[Marxism] Remembering George Habash

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

  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.
*

This month marks the 8th anniversary of the death of the great Palestinian
revolutionary George Habash:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/remembering-george-habash/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Marxism and gay liberation on Redline

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

  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://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/marxism-and-gay-liberation-on-redline/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Imagining the Communist Party again as a force: Jodi Dean on left politics and the party

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2489-imagining-the-communist-party-again-as-a-force-jodi-dean-on-left-politics-and-the-party
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

LRB, Vol. 38 No. 4 · 18 February 2016
Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity
James Meek

Myth is a story that can be retold by anyone, with infinite variation, 
and still be recognisable as itself. The outline of surviving myth is 
re-recognised in the lives of each generation. It’s an instrument by 
which people simplify, rationalise and retell social complexities. It’s 
a means to haul the abstract, the global and the relative into the realm 
of the concrete, the local and the absolute. It’s a way to lay claim to 
faith in certain values. If those who attempt to interpret the world do 
so only through the prism of professional thinkers, and ignore the 
persistence of myth in everyday thought and speech, the interpretations 
will be deficient.


This is the importance of the Robin Hood myth. It’s the first and often 
the only political-economic fable we learn. It’s not a children’s story, 
although it is childlike. It contains the three essential ingredients of 
grown-up narrative – love, death and money – without being a love story, 
a tragedy or a comedy. It doesn’t tell of the founding of a people. It’s 
not a fairy story or a religious myth; it has no monsters, gods or 
wizards in it, only human beings. It’s not a parable. In place of a 
moral, it has a plan of action. What does Robin Hood do? We all know. He 
takes from the rich to give to the poor.


A change has come over Robin Hood. On the surface, he’s the same: the 
notion of taking from the rich to give to the poor is as popular as 
ever. But in the deeper version of his legend, the behaviour-shaping 
myth, he’s become hard to recognise. The storytelling that makes up 
popular political discourse is crowded with tales of robbery, but the 
story has been cloven. I can no longer be sure that my Robin Hood is 
your Robin Hood, or that my rich and poor is your rich and poor, or who 
is taking and who is giving.


The old Robin Hood, embodiment of the generous outlaw of Sherwood 
Forest, still occasionally bubbles up, as when the actor-director Sean 
Penn called Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, head of the world’s biggest 
supplier of banned narcotics, ‘a Robin Hood-like figure who provided 
much needed services in the Sinaloa mountains’. This is Robin Hood the 
‘noble robber’, in Eric Hobsbawm’s characterisation. In the final 
edition of his much reworked book Bandits, Hobsbawm bids farewell to the 
type. ‘In a fully capitalist society,’ he writes,


the conditions in which social banditry on the old model can persist or 
revive are exceptional. They will remain exceptional, even when there is 
far more scope for brigandage than for centuries, in a millennium that 
begins with the weakening or even the disintegration of modern state 
power, and the general availability of portable, but highly lethal, 
means of destruction to unofficial groups of armed men. In fact, to no 
one’s surprise, in most ‘developed countries’ – even in their most 
traditionalist rural areas – Robin Hood is by now extinct.


Sinaloa state in Mexico, from where El Chapo carried on his business 
until his recent recapture by the combined forces of the entertainment 
world and the Mexican marines, is still fertile ground for belief in the 
existence of the noble robber in a way present-day Nottinghamshire, or 
Missouri, or Victoria, once homes to the mythical Robin Hood and the 
real Jesse James and Ned Kelly, no longer are.


Still, if we move out from Hobsbawm’s focus on the social bandit as 
actual individual, and consider the entire Robin Hood myth, the ideal 
remains familiar in our outlaw-free world. The myth requires a great 
mass of heavily taxed poor people who work terribly hard for little 
reward. The profits of their labour, and the taxes they pay, go to 
support a small number of lazy, arrogant rich people who live in big 
houses, wallow in luxury, and have no need to work. Any attempt to 
resist, let alone change, this unjust system is crushed by the weight of 
a vast private-public bureaucracy, encompassing the police, the courts, 
the prison system, the civil service, large property-owners and banks, 
all embodied in the ruthless figure of a bureaucrat-aristocrat, 
personification of the careerist-capitalist elite, the sheriff of 
Nottingham.


Two figures stand between the sheriff and the poor. One is the absent 
king. He carries a monarch’s title, but exists only to represent benign 
authority, order and justice, the kinder, fairer authority that existed 
before he went away, naively leaving the sheriff to govern in his name 
and pervert his wishes, the same authority he will restore when he 
returns. The other is Robin Hood, who defies the system, who stan

[Marxism] Kenneth Pomeranz: China’s Capitalism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

LRB, Vol. 38 No. 4 · 18 February 2016
Nightwork in Chengdu
Kenneth Pomeranz

China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower by Linda Yueh
Oxford, 349 pp, £29.99, April 2013, ISBN 978 0 19 920578 3
The Rise of the People’s Bank of China: The Politics of Institutional 
Change by Stephen Bell and Hui Feng

Harvard, 374 pp, £40.95, June 2013, ISBN 978 0 674 07249 7
The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China 
by You-tien Hsing

Oxford, 272 pp, £27.50, March 2012, ISBN 978 0 19 964459 9
Constructing China’s Capitalism: Shanghai and the Nexus of Urban-Rural 
Industries by Daniel Buck

Macmillan, 267 pp, £55.00, July 2012, ISBN 978 0 230 34095 4
Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality among China’s New Rich by John Osburg
Stanford, 248 pp, £15.99, April 2013, ISBN 978 0 8047 8354 5

The reasons for China’s economic boom remain disputed. Chinese economic 
policy has changed repeatedly while high growth rates have continued. 
Commentators are clearer on what hasn’t happened than on what has: there 
has been only limited privatisation (as there was in 1990s Russia), no 
full embrace of factor markets (land can’t be privately owned; labour 
mobility is restricted by an internal passport system; capital markets 
are anything but transparent), and much less political liberalisation 
than some predicted. Despite the current slowdown – which has slashed 
stock market and real estate values that had long been suspiciously 
high, and is causing a cascade of debt problems in over-leveraged firms 
and local government development agencies – there is still a reasonable 
chance of China experiencing several more years of growth that would be 
high by almost any other country’s standards. So the basic questions 
remain: how long can the boom go on, and should we expect the durable 
institutions that emerge from it, if there are any, to resemble Western 
ones?


Linda Yueh’s China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower begins 
with a lengthy exercise in growth accounting. She looks at how five 
factors have contributed to Chinese growth: institutional change, 
particularly the clarification of property rights and contract 
enforcement; the increasing dominance of private profit-seeking firms; 
labour market changes that make it easier to match workers with jobs and 
reward investment in training; ‘catch-up growth’ from importing superior 
technologies and business practices; and the development of social norms 
and networks that encourage entrepreneurship. She uses statistical 
regression to estimate how much of China’s post-Mao growth each of these 
factors might explain.


Yueh estimates that about 45 per cent of China’s growth since 1979 can 
be attributed to capital accumulation, another 10-20 per cent to the 
growth of the labour force, and a further 11-15 per cent to improvement 
in ‘human capital’ (i.e. healthier and, more important, better educated 
workers). This leaves around 30 per cent of growth to be explained by 
what economists call Total Factor Productivity (TFP): gains resulting 
from making institutions more efficient, discovering better ways of 
doing things and various intangibles. Yueh estimates that a bit less 
than a third of China’s TFP gains – 8 per cent of growth overall – is 
explained by the reallocation of both labour and capital from 
state-owned enterprises to the private sector. This leaves about 20 per 
cent of growth to be explained by other institutional changes – easing 
migration restrictions, liberalising financial rules, providing more 
patent protection and so on. This is a relatively modest share, but Yueh 
estimates that it has been increasing recently, and must increase at a 
faster pace if China is to continue rapid growth while allowing its 
people to enjoy more of growth’s benefits, since more consumption would 
moderate its very high rates of investment and capital accumulation. She 
then turns to what she sees as the two greatest challenges ahead: legal 
reform to make businesses more secure and better able to expand, and 
rebalancing the economy so that it depends more on domestic consumer demand.


Her discussion of institutions begins from what she and many others call 
‘the China paradox’: that China’s legal system seems too unreliable to 
have supported such robust growth. She argues that the paradox 
essentially disappears if we compare China not to other ‘post-socialist’ 
economies, which have tended to copy their institutions from developed 
countries, or to former European colonies, which have also used imported 
models, but to another large developing economy that gradually evolved 
its own institutions: the United State

[Marxism] Fwd: The Battle of Aleppo Is the Center of the Syrian Chessboard - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 Azaz corridor grew particularly weak after the Democratic Forces of 
Syria (DFS) -- an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces under the PYD 
umbrella -- gained the upper hand against the rebels and began to 
advance westward in recent weeks, approaching the Aleppo-Azaz road. The 
DFS has benefitted from Russian shelling against rebel lines, as well as 
direct Russian weapons deliveries. On February 4, the group announced 
the capture of two villages north of the Nubl-Zahra enclave, Ziyarah and 
al-Kharba. In light of this situation, the Syrian army's latest victory 
would seem to benefit the Kurds, who can advance in the northern part of 
Azaz corridor while regime and allied forces content themselves with 
solidifying their position around Aleppo instead of heading to Azaz.


full: 
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-battle-of-aleppo-is-the-center-of-the-syrian-chessboard

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Democracy, the Democratic Party, and superdelegates

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Although I plan to vote for Jill Stein, I sympathize with his supporters 
who are repelled by the underhanded tactics of Hillary Clinton and her 
mouthpieces. Besides the constant barrage of propaganda from the likes 
of Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman, there are institutional barriers to 
him becoming the DP candidate for president, especially the 
“superdelegates” who are free to vote for Clinton even if she loses a 
primary as was the case with New Hampshire. Despite being in a dead heat 
with Clinton in Iowa (and on the losing side arguably through fraud 
orchestrated by her minions) and having won in New Hampshire, the 
delegate count is 394 delegates for Clinton, both super and earned 
through the ballot and only 42 for Sanders.


The superdelegates for Clinton are a kind of rogue’s gallery for the DP 
(which I suppose is a kind of redundancy.) Like Andrew Cuomo, the CNN 
reporter, and his brother Mario who is the neoliberal dirtbag governor 
of NY state. Historically the superdelegates were a reaction to the 
hiccup of democracy that emerged in the DP during the 1960s 
radicalization. In 1968 the DP convention nominated Hubert Humphrey for 
president even though the delegate count for Robert F. Kennedy was 393.5 
and 258 for Eugene McCarthy. The combined total for the two antiwar 
(sort of, anyhow) candidates was 651.3 while Humphrey had 561.5. With 
Kennedy’s death, the only fair outcome would have been a McCarthy 
nomination but LBJ pulled strings to make Humphrey the nominee.


full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2016/02/11/democracy-the-democratic-party-and-superdelegates/

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Did Steve Keen Get It Right?

[Paddy Hackett via Marxism]

  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.
*

Hi

Below is a piece by me on Steve Keen, the economist:

Steve Keen, the author of Debunking Economics, argues that  economic crises are 
caused by excessive private debt. He claims that the financial sector plays a 
key role in creating this debt. The banks, he argues, are not simple 
intermediaries between lender and borrow. When they lend they increase debt and 
thereby credit and money. He claims that austerity imposed by the state is not 
the solution. For him the latter intensifies the problem. For Keen when private 
debt is contracting cutting back on public debt through austerity simply 
magnifies the problem. On this basis, if anything, the state needs to expand 
its intervention under such conditions. Keen fails to understand that the 
problem is due to lack of total profitability or surplus value. It is then a 
problem located in the process that generates surplus value (profit). The 
problem is not created in the circulation process. Consequently the problem is 
not due to the diminution of private borrowing. The latter is merely a symptom 
of the problem. Hence Increased state borrowing cannot solve the problem. 
Indeed increased state borrowing merely sustains weak private capitalists in 
business. This prevents the crisis from forcing out weak capital as a means 
towards restoring profitability. Keen never informs us as to what, itself, is 
the cause of debt. This is because capital is the source of debt and thereby 
its regulator –the law of value.  The financial system, including the banks, is 
thereby the product of value relations. Keen fails to view social categories 
historically.

Keen, instead, falsely bases the existence of the crisis free stage of the 
economic cycle on subjective factors: psychology and memory. He makes the false 
assumption that memory of the previous debt ridden crisis makes investors and 
others risk adverse. This is hardly a justifiable assumption as a basis for 
offering an understanding of the economic cycle. It makes the false assumption 
that subjective factors standing outside the economic cycle are the cause that 
leads to crises. It also, in a sense, implies that the fading of memory 
explains the shift away from being risk adverse leading to the burgeoning of 
debt. Consequently the cycle of remembering and forgetting is the basis for the 
debt and economic cycles. Now psychology is the ultimate basis for economic 
behaviour. This is no better a basis than the utilitarianism, that Keen 
criticises, as the basis of neo-classical economics. Keen is forced to promote 
a fictitious account of the existence of economic recovery because of his 
repudiation of the process of capitalist production as the core location of 
crises. Because he has rejected a materialist account of the capitalist economy 
based in the production process he must resort to idealistic assumptions. But 
these are no more than mere myths.

The problem with Keen is that he views the problem in reverse. By privileging 
debt as opposed to production he reverses the problem thereby taking surface 
appearances as the source of the problem. For him result is cause. But the  
problem is not excessive debt but the opposite: over-investment of capital  
with respect to the degree of exploitation obtaining. It is this that is 
responsible for excessive debt. Capital is over-produced in relation to 
profitability. 


In contrast for  Keen over-accumulation of capital is driven and facilitated by 
excessive accumulation of debt. Credit not production is cause. He fails to 
understand the opposite to be the case. The over-accumulation of debt is a 
product of the over-accumulation of capital.  Because there is an ultimate 
limit to the overproduction of capital there is a limit to the scale of 
possible debt. As capital accelerates to such a degree that it turns into 
over-accumulation credit consequently contracts. It is over-accumulation that 
causes both excessive debt and the consequent credit contraction. Under these 
circumstances the ratio of debt to GDP spirals out of control. But this ratio 
is merely an index that over-production of capital has occurred. 

The contraction of credit manifests itself on financial markets through the 
emergence of wild speculation. Eventually there is a credit crunch. Credit 
thereby becomes less available to make investments and to meet debt 
obligations. This is a chain like reaction.

The state steps in to compensate for private credit contraction through what is 
known today as quantitative easing. This prevents the contraction from 
sufficiently deepening to make a robust recovery a reality. Consequently the 
conditions for a real  recov

[Marxism] Fwd: It's No Good by Kirill Medvedev – n+1 Shop

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Kirill Medvedev is a young Russian poet who in 2003 rejected the Moscow 
literary world for its corruption and irrelevance. In the years since, 
he has protested the Putin regime on the streets of Moscow, written long 
essays about the post-Soviet intelligentsia, and taken his poetry in new 
directions. "I am interested," Medvedev has written, "exclusively in the 
artist undertaking a 'battle for his art'—which in our own time will 
mean a battle for his position. The meaning of this is contained not in 
one or another social function, but, to the contrary, in the ability to 
see, without distortion by one's social standing, without limitations by 
one's artistic milieu." This book, co-published with Ugly Duckling 
Presse, collects Medvedev's poetry, essays, and manifestos from the past 
decade.


"In his most eloquent essay, 'My Fascism,' Medvedev defines poetry as 
'the maximal expression, via the medium of language, of this or that 
authentic way of seeing.' And it is this—the quest for an authentic way 
of seeing—that leads to Medvedev's wholesale rejection, a 'no' upon 
which a 'yes' might be built. He calls it a 'rebellion of humanism.' For 
Americans, and especially for American writers and artists, Medvedev's 
texts must have the force of a clarion call." —Michael Robbins, Chicago 
Tribune


"A shrewd and irritable observer of the petty (and not-so-petty) 
corruptions of the Russian literary world...Part of the nightmare world 
that It’s No Good evokes is one that both Orwell and the members of 
Pussy Riot would understand. It’s a nightmare of euphemism and cant. 
'This is what happens,' Mr. Medvedev writes, 'when the authorities don’t 
want to speak clearly and don’t want to be spoken of clearly, either.'" 
—Dwight Garner, New York Times


"It's No Good is an event. Archimedes said: Give me a place to stand, 
and a long enough lever, and I'll move the world. Kirill Medvedev and 
his translators have given American readers another place to stand, a 
kind of Zuccotti of the mind. Now if only we can keep our grip on the 
lever." —Garth Risk Hallberg, The Millions


As seen in n+1 Issues 6 and 14, as well as Occupy! Gazette number 4.

Translated by Keith Gessen with Mark Krotov,
Cory Merrill, and Bela Shayevich
Edited, introduced, and annotated by Keith Gessen
Designed by Don't Look Now!
Smyth-sewn. 286 pp, 5.75 x 8.25"
Publication date: Second Edition, 2016
Co-published with Ugly Duckling Presse (EEPS 30)

http://shop.nplusonemag.com/collections/featured/products/its-no-good?mc_cid=a9919d8873&mc_eid=9e8030f4b0
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Further on Syrian Kurds

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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.
*

Thanks for the link, Ken. Comments on it:
1. I don't know any of the (mostly-German) signers, and so I don't know if
they represent a particular trend in the movement, but am digging.
2. For a much, much more balanced approach, see the articles that come up
by googling "joseph daher kurds." His approach has been 100% support to
Kurdish self-determination, 100% support for all protests against Erdogan's
murderous repression - and 100% insistence on clarity on the alleged
transformation of the PKK, which the "Open Letter" signers themselves admit
is dubious.
PS for New Yorkers: come here comrades from the HDP and others tonight:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1085403781490492/


On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 10:24 AM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4377
>
> Open letter to the signatories of the declaration “Let us mobilise against
> dictatorships, imperialist aggression and Daesh. We reject the politics of
> ‘national security’, racism and austerity”
> http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4322
>
>
> We are deeply disappointed, however, to see that the statement says
> absolutely nothing about the Kurdish revolution or the specific democratic
> experiment in Rojava, nor does it proclaim solidarity with them. In our
> view, this is symptomatic of the difficulties that some parts of the
> revolutionary Left have concerning solidarity with Rojava, the Kurdish
> revolution and the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party).
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at:
> http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com
>
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Alan Grayson’s Double Life: Congressman and Hedge Fund Manager - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/us/politics/alan-graysons-double-life-congressman-and-hedge-fund-manager.html
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein Right - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Further on Syrian Kurds

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4377

Open letter to the signatories of the declaration “Let us mobilise against 
dictatorships, imperialist aggression and Daesh. We reject the politics of 
‘national security’, racism and austerity”  
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4322


We are deeply disappointed, however, to see that the statement says absolutely 
nothing about the Kurdish revolution or the specific democratic experiment in 
Rojava, nor does it proclaim solidarity with them. In our view, this is 
symptomatic of the difficulties that some parts of the revolutionary Left have 
concerning solidarity with Rojava, the Kurdish revolution and the PKK (Kurdish 
Workers Party). 
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Syrian Kurds backed by Russian airstrikes advance onSyrian airb

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

  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.
*

No longer just "poised" - they've done it! Liberation complete!

Anti-imperialism now consists of being the only force in Syria to be 
fully backed to the hilt by both US and Russian imperialism.


-Original Message- 
From: Louis Proyect via Marxism
Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: Syrian Kurds backed by Russian airstrikes 
advance onSyrian airb


Anarchist, feminist tree-huggers poised to liberate Baathist air base
from filthy bearded, Sharia-law supporting jihadists.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/10022016

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Syrian Kurds backed by Russian airstrikes advance on Syrian airb

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Anarchist, feminist tree-huggers poised to liberate Baathist air base 
from filthy bearded, Sharia-law supporting jihadists.


http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/10022016
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: please contribute and share! Fw: Crowdfunding campaign for the Sociali st Forum in Lebanon

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 2/11/16 9:26 AM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote:

-- Forwarded Message --
From: Farah Kobaissy 
To: acpolla...@juno.com
Subject: Crowdfunding campaign for the Socialist Forum in Lebanon
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 15:49:29 +0200

Dear comrades,
I hope my email finds you well,

I am sending you this email in order to ask for your assistance at this
critical time of our organization in Lebanon.

As you know, the Socialist Forum was formed in 2010 after a merger between
two small organisations, one close to the IST and the other close to the
FI.



I just donated $50 and encourage other comrades to chip in.
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: please contribute and share! Fw: Crowdfunding campaign for the Sociali st Forum in Lebanon

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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.
*

-- Forwarded Message --
From: Farah Kobaissy 
To: acpolla...@juno.com
Subject: Crowdfunding campaign for the Socialist Forum in Lebanon
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 15:49:29 +0200

Dear comrades,
I hope my email finds you well,

I am sending you this email in order to ask for your assistance at this
critical time of our organization in Lebanon.

As you know, the Socialist Forum was formed in 2010 after a merger between
two small organisations, one close to the IST and the other close to the
FI.

Since then we have been involved in numerous campaigns, and our work has
encompassed solidarity with the Arab revolutions, particularly the Syrian
revolution because of the close ties between the two countries, as well as
solidarity with refugees. We have also been involved in the 2011 campaign
against the sectarian system, solidarity work with labour struggles, as
well as the domestic workers’ movement, among other things.

During last summer a social movement erupted in Lebanon over the garbage
crisis, the movement soon gained momentum reaching tens of thousands of
people protesting against governmental corruption in the capital and
outside of Beirut. We were involved in the movement and we formed a united
front with other student and feminist organizations. During that period, it
became evident to us that our revolutionary message reached far beyond our
own ranks and had a real audience within the movement and beyond. It was
also clear that we needed to strengthen and expand our small organisation
in order to maximise our impact as well as have a stepping stone to build a
revolutionary party.

We are currently experiencing a very exciting period of potential growth,
particularly following our involvement in the summer’s movement. At this
delicate time we felt the urge of opening a center in Beirut which will be
a very important step in building our party. To this end we are
starting a crowdfunding
campaign to cover the costs for a permanent local
-
1 year’s rent + various one-off expenses (furniture etc). Later the local
would pay for itself (through our own events there or renting it out to
other events)

We would be very grateful if the comrades in the US could support by
publicizing
the call for crowdfunding among members and friends and contribute
financially to the campaign.



In solidarity,

Farah Kobaissy

Socialist Forum
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Gravitational waves & testing String theory

[Jeff via Marxism]

  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.
*

Later today (15:30 GMT) we expect the official announcement of the direct 
detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO interferometers: this is a huge 
experimental confirmation of a prediction of Einstein's theory of general 
relativity 100 years ago. That theory several of whose predictions have already 
been confirmed (most famously the 1918 Eddington solar eclipse expedition) is 
barely controversial since hardly any other theory can explain the evidence.

On the other hand, I've been meaning to respond to some of the numerous 
articles on cosmology that Louis regularly posts. I appreciate him posting 
these, but of course they are invariably from the popular press (or else none 
of us would be able to understand them!) and often include numerous errors. 
Moreover it seems that Louis' choices for these articles have been intended to 
make a vague point which I'd find hard to articulate but appears to me to be an 
expression of jealousy from all the other sciences (thus including Marxism) of 
Physics being the most concise and complete science which is able to predict 
(at least given sufficient computing power) the outcome of almost any 
experiment within its scope, outside of a very small number of unsolved 
problems. So those rather esoteric problems (in the sense that they don't 
affect any experiment you could possibly perform using materials you'd find 
around the house, or even most laboratories) become the target of those other 
scientist
s and pundits.

IN PARTICULAR the extremely promising developments of string theory and theory 
of the multiverse are gleefully attacked on supposedly methodological or 
philosophical grounds. Especially in the very last article Louis posted:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/
 
This article had so many problems with it that I didn't have time to deal with 
them individually when he posted it. Nor do I have so much time now, but I will 
call your attention to the following key statement in that article which I 
suspect was one of the very points Louis was hoping to make:

"However string theory, which has its roots in ideas developed in the late 
1960s, has made no testable predictions about the observable universe."

That statement (which the author also applies to the theories of inflation and 
the multiverse) follows a philosophical discussion in which "testability" is 
advanced as the criterion for a proposition being within the bounds of science. 
I'd largely agree with that though it's not so clear and simple. But regardless 
I wanted to mention one important thing I learned from an interesting talk 
(though I couldn't understand most of it!) we had last week by a cosmologist 
named Robert Brandenberger.

He named one testable prediction of superstring theory, involving measurements 
of gravitational waves (which have now been directly detected, as we are about 
to be told). According to that, the spectrum of gravitational waves should rise 
toward high frequencies, whereas the prediction of standard inflation has a 
higher power at lower frequencies. So this is absolutely a testable prediction 
(at least in principle) on which the theory could be disproved (or not 
disproved, in which case there probably won't be other theories that had made 
the same experimental prediction, especially in advance!).

Given that, I felt encouraged given today's announcement that I might indeed 
see such a confirmation in my lifetime. But on further reflection I realize 
today's announcement will be for detection of gravitational waves from a 
cataclysmic event (such as the merging of two black holes) whereas the 
prediction of string theory involves the background of gravitational waves 
requiring a much more sensitive instrument. Nevertheless given what I already 
know, I will die with the near-assurance (as I have now) of the validity of the 
multiverse, given an extremely compelling piece of evidence: the existence of 
life in at least one universe. Plus I suspect there will be further predictions 
(which are testable through new experiments or observations) of these powerful 
theories beyond the one that I just happened to hear about last week. But I 
don't expect that to happen soon enough to shut up these pundits who want to 
use philosophy to berate the latest advances in physics.

- Jeff




_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] new Times revelations

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

  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.
*

-Original Message- 
From: Andrew Pollack via Marxism




"American-backed insurgents have long been used to the American stance 
in
recent years, that the United States did not want them to actually win 
the

war ..."

Orwellianism caught out straight away. "American-backed" rebels that 
America doesn't back.


Article heading: "Syrian opposition groups sense US support fading."

"Fading"? From what? Unlikely to have been a quote. A more likely Syrian 
quote here:


Assad's Partners in Washington - by Karam Nachar
10-02-2016: When John Kerry tells one of my closest friends: "The Syrian 
Opposition will be decimated in three months" he does not say that as an 
analyst, an interlocutor, or a cocktail party guest, he says it as the 
most senior foreign affairs official of the most powerful country in the 
world.
Stop staying the US has "abandoned" us or "betrayed" us. Such words 
assume prior friendship and/or an unfortunate turn in behavior. The 
Obama administration has blocked assistance to the Syrian opposition 
since 2012, allowed the use of chemical weapons against civilians, 
transmitted threats from Russia, and is now happily waiting for our 
destruction.
I look forward to Obamas end of term in a few months, not because his 
successor will make things better, (what good will that be if hundreds 
of thousands of Aleppines perish until then?) but because I'll probably 
have a better chance to see him after at a public event of sorts, stand 
up and shout:
"You have blood on your hands, Mr. President - what a big fool I was to 
cry of joy at your inauguration on that icy January day, 2008."

https://www.facebook.com/RadioFreeSyria/photos/a.382885705129976.91927.363889943696219/975800572505150/?type=3&theater

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Nato orders fleet to deploy in Aegean Sea 'to help end Europe's refugee crisis' | Europe | News | The Independent

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nato-orders-fleet-to-deploy-in-aegean-sea-to-help-end-europes-refugee-crisis-a6867076.html
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Palestinian journalist on hunger strike on verge of death

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

  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.
*

After 77 days on hunger strike in protest against his arbitrary detention
by Israeli forces, Palestinian journalist Mohammed Al-Qeeq is on the verge
of death.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61061

-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] As we suspected: Real figure for Syrians killed close to half a million

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

  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.
*

(In fact, just a few days ago, Michael Kilo, long-term dissident, and 
Christian, and former Syrian Opposition Coalition leader, claimed the 
real figure was 1 million killed: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/OccupySyria/permalink/955638211196658/)


Report on Syria conflict finds 11.5% of population killed or injured
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/11/report-on-syria-conflict-finds-115-of-population-killed-or-injured?CMP=share_btn_tw

Exclusive Syrian Centre for Policy Research says 470,000 deaths is twice 
UN’s figure with ‘human development ruined’ after 45% of population is 
displaced


Ian Black Middle East editor
Thursday 11 February 2016 11.01 AEDT Last modified on Thursday 11 
February 2016 22.51 AEDT


Syria’s national wealth, infrastructure and institutions have been 
“almost obliterated” by the “catastrophic impact” of nearly five years 
of conflict, a new report has found. Fatalities caused by war, directly 
and indirectly, amount to 470,000, according to the Syrian Centre for 
Policy Research (SCPR) – a far higher total than the figure of 250,000 
used by the United Nations until it stopped collecting statistics 18 
months ago.
In all, 11.5% of the country’s population have been killed or injured 
since the crisis erupted in March 2011, the report estimates. The number 
of wounded is put at 1.9 million. Life expectancy has dropped from 70 in 
2010 to 55.4 in 2015. Overall economic losses are estimated at $255bn 
(£175bn).
The stark account of the war’s toll came as warnings multiplied about 
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, which is in danger of being cut off by a 
government advance aided by Russian airstrikes and Iranian militiamen. 
The Syrian opposition is demanding urgent action to relieve the 
suffering of tens of thousands of civilians.
The International Red Cross said on Wednesday that 50,000 people had 
fled the upsurge in fighting in the north, requiring urgent deliveries 
of food and water.
Talks in Munich on Thursday between the US secretary of state, John 
Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, will be closely 
watched for any sign of an end to the deadly impasse. UN-brokered peace 
talks in Geneva are scheduled to resume in two weeks but are unlikely to 
do so without a significant shift of policy.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, an opposition spokesman, Salim 
al-Muslet, said President Barack Obama could stop the Russian attacks. 
“If he is willing to save our children it is really the time now to say 
‘no’ to these strikes in Syria,” he said. The Washington Post reported 
that Moscow had sent a letter to Washington proposing to stop bombing on 
1 March.


Of the 470,000 war dead counted by the SCPR, about 400,000 were directly 
due to violence, while the remaining 70,000 fell victim to lack of 
adequate health services, medicine, especially for chronic diseases, 
lack of food, clean water, sanitation and proper housing, especially for 
those displaced within conflict zones.


“We use very rigorous research methods and we are sure of this figure,” 
Rabie Nasser, the report’s author, told the Guardian. “Indirect deaths 
will be greater in the future, though most NGOs [non-governmental 
organisations] and the UN ignore them.
“We think that the UN documentation and informal estimation 
underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information 
during the crisis,” he said.
In statistical terms, Syria’s mortality rate increase from 4.4 per 
thousand in 2010 to 10.9 per thousand in 2015.
The UN high commissioner for human rights – which manages conflict death 
tolls – stopped counting Syria’s dead in mid-2014, citing lack of access 
and diminishing confidence in data sources.
The SCPR was based until recently in Damascus and research for this and 
previous reports was carried out on the ground across Syria. It is 
careful not to criticise the Syrian government or its allies – Iran, 
Hezbollah, Russia. And with the exception of Islamic State, it refers 
only to “armed groups” seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. 
But despite the neutral tone the findings are shocking.
In an atmosphere of “coercion, fear and fanaticism”, blackmail, theft 
and smuggling have supported the continuation of armed conflict so that 
the Syrian economy has become “a black hole” absorbing “domestic and 
external resources”.Oil production continues to be an “important 
financial resource” for Isis and other armed groups, it says.
Consumer prices rose 53% last year. But suffering is unevenly spread. 
“Prices in conflict zones and besieged areas are much higher than 
elsewhere in the country and this boosts profit margins for war traders 
who monopolise the m