[Marxism] New on Redline blog
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. * Kenan Malik on British Labour Party: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/kenan-malik-on-british-labour-party/ Duneidn library workers show solidarity with Auckland workers: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/solidarity-with-the-auckland-libraries-workers-statement-by-dunedin-workers/ >From the vaults: political correctness and social control: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/from-the-vaults-political-correctness-and-social-control/ >From the vaults: race relations and social control: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/from-the-vaults-race-relations-and-social-control-written-in-19992000/ Yemen - the ignored war: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/yemen-the-ignored-war/ Martin McGuinness: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/martin-mcguinness-1950-2017/ Palestine - on hunger strike against administrative detention: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/17151/ _ 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] Evolution of the Provos in Ireland
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. * Some old(ish) articles of mine, that I think stand up pretty well. Socialist-republicanism versus pan-nationalism - a brief survey of the 20th century: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/socialist-republicanism-versus-pan-nationalism-a-brief-survey-of-the-20th-century/ Anyone for tennis?: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/socialist-republicanism-versus-pan-nationalism-a-brief-survey-of-the-20th-century/ Behind the betrayal of the Irish freedom struggle: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/behind-the-betrayal-of-the-irish-freedom-struggl/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: What Exists is Good: On “The Architecture of Neoliberalism” - Los Angeles Review of Books
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. * As always, thanks Lou for posting this. I want though to comment on this paragraph from Staten's article. He wrote *Neoliberalism does not impose itself on us coercively, via punitive measures or structures of discipline, but gently shapes our common-sense understandings of the world and ourselves through the medium of our everyday experiences, turning us into competitors, entrepreneurs, and round-the-clock workers. We are not exactly subjugated by neoliberalism, as one is subjugated by totalitarianism; instead, we are “subjectified” by it. Rather than its victims, we learn to become its willing participants; and architecture, argues Spencer, becomes one of our key instructors.* I am currently working though Enzo Traverso's Left wing Melancholia and also preparing a piece on the great South East Queensland Electricity Board [a publicly owned entity] dispute in Queensland in the 1985 period when 1002 electricity workers were sacked and their work was outsourced to private contractors. It was one of the incipient moments in the onset of neoliberalism in Australia and it was far from gentle. I myself was arrested five times that year and fined thousands of dollars for solidarity work on picket lines that were made illegal by the government. Others suffered much more, of course Now, a central part of Traverso's argument is that we must see the past not in terms of victim-hood but as the defeat of militancy. The defeats testify to the existence of struggle and we mourn them, but we also try to learn from the defeats. The Staten-Foucault thesis though would deny struggle and agency and therefore the possibility of an alternative outcome. It is as if neoliberalism is piped into the air conditioning system and we all become robotic neoliberals. Rubbish, yes and it does not give any indication how we are now at the stage where neoliberalism is breaking down as a paradigm and we are capable of making a rational judgement that we would be better off with an alternative paradigm. Staten's article reinforces for me personally once again the danger of Foucault-Nietzsche thought with its inherent disdain for the possibility that the lower orders might have agency. comradely Gary On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 8:41 AM, Louis Proyect 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. > * > > > > https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-exists-is-good-on- > the-architecture-of-neoliberalism/ > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt > ions/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Jean Rouverol Butler, Blacklisted Screenwriter, Dies at 100
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. * Jean Rouverol Butler, Blacklisted Screenwriter, Dies at 100 http://a.msn.com/0C/en-us/BByMfGx?ocid=se _ 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: What Exists is Good: On “The Architecture of Neoliberalism” - Los Angeles Review of Books
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[Marxism] Fwd: Dollars and Dentists | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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[Marxism] The Tooth Divide: Beauty, Class and the Story of Dentistry
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. * Sunday Times Book Review, Mar. 26 2017 The Tooth Divide: Beauty, Class and the Story of Dentistry By SARAH JAFFEM TEETH The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America By Mary Otto 291 pp. The New Press. $26.95. Politicians, journalists and researchers have a long-running problem when it comes to talking about class. The definitions we use are myriad and not always overlapping. Is the boundary of the middle class a college degree, a certain level of income? Perhaps a certain type of job: a teacher or a doctor versus a coal miner or factory worker? We might be missing a still more useful — and more personal — indicator, however. This is the premise, though not so bluntly stated, of Mary Otto’s new book, “Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America.” The dividing line between the classes might be starkest between those who spend thousands of dollars on a gleaming smile and those who suffer and even die from preventable tooth decay. If the idea of death from tooth decay is shocking, it might be because we so rarely talk about the condition of our teeth as a serious health issue. Instead, we think of our teeth as the ultimate personal responsibility. We fear the dentist because we fear judgment as well as pain; we are used to the implication that if we have a tooth problem, if our teeth are decaying or crooked or yellow, it is because we have failed, and failed at something so intimate that it means we ourselves are failures. Otto’s book begins and ends with the story of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died of an infection caused by one decaying tooth, and the system that failed him. In pointing out the flaws in that system, Otto takes us back through the history of dentistry and shows us how the dental profession evolved, separately from the rest of health care, into a mostly private industry that revolves almost entirely around one’s ability to pay. In other words, all of the problems with health care in America exist in the dental system, but exponentially more so. On the high end of the $110 billion-a-year dental industry, there are veneers for $1,000 each, “gum contouring” and more than $1 billion per year spent on tooth whitening products. A dentist tells Otto that members of his profession “once exclusively focused upon fillings and extractions, are nowadays considered providers of beauty.” And thanks to decades of deregulation, allowing medical advertising and then medical credit cards, they are doing well at it — according to a 2010 study, dentists make more per hour than doctors. But on the other end of the spectrum, which stretches from a free clinic in Appalachia to the Indian Health Service in remote Alaska to a mobile clinic in Prince George’s County, Md., dental providers struggle to see all of those who cannot access regular care. One-third of white children go without dental care, Otto notes; that number is closer to one-half for black and Latino children. Forty-nine million people live in “dental professional shortage areas,” and even for those who do have benefits under public programs like Medicaid, which ostensibly covered Deamonte Driver and his siblings, it can be difficult to find a provider. The dentist treating Driver’s brother DaShawn, Otto writes, “discontinued treatments because DaShawn squirmed too much in the dental chair.” Medicare doesn’t cover routine dental services. Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, the charity that operated the temporary clinic in Appalachia, was begun to reach suffering people in developing countries, but wound up seeing Americans. “We have a very serious social problem that we are trying to solve with private means,” a researcher tells Otto. Yet in a country where the party in power fights tooth and nail against expanding regular health care benefits, what chance do we have of publicly funded dental care? After Deamonte Driver’s death, elected officials battled to add dental benefits to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), only to see the law vetoed by George W. Bush. Barack Obama signed the Schip expansion in February 2009; newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price voted against it. Donald Trump, who has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and who nominated Price, makes a cameo in “Teeth,” looming over the Miss U.S.A. pageant as the owner of the Miss Universe Organization, a subtle reminder of which side of the American divide — on teeth as on everything — Trump stands. The focus on pageant competitors underlines another divide
[Marxism] Fwd: In Syria, Civilian Lives Don’t Matter – Hummus For Thought
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[Marxism] Fwd: Jewish Voice for Peace Attacked for Commemorating Sixth Year of the Syrian Revolution
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://muftah.org/jewish-voice-peace-attacked-commemorating-sixth-year-syrian-revolution/#.WNfT7xLyvq0 _ 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] Russian Foreign Ministry openly threatens to start leaking 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. * Ministry spox made the following comments during Q a few days ago (23rd): To tell the truth, over the past few years we’ve seen many strange things happen in Washington in connection with preparations for visits or talks by our foreign ministers. The US Department of State has more than once asked us not to announce planned visits until the last minute. This is not our tradition. We have been operating openly for years, but we have respected the requests we have received from our colleagues in Washington in the past few years. But what happened after that? First, the US Department of State asked us to keep the planned visit quiet and not to announce it until the last possible minute, until we coordinated the date. We did as they asked. But a day or two later the information was leaked by the US State Department and sometimes by the US administration. Frankly, this put Russia and the media in a strange situation, because they didn’t know who to believe – the official agencies or the many leaks. It is difficult to say if this diplomatic communication is a US tradition or the latest technique. But it definitely doesn’t correspond to our traditions. We believe that everything we coordinate should be made available to the media in accordance with diplomatic procedure. When we coordinate a visit and the date for announcing it, the information should be made public calmly and as agreed. This is what we do in relations with our colleagues from other countries. As I said, such cases in our relations with the US Department of State have become a bad tradition over the past few years. So, I can say in response to your question that we will make the date and format of contacts between the Russian and US foreign ministers public after we coordinate them. We won’t keep them quiet. At this point, I don’t have any information I can share with you. I can say that this visit and such contacts are possible in principle, but it would be premature to talk about timeframes. Also, I would like to say that if the practice of leaking information that concerns not just the United States but also Russia, which has become a tradition in Washington in the past few years, continues, there will come a day when the media will publish leaks about the things that Washington asked us to keep secret, for example, things that happened during President Obama’s terms in office. Believe me, this could be very interesting information. Our American colleagues must decide if they respect the diplomatic procedure, if they keep their word on the arrangements made between us, primarily arrangements made at their own request, or we create a few very nice surprises for each other. http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2703372?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB _ 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: 2585. Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi: Her Life and Times
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 necessary introduction Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi, a flamboyant female Iranian socialist who was named by the Amnesty International’s political prisoner of the year in 1978 died of a stroke in Paris on March 13, 2017, at age 81. I learned about it from Farrokh, my lifetime friend who was like me active in the New York-based Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran (CAIFI) in the 1970s. While CAIFI publicized the plight of dozens of political prisoners in the Mohammad Reza Shah’s Jails, The case of Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi was always a central case. A non-sectarian defense committee that defended all prisoners of conscience, including leftists of various ideologies, nationalists, and Islamic oppositionists and welcomed the support of all regardless of their political allegiances, CAIFI won over the support of some prominent liberal Americans, including Kay Boyle, Daniel Ellsberg, and Ramsey Clark. In the case of Vida Hadjebi, CAIFI won over Columbia University sociologist Allan Silver who personally took a letter of protest signed by the Canadian Association of Sociologists to Iranian Embassy in Washington D.C regarding her detention. American Feminist Kate Millett, the National Organization of Women representative and Anne Roberts, Amnesty International representative, and other concerned U.S citizens publicly denounced the imprisonment and torture of Vida Hadjebi and the treatment of women prisoners of conscience in Iran. full: http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2017/03/2585-vida-hadjebi-tabrizi-her-life-and.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
