[Marxism] More on Las Vegas

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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*The North Star recently published my article
 on the mass killing in Las Vegas.
For those who are interested, here is an addition I just added:*

*Update: addictions and this event*
I’ve been thinking a little more about Paddock, the apparent shooter. He’s
known to have had an extreme addiction to slot-machine poker gambling,
although the capitalist media doesn’t call it an “addiction” out of
concession to the gambling industry. He also was an alcoholic.
Modern brain science shows that satisfying any addiction (including
addiction to behaviors like gambling) stimulates the release of ever
increasing amounts of dopamine and strengthens the role of the midbrain at
the expense of the pre-frontal cortex. The former, called the “lizard
brain” by some, is that part of the brain that just reacts. All animals
have that part of the brain. The latter is the part of the brain that is
responsible for logical thought, perception of more distant consequences –
in short, the part of the brain that distinguishes our species, the human
species.
It is suspected – although far from confirmed – that Paddock may have been
obsessed with his father, the bank robber who was on the FBI’s Ten Most
Wanted list. So, here’s one theory: That as Paddock’s addiction
strengthened, it broke down the inhibitions against satisfying unconscious
or even possibly conscious cravings to emulate his father and to become
notorious in his own right. Again, this is a theory only, and I recognize
that there is no evidence at present that Paddock had this craving.
But if he did, this might help explain Paddock’s individual behavior. What
it does not explain is why these shootings are ever more common. For that
we would have to delve deeper, and that’s where the social analysis above
comes in. It would also be interesting to know if the other shooters were
drug addicts of some sort or another. If so, then again we have to ask why
drug addiction is so rampant in capitalist US society? What must be
emphasized is that no view of the individual psychology can explain
individual actions if the view is taken to the exclusion of the social
conditions. That is doubly so when the individual actions are part of a
larger pattern (such as random murders of the sort Paddock and others have
committed).

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"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Assata Shakur
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[Marxism] Thoughts on UK Toryism

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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The spectacle of the Tory PM, Theresa May, gasping for air while a
prankster handed her a form sacking her amidst a set that began to fall
apart was as Novara Media would say “delicious”.  Richard Seymour has a
piece behind a paywall about Tory Trauma, and certainly that looked like to
be a very accurate way of describing what has happened.

I think, though, that what is going on in the UK needs to be understood as
a crisis of caste as much as a crisis of class relations.  The tradition
British Ruling Caste nurtured at their private schools and at Cambridge and
Oxford are just not up to the task at the moment.  They have two star
leaders - Johnson and Rees-Mogg.  Both of them sound like something from my
collection of Boy’s Own annuals from the 1920s. They get up and talk about
Crecy and Agincourt, for Jayzuss’ sake.

I sit and think how could you get so much shit into a head? I do not know
what they do at Eton, but that school  must provide one of the worst
educations available anywhere. How could such idiots be let loose on the
British public?

But loose they are and at a time when British Capitalism needs rescuing
from the Capitalists. There is nothing, however, in the make up of caste
consciousness which would enable the Upper Caste to act effectively to
achieve such a breakthrough. And so we have an absolute crisis of hegemony,
where neoliberal imperatives have also weakened the forces of tradition.

How long can they keep on keeping on?  Of course it is impossible to answer
that question, but I cannot see the Tories eeking out another 4 years.

There is too the big issue of Brexit, the Tiger’s back, astride which
squats the Tory PM gasping and coughing and spluttering in fear. She is
terrified to go on and equally frightened of getting off.

All in all the times are delightful..

Comradely

Gary
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[Marxism] Bourgeois ideology, changes and shifts. . .

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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A collection of articles on Redline blog:

https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/bourgeois-ideology-popular-attitudes-shifts/
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[Marxism] Report on Syria from 7 years ago

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The book of Proverbs says that "He that troubleth his own house shall 
inherit the wind". That would apply in spades to the Baathist dictator. 
Due to unwise agricultural policies and climate change, Syria is facing 
an even grimmer outlook than when this article was written. I have read 
scholarly articles predicting that Damascus will run dry as early as 5 
years from now. The vainglorious blustering of the Damascus dictatorship 
will be starkly at odds with the dystopian future of a country that will 
have to rely on the diminished wealth of its oil-exporting benefactors 
in Russia and Iran. You'll note that this article was filed from Raqqa, 
the epicenter of Syria's collapse into sectarian madness.




The International Herald Tribune
October 14, 2010 Thursday
Once a breadbasket, now a barren land;
Drought strikes region covering Syria and Iraq, bringing deep poverty
BY ROBERT F. WORTH


Al RAQQA, Syria

The farmlands spreading north and east of this Euphrates River town were 
once the breadbasket of the region, a vast expanse of golden wheat 
fields and bucolic sheep herds.


Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the 
Fertile Crescent - including much of Iraq - appears to be turning 
barren, climate scientists say.


Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed; underground water sources 
have run dry, and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farm 
fields turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms 
have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed 
farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and 
cities of Syria and Iraq.


''I had 400 acres of wheat, and now it's all desert,'' said Ahmed 
Abdullah, a 48-year-old farmer who is living in a ragged burlap and 
plastic tent here with his wife and 12 children alongside many other 
migrants. ''We were forced to flee. Now we are at less than zero - no 
money, no job, no hope.''


The collapse of farmlands here - which is as much a matter of human 
mismanagement as of drought - has become a dire economic challenge and a 
rising security concern for the Syrian and Iraqi governments. They are 
now growing far more dependent on other countries for food and water. 
Syria, which once prided itself on its self-sufficiency and even 
exported wheat, is now quietly importing it in ever-larger amounts. The 
country's total water resources dropped by half from 2002 to 2008, 
according to scientists and water engineers.


For Syria, which is running out of oil reserves and struggling to draw 
foreign investment, the farming crisis is an added vulnerability in part 
because it is taking place in the area where the country's restive 
Kurdish minority is centered. Iraq, devastated by war, is now facing a 
water crisis that may be unprecedented in its history. Both countries 
have complained about reduced flow on the Euphrates, because of massive 
upriver dam projects in Turkey.


The four-year drought in Syria has pushed two million to three million 
people into extreme poverty, according to a survey completed this month 
by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier 
De Schutter.


Herders in the country's northeast have lost 85 percent of their 
livestock, and at least 1.3 million people have been affected, he 
reported. An estimated 50,000 more families have migrated from rural 
areas this year, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of people who 
fled in earlier years, Mr. DeSchutter said.


Syria, with a fast-growing population, has already strained to 
accommodate more than a million Iraqi refugees in the years since the 
2003 invasion.


''It is ironic, this region is the origin of wheat and barley, and now 
it is among the biggest importers of these products,'' said Rami Zurayk, 
a professor of agricultural and food science at the American University 
in Beirut.


The drought has become a sensitive subject for the Syrian government, 
which does not give foreign journalists official permission to write 
about it and refuses access to officials in the Agriculture Ministry. On 
the road running south from Damascus, displaced farmers and herders can 
be seen living in tents, but the entrances are closely watched by Syrian 
security agents, who do not allow journalists in.


Droughts have always taken place here, but ''the regional climate is 
changing in ways that are clearly observable,'' said Jeannie Sowers, a 
professor at the University of New Hampshire who has written on Middle 
East climate issues. ''Whether you call it human-induced climate change 
or not, much of the region is getting hotter and drier, combined with 
more intense, 

[Marxism] Muftah readings

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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https://muftah.org/iran-recruiting-afghan-child-soldiers-fight-syria/


https://muftah.org/egyptian-states-oppressive-moral-policing-lgbtq-citizens/
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Re: [Marxism] Tom Petty on regretting his use of the Confederate flag

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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You may also appreciate this album by Johnny Cash, with Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers as the back-up band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHwS0y4lzp0
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Re: [Marxism] Tom Petty on regretting his use of the Confederate flag

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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http://bittersoutherner.com/from-the-southern-perspective/music/like-sonny-liston-tom-petty-patterson-hood

Patterson Hood is hardly a "master of brevity and precision", but this is a
good read.
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[Marxism] Syria: The Turkish-Russian Invasion against Idlib has begun!

[RKOB via Marxism]

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https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/the-turkish-russian-invasion-against-idlib-has-begun/

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(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
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[Marxism] Fwd: Soft Shell, Hard Core: On the 150th Anniversary of the Publication of Karl Marx's Capital, Vol. 1 | The Brooklyn Rail

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://brooklynrail.org/2017/10/field-notes/SoftShell-HardCore-On-the-150th-Anniversary-of-the-Publication-of-Karl-Marxs-Capital-Vol-1
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[Marxism] Capital's strike against Catalonian independence begins

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/spain-catalonia-economy-bonds.html?ref=todayspaper
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