Homes, the public housing complex beside Catskill Creek, which runs southeast from the Catskill Mountains, emptying into the Hudson in the village. Nearly 70 percent of residents in public housing are people of color, according to the Catskill Housing Authority; the housing complex is close to where the alternate location of the painting was proposed to go along Water Street. The worn, low-slung red brick homes are just steps away but a world apart from the rapidly gentrifying main drag. There, a turmeric latte costs nearly $5, and “Black Trans Lives Matter” signs rest in the windows of shops, some grasped in the arms of luxury bathrobes. Catskill has had a sizable Black population since at least the early 1800s, when the village was a prominent Hudson River port; by the latter part of the century, local historians said, the village drew Black families from the South. Nearly a century later, Catskill continued to attract Black residents, drawn in part by the construction of new public housing like Hop-O-Nose; in more recent years, a new wave of visitors from places like Brooklyn, lured by the scenery and cheap housing stock, has given the village a more trendy vibe. “When you leave out of Hop-O-Nose, once you go out on Main Street, you see the Black Lives Matter signs
[Marxism] A disabled black veteran drove through Alabama with medical marijuana. Now he faces 5 years in prison.
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. * Washington Post, July 14, 2020 at 7:23 a.m. EDT A disabled black veteran drove through Alabama with medical marijuana. Now he faces 5 years in prison. By Teo Armus The first mistake that left Sean Worsley facing a five-year prison sentence was choosing to stop for gas in tiny Gordo, Ala. The next was blasting music at the pump loudly enough to catch the attention of a local police officer. And the third error was letting Officer Carl Abramo, who said he smelled weed in Worsley’s car, to search the vehicle. What was the worst that could happen? The marijuana in his back seat had been legally prescribed to him in Arizona. Worsley, an Iraq War veteran with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, had used the substance for years to calm his nightmares and soothe his back pain. Yet unbeknown to him, even his legal prescription was illegal in Alabama. The worst-case scenario was far more severe than Worsley could have ever imagined: a years-long legal fight that plunged him into homelessness, cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees, and recently concluded in a 60-month prison sentence. “I feel like I’m being thrown away by a country I went and served for,” Worsley wrote in a letter from the Pickens County Jail to Alabama Appleseed, a criminal justice organization that recently published a detailed account of his case. “I feel like I lost parts of me in Iraq, parts of my spirit and soul that I can’t ever get back.” Besides painting a damning picture of Alabama’s criminal justice system, Worsley’s tale underscores the wildly inconsistent legal landscape across states on marijuana. While recreational use of the drug is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia and medicinal use is allowed in 33 jurisdictions, the substance is entirely banned in Alabama. Not so in Arizona, where the substance has been legal for medical purposes since 2011. Worsley, a Purple Heart recipient who spent five years in the military, including a 14-month deployment to Iraq, used his legal prescription to relieve his short-term memory issues, depression and chronic pain, according to the Appleseed report. Neither the Gordo Police Department nor Pickens County District Judge Lance Bailey immediately responded to phone calls requesting comment from The Washington Post. According to the Appleseed report, Abramo no longer works for the department, and attempts to reach him by The Post were unsuccessful. In 2016, Worsley and his wife, Eboni, were driving from a visit to her family in Mississippi to surprise his own relatives in North Carolina. Driving along Highway 82, they stopped at a gas station outside Tuscaloosa, Ala., to refuel their car. Worsley played air guitar at the pump. On Aug. 15, 2016, shortly after 11 p.m., Abramo heard loud music coming from a vehicle and “observed a Black male get out of the passenger side vehicle,” according to a police report obtained by Appleseed. “He was laughing and joking around and looking at the driver while doing all this.” When Abramo told them their music was violating the noise ordinance in Gordo, a town of less than 2,000 people, they quickly turned it down. After the officer said he smelled marijuana, Worsley said he was disabled veteran and tried to show the officer his medical marijuana card from Arizona. “I explained to him that Alabama did not have medical marijuana,” the police report said, according to Appleseed. “I then placed the suspect in hand cuffs." In the back of the vehicle, Abramo also found a prescription bottle of marijuana, rolling papers, a pipe, a six-pack of beer, a bottle of vodka, and some pain pills, all of which he cited as reasons to arrest the couple. (It is illegal to possess most types of alcohol in Pickens County, which at the time was one of Alabama’s 23 partially dry counties.) While first-time possession of marijuana is sometimes charged as a misdemeanor, according to the Appleseed report, it can be charged as a felony if the arresting officer believes the substance is for purposes “other than personal use.” That’s what the Worsleys, who spent six days in jail, were charged with. After being released on bond, the couple’s legal nightmare seemed to be over. But almost a year later, the bail bondsman called back with a dire message: The Pickens County judge was revoking bonds on all his cases. That meant they had to rush back from Arizona, he told the couple, or they would be charged with failing to appear in court. They hustled and drove back overnight to Alabama, where the Worsleys were split up and taken to separate rooms for questioning — even though, as
[Marxism] Canceling the Cancel Culture: Enriching Discourse or Dumbing it Down? - CounterPunch.org
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[Marxism] Miami Hospital ICU Doctor: New Influx Of Patients Is Younger Than Before : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
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[Marxism] If There Is to Be Any Future for the U.S. Left, We Must Break with Sanders and the Democrats | Left Voice
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Re: [Marxism] (99+) (PDF) Academic Corruption, the Israel Lobby, and 9/11, or, Why I have resigned from my emeritus status at the University of Sussex | Kees Van der Pijl - Academia.edu
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[Marxism] Moving on from Bernie - New Politics
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[Marxism] (99+) (PDF) Academic Corruption, the Israel Lobby, and 9/11, or, Why I have resigned from my emeritus status at the University of Sussex | Kees Van der Pijl - Academia.edu
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[Marxism] Howie Hawkins goes national
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[Marxism] "I Came To Take The White House!" Angela Walker of the Green Party | #MOBP is FREE!
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[Marxism] This Isn't Hillary Clinton's Polling - The Atlantic
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[Marxism] The Harper’s Letter Is a Weak Defense of Free Speech - The Atlantic
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[Marxism] BAR Book Forum: Andrew J. Douglas’s “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society” | Black Agenda Report
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[Marxism] What Do College Students Think of Their Schools’ Reopening Plans? | The New Yorker
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Don’t Fall For The 'Cancel Culture' Scam | HuffPost
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[Marxism] Reactionary liberalism
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. * (Before the Harper's letter appeared, this guy destroyed the premises it was built on.) New Republic Osita Nwanevu/July 6, 2020 The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism The critics of progressive identity politics have got it all wrong: They’re the illiberal ones. It was always a given that 2020 would be a year to remember. Even so, it continues to surprise. It seems likely that June will go down as one of the pivotal months of our political era, a period when our streets, our press, and some of our major institutions were rocked by the force of progressive identity politics. Conversations over the implications of all that’s happened in recent weeks will continue for some time. One of the more active debates is whether our recent social controversies should be seen as further evidence for the advent of what the writer Wesley Yang has called a “successor ideology” that might supplant liberalism altogether. This was the conclusion of an essay on upheaval in the media from journalist Matt Taibbi. “The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation,” he wrote. “They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.” In another recent essay, New York’s Andrew Sullivan charged that progressives now believe “the liberal system is itself a form of white supremacy” and that “liberalism’s core values and institutions cannot be reformed and can only be dismantled.” Versions of this argument have been circulating for over half a decade now. In a 2015 piece, New York’s Jonathan Chait warned readers to take a series of then-recent campus controversies seriously. “The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over,” he wrote. “It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism.” Now, it really would be quite remarkable if American students and activists had, within the space of five or so years, constructed or wandered into a real and novel alternative to the dominant political ideology of the last few centuries. But they haven’t. The tensions we’ve seen lately have been internal to liberalism for ages: between those who take the associative nature of liberal society seriously and those who are determined not to. It is the former group, the defenders of progressive identity politics, who in fact are protecting—indeed expanding—the bounds of liberalism. And it is the latter group, the reactionaries, who are most guilty of the illiberalism they claim has overtaken the American Left. The word “liberalism” has grown many bizarre and contradictory appendages and meanings over the years, particularly in the United States, but the original ideas central to it are fairly clear. Liberalism is an ideology of the individual. Its first principle is that each and every person in society is possessed of a fundamental dignity and can claim certain ineradicable rights and freedoms. Liberals believe, too, in government by consent and the rule of law: The state cannot exercise wholly arbitrary power, and its statutes bind all equally. Associative freedom is often entirely absent from popular discourse about liberalism and our political debates, perhaps because liberals have come to take it entirely for granted. Overall, the liberal ideal is a diverse, pluralistic society of autonomous people guided by reason and tolerance. The dream is harmonious coexistence. But liberalism also happens to excel at generating dissensus, and some of the major sociopolitical controversies of the past few years should be understood as conflicts not between liberalism and something else but between parties placing emphasis on different liberal freedoms—chiefly freedom of speech, a popular favorite which needs no introduction, and freedom of association, the under-heralded right of individuals to unite for a common purpose or in alignment with a particular set of values. Like free speech, freedom of association has been enshrined in liberal democratic jurisprudence here and across the world; liberal theorists from John Stuart Mill to John Rawls have declared it one of the essential human liberties. Yet associative freedom is often entirely absent
[Marxism] “New Right” Leaders Are Co-opting Progressive Language to Mislead Voters
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. * Rutger Bregman turned the tables on Tucker Carlson when Carlson invited him to talk about the need to tax the rich. Expecting the kind of lovefest he has with Max Blumenthal, Bregman accused Fox News of being opposed to raising taxes and called its hosts "millionaires funded by billionaires". https://truthout.org/articles/new-right-leaders-are-co-opting-progressive-language-to-mislead-voters/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] "The rats are leaving the sinking ship": Lindsey Graham agrees to let Robert Mueller testify | Salon.com
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. * With many Twitter commentators saying Graham's s decision would make Trump exceedingly unhappy by giving Mueller a forum to talk about his investigation, some felt Graham — who is struggling in the polls — was trying to put distance between himself and the unpopular president. As one person noted, it looks like 'The rats are leaving the sinking ship." https://www.salon.com/2020/07/12/the-rats-are-leaving-the-sinking-ship-lindsey-graham-agrees-to-let-robert-mueller-testify_partner/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Mass protest in Serbia and an attempt of state-led demobilisation | Lefteast
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. * The regime of Aleksandar Vučić and the machinery of the Serbian Progressive Party managed to almost completely privatise state, municipal and public institutions for their own benefit, starting in 2014 when Vučić became a prime minister for the first time. In the years since, many people left Serbia in pursuit of work and better living conditions. The lives of those who remain in Serbia are instrumentalized by the Progressive Party. https://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/mass-protest-in-serbia-and-an-attempt-of-state-led-demobilisation/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Pecksniff and the Harper’s Open Letter | 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. * https://secure-web.cisco.com/1Yb_zcjuM2qIiwATZacjnqoy2sUreEkbzfWmGSSft2yv7u3B9qeO_oI_zLFf7OOapE2A8uAGAKdqrJnQjHD0AQfpVSlActfQ0ZZ_mm5uTIjmWeFYdRLFj2HOZ-3cdIFRbGGIDOisl5maefW9bMxX-5SX0CdbYrY5rMueK6GQpkJJwXnv3uYnj-5GglNxjHtkesqxTJwtF5XFyX7AW0sqjl4xoIJfVfTIuppp03o_l3wYJMWO9j_vOP7sKPZHFvm1K1xsm7I-j7eZANnrCm3TsKTvpl0b_SQCc2dnoesrGxLJlgU5nZUMg_lpw_24NTVdZqymzpd4QbzUsVmu8ZMoWY1mOAD_nmn0zJuzLmyWIpyfFBwJjo6Q0tVXsFWuJpYKT4TGj7rbGFxr5Z3duePUCyw/https%3A%2F%2Flouisproyect.org%2F2020%2F07%2F12%2Fpecksniff-and-the-harpers-open-letter%2F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] ‘Cancel Culture’ and the Pro-Israel Lobby – Canadian Dimension
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[Marxism] The Dialectic of Assimilation - COSMONAUT
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. * How have Jews in the US have gone from an unwelcome immigrant group prone to left-wing radicalism to Zionists and beneficiaries of whiteness? Lane Silberstein investigates. https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/07/11/the-dialectic-of-assimilation/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Can liberalism and its gatekeepers survive the seismic changes in our society? | Brigid Delaney | Opinion | The Guardian
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[Marxism] Angela Merkel knows how to insert a dagger -- Meanwhile in America - CNN
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[Marxism] The Harper’s letter has an eerie closeness to Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech.
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Re: [Marxism] Howie Hawkins is the nominee
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 7/11/20 4:50 PM, Glenn Kissack via Marxism wrote: Are there significant differences between Hawkins and Hunter? Not really. He just thought he would be a better candidate. I have to admit, however, that I haven't paid much attention to his campaign. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Big changes in small towns are fueling a racial justice movement across the Midwest.
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. * Washington Post, JULY 11, 2020 A new generation challenges the heartland Big changes in small towns are fueling a racial justice movement across the Midwest. By Tim Craig and Aaron Williams FORT DODGE, Iowa — Jayden Johnson was 8 years old the first time someone hurled a racial slur at her, a biracial girl frolicking on a playground in this overwhelmingly white town. She was about 15 years old when a Family Dollar clerk wrongly assumed her black father was on welfare. And she’s been pulled over by police several times when in cars with black friends but rarely when with white friends, she says. Those memories were swirling in Johnson’s mind as she read about George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis several weeks ago. She pulled out her phone and opened Snapchat. “Everybody meet at the square at 8 p.m.,” wrote Johnson, 19. “Be there or be square.” As people arrived at the downtown park, Johnson was astonished by the turnout. Instead of the 15 people she expected, about 100 teenagers and young adults — African American, Latino, white and mixed race — gathered to march through this farming and factory town of 25,000 residents. “Let’s get justice,” Johnson recalls saying as the group began the first public protest that anyone in town can remember. “I saw people who looked like me and didn’t look like me, and I started thinking, ‘Something really is different now,’ ” Johnson said. Jayden Johnson stands in City Square Park in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on June 29. A few weeks ago, after watching the protests over the killing of George Floyd, Johnson organized a Black Lives Matter protest of over 100 people at the square. (Steel Brooks for The Washington Post) The number of young people of color living in the Midwest has surged over the past decade, as the older white population has nearly stalled. Forty percent of the nation’s counties are experiencing such demographic transformations — a phenomenon fueling the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the country and forced racial reckonings in communities, colleges and corporations nationwide. A Washington Post review of census data released last month showed that minorities make up nearly half of the under-30 population nationwide compared to just 27 percent of the over-55 population, signaling that the United States is on the brink of seismic changes in culture, politics and values. The protests reflect demographic changes that social scientists have long predicted would hit America around 2020 as the country moves closer toward becoming majority-minority. As this young, diverse cohort enters adulthood, it’s challenging the cultural norms and political views of older white Americans, said Stefan M. Bradley, a historian and professor of African American studies at Loyola Marymount University. “What we are seeing now is younger people with an openness to question traditional American structure in a way that older people are not willing to do,” said Bradley, coordinator of diversity and inclusion initiatives at Loyola’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. These Black Lives Matter protesters don’t always prioritize defunding police departments or tearing down Confederate statues. Their goals are simpler but perhaps just as revolutionary: to force white neighbors not used to encountering so many black and brown faces in their towns to acknowledge their experiences with racism. “We are saying there is a lot of unconscious bias, and there is still a lot of racial, racist tolerances that one generation has passed down to the next,” said Zac Nuzum, 24, a black resident of Fort Dodge who is raising 3-year-old biracial twins. “We are saying the buck stops here.” To some of their older white neighbors, the protesters’ demands are overblown. Fort Dodge has already overcome its divisive history, they say. Stories of white and black youths fighting each other in schools and swimming holes are a thing of the past. The racial tensions that exist today, they say, are often fueled by protesters’ cries of racism and vilification of law enforcement. “I think it’s terrible because you’ve got to have police,” said Alan Johnson, 65, who is white and worries the protesters are out to undermine local law enforcement. “I’ve gotten pulled over for a stop sign violation before, and I think the police were a little bit too mean, but I think this has all gone way too far.” The dawn of small-town activism The debate over race is echoing through some of Iowa’s smallest agricultural communities. Over the past decade, the minority youth population in Iowa counties has outpaced the growth of older white
[Marxism] Howie Hawkins is the nominee
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've been at the Green Party virtual convention all day. Howie got 210 votes. Dario Hunter, the runner-up, got 102. Onward to victory! _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Austerity's Future: Higher Education and COVID-19 - New Politics
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[Marxism] Wall Street Journal Staff Members Push for Big Changes in News Coverage
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, July 11, 2020 Wall Street Journal Staff Members Push for Big Changes in News Coverage By Marc Tracy and Ben Smith Staff members of The Wall Street Journal have been pressing newsroom leaders to make fundamental changes in how the newspaper covers race, policing, and its primary focus, the business world, along with other matters. In a June 23 letter to the editor in chief, Matt Murray, a group identifying itself only as “members of the WSJ newsroom” said the paper must “encourage more muscular reporting about race and social inequities,” and laid out detailed proposals for revising its news coverage. “In part because WSJ’s coverage has focused historically on industries and leadership ranks dominated by white men, many of our newsroom practices are inadequate for the present moment,” the letter said. Among its proposals: Mr. Murray should appoint journalists to cover “race, ethnicity and inequality”; name two standards editors specializing in diversity; conduct a study of the race, ethnicity and gender breakdown of the subjects of The Journal’s “most prominent and resource-intensive stories”; and bring more diversity to the newsroom and leadership positions. “Reporters frequently meet resistance when trying to reflect the accounts and voices of workers, residents or customers, with some editors voicing heightened skepticism of those sources’ credibility compared with executives, government officials or other entities,” the letter said. “We should apply the same healthy skepticism toward everyone we cover.” On Friday, Kamilah M. Thomas, chief people officer with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, sent an internal email announcing the recent creation of a new position of senior vice president of inclusion and people management as well as other initiatives that, she said, are part of “a comprehensive review of diversity, equity and inclusion across our business.” The Journal is one of many media organizations, including The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast, where staff members have questioned leadership at a time of widespread protests against racism and police brutality prompted by the killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died after a white police officer pressed a knee to his neck. Confrontations between staff members and newsroom leaders have been rare at the 131-year-old publication, which became part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in 2007. It has one of the country’s largest newsrooms, employing about 1,300. The June 23 letter was sent to Mr. Murray, who succeeded Gerard Baker as editor in chief two years ago, through the news committee of the employee union and came from discussions on a private channel on the interoffice communications app Slack, according to two people with knowledge of how it came about. It was at least the third instance of formal communication in recent weeks between the staff and Journal leaders. On June 12, more than 150 journalists sent a letter to Journal leaders saying the paper’s coverage of race was “problematic” and that its staff was not diverse enough, The Journal reported in an article on newsroom revolts across the country. The week before that, the union representing Journal reporters and editors sent a letter requesting that Mr. Baker, who stayed on in the news department as a columnist, be reassigned to the opinion section, which is operated separately from the newsroom. Faulting columns Mr. Baker had written on race, that letter said his work had violated newsroom standards. Mr. Baker was moved to the opinion staff the day after the letter was sent. One of the proposals in the June 23 letter concerned changes to The Journal’s stylebook. “Review the terminology used across WSJ content, including editorial, to refer to various identity groups and compare with latest industry standards,” it suggested. The following week, The Journal announced that it would capitalize “Black” when referring to members of the African diaspora. Several other news organizations have made the same decision in recent weeks, including The Associated Press and The Times. On Thursday, Mr. Murray announced in an email to the staff that Brent W. Jones, an associate managing editor, who is Black, had been promoted to the top echelon of newsroom leadership to fill a newly created role, editor of culture, training and outreach. In the note, which was obtained by The Times, Mr. Murray said Mr. Jones was “passionate about improving newsroom culture, diversity and inclusion, talent development, training — and the
[Marxism] Kevin Rafferty, ‘Atomic Cafe’ Co-Director, Dies at 73
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, July 11, 2020 Kevin Rafferty, ‘Atomic Cafe’ Co-Director, Dies at 73 By Neil Genzlinger Kevin Rafferty, who with two co-directors gathered archival material that had been created to ease Americans into the nuclear age and turned it into “The Atomic Cafe,” an acclaimed, darkly comic documentary film released in 1982, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 73. His brother Pierce, who directed the film with him and Jayne Loader, said the cause was cancer. Mr. Rafferty didn’t make a lot of films — he has just six directing credits in the Internet Movie Database — but the ones he did make drew critical praise and covered a wide range of subjects. In addition to “The Atomic Cafe,” which highlighted the absurdity of an earlier generation’s propaganda and suggested the unsettling possibility that Americans were still being so manipulated, there was “Blood in the Face” (1991, directed with Anne Bohlen and James Ridgeway), which examined the Ku Klux Klan and other far-right groups. “The Last Cigarette” (1999, directed with Frank Keraudren) was about the peddling of cigarettes to American consumers and the world. “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” (2008) recounted a storied 1968 football game. Other documentarians said Mr. Rafferty’s influence went well beyond his directing credits. In an email, Robert Stone, who had help from him on his Oscar-nominated 1988 documentary, “Radio Bikini,” spoke of Mr. Rafferty as leaving a “deep and lasting legacy, both in his own work and that of the filmmakers he inspired and with whom he collaborated.” Michael Moore, the Oscar-winning director of “Bowling for Columbine” (2002) and other films, credited Mr. Rafferty with starting his documentary career. Mr. Moore was just an admiring fan when he briefly met Mr. Rafferty after a showing of “The Atomic Cafe” in Ann Arbor, Mich. But three years later, Mr. Rafferty, by then making “Blood in the Face,” asked him for help in getting to Bob Miles, a leading Klan figure whose farm was near Flint, Mich., where Mr. Moore was running a weekly magazine. Mr. Moore ended up as an interviewer in that documentary, which focused on a gathering of extreme-right groups in 1986. A year or so later, Mr. Moore said in a phone interview, he decided to make his own documentary, about General Motors, and asked Mr. Rafferty for pointers. Mr. Rafferty showed up in Michigan with equipment, support personnel and 60 rolls of film; he was credited as a cinematographer on “Roger & Me” (1989), Mr. Moore’s career-making debut. (“Blood in the Face,” though filmed before “Roger & Me,” was not released until after.) “He was my film school,” Mr. Moore said. “I would not have made these other films had he not been so generous.” The technique employed by Mr. Rafferty and his co-directors on “The Atomic Cafe” — which had no narration, just archival clips — was not lost on Mr. Moore or other documentarians. “The way he did his films was, if you are good enough at making the film, that is your voice,” Mr. Moore said. “You don’t need to underscore it. This is what I learned from him: that that is stronger than me underscoring with my heavy narration — ‘But the bastards at corporate headquarters refused to budge.’” “The Atomic Cafe” is constructed of snippets of early Cold War films, from government and other sources, that promoted “duck and cover” drills, personal fallout shelters and other measures as prudent preparations for a potential nuclear attack. It resonated with critics. The film, David Sterritt wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, “should be seen by everyone who cares about atomic power, the threat of nuclear war, the roots of American culture, or the pervasive effects of the images and ideas that blitz our minds every day through the mass media.” “In its own modest way," he added, “it’s an explosive movie.” Kevin Gelshenen Rafferty II, who was named for an uncle killed in World War II, was born on May 25, 1947, in Boston to Walter and Martha Pierce Rafferty. His father was an investment banker, and his mother was a homemaker who served on school and other civic boards and was active in garden clubs. Kevin Rafferty graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts in 1965 and from Harvard University in 1970, earning a bachelor’s degree in art and architecture. He then studied film at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was a teaching assistant for two years. He and his brother began working on “The Atomic Cafe” in the 1970s, with Ms. Loader soon joining the project. The film had a long gestation in which the filmmakers spent many
[Marxism] Herman Benson, Who Fought Union Corruption, Dies at 104
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, July 11, 2020 Herman Benson, Who Fought Union Corruption, Dies at 104 By Sam Roberts Herman Benson, a former machinist who crusaded against corrupt labor leaders and introduced democratic reforms to entrenched trade unions, sometimes overcoming the resistance of fellow unionists, died on July 2 at his home in Brooklyn, a week shy of his 105th birthday. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Dr. Ellen Benson. Mr. Benson put an early stamp on organized labor in the 1950s, when he helped draft landmark federal legislation with Clyde W. Summers, a Yale University law professor and a leading authority on organized labor. The legislation, passed in 1959 as the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act but better known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, granted rank-and-file workers guarantees of free speech, assembly, fair hiring and other civil liberties. (Its sponsors were Representative Phil Landrum, Democrat of Georgia, and Senator Robert P. Griffin, Republican of Michigan. Professor Summers had also worked with a young Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in drafting the legislation.) “That Bill of Rights for union members, and all the work it takes to realize its democratic intent, is Herman’s enduring legacy,” said William Kornblum, an emeritus sociology professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 1969, Mr. Benson helped form the Association for Union Democracy, a nonprofit in Brooklyn to advocate for fair union elections, and edited its newsletter, Union Democracy Review. “He was a one-man army in the union democracy movement for over 50 years,” said Ken Paff, founder of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which helped elect Ron Carey, a United Parcel Service driver from Queens, as the Teamster’s president in 1991. Mr. Benson’s reach was wide: He helped empower the rank and file in unions representing painters, mineworkers, machinists, steelworkers, ironworkers, laborers, electrical workers and nurses. His left-wing credentials dated to when he was 15, when he joined the Young People’s Socialist League, earning him a place on a federal government list of radicals who could be peremptorily interned during a national emergency. Still, he was scorned by some liberals, who argued that his democratic reforms could undermine organized labor’s solidarity. Mr. Benson disagreed, saying that only a truly democratic union would best serve workers and the working class, and that unions that were undemocratic in their procedures would appear hypocritical when preaching democratic values in the United States and abroad. “Unions organize first where workers are best situated to win their battle,” he wrote in 2010 in the socialist journal New Politics. “As they raise the standards of those who are victorious, they tend to lift the standards of the class, even those not organized.” Herman William Benson was born on July 9, 1915, in the Bronx to Samuel and Lillian (Edelman) Benson. His father owned a Studebaker dealership in Washington Heights in Manhattan. Mr. Benson graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and attended City College, but was expelled in 1933 for participating in a demonstration against the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program on campus. (He later received a draft deferment because of a hearing impairment, his daughter said.) His affinity for labor drew him to factory jobs; his first was making Shirley Temple dolls. He went on to work as a machinist in New York and Detroit. In 1939, he and other breakaway socialists, including Max Shachtman and Hal Draper, formed the Workers Party, positioning it as an alternative to American capitalism and Stalinism. He ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor of Detroit in 1947 as the Workers Party candidate. Mr. Benson then returned to New York and, over the next two decades, wrote for a weekly Workers Party newspaper and consulted with a Jewish vocational organization. But his primary focus was the Association for Union Democracy, particularly after the assassinations of Joseph Yablonski, a labor leader with the United Mine Workers, and two activists in California, who had challenged the painters union establishment there. (Mr. Yablonski was murdered along with his wife and 25-year-old daughter in their southwestern Pennsylvania farmhouse, an incident that shocked the nation.) “My dad, Jock Yablonski, relied on the pathbreaking work Herman had performed before he, my mother and sister were murdered,” Joseph A. Yablonski Jr. said in an email. In 1996, Mr. Benson’s wife, Revella (Sholiton) Benson, who worked for the
[Marxism] The Left Is Remaking the World
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 Op-Ed, July 11, 2020 The Left Is Remaking the World “Defund the police” and “cancel rent” aren’t reforms, but paths to revolution. By Amna A. Akbar Ms. Akbar is a law professor who studies leftist social movements. The uprisings in response to the killing of George Floyd are far different from anything that has come before. Not just because they may be the largest in our history, or that seven weeks in, people are still in the streets (even if the news media has largely moved on). But also because, for the last few years, organizers have been thinking boldly. They have been pushing demands — from “defund the police” to “cancel rent” to “pass the Green New Deal” — that would upend the status quo and redistribute power from elites to the working class. And now ordinary people are, too; social movements have helped spread these demands to a public mobilized by the pandemic and the protests. These movements are in conversation with one another, cross-endorsing demands as they expand their grass-roots bases. Cancel the rent campaigns have joined the call to defund the police. This month, racial, climate and economic justice organizations are hosting a four-day crash course on defunding the police. Each demand demonstrates a new attitude among leftist social movements. They don’t want to reduce police violence, or sidestep our environmentally unsustainable global supply chain, or create grace periods for late rent. These are the responses of reformers and policy elites. Instead, the people making these demands want a new society. They want a break from prisons and the police, from carbon and rent. They want counselors in place of cops, housing for all and a jobs guarantee. While many may find this naïve, polls, participation in protests and growing membership in social movement organizations show these demands are drawing larger and larger parts of the public toward a fundamental critique of the status quo and a radical vision for the future. Consider the appeal to defund and dismantle the police, championed by almost every major social movement organization on the left, from the Black Visions Collective to Mijente to the Sunrise Movement, and echoed on the streets. Defunding, part of a strategy to eventually abolish the police, challenges the prevailing logic of police reform: the idea that police brutality is caused by individual bad apples acting without sufficient oversight and training. This idea undergirds the familiar panoply of reforms: body cameras, community policing, implicit bias workshops. If officers are properly equipped and controlled, there will be less violence, its proponents argue — despite no significant evidence to back that up. Defunding suggests the problem is not isolated, nor is it a result of a few officers’ attitudes. It challenges the power, the resources and the enormous scope of the police. Whether they are responding to a mental health emergency or deployed to a protest, their training and tools are geared toward violence. The demand for defunding suggests, as the police and prison abolitionist Rachel Herzing often says, that the only way to reduce police violence is to reduce police officers’ opportunities for contact with the public. The protests have forced us to rethink state-sanctioned violence as our default response to social problems, to reconsider the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent on prisons and the salaries of more than 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers. The uprisings have also expanded the space for a reckoning with the failures of liberal reforms and with the possibility of doing things in radically different ways. Tinkering and training cannot fix our reliance on police officers to deal with routine social problems through violence and the threat of it. The demand for defunding calls into question the fundamental premise of policing: that it produces safety. It urges us to take collective responsibility for collective care, repair and redress. It shifts our vantage point on persistent problems: for example, to guarantee housing for all rather than to continue to arrest and cage this country’s more than 567,000 homeless people. The call to defund the police is often accompanied by a call to shift resources elsewhere, to education, housing and health care. The pandemic has put on display the spectacular contradiction such appeals reveal. We have no guaranteed health care, wages, housing or food; we can’t even provide personal protective equipment. These failures have devastated Black communities in particular. But then, in response to Black
[Marxism] UK: wishing for a V-shape | Michael Roberts Blog
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[Marxism] Tucker Carlson's Top Writer Quits After Secretly Posting Racist, Sexist Messages: Report | HuffPost
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. * There was no immediate comment from Carlson. But shortly after the CNN report, Carlson exploded in his program over “cancel culture.” He added: “We are in a situation where it’s ... individuals against the mob — online, other news organizations, CNN particularly.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-blake-neff-fox-news-racist-posts_n_5f090249c5b67a80bc078c34 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate - The Objective
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 7/10/20 7:39 PM, John Edmundson via Marxism wrote: So being trans-racial is not OK. Fair enough. Jeanine Cummins should be able to write a book from the perspective of someone with experiences other than her own (all writers have to do that all the time) but deciding that she can start "identifying as Puerto Rican" is a whole different thing. She can't claim that the experience of*being* Latina is hers because it's not. Because saying you 'feel' Latina (or any other race) doesn't make you one. Are we agreed on that? Sure you can do that. The problem was that her book was filled with racist stereotypes, and even worse treated like the book of the year by gringo critics. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] An Open Letter on Free Expression Draws a Counterblast
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, July 10, 2020 An Open Letter on Free Expression Draws a Counterblast By Jennifer Schuessler Three days after an open letter signed by more than 150 cultural luminaires darkly warning of a growing “intolerant climate” stirred intense response on the internet, another group issued a counterblast on Friday accusing them of elitism, hypocrisy and complicity in the bullying they decry. The first letter, titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” was posted online on Tuesday by Harper’s Magazine. Signed by prominent figures in the arts, media and academia, including Margaret Atwood, Wynton Marsalis and J.K. Rowling, it warned of a growing tide of illiberalism and a weakening of “our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” The response letter, titled “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” chided the Harper’s statement for what it characterized as lofty generalities, as well as ignoring the realities of who actually gets to be heard. If its more than 150 signers were far less well-known, that was perhaps part of the point. The Harper’s letter “does not deal with the problem of power: who has it and who does not,” according to the response, published at The Objective, a news and commentary site that explores “how journalism has interacted with historically ignored communities.” “Harper’s has decided to bestow its platform not to marginalized people,” it said, “but to people who already have large followings and plenty of opportunities to make their views heard.” It continued: “The letter reads as a caustic reaction to a diversifying industry — one that’s starting to challenge diversifying norms that have protected bigotry. The writers of the letter use seductive but nebulous concepts and coded language to obscure the actual meaning behind their words.” Almost as soon as it appeared on Tuesday, “That Letter,” as Twitter quickly began calling the Harper’s statement, set off rounds of debate about free speech, privilege and the existence or nonexistence of so-called cancel culture. Akela Lacy, a politics reporter at The Intercept who signed and helped edit the counter-letter, said it grew organically out of a conversation in a Slack channel called Journalists of Color. Initially, there was some wariness of feeding what she and others on Twitter wryly referred to as “letter discourse.” “There are so many more important things going on in media right now,” Ms. Lacy said, citing in particular threats and harassment experienced by journalists from marginalized groups. “But the fact is there are a lot of people, particularly Black and trans, expressing very valid concerns about the climate right now,” she said. “Letting this very lofty position go unanswered didn’t feel like it was benefiting anyone.” The prominence of the Harper’s signers has been a flash point in the conversation, with some deriding that letter as the whining of “assorted rich fools,” as a writer for The Daily Beast put it. The response letter characterized it as a defense of “the intellectual freedom of cis white intellectuals,” which “has never been under threat en masse.” On Friday, after the response letter was posted, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who spearheaded the Harper’s letter, highlighted the more than two dozen Black and other nonwhite intellectuals who signed his letter. “You know, just a bunch of privileged solipsistic elites worrying about problems that don’t exist,” Mr. Williams, who is Black, tweeted. “So far, haven’t seen any of the formerly imprisoned signatories or the ones who have experienced fatwas cave to the social media backlash, though,” he added. His dig was a reference to the fact that criticism of the Harper’s letter centered as much on who signed it as its content. And within hours of its publication, some who had signed distanced themselves from it, saying they would not have joined if they had been aware of some of the other signers. The inclusion of J.K. Rowling, who has drawn condemnation for a series of recent comments widely seen as anti-transgender, drew particular ire. The new letter included one person, the historian Kerri Greenidge, who had signed the Harper’s letter, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times, but then asked that her name be removed, saying on Twitter “I do not endorse this @Harpers letter.” It also included a number of people signing anonymously, including three listed as journalists at The New York Times. (The Harper’s letter was signed by four Opinion columnists at The Times, who used their names.)
Re: [Marxism] An interesting Daniel Barenboim Interview
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, January 26, 2005 Barenboim Criticizes Israeli Views By DANIEL J. WAKIN Daniel Barenboim, the politically outspoken conductor and pianist, lectured at Columbia University on Monday night and drew a link between the taboo on playing Wagner in Israel and that country's treatment of Palestinians. Mr. Barenboim, an Israeli who is a frequent defender of Palestinian rights, stirred debate several years ago by performing Wagner's music in Israel, upsetting some Israelis because of the composer's anti-Semitism and his adoption as a symbol by the Nazis. Mr. Barenboim said Wagner's anti-Jewish vitriol had to be placed in the context of 19th-century European nationalist feeling. He said that he understood the pain of Holocaust survivors but that it was hypocritical to keep Wagner off the concert stage when audio and video recordings of his work were available, and even cellphones in Israel rang with "The Ride of the Walkyries." He blamed the taboo on a lingering sense of minority status and victimhood. "It is this fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism," Mr. Barenboim said. "It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people." Mr. Barenboim said that the failure of the Israeli government to accept the Palestinians' "narration" had led to a new wave of anti-Semitism, and that suicide bombings in Israel had "to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived." His lecture was the first in honor of Edward Said, the Columbia scholar and Palestinian advocate, who died in 2003. The two men, who were friends, founded the West-Eastern Divan Workshop, intended to bring Israeli and Arab musicians together. (Said was also a pianist.) The lecture, at the Miller Theater at Columbia, came at a time when the university was dealing with accusations by some Jewish students that they had been marginalized by pro-Palestinian professors. At the end, after an audience member asked Mr. Barenboim to play, he performed Schubert's Impromptu in A flat (Op. 142). _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate - The Objective
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Re: [Marxism] It’s Official — Steven Pinker Is Full of Shit
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 7/10/20 3:07 PM, Ryan Bell wrote: Reading takedowns of Steven Pinker is one of my favorite pastimes. https://louisproyect.org/2011/10/04/steven-pinker-hobbes-pangloss/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting him
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. * Washington Post, July 10, 2020 Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting him By Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble. The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president. Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings. Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country. Trump put his self-victimization on public display Thursday in response to a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his claim of absolute immunity and permitting a New York prosecutor to see the president’s private and business financial records. Trump reacted with a social media meltdown, writing on Twitter, “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!” and “POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He wrote that the decision was “Not fair to this Presidency” and claimed that “Courts in the past have given ’broad deference’. BUT NOT ME!” Trump has always exhibited a healthy ego and his self-victimization tendencies are not a new phenomenon, according to those who have known him over the years. But those characteristics have been especially pronounced this summer, revealing themselves almost daily in everything from private conversations to public tweets as the pandemic continues to upend daily life across America and threaten the president’s political fortunes. Barbara Res, a former executive at the Trump Organization, said that when she worked for Trump, he interpreted nearly everything in deeply personal terms. “Whatever bad happened, no matter what it was, it was always against him, always directed at him,” Res said. “He would say, ‘Why does everything always happen to me?’ ” She added: “It was as if the world revolved around him. Everything that happened had an effect on him, good or bad.” Now, however, Trump’s sense of victimhood strikes even some allies as particularly incongruous considering the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the pain and anguish apparent in Black Lives Matter protests. More than 130,000 Americans so far have died of the novel coronavirus, with more than 3 million cases reported. Nearly 43 million Americans — more than a quarter of the labor force — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began. And the nation is riven not just by protests following the death of George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis police custody, but also by a president who has deliberately stoked racial animus. Even those in Trump’s orbit are trying to nudge him toward a sunnier, less egocentric approach to the crises he is facing, fearing that his sullen demeanor could backfire politically. Among those internally who have advocated a more optimistic tone are Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, according to one senior administration official. Other top White House advisers — including Hope Hicks and Dan Scavino — have also sought to buttress Trump’s mood with events they thought he would enjoy, such as celebrating truckers by bringing 18-wheelers onto the White House South Lawn in mid-April or creating social media videos that feature throngs of his adoring fans, according to aides. Advisers also have sought to boost Trump’s mood by presenting him internal polling that shows him in a better position than public surveys, which universally show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump loses ground in polls amid pandemic, George Floyd protests President Trump’s approval rating peaked in early 2020, but has dropped after two crises hit the nation. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) One senior administration official rejected the notion that Trump views himself as a victim, saying instead that he has repeatedly expressed his frustration over a virus that seemed
[Marxism] It’s Official — Steven Pinker Is Full of Shit
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[Marxism] Broad disapproval for Trump's handling of coronavirus, race relations: POLL - ABC News
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Harper’s and the Great Cancel Culture Panic | 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. * You can imagine my chagrin when I discovered that Harper’s, a magazine that I have subscribed to since the early 80s, provided a platform for “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” The open letter was a denunciation of “cancel culture” in the name of liberal values as if angry Tweets by mostly powerless young people had anything to do with state-sponsored censorship. Although I will say more about how and why this letter materialized, it is worth pointing out that one of its signatories is Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus at the U. of Illinois. In 2013, the board of trustees sent Steven Salaita a letter stating they were hiring him for a job teaching American Indian studies. Behind the scenes, Nelson and major donors connected to the Israel lobby had already begun a campaign to persuade the board to rescind the offer because of Salaita’s pro-Palestinian views. He had already resigned a tenured position when the board caved into Zionist pressures. That left Salaita unemployed. Today he drives a school bus and will likely never teach again. full: https://secure-web.cisco.com/1Y2plxFJGMsG3fuhk0XQPgc8ZYo2Lq_z0L6bc_ppId1g04TSVAui8i0NPZjIbRTzTFk-jX-4oZHSOr91q7h6MioIbC7NUGpXyE_3j3TDtNrwyNT0FDuLVPHO3eVMkCTFdITnIkGBGUCY82uY0HfQT4ihnWAuc2pVlN4Q5YkjmrmhUBzSixtG19pRQXkbN3PKz2czsKXLn0tvvj5IKKSCdlS9givddsvMn2IiX-hmgrumKYFjj9MQ_qFvsseEz9OYoZtgm3MS6WOmnyJ7u2CjDCdRM7Uzx4AlQCB2hB0y4rupFajpmbbw2ESHaClmAJKITtYxfoR9cy4JSQGXaOMe7I6vQ07RWQLuD8iGa1Jf22hSuc_dqaYpcrALE8aYMgNBDV7Ui0O1EGmeRdKMeM2vtvg/https%3A%2F%2Flouisproyect.org%2F2020%2F07%2F10%2Fharpers-and-the-great-cancel-culture-panic%2F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Your 19th COVID Breakdown - CounterPunch.org
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[Marxism] The Revolution at the Gate | Boston Review
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[Marxism] YouTube’s Psychic Wounds - Columbia Journalism Review
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Racism, Capitalism and Rebellion – Red Madison
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[Marxism] Interview: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers | JSTOR Daily
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[Marxism] Harper's Published an Awful Open Letter About "Toleration" | The Mary Sue
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[Marxism] Degrowth Considered – The Brooklyn Rail
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. * Max Ajl reviews Kallis book. https://brooklynrail.org/2018/09/field-notes/Degrowth-Considered _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Freedom Means Can Rather Than Should: What the Harper's Open Letter Gets Wrong | Literary Hub
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 7/9/20 1:39 PM, Michael Meeropol wrote: So the reason this letter is no good is because it was signed by J.K. Rowling and doesn't mention the fight for LGBTQ rights? Jesus Christ, Michael, what in the hell is the letter trying to remediate? Why don't you tell me which bad behavior it is meant to overcome? Transgender people and their supporters writing nasty Tweets to Rowling? What exactly is it that you think we need to fight against? Social media is the weapon of the weaponless. These people like Nick Lemann, Dean Emeritus of the Columbia Journalism School, can't get over the fact that anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can raise all sorts of hell. They remind me of the Vatican getting riled up over Gutenberg's printing press that would allow the commoners to compose a pamphlet that reflected their own needs, both religious and material. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Dead Letter: Rescuing Free Speech from the Liberals who Claim to be Defending It | The Public Autonomy Project
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 7/9/20 1:04 PM, Michael Meeropol wrote: Notice, the attack on the letter and letter-writers does not say ONE WORD is opposition to ONE SENTENCE in the letter --- and ignores the most important sentence --- that such behavior HELPS the right-wing ... Oh, come on, Michael. The cancel culture consists of powerless and mostly young people writing angry Tweets. On the other hand, Cary Nelson got Steven Salaita fired because of his pro-Palestinian writing. Harper's, the sponsor of this meretricious letter, is owned by John MacArthur who is one of the signers. He has also fired multiple editors because they didn't agree with him on an article and to preempt a union organizing drive. Anyhow, I have an article on this in tomorrow's Counterpunch. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Dead Letter: Rescuing Free Speech from the Liberals who Claim to be Defending It | The Public Autonomy Project
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://publicautonomy.org/2020/07/09/free-speech/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] COVID-19: Penn State Professors Write Open Letter Petitioning Return to Campus in the Fall
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.esquire.com/news-politics/a32973676/penn-state-university-covid-19-petition-professors/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Here Not Death but the Future Is Frightening: The Twenty-Eighth Newsletter (2020).
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.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/28-coronavirus/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Freedom Means Can Rather Than Should: What the Harper's Open Letter Gets Wrong | Literary Hub
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. * Williams, who is half-black and half-white, doubtless partly desires this because of his own oft-stated discomfort with his blackness; it was he, after all, who described black fans of hip-hop in his first book, a 2010 memoir, as “psyching themselves up like child soldiers drunk off blood in some war-ravaged African province.” This is the kind of language that, had it been employed by a white critic describing jazz (a genre Williams ironically proclaims to enjoy) in the early 20th century, would have been both commonplace and nakedly racist, conjuring up a trope of Africa as a wild world that is meant to suggest not civilization or complexity, but war and savagery. Williams, whose entire career has been predicated on writing about race, wants as little to do with race as possible, explaining the letter’s feeble gesturing to the protests. https://lithub.com/freedom-means-can-rather-than-should-what-the-harpers-open-letter-gets-wrong/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] » Anthony Fauci: The Last American Hero?
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. * By Mike Davis. Despite his famous halo of truthfulness, Fauci has deliberately misled the public on several occasions during the crisis. At the beginning of the outbreak, he and CDC Director Robert Redfield defied medical common sense and lied about the efficacy of face mask usage. While news programs were showing entire Asian societies safely masked, we were told that face coverings were unnecessary, useless, and possibly dangerous. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/anthony-fauci-the-last-american-hero/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] "You Seem To Have No Conscience": Activists Stop Crown Heights Landlords From Evicting Tenants - Gothamist
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[Marxism] ‘Cancel Culture’ Is How the Powerful Play Victim | by Jessica Valenti | Jul, 2020 | GEN
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