[Marxism] Catalonia: ‘Suspend self-rule and we declare independence’

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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Dick Nichols writes: The arrests of the Jordis (leaders of the Cataan
independence movement) made it clear there was nothing to be gained from
seeking talks with a Spanish government determined to crush the movement.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/catalonia-suspend-self-rule-and-we-declare-independence

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870–1950American Danger | The American Historical Review | Oxford Academic

[Patrick Bond via Marxism]

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This looks like an important historical reconstruction, unearthing 
another way that Africa has been the North's useful tool.


Last week I happened to be on a panel at a Marseille conference with a 
comrade - Peo Hansen - who has a very similar view about the Eurafrica 
side of this story: 
https://books.google.com/books/about/Eurafrica.html?id=-FuCBAAAQBAJ



On 2017/10/20 07:11 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the 
Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870–1950          Sven 
Beckert
The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 4, 1 October 2017, 
Pages 1137–1170, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.4.1137


During the last third of the nineteenth century, a debate emerged in a 
number of European countries on the “American danger.” Responding to 
the rapid rise of the United States as the world’s most important 
economy, some European observers feared their nations’ declining 
competitiveness in the face of the territorial extent of the United 
States, and its ability to integrate a dynamic industrial sector with 
ample raw material supplies, agriculture commodities, markets, and 
labor into one national economy. This “second great divergence” 
provoked a range of responses, as statesmen, capitalists, and 
intellectuals advocated for territorial rearrangements of various 
European economies, a discussion that lasted with greater or lesser 
intensity from the 1870s to the 1950s. Their sometimes competing and 
sometimes mutually reinforcing efforts focused on African colonialism, 
European integration, and violent territorial expansion within Europe 
itself. Using the debate as a lens to understand the connections 
between a wide range of policy responses, this article argues that 
efforts to territorialize capitalist economies delineate a particular 
moment in the long history of capitalism; and it demonstrates the 
unsettling effects of the rise of the United States on European powers.




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[Marxism] Fwd: American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870–1950American Danger | The American Historical Review | Oxford Academic

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Sven Beckert and hopefully not behind a paywall if you use this link 
with an access key.


https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/122/4/1137/4320241/American-DangerUnited-States-EmpireEurafricaand?guestAccessKey=b3fa9ed4-ef9a-424a-83cc-6b399b79275a
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[Marxism] Fwd: More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0185809
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[Marxism] Fwd: Kenya’s Electoral Paralysis: A Democratic Cul-de-sac and A Recipe for Violence?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=13716
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[Marxism] Fwd: America's Political Economy: On not growing the pie – ADAM TOOZE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/10/19/americas-political-economy-not-growing-pie/
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[Marxism] Venezuela's Former Opposition Leader Slams Opposition's Failure at Polls

[michael a. lebowitz via Marxism]

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"They failed in their proposal for insurrection - what do I mean when I 
say insurrection well you remember the speech on the 3rd of July in 
Chacao. The four key phrases used then were - national uprising, 
upsurging rebellion, zero hour and general strike. That's a proposal for 
insurrection. The insurrection failed, they failed at these past 
election and on top of that they don't like dialogue. So if you don't 
want to vote, you're bad at insurrection, and you don't wan't to 
dialogue, what do you want - collective suicide?"



 Venezuela's Former MUD Leader Slams Opposition's Failure at Polls

*venezuelanalysis.com*/analysis/13452 


‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2017

--
-
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
 University Drive
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Home:   Phone 604-689-9510
Cell: 604-789-4803


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[Marxism] Žižek vs Lenin, again

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://socialistresistance.org/zizek-vs-lenin-again/10940 


This is an abysmal reactionary book, a betrayal of what Lenin was up to which 
anticipates Stalinism’s eventual complete betrayal of October, a betrayal of 
Lenin.
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[Marxism] Canadians and the US medical system

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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I haven’t heard complaints about the quality of care in the US.  I do hear 
surprise at the costs.
I do recall that decades ago my parents were travelling in the US.  My mother 
had a fainting spell.  From northern California they turned around and came 
back to Canada so she could see a doctor.

Some years ago an incident was reported in the Toronto papers.  A man and his 
father were travelling in Florida.  When the father needed to see a doctor they 
were relieved that they had medical insurance.  But the doctor refused to deal 
with the insurance company.  He demanded cash.  And he phoned the local airport 
to tell them not to let the father board a plane.

ken h


http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/alkan-air-opens-hangar-at-nanaimo-airport/ 

“Our core business has mainly been medical flying. Mainly picking up Canadians 
vacationing in the States or further afield, who have either gotten injured or 
sick. We pick them up and bring them back to Canada into the medical system 
here,” he said. “We decided it was time to go ahead and do a long-term 
investment and put some roots down.”
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[Marxism] Documenting U.S. Role in Democracy’s Fall and Dictator’s Rise in Chile

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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Documenting U.S. Role in Democracy’s Fall and Dictator’s Rise in Chile

By Pascale Bonnefoy - OCT. 14, 2017

SANTIAGO, Chile — An old rotary phone rings insistently.

Visitors at a new exhibition at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights here
in Santiago who pick up the receiver hear two men complain bitterly about
the liberal news media “bleating” over the military coup that had toppled
Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile, five days earlier.

“Our hand doesn’t show on this one, though,” one says.

“We didn’t do it,” the other responds. “I mean, we helped them.”

The conversation took place on a Sunday morning in September 1973 between
former President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry
Kissinger. The two men were discussing football — and the violent overthrow
of a democratically elected government 5,000 miles away with their
assistance.

For the exhibition, two Spanish-speaking actors re-enacted the taped phone
call based on a declassified transcript.

The chance to listen in on the call is part of “Secrets of State: The
Declassified History of the Chilean Dictatorship
,”
an exhibition that offers visitors an immersive experience of Washington’s
intervention in Chile and its 17-year relationship with the military
dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

An enlarged and dramatically lit document sets the tone at the entrance. It
is a presidential daily brief dated Sept. 11, 1973, the day of the coup.
Its paragraphs are entirely redacted, every word blacked out.

A dimly lit underground gallery guides visitors through a maze of documents
— presidential briefings, intelligence reports, cables and memos — that
describe secret operations and intelligence gathering carried out in Chile
by the United States from the Nixon years through the Reagan presidency.

 “There is an arc of history that is very dramatic when you put these
documents together,” said Peter Kornbluh, the exhibition’s curator who is a
senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington and director
of its Chile Documentation Project
. “They have
provided revelations and made headlines, they have been used as evidence in
human rights prosecutions, and now they are contributing to the verdict of
history.”

On view are documents revealing secret exchanges about how to prevent
Chile’s Congress from ratifying the Allende victory in 1970, plans for
covert operations to destabilize his government and reports about a Chilean
military officer informing the United States government of the coming coup
and requesting assistance.

There is a cable from the Central Intelligence Agency to its officers in
Santiago after a failed operation in October 1970 to prevent Allende from
assuming office, which he did that November. The C.I.A. provided weapons
for the plan, which resulted in the killing of the commander in chief of
the army, Gen. René Schneider, and the agency later sent money to help some
of the plotters flee the country.

“The station has done an excellent job of guiding Chileans to a point today
where a military solution is at least an option for them,” the cable says,
commending the officers, even though their plot was foiled.

The exhibition includes only a small sample of the 23,000 documents on
Chile that the Clinton administration declassified between 1999 and 2000 in
response to international requests for evidence on Pinochet’s crimes. The
former Chilean dictator was arrested in London in October 1998 and awaited
extradition to Spain to face trial on charges of human rights abuses during
his rule.
As several other European countries also sought Pinochet’s extradition
based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, Mr. Kornbluh, the
curator, led a campaign to persuade the White House to release classified
records that could serve in an eventual trial against the general.

Documents on Chile from 1968 to 1991 from seven United States government
agencies, some of them heavily redacted, were released as part of the State
Department’s Chile Declassification Project
. Most were declassified
months after Pinochet was sent home from London for humanitarian reasons,
but just in time to contribute to new judicial investigations in Chile.

The documents have been used as evidence in several human rights inquiries
involving American victims, including the 1973 killings

[Marxism] Fwd: Faith and the World: the Baha’i Vision

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A welcome appreciation of Baha'i, which apart from its reactionary views 
on homosexuality, is an honorable religion.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/faith-and-the-world-the-bahai-vision/

My own take on Baha'i:

https://louisproyect.org/2007/08/04/the-jews-and-the-bahai-in-iran/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Russia TV's new 'Trotsky' mini-series teaches viewers why revolution is bad

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/348974/russia-tv-trotsky-mini-series-teaches-why-revolution-bad/
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[Marxism] the mass rape that occured right before the mass murder at My Lai

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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http://www.readingthepictures.org/2013/10/my-lai-sexual-assault-and-the-black-blouse-girl-forty-five-years-later-one-of-americas-most-iconic-photos-hides-truth-in-plain-sight/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Carry on up the Kremlin: how The Death of Stalin plays Russian roulette with the truth | Film | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/18/death-of-stalin-russian-roulette-with-truth-armando-iannucci
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[Marxism] Fwd: Lauren Greenfield Tries to Capture the Meaning of Money - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Best seen on the NY Times website for samples of Greenfield's photos. 
The reviewer thinks she is too vicious against rich people by making 
them look grotesque. I wonder what he would make of George Grosz's 
paintings.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/arts/design/review-laura-greenfield-generation-wealth-international-center-photography-icp.html
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[Marxism] Chris Long of the Philadelphia Eagles to Donate Entire Salary

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Howie Long's son is a real mensch.

NY Times, Oct. 20 2017
Chris Long of the Philadelphia Eagles to Donate Entire Salary
By VICTOR MATHER

Chris Long, the Eagles defensive end, will donate his entire salary this 
season to charity.


Long announced this week that he would send his last 10 game checks to 
educational charities in the three cities where he has played, 
Philadelphia, St. Louis and Boston. This season he said his first six 
checks would go to to scholarships at a private school in his hometown, 
Charlottesville, Va.


Long, 32, is to make a base salary of $1 million this season.

“I’m playing the entire 2017 N.F.L. season without collecting income 
because I believe that education is the best gateway to a better 
tomorrow for everyone in America,” Long said in a statement.


He told The Associated Press on Wednesday, “I think we can all agree 
that equity in education can help affect change that we all want to see 
in this country.”


Long, the son of the Hall of Famer and broadcaster Howie Long, has been 
involved in charity and activism for some time. He started a foundation 
two years ago that supports causes including assuring access to clean 
water worldwide, fighting homelessness, supporting veterans and helping 
children in need.


Long, who is white, drew attention this season for putting his arm 
around his black teammate Malcolm Jenkins, who raised his fist during 
the national anthem to protest discrimination and police brutality.


A member of the champion Patriots last season when they won the Super 
Bowl, Long was among several members of the team who chose to stay away 
from its White House visit with President Trump.


“Some people are tired of hearing me tweet because they want me to stick 
to football but I like to use social media like I was a regular guy 
because I think I am,” Long told NBC Sports Philadelphia in August. “I 
don’t tell people to stick to their job when they want to talk politics.”


Referring to neo-Nazis marching in his hometown, he said: “For me, being 
from Charlottesville, no one wants to see you sit idly by and watch that 
stuff happen and not say anything. And I wish there was more categorical 
denial from some very important people in this country who have had the 
opportunity to strike it down but didn’t.”

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Re: [Marxism] Gowan's book on Syria--a more nuanced tak

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 10/20/17 9:20 AM, Ron Jacobs via Marxism wrote:


https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/11/syria-beyond-western-myths-and-half-truths/



Ron, you wrote:

"For example, although many socialists would have difficulty considering 
the Baathist economy as being socialist in nature, that has been the 
guiding interpretation of many in the Washington political establishment."


What is your point? That an analysis of the Syrian economy should not be 
based on an examination of class structures but what some rightwing 
ideologue in the USA says?


Gowans book is filled with references to "the Washington political 
establishment" but my review is based on the concrete reality of foreign 
investment, the agrarian crisis, rentier state contradictions, etc.


His book is a pile of steaming excrement and you acquitted yourself 
poorly by praising it.

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[Marxism] Fwd: Puerto Ricans Ask: When Will the Lights Come Back On? - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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In my interview with Ian Seda-Irizarry on "The political economy of 
hurricanes and debt" 
(https://louisproyect.org/2017/10/03/the-political-economy-of-hurricanes-and-debt/), 
the focus was on the relationship between the island's debt and the woes 
that ensued after Hurricane Maria struck. This article from today's 
Times makes it even more explicit:


After major storms, power companies typically rely on mutual aid 
agreements to get electricity restored. Outside companies send thousands 
of workers, and electric companies pay for the service with funds from FEMA.


Such agreements are “absolutely critical,” said Devon Streit, the deputy 
assistant secretary for infrastructure security at the Department of 
Energy, which is helping to coordinate the restoration of power. But in 
this instance, some companies were concerned about getting paid, she 
said, because the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as Prepa, 
had filed for bankruptcy protection in July after defaulting on $9 
billion in debt.


full: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/us/puerto-rico-electricity-power.html

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[Marxism] Stop the Idiocy! Stop the Mattiss-ness!

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2017/10/stop-idiocy-stop-mattis-ness.html

-- 
Check out my newest books ,* Capitalism
, Daydream
Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s
 and Can We Escape the Eternal Flame?
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[Marxism] Gowan's book on Syria--a more nuanced tak

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/11/syria-beyond-western-myths-and-half-truths/

-- 
Check out my newest books ,* Capitalism
, Daydream
Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s
 and Can We Escape the Eternal Flame?
*
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Foreword to Creating an Ecological Society | MR Online

[Ambrose Andrews via Marxism]

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This book has already come forth.

Pretty good, as far as I've read.

  -AA.


> On 20 Oct 2017, at 11:20 pm, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> John Bellamy Foster's intro to a forthcoming book by Fred Madoff and Chris 
> Williams.

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[Marxism] Fwd: A Day in the Life of CounterPunch

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Good reasons to contribute to the CounterPunch fund drive.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/a-day-in-the-life-of-counterpunch/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Was Syria an exception to the Arab Spring: commentary on Stephen Gowans’s “Washington’s Long War on Syria” | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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COUNTERPUNCH, OCTOBER 20, 2017

One can debate whether to label the ideology that structured the Arab 
nationalists’ economic policies as socialism, but U.S. officials 
unquestionably regarded the economic demarche of the Arab nationalist 
countries, including Syria, as socialist. As mentioned, some even went 
so far as to brand Assad’s father, Hafez, an Arab communist. Others 
described Syria’s economic policies under Bashar as inspired by Soviet 
models.


— Stephen Gowans, “Washington’s Long War on Syria”

Late last year, a group of big-name investors — including Bill Miller of 
Legg Mason Capital Management and Barton Biggs, managing partner of 
Traxis Partners, a New York hedge fund — spent a week in Syria and 
Lebanon. They met with top political leaders and local businesspeople 
and were feted with elaborate dinners with the cream of society.


Traveling to far-flung corners of the world to get an early look at 
promising markets has long been a staple of global investing. But Syria 
— until recently a pariah state in the eyes of the U.S. — proved 
irresistible, drawing an unusual array of money managers.


Long isolated from international finance, Syria is one of the last 
remaining investment frontiers. It has a sizable economy, an educated 
populace, and, lately, a new degree of openness to foreign investment.


“This was not a group of naive investors, and [I] have to say it opened 
all our eyes,” said Steven Galbraith, a partner at Maverick Capital, a 
$11 billion hedge fund.


-- Joanna Slater, “Syria Woos Investors From Half a World Away”, Wall 
Street Journal, January 10, 2010



Published in April, 2017, Canadian blogger Stephen Gowans’s 
“Washington’s Long War on Syria” is a 282-page full-throated defense of 
Bashar al-Assad, who, according to the excerpt from the book’s 
Introduction above, amounts to a heroic figure defending socialism just 
as much as Fidel Castro did during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In 
a Manichean-like understanding of politics that permeates the openly 
pro-Assad left, the world is divided between Good and Evil. On one side, 
you have vintage Arab nationalism that stood up to Israel, exploited a 
nation’s resources for the common good, opposed medieval Islamic 
institutions, and generally took the side of people struggling against 
imperialism everywhere in the world. On the other hand, you had 
villainous Salafi jihadists funded by the Saudis and other Sunni states 
in the Middle East who sought to kill “infidels” such as the Shia and 
the Alawites. These mustache-twirling fiends were in turn backed by the 
CIA and Israel. According to this scenario, the revolt that began in 
2011 was nothing but a plot hatched by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria 
to foment discord among a comfortable and untroubled Sunni population 
that was unfortunately susceptible to demagogic appeals based on 
religious dogma. It was not hardship that drove people to protest but 
differences over who is entitled to speak in the Prophet’s name.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2017/10/20/16722/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Foreword to Creating an Ecological Society | MR Online

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John Bellamy Foster's intro to a forthcoming book by Fred Madoff and 
Chris Williams.


https://mronline.org/2017/10/19/foreword-to-creating-an-ecological-society/
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[Marxism] Fwd: 100 Years Since the Russian Revolution

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Edited by Todd Chretien.

http://mailchi.mp/haymarketbooks/wt7stkhm8t-2028017?e=dd26bf9f3f
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[Marxism] Fwd: What should Putin do about the war in Ukraine? Learn from Lenin | Serhii Plokhy | Opinion | The Guardian

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The Ukrainians pulled down all their remaining statues of Lenin in the 
wake of the 2014 Maidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity. They did 
so because they saw in Lenin an important tie not only to Soviet times 
but also to present-day Russia and wanted to cut it. But Lenin’s legacy 
to Ukraine is complex. He managed to bring Ukraine back into Moscow’s 
fold after it declared independence in 1918, but the price he paid for 
doing so seems excessive to present-day Russian opinion makers.


full: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/19/russian-revolution-centenary-ukrainians-not-celebrating-conflict

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[Marxism] Fwd: ZCommunications » The Economic War Against Venezuela

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By Steve Ellner.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-economic-war-against-venezuela/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Thousands Of Protesters Show Up In Florida To Drown Out Richard Spencer's Hate | HuffPost

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A model of how to protest white supremacists.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/thousands-of-protestors-show-up-in-florida-to-drown-out-richard-spencers-hate_us_59e8a469e4b00905bdaf1141
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[Marxism] Fwd: The Fiction of Kurt Anderson’s “Fantasyland”

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Michael Barker is great.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/the-fiction-of-kurt-andersons-fantasyland/
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