[Marxism] the Spark group on the Black Movement in the Sixties
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 think they underestimate the radicalism of both Malcolm X and MLK somewhat, but it's an interesting analysis from 1987, a point in which most of the leaders and organisations from the 60s had gone and/or been incorporated in mainstream capitalist politics and there were no new MLKs or MX's on the horizon, no new SNCCs, of LRBW, or BPs. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/the-american-black-movement-in-the-sixties-victories-and-lost-opportunities/ _ 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] My analysis of British polictical situation in 1997 and how it was 15 to 18 years ahead of what has been unfoilding!
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. * AN ARTICILE ME (ANTHONY BRAIN) WRITTEN IN AUTUMN OF 1997 PREDICTING HOW A RE-ELECTED TORY GOVERNMENT WOULD LEAD TO A UKIP-LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC POLARISATION WITHIN THE LABOUR PARTY! HOW A SMALL OUTSIDE CHANCE IF ONLY THE EX-TROTSKYISTS FAILED TO GI | | | | || | | | | | AN ARTICILE ME (ANTHONY BRAIN) WRITTEN IN AUTUMN OF 1997 PREDICTING HOW A R... Preface by Anthony Brain to this Autumn 1997 document:- The splits which this document analysed within the Briti... | | | | _ 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] Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary - 1976
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. * Inside the Central Committee, close-up views of Brezhnev and the Soviet system Challenges posed by Eurocommunism, the Helsinki effect, human rights "We have lost the biggest ideological battle of the XX century" Posting marks 95th birthday of glasnost champion http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB550-Chernyaev-Diary-1976-gives-close-up-view-of-Soviet-system/ _ 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] CLR James on When the rich are defeated
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. * Very succinct comment by cde James: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/14989/ _ 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] Immigration controls: not in workers' interests
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/2011/06/12/new-zealand%E2%80%99s-immigration-controls-%E2%80%93-not-in-workers%E2%80%99-interests-%C2%A0/ _ 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] FI on Nuit Debout movement in France
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/2016/05/24/the-nuit-debout-revolt-in-france-let-the-gems-sparkle/ _ 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] The Occupation of the American Mind ...
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 agree with Ken's concern about people who criticize Israel for the wrong reasons. I remain unpersuaded that Weir is such a person or that the attacks against her were motivated by such legitimate concerns. On Tuesday, May 24, 2016, Andrew Stewart 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. > * > > Since the teenage passive aggressive tone and self-aggrandizing codicil > are quite obvious, I will just say three things: > > 1) God forbid a Marxist have contact with other proletarians and perhaps > help them overcome their capitalist ideological programming, including > chauvinism of any variety. That would be unthinkable. > > 2) If American Jews are so threatened by white supremacy why is Trump > endorsed by Sheldon Adelson? Don't like the guilt by association? Then > don't use it on Weir! > > 3) Don't you have a real job? > > > Message: 7 > Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 21:16:08 -0700 > From: Ken Hiebert > > To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition >> > Cc: hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com > Subject: [Marxism] The Occupation of the American Mind ... > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii > > > http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/the-occupation-of-the-american-mind-a-film-that-palestinians-deserve/ > > In his Counterpunch piece The Occupation of the American Mind: a Film > ThatPalestinians Deserve, Andrew Stewart models the inclusivity that he > would like to see in the Palestine solidarity movement. > He says, "Does Alison Weir, as a single-policy advocate, go on the radio > shows of a few folks who might be white nationalists?" He avoids the term > white supremacist which might give offence to some white nationalists. > If Alison Weir's outreach to white nationalists is successful we can look > forward to some of them joining our demonstrations. We'll have to think > about some expressions that we thoughtlessly use, such as "Israeli > apartheid." Not everyone sees apartheid as something bad. >ken h > > -- > > Best regards, > Andrew Stewart > > > On May 24, 2016, at 2:00 PM, marxism-requ...@lists.csbs.utah.edu > wrote: > > > > Message: 7 > > Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 21:16:08 -0700 > > From: Ken Hiebert > > > To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition > >> > > Cc: hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com > > Subject: [Marxism] The Occupation of the American Mind ... > > Message-ID: > > > > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii > > > > > http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/the-occupation-of-the-american-mind-a-film-that-palestinians-deserve/ > > > > In his Counterpunch piece The Occupation of the American Mind: a Film > ThatPalestinians Deserve, Andrew Stewart models the inclusivity that he > would like to see in the Palestine solidarity movement. > > He says, "Does Alison Weir, as a single-policy advocate, go on the radio > shows of a few folks who might be white nationalists?" He avoids the term > white supremacist which might give offence to some white nationalists. > > If Alison Weir's outreach to white nationalists is successful we can > look forward to some of them joining our demonstrations. We'll have to > think about some expressions that we thoughtlessly use, such as "Israeli > apartheid." Not everyone sees apartheid as something bad. > >ken h > > > > -- > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/amithrgupta%40gmail.com > -- - Amith _ 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] The Occupation of the American Mind ...
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. * Since the teenage passive aggressive tone and self-aggrandizing codicil are quite obvious, I will just say three things: 1) God forbid a Marxist have contact with other proletarians and perhaps help them overcome their capitalist ideological programming, including chauvinism of any variety. That would be unthinkable. 2) If American Jews are so threatened by white supremacy why is Trump endorsed by Sheldon Adelson? Don't like the guilt by association? Then don't use it on Weir! 3) Don't you have a real job? Message: 7 Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 21:16:08 -0700 From: Ken Hiebert To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition Cc: hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com Subject: [Marxism] The Occupation of the American Mind ... Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/the-occupation-of-the-american-mind-a-film-that-palestinians-deserve/ In his Counterpunch piece The Occupation of the American Mind: a Film That Palestinians Deserve, Andrew Stewart models the inclusivity that he would like to see in the Palestine solidarity movement. He says, "Does Alison Weir, as a single-policy advocate, go on the radio shows of a few folks who might be white nationalists?" He avoids the term white supremacist which might give offence to some white nationalists. If Alison Weir's outreach to white nationalists is successful we can look forward to some of them joining our demonstrations. We'll have to think about some expressions that we thoughtlessly use, such as "Israeli apartheid." Not everyone sees apartheid as something bad. ken h -- Best regards, Andrew Stewart > On May 24, 2016, at 2:00 PM, marxism-requ...@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: > > Message: 7 > Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 21:16:08 -0700 > From: Ken Hiebert > To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition > > Cc: hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com > Subject: [Marxism] The Occupation of the American Mind ... > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii > > http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/23/the-occupation-of-the-american-mind-a-film-that-palestinians-deserve/ > > In his Counterpunch piece The Occupation of the American Mind: a Film That > Palestinians Deserve, Andrew Stewart models the inclusivity that he would > like to see in the Palestine solidarity movement. > He says, "Does Alison Weir, as a single-policy advocate, go on the radio > shows of a few folks who might be white nationalists?" He avoids the term > white supremacist which might give offence to some white nationalists. > If Alison Weir's outreach to white nationalists is successful we can look > forward to some of them joining our demonstrations. We'll have to think > about some expressions that we thoughtlessly use, such as "Israeli > apartheid." Not everyone sees apartheid as something bad. >ken h > > -- _ 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] caring for kids who care for elders
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 coincidence, in the journal just forwarded by Louis is the following: http://www.transform-network.net/publications/yearbook/yearbook-2016/news/detail/Journal/care-revolution-a-feminist-marxist-transformation-strategy-from-the-perspective-of-caring-for-each.html Assuming the author and the network described are serious about making a care revolution AGAINST capitalism, then they're in synch with what I advocated in the previous message. (If I question their seriousness it's only because the journal issue also includes such surrenderistas as Panitch and Varoufakis.) _ 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] Tariq Ali to share podium honors with Tim Anderson
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 5/23/16 11:19 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: Tariq, I just wanted to drop you a line reminding you of what a fuckwit you are on Syria. I can sort of understand why you would be affiliated with John Rees's gang since these people at least have a patina of legitimacy from the demonstrations they organized against Bush's war in Iraq. I hope that they are paying you good money for speaking at the "Crossing Borders" conference since it will cost your tattered reputation dearly. But Tim Anderson is a rancid specimen who makes no bones about his backing of Bashar al-Assad. Being an invited guest of a conference that gives him a platform is like speaking at rally in 1938 in defense of the Moscow Trials. Anderson is the master of the Big Lie. This is a guy who writes articles for batshit Michel Chossudovsky's website claiming that al-Assad's popularity was confirmed by his big victory in the 2014 "multi-party" elections in Syria. Surely someone as trained in Chomskyism as you would understand the difference between real elections and demonstration elections, right? Well, Anderson has been disinvited. That's good even though the conference remains a sordid affair. This is a minor victory akin to Mother Agnes getting disinvited from a STWC conference a while back. How in the world did they stoop to invite Anderson in the first place. He doesn't pass the smell test even though I think Rees and Ali can't distinguish between the scent of a rose and a dog turd. _ 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: Yearbook 2016 - Transform Network
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. * Never before in the history of our network and journal has there been a year like 2015 in which the radical left – along with many unpoliticised people – has learned so much about what its possibilities and limits are within the European Union’s neoliberal architecture. Syriza’s electoral victory in January and the victory of the OXI vote in July’s referendum demonstrate that radical left parties can build electoral majorities around a platform for political change. But, at the same time, it became clear what the limits are of what can be achieved with the current balance of forces within the European institutions and amongst Member States and to what extent a single country can resist when going it almost alone, with social movements, militant trade unions, and political parties of the European left still too small to defend it. People are thinking about strategy more intensely than ever before during the neoliberal era. Assessing the experience of the clash between Greece’s left government and the Troika, Yanis Varoufakis offers detailed proposals for an investment-led recovery and currency, banking, and debt policy as part of a feasible programme for the immediate future in the context of a new European network or platform now being put together. Without reducing the inner-party conflicts in Syriza to one between a ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’ wing, Michalis Spourdalakis draws a balance sheet of the first months of the left-led government and the loosening of contact with the party’s social base, maintaining that Syriza needs both to return to the social arena and stay in government. The question of the kind of Europe that has to be fought for, and the national/international dialectic the left needs to master in resisting the governance of a globalised financial market are addressed by Étienne Balibar and Walter Baier. The left has always been internationalist, but it cannot afford to be in any way identified, by dint of its internationalism, with the actual neoliberal European project; this will necessarily allow a large part of the oppositional space to be claimed by the radical right and its nationalism. The post-democratic and neoliberal nature of the EU institutions is documented by Riccardo Petrella, the nexus of financialisation and austerity by Joachim Bischoff, and the labour regime the EU enforces is laid out by Karola Boger, while Adoración Guamán and Raúl Lorente show how EU policies have affected labour legislation in Spain and what attempts have been made to resist them. The question of how much can be changed within the framework of the Treaties, how much flexibility there can be for different national approaches, along with specific policy proposals, is debated by Axel Troost and Peter Wahl. But despite differing viewpoints one thing is certain: for the left, the labour movement, and other social movements, there can be no return to organisation on a purely national basis. full: http://www.transform-network.net/publications/yearbook/yearbook-2016.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] Michael Mariotte, a Leading Antinuclear Activist, Dies at 63
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, May 24 2016 Michael Mariotte, a Leading Antinuclear Activist, Dies at 63 By SAM ROBERTS Michael Mariotte, a leading national opponent of nuclear power and an advocate for alternative, sustainable sources of energy, died on May 16 at his home in Kensington, Md. He was 63. The cause was pancreatic cancer, his wife, Tetyana Murza, said. As executive director and president of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Takoma Park, Md., for three decades, Mr. Mariotte was at the forefront of two successful landmark efforts: to prevent the repeal of a federal ban on interstate shipment of radioactive waste, and to bar the construction of new nuclear plants in Maryland and Louisiana. He also organized antinuclear campaigns in Eastern Europe after the fatal power plant catastrophe in 1986 at Chernobyl, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. And his information service acted as a clearinghouse for groups that opposed nuclear power, both in the United States and overseas. In 2014, Mr. Mariotte (pronounced like the hotel chain) received a lifetime achievement award from Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, on behalf of a dozen environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club. He had earlier been a co-founder of an alternative weekly newspaper in the nation’s capital, which became Washington City Paper, as well as a drummer in a punk-rock band. Michael Lee Mariotte was born in Indianapolis on Dec. 9, 1952, to Richard Mariotte, a civilian employee of the Defense Department, and the former Rozetta Mae Dorton, who had worked for a hotel in Hilton Head, S.C., and for an employment agency. He moved to the Washington area when he was 13 and graduated from Herndon High School in Fairfax County, Va. Mr. Mariotte graduated from Antioch College in Ohio in 1978. His marriage to Lynn Thorp ended in divorce. He is survived by their children, Nicole and Richard Mariotte; his children with Ms. Murza, Zoryana and Kateryna; a sister, Julie Mariotte; and a brother, Jeffrey. When he was a young man, Mr. Mariotte and housemates from Virginia formed the band Tru Fax and the Insaniacs, which began playing at local clubs in 1978 and produced an album in 1982. The band continued to perform occasionally until recently (and impishly relished the title of Washington’s worst band, bestowed in 1980 by Washingtonian magazine). Mr. Mariotte was also the founding editor and later general manager of the alternative newspaper 1981, which was renamed Washington City Paper a year later. He joined the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in 1985, became executive director the next year and began publishing a newsletter called Groundswell, now known as Nuclear Monitor. The organization mobilized antinuclear groups, testified before Congress and enlisted celebrity endorsements. Notably, it helped defeat a proposed reactor in Calvert Cliffs, Md.; a uranium processing plant in Louisiana; and legislation that would have lifted curbs on the transportation of radioactive waste. Mr. Mariotte said the measure had posed the threat of a “mobile Chernobyl.” He resigned as executive director at the end of 2013 because of his illness. He was subsequently named president and ran the organization’s website, its GreenWorld blog and other programs. Mr. Mariotte remained convinced that nuclear power would become obsolete and be replaced by clean, renewable energy sources and greater energy efficiency. “It is no longer a question of whether these 21st-century technologies can replace nuclear power and fossil fuels,” he said when he stepped down as executive director of the information service. “The question is when.” _ 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] caring for kids who care for elders
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. * It sounds like the organization profiled does good and necessary work. But as always with such efforts under capitalism it can't and won't attack the root problem, i.e. the working and family conditions dragging children into this situation in the first place. This is so relevant to new analyses about social reproduction. Here we have a private organizing taking the rough edges off a brutal, punishing care system, rather than fighting for a system under which families, communities and workplaces are provided (and self-manage) care free as a matter of right. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/supporting-children-who-serve-as-caregivers/?ref=todayspaper _ 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: My Father’s Vietnam | 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. * Over the years there have been any number of narrative films about Vietnam veterans ranging from the sensationalistic Rambo series to quieter and more serious films like “In Country” or “Coming Home”. As for documentaries, they tend to be made under the impact of the antiwar movement such as “Winter Soldier” or harrowing tales of survival such as “Return with Honor” or “Little Dieter Loves to Fly”, both of which are focused on the ordeals of POW’s. If you’ve seen such films, you’ll have a little bit of trouble getting the hang of “My Father’s Vietnam”, a documentary that premieres on VOD today, a deceptively modest work that combines stock footage, family photos and interviews with a number of veterans who were connected in some way with a man named Peter Sorensen whose son Soren is the director. full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/05/24/my-fathers-vietnam/ _ 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] A Window Into the West Bank’s ‘Wildest, Most Violent’ Areas
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, May 24 2016 A Window Into the West Bank’s ‘Wildest, Most Violent’ Areas By JAMES GLANZ YISHUV HADAAT, West Bank — With shoulder-length hair tumbling from beneath his knit skullcap, Hanamel Dorfman, a radical young Israeli settler, explains matter-of-factly on camera how hilltop settlement outposts like his own will continue to proliferate across the West Bank. From there, he says bluntly, Israelis will cross the Jordan River and start building on the other side. Reminded that beyond the river there is another sovereign nation, Jordan, Mr. Dorfman says with an unwavering gaze, “Everything is temporary.” The stunning statement comes in one of the final scenes of “The Settlers,” a documentary by an Israeli-American filmmaker, Shimon Dotan, that opens a rare window into the reclusive and politically explosive “hilltop youth” movement. The film, which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was shown for the first time in Israel on Monday evening, suggests that the fringe group of religious hippies is underestimated in its ability to influence Israeli politics and thwart any possibility of peace with the Palestinians. Mr. Dotan was born in Romania, immigrated to Israel as a boy and moved to New York in 1995. He introduced me to Mr. Dorfman and other settlers during a recent visit to Yishuv Hadaat, which is little more than a collection of mobile homes, a ramshackle synagogue and some playground equipment on the crest of a hill. We also went to the nearby outpost Esh Kodesh — the name means “Holy Fire” — where several residents welcomed us into their synagogue, but one chased our group down in a golf cart and expressed strong unhappiness about our arriving without asking their permission. Mr. Dorfman, now 21, told me that Israel’s government was illegitimate because it did not rule based on the laws of the Torah. “It stays in its place in a pathetic attempt at survival,” he said. Mr. Dorfman said he had been arrested numerous times, but not for any major attacks on Palestinians. Still, his ideology echoes a manifesto of a new group of extremist Jewish settler youth that Israeli security officials revealed last year. Mr. Dotan’s film chronicles the germination of the early settler movement after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, including the ideas and religious zeal that fueled it, and explores its latest extreme element: the hilltop youth. They are but a tiny fraction of the more than 400,000 Israeli Jews living in the occupied West Bank, but the object of mounting concern as they are blamed for extreme violence there, like the arson last summer that killed a toddler and his parents in the village of Duma. “The Settlers” is one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders. Though mainstream settler leaders denounce violence and try to distance themselves from the radical youth in the hills, Mr. Dotan sees the hilltop dwellers as a natural outgrowth of the original movement. “Those who push it forward today are the hilltop youth,” he said. “And it seems to me a very dangerous direction.” Often depicted as uneducated hooligans, the youth in the film come off as raw but canny — an American like me might call them street smart — using acts of defiance and violence to achieve their aims. There is also an aura of romance: Mr. Dorfman, with his long sidelocks, wispy beard and rimless glasses, seems more like a hard-eyed John Lennon than a backwoods militant. At one point in the film, a settler with a guitar sings Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” in a mixture of English and Hebrew while sitting at a fire. But there are also expressions of virulent racism, a glorification of violence and a desire to replace the modern state of Israel with a full-scale biblical kingdom that would extend as far as Iraq. In one scene at Esh Kodesh, Pinhasi Bar-On, 25, speaks playfully with several young children about his legal troubles, asking them if they will come along on his escapades when they get older. “What will you do with me?” Mr. Bar-On asks, as if teaching a preschool class. “Beat up Arabs,” one child says. “Yes,” Mr. Bar-On says approvingly. Mr. Dotan, 66, whose previous films include a feature based on a David Grossman novel (“The Smile of the Lamb,” 1986) and a documentary shot inside Israeli prisons (“Hot House,” 2007), said he had decided to explore the settlements because he views them as a threat to Israel from within. Living abroad for decades had intensified his Zionism as he saw the Jewish state through expa
[Marxism] Fwd: Alawite dissident warns of ‘the danger of making the revolution appear as if it were a Sunni revolution’ - Syria Direct
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://syriadirect.org/news/alawite-dissident-warns-of-%E2%80%98the-danger-of-making-the-revolution-appear-as-if-it-were-a-sunni-revolution%E2%80%99/ _ 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: Assessing Che | Jacobin
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. * Sam Farber: "He was a radical egalitarian, a trait that was rooted in his bohemian upbringing in Argentina." Right. Smoking pot and reading Jack Kerouac was key, not identification with the continent's most oppressed people. What an idiot. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/cuba-che-guevara-fidel-raul-castro-communism/ _ 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] Review: ‘The Morning They Came for Us’ Reports on the Hell of Syria
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, May 24 2016 Review: ‘The Morning They Came for Us’ Reports on the Hell of Syria Books of The Times By MICHIKO KAKUTANI MAY 23, 2016 The Morning They Came for Us Dispatches From Syria By Janine di Giovanni 206 pages. Liveright Publishing. $25.95 The title of Janine di Giovanni’s devastating new book, “The Morning They Came for Us,” refers to those terrible moments in ordinary Syrians’ lives when the war in their country becomes personal. Those moments when there is a knock on the door and the police or intelligence services take a family member away. Those moments when a government-delivered barrel bomb falls on your home, your school, your hospital, and daily life is forever ruptured. “The water stops, taps run dry, banks go, and a sniper kills your brother,” she writes. Garbage is everywhere because there are no longer any functioning city services, and entire neighborhoods are turned into fields of rubble. Victorian diseases like polio, typhoid and cholera resurface. Children wear rubber sandals in the winter cold because they do not have shoes. People are forced to do without “toothpaste, money, vitamins, birth-control pills, X-rays, chemotherapy, insulin, painkillers.” In the five years since the Assad regime cracked down on peaceful antigovernment protests and the conflict escalated into full-blown civil war, more than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and some 12 million people — more than half the country’s prewar population — have been displaced, including five million who have fled to neighboring countries and to Europe in what the United Nations calls the largest refugee crisis since World War II. In “The Morning They Came for Us,” Ms. di Giovanni gives us a visceral understanding of what it is like to live in wartime Syria, recounting some of the individual stories behind the numbing statistics: students who were whisked away by the police and interrogated and tortured; children who died from common infections because medicine and doctors were unavailable; women who were raped by soldiers at checkpoints and in jail; families who fled besieged cities like Homs, only to return because there was no place else to go. The fact that much of the book’s on-the-ground reporting is confined to the early stages of the war only serves to remind the reader that the horrors she witnessed would escalate in the years to come — with still no end in sight. Ms. di Giovanni introduces us to a baker named Mohammed, who received messages from the government that he would be kidnapped and killed if he did not stop manning the bread factory that helped feed an opposition-held neighborhood in Aleppo. And to Nada, who brought sandwiches and medical supplies to fellow students on the front lines, and who later helped spread the opposition’s message through Facebook and Twitter. Nada was arrested at her parents’ home and held captive for eight months and three days — during which she was beaten, whipped and raped, while her jailers told her family that she was dead. Another student, Hussein, had helped organize some of the early peaceful demonstrations that sprang up in Syria, after the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia and Egypt. He was shot, taken captive by pro-Assad forces and savagely beaten and tortured. He tells Ms. di Giovanni that his abdomen was cut, his intestines were pulled out and he was then crudely sewn back up; he survived, he says, only because a pro-regime doctor, who took pity on him, declared him dead and allowed him to escape from the morgue. Ms. di Giovanni quotes a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who says, “The Syrian government is running a virtual archipelago of torture centers scattered around the country.” Like the work of the Belarussian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, Ms. di Giovanni’s book gives voice to ordinary people living through a dark time in history; and like Anthony Shadid’s powerful 2005 book, “Night Draws Near” (which recounted the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq), it chronicles the intimate fallout that war has on women, children and families. A longtime reporter who covered the wars in Bosnia, Chechnya and Sierra Leone, Ms. di Giovanni writes here with urgency and anguish — determined to testify to what she has witnessed because she wants “people never to forget.” Her sorrow comes through in the writing — in the book’s staccato sentences, in its flashbacks to similar scenes of suffering in the Balkans, in its helpless empathy for people she met in Syria, like the ailing woman in a hospital who begged her to take her children away to some place safe. Most of
