Re: [Marxism] WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == So... are we supposed to be against public education? W aren't against secular, non-religious, free education available to all children regardless of economic circumstance because the state will administer this education, any more than we are against universal, free, healthcare, with equal access granted to all, because the state will administer that program also. We aren't against public health measures because the state administers that program. We aren't against librairies because cities administer those. We aren't against access to clean water because the state regulates that program. On the contrary, we want to improve, expand, and defend these essential socially necessary programs from the depradations of private capital; from the demands for austerity; etc. We argue for the primacy of public education, public health, public sanitation, public controlled drinking water supplies over and against privatization. Marx attacks LaSalle's position not because it demands free public education, but because LaSalle uses the proposition to continue his glorification of the state, and mystify its connections to class. I think we clearly need to defend those public services that are on short rations in the best of times, and the first to be attacked when the times aren't best. As far as American education designed to defend and promote the interests of the enemy class, well yes no. It is the gutting of the education system that the ruling class sees as protecting its interests, not its ideological conscription into American firstism. Why do we object to charter schools? First, because many of them are simply scams. Secondly, because they are inherently discriminatory, and are a step back from the essential social functions that supposedly represent the step forward that capitalism takes as a result of the social basis of production. Thirdly, because charter schools exist and survive due to public subsidies-- the costs are not absorbed solely by the families of the students themselves but are absorbed by all. Fourthly, because there is no way that charter schools can meet the needs of any but a small fraction of the student population. Thus charter schools act as a feint, a diversion, will the federal, state, and city governments continue to allow public education to decay. Private schooling, charter schooling, home schooling are the real ideological attacks on the obligation of society to provide free, quality education for all. - Original Message - From: Joaquin Bustelo jbust...@bellsouth.net sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2009 2:29 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Communist Party backs Senate health care reform bill
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2009/12/27 Mark Lause markala...@gmail.com This method is entirely consistent. Determined not to be distracted by those petty everyday considerations--like the actual subject under discussion--the argument levitates (dialectically, of course) into generalizations that mean absolutely nothing to any materialist without those very considerations Dogan scorns. Mark, you are abviously not familiar with methodological questions and debates. To be conserned with everday issues is entirely different from everyday understanding of the world, society and the state. The former that is sometimes called the eveyday life is an essential part of any consistent Marxist theory and practice. The latter refers to the methodological debate about how society can be grasped in its entire relations and be presented. Remember Marx criticised classical political economists for relying on everyday understanding when they described market relations. But he was very much concerned with daily issues. So please do not confuse these two different issues. I dealt with some of these issues in my paper: Rosa Luxemburg, the legacy of classical German philosophy and the fundamental methodological questions of social and political theory. I quote here a relevant bit. If you are intersted in you can go and read more to stop this communication in dark: In this way the bourgeois science declares the “timidity of empirical feeling to the only principle of the research method” and undertakes an “industrious atomising work”. This approach creates a picture of social life that lets appear social relations like in a mirror that is broken to thousands of pieces. In her paper Im Rate der Gelehrten (“At the Council of Intellectuals”), in which she attacks Werner Sombart’s misuse of Marxian theory, she says: “this atomising work” is for bourgeois scientists “the safest way to dissolve theoretically all general social connections and to let disappear ‘scientifically’ capitalist forest behind many trees.” However, to do this, bourgeois scientists have to get rid of the Hegelian ‘burden’. But according to Luxemburg this is as vain as trying to stop time and progress of history, because generally speaking in science as well as in the development of society there is no way back. As I have already pointed out she thinks that the development and progress neither in society nor in science can be stopped. Read further: http://dogangocmen.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/rosa-luxemburg-and-classical-german-philosophy.pdf . Finally, I think I spent enough time in this debate and will not reply any post anymore. Dogan Göcmen http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Communist Party backs Senate health care reform bill
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2009/12/27 Mehmet Cagatay mehmetcagatayay...@yahoo.com If I remember correctly, I told you before that I've never been a part of socialist/communist organization except a few demonstrations here and there in my university years. During the process of being acquainted with Marxist classics I once decided to join CP of Turkey but immediately gave up the idea after I learned from their program that we are supposed to establish patriotic consciousness among working class. Mehmet, you know that I am one of the few Turkish Marxists (if not the only one) who produced well-researched Marxist papers against establishing patriotic consciousness among working class. You know all my papers on this issue. One of them (30 pages) deals with Marx's and Engels' approch to pariotism. So there is no need to repeat them here. Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NY Times, December 26, 2009 Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64 By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Tim Costello, a truck driver who became a labor advocate and theorist, the co-author of four books and the founder of an organization that fought globalization, died Dec. 4 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 64. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his brother, Sean. Mr. Costello was hailed by many academics and labor advocates as a bona fide worker-intellectual. A genial, mustached native of Boston, he drove fuel-delivery trucks, worked as a lobsterman, founded a group that battled against the fast-growing use of temporary workers and developed close links with labor advocates in China, Italy and Mexico. His most notable book was “Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity” (2000), written with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, which became a primer for labor advocates who argued that globalization was destroying jobs and reducing wages in the United States while exploiting workers in Asia. During his two decades driving trucks — he was also a long-haul driver — Mr. Costello often used the back of his truck as a private study to read and write. Mr. Costello was often several steps ahead of the rest of the labor movement. In 2005, he helped found Global Labor Strategies, which fostered cross-border alliances to fight to improve wages and working conditions in the face of downward pressures from companies moving jobs overseas. In 2007, when American and European business groups were battling China’s plans to adopt a law strengthening workers’ rights, Mr. Costello was a leading voice in countering corporate efforts to block the law. “We called him Cosmic Tim because he seemed to be everywhere in the universe,” said James Green, a labor historian at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who was a friend and professor of Mr. Costello. “He seemed to have trucked everywhere and read everything.” Timothy Mark Costello was born in Boston on June 13, 1945. His father was the president of a union local that represented railway car welders. He was raised in Dedham, Mass., and graduated from the Huntington School for Boys in Boston in 1964. He attended Goddard College in Vermont before transferring to Franconia College in New Hampshire and the New School in New York, where he joined Students for a Democratic Society. While in school in New York, he began driving oil trucks. In 1971, he moved back to Boston, without having finished college, and continued driving fuel-delivery trucks and, as he had in New York, writing and speaking out against corruption in the Teamsters union. In the mid-1970s he traveled cross-country to study the recession’s effects on young workers, producing a book, “Common Sense for Hard Times,” with Mr. Brecher, his longtime co-author. While in Boston, he switched trucking jobs to become a long-haul driver, often carrying loads to the Deep South and the Midwest. He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, obtaining his bachelor’s degree there in 1990. He became a business agent for Local 285 of the Service Employees International Union, which represented hospital workers and janitors. In 1999, he founded the Campaign on Contingent Work, which evolved into another organization he helped found, the North American Alliance for Fair Employment, a grouping of 65 organizations that opposed the growing use of temporary workers, who rarely had job security, health insurance or pensions. With Mr. Brecher, he also wrote “Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community” (1990) and “Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction From the Bottom Up” (1994). In addition to his brother, Sean, of Belmont, Mass., he is survived by his wife, Susanne Rasmussen; his daughters Pia, of Cambridge, and Gillian, of Brooklyn; and two grandchildren. Mr. Costello was low-key, his brother said, but he was forever battling for one cause or another. “He thought that if you’re on the left,” Sean Costello said, “you’ll be working at it for the rest of your life, and you may not be successful, but it would be worth the effort.” Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Communist Party backs Senate health care reform bill
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dogan wrote: Mehmet, you know that I am one of the few Turkish Marxists (if not the only one) who produced well-researched Marxist papers against establishing patriotic consciousness among working class. You know all my papers on this issue. ... Dogan, you don't deserve a defamation as such. And I'm very sorry if you understand my last post in this vein. Actually it was an answer to the triviality written by S. Stark which got on my nerves. But you are right, anyone here unfamiliar to your works might think I was pointing my finger at you, so I should have been more clear. Sorry again. mç Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Joe Sacco book on Gaza massacres in 1956
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (Astonishingly, the right-leaning book review did not assign Daniel Pipes or Alan Dershowitz to review this.) NY Times Book Review, December 27, 2009 ‘They Planted Hatred in Our Hearts’ By PATRICK COCKBURN FOOTNOTES IN GAZA Written and illustrated by Joe Sacco 418 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt Company. $29.95 Joe Sacco’s gripping, important book about two long-forgotten mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza stands out as one of the few contemporary works on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle likely to outlive the era in which they were written. Sacco will find readers for “Footnotes in Gaza” far into the future because of the unique format and style of his comic-book narrative. He stands alone as a reporter-cartoonist because his ability to tell a story through his art is combined with investigative reporting of the highest quality. His subject in this case is two massacres that happened more than half a century ago, stirred up little international attention and were forgotten outside the immediate circle of the victims. The killings took place during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the Israeli Army swept into the Gaza Strip, the great majority of whose inhabitants were Palestinian refugees. According to figures from the United Nations, 275 Palestinians were killed in the town of Khan Younis at the southern end of the strip on Nov. 3, and 111 died in Rafah, a few miles away on the Egyptian border, during a Nov. 12 operation by Israeli troops. Israel insisted that the Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces were still facing armed resistance. The Palestinians said all resistance had ceased by then. Sacco makes the excellent point that such episodes are among the true building blocks of history. In this case, accounts of what happened were slow to seep out and were overshadowed by fresh developments in the Suez crisis. Sacco, whose reputation as a reporter-cartoonist was established with “Palestine” and “Safe Area Gorazde,” has rescued them from obscurity because they are “like innumerable historical tragedies over the ages that barely rate footnote status in the broad sweep of history — even though . . . they often contain the seeds of the grief and anger that shape present-day events.” Governments and the news media alike forget that atrocities live on in the memory of those most immediately affected. Sacco records Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi — a leader of Hamas (later killed by an Israeli missile), who in 1956 was 9 and living in Khan Younis — describing how his uncle was killed: “It left a wound in my heart that can never heal,” he says. “I’m telling you a story and I am almost crying. . . . They planted hatred in our hearts.” The vividness and pace of Sacco’s drawings, combined with a highly informed and intelligent verbal narrative, work extremely well in telling the story. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how any other form of journalism could make these events so interesting. Many newspaper or television reporters understand that the roots of today’s crises lie in obscure, unpublicized events. But they also recognize that their news editors are most interested in what is new and are likely to dismiss diversions into history as journalistic self-indulgence liable to bore and confuse the audience. In fact, “Footnotes in Gaza” springs from this editorial bias against history. In the spring of 2001, Sacco and Chris Hedges (formerly a foreign correspondent of The New York Times) were reporting for Harper’s Magazine about Palestinians in Khan Younis during the early months of the second Palestinian intifada. They believed the 1956 killings helped explain the violence almost 50 years later. Perhaps predictably, however, the paragraphs about the old massacre were cut. American editors weren’t the only people who found their delving into history beside the point. When Sacco returned to Gaza to search for witnesses and survivors in 2002 and 2003, with Israeli forces still occupying the area, young Palestinians could not understand his interest in past events when there was so much contemporary violence. Sacco’s pursuit of Palestinian and Israeli eyewitnesses as well as Israeli and United Nations documentation is relentless and impressive. He details the lives of those who help him, notably his fixer Abed, and brings to life two eras of the Gaza Strip, its towns packed with refugees in the early 1950s as they are today. It was an atmosphere filled with hate. Few Israeli leaders showed any empathy for the Palestinian tragedy. But early in 1956, the Israeli chief of staff Moshe Dayan made a famous speech at the funeral of an Israeli commander killed on the border with Gaza. What, Dayan wondered, explained the Palestinians’
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This is just Ruthless on another jag; I received a similar email from him before bhandari was purged. Apparently, he still has feelings about being removed from the list for similar reasons, so he wants others to share in that experience-- those he deems have committed similar offenses, otherwise his own banishment would be perceived by him as unfair. G. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dogan Gocmen wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I received the email below this morning. I have just realised that Mr. was not courageous enough to send it to the mailing list.I am forwarding it. In the next email I will forward my reply. Comrades should ignore email from Sayan Bhattacharyya (aka ruthless critic). He is an obsessed former subscriber who is in the habit of sending his worthless opinions to various people. He really is need of some psychotherapy. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Ah, so now I'm illiterate for using the term liberal for anything since the 1890s. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Moderator's note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Let's drop this thread, including the reference to Dogan's name in the subject heading. Sayan, like Michael Pugliese, is one of those bizarre personalities who has no existence outside of cyberspace. As such, paying attention to his ravings gives him an importance he does not deserve. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Arthur Koestler: a nasty piece of work
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (Considering Koestler's iconic status among hardened anti-Communists of the sort that edits this book review and the fact that the reviewer is a long-time conservative, the open acknowledgment of Koestler's creepy character should really tell you something.) NY Times Book Review, December 27, 2009 Arthur Koestler, Man of Darkness By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL KOESTLER The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. By Michael Scammell Illustrated. 689 pp. Random House. $35. No other writer of the 20th century had Arthur Koestler’s knack for doing odd things, crossing paths with important people and being present when disaster struck. As a 27-year-old Communist he spent the famine winter of 1932-33 in Kharkov, amid millions of starving Ukrainians. Rushing southward through France ahead of the invading Nazi armies in 1940, he ran into the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who shared with him half the morphine tablets Benjamin would use, weeks later, to commit suicide. The Harvard drug guru Timothy Leary gave Koestler psilocybin in the mid-1960s, and Margaret Thatcher solicited his advice in her 1979 election campaign. Simone de Beauvoir slept with him but came to hate him, and in a fictional portrait described a blazing intelligence and a personality capable of sweeping people off their feet. Yet, although he wrote more than 30 books, Koestler is today known primarily, perhaps exclusively, as the author of “Darkness at Noon,” his gripping short novel of Stalinist coercion. The biographer Michael Scammell wants to put Koestler’s multifaceted intelligence back on display and to show that something more than frivolity or opportunism lay behind his ever-shifting preoccupations and allegiances. As a source of information, “Koestler,” the work of two decades, will never be surpassed. As an argument for the man’s importance, however, it must contend with the eccentricity of Koestler’s preoccupations and — although Scammell does not always seem to realize it — his vices. Born in Budapest in 1905, Koestler grew up, he later said, “admired for my brains and detested for my character by teachers and schoolfellows alike.” His parents came from the cultured Jewish milieu of the Hapsburg twilight. They were at home in Vienna as well as Budapest, and financially well off until they were wiped out in the 1920s. Koestler’s Jewishness is a puzzle. He was a passionate Zionist, but his estimate of his Jewish contemporaries was low, almost anti-Semitic: they hadn’t “a single spark of true Bildung [cultivation], in Goethe’s sense of the word,” he complained. His hero was the dashing Zeev Jabotinsky, whose Revisionist Zionism would flow into the hard-line Irgun group in the 1940s. Jabotinsky’s machismo offered Koestler, as Scammell insightfully puts it, “freedom from all those traits considered the hallmarks of a Jew.” Forsaking his education, Koestler moved to Palestine. Allergic to the hard physical labor it took to make the desert bloom, Koestler didn’t last long. Before he left Palestine, though, he had proved himself a brilliant, versatile and indefatigable journalist, and when he returned to Europe, he was swept away by a new enthusiasm. He became a Communist. He traveled to the Soviet Union, posing as a “bourgeois” journalist undergoing a conversion, and closed his eyes to teeming beggars there, not to mention the famine. The Party needed Koestler in Paris, where he worked for the arch-propagandist Willi Münzenberg. He promoted the Communist line in his journalism and books, particularly once the Spanish Civil War started. Koestler was in Málaga when it fell to Franco in 1937. He was thrown in jail, where on some nights dozens of his fellow inmates were marched away to execution. Because his interrogators did not know he was an actual Communist, it was possible for the Party to secure his release through its front groups. Scammell is masterly on the role of these organizations, putatively just “antifascist” but run by steering committees taking orders from Moscow. They drummed up the campaign, a novelty at the time, for Koestler’s release, turning him into a European celebrity. Prison changed Koestler. It did not bring him the spiritual blossoming that it brought to, say, Solzhenitsyn and Mandela, but it gave him insights about human character that Europe needed and lacked. “The consciousness of being confined acts like a slow poison, transforming the entire character,” he wrote. “Now it is beginning gradually to dawn on me what the slave mentality really is.” By then, the Moscow show trials were under way, with the Politburo member Nikolai Bukharin confessing in public to crimes he didn’t commit, and calling for his own execution.
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dogan, A little bit more concrete understanding of the US would serve you well in this since it is specifically the political situation in the US you think you are analyzing. Liberalism as a political agenda, rather than a school of economic thought, is the label attached, and self-attached, to and by a section of the bourgeoisie that supports government intervention, and changes in the content of government intervention, in issues of social welfare, social justice, to mitigate the worst inequities in capitalism. The conservative section of the bourgeoisie has made a career of attacking liberals, the liberal media, liberal think tanks, liberal civil libertarians, blahblahblahblah. Mark is stating that your support, and tortured rationalizations of the CPUSA's own right of center rationalizations and endorsements of the healthcare bill is a mark of conservatism, a position that is actually less progressive, and represents a greater retreat, than the positions of the liberal wing of the US bourgeoisie. So... you don't grasp the content of Hegel's analysis of master and slave, you misrepresent, IMO, Marx's and Engel's analysis of free trade, you are mistaken in your counterposing of everyday politics to strategic thinking, and you misunderstand the CPUSA's position on everyday politics and strategic thinking since their everyday support of Obama is explicitly their strategic thinking. And now you add to that a basic ignorance as to the characterizations of different political agendas of the bourgeoisie. In the US, we would say your're batting a thousand, which of course would mean, you're batting zero. You're 0 for 5, you're below the Mendoza line, you're wearing the golden sombrero, you're a weak stick, a rally-killer, a sure out. - Original Message - From: Dogan Gocmen dgn.g...@googlemail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And I can telly without any question, the best thing I did for my daughters [the elder being 1 year old at the time, the younger still 6 years from conception] was to move to New York City where I knew they would be able to obtain a decent public education in the city school system [obviously this was a while ago], and would learn that most of the world is not white. Yes, public schools are failing children-- but failing the most in areas blighted by the disaggregation of capitalism since the 1970s, driven forward during the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama administrations. Public schools are failing because the obligation to public education has been attacked. And it has been attacked because providing an adequate public education for all is too expensive, too demanding for the bourgeoisie. You can give your child the best education you can at home, perhaps better than most public schools, but that ability you have does nothing to address the SOCIAL problem of decaying public education-- your efforts don't address the social causes, and the social remediations necessary, and requiring COLLECTIVE effort, to provide that education. You may have the ability to provide home schooling-- most people do not, just as most people cannot provide adequate medical care for themselves; most people cannot maintain private adequate supplies of clean drinking water . Nobody says your motivations and the motivations of those around you aren't positive, noble. But those actions reflect an atomized, fragmented response that perpetuates the social decomposition that is made manifest in the declining quality of public education. By the way, the best socialist leaders read tons of books, and because they read tons of books, many of them by dead guys, they were able to listen to the masses, and distinguish noise from sense. - Original Message - From: Thomas Bias bia...@embarqmail.com sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2009 11:06 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] A Walk in the Sun
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The only thing surprising about Saving Private Ryan is how conventional it is. I fully expected a much more noir vision of WWII along the lines of Oliver Stone's Platoon. What I saw was an updated version of such 1950s classics as A Walk in the Sun, written by Robert Rossen, the CP'er who named names. A Walk in the Sun, also known as Salerno Beachhead, just about defines this genre. A group of GI's are out on a patrol and they get killed off one by one. The enemy is faceless and evil. Our soldiers, by the same token, are good boys who are just trying to get home. The reason that CP'ers were so adept at turning out this sort of patriotic pap is that they had bought into the myth of FDR's fight for freedom. So patriotic were the CP'ers that they also backed the decision to intern Japanese-Americans. full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/private_ryan.htm NY Times, December 27, 2009 DVDs A Grown-Up War Story for a Nation Weary of War By DAVE KEHR A WALK IN THE SUN World War II was in its final stages when “A Walk in the Sun” was released in January 1945, and the film, in its honesty and ruefulness, already has the feel of a retrospective, postwar vision. The need for propaganda had passed — it was no longer necessary to convince audiences that the war was a cheerful romp, as in “This Is the Army” or “I Wanted Wings” — and certain things could now be acknowledged, like fear, panic and death. Directed by Lewis Milestone from a well-received but now forgotten novel by Harry Brown, “A Walk in the Sun” follows a few members of an Army platoon as they land on the beach in Salerno, Italy, and make their way a few miles inland, where they are to blow up a bridge and take a farmhouse held by a German machine-gun crew. The action begins in the predawn darkness and ends in the blaze of noon; in between, war happens. After the opening credits, a narrator (Burgess Meredith) introduces the main characters, who seem at first like the standard ethnic mix of a propaganda film: there’s the loquacious New Jersey Italian (Richard Conte), the wary New York Jew (George Tyne), the terse Midwestern farmer (Lloyd Bridges), the drawling Southern medical aide (Sterling Holloway). When the platoon loses its lieutenant during the landing, leadership falls first to an inexperienced sergeant (Herbert Rudley) who cracks under the pressure. (The moment he falls to the ground and starts to sob, we know we’re in a different kind of war movie.) Command passes to the quiet, self-contained Sergeant Tyne (Dana Andrews), who carries on the best he can, leading by consensus rather than authority. Fifteen years earlier Milestone had won an Oscar for directing “All Quiet on the Western Front,” an epic adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s pacifist novel of World War I. “A Walk in the Sun” is smaller in scale and less insistent on its universal humanism (the Germans here are only faceless killing machines), but it’s also less bombastic, shaped by small, ambiguous experiences rather than grand moral certainties. Milestone, born Lev Milstein in 1895 in what is now Moldova, has long been a problem for critics. At its best his work is formally daring, almost to the point of slipping into avant-garde effects (like the bouncing ball close-ups of his 1931 version of “The Front Page”), and there is a dark, subversive sense of humor in films like “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!” (1933) and “The General Died at Dawn” (1936). But his work could also seem blandly institutional, in prestige projects like the 1952 version of “Les Miserables” and in overproduced entertainments like the Rat Pack vehicle “Ocean’s Eleven” (1960, from a script written by Mr. Brown and Charles Lederer). One of his most consistently accomplished films, “A Walk in the Sun” walks a fine line between unassuming naturalism and high stylization, most effectively in Milestone’s handing of Brown’s concentrated, poetic dialogue (as adapted, almost word for word, by the screenwriter Robert Rossen). The use of repeated phrases (“You guys kill me,” “I’ve got the facts”), passed back and forth among the performers, gives the film a cadenced quality, a rhythm somewhere between a military march and the echoing absurdities of a Beckett play. Because “A Walk in the Sun” was never properly registered for copyright, substandard public-domain versions have been flooding the home video market for decades. This new edition from VCI Entertainment has been authorized by Brown’s estate and boasts far better image and sound than previous releases, though details are still a bit soft, and contrast is low. Nevertheless the VCI release goes a long way toward restoring this remarkable film to its proper place in film history, as a
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I only met Dogan once. He was opposed to the ideas that I was presenting, but we were able to engage each other productively. I learned from the experience. The problem does not seem to be Dogan, but the endlessness of the threads. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 10:50 27/12/09 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Let's drop this thread, Well actually I'm rather enjoying reading this thread (though at the expense of lonely Dogan) and I don't think the issues have been completely explored since they touch on larger strategic issues. For instance, one argument was over whether the proposed health care bill is worse than the status quo and should therefore be opposed. But I'm still waiting to hear a good discussion of the underlying principle: that any change for the better should be supported in some sense. That is a more general issue that obviously has widespread implications. Also there might be some miscommunication due to the meaning of words. S. Artesian told Dogan exactly what Liberalism means. But Dogan is in Europe and here the word Liberal does not refer to the left wing of the ruling class but rather to the moderate right (the part that most strongly believes in free-market capitalism and privatization) of the ruling class. The Liberal party (VVD) in the Netherlands is the furthest to the right among parties which have been in a government coalition in recent times. Hence this use of name-calling may be raising the heat of the discussion while fogging the issues. (Of course I have some names myself for people like Dogan, but liberal isn't one of them!). - Jeff including the reference to Dogan's name in the subject heading. Sayan, like Michael Pugliese, is one of those bizarre personalities who has no existence outside of cyberspace. As such, paying attention to his ravings gives him an importance he does not deserve. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2009/12/27 Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl For instance, one argument was over whether the proposed health care bill is worse than the status quo and should therefore be opposed. But I'm still waiting to hear a good discussion of the underlying principle: that any change for the better should be supported in some sense. That is a more general issue that obviously has widespread implications. Also there might be some miscommunication due to the meaning of words. S. Artesian told Dogan exactly what Liberalism means. But Dogan is in Europe and here the word Liberal does not refer to the left wing of the ruling class but rather to the moderate right (the part that most strongly believes in free-market capitalism and privatization) of the ruling class. The Liberal party (VVD) in the Netherlands is the furthest to the right among parties which have been in a government coalition in recent times. Hence this use of name-calling may be raising the heat of the discussion while fogging the issues. (Of course I have some names myself for people like Dogan, but liberal isn't one of them!). Jeff, First on the second paragraph: I do not use any term or conception that circulates around and I do not care about how people describe themselves. I rather look at what they say in the historical context, that it, in the light of the imperialist stage of capitalism. I use Marxist terms. According to Marx it does not make any sense to talk of liberalism to describe any idea or movement or proposal that comes after 1848. And according to Luxemburg's reading at latest after 1890s, indicating to the rise of the imperialist stage of capitalism. Both the statement of Marx and the statement of Luxemburg are universal statements. They apply universally. And my reference to Luxemburg should be taken in this sense. Therefore, the try to give a definition of liberals or liberalism by to describe any contemporary movement, fraction of a party or idea according to my approach is just wrong. Among academics people you describe are referred to as the new-right. That might be a better term. On the first paragraph: The issue you raise would involve a debate about the dialectic of reform and revolution. It is very much on the agenda of the left world-wide. But, I am afraid, I do not see any sense in going on with these blind debates. So I am sorry if I cannot contribute to your enjoying yourself. But do not hestitae to do so, even if at my cost. --- Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Dismiss the liberal Dogan from MarxMail list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote of an obsessed former subscriber that he is in the habit of sending his worthless opinions to various people. He really is need of some psychotherapy If we pass the hat, maybe we can hire one for members who do the same thing. : - ) ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Best Candidates Suggest Themselves
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2009/12/27 Mark Lause markala...@gmail.com == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote of an obsessed former subscriber that he is in the habit of sending his worthless opinions to various people. He really is need of some psychotherapy If we pass the hat, maybe we can hire one for members who do the same thing. : - ) ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/dgn.gcmn%40googlemail.com -- Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In a message dated 12/27/2009 12:55:22 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _dgn.g...@googlemail.com_ (mailto:dgn.g...@googlemail.com) writes: The issue you raise would involve a debate about the dialectic of reform and revolution. It is very much on the agenda of the left world-wide. But, I am afraid, I do not see any sense in going on with these blind debates. So I am sorry if I cannot contribute to your enjoying yourself. Reply Reform and revolution as a contradiction or the dialectic of reform and revolution, has caused us grief. Lenin's and Rosa L. writings on reform and revolution are outdated. The dialectic of reform is different from the dialectic of revolution. Quantitative changes in the productive forces, expansion on the old basis, generate reform movements. Qualitative changes in the productive forces, development on a new technological basis, create the impulse for social revolution. In real life things are never categorical, but this should not defect from presenting a proposition in clear terms. Revolutionaries cannot transform one into the other (reform into revolution) on the basis of correct thinking, correct program, correct political line, self organization of the proletariat, independence from the bourgeoisie, etc. The Senate bill does not in my opinion merit a debate about reform and/or revolution. WL. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dear Comrade, I have not implied anything like that. As I said I am not able to go on with these debates. I hope you understand. 2009/12/27 waistli...@aol.com The Senate bill does not in my opinion merit a debate about reform and/or revolution. WL. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/dgn.gcmn%40googlemail.com -- Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Best Candidates Suggest Themselves
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2009/12/27 brad bauerly bbaue...@gmail.com Surely there must be free public psychotherapy in this wonderful new health care bill if the CP supports it. Brad ___ Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism End of Marxism Digest, Vol 74, Issue 60 *** -- Brad A. Bauerly PhD Candidate Political Science York University Toronto, Canada 647-345-2072 baue...@yorku.ca Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/dgn.gcmn%40googlemail.com -- Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Moderator's note #2
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades are going to have to control their one and two line snarky posts to the list. This is not Usenet. It is a mailing list devoted to substantive and hopefully polished thought. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note #2
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I am replying to the subject line which you suggested that it should be dropped 2009/12/27 Louis Proyect l...@panix.com == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades are going to have to control their one and two line snarky posts to the list. This is not Usenet. It is a mailing list devoted to substantive and hopefully polished thought. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/dgn.gcmn%40googlemail.com -- Dogan Göcmen (http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/) Author of The Adam Smith Problem: Reconciling Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris, LondonNew York 2007 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] ReSocialism and the defense of public education: Shift to Health
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I am a bit confused: The issues on education that were put by the opposing sections seemed both respectful and mindful on both sides, of the distinction between reformist steps and reovelutionary steps. While accepting that reformist measures are at times, to be accepted by the revolutionary movement. Yet I see no semblance of that un-emotive (and open-minded) tone in the current discussion on the patently inadequate health bills. Would someone (preferably at least one of the more dogmatic people here who insist that there is no value *at all* in the bill) explain to me what reforms are acceptable and what ones are not? Hari Kuamr 6. Re: WSWS: (Thomas Bias) 7. Re: WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education (S. Artesian) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Forwarded message on Joe Sacco
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == For some reason, this bounced from Pat Costello. a pdf sample of the art can be downloaded at amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Footnotes-Gaza-Graphic-Joe-Sacco/dp/0805073477/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1261947030sr=1-3 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Chuck Grimes comments on Cockburn (from LBO-Talk)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 12/20/09 6:00 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote: From AC, another quote indicating a problem with the physics of the AGW model: ``Greenhouse gasses in the cold upper atmosphere, even when warmed a bit by absorbed infrared, cannot possibly transfer heat to the warmer earth, incredible ... and in fact radiate their absorbed heat into outer space[snip] ... ' AC Cockburn has it exactly backward. The upper atmosphere does not transfer heat to the surface. It's the surface that heats the atmosphere. the greenhouse effect is a little different from the blanket/insulator model .. in the case of cooler gases, they still can radiate energy to a warmer surface, it's just that they absorb from the surface more than they radiate ... the NET effect is that surface radiates to the atmosphere. but look at the numbers: 492 W/m2 is radiated away by the earth's surface in the infrared, for comparison, only 235 W/m2 of solar radiation strikes the *top* of the atmosphere, while 324 W/m2 is radiated from the atmosphere back down to the earth's surface (cf. sylas). the NET energy IS radiated upwards, but without that CO2 (and H2O) absorption, the surface and atmosphere could run cooler. i wonder how these clowns would explain the high temperatures on Venus ... I looked up this article and found it was disputed to near derision, especially among the math-physics crowd. they make some serious errors. but also, the errors are very clever. for example, attacking the heat engine description of atmospheric physics. these guys know the right words to make their article SOUND serious. except they have completely non-understood the heat engine description. these kinds of clever arguments WILL be effective in being distracting ... by the way, there ARE measurements of the radiation fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Lecture Discussion in Oakland, CA, January 3: US Health Care Reform
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Lecture Discussion in Oakland, California, January 3, 2010 US Health Care Reform: Another Historic Moment in the Administration of the Nation’s Poverty Time: January 3, 2010, Sunday, 1:00 pm Location: Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94609-1113 Ph: (510) 595-7417 Speaker: Joseph Patrick, co-editor of GegenStandpunkt (Germany) Just in time for Christmas, the Senate has passed its own version of the healthcare reform bill, jumping yet another hurdle on the path to “change” in the way Americans receive and pay for medical care. Yet controversy continues to rage. On the one side, President Obama has deemed the bill the single most significant piece of legislation since the creation of Social Security, and many Democratic lawmakers have solemnly declared that, despite the many bitter concessions they have had to make, this is the moment of their legislative lifetimes. On the other side, Republicans have expressed their utter revulsion at both the substance of the bill and the manner of its construction. And on the liberal left, there is disappointment and even disgust at how politicians have once again failed to put an end to the scandal that is the current American healthcare system. Meanwhile, average citizens get to follow the ups and downs of the negotiations in Congress, listen to the pleas and arguments of big and small business, weigh the options and come to a conclusion about which is worse: their current inability to pay for the most basic care or their inability to pay for compulsory insurance, the risk of financial ruin posed by a serious illness or by unbearable healthcare costs on the companies that employ them? These people would do well to pay attention as to why, despite all the rancor of the debate, elites on both sides of the aisle regard healthcare reform to be so urgent. Without far-reaching change, two things they regard to be much more important than the health of individual citizens will face impending doom: the nation’s economy and the solidity of the national budget. On that basis, the population’s poor bill of health raises some urgent questions for the ruling class: Is the health of the nation’s competitiveness in danger? Does the illness of broad swathes of the population represent a disadvantage in international competition that America can no longer afford? That requires a solution. How to extend basic care to a greater portion of the population without imposing unbearable costs on “the economy”, i.e., the profits of employers, while making sure that America’s premier growth industry can emerge stronger than ever? This gives us no reason for joy or even “cautious optimism,” but raises some unwelcome questions of a more fundamental kind: Why, right in the middle of the free market economy, is healthcare such a thoroughly governmental affair?What does the state take care of when it takes care of the “health of the nation” and why?Why is healthcare always considered too expensive and in constant need of reform? The answers to these questions illustrate why the hopes for a “historic moment” in the history of American healthcare are not only woefully modest, but hopelessly wrongheaded. We invite you to come and find out why. Sponsored by: www.ruthlesscriticism.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Chuck Grimes comments on Cockburn (from LBO-Talk)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Les, I was wondering if you've heard of Piers Corbyn and his group in weatheraction.com, who dismiss global warming as 'non-sense' http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.asp?p=wact10fsize=0 . Piers Corbyn is an astro-physicist and an ex-member of the Internationalist Socialist group and was quite active back in the day, it seems. Here's a video of him with a Russian meteorologist on the issue about those hacked e-mails, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anHuOAXIl0M Basically, the two things he claims there are that CO2 does not drive temperature and that temperatures have actually gone down in the last decade. And there's also an interview, apparently done by the Larouchites, here http://www.larouchepub.com/other/interviews/2007/3422piers_corbyn.html ...is he our climate Hitchens? _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] ReSocialism and the defense of public education: Shift toHealth
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Again, though, people who believe the Senate Bill's an improvement have yet to enumerate how it would be so...other than saying that they think such-and-such million more people will buy private health insurance because it will be legally required. The Democratic Party and its supporters wanted health care reform to do two things: (1) insure those who don't have insurance; and, (2) force insurance costs down by providing an alternative. With really very minimal pressures, they and their president did not argue the case very effectively, though most of the population continued to support these goals. With the Senate Bill, the Democrats and their supporters have conceded on both of these points, ignoring both their public promises and public opinion. It will be a health care reform in name and image only. Rather like the administrations contribution to world peace... ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] WSWS: Socialism and the defense of public education
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I have a couple of questions for Joaquin. When Marxists 'insist on the state fully funding the education of children with the parents free to send their children to whatever school they chose', - Who determines what full funding is and on what basis? - If schools are resourced equitably, on what basis would parents choose their children's schools? - Do you envision any geographical limitations on parents' choice? If a parent in Eastern Samoa prefers a school in Maine, do we insist their transport and living expenses be fully funded? - Do children have any role in school choice? Regarding religious schools and home schooling, who would set 'certain minimum standards' and on what basis? Harry Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Derek Sayer
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Does anyone know the story of Derek Sayer? He is the author of the Violence of Abstraction, the Great Arch (with Philip Corrigan), Capitalism and Modernity. He moved on to postmodern stuff since 1990s. Did he become somewhat disillusioned with Marx and/or Marxism? Was it a personal/institutional grudge? Did he just move on? (no sarcasm or pun intended in any of these questions). Thank you, Yavuz Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Pakistan: Special appeal for families of killed socialist activists
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From http://links.org.au/node/1434 By *Farooq Tariq*,* Nasir Mansoor* and *Khalid Mahmood* December 27, 2009 -- The Labour Party Pakistan has lost our four most brilliant comrades, Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar and Wahid Baloch, in a road accident on December 13 near Ormara, Baloachistan. They were in the coastal region, one of the most deprived areas of the country, to organise the home-based women workers (HBWW). They held two focus group meetings and a wider consultation on December 11, 12 and 13 in the port cities of Pasni and Gawadar. They also formed core groups and clusters of local HBWW and planned to organise more meeting in the region in month of January next year. Comrades Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar and Wahid Baloch were dedicated members of the team who lost their lives for the cause of downtrodden masses and were on mission until their last breath. Another member of team, Mohammed Rafiq Baloch, central president National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan (NTUF) survived but was severely injured in the fatal accident. Comrade Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum and Rehana Kausar were staff members of the Labour Education Foundation (LEF). While Wahid Baloch was trade union activist in industrial city of Hub and by profession he was a driver. Abdul Salam, 29, was working as coordinator on peace, democracy and trade union issues. He was also elected central finance secretary of the NTUF in 2007. He was the secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, Karachi chapter for 2007-2009. Comrade Abdul Salam had initiated number of awareness activities for trade union members, young students and political activists. He conducted six regular monthly study circles on social, economic and political issues in different localities of working class. He was the guiding force behind his last initiative, a six-month training course on labour laws for new and young trade union activists with a view to build a team of committed workersto represent workers in labour courts. He was on the of editorial board of weekly /Mazdoor Jeddojehad/ for two years. He was also a regular contributor in respect of articles to /Mazdoor Jeddojehad/ in the Urdu and Pashto languages, and was the main source for the LEF’s monthly /Newsletter/. He had translated a Pashto novel of Noor Mohammed Tarakai into Urdu. He was a Pashto poet of good repute and organiser of the “Jurs”, a progressive Pashto literary forum in Karachi. He belonged to working-class family and started his career as textile worker in Al Karam textile mill, where he was expelled from job nine years ago because of trade union activities. He challenged the management in court and won the case in October 2009. Najma Khanum, 38, was a social activist and was the former local body's councillor of the area, mainly comprising of working class people. She had been a staff member of the LEF since 2003. She was the organiser of home-based women workers. She was the leader of her community and always at the forefront of all political, trade union and woman rights rallies and demonstrations. She formed a women's theatre group for young girls with the title of “Apna Theatre”, which means “Our Theatre”. Their performances on May Day, Women's Day and on other important events were always an important part of the program. She was also a former member of Pakistan national women's field hockey squad. She served the LPP as women's secretary of Karachi chapter for two years from 2007 to 2009. She had been running the home-based women workers' cooperative in Yousuf Ghoth for four years. Rehana Kausar, 26, was one of the youngest staff members of the LEF. She started work as a part-time teacher at an adult literacy centre in Gadap town and become social mobiliser in 2006. She was very energetic and committed to the cause and a great fighter. She was also an active member of the LPP. Wahid Baloch, 40, was a trade union activist and was sacked from his job by the Bawani Air Products manufacturing company three years ago, where he worked as a driver. His only crime was trying to form a union in the factory. No factory was inclined to give him job in the Hub city industrial area due to his union-related activities. He was involved in all activities of the National Trade Union Federation and partly worked as a driver with the NTUF. All the comrades were from very poor and working-class families. Comrade Abdul Salam leaves behind two little kids, a two and four year old, and a young widow. Salam was the only one working. Najma leaves behind three children but to some extent grown up, from 13 to 20 years old, all are studying. Her husband has job with very little earnings, living in a rented house. Driver Wahid Baloch leaves behind six young kids, the eldest is only
[Marxism] America's Secret Ice Castles, or Office Park Gulag
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/stevens According to this excellent article in the Nation magazine, written by Jacqueline Stevens, the federal agency ICE is running a chain of secret prisons inside the borders of the United States. What better way to keep relatives, friends, and lawyers, in the dark about the status of their disappeared clients or significant others? It'is like a police bureaucrat's wet dream. Now you see them, now you don't. It's a perfect set up for keeping people with ambiguous legal status locked up until their cases can be resolved, but it also sets the scene for abuse, torture, and possibly worse. Plus, it violates certain international agreements on human rights to which the US government is a signatory, allowing the Obama administration to treat immigrants in a worse manner than the current treatment meted out to terror suspects in Guantanamo. The article gives a detailed synchronic account of what could best be described as an office park gulag, but it fails to provide a diachronic account of its antecedents. As I read this expose, it reminded me of similar treatment I had experienced many years ago as an organizer for CISPES. More than twenty years ago, I was one of hundreds who were arrested in a blockade of the Federal Building in NYC to protest the US war in El Salvador, but that day only two of us were detained over night. To keep our lawyers in the dark as to our whereabouts, we were shackled to other inmates and shuttled from prison to prison in vans in the middle of the night, and transferred from holding cell to holding cell. We were neither fed nor were we allowed to sleep. We found space on the floor of the group temporary cell, under the harsh lights which were kept on 24 hours a day. This went on for only 36 hours or so, until our lawyers located us and secured our release. In the meantime, our FBI handlers tormented us psychologically, with sleep deprivation and worse. This is the exact same modus operandi used by ICE in their gulag system to keep secret the status and location of detained immigrants from people who are wondering why in the hell they were disappeared in the first place. And we also find the same type of psychological and physical torture. But while we were in its grips for only 36 hours, the people currently caught up in this hell hole are being held for weeks, sometimes months. The same treatment we received has now become an institutionalized, off the books system. Kind of a paradox, I know, but that's the best way I can describe it. In the 1980's, we were on the receiving end of a large scale COINTELPRO-type operation created by Reagan and enacted by the FBI. For more than five years, the FBI, the CIA, and the police, surveilled, interviewed and investigated more than 100,000 people in 59 cities. But as was the case for CISPES and Salvadorans in the 1980's, so it is the case today. Our Latino and Latina comrades suffered much more than we ever did. Sure, I had my apartment broken into, and did that little stint in jail, but I was never deported back to El Salvador, tortured, and shot. The FBI would inform the Salvadoran National Guard when certain Salvadorans would be arriving at the airport in San Salvador. One wonders if something similar is occurring to immigrants who are being processed and deported through this gulag system today. Greg McDonald Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] ReSocialism and the defense of public education: Shift toHealth
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Carroll Cox wrote That said, may I note that what radicals, marxist or otherwise, think of this bill is utterly irrelevant to anything. The bill's chances are not improved by the support of radicals, and it is not threatened by opposition from radicals. Refere nes to The Left in the United states are references to a non-existent entity. There are 10s of thousands (or more) of individual leftists but no coherent left that can have any impact on public affairs. -- Carroll, I don't agree at all. That is a give-up position and one I've noticed you have brought out many times. My own experience is that I (and many others, I am convinced) glean what I regard as significant information from various news sources and left lists, I send them out to a list mainly composed of acquaintances whom I could characterize as mainly reformist Democrats, ex-Democrats or independent in political orientation, who may not be reading periodicals beyond maybe the Nation, Huffington Post, Progressive or other 'liberal' information sources. Where I don't think it might be obvious to the reader, in my comments I try to connect the dots to show as clearly as I can why the system of capital accumulation can't produce anything but further obfuscation and growing contradiction in the set of circumstances at issue. It's becoming much easier to do this, the clearer that things appear to me, and as more people seem amenable to our point of view, and as almost patently outrageous events increasingly occur. I know that a number of other left friends, who read this and similar lists but may not contribute here, are doing the same, sending to liberal acquaintances who are experiencing obvious disconnects, whoever might seem reachable. I often get their mailings. I think we are relevant, and in some ways the main hope. If what we profess makes eminent sense to us. why should we not assume that it makes sense to others? I know that this is how I learn, and I'm positive, from seeing others' changing orientation, so do others. And this has always been so, but possibly more than ever now, when the nature of ruling class power is becoming ever more transparent and their legitimacy is more in question. Ralph Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] ReSocialism and the defense of public education: Shift toHealth
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I don't think of these things in terms of groups at this point. If we don't start with the conclusion and work our way back through a rationalization, different people applying a similar criteria in a rigorously materialist fashion should come away with the same analysis. I think it happens a lot on this list. When I have read more of what people post here, I'm generally pretty well pleased with how well our Marxist approach works. As to the health care issue, it's certainly true that we haven't had anyone representing a real Left in the U.S. Congress for a long time and are likely not to have one there for just as long. However, all along there have been people trying to mobilize for single-payer or, at least, a public option, and this happened with little reference to what a relatively smaller group of Marxists had to say on the subject. On the other hand, it does matter if Marxists line up behind Uncle Joe and against those mobilizations, however small they have been. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Danger of Overcapacity
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == While the US frittered away much of the stimulus on throwing money at banks, the Chinese actually created much more capacity. Business Week used to do a good job of understanding real issues. Here the new Bloomberg magazine notes that the extra capacity poses a risk to the West because China will now have to export more, creating a different sort of imbalance. Roberts, Dexter. 2009. China's 'Made in China' Problem: The Downside to Beijing's Huge Stimulus is a Glut of Factories and Output That May Spur Trade Frictions. Business Week (21 December): pp. 20-21. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_51/b4160020918482.htm?chan=magazine+channel_new+business While Beijing's $586 billion stimulus package has helped the mainland navigate the global financial crisis, there's a downside. Fixed asset investment -- money spent on factories, highways, and other big-ticket projects -- soared 40% in the first half and accounted for nearly all of the country's growth. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
