[Marxism] "A Few Good Men: Trump and the Generals "
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. * From the ever-worthwhile 'Foreign Affairs'. Among other things, a thorough refutation of the idea that was common on the left that the military industrial complex favored Clinton and opposed Trump because he "wants peace". "When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, there was good cause to think that he would be popular with the armed forces. He was, for a start, a Republican, and the military leans heavily conservative. He had also run an ostentatiously pro-military campaign, promising to “rebuild the military, take care of vets and make the world respect the U.S. again!” There were, to be sure, some warning signs of trouble to come, such as when he attacked the war hero John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona (“I like people who weren’t captured”), and belittled the parents of a soldier who had died in combat after they dared to criticize him. "But initially, at least from the military’s perspective, the good seemed to far outweigh the bad. Trump pushed for higher defense spending; sent more U.S. forces and firepower to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and liberalized the military’s rules of engagement, giving commanders on the ground more freedom of maneuver. Even more eye-catching was his appointment of generals to senior civilian positions: the retired Marine Corps general James Mattis became the secretary of defense, the retired Marine general John Kelly became the secretary of homeland security and then the White House chief of staff, the retired army lieutenant general Michael Flynn became Trump’s national security adviser—and, when he flamed out after just 24 days, was replaced by the then active-duty army lieutenant general H. R. McMaster. Trump, for his part, reveled in the generals’ aura of manliness, hailing “Mad Dog” Mattis (a nickname Mattis hated) as “a true General’s General!” "Some critics worried that the overrepresentation of generals in the administration would impinge on civilian control of the military. But many others celebrated the appointment of these generals, hoping that their presence in the administration would provide the reality TV star turned president with much-needed “adult” supervision. "Things went wrong almost immediately. How that happened—how the promise of smooth civil-military relations devolved into acrimony, backbiting, and bewilderment—is documented in four new books. Two are journalistic accounts: Trump and His Generals, a fair and comprehensive overview of Trump’s foreign policy by the journalist and think tanker Peter Bergen, and A Very Stable Genius, a work of first-rate news coverage and valuable insight by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, reporters at The Washington Post (where I am a columnist). The other two books are memoirs. Holding the Line, by Guy Snodgrass, a retired U.S. Navy officer who served as Mattis’s Pentagon speechwriter, gives the impression of being hastily cobbled together and includes more interoffice politics than most readers will want to know. But it provides a few nuggets that have not been reported elsewhere—such as the claim that Trump told Mattis to “screw Amazon” on a major contract because he was so unhappy with The Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos). The other memoir—Call Sign Chaos, by Mattis and Bing West—doesn’t deal with the controversies of the Trump administration at all. “I’m old fashioned: I don’t write about sitting Presidents,” Mattis explains. But the book does provide an expertly crafted account of Mattis’s career, which helps explain why the marriage between Trump and his generals was destined for divorce." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2020-04-06/few-good-men -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Coronvirus carrier: USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam (Nic Maclellan)
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[Marxism] Venezuela: community organisation key to fighting COVID-19 (Green Left)
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[Marxism] The Science of Class Hatred | Commune
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[Marxism] Living Through the Social Explosion | Nikola Garcia
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Like other states facing intransigent movements last year — China in Hong Kong, for example — the Chilean government is incapable of meeting the demands of the protesters. The calls for dignity emerging from the Estallido Social are not only directed at the government, but also at broader Chilean society, and the protesters themselves. They are both transitive and intransitive demands, calls for and calls to, indicating both desired reforms and actions protesters themselves can take. Given the rampant inequalities in South America’s richest country, the movement demands that everyone in the streets, their families, and their neighbors re-evaluate what it means to live with dignity, to live a good life, a life worth living. The movement asks that its constituents and others rethink the meaning of political participation in the post-dictatorship era, when democratic reforms have failed to adequately empower everyday Chileans. Lastly, it is a demand that after this struggle, the institutions and individuals responsible for increased suffering and rampant human rights violations will not be treated with impunity like those in the Pinochet dictatorship before them. full: https://communemag.com/living-through-the-social-explosion/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] These Are Conditions in Which Revolution Becomes Thinkable | Ben Tarnoff
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[Marxism] Sander's submission
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. * Predictably, Bernie Sanders did not win the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and - just as predictably - he has graciously pledged his loyalty to the Democrats and for their barely functional candidate. The Democrats will modify their platform to appeal to Sander's supporters, will nominate a woman for VP, probably a woman of color, make changes in the DNC, and promise to give the Sandernistas a voice in the party's inner circles. Biden could even go on to win in the general election against Trump, in something like the final scene of Bertolucci's 1900 only much worse. Most of his disappointed followers will vote for Biden, especially if Bernie campaigns for Biden. With Trump's consistently awful management of the pandemic, and the economy plummeting, he should be able to lose this election no matter who the Democrats run. This is especially true given Trump's enormous angst to get the economy going again before the pandemic has run through its first wave. Neither Sanders himself nor the possibility of his election ever should have been the primary focus of revolutionaries. Sanders was made possible by a mass movement that is being born - not called into being by Sanders the great caudillo of the left - but growing in the pores of society because of the degeneration of society as capitalism decays. Sanders touched what was already there: massive disaffection with the medical and education systems of the United States, massive disaffection with the housing crisis, massive resistance to violations of immigrant rights, Black lives matter, Me Too... The fact that Sanders calls himself a socialist is good for this movement because it will continue to think of itself as socialist, not Liberal, and not just Progressive. Thank you Bernie, you have played your role in history. Sanders loss was not a historic defeat for "the parliamentary road to socialism". It was just one episode. Labor and Social Democratic Parties have lost lots of elections and come back for more. so have Communist Parties and all sorts of other parties. It was also not a historic defeat for the left in general in the United States. The left is growing in the United States and will continue to grow once Sanders himself leaves the stage. The next stage is almost certainly going to be in the streets rather than at the ballot box. The protest movement that is likely to arise now will take a different form if Trump is reelected than it will if Biden is elected, but it is nevertheless on the agenda for the simple reason that society is in a deep crisis, and this election is not going to resolve it in any way. Anthony _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Pope Francis: Coronavirus pandemic could be nature's response to climate crisis - CNN
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[Marxism] Dark Days for Wisconsin Democracy - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
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 Paul Buhle The willingness of thousands of Wisconsinites to vote in person on April 7, at a moment when the outbreak of the virus is said to be moving toward a peak, revealed a degree of courage in the face of the most extreme conditions. The outcome of the election will not be revealed until April 13, but the likelihood is that, as usual, the effect of voter suppression would not be inconsiderable. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/dark-days-for-wisconsin-democracy/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Sanders and Corbyn said similar things about their failure
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 is interesting that Sanders and Corbyn responded similarly to their electoral failure (even if the nature/magnitude of their failure was different). Following his party’s failure, Corbyn said: ‘I am proud that on austerity, on corporate power, on inequality and on the climate emergency we have won the arguments….But I regret that we did not succeed in converting that into a parliamentary majority for change’ Suspending his campaign for the nomination, Sanders said: ‘we have transformed American consciousness as to what kind of nation we can become and have taken this country a major step forward in the never ending struggle for economic justice, racial justice, social justice, and environmental justice’. He said: ‘Few would deny that over the past five years, our movement has won the ideological struggle’ So what is ‘left’ of the parliamentary road to socialism? Is there any empirical evidence that the level of 'class consciousness' has actually changed in Britain and the US? Have people actually become socialist-anti-capitalist? Raju J Das York University _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back
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. * Foreign Policy, APRIL 9, 2020, 8:36 AM The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back The latest U.S. data proves the world is in its steepest freefall ever—and the old economic and political playbooks don’t apply. BY ADAM TOOZE As the coronavirus lockdown began, the first impulse was to search for historical analogies—1914, 1929, 1941? As the weeks have ground on, what has come ever more to the fore is the historical novelty of the shock that we are living through. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, America’s economy is now widely expected to shrink by a quarter. That is as much as during the Great Depression. But whereas the contraction after 1929 stretched over a four-year period, the coronavirus implosion will happen over the next three months. There has never been a crash landing like this before. There is something new under the sun. And it is horrifying. As recently as five weeks ago, at the beginning of March, U.S. unemployment was at record lows. By the end of March, it had surged to somewhere around 13 percent. That is the highest number recorded since World War II. We don’t know the precise figure because our system of unemployment registration was not built to track an increase at this speed. On successive Thursdays, the number of those making initial filings for unemployment insurance has surged first to 3.3 million, then 6.6 million, and now by another 6.6 million. At the current rate, as the economist Justin Wolfers pointed out in the New York Times, U.S. unemployment is rising at nearly 0.5 percent per day. It is no longer unimaginable that the overall unemployment rate could reach 30 percent by the summer.It is no longer unimaginable that the overall unemployment rate could reach 30 percent by the summer. Thursday’s news confirms that the Western economies face a far deeper and more savage economic shock than they have ever previously experienced. Regular business cycles generally start with the more volatile sectors of the economy—real estate and construction, for instance, or heavy engineering that depends on business investment—or sectors that are subject to global competition, such as the motor vehicles industry. In total, those sectors employ less than a quarter of the workforce. The concentrated downturn in those sectors transmits to the rest of the economy as a muffled shock. The coronavirus lockdown directly affects services—retail, real estate, education, entertainment, restaurants—where 80 percent of Americans work today. Thus the result is immediate and catastrophic. In sectors like retail, which has recently come under fierce pressure from online competition, the temporary lockdown may prove to be terminal. In many cases, the stores that shut down in early March will not reopen. The jobs will be permanently lost. Millions of Americans and their families are facing catastrophe. The shock is not confined to the United States. Many European economies cushion the effects of a downturn by subsidizing short-time working. This will moderate the surge in unemployment. But the collapse in economic activity cannot be disguised. The north of Italy is not just a luxurious tourist destination. It accounts for 50 percent of Italian GDP. Germany’s GDP is predicted to fall by more than that of the United States, dragged down by its dependence on exports. The latest set of forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are apocalyptic across the board. Hardest hit of all may be Japan, even though the virus has had a moderate impact there. In rich countries, we can at least attempt to make estimates of the damage. China was the first to initiate shutdowns on Jan. 23. The latest official figures show China’s unemployment at 6.2 percent, the highest number since records began in the 1990s, when the Chinese Communist Party reluctantly admitted joblessness was not a problem confined to the capitalist world. But that figure is clearly a gross understatement of the crisis in China. Unofficially, perhaps as many as 205 million migrant workers were furloughed, more than a quarter of the Chinese workforce. How one goes about counting the damage to the Indian economy from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s abrupt 21-day shutdown is anyone’s guess. Of India’s workforce of 471 million, only 19 percent are covered by social security, two-thirds have no formal employment contract, and at least 100 million are migrant workers. Many of them have been sent in headlong flight back to their villages. There has been nothing like it since partition in 1947. The economic fallout from these immense human dram
[Marxism] Femicide Does Not Respect the Quarantine: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2020).
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[Marxism] Why We Need a New Progressive Party and How We Can Create It - CounterPunch.org
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[Marxism] Bernie’s Last Tape - CounterPunch.org
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * A riff on Samuel Beckett. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/09/bernies-last-tape/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] By Picking Joe Biden Over Bernie Sanders, Democrats Are Kissing Their Future Goodbye
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 see so many people talking about the probable nomination of Biden as if there were no mood and no consciousness that created Biden's success. This defeat was not simply a matter of the DNC deciding who it wanted. The fact is that there is a conservative consciousness within a huge sector of the US population, including among most Democrats. Sure, that consciousness exists because of the propaganda (and the threats) of big business. But it exists. To simply see Biden's victory as a matter of manipulation by "the Democrats" (meaning the Democratic Party powers-that-be) is somewhat akin to conspiracy theory in that it is overly simplistic. I am also not so sure that a Biden candidacy means the future of the Democratic Party is dead. In fact, I'm not so sure that he won't beat Trump. He might not, but it's far from guaranteed. John Reimann -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Syria faces COVID-19 threat (Green Left)
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