[Marxism] Pakistani relatives of drone victims to sue CIA
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,740638,00.html 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] 5,000 rally in Jordan 'bread and freedom' demo:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *5,000 rally in **Jordan** 'bread and freedom' demo: * More than 5,000 people rallied in Amman and other cities after weekly prayers on Friday against Jordan's economic policies, demanding bread and freedom and that the government resign. http://yhoo.it/if7498http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104284927572s=109652e=0019wEZh5TTub3yPWGgcHU7vcZNwJXUYEDhtsVULNi8NmMhaXwV5BXgDJKM4HAAdZm2-bdZEiZF_ArnE6rV-6QvVND_mS9HFNWX3eLMEvcsW2LHkY_2PAQxHw== 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] Tunisia's Deposed President - Corrupt, Anti-Democratic, and One of America's Close Friends
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tunisia's Deposed President -- Corrupt, Anti-Democratic, and One of America's Close Friends Across the Middle East and Central Asia, U.S. allies are invariably corrupt dictators, maintained in power by lavish patronage and the military. clip – Officially, the Obama administration greeted Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution”—named after that country’s national flower—with open arms, calling for free and fair elections as the United States scrambled to get aboard the democratic bandwagon. However, celebration is restrained in Washington. There’s serious concern about who will take the place of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the corrupt, 74-year-old dictator, who, until the end, was considered an important American ally in the war against terror. Assuming the Tunisian military actually agrees to hold free elections (not at all a sure thing), will the generals really throw open the doors to all political groups? Nationalists? Islamists? Marxists? Anti-militarists? What forces will roil to the surface after decades of political repression? Will they throw in their lot with America’s war against terror, or join the ranks of those in the Middle East who increasingly see what’s going on as America’s war against Islam? Full - http://www.alternet.org/story/149566/tunisia%27s_deposed_president_--_corrupt%2C_anti-democratic%2C_and_one_of_america%27s_close_friends?page=entire 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] Why Duvalier Returned to Haiti: He needs more money
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Why Duvalier Returned to Haiti: He needs more money Posted on January 20, 2011 by James Ridgeway http://unsilentgeneration.com/2011/01/20/why-duvalier-returned-to-haiti-he-needs-more-money/ It’s hard to make sense of Duvalier’s return to Haiti. But there is one plausible explanation. Baby Doc wants money. He already has looted the country of millions of dollars.Now he needs more. Yesterday Alice Speri and Ezra Fieser in the Christian Science Monitor speculated: One of the most logical reasons for Duvalier’s return is financial. The riches he accumulated by allegedly robbing the Haitian government have vanished, leaving him with a modest life in a small apartment in Paris reportedly paid for by loyal supporters. But, of the hundreds of millions of dollars that he reportedly pilfered from Haiti’s state coffers, an estimated $6.2 million remains in a Swiss bank account that has been frozen since 1986. A Swiss law set to go into effect Feb. 1 the law on returning illicit dictator funds will allow the Swiss government to return that money to the Haitian people. Last May, the head of international law at the Swiss foreign ministry told reporters that the Swiss government would likely apply the law to the Duvalier funds. There was a caveat: If Haitian authorities had the opportunity to capture and prosecute Duvalier, the Swiss law could not be used. Hence, if Duvalier made a brief appearance in Haiti he had a return ticket for Thursday he could go back to France and claim the money. “If he went to Haiti and was not prosecuted, he could have returned and said I was there and they had their chance,”says Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch and a former prosecutor in Haiti. Duvalier `may have gone hoping that he would not be detained and could come back to France and claim the $6.2 million.” 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] Cheney: Obama has learned that Bush policies were right
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Richard Menec menec...@shaw.ca wrote: Cheney: Obama has learned that Bush policies were right http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/138341-cheney-obama-has-learned-from-experience-that-bush-moves-were-necessary *The vindication of Dick Cheney* *By Glenn Greenwald* * http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/18/cheney/index.html * 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] Just a Nut Job
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Just a Nut Job Posted on January 18, 2011http://unsilentgeneration.com/2011/01/18/just-a-nut-job/ by James Ridgeway http://unsilentgeneration.com/author/jamesridgeway/| You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief coming from the right when accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was revealed to be just another disturbed young man, clearly suffering from untreated mental illness. After all, conservative commentators leaped to point out, if the guy is a nut job, then all the right-wing political attacks on Democratic Party office holders and candidates for office didn’t have any or much effect on the shooting. That interpretation of events seems to have taken hold in the public mind. Most people don’t think there is any connection between the Tuscon shooting and what the pollsters call “political discourse,” according to the newABC-Washington Posthttp://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1120a1%20Guns%20and%20Discourse.pdfpoll released Tuesday morning. The public overwhelmingly sees the country’s political discourse as negative in tone – 82 percent say so, including three in 10 who say it’s “angry.” Still there’s a division, 49-49 percent, on whether it’s created a climate that could encourage political violence. On the Tucson shootings specifically, 54 percent of Americans do not think the political discourse contributed to the incident, while 40 percent think it did. Those who do see a connection divide on whether it was a strong factor, or not strong. The survey more generally finds blame for the political tone spread across a variety of groups. Half the public says the Tea Party political movement and its supporters, as well as political commentators on both side of the ideological divide, have “crossed the line” in terms of attacking the other side. Forty-five percent say the Republican Party and its supporters have done the same; fewer, 39 percent, say so about the Democratic Party. Now, this doesn’t make much sense to me. Jared Loughner may be mad, but there’s clearly a method to his madness. He may be psychotic, but his psychosis manifested itself in a particular way. After all, Loughner didn’t attack members of his family. He didn’t go postal at the workplace. He didn’t shoot up the military recruiters or the college that rejected him. No. When he picked up his legally obtained assault weapon, he chose to try and assassinate a member of the United States Congress. And not just any old member, but one who had been targeted, singled out for political attack, reviled by the right wing. And this amidst a call by several right-wing figures for their followers to become “armed and dangerous” to defend their liberties against such Democratic party usurpers as Gabrielle Giffords. How can you say this attack is unrelated to the current American political culture? Full - http://unsilentgeneration.com/2011/01/18/just-a-nut-job/ 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] Tunisia Has Electrified People Across the Arab World
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/18/anthony_shadid_in_beirut_tunisia_has 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] Tunisia - This is what victory looks like
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://pulsemedia.org/2011/01/15/this-is-what-victory-looks-like/?utm_source=Mondoweiss+Listutm_campaign=3dbe51a332-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGNutm_medium=email 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] Egypt is Not Tunisia, But...
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Egypt is Not Tunisia, But... Saturday 15 January 2011 by: Emad Mekay | *Inter Press Service | Report*http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54143 clip - Cairo - Where can I find a Tunisian flag? The question flooded Egyptian blogs, tweeter and Facebook pages minutes after news that popular protests had forced out long-time Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Egypt is feeling the ripple effect from Tunisia already. Egypt’s 85 million people constitute a third of the Arab population. Until Tunisians ousted their autocratic ruler Friday evening after his 23 years in power, Egypt, a regional trendsetter, was seen as the first candidate for regime change by popular uprising in the Arab world. John R. Bradley penned a book in June 2008 predicting a revolution in Egypt. He said the country was slowly disintegrating under the twin pressures of a ruthless military dictatorship at home and a flawed Middle East policy in Washington. In his book, ‘Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution’, Bradely argued that Egypt was the most brutal Arab state where torture and corruption are endemic and it would therefore be the next domino to fall to popular anger. The book was banned in Egypt. Today the view from Cairo is that the military-backed regime of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak is far more formidable, and more subtle, than the brutal regime of Ben Ali that alienated its own people, and failed to handle the unrest when it first erupted Dec. 17. Mubarak’s supporters say he carries the public with him, and has a wide support base that includes the army and many businessmen. We should remember that he has survived at least three assassination attempts and hundreds of protests and demonstrations against food prices and other issues, says Khaled Mahmoud, an independent analyst. Mubarak is simply much stronger than Ben Ali, and enjoys the backing of the country’s most powerful institution; the army. full -- http://www.truth-out.org/egypt-not-tunisia-but66899 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 US/Israeli Coup in Beirut
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *The US/Israeli Coup in Beirut* *By Mike Whitney* The United States and Israel have executed a stealth coup that has precipitated the collapse of Lebanon's unity government. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27265.htm 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] Tucson and double standards
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == * * *Can You Imagine? Double Standards and Doublethink By June Terpstra, Ph.D. January 14, 2010 **Information Clearing House*http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ * **-- As* Sarah Palin whines about liberals blaming her for the recent Arizona tragedies, thus focusing those tragedies on her rather than the victims and their families, I ask you to imagine pundits and politicians saying what she has said about so called terrorist tragedies. In a recent video Palin says, “After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.” Has the American media, military and government done nothing but blame Islam and Muslims for the last ten years? Since September 11 we listened with shock and then sadness to the irresponsible statements from people like Palin Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, Coulter, and Ingraham apportioning blame to all Muslims. Palin also said, “No-one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent…by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.” Really, does this mean that the oppressed Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghani or the American anti-war advocate can now speak and be heard without being called a terrorist or terrorist supporter? Is she advocating diversity or even, god forbid, multi-culturalism? Palin also has attempted a very controversial doublethink strategy by reintroducing the term, blood libel which historically some used to reference a myth that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in Passover matzo. The Zionists want an apology because, like the term holocaust, they believe it should only be used for their propaganda. However, I would like to introduce that term for all Muslims and those from invaded and occupied lands fighting for their liberation. They have been “blood libeled” with the label of “terrorist”. Doublethink, according to George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eight-Four, means: ... the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ...To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. The media is full of Doublethink stories today about the alienated, perhaps bi-polar, maybe schizophrenic Jared Loughner who would have been arrested if he were Black, Latino or Middle Eastern when he ran that red light before shooting six people in Tucson, AZ. Can you imagine stories about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being a lonely bi-polar guy who could have been saved if someone had just said hello or given him a hug as was suggested at a memorial service in Tucson yesterday about Loughner? The discourse of the media and political establishment’s response to the recent attacks in Arizona is a fascinating study in double standards and double think methodologies. In their coverage of alleged attacker, Jared Loughner’s parents they recount that his, “Mother 'almost passed out right there' while father sat in the road and cried”. Can you imagine hearing this about Mohammed Atta’s parents? No, they are Muslim and do not have any humanity to discuss in US media. We are also being treated to a discussion on the political opportunities President Barack Obama faces in his national memorial service for the dead of the Arizona shooting tragedy. Somehow I missed this media discussion about political opportunism during the ten years of unending September 11 memorials. I would like to turn the double standard around using some of the quotes that William Rivers Pitt reminded me of today in his article, “The Wrath of Fools”. For example, Ann Coulter’s, My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.(Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02) Can you imagine a journalist such as Helen Thomas saying her only regret is Mohammed Atta did not go the White House or the CIA plantation at Langley? After all, a Lebanese-American such as Thomas cannot even call a European occupier a European without being censored. Finally, one of my favorite quotes: Two things made this country great: White men Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation.. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men” (State Rep. Don
[Marxism] Jordanians march against inflation:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Jordanians march against inflation: * Thousands vent anger in Amman and other cities against government's inability to rein in prices and poverty. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2041219337111.htmlhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104247482779s=109652e=001hvayathXBtwn9JIDAU3Aaa0oppJ7SuEQfxl-myL1qNldIZo3IGLbF7VRv6h-wZ5NUuLACUWQd56Ie-gCSNvl8i8UpCYCdKqtg52rrwZ-rbaognNyr-h6Fp7Z44jsKrqrlGaG2NfZw7BNG_NQinoMBPWjtHv-9YLMTsIKuRgsdOXVLD3WH3sZZKMrb5Qvtor3 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] Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Why does health care in **Cuba** cost 96% less than in the **US**?: * Life expectancy of about 78 years of age in Cuba is equivalent to the US. Yet, in 2005, Cuba was spending US$193 per person on health care, only 4% of the $4540 being spent in the US. Where could the other 96% of US health care dollars be going? http://links.org.au/node/2082http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104247482779s=109652e=001hvayathXBtxTboOEZwEhYKW9yZxE7v8Aj-lclLzpLMG_jer5PTYg2p3yblvDxqpDcPJvNr47v-APh0LCO6JpuGWokcKsE8Fmlfg-b3c4g3aUhDTSE7WMMMC2K2_3bdMy 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 graphic example of what NYC budget cuts mean for subway riders (video)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.salon.com/news/viral_video/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/01/14/rat_on_subwaysource=newsletterutm_source=contactologyutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110 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] U.S. journalists back away from supporting Assange
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == U.S. journalists back away from supporting Assange By NANCY A. YOUSSEF McClatchy Newspapers clip – WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON-Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn't want the world to see. But just three years after a major court confrontation in which many of America's most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks' behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange - even as reporters write scores of stories based on WikiLeaks' trove of leaked State Department cables. Some say he is responsible for what's arguably one of the biggest U.S.national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents. The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him not one of us. The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange's behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he'll be charged with a crime. With a few notable exceptions, it's been left to foreign journalism organizations to offer the loudest calls for the U.S. to recognize WikiLeaks' and Assange's right to publish under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Assange supporters see U.S. journalists' ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now - writing news stories based on leaked government documents. Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington, said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism. full -- http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/09/v-fullstory/2007863/us-journalists-back-away-from.html#ixzz1B8yVEH8M * * 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] readings on US support for death squads in Angola, Mozambique in 1980s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades, I recently asked for and received wonderful suggestions for readings on US policy in Central America in the 1980s - thank you. Can anyone recommend books or articles on US support to Savimbi/UNITA in Angola and to the terrorist RENAMO in Mozambique during those years? Thanks again Dennis 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] just when you thought that Zionist racism had hit rock bottom ...
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Zionist comic book portrays activist Palestinians (and allies) as vermin, reminiscent of Nazi propagandahttp://www.muzzlewatch.com/2011/01/12/standwithus-comic-book-portrays-activist-palestinians-and-allies-as-vermin-reminiscent-of-nazi-propaganda/ I wondered what it was about the evil serpent-the colors of the Palestinian flag- that looked so familiar to me? Where on earth did they get the inspiration to portray the Palestinian and international human rights groups that support the BDS movement as a big, fanged, serpent? As vermin? (And then I remembered I had seen it in different (Genesis inspired) anti-Semitic propaganda about ‘conniving’ Jews, and thought, why not just call them all “cockroaches http://bigthink.com/ideas/19413” and get it over with? ) A comic book for children, this is really beyond muzzling. This is about preparing for eradication. http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2011/01/12/standwithus-comic-book-portrays-activist-palestinians-and-allies-as-vermin-reminiscent-of-nazi-propaganda/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+Muzzlewatch+%28MuzzleWatch%29 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 Weight of Dead Generations
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == fro portside.org -- The Weight of Dead Generations By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman New Labor Forum Spring 2011 issue http://newlaborforum.cuny.edu [** The following piece will appear in New Labor Forum's Spring 2011 issue. To subscribe to New Labor Forum, please visit http://newlaborforum.cuny.edu or call 212-642-2029.] clip - Marx was wrong. He famously declared that the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. But it turns out that, for some, the remembered past can act like a tonic, an inspirational elixir, even a promissory note about how what once was might be again. Over the course of American history, popular movements of resistance and rebellion have sometimes resolutely turned their backs to the future in concerted efforts to return to some mythic golden age. Others have enlisted their collective recollections of the past to fashion an emancipated new way of life. As the sesquicentennial of the Civil War begins, we are reminded of this plasticity of historical memory and the way it gets deployed to resolve contemporary dilemmas. Commemorations of the Civil War functioned for generations in the South, to reinforce commitment to the Confederacy's Lost Cause. Confederate Balls, reenactments of Jefferson Davis's inauguration, and the like had a political purpose in solidifying core beliefs about white supremacy, states' rights, and loyalty to the region's all-white Democratic Party. Around the turn of the twentieth century, when the hot- blooded emotions of the war had finally cooled enough, the Lost Cause got nationalized and found a home in the North as well. There it served to turn a conflict over freedom and slavery into a shared national tragedy that hid the country's ugly racial pathology. In the South, that distinctive recall of the past at the same time worked to replenish the soil of social subservience, leaving the Southern oligarchy of landlords, merchants, and their political facilitators in charge. Still, for legions of true believers in the Lost Cause it was empowering, firing resistance to Reconstruction and all subsequent attempts to end American apartheid. For a long century, most white Southerners reveled in their peculiar version of the past, used it to define their moral imagination, and mobilized politically on its behalf; but they were imprisoned by it, unable to envision a future that would liberate them from hierarchies of the South's caste- based political economy. Already, the sesquicentennial has shown us there's life still left in that old dog: Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, recalls that life in 1960s Yazoo City wasn't all that bad as the White Citizens Council kept the Klan at bay, and Virginia's governor forgot to mention slavery in his sesquicentennial proclamation. Dream and nightmare! Using and being used by the past is hardly unique to partisans of the Old South. Take the Tea Party. Memories of its revolutionary-era forefathers-no matter how fantastical the images of that revered past may be- incite among Tea Party partisans an enthusiasm to restore an idealized world of self-reliant heroism. Government-whether it's King George's or Barack Obama's-is the great enemy; dependency its toxic seduction. No one actually contemplates donning knee breeches and pinafores, however. Rather, for Tea Party followers the nearest historic exemplar of what they want to see restored is a kind of Disneyland version of small town/suburban yesteryear: nuclear families, conventional marriage, home ownership, Christian morals, cultural and racial homogeneity, and economic self-sufficiency. One might call this the twenty-first century version of a romanticized family capitalism; profoundly sentimental insofar as it ignores how utterly dependent that suburban arcadia was on an intricate network of federal, state, and local government programs and bureaucracies. Like those who once rallied to The South Shall Rise Again, the Tea Party rises in righteous resistance to reclaim the way we never were. It draws its energy from an imaginary past. But that same fantasy disarms it. After all, what helped set off the uproar a year or so ago were government bailouts of Wall Street fat cats. Tea Party militants, however, have reset their sights not on big business and finance-such anti- capitalism cuts to close to home-but on the leviathan state, in particular what's left of its social-welfare apparatus. Back to the future may tickle the fancy and win votes but, without a real alternative to corporate capitalism and the welfare state, don't tread on me is an idle boast. ... [Steve Fraser is editor-at-large
[Marxism] The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 4:53 PM, National Security Archive arch...@gwu.eduwrote: National Security Archive Update, January 11, 2011 The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles A Former Agency Asset Goes on Trial in the U.S. For more information contact: Peter Kornbluh - 202/994-7000 or nsarc...@gwu.edu http://www.nsarchive.org Washington, DC, January 11, 2011 - As the unprecedented trial of Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles begins this week in El Paso, Texas, the National Security Archive today posted a series of CIA records covering his association with the agency in the 1960s and 1970s. CIA personnel records described Posada, using his codename, AMCLEVE/15, as a paid agent at $300 a month, being utilized as a training instructor for other exile operatives, as well as an informant. Subject is of good character, very reliable and security conscious, the CIA reported in 1965. Posada, another CIA document observed, incorrectly, was not a typical 'boom and bang' type of individual. Today's posting includes key items from Posada's CIA file, including several previously published by the Archive, and for the first time online, the indictment from Posada's previous prosecution--in Panama--on charges of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro with 200 pounds of dynamite and C-4 explosives (in Spanish). This explosive has the capacity to destroy any armored vehicle, buildings, steel doors, and the effects can extend for 200 meters...if a person were in the center of the explosion, even if they were in an armored car, they would not survive, as the indictment described the destructive capacity of the explosives found in Posada's possession in Panama City, where Fidel Castro was attending an Ibero-American summit in November 2000. The judge presiding over the perjury trial of Posada has ruled that the prosecution can introduce unclassified evidence of his CIA background which might be relevant to his state of mind when he allegedly lied to immigration officials about his role in a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997. In pre-trial motions, the prosecution has introduced a short unclassified summary of Posada's CIA career, which is included below. Among other things, the summary (first cited last year in Tracey Eaton's informative blog, Along the Malecon) reveals that the CIA anonymously warned former agent and accused terrorist Luis Posada of threats on his life. A number of the Archive's CIA documents were cited in articles in the Washington Post, and CNN coverage today on the start of the Posada trial. The C.I.A. trained and unleashed a Frankenstein, the New York Times quoted Archive Cuba Documentation Project director Peter Kornbluh as stating. It is long past time he be identified as a terrorist and be held accountable as a terrorist. Visit the Archive's Web site for more information about today's posting. http://www.nsarchive.org THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. _ 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] Glenn Greenwald - interesting proposition on taking out would-be terrorists
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == clip - For those who believe that leading right-wing figures are inspiring violence (whether of the kind that just occurred in Arizona, things like thishttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/headlines/gunman_cites_glenn_beck_as_inspiration_for_plot_against_aclu_tides, or even calls for Assange's murder), shouldn't they be treated the same way American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki is: *i.e.*, targeted by the U.S. Government with due-process-free assassination for inciting violencehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html? Doesn't the mentality justifying Obama's assassination program necessarily extend to other Americans accused of inciting violence with their political speech? While it's true that American officials -- once the assassination efforts were leaked -- began passing claims to journalists that Awlaki had an operational role in Terrorist plots, there has been no evidence presented of that, and the concern overwhelmingly with Awlaki is that he inspires violence with his political speech. If presidentially-decreed assassination is justified against him, why not other American leaders accused of inciting violence? Shouldn't the President order them taken out, too?** * * * * full http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/11/justice/index.html 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] 15 Men Decapitated in Acapulco - The Unreported War in Mexico
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *15 Men Decapitated in **Acapulco** The Unreported War in **Mexico* *By Mike Whitney* The war on drugs is a fraud, but its costs are quite real. Just ask any of the family members of its 30,000-plus victims. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27240.htmhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104228475252s=109652e=001rg8q1k_qVuiaqxziX3S5SC6CWgLnngjs8RxVr0GnP0UQje7xT07ToKNK3O2Q5IiVPLJb4yf0oVHJb3xlXQIPIL3NfRvwnNJF9D3Iyu_NxcMiBBCOcHEKWAlfZqpbv89uQ0drlwcuYrBLQfFsgBVaugRy4GAYv_21 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] At least 14 dead in Tunisian riots over rising food prices:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *At least 14 dead in Tunisian riots over rising food prices: * In the strongest sign to date authorities may be ready to make some concessions, Tunisia's Communications Minister Samir Labidia said in an interview broadcast on al Jazeera television that the government would respond to people's grievances. http://bit.ly/gnp6MFhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104222534717s=109652e=001I7kp3P-0ZFikJKDLGlD2W4dKtwzPKotF_hdy5NB78B7S826fYu15hPpxvzVZrWjQZ9XgDxKwkcaUwMP-kBvOxZj-rPmQYC3tpEXD9fbkl-p_1hOxfug8cQ== 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] Thousands of Egyptian Muslims Show Up as Human Shields to Defend Coptic Christians From Terrorism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thousands of Egyptian Muslims Show Up as Human Shields to Defend Coptic Christians From Terrorism Saturday 08 January 2011 by: Zaid Jilani **http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/08/thousands-muslims-human-shields/ clip - On New Year’s Day, a devastating terrorist bombinghttp://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/01/world/la-fg-egypt-church-attack-20110102at a Coptic church in Egypt killed 21 people and injured 79 others. Although the identity of the culprits was not known, it was assumed that they were Muslim extremists, intent on targeting those they saw as heretics. Religious tensions immediately rose in the country, and angry Copts stormed streets, battled with police, and even vandalized a nearby mosque. The riots and heightened tensions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7uSIXUPsM4 between the Muslim and Coptic communities was likely what the terrorists wanted — to divide the Egyptian community and create sectarian strife between different religious groups. Yet by Coptic Christmas Eve, which took place Thursday night in Egypt, things had changed completely. As Egyptian Copts attended mass at churches across the country, “thousands” of Muslims, including “the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak,” joined them, acting as “human shields” to protect from terrorist attacks by extremists. The Muslims organized under the slogan “We either live together, or we die together,”http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/3365.aspxinspired by Mohamed El-Sawy, an Egyptian artist: Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when *thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.* *“We either live together, or we die together,”* was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea. Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole. *“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”* full - http://www.truth-out.org/thousands-egyptian-muslims-show-up-human-shields-defend-coptic-christians-from-terorism66684 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] Cathie Black and the Demise of Public Education
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Cathie Black and the Demise of Public Education Saturday 08 January 2011 by: Christopher Lawrence, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis clip - http://www.truth-out.org/cathie-black-and-demise-public-education66427 The appointment of Cathie Black - the Hearst magazine executive with zero education experience - as New York City schools chancellor is further evidence of the complete collapse of the 20th century model of liberal public education in the US. The cynical compromise between Mayor Bloomberg and his liberal opponents to appoint an educator as deputy chancellor only serves to highlight the obvious message: education is a business that is too lucrative in these difficult times to leave to teachers and communities. It now seems inevitable that we will move to a dual education system not seen since the days of legal segregation, with minorities and the poor shuttled through a system of for-profit institutions emphasizing standardized testing, uniform lessons and rote learning. It is remarkable how quickly the liberals caved. Maybe this is because of the way pro-business education reformers co-opted the traditional liberal discourse of equality and civil rights. Or maybe it's the money. It is heart-warming to see the captains of industry, hedge fund managers and politicians across the political spectrum lining up to bankroll an attempt to level the playing field for the poor. This equalization is a noble cause, and one that is difficult to criticize. Unfortunately, it is also a scam. Once again, the rich are preying on the hopes of the poor in order to further their monopoly on wealth and power. The education reforms enshrined in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), like charter schools, increased testing and subcontracted tutoring and provided a huge opening for private education entrepreneurs, even as public school budgets are repeatedly slashed. If anyone had any doubts about the true intentions of these corporate conquistadores, the announced departure of current New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein to Murdoch's News Corp in order to pursue opportunities in the education marketplace makes clear their objectives. School reformers focus on the racial achievement gap as a source of social inequality. This is naive at best and a red herring at worst, distracting us from the real causes and remedies of inequality. Education, in itself, is neither a cause nor a solution to the systemic problems of racism and poverty in the US. The promise to prepare all students for college seems admirable, until one realizes that the colleges where most students are to be sent are for-profit diploma mills where students graduate, if at all, with high debts and few prospects of a well-paying job. As for charter schools, a recent studyhttp://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdfshows that more fail than succeed. Those that do are invariably the beneficiaries of generous private grants that guarantee funding at much higher levels than those of regular public schools. No matter. The attraction of charters continues as poor people, accustomed to the indignity of lining up for lottery tickets, continue to hope for that lucky break. When reformers promise us that every child can succeed, they are trafficking in cheap platitudes. True success would involve a redistribution of wealth, the creation of decent jobs and a commitment to real equality. But to think of these reforms in terms of education misses the point. Their real goals are cutting costs and increasing profits. Education reforms have been marketed by demonizing public school teachers and their unions. As systemic inequality and unemployment grow, teachers have become the scapegoats for an economic system in crisis. Demands are growing for an end to job security and other benefits and the firing of teachers based on poor student test scores, despite the fact that the most relevant variable in test scores is poverty, not teaching. In charter schools, these problems have been addressed through increased productivity (such as longer teacher hours for less pay) and the elimination of job security and benefits. Many charters do not even offer teachers a pension. full -- http://www.truth-out.org/cathie-black-and-demise-public-education66427 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] Richard Falk - Israel is gearing up for another major offensive into Gaza
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Israel is gearing up for another major offensive into Gaza, yet the world community still remains bafflingly silent. Richard Falk: Hopes of Gaza Cast in Lead It is mainly through civil society acts of defiance, like the Mavi Marmara and the Freedom Flotilla, that offer the appropriate responses to the injustices occurring in Gaza [EPA] It is dismaying that during this dark anniversary period two years after the launch of the deadly attacks on the people of Gaza - code-named Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis - that there should be warnings of a new massive attack on the beleaguered people of Gaza. The influential Israeli journalist, Ron Ren-Yishai, writes on December 29, 2010, of the likely prospect of a new major IDF attack, quoting senior Israeli military officers as saying It's not a question of if, but rather of when, a view that that is shared, according to Ren-Yishai, by government ministers, Knesset members and municipal heads in the Gaza region. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/2011147844745636.html 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] Algerian riots resume over food prices:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Police deployed around mosques and football matches suspended amid protests over food prices and unemployment http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/07/algeria-riots-food-prices 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] Aflockalypse
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Is it possible that the process of environmental destruction and species extinction has progressed to the point where quantitative change has or is about to become qualitative? If so, we will be entering an era of wars not for oil, but for water and against millions of refugees who will be fleeing flooded coasts and newly hostile climates. A new meaning for the phrase, socialism or barbarism. On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Louis Proyect unrepentantmarx...@gmail.comwrote: 'Aflockalypse': Here's Why We Should Really Be Concerned About the Huge Bird and Fish Die-off By Tara Lohan, AlterNet Posted on January 7, 2011, Printed on January 7, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/story/149440/ 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] Green Party Says Cuomo Fiscal Plan Recycles Failed Policies
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Green Party of New York State* Green Party Says Cuomo Fiscal Plan Recycles Failed Policies The Green Party blasted the Emergency Fiscal Plan outlined by Andrew Cuomo in his State of the State Message as a continuation of the failed policies of previous administrations of both major parties. Andrew Cuomo is reading from the same 30-year old major party script, which says the bad economy and fiscal problems are the fault of big government and the solution is to cut taxes and spending. It's the same old banker's agenda to make take capital off the tax roles and make labor pay all the taxes. The result has been an unprecedented concentration of income, wealth, and power in a tiny elite and stagnant or declining income, wealth, and public services for the rest of us. Wall Street blew up the economy, but Cuomo wants to blame public employees, said Howie Hawkins, the Green Party's 2010 gubernatorial candidate and recently elected co-chair. Peter LaVenia, the other co-chair of the Green Party, added that Cuomo is using this crisis to advance a 'shock doctrine on NY just like the bankers and Wall Street had been doing with the IMF and third world countries for decades. Slashing public spending for essential services and selling off public assets to pay off debts and deficits only works for looting the economy. Cuomo is continuing the bipartisan push to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. How is his austerity plan supposed to help an upstate described 4 years ago by Spitzer as part of Appalachia? Cuomo is advocating class war on behalf of the rich, and we think it's time working NYers fought back. We say that the problem is concentrated wealth and power and the solution begins with progressive tax reform to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes again so government can invest in what the people want: secure jobs, good schools and health care, clean energy, and a sustainable environment, Hawkins said. full article -*www.gpnys.org* 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] New York Times Book Review Excludes Black, Latino Critics
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == by Randy Shaw - Jan. 05‚ 2011 clip - The latest example of the sad decline of the New York Times Book Review under editor Sam Tanenhaus is its January 2, 2010 edition on “Why Criticism Matters” that excludes African-American and Latino critics. Citing the importance of the critic as cultural arbiter, the Times asked six critics to address the subject – none of whom were black or Latino. Further, the back page of the section cites seven cultural critics who inspired the issue’s theme: all seven are white men. We have previously discussed the Book Review’s neo-conservative agenda in its promoting a praiseworthy review of a book unfairly attacking Hampshire College; now it is defining critics as our leading cultural arbiters while ignoring the perspectives of the African-American, Latino and Asian-American critics whose outsider status has often resulted in salient critiques of the elite white culture trumpeted in the Times. It should be considered remarkable that in 2011 the New York Times Book Review would put out an issue on cultural criticism that excludes no representatives of the leading ethnic and racial minority groups of the United States. Sadly, this exclusion, particularly for Latino critics, is par for the course. full -- http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8785 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] 40-000-crabs-join-slew-of-animal-death-mysteries - is the revolution too late?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/916503--40-000-crabs-join-slew-of-animal-death-mysteries 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] NYTimes.com: Aspiring to Musical Power and Glory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Love Me, I'm a Liberal By Phil Ochs I cried when they shot Medgar Evers Tears ran down my spine I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy As though I'd lost a father of mine But Malcolm X got what was coming He got what he asked for this time So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal Once I was young and impulsive I wore every conceivable pin Even went to the socialist meetings Learned all the old union hymns But I've grown older and wiser And that's why I'm turning you in So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal A new documentary about Phil Ochs, a great singer/songwriter if there ever was one.--Tom MOVIES | January 05, 2011 Movie Review | 'Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune': Aspiring to Musical Power and Glory By STEPHEN HOLDEN Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune is Kenneth Bowser's documentary about that protest singer's complicated and tragic life. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/movies/05phil.html?emc=eta1 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] Roger Goodell's Message to NFL Players and Fans: Drop Dead
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.thenation.com/blog/157438/roger-goodell%E2%80%99s-message-nfl-players-and-fans-drop-dead Roger Goodell's Message to NFL Players and Fans: Drop Dead by Dave Zirin | January 3, 2011 http://www.thenation.com/blog/157438/roger-goodell%E2%80%99s-message-nfl-players-and-fans-drop-dead Leave it to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to end a thrilling NFL regular season on a sour, ugly note. As football fans, sports radio devotees and chat-room obsessives gathered Monday to discuss the playoff seedings, Goodell issued an ill-timed letter http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/sports/bob-smiziks-blog/26836-goodells-letter-to-nfl-fans [1]laying out the state of negotiations with the NFL Players Association. Both sides are striving to secure a new collective bargaining agreement and avoid labor Armageddon, but based on Goodell's letter, that's where the similarities end. In the letter, Goodell seems to be following a tried-and-true strategy: blame the union and sow resentment between the fans and the players they pay to watch. But in taking a closer look at his musty missive, Goodell also establishes himself as a stalking horse for a broader, systemic strategy being used by governors and captains of industry across the country. It’s a strategy that for all the focus-tested language has one end-goal: getting workers to work harder for less. First, blame the economy: Goodell writes: Economic conditions have changed dramatically inside and outside the NFL since 2006 when we negotiated the last CBA. A 10 percent unemployment rate hurts us all. Fans have limited budgets and rightly want the most for their money. I get it. Does he get it? There is nothing about lowering prices for tickets, concessions or parking. Instead he goes on to blame the greedy unions for making decent wages and benefits as the reason there may be no football in 2011. As Goodell writes, Yes, NFL players deserve to be paid well. Unfortunately, economic realities are forcing everyone to make tough choices and the NFL is no different. This is the sporting version of something far broader and more pernicious, as public sector workers are becoming the Willie Hortons of our economy. They have become the 2011 scapegoat of choice as politicians impose the coming austerity. AFSCME has even started a campaign called No More Lies http://leftlaborreporter.wordpress.com/ [2] to counter the myths of the greedy unionists destroying state budgets. Goodell goes on to lay out his vision for a brighter future. This brighter future includes players not only playing for less but also working more. As Goodell writes, An enhanced season of 18 regular season and two preseason games would not add a single game for the players collectively, but would give fans more meaningful, high-quality football. Then without irony and with no transition, Goodell leaps right into his deep care and concern for players' health, writing, Our emphasis on player health and safety is absolutely essential to the future of our game. Yes, play longer but nothing is more essential than the health of the players. As Pittsburgh Steelers Wide Receiver Hines Ward said in comments aimed at Goodellhttp://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Best-of-the-Burgh-Blogs/Pulling-No-Punches/December-2010/Hines-Ward-Puts-the-Smack-Down-on-Goodell/ [3], If you were so concerned about the safety, why are you adding two more games? They don't care about the safety of the game They're hypocrites. Then Goodell goes after the salaries of rookies, calling for a rookie pay scale. He writes, All we're asking for is a return to common sense in paying our rookies. Other leagues have done this and we can too. This is also ridiculous if not immoral. Any sport where each play can be your last should reject any notion of a pay scale. Players in this most violent of games should be able to make as much as the market will bear and not a penny less. Goodell finally ends with some blather about wanting to achieve this kind of forward looking CBA and protecting the integrity of the game. But there is no integrity in Goodell's vision: only the same blueprint for workers we are seeing across the country: work more, take less. I am sure that there are many who would read this with little sympathy for NFL players as workers. But please consider: a typical NFL career is three and a half years, and as NFL player Scott Fujita said to me, We're the only business with a 100 percent injury rate. The ratings for the NFL this season have never been higher and no one ever paid hundreds of dollars to see Jerry Jones stalk the sidelines. But it's even bigger than all of that. Goodell finishes this ill-timed screed by writing, This is about more than a labor agreement. It's about the future of the NFL. It's
[Marxism] Alexander Cockburn - Honor the WikiLeakers
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Honor the WikiLeakers Friday 31 December 2010 by: Alexander Cockburn, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed http://www.truth-out.org/alexander-cockburn-honor-wikileakers66432 When it comes to journalistic achievements in 2010, the elephant in the room is WikiLeaks. I've seen many put-downs of the materials as containing no smoking guns, or as being essentially trivial communications to the State Department from U.S. diplomats and kindred government agents around the world. Now, it's true that the cables were legally available to well over 1.5 million Americans, who had adequate security clearance. But trivial? Don't believe it. The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in manners diametrically opposite to public pretensions. The cables form one of the most extraordinary lessons in the cold realities of international diplomacy ever made public. Normally, scholars have to wait for 10, 20, even 50 years to gain access to such papers. The WikiLeaks documents show that the picture of the international business of the United States offered by the major U.S. media to the public is an infantile misrepresentation of reality. The efforts being made by Attorney General Eric Holder to bolster secrecy and espionage laws show that the U.S. government, led currently by a man who pledged transparency, wants the American people to remain in blissful ignorance of what its government is actually doing. The alleged leaker of the WikiLeaks files, Army Private Bradley Manning, currently being held in solitary confinement in sadistic conditions, should be vigorously applauded and defended for exposing such crimes as the murder of civilians in Baghdad by U.S. Apache helicopters. The WikiLeaks Afghan-related files are a damning, vivid series of snapshots of a disastrous and criminal enterprise. In these same files, there is a compelling series of secret documents about the death squad operated by the U.S. military known as Task Force 373, an undisclosed black unit of special forces, which has been hunting down targets for death or detention without trial. From WikiLeaks we learn that more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a kill or capture list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritized effects list. Julian Assange and his colleagues should similarly be honored and defended. They have acted in the best traditions of the journalistic vocation. The U.S. began the destruction of Afghanistan in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, started financing the mullahs and warlords in the largest and most expensive operation in the CIA's history until that time. Here we are, more than three decades later, half-buried under a mountain of horrifying news stories about a destroyed land of desolate savagery, and what did one hear on many news commentaries earlier this week? Indignant bleats often by liberals, about WikiLeaks' irresponsibility in releasing the documents, twitchy questions such as that asked by The Nation's Chris Hayes on the Rachel Maddow Show: I wonder ultimately to whom WikiLeaks ends up being accountable. The answer to that last question was given definitively in 1851 by Robert Lowe, editorial writer for the London Times. He had been instructed by his editor to refute the claim of a government minister that if the press hoped to share the influence of statesmen, it must also share in the responsibilities of statesmen. The first duty of the press, Lowe wrote, is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation ... The Press lives by disclosures ... For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences -- to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world. *Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils, available through www.counterpunch.com.* *Copyright 2010 Creators.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] US Evangelical Fundamentalism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Dan d.koech...@wanadoo.fr wrote: The US disease known as Evangelical Fundamentalism is a direct threat to working class autonomy and emancipation. In the US, tapping into the Evangelical vote is done by Republicans. Rather than trying to engage with such elements, US Marxists should be extremely wary of the pernicious effects of religion which is always concerned with establishing authoritarian rule and protecting the powers that be. Cases involving born-again Christian teachers refusing to teach evolution are becoming as frequent as burqa-clad teachers telling children that women should dress modestly. Both are pilling up in the European Court of Human Rights, despite clear precedents showing that the ECHR upholds secularism. I suppose this means that the US left should have refused to support and build the movement against Jim Crow in the 1950s and 60s since it was lead predominantly by Black Christian ministers. To mention in the same breath and thus equate the struggle by victims of racism and xenophobia with the oppressive fundamentalism of racists and xenophobes is to completely miss the distinction of which side are you on, which I would list as the starting point for revolutionaries. 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] 8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media Alternet/ By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd and Tana Ganeva December 31, 2010 Shredding the corporate media's malicious attacks on WikiLeaks The corporate media's tendency to blare misinformation and outright fabrications has been particularly egregious in coverage of WikiLeaks. As Glenn Greenwaldhttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/28/cnnn/index.htmlhas argued, mainstream news outlets are parroting smears and falsehoods about the whistleblower site and its founder Julian Assange, helping to perpetuate a number of zombie lies -- misconceptions that refuse to die no matter how much they conflict with known reality, basic logic and well-publicized information. Here are the bogus narratives that keep appearing in newspapers and on the airwaves. http://www.alternet.org/story/149369/8_smears_and_misconceptions_about_wikileaks_spread_by_the_media?page=entire 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 Phantom Menace: Fantasies, fal sehoods, and fear-mongering about Iran’s nucl ear program
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, falsehoods, and fear-mongering about ** Iran**’s nuclear program* Dec 31, 2010 01:32 am | Nima Shirazi To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. - George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four Facts rarely get in the way of American and Israeli fear-mongering and jingoism, especially when it comes to anti-Iran propaganda. For nearly thirty years now, U.S. and Zionist politicians and analysts, along with some of their European allies, have warned that Iranian nuclear weapons capability is just around the corner and that such a possibility would not only be catastrophic for Israel with its 400 nuclear warheads and state-of-the-art killing power supplied by U.S. taxpayers, but that it would also endanger regional dictatorships, Europe, and even the United States. If these warnings are to be believed, Iran is only a few years away from unveiling a nuclear bomb...and has been for the past three decades. Fittingly, let's begin in 1984. http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/the-phantom-menace-fantasies-falsehoods-and-fear-mongering-about-irans-nuclear-program.html?utm_source=Mondoweiss+Listutm_campaign=da99c10e0e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGNutm_medium=email#comments 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] books on Nicaragua/El Salvador in the 1980s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Ismail Lagardien ilagard...@yahoo.comwrote: Dennis Would you care to share information/suggestions you receive, please. I teach two courses in International Relations in the spring. Cheers Ismail Voices From the Other Side – Keith Bolender – US terrorism against Cuba A Faustian Bargain; U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era by William I. Robinson Westview Press, 1992 Weakness and Deceit: US Policy and El Salvador By Raymond Bonner Our Own Backyard: The United States In Central America, 1977-1992 By William M. LeoGrande David and Goliath By William Robinson 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] Julian Assange to use £1m book deals f or legal fight
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == WikiLeaks founder says he had to sell rights to autobiography to cover legal costs and keep website afloat http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/26/julian-assange-book-deals 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] Don't spin the Civil War
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Don't spin the Civil War By E.J. Dionne Jr. The Washington Post Sunday, December 26, 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122601696.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline 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] Moustafa Bayoumi, The Race Is On: Muslims and Arabs in the American Imagination
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Moustafa Bayoumi, The Race Is On: Muslims and Arabs in the American Imagination http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52612205f=17475u=22792232c=3944463 The irony is that while Arabs and Muslims are increasingly racialized as black (in ways that approximate Cold War images of African-Americans), African-Americans are emerging in popular culture as leaders of the American nation and empire. Moreover, this depiction revolves fundamentally around the idea of black friendship with Muslims and Arabs, a friendship not among equals but one reflecting a modified projection of American power. This image appears to seek to transform the image of the United States itself. Consider two different films in this regard: The Siege (1998), again starring Denzel Washington, and The Kingdom (2007), starring Jamie Foxx. . . . Race, nation and empire. Their mixing, in the end, describes a complicated, if not confused, situation. On the one hand, as they suffer social exclusion, Arabs and Muslims are increasingly racialized. But the same gesture, in a post-civil rights era world, somehow manages to Americanize them. Arab and Muslim Americans signify both the incompleteness and the human triumph of the project of the American nation. African-Americans are cast at the same time in sheltering roles, protecting the nation, those vulnerable and good Arabs and Muslims, and the empire. Such representations simultaneously prove that true equality has been won and that there exists an enduring need for civil rights thinking in the United States. What is largely missing is the recognition that black heroism, for it to be truly noble, must not be staged on the backs of another people. What is required is the critical consciousness that would build an alliance between Arabs, Muslims and African-Americans against global and domestic aggression and terrorism. (To be fair, The Kingdom hints toward this consciousness at the end.) In the absence of that idea, such representations in fact coopt the struggle for racial equality into the project of an unequal nation and that of an expanding empire. http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/bayoumi_interv.html 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] Returning to the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah).
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Returning to the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah).* *Imagine what an uproar there would be if Muslims declared the following: * * We long to return to Spain, from which we were expelled centuries ago. We long to return to the Gardens of Cordoba (in Arabic: Qurtuba). We agonize with every breath to re-inhabit the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah). In our veins, there runs an eternal longing to walk again in the footsteps of our forefathers in Zaragoza (Saraqusta). We yearn to once again cultivate the orchards of Valladolid (Balad Al Waleed). We shall strive, by military means if necessary, to see the blessed day when we can tread along the rose-scented pathways of the splendid palace of Al Hambra (Al Hamraa) in Granada (Ghirnata). Every stone and every particle of sand in that Iberian holy land belongs to me and to my people, exclusively. No Spaniard terrorist has the right to obstruct the will of God and deny my family the legal title to the land of our ancestors. It is God who had given us Andalucía (Al Andalus), and it is God who promised us that we, the exiles, shall return to it once again. * I would indeed have to be a certified lunatic if I had meant a word of the above. Yet, the only difference between my disease of the mind and that of the millions of Jewish Israelis who claim to have returned to Palestine is that in my case, at least, the monuments and Arab names I am referring to are real and do actually exist today. It is incontestable that the direct ancestors of my people built a great Islamic civilization in Spain. On the other hand, Zionist archaeologists have failed after digging up every conceivable corner of Palestine for the last 62 years to excavate a Jewish artifact or building or temple remotely matching the grandeur of any of the visible relics of Andalucía. How is it conceivable for otherwise rational people to entertain - let alone accept and adopt - the twisted Zionist logic about a Jewish return to a promised land after so many thousands of years of supposed separation? How can these people allow Israeli politicians to use such religious nonsense as a justification for the contemporary and ongoing catastrophe being inflicted upon the millions of guiltless Palestinian inhabitants of that land? * Adapted from A Terrible Disease of the Mind, written by Zaid Nabulsi and published online at * http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/a-terrible-disease-of-the-mind/ 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] Paul Street - The President and the Climate: Reflections on Progressive Obama Delusion
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paul Street, The President and the Climate: Reflections on Progressive Obama Delusionhttp://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52585731f=17475u=22792232c=3942822 Just what did Barack Obama and his spinners do to the critical faculties of so many leading American progressives? http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/street231210.html 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] solidarity with activists targeted by the government!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == solidarity with activists targeted by the government Max Ajl - http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4617 As many of you may know, the FBI has lately been targeting Palestine solidarity activists. People call it a witch-hunt, and like the witches, these activists will be innocent of whatever the government charges them with, if it bothers to charge them with anything. They are guilty of something else that they should be proud to be guilty of: struggling against the neo-colonial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and beyond. I had not mentioned this inquisition here before, but they have now delivered a subpoena to Maureen Murphy, my editor at *Electronic Intifadahttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11690.shtml *, who is responsible for tamping down my verbosity and also helping to run the most important electronic newspaper serving the Palestine solidarity movement. This subpoena comes in the wake of house-raids and other subpoenas across the Midwest, through which some two dozen anti-war activists have been targeted. Historically, Democratic administrations have been the ones to repress civil liberties and anti-war organizing with the firmest hand. The Obama administration is no exception, and its thuggish, anti-democratic nature should be clear if it wasn’t before. The Obama administration is not yielding to an oppressive atmosphere of Islamophobia and rightist chauvinism. It is fomenting it. It is not struggling against those seeking to prevent it from reforming the system. It is struggling against those seeking to reform or destroy the system. As Maureen stated in a press release, “Along with several others, I am being summoned to appear before the Grand Jury on Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.” Those who have been summoned have so far refused to appear before the grand jury. There have been no arrests, nor indictments. The government has not mentioned any crimes that it may be investigating. To be subject to political harassment is a badge of honor. It means you are destabilizing power. Our job now is to make sure that badge of honor remains just a badge and not a burden. As the wars escalate in Af-Pak and Gaza is being once again pummeled by the Israeli-American air force, the empire’s courtroom is trying to intimidate those who are resisting those policies. Don’t let them. Let’s push back. [More information available at www.stopfbi.net] 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] music makes you smarter?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I can think of at least one person on this list who would argue that it certainly hasn't helped me, but nevertheless, an interesting thesis. http://www.alternet.org/story/149288/why_listening_to_music_makes_you_smarter?page=entire 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] WikiLeaks' lesson on Haiti:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *WikiLeaks' lesson on **Haiti**: * What the US embassy cables reveal about Washington's malign influence should make Latin American nations quit the UN force http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104097017242s=109652e=001I7X-pe43j3CHcjA4ec8q2zp80WWzYBlwHyTEu0lVnKHw7-tJYBsld6UBBf998N15-VWmWjyoREZFR8hkpiWyH-4CB-4H5hqlM0cdhAHXi0LGmSGIkiqgKvGeDhXbTpudl7UN8SLXi3uUUe6eiUVajTpdfC0X34847tgAyC8GiYfDO9c3tFddHc_x6geANrZtmVl3EMRcAkU= http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/17/haiti-wikileakshttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104097017242s=109652e=001I7X-pe43j3CHcjA4ec8q2zp80WWzYBlwHyTEu0lVnKHw7-tJYBsld6UBBf998N15-VWmWjyoREZFR8hkpiWyH-4CB-4H5hqlM0cdhAHXi0LGmSGIkiqgKvGeDhXbTpudl7UN8SLXi3uUUe6eiUVajTpdfC0X34847tgAyC8GiYfDO9c3tFddHc_x6geANrZtmVl3EMRcAkU= 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] opposition from leading left Obama supporter
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == While a Marxist analysis would not concentrate so much on individual personality traits, this possibly reflects an important break within the left supporters of Obama camp -- An Historical View from the Sanctimonious Left By Carl Bloice - BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Black Commemtator - December 16, 2010 clip - Smarting from the complaints within his own party about the tax deal he and the Republican leadership had hatched, an increasingly defensive President Obama said, this is the public option debate all over again. Then, he claimed, that while he was able to pass a meaningful reform, progressives had instead viewed it as weakness and compromise that there was no public option in his healthcare plan. Now, if that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, and then let's face it, we will never get anything done. This is a big, diverse country, Obama said. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. This country was founded on compromise. I couldn't go through the front door of this country's founding, he added. And you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a Union. When I read those words my first thought was: that's not how Abe Lincoln viewed it. full - http://www.blackcommentator.com/406/406_lm_sanctimonious_left.php 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] Richard Holbrooke Represented the Worst of the Foreign Policy Establishment
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.truth-out.org/richard-holbrooke-represented-worse-side-foreign-policy-establishment65933 http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/richard_holbrooke_dies_at_69_remembering 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] US Cables Portray a Different Side of Brazil's Lula da Silva:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 10:08 PM, Joaquín Bustelo jbust...@bellsouth.netwrote: I know some class-reductionist, workerist comrades don't like it because it isn't a comic-book simple class against class situation with all the workers, peasants and honest professionals and intellectuals lining up on one side, all the bosses, strikebreakers, scab herders and their stooges in academia and the media on the other. Bustelo creates a straw argument. I fully understand and support every positive step and micro step taken in South America, as well as the Middle East and everywhere else against imperialism, no matter who leads it I do not equate a Lula, Kirchner, Ahmadinejad, with imperialism and fully support any and all moves toward a united Latin America. But I also do not try to prettify these individuals, movements or governments (ANC) and all of their policies in the name of anti imperialism. 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] US Cables Portray a Different Side of Brazil's Lula da Silva:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == * * *US Cables Portray a Different Side of **Brazil**'s Lula da Silva: * The leaked U.S. cables, which chronicle Lula's eight years in power, show a leader all too willing to placate Washington and double-cross fellow leftists throughout the region. http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104090650518s=109652e=001OTjDQqgrh55iSJA4vQ6lSGcxXwg1-kFvaS03EfqEf21Yw2A0xXMTA95gcgPL2LhGSVcNh8HekGSguYMsLPW7J3f9DwD4JpZAg6IQM-MaI9HhwVH0iK1YWoUtGawHWEujJPlPqUlhikbmQ_lPS46k_0zgt1L-d9UqHdZw_DkPRxfItVvK_uSiDTV6yCr28WJXKT0HGlF4x_gMGRsOHaGd0CmQ_KjveMNp http://latindispatch.com/2010/12/15/wikileaks-cables-portray-a-different-side-of-brazils-lula/http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104090650518s=109652e=001OTjDQqgrh55iSJA4vQ6lSGcxXwg1-kFvaS03EfqEf21Yw2A0xXMTA95gcgPL2LhGSVcNh8HekGSguYMsLPW7J3f9DwD4JpZAg6IQM-MaI9HhwVH0iK1YWoUtGawHWEujJPlPqUlhikbmQ_lPS46k_0zgt1L-d9UqHdZw_DkPRxfItVvK_uSiDTV6yCr28WJXKT0HGlF4x_gMGRsOHaGd0CmQ_KjveMNp 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] Israel thinks we're very powerful. So keep us strong
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There are many good causes for comrades to contribute to. In my opinion, EI is at the top of the list! - Dennis Brasky 14 December 2010 Now we know why Israel is trying to shut down The Electronic Intifada. Recently I wrote to you and other friends about the attackhttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11651.shtmlon The Electronic Intifada by NGO Monitor, an extremist Israeli group that works with the Israel's far-right government and wants to shut us down. At a 9 December press conference at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, hosted by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, the head of NGO Monitor said: ... we also see this combination between *a very powerful organization called the Electronic Intifada*, and the people who are involved in that, a gentleman by the name of Ali Abunimah in particular, who appears on many, many campuses and frameworks, preaching the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions and one-state, eliminate-the-State-of-Israel solution... Of course NGO Monitor distorts the truth, and tries to misrepresent what we as a publication do and what I as an individual say, but they are right about one thing: *we are powerful*, because the original news and analysis published by The Electronic Intifada empowers activists all over the world who are working for justice, equality and respect for universal rights in Palestine. We're a small publication, standing up to the might of Israel and making a big difference by educating thousands of people every day. I am privileged to work with an incredible editorial team, and The Electronic Intifada counts on dozens of first class reporters, writers and activists. We can do this work and withstand these attacks only because of the support of people like youhttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11662.shtml. You make us *powerful* and Israel has noticed. To remain strong and independent in 2011 we must raise $100,000 by December 31. We've already raised almost $30,000, but we still have a long way to go. Be *powerful* and make a tax-deductible donationhttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11662.shtmltoday! With thanks on behalf of The Electronic Intifada Team Ali Abunimah PS: You can read more about our campaignhttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11662.shtml, and revisit some of the great articles that have made Israeli so mad! Donate Now http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml. 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] What a Disgrace!! - Islamophobia and France's NPA
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Islamophobia and France's NPA December 15, 2010 -- http://socialistworker.org/2010/12/15/islamophobia-and-the-npa Last week, 12 activists in France's New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)--including Ilham Moussaid, whose candidacy for regional elections caused controversy because of the fact that she wears a hijab--resigned from the organization. John Mullen, a member of the NPA in the Paris region, answered questions for Australia's *Socialist Alternative http://www.sa.org.au/* about the issue of Islamophobia in France, and the debates within the NPA that led to these resignations. FIRST, COULD you elaborate on what caused the 12 members to resign and the contours of the debates within the NPA about the rights of its Muslim membership? ILHAM WAS chosen as one of a list of candidates in the regional elections last year. This decision was made in the region--the NPA is very much a federal organization. The NPA was attacked from all sides for giving in to Islamists and fundamentalists, and for abandoning secularism. The party's national spokesperson Olivier Besancenot defended Ilham's right to be a candidate, but a vocal minority inside the NPA is hostile to having members with hijabs. For the upcoming conference, this minority has put forward a motion that hijab wearers can't be candidates for the party. A counter-motion defends equal rights for all members to apply to be a candidate, and a third motion suggests a dreadful compromise--that hijab wearers can be candidates if approved by special commissions. The group of comrades of which Ilham is part, near Avignon, hasbeen running dynamic campaigns on local issues, including the question of Islamophobia. A campaign against them inside the party has worn them out, and rather than fight at the conference, they have chosen to continue their activism outside the party. It's very sad. The very real and slowly growing support they have had from a minority of comrades around the country has not been enough to keep them in our party. WHEN MOUSSAID resigned, she said, We need to concentrate on what unites us, on the fight for equality between men and women, and not to say we should all dress the same way, that you can't wear a headscarf because otherwise you're not a feminist. What do you say to those who are arguing that wearing the hijab is an assault on feminism? THE MAJORITY of the left in France believe that the hijab is an assault on women's rights, and this position quickly moves into the prejudice that Muslim women in France are more oppressed than non-Muslim women, that the experience of women in Saudi Arabia is merely an extreme case of an oppression which is inherent in Islam, and other such ideas. Muslim and Arab men are then presented as the major source of women's oppression and contrasted with the progressive white values of Republican France. So opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism--and often does. In fact, if Muslim women in France suffer oppression, get mostly low-paid jobs and bad housing, this is not usually because of their husbands and big brothers, but because capitalism wants cheap labor, and treating ethnic minorities badly is good for profits. Pieces of clothing have symbolic meanings in all cultures. In many cultures, women must cover their breasts, and men must not wear dresses. In Sikh culture, men must not cut their hair. And in many Muslim cultures, women must cover their hair. When French women cover their hair to please their God, they are not saying treat me as an inferior. There is another point: in France, where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism is at a high level (which has a lot to do with France's imperial past and neo-colonial present), wearing the hijab is about showing you are proud to be a Muslim (and often, proud to be an Arab) in a fairly hostile situation. Tragically, the opinion of the women who wear the hijab, or the niqab, is practically never asked. Enlightened left anti-sexists speak for them and tell them how they should dress. It's an old colonial tradition, telling oppressed groups what is good for them. THE RIGHT-wing government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, with the support of the Socialist Party, recently banned the wearing of the hijab in state schools and the public service, and the full veil is now illegal in the streets. How is this issue being exploited by France's politicians, and how prevalent is racist abuse of Muslims in France today? A FEW months ago, researchers sent to French companies applications for jobs accompanied by CVs. They wanted to compare how a young Black Catholic woman fared in comparison with a young
[Marxism] Glen Ford - The left and Obama-trauma
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content%2Fleft-and-obama-trauma 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] Thesis on Jewish 'privilege' rebuked, sparking row
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Author of Master’s Thesis Critical of Jewish Narcissism to be Electrocuted on Christmas Day; Parents’ Plea for Stay of Execution Denied By Prime Minister Harper, Who Declares “Jews are My Johns” Thesis on Jewish 'privilege' rebuked, sparking row 12.09.2010 | The National Posthttp://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Thesis+Jewish+privilege+rebuked+sparking/3949150/story.html Academics are calling the Ontario government’s condemnation of a university student thesis an attack on scholarly freedom, but those offended by the controversial paper insist they won’t let “hate” hide behind the veil of academia. Jenny Peto’s 100-page thesis argues that today’s Jews of European descent “enjoy white privilege” and maintain a victim identity by participating in “hegemonic” Holocaust remembrance programs such as the March of the Living, during which young Jewish people visit Poland and Israel. The University of Toronto accepted the defended thesis and awarded a master’s degree to the 29-year-old, who is an activist associated with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid group. She’s also Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors. The thesis, entitled The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education, describes Israel as an apartheid state. It has provoked intense debate online, in academia and even the political realm. Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark raised it in the legislature Tuesday in response to sharp criticism in the Jewish community, calling it “shockingly anti-Semitic.” Citizenship and immigration minister Eric Hoskins likewise condemned the thesis in the legislature saying he was “greatly disturbed and, in fact, disgusted,” when he read media coverage about it. In a statement to the Post on Wednesday, Mr. Hoskins stood by his condemnation: “I rose in the House to condemn all anti-Semitism, a particularly vile and pernicious form of discrimination,” he said. “The lessons to be learned from the Holocaust are pivotal, not just for the Jewish community, but for all Ontarians.” Ms. Peto responded to the criticism by saying her academic freedom was under attack. “I never could have imagined an MA thesis getting this much attention,” she said. “But given my reputation as a vocal critic of Israel … I am never surprised to be attacked by pro-Israel groups or pro-Israel politicians, for that matter.” “Students and researchers should be able to research and publish on controversial matters without the fear of attacks from the government.” It is certainly unusual for a student’s work to be challenged by elected representatives, said Michiel Horn, a York University history professor and author of Academic Freedom in Canada: A History. “I know not of a single case where a master’s or a phD paper has been subject of discussion in the legislature of any province in Canada,” he said. “This is hardly the forum,” he added, insisting that politicians should not be perceived to be tearing apart a thesis that has already been vetted by two university experts. University of Toronto provost Cheryl Misak said most if not all dissertations from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where Ms. Peto studied, are scrutinized by a panel of experts who must grill the student and pose all kinds of “obstacles” to the argument. Though she wasn’t present at Ms. Peto’s thesis defence, she says she’s confident the process met the high standards set by the institution. “They’re called defences for good reason,” she said. “The thing that concerns me is that this is a piece of student work and it’s part of a wider educational project. It’s important to remember that.” Anyone who disagrees with a thesis, paper, book or statement and might find it offensive, can offer counterarguments, she said. “That’s what freedom of expression is, that’s how it ought to unfold,” she said. “Condemnation is not really how expression is done.” But as far as Peter Shurman is concerned, all hate should be condemned — and hate is exactly what he believes this particular thesis is. “I am sure that the legislature is a place to discuss anything that affects the general wellbeing of the people of Ontario,” said the Thornhill MPP who was part of Tuesday’s condemnation. “I’m not sure Ontario is an appropriate place for preaching hate.” He hasn’t read the paper, but nonetheless owes it to his largely Jewish constituents to defend Israel on their behalf, he said. Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Thesis+Jewish+privilege+rebuked+sparking/3949150/story.html#ixzz183CLSJ7M Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at:
[Marxism] Glenn Greenwald's interview with Nir Rosen on his new book Aftermath of US wars
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/?source=newsletterutm_source=contactologyutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110 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] Hawaii's Legal Case Against the United States
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Hawaii's Legal Case Against the United States* Jon Letman, Truthout: Imagine if you grew up being told that you had been adopted, only to learn that you were, in fact, kidnapped. That might spur you to start searching for the adoption papers. Now imagine that you could find no papers and no one could produce any. That's how Dr. David Keanu Sai, a retired Army Captain with a PhD in political science and instructor at Kapiolani Community College in Hawaii, characterizes Hawaii's international legal status. Since 1993, Sai has been researching the history of the Kingdom of Hawaii and its complicated relationship to the United States. http://www.truth-out.org/sai-v-obama-et-al-hawaiis-legal-case-against-united-states65850 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] Obama Isn't Spineless, He's Conservative
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 2:28 PM, midhurs...@aol.com wrote: The republicans will show you there is worse on January 1st George Anthony While the Repubs will go farther and faster at dismantling the social safety net, it's the Dems that disappointed and demoralized so many that they have withdrawn from the political arena (a reported 29 million '08 Obama voters did not vote last month). This enables the Repubs to come back. Marxists call this a dialectical interaction. 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] Would Obama Prosecute Martin L. King Jr. for WikiLeaks' Revelations of War and Environmental Crimes?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Would Obama Prosecute Martin L. King Jr. for WikiLeaks' Revelations of War and Environmental Crimes? http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12048 * JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH * Or to put the question differently: Would Martin Luther King Jr. support and defend Julian Assange's efforts to inform the public about war and corporate environmental crimes? Last night I watched The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington again, and it occurred to me that during the arguments given in support of civil disobedience that Julian Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks.org, is practicing civil disobedience and that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history. For much of his crusading career, Martin Luther King Jr. was regarded by the U.S. Justice Department and Hoover's FBI an enemy of the state, a terrorist, and a communist. Many more accusations were made against him for his attempt to shed light on human suffering that had its violent roots in the acceptance of racism. Most people remember King for his demonstrations against segregation and racism, but what the history books conveniently leave out is his equally strong opposition against the Vietnam War. Here is a passage taken from his Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silencehttp://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.htmlspeech delivered April 4 th, 1967. When asked about Vietnam, he replied: They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. Today, I have no doubt that, like Julian Assange, Martin Luther King Jr. would be opposed to the unnecessary occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. He would question the interests of Big Oil in these regions and he would also defend Julian Assange's WikiLeaks revelations on corporate crimes committed against nature and human beings, the exposure of toxins and pollution of our air and water. While Eric Holder spends his time prosecuting a Martin Luther King activist for exposing corporate and war crimes via WikiLeaks that would otherwise remain secret, he turns a blind eye to BP executives who've literally destroyed the Gulf sea life and the economy of the Gulf, which is understandable since he used to defend oil companies. History will show that Obama's Justice Department prosecutes individuals who believe the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are morally and legally wrong. Holder argues that WikiLeaks is putting troops at risk. Martin L. King would reply to Holder: The use of military violence, for any reason, gives opponents fuel for criticism and risks harming others. One thing is for certain: President Obama is no Martin Luther King Jr. in that one must practice what one preaches in campaigns, and he is no environmentalist. As TruthOut reportedhttp://www.truth-out.org/big-polluters-freed-from-environmental-oversight-stimulus65675: The Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation's biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight... The administration has awarded more than 179,000 'categorical exclusions' to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. As Mark Karlin, Editor of Buzzflash, put it, on shutting down WikiLeaks: President Obama hangs an iron curtain between U.S. citizens and the Truth./node/12040 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] So Much for Left Wing “Solidarity” in South America
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == So Much for Left Wing “Solidarity” in South America *NIKOLAS KOZLOFF * In Oliver Stone's recent documentary *South of the Border*, leftist regimes in Latin America are depicted rather idealistically. In country after country, Stone interviews the region's leaders who criticize the United States and present a common anti-imperialist front. Yet, while it's certainly true that politics has taken a decisive leftward shift from Venezuela to Bolivia and beyond, many differences and tensions remain. That, at any rate, is the impression I got when I read U.S. diplomatic cables released by whistleblower Wikileaks. Previously, in a couple of online articles, I analyzed internal political fissures within the top echelons of the Brazilian political leadership. U.S. cables reveal that some members of the Lula administration harbored suspicions about Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and, more often than not, saw eye to eye with Washington when it came to wider South American geopolitics. While these revelations are surely eye opening, it now appears as if they may be just the tip of the iceberg. Take, for example, the case of Argentina. Publicly, the nation's power couple, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, has embraced Hugo Chávez and the region's leftist Pink Tide. Yet in 2007, the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aireshttp://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07BUENOSAIRES376.htmlnoted that Néstor was engaged in a kind of diplomatic double game: on the one hand, the Argentine president sought to stake out a position for himself close to Chávez, while also maintaining a close working relationship with the U.S. on particular issues such as counter-terrorism. The U.S. Embassy saw Kirchner as a kind of latter-day, independent Charles de Gaulle, a politician who would maintain a balance in relations between Venezuela and the U.S. Full -- http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12043 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] Secret U.S. Manipulation of Climate Talks Revealed in WikiLeaks Cable
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed new details about how the United States manipulated last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen. The cables show how the United States sought dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming, how financial and other aid was used to gain political backing, and how the United States mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the Copenhagen Accord. We speak to Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solón. Several of the cables addressed Bolivia’s opposition to the U.S.-backed accord. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/6/bolivian_un_ambassador_pablo_solon_reacts 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] All Quiet on the Western Front - Once Not so Quiet
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == All Quiet on the Western Front - Once Not so Quiet Victor Grossman, Berlin Bulletin No. 15, from portside - On December 5th one or two hundred people left a movie theater in Berlin, mostly silent and deeply moved though the film they had seen was first released in 1930. This American-made epic had lost none of its extremely emotional appeal . It was All Quiet on the Western Front and the date of its showing here was no coincidence. Exactly eighty years earlier, to the day, Joseph Goebbels, later to become Hitlers notorious propaganda minister, had led 200 Nazis in violently preventing the showing of this same film. At the shout of Goebbels, who was in the balcony, the Nazis, storm troopers without their brown uniforms and some of the many newly-elected deputies to the Reichstag, blew whistles, attacked the rest of the audience and then let hundreds of white mice out of cardboard boxes to scurry through the rows. The police tried to restore order, at least some of them did, but this proved impossible and the showing was stopped. Then five or ten thousand Nazis waiting outside joined Goebbels in a march and rally in the downtown area. The tumults continued for a whole week, after which the Censorship Office, made up of Nazi sympathizers or men fearing the growing Nazi pressure, bowed to the demands of several pro-Nazi states to have the film banned altogether in Germany. This was a first major success of the Nazis and was accompanied by an obscene barrage of propaganda against this defamation of our boys in uniform by the Jews in Hollywood and in Berlin's elite West Side. A half-year later, after protests by prominent writers, artists and anti-Nazi political figures, permission was reluctantly granted to show the film to small private audiences, but only in such a radically cut version that much of the political punch was gone. This strange law, a compromise applying to a single film, was soon canceled, yet the attempted conciliation of the important German market for American films resulted in only cut film versions being distributed to all other countries as well. The film was totally forbidden in many countries, including France, Austria and Australia, and was eviscerated even in the USA, despite its two Oscars as best film and, for Lewis Milestone, best director. A final wish of Milestone was to have the film restored to its original length and principles. It took two decades after his death in 1980 before this was finally achieved. The film shown last Friday was the original, uncut version with German sub-titles. Before it began, two historians described what had happened in 1930, which had made this a major step in the Nazi take-over of German culture and, two years later, of the whole country, resulting in the destruction of both. One historian told the tragic story of Hanns Brodnitz, the manager of the Mozart-Saal, which he had turned into a leading art film center, highlighting such film greats as the young Rene Clair (Under the Roofs of Paris) and Charlie Chaplin's masterpieces. But after the Nazi attacks on his theater and the exploding level of anti-Semitism in Germanyhe lost his job and, before long, all jobs. His attempts to escape to the USA were in vain and in 1938 he went into hiding. Only after five years, when he dared to leave his last hiding-place, was he caught and sent to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in a gas chamber a few days later. His autobiographical book on film culture during Germany's Weimar Period (after 1919) was not released in 1933 because of the Nazi takeover and was soon destroyed, but a surprising find of the galley proofs a few years ago made a new edition possible. Two major thoughts certainly went through the minds of many in the audience last Friday. One was a swift understanding of why not only Nazis and not only German super-patriots hated the film and its terrifying portrayal of the horrors of war, with occasional questioning by the soldiers as to why and to whose benefit they are suffering, shooting and dying. One scene, where the hero, played by Lew Ayres, bitterly regrets killing a French soldier lying next to him, is unforgettable. The glories of fighting and dying for one's country, so mercilessly satirized and exposed by the film, went against all the efforts by nearly every government in those years to honor the dead in such a way that the next generation would dutifully follow in their fatal footsteps. The other thought surely going through the heads of so many in the audience was not unrelated: They are at it again! Not only the heavy-booted pro-Nazi groups marching through one city after another in Germany, for they are still a small minority and face unrelenting resistance by anti-fascists. But even more menacingly, troops
[Marxism] Evading a shutdown, WikiLeaks mobilizes Twitter supporters
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Evading a shutdown, WikiLeaks mobilizes Twitter supportershttp://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/04/evading_a_shutdown_wikileaks_mobilizes_twitter_supporters Posted By Blake Hounshell http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/blog/40 Sunday, December 5, 2010 - 1:58 AM http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/ In a bid to stay one step ahead of the governments, companieshttp://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/paypal-suspends-wikileaks-account/?partner=rssemc=rss, freelance hackershttp://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-29/us/wikileaks.hacker_1_wikileaks-computer-hacker-cyber-attack?_s=PM:UStrying to shut down its operations, WikiLeaks mobilized its vast base of online support Saturday by asking its Twitter followers to create copies of its growing archive of hundreds of classified State Department cables. By late afternoon Eastern time, more than 200http://www.twitlonger.com/show/79s9r1had answered the call, setting up mirror sites, many of them with the name wikileaks appended to their Web addresses. They organized themselves organically using the Twitter hashtag #imwikileakshttp://twitter.com/search?q=imwikileaks, in a virtual show of solidarity reminiscent of the movie *V is for Vendetta*. In that 2005 film, a Guy-Fawkes masked vigilantee inspires thousands of Londoners to march on the Parliament similarly disguised -- while it blows up in front of their eyes. Presumably, many of these people believe they are facing the same sort of tyranny that V, the film's protagonist, fought against. Critics of WikiLeaks have called on the Obama administration to shut down the site, but now it's clear that doing so would be a difficult task indeed. The *New Yorker*'s recent profilehttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourianof Julian Assange, the organization's mysterious founder and front man, said that a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself. WikiLeaks has also postedhttp://erictric.com/2010/11/25/wikileaks-urges-public-to-download-insurance-file/a massive, heavily encrypted insurance file on *The Pirate Bay*, a sympathetic website, which presumably contains also 250,000-plus cables and would be released into the wild if anything happens to Assange. As my FP colleague Evgeny Morozov warnshttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15-11df-956b-00144feab49a.html#axzz17CGI2f9C, aggressive action like arresting or killing Assange could spawn the rise of a vast, permanent network of radicalized hackers systematically challenging those in power – governments and companies alike – just for the sake of undermining 'the system'. That could prove an extremely dangerous threat to the global economy and diplomatic sphere. Evgeny offers the sensible suggestion that governments try to steer WikiLeaks into a more productive direction. It is a choice between WikiLeaks becoming a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International, he writes, arguing that a responsible version of the organization could pose more of a challenge to closed regimes than to the West. Handled correctly, the state that will benefit most from a nerdy network of 21st-century Che Guevaras is America itself. 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] donate to support WikiLeaks and Assange!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://wikileaks.ch/support.html 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] Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to Pharmacologic Waterboarding
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to Pharmacologic Waterboarding* A two-month investigation lead by Truthout's Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye reveals for the first time that the Defense Department forced all war on terror detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called pharmacologic waterboarding. The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not. Interviews with mefloquine and malaria experts and a review of peer-reviewed journals and hundreds of pages of government documents show there were no preexisting cases where mefloquine was ever prescribed for mass presumptive treatment of malaria. The use of the drug in this manner may have violated a provision in the anti-torture statute related to mind altering substances or other procedures that profoundly disrupts the senses or the personality. http://www.truth-out.org/controversial-drug-given-all-guantanamo-detainees-amounted-pharmacologic-waterboarding6558 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] In Defense of WikiLeaks!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tuesday, Nov 30, 2010 06:31 ET WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets By Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/author/glenn_greenwald/index.html clip - The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weaponhttp://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007562 . First we have the group demanding that Julian Assange be murdered without any charges, trial or due process. There was Sarah Palin on on Twitter illiterately accusing WikiLeakshttp://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/9251635779866625-- a stateless group run by an Australian citizen -- of treason; she thereafter took to her Facebook pagehttp://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=465212788434to object that Julian Assange was not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders (she also lied by stating that he has blood on his hands: a claim which even the Pentagon admits is untruehttp://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html). Townhall's John Hawkins has a column this morninghttp://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/11/30/5_reasons_the_cia_should_have_already_killed_julian_assange/page/full/entitled 5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange. That Assange should be treated as a traitor and murdered with no due process has been strongly suggested if not outright urged by the likes of Marc Theissenhttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/wikileaks_and_drone_strikes.html, Seth Lipsky http://www.nysun.com/editorials/wikileaks-and-the-war/87121/ (with Jeffrey Goldberg postinghttp://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/what-would-lincoln-have-done-about-julian-assange/65382/Lipsky's column and also illiterately accusing Assange of treasonhttp://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/on-treason-and-julian-assange/65437/), Jonah Goldberghttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/29/goldbergand, today, *The Wall Street Journal*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644490285411052.html . The way in which so many political commentators so routinely and casually call for the eradication of human beings without a shred of due process is nothing short of demented. Recall Palin/McCain adviser Michael Goldfarb's recent complainthttp://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2010/11/glimpse-into-sick-twisted-and-anti.htmlthat the CIA failed to kill Ahmed Ghailani when he was in custody, or Glenn Reynolds' morning demand http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/110310/ -- in between sips of coffee -- that North Korea be destroyed with nuclear weapons (I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs). Without exception, all of these people cheered on the attack on Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, yet their thirst for slaughter is literally insatiable. After a decade's worth of American invasions, bombings, occupations, checkpoint shootings, drone attacks, assassinations and civilian slaughter, the notion that the U.S. Government can and should murder whomever it wants is more frequent and unrestrained than ever. Those who demand that the U.S. Government take people's lives with no oversight or due process as though they're advocating changes in tax policy or mid-level personnel moves -- *eradicate him!*, they bellow from their seats in the Coliseum -- are just morally deranged barbarians. * *There's just no other accurate way to put it.* * These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves pro-life and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for *their* disregard for human life. And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded American political cultural is. When WikiLeaks critics devote a fraction of their rage to this form of mainstream American thinking -- which, unlike anything WikiLeaks has done, has * actually* resulted in piles upon piles of corpses -- then their anti-WikiLeaks protestation should be taken more seriously, but not until then. full -- http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks/index.html Send
[Marxism] Wikileaks and the New Global Order
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Wikileaks and the New Global Order* The new WikiLeaks disclosures will help to dent many assumptions http://www.palestinechronicle.com/ *By Jonathan Cook** * The Wikileaks disclosure this week of confidential cables from United Statesembassies has been debated chiefly in terms either of the damage to Washington's reputation or of the questions it raises about national security and freedom of the press. The headlines aside, most of the information so far revealed from the 250,000 documents is hardly earth-shattering, even if it often runs starkly counter to the official narrative of the US as the benevolent global policeman, trying to maintain order amid an often unruly rabble of underlings. Is it really surprising that US officials appear to have been trying to spy on senior United Nations staff, and just about everyone else for that matter? Or that Israel has been lobbying strenuously for military action to be taken against Iran? Or even that Saudi Arabia feels threatened by an Iranian nuclear bomb? All of this was already largely understood; the leaks have simply provided official confirmation. The new disclosures, however, do provide a useful insight, captured in the very ordinariness of the diplomatic correspondence, into Washington's own sense of the limits on its global role -- an insight that was far less apparent in the previous Wikileaks revelations on the US army's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Underlying the gossip and analysis sent back to Washington is awareness from many US officials stationed abroad of quite how ineffective -- and often counter-productive -- much US foreign policy is. While the most powerful nation on earth is again shown to be more than capable of throwing its weight around in bullying fashion, a cynical resignation nonetheless shines through many of the cables, an implicit recognition that even the top dog has to recognise its limits. That is most starkly evident in the messages sent by the embassy in Pakistan, revealing the perception among local US officials that the country is largely impervious to US machinations and is in danger of falling entirely out the ambit of Washington's influence. In the cables sent from Tel Aviv, a similar fatalism reigns. The possibility that Israel might go it alone and attack Iran is contemplated as though it were an event Washington has no hope of preventing. US largesse of billions of dollars in annual aid and military assistance to Israel appears to confer zero leverage on its ally's policies. The same sense of US ineffectiveness is highlighted by the Wikileaks episode in another way. Once, in the pre-digital era, the most a whistleblower could hope to achieve was the disclosure of secret documents limited to his or her area of privileged access. Even then the affair could often be hushed up and make no lasting impact. Now, however, it seems the contents of almost the entire system of US official communications is vulnerable to exposure. And anyone with a computer has a permanent and easily disseminated record of the evidence. The impression of a world running out of American control has become a theme touching all our lives over the past decade. The US invented and exported financial deregulation, promising it to be the epitome of the new capitalism that was going to offer the world economic salvation. The result is a banking crisis that now threatens to topple the very governments in Europe who are Washington's closest allies. As the contagion of bad debt spreads through the system, we are likely to see a growing destabilisation of the Washington order across the globe. At the same time, the US army's invasions in the Middle East are stretching its financial and military muscle to tearing point, defining for a modern audience the problem of imperial over-reach. Here too the upheaval is offering potent possibilities to those who wish to challenge the current order. And then there is the biggest crisis facing Washington: of a gradually unfolding environmental catastrophe that has been caused chiefly by the same rush for world economic dominance that spawned the banking disaster. The scale of this problem is overawing most scientists, and starting to register with the public, even if it is still barely acknowledged beyond platitudes by US officials. The repercussions of ecological meltdown will be felt not just by polar bears and tribes living on islands. It will change the way we live -- and whether we live -- in ways that we cannot hope to foresee. At work here is a set of global forces that the US, in its hubris, believed it could tame and dominate in its own cynical interests. By the early 1990s that arrogance manifested itself in the claim of the end of history: the world's problems were about
[Marxism] A trailer for Our Story, an important presentation by Mustafa Barghouthi,
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Israeli Occupation Archive has posted 1 new item(s): * Mustafa Barghouthi: Our Story ___ Mustafa Barghouthi: Our Story http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-11-27/mustafa-barghouthi-our-story-video/ A trailer for Our Story, an important presentation by Mustafa Barghouthi, documenting Palestinian history, the Occupation, the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people by Israel from 1948 to the present day. ___ 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 SEGREGATION OF JEWS AND ARABS IN ISRAEL
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == * * *For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes.* Under the guise of the deceptively mundane name Amendment to the Cooperative Associations Bill, the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) has finalized a bill intended to bypass previous rulings of the Israeli High Court of Justice. If this legislation is approved by the Knesset plenum, it will not be possible to describe it as anything other than an apartheid law. If it becomes law, the amendment will give the acceptance committees of communal villages the authority to limit residence in their towns exclusively to Jews. Using polished and sanitized language, the bill would allow such committees in small rural suburbs to reject applications from families that are incompatible with the social-cultural fabric of the community, and where there are grounds to assume that they will disrupt this fabric. The segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel of 2010 is almost absolute. For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes: segregated education, segregated businesses, separate entertainment venues, different languages, separate political parties ... and of course, segregated housing… Such separation only contributes to the growing mutual alienation of Jews and Arabs. Several courageous attempts - particularly in mixed cities and regions - have been made to change the situation, bridge the rifts and promote integration. These range from efforts to develop mixed educational frameworks, to joint economic ventures and other interventions intended to foster good neighbourly relations based on equal opportunity. Until now, these attempts addressed a situation of *de facto** *segregation. From today, however, such segregation will be fully enforced by the law of the land, to the shame of Israel. * * *Adapted from **Segregation of Jews and Arabs in 2010 Israel is almost absolute, written by** Amnon Be'eri Sulitzeanu, the co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, which promotes coexistence and equality for Israeli Jews and Arabs. Published by Ha’aretz on Oct. 29, 2010. See full text **at*: * www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/segregation-of-jews-and-arabs-in-2010-israel-is-almost-absolute-1.321728 *http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/segregation-of-jews-and-arabs-in-2010-israel-is-almost-absolute-1.321728/t_blank 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 passing of a great man: Chalmers Johnson, critic of empire
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.alternet.org/rss/breakingnews/348859/the_passing_of_a_great_man%3A_chalmers_johson%2C_critic_of_empire/ 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] anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict - assessing the claim of double standards
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Stephen R. Shalom: anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict - assessing the claim of double standards http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-11-19/stephen-shalom-anti-semitism-and-the-israel-palestine-conflict/ As it becomes increasingly difficult to justify Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people, Israel's apologists -- whether based in Israel or at pseudo-academic centers such as the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism -- resort to another line of defense: namely, they accuse Israel's critics of being anti-Semitic. Not the sort of classic anti-Semitism found for example in Hamas's Charter, but instead the anti-Semitism of an anti-Israel double standard. 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] Taibbi: How Can We Expect Wall St. Thieves to Stop Stealing Unless We Throw Them in Prison?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Taibbi: How Can We Expect Wall St. Thieves to Stop Stealing Unless We Throw Them in Prison? By David Sirota http://www.alternet.org/story/148916/taibbi%3A_how_can_we_expect_wall_st._thieves_to_stop_stealing_unless_we_throw_them_in_prison With financial fraud now so sophisticated and pervasive, we clearly need zero-tolerance solutions to change Wall Street's culture. *November 18, 2010* | Often, the most provocative ideas arise after swigs of whiskey. This is especially true when a *Rolling Stone* reporter is around -- and, as I recently learned, it's all but guaranteed when that Rolling Stoner is Matt Taibbi, aka the heir to the magazine's gonzo throne. I had the chance to hang with Taibbi last week after he spoke to a Denver audience about his new book, Griftopia, which argues that Wall Street's bubble-bailout cycle has been one of the greatest -- and least prosecuted -- crimes in history. His presentation was serendipitously timed, coming the same week as a local Bonfire of the Vanities-esque scandal was underscoring the speculator class's privilege. In Colorado's own Bonfire of the Rockies, a local prosecutor had just reduced hit-and-run charges against a fund manager because the prosecutor said a felony would have serious job implications for the Sherman McCoy in question. Over drinks in my living room, Taibbi and I pondered the financial Masters of the Universe and their maddening infallibility. I asked him why they never fear facing legal consequences. Do they believe they're untouchable? Or do they know law enforcement won't pursue them? They're not afraid because other than Bernie Madoff, when was the last time someone on Wall Street faced any real punishment? he responded. Sure, a few go to jail once in a while, but they're usually out in a few months and then on the speaking circuit. That's not exactly a deterrent against bad behavior that's making you millions. Deterrence -- it's the vaunted idea behind tough on crime sentences for violent offenses. Lock the door, throw away the key, and the theory says that heinous acts will be prevented. However, things haven't worked out that way because the toughest tough on crime policies are most focused on crimes of passion, derangement and destitution -- crimes that are often not calculated and therefore not deterrable. This is probably one of the reasons why the murder rate has been higher in death penalty states than in non-death penalty states, leading most criminologists to conclude that capital punishment does not hinder conventional homicide. But what about crimes of economic homicide? These are the opposite of crimes of passion. When, say, a speculator securitizes bad mortgages and peddles them to pension funds as safe investments, that fraud involves exactly the kind of calculation that might be deterred via the prospect of harsh punishment. What if a bank CEO was given life without parole? I asked Taibbi. What if instead of country club jail, one of these guys was shown experiencing prison like a regular convict? That would have to stop some of the worst stuff, right? Right, and go a step further, Taibbi countered. How about putting a few of them in the electric chair? Are you telling me Goldman Sachs execs aren't then going to change? We both busted out laughing -- and hard. Not at the truth behind the theorizing, but at the idea that any of it would actually happen today. In 2005, Washington couldn't even pass a post-Enron proposal to hold CEOs legally liable for their companies' corporate tax fraud. So the notion that the same money-dominated capital will now subject CEOs to anything remotely tough on crime is, well, far-fetched. And yet, the hypothetical is compelling, isn't it? That's because it highlights how our society misapplies deterrence -- and how it might apply the concept more successfully. The necessity of such a criminal justice shift should be obvious. With financial fraud now so sophisticated and pervasive, we clearly need zero-tolerance solutions to change Wall Street's culture. Indeed, without true shock-and-awe deterrence, most regulatory reform will likely be an ineffectual thumb in the economic dike -- just as the thieves desire. 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] Jonathan Cook - Palestinians will be t he losers – again
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By Jonathan Cook - 17 Nov 2010 *Palestinians will be the losers – again* clip - http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-11-17/jonathan-cook-obama%E2%80%99s-bribe/ Watching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians drag on year after year without conclusion, it is easy to overlook the enormous changes that have taken place on the ground since the Oslo Accords were signed 17 years ago. Each has undermined the Palestinians’ primary goal of achieving viable statehood, whether it is the near-trebling of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land to the current numbers of half a million, Israel’s increasing stranglehold on East Jerusalem, the wall that has effectively annexed large slices of the West Bank to Israel, or the splitting of the Palestinian national movement into rival camps following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Another setback of similar magnitude may be unfolding as Barack Obama dangles a lavish package of incentives in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu in an attempt to lure the Israeli prime minister into renewing a three-month, partial freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank. full -- http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-11-17/jonathan-cook-obama%E2%80%99s-bribe/ http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-11-17/jonathan-cook-obama%E2%80%99s-bribe/ 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] Ramsy Baroud - who decides how the oppressed should fight their oppression?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == clip - Violence and nonviolence are mostly collective decisions that are shaped and driven by specific political and socioeconomic conditions and contexts. Unfortunately, the violence of the occupier has a tremendous role in creating and manipulating these conditions. It is unsurprising that the Second Palestinian Uprising was much more violent than the first, and that violent resistance in Palestine gained a huge boost after the victory scored by the Lebanese resistance in 2000, and again in 2006. These factors must be contemplated seriously and with humility, and their complexity should be taken into account before any judgments are made. No oppressed nation should be faced with the demands that Palestinians constantly face. There may well be a thousand Palestinian Gandhis. There may be none. Frankly, it shouldn't matter. Only the unique experience of the Palestinian people and their genuine struggle for freedom could yield what Palestinians as a collective deem appropriate for their own. This is what happened with the people of India, France, Algeria, South Africa, and many other nations that sought and eventually attained their freedom. full -- http://www.truth-out.org/who-decides-how-oppressed-should-fight-oppression65044 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] Democrats and the rule of law
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == concerning Obama's decision to deny due process to accused terrorists and the double standards of the liberal commentariat - Democrats and the rule of law By Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/author/glenn_greenwald/index.html http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/14/trials/index.html * clip - * Obviously, those who screamed bloody murder over Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies but now justify or at least acquiesce to the same policies when implemented by Obama have serious issues with partisan loyalties trumping honest advocacy. But it's when the Obama administration reverses itself -- such as with the torture photos -- that one's intellectual honesty is most conclusively tested: one's beliefs and principles can't shift with Obama's reversals if they're to be meaningful or credible. The same issue applies here: shouldn't anyone who defended Holder's original decision on the ground that it was compelled by the Constitution, the rule of law and our values now vocally denounce Obama for his profound violations of those same doctrines? If the Obama administration merited praise last November for upholding the Constitution, the rule of law and our values with civilian trials, then it must be true that they're now violating the Constitution, the rule of law and our values by denying them. Isn't that a rather serious offense? full article -- http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/14/trials/index.html 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] Tissue, Skin, Bone and Organ Harvesting at Israel's National Forensic Institute Body Parts and Bio-Piracy
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tissue, Skin, Bone and Organ Harvesting at Israel's National Forensic Institute Body Parts and Bio-Piracy By Nancy Scheper-Hughes Exclusive CounterPunch Report October 25, 2010 clip -- Editorial Note: Nancy Scheper-Hughes is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she directs the doctoral program in medicine and society. Since 1996, she has been involved in active field research on the global traffic in human organs, following the movement of bodies, body parts, transplant doctors, their patients, brokers, and kidney sellers, and the practices of organ and tissue harvesting in several countries - from Brazil, Argentina, and Cuba, to Moldova, Israel and Turkey, to India, South Africa, and the United States. She is a co-founder of Organs Watch, an independent, medical human rights, research and documentation center at UC Berkeley. What follows is her detailed report on the tissue, skin, bone and organ harvesting conducted for many years at Israel's L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine, a.k.a. The Abu Kabir Institute, under the aegis of its former director and current chief pathologist, Dr. Yehuda Hiss. Long before Donald Boström leveled allegations of organ-harvesting from Palestinians in the Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, in August 2009, causing furious accusations of blood libel, Dr. Scheper-Hughes had already interviewed Dr. Hiss and had on tape the interview that forms part of her report here. Dr. Scheper-Hughes says her purpose here is to refute the controversial official statements of the Ministry of Health and the IDF that while there may have been irregularities at the National Forensic Institute, they have long since ended. To this day, she says, they have failed to acknowledge, punish, or rectify various medical human rights abuses, past and present at the National Forensic Institute. While many of the allegations are widely known, the testimony by Israeli state pathologist and IDF (reserve) Lt. Col. Chen Kugel has never been published in English and his allegations are known only within Israel. Dr. Scheper-Hughes invited Dr. Kugel to speak publicly on this topic in the U.S. on May 6, 2010. There are three lawsuits ongoing in Israel at the present moment concerning the Forensic Institute and Dr. Hiss. Two concerns alleged abuses against the dead bodies of Israeli citizens. The third concerns Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen who was killed in Gaza in 2003 while protesting the demolition of houses. Transcripts of court proceedings show that Corrie's autopsy was conducted in contravention of an Israeli court order that an official from the U.S. Embassy be present. These transcripts also show Dr. Hiss conceding that he had kept samples from Corrie's body without her family's knowledge. Dr. Hiss also testified that he was uncertain where these samples now are. For his part, Dr. Kugel asserts that abuses at the Institute continue to this day. The Scheper-Hughes article takes care to note Dr. Kugel's description of his former mentor, Dr. Hiss, as a man who saw himself as willing to take great personal and professional risks to serve a noble end. to help the war-wounded victims of terrorist attacks, with his actions as something sublime, or even heroic, as a modern-day Robin Hood. full -- http://www.counterpunch.com/hughes10252010.html 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] our targeted assassinations are morally superior to theirs
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == clip - Since “targeted” murders are illegal, one would expect outcry. One would expect it, but it never comes. Again, compare “targeted assassinations” of the resistance when they are simply going about their business in their own land versus “targeted assassinations” of illegal settlers in the West Bank undoubtedly carrying out war crimes. Or, actually compare the response, especially on the liberal left: hand-wringing about the barbarity of one set of killings, quietude about another (and the silence amidst the killing of shepherdshttp://tildeingaza.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/drie-palestijnse-landbouwers-gedood-na-afvuren-vanaf-israelische-tank/in northern Gaza, too). Look at the ziggurat of racist institutions, practices, and mindsets that contribute to erasing one death while blaring about the other on White House lawns, op-ed pages, and even the progressive press, and wonder: what is the point of contributing to that cacophony, while remaining noticeably mute when Israel takes out the people struggling in whatever benighted, ineffectual, palsied way they can for Palestinian freedom? full -- http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4400 http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4400 http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4400 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 US to Gaza Initiative and the Hillel Controversy at Rutgers
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By Deepa Kumar Last night I attended a fundraiser for the US to Gaza mission that intends to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. It was an incredible success. About 150-200 mostly young people had crowded the hall, most of whom stayed on past 10 pm to listen to the invited speakers. The presence of so many students who had chosen to attend the event despite intimidation by those claiming to represent Rutgers Hillel was truly heartening. Colonel Ann Wright, who was one of the featured speakers, said that this was one of the largest and most well attended of such fundraising events she has been to. Hillel's line of attack was predictable. In a press release Andrew Getraer, the executive director of Rutger's Hillel, argued that there were serious legal issues involved. First on the list was the claim that the blockade runners will attempt to deliver goods, services or technical assistance to Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). This is a standard rhetorical ploy: trot out the bogeyman of Hamas in order to obscure and paper over the horrendous conditions under which Palestinian people in Gaza live. In fact, the press release does not once make reference to these conditions and why it is so urgent and important to raise money for this humanitarian crisis. Instead, it asserts that Hillel is vehemently opposed to this event. Full article -- http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kumar051110.html 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] Our Big, Fat, Invisible Wars
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Our Big, Fat, Invisible Wars * Jon Letman, Truthout: One can only assume that the White House offered [Jon] Stewart a one-on-one with Obama on the condition that there was to be absolutely no mention of the wars, the troops, terror threats, predator drones, Guantanamo, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Iran, North Korea or anything with even the slightest whiff of war. http://www.truth-out.org/our-big-fat-invisible-wars64846 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] NYC 11/9 - The Arabs and the Holocaust, the Arab Israeli war of narratives: Gilbert Achcar, Amira Hass, Rashid Khalidi
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Arabs and the Holocaust – the Arab Israeli war of narratives: Gilbert Achcar, Amira Hass, Rashid Khalidi The Arab Israeli War of Narratives *GILBERT ACHCAR * Professor of Development at SOAS, London Author of *The Arabs and the Holocaust * *and * *AMIRA HASS * *Haaretz *correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories* * Author of *Drinking the Sea at **Gaza** * *Moderated by Rashid Khalidi * Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University Sponsored by the Middle East Institute and the Center *for *Palestine Studies Tuesday, 9 November 2010 6:00PM – 8:00PM Room 1501 ~ International Affairs Building 420 West 118 Street between Amsterdam and Morningside 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] Why ARE so many modern British career women converting to Islam?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tony Blair's sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend.- She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so. Here, writer EVE AHMED, who was raised as a Muslim before rejecting the faith, explores the reasons why. http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103850437989s=109652e=001xLxTVhJKyrUHIfNcogunpgnSkNLwpHJKDymw3jgGbSm7GRP4_NeVylaaxOY4tlyqla7Kz3Q-xNlBcobHP6XOnxGvYYXTIQx8ieh8j1DpHky18-QH-KW37w== http://bit.ly/aL8jjghttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103850437989s=109652e=001xLxTVhJKyrUHIfNcogunpgnSkNLwpHJKDymw3jgGbSm7GRP4_NeVylaaxOY4tlyqla7Kz3Q-xNlBcobHP6XOnxGvYYXTIQx8ieh8j1DpHky18-QH-KW37w== 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] Manufacturing Mayhem in Mexico: From Nixon to NAFTA and Beyond
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Written by Chris Floyd Thursday, 28 October 2010 08:58 clip -- Ben Ehrenreich at the London Review of Books has written one of the best articles on the current situation in Mexico that I have seen. Thousands of people are dying there, caught up in a sinister nexus where all the main players -- drug cartels, their officials backers (and servants), the various Drug Warriors on both sides of the border, the corporations profiteering from the Drug War, the august and respectable financial institutions who move the money for both the cartels and their official antagonists, and the American and Mexican politicians who happily game the murderous system for their own cynical advantage -- are reaping huge rewards, while a whole society is being destroyed. As Ehrenreich points out in the succinct but detailed historical background he provides, the current Drug War-fueled destruction is just part and parcel of a larger assault on the underpinning of Mexican society -- a wider campaign that includes brutal economic war, and the relentless militarization of society on both sides of the border. On the U.S. side, it is again a thoroughly bipartisan affair, ranging from Richard Nixon to Clinton's NAFTA and beyond. Unfortunately, the article is not one of those that LRB makes available to non-subscribers every month. Fortunately, your correspondent happens to be a subscriber, so below are some extensive excerpts from Ehreneich's superb piece. full --- http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2039-manufacturing-mayhem-in-mexico-from-nixon-to-nafta-and-beyond.html?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=Feed%3A+empire_burlesque+%28Empire+Burlesque+-+Chris+Floyd%29 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] Obama Administration Handed Over Detainees Despite Reports of Torture
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Obama Administration Handed Over Detainees Despite Reports of Torture Saturday 23 October 2010 by: Angus Stickler http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/2010/10/23/obama-administration-handed-over-detainees/ http://www.truth-out.org/obama-administration-handed-over-detainees-despite-reports-torture64482 President Barack Obama’s government handed over thousands of detainees to the Iraqi authorities, despite knowing there were hundreds of reports of alleged torture in Iraqi government facilities. Washington was warned by the United Nations and many human rights organisations that torture was widespread in Iraqi detention centres. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal the US’s own troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and 2009. *Prisoner Handover* In July 2010, the US completed the handover of 9,250 detainees to the Iraqi authorities. It would be a clear violation of international law, drawn up by the United Nations Convention Against Torture,http://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATYmtdsg_no=IV-9chapter=4lang=enratified by the US in 1994, for any government to transfer detainees to a regime at whose hands they face torture or other serious human rights violations. However, the 1,365 cases of alleged torture by the Iraqi authorities found by the Bureau, raise questions as to why the US government handed over detainees to these authorities. Human rights organisations have expressed outrage at the revelations. Professor Novak, the UN Rapporteur on Torture told the Bureau: “If the United States forces handed over detainees to Iraqi jurisdiction, despite the fact that they were at serious risk of being subjected to torture, that is a violation of Article 3C of the Convention Against Torture of which the US is a signatory.” He said there should be a full and thorough investigation to ascertain whether any of the detainees handed over to the Iraqi authorities by the US have been abused. “The burden of proof is on the US to prove that they can categorically state that the detainees they are handing over are not at risk of torture.There should be an investigation to look into the fate of those individuals to see whether they have been abused.” It is likely that the detainees handed over could face torture. Many of the reports in the logs detail complaints of brutality reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s regime. They include accounts of detainees being whipped with cables, chains, wire and pistols and being burnt with acid and cigarettes. Some accounts describe people having electric shocks to their genitals, fingernails ripped out and fingers cut off. In other cases, the documents report men being sodomised with bottles, hoses and raped. One of the worst cases relates to a man held in an underground bunker and tortured for two months in Diyala Prison, run by the Iraqi Ministry of Justice. March 25 2006 His hands were bound/shackled and he was suspended from the ceiling; the use of blunt objects (pipes) to beat him on the back and legs; and the use of electric drills to bore holes in his legs. Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Porgramme said: “This adds further weight, if it were needed, that US authorities committed a serious breach of international law when they handed over thousands of detainees to Iraqi security forces who, they clearly knew, were responsible for widespread and systematic torture. It is our view that the current US administration is complicit in torture. “The US authorities, like all other governments, have an obligation not only to ensure that their own forces do not use torture, but also that people who were detained ans are bieng held by US forces are not handed over to other authorities who are likely to torture them.” He continued: “The US failed to respect this obligation in Iraq, despite the great volume of evidence available from many different quarters showing that the Iraqi security forces use torture widely and are allowed to do so with impunity. The US military records add to a body of evidence gathered by the international community concerning allegations of torture within Iraqi state facilities. *Evidence of Abuse * In 2008 the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)http://www.uniraq.org/warned, “Ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amidst pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses, constitute severe breaches of international human rights obligations.” Despite this, on January 1 2009, the Iraq-United States Bilateral Security Agreement came into force. This provided for the release and transfer from US jurisdiction of detainees to
[Marxism] Suicide terrorism, the violent nature of Islam, and the role of foreign occupation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *It's the Occupation, Stupid* Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn't to blame -- the root of the problem is foreign military occupations. *BY ROBERT A. PAPE **October 22, 2010** **Foreign Policy*http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/18/it_s_the_occupation_stupid * -- -Although *no one wants to talk about it, 9/11 is still hurting America. That terrible day inflicted a wound of public fear that easily reopens with the smallest provocation, and it continues to bleed the United States of money, lives, and goodwill around the world. Indeed, America's response to its fear has, in turn, made Americans less safe and has inspired more threats and attacks. In the decade since 9/11, the United States has conquered and occupied two large Muslim countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), compelled a huge Muslim army to root out a terrorist sanctuary (Pakistan), deployed thousands of Special Forces troops to numerous Muslim countries (Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, etc.), imprisoned hundreds of Muslims without recourse, and waged a massive war of ideas involving Muslim clerics to denounce violence and new institutions to bring Western norms to Muslim countries. Yet Americans still seem strangely mystified as to why some Muslims might be angry about this situation. In a narrow sense, America is safer today than on 9/11. There has not been another attack on the same scale. U.S. defenses regarding immigration controls, airport security, and the disruption of potentially devastating domestic plots have all improved. But in a broader sense, America has become perilously unsafe. Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined. From 1980 to 2003, there were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10 percent were anti-American inspired. Since 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over 91 percent against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries. Yes, these attacks are overseas and mostly focused on military and diplomatic targets. So too, however, were the anti-American suicide attacks before 2001. It is important to remember that the 1995 and 1996 bombings of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen were the crucial dots that showed the threat was rising prior to 9/11. Today, such dots are occurring by the dozens every month. So why is nobody connecting them? full -- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26664.htmhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103817652991s=109652e=001VFd8UgCAbGPsPN1fD5jrYT5FA3jLfoT8Va0nUweOLj1m6gS4f8YxL6pByA1A3RkgUlSBuci8r64gLd6evsjqt4HVfMtZtzBelXC7vfhcnc2lrhuPdAYkj9Wso0DkAWHsjVpiABGRai7AFifyRJ5Sjb81_iuj1oyq ** *Robert A. Pape teaches at the University of Chicago and is co-author, with James K. Feldman, of Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop Ithttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226645606?ie=UTF8tag=fopo-20linkCode=as2camp=1789creative=390957creativeASIN=0226645606. * 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] Association for Civil Rights in Israel on democracy’s heart attack (Long)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Association for Civil Rights in Israel on democracy’s heart attack (Long)http://theonlydemocracy.org/2010/10/association-of-civil-rights-in-israel-on-democracys-heart-attack-long/ October 22nd, 2010 | by Jesse Bacon From the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, reprinted by permission. Ed’s note: This is long, but close enough to our mission to warrant reprinting in full. Here you have the definite guide to anti-democracy bills in the Israeli Knesset, some that will be familiar to readers of this blog, some that even close followers of Israeli democracy will be unaware of. Did you know that the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) might consider banning face veils? Or that there was a bill to restrict the Israeli cinema? Or that Israel’s embattled political opposition faced further restrictions in one bill that passed its first reading? None of these bills have passed as of yet. But they offer a window into what the next outrage might be and clearly illustrate the steep downward trendlines of Israeli democracy. No doubt not all of these bills will become law, but each will do their part to send a message to Israel’s political and national minorities and oppressed groups about where things are headed. And exactly none of them will be mentioned next time an official Israeli film festival comes to town, or the next time an Israeli or American leader goes on about our shared democratic heritage. Harming Democracy in the Heart of Democracyhttp://www.acri.org.il/eng/story.aspx?id=769 News A Position Paper Ahead of the Knesset’s Winter Session Update:10/5/2010 by Attorney Debbie Gild-Hayo October 2010 http://www.acri.org.il/eng/story.aspx?id=769 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] Why “Breaking the Silence” is Shor t-Listed for the Sakharov Prize
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Magnes Zionist - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 Why “Breaking the Silence” is Short-Listed for the Sakharov Prizehttp://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2010/10/why-breaking-silence-is-short-listed.html There is a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and there are a lot of human rights violations. The European Parliament's Sakhorov Prize is intended to honour exceptional individuals [and groups] who combat intolerance, fanaticism, and oppression. Like Andrei Sakharov himself all the winners of the prize have shown how much courage it takes to defend human rights and freedom of expression. To understand why Breaking the Silence, an organization of IDF combat veterans, is short-listed for the prize, one only need read the Wall Street Journal's editorial attackhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575561593663435672.html?mod=europe_opinionon the group and the Europeans for short-listing them. The problem is not so much the organization's work, which makes sweeping accusations against Israeli soldiers…. False. The organization does not make accusations, much less sweeping ones. It collects testimonies from IDF soldiers, both veterans and those on active duty, that report human rights abuses that they witnessed or participated in. Hundreds of testimonies (some in English translation can be read herehttp://www.shovrimshtika.org/testimonies_group_e.asp) have been collected and subjected to a rigorous verification process. To date, not a single question mark or doubt has been raised about any of the testimonies. At the same time, the IDF Spokesperson's office, which has itself relied on the organization's testimonies in its investigations, has changed its story time and time again on incidents and policies, e.g., the use of white phosphorushttp://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2010/02/we-didnt-we-did-we-didnt-we-did-we.htmlin the Gaza Operation or the bombing of the Gazan mosquehttp://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2010/07/idfs-report-to-un-we-didnt-do-anything.htmlduring prayers. Full article --- http://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2010/10/why-breaking-silence-is-short-listed.html 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] Spitting in the Face of U.S. Troops
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Spitting in the Face of U.S. Troops by Mark Engler Dissent October 14, 2010 clip - Last week, the Supreme Court took up a case regarding a right-wing fundamentalist pastor, Fred Phelps, whose anti-gay congregation has taken to protesting at military funerals, carrying signs that read Fag Troops or Thank God for Dead Soldiers. Phelps doesn't seem to care whether or not the dead soldiers in question were actually gay. He believes that the killing of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is the result of America's immorality and its tolerance for abortion and homosexuality-the latter supposedly expressed in the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. The father of one Marine killed in Iraq sued after his son's funeral was protested, beginning a long legal battle. The Supreme Court ultimately heard arguments about whether his family's right to grieve in peace should be taken into consideration in constraining the free speech of Phelps's followers. I'll put aside the legal issues involved in this case going to the Supreme Court. (That the current court is taking on any free speech case probably bodes ill for civil liberties.) Instead, I want to consider for a moment the concept of demonstrating at military funerals-or targeting returning troops in general with protests. The idea that the people rallying outside military funerals are Fags Die, God Laughs adherents of the religious Right, rather than godless leftists, will be a shock for many Americans, especially conservatives. It contradicts a deep-rooted myth. A persistent narrative about the Vietnam War is that anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s vilified the troops, spitting in their faces upon their return to the United States. This storyline was perhaps most memorably presented by veteran John Rambo in the now- classic film First Blood. When he breaks down at the end of the movie, Rambo explains resentfully: I come back to the world, and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of crap! Who are they to protest me?! Who are they?! Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about! I like Rambo as a series of action movies, and I've written about the franchise's conflicted politics. But this point is definitely one that Rambo's writers get wrong. Historian Jerry Lembcke, author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, has done a very convincing job of debunking the story of spat-upon soldiers. As Jack Shafer summarized in an article for Slate, Lembcke investigated hundreds of news accounts of antiwar activists spitting on vets. But every time he pushed for more evidence or corroboration from a witness, the story collapsed-the actual person who was spat on turned out to be a friend of a friend. Or somebody's uncle. He writes that he never met anybody who convinced him that any such clash took place. While Lembcke doesn't prove that nobody ever expectorated on a serviceman-you can't prove a negative, after all-he reduces the claim to an urban myth. In most urban myths, the details morph slightly from telling to telling Lembcke uncovered a whole lot of spitting from the war years, but the published accounts always put the antiwar protester on the receiving side of a blast from a pro-Vietnam counterprotester. Surely, he contends, the news pages would have given equal treatment to a story about serviceman getting the treatment. Then why no stories in the newspaper morgues, he asks? full --http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=288 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] 8, 000 Demonstrate in Tel Aviv against Racist Laws and Population Transfer Exercises
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 8,000 Demonstrate in Tel Aviv against Racist Laws and Population Transfer Exercises http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=51028699f=17475u=22792232c=3906032 Some 8,000 people marched through Tel Aviv to the Ministry of Defense on 16 October 2010, in protest against the racist laws being promoted by the Israeli government and the Israeli security forces' population transfer exercises. A long list of organizations, movements, and political parties participated in the demonstration, including the Hadash Party, Hithabrut-Tarabut, and the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, amongst others. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/israel181010.html 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] Obama gets input from war criminal
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101015/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_rice Obama, Rice huddle on arms treaty, other issues Fri Oct 15, 10:15 am ET --- Friday, Oct 15, 2010 11:16 ET A political culture free of accountability By Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/15/accountability/index.html Wolf Blitzer, CNN, January 10, 2003http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-10/us/wbr.smoking.gun_1_smoking-gun-nuclear-weapons-hans-blix?_s=PM:US : Last September 8, I interviewed President Bush's National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I was pressing her on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities. . . . We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon, she told me. . . . Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. ABC News, April 9, 2008http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256page=1 : *Sources: Top Bush Advisers Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'* In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of combined interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said. Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- *whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.* The high-level discussions about these enhanced interrogation techniques were so detailed, these sources said, *some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed* -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft. As the national security adviser, *Rice chaired the meetings*, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies. . . . Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said. . . . According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: Why are we talking about this in the White House? *History will not judge this kindly.* The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, *pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo*, sources told ABC News. *Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive.* Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say *she did not back down, telling the CIA: This is your baby. Go do it.* Associated Press, todayhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101015/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_rice : *Obama, Rice huddle on arms treaty, other issues* WASHINGTON -- President Barack *Obama is meeting with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk about a pending arms treaty with **Russia**and other issues . * A White House official said Rice and Obama have a cordial relationship, and the president looks forward to Friday's meeting covering a range of foreign policy topics. In other words: *Prosecute Bush officials who broke the law and instituted a worldwide torture regime?* *Please. I'm doing the opposite: I'm going to select some of them to occupy the highest positionshttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/11/16/brennanin my administrationhttp://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/07/12/the-dark-legacy-of-gen-mcchrystal/and then meet with others in order to drink from the well of their wisdom on a wide range of foreign policy matters.* I realize this is very childish, shrill
[Marxism] American Science's Racist History Still Haunts the World
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == American Science's Racist History Still Haunts the World By Michelle Chen Colorlines October 10, 2010 Early in America's crusade to spread the wonders of modern medicine, a group of researchers in Guatemala did something unspeakable in the name of science. Documentation of the project is just now coming to light, more than 60 years later, and it reads like a horror novel: Hundreds of men systematically infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in an effort, endorsed by both the U.S. and Guatemalan governments, to research the effectiveness of drug treatment. Researchers exposed men to disease with varying degrees of intent. At first, Guatemalan health official Juan Funes selected prisoners in Guatemala City as subjects because prostitution at the penitentiary would likely yield fresh infections. But the researchers used more invasive tactics as well. The Washington Post reports, 'in other cases, doctors put infectious material on the cervixes of uninfected prostitutes before they had sex with prisoners.' When they needed more infections, they took more aggressive measures-'direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded - or in a few cases through spinal punctures,' according to the research of the historian who broke the story, Susan M. Reverby (interviewed recently on Democracy Now!). Many, but not all, of these people-who included prisoners, soldiers and mental patients-were given penicillin to test its effectiveness as an after-sex treatment of syphilis, a disease that that can result in blindness or death. Medical personnel carried out similar studies on gonorrhea, which can lead to intense pain and infertility, and chancroid, which causes genital ulcers. The archival documents suggest the experiments didn't raise significant ethical qualms in Washington. The surgeon general at the time was quoted as saying, 'You know, we couldn't do such an experiment in this country.' Well, in a way, they could. A bizarre element in the story is the connection to another shameful chapter in the history of American medicine. The man behind the infection of incarcerated Guatemalans, Dr. John Cutler, had a hand in the infamous Tuskegee experiments as well. full -- http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/10/human_subjects_guatemala_and_the_history_of_racism_in_experimental_medicine.html 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] WikiLeaks' Biggest Document Dump Yet Coming Monday:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Monday, the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks will release nearly 400,000 pages worth of classified U.S. Army documents on the war in Iraq, making it the single largest military leak in U.S. history. http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103789235038s=109652e=001SOVm23hMDvI7WCACFCFxUf3mAEoAZMLdCeSS6F15DMbr-timw5buJtSqwXs0HS2BxzBaPOhXd0wSTSyBjB1JdqWTe5DZ4IkRTVpIDdCVv7zGL2sbhJcA3mI8Ifle1FXzwp052Ci0mJyU_luC_Ij9AqvVArqAOPVi //www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26612.htmhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103789235038s=109652e=001SOVm23hMDvI7WCACFCFxUf3mAEoAZMLdCeSS6F15DMbr-timw5buJtSqwXs0HS2BxzBaPOhXd0wSTSyBjB1JdqWTe5DZ4IkRTVpIDdCVv7zGL2sbhJcA3mI8Ifle1FXzwp052Ci0mJyU_luC_Ij9AqvVArqAOPVi 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] Jonathan Cook: Israel conducts population transfer training exercises
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-10-14/jonathan-cook-israel-conducts-population-transfer-training-exercises/ 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] Narco News: Ecuador's CONAIE and Defamation by Journalism of the State
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Joseph Catron jncat...@gmail.com wrote: Last September 30, Latin America observed what appeared to be the third coup d’etat of the new millennium, and upon first glance many of us believed it was possible. But with the passage of time following this event, the facts have become even more confusing. Ecuadorian social movements that didn’t support President Rafael Correa *ipso facto *were attacked with criticisms and falsehoods from those whose vision of the left in the hemisphere doesn’t transcend the limits of the state. Within the very nature of the attempted coup, or whatever it was, the most relevant thing emerged a few days later, with the attempted attacks against historic Ecuadorian indigenous organizations that, for strong differences over its policies, don’t support the Ecuadorian government ... http://www.narconews.com/Issue67/article4230.html It sounds like Gollinger and her co-thinkers are engaged in the same type of demagogic attempts to equate ALL opposition to the Correa government (and by implication, Morales and Chavez) with that of reactionaries. This is the same type of gutter politics that Obama worshipers employ when they denounce left criticism of their messiah as Tea Party racists. And of course it was also a staple of the Stalin regime's Moscow Frame-Up Trials. Sartesian was right on the money last week when he said that the spirit of Stalin-defender Grover Furr was alive and well on some of the postings here. 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] US Cities Face Half a Trillion Dollars of Pension Deficits:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Big US cities could be squeezed by unfunded public pensions as they and counties face a $574 billion funding gap, a study to be released on Tuesday shows. http://www.cnbc.com/id/39626759http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103775078763s=109652e=001PLnqbaOUVW8fLGPnIAfr9ZC7su6Dl8u6pTL8iY700xzXU-_92BtrZLy8ZnLzwkMAihom-ydHnIed93PmYVgGrcosofun2Oww36dmjpRcEBLjQ_mHlKGeUH_aGtyHiiW6 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] Chilean miners,
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Chile's Ghosts Are Not Being Rescued Wednesday 13 October 2010 By John Pilger, Truthout/Op-Ed http://www.truth-out.org/chiles-ghosts-are-not-being-rescued64160 The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a facade. The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and is the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile's gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile's privatized mines. The San Jose mine, where the trapped men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed - but not for long. On 30 July last, a labor department report warned again of serious safety deficiencies, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed. For all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the capital Santiago, a sign says: The forgotten past is full of memory. This was the torture center where hundreds of people were murdered and disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Pinochet and his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to live nearby and remembers the screams. I was taken there one wintry morning in 2006 by Sara De Witt, who was imprisoned as a student activist and now lives in London. She was electrocuted and beaten, yet survived. Later, we drove to the home of Salvador Allende, the great democrat and reformer who perished when Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973 - Latin America's own 9/11. His house is a silent white building without a sign or a plaque. Everywhere, it seems, Allende's name has been eliminated. Only in the lone memorial in the cemetery are the words engraved *Presidente de la Republica * as part of a remembrance of the *ejecutados Politicos*: those executed for political reasons. Allende died by his own hand while Pinochet bombed the presidential palace with British planes as the American ambassador watched. Today, Chile is a democracy, though many would dispute that, notably those in the barrios forced to scavenge for food and steal electricity. In 1990, Pinochet bequeathed a constitutionally compromised system as a condition of his retirement and the military's withdrawal to the political shadows. This ensures that the broadly reformist parties, known as Concertacion, are permanently divided or drawn into legitimizing the economic designs of the heirs of the dictator. At the last election, the right-wing Coalition for Change, the creation of Pinochet's ideologue Jaime Guzman, took power under President Sebastian Piñera. The bloody extinction of true democracy that began with the death of Allende was, by stealth, complete. Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail industries. He made his fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup and during the free-market experiments of the zealots from the University of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labor minister under Pinochet, privatized mining and state pensions and all but destroyed the trade unions. This was applauded in Washington as an economic miracle, a model of the new cult of neoliberalism that would sweep the continent and ensure control from the north. Today. Chile is critical to President Barack Obama's rollback of the independent democracies in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Piñera's closest ally is Washington's main man, Juan Manuel Santos, the new president of Colombia, home to seven US bases and an infamous human rights record familiar to Chileans who suffered under Pinochet's terror. Post-Pinochet Chile has kept its own enduring abuses in shadow. The families still attempting to recover from the torture or disappearance of a loved one bear the prejudice of the state and employers. Those not silent are the Mapuche people, the only indigenous nation the Spanish conquistadors could not defeat. In the late 19th century, the European settlers of an independent Chile waged their racist War of Extermination against the Mapuche who were left as impoverished outsiders. During Allende's thousand days in power, this began to change. Some Mapuche lands were returned and a debt of justice was recognized. Since then, a vicious, largely unreported war has been waged against the
[Marxism] Currency wars are necessary if all else fails
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard* The overwhelming fact of the global currency system is that America needs a much weaker dollar to bring its economy back into kilter and avoid slow ruin, yet the rest of the world cannot easily handle the consequences of such a wrenching adjustment. There is not enough demand to go around. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26565.htmhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1103770625082s=109652e=001J7-ndJOPkko7ayLveMJd0rb61G8z_dosbqiM6MY51tmncCqXUiYc4xmUovZi-w4W22ycMtxtLpbDNJMsfVPQBgtMHkLk214mLdAi4qgRCgHQyDwllwO9EnFFdiqdhHXlGaoOTlbptYy4U89-hOI3iq2hOW0vXCMt 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] Panama Awakes
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == from portside.org http://www.indypendent.org/2010/09/30/panama-awakes/ 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] Rashid Khalidi, The Palestine Question and the U.S. Public Sphere
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Rashid Khalidi, The Palestine Question and the U.S. Public Sphere http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=50820142f=17475u=22792232c=3901891 The 1967 war had a galvanizing effect on American Jewish attachment to Israel. It connected a whole generation that was coming of age at that time with Israel in a way that was different from what had come before. . . . The growing emphasis on the Holocaust and the increased identification with Israel have grown into what have now been institutionalized as central pillars of American Jewish identity in ways that were not true previously. . . . These were changes that were the result of the fact that our government, the U.S. government, was increasingly coming to see Israel, for the first time, as an ally. It was seeing it for the first time as a proxy in the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union and its Arab clients in the region. This was not always the case. We think it was but it wasn't. The United States and the Soviet Union were on the same side in 1947-1948; they both supported the establishment of Israel. They were on the same side in 1956; they both opposed the tripartite aggression against Egypt. There was no Cold War alignment on one side or the other on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel had not been considered to be a strategic asset to the United States, by most American policy-makers, from 1947 right up through the mid-1960s. But by 1967, the United States had become completely aligned with Israel against the Arab states, most of which were supported by the USSR, in a configuration that continued until the end of the Cold War. Israel has been considered a strategic asset ever since -- but, I'm trying to stress, never was before that -- even though there may be some questioning of Israel's strategic value in some policy-making circles in this town today. . . . The impact of the Vietnam War was also a big factor in causing policy-makers to see the Middle East in Cold War terms much starker than had been the case before. And the June war itself played a role in this closer alignment with Israel. This resounding Israeli victory showed American policy-makers who were deeply shaken at this time by Vietnam -- Johnson was about to resign a year later because of Vietnam, this was before the Tet Offensive, but things were already going badly -- it showed him and the people around him that Israel could serve American interests in opposing the Soviet Union. The defeat of the Soviet-supplied Arab armies provided a welcome triumph for the free world at a time when news from the Southeast Asian battlefields was bad. Full article – http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/khalidi081010.html 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] starting an education thread???
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Gary MacLennan gary.maclenn...@gmail.comwrote: There is so much going on right now in Oz that is being influenced by events in the States. the current Pri9me Minister Julia Gillard when she was Minister of Ed was busily channelling Joel Klein and Michele Rhee for all she worth. I note too the speech at the Tory conference by Geoffrey Canada who blamed unions for all the ills in education. His speech went down a treat no doubt. We will also have a big deal made of Guggenheim's doco also pushing the same propaganda. I noted too the speech by Katherine Birbalsingh that went down so well. Ms Birbalsingh claims to have been a Marxist but was led into voting Tory by the recognition of the need for Right Wing thinking on Education. Bill Gates, Public School Teachers and the Politics of Humiliation -- Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: Democratic goals and public values no longer have any merit in a reform movement in love with the logic of measurement, profit and privatization. This is not a reform movement, but an anti-reform movement, that can only imagine schooling within what my colleague David L. Clark calls 'an eternal present of consumption and subjection.' It is a movement that appears to kill critical thought, the ability to think imaginatively and any notion of pedagogy that takes matters of individual autonomy and social empowerment seriously. In the name of reform, we now face increasing numbers of schools that either bear a close resemblance to the old Ford factory production lines or are modeled after prisons. http://www.truth-out.org/when-generosity-hurts-bill-gates-public-school-teachers-and-politics-humiliation63868 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] Dahr Jamail | Evidence Refutes BP's and Fed's Deceptions
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Dahr Jamail | Evidence Refutes BP's and Fed's Deceptions* Dahr Jamail, Truthout: In August, Truthout conducted soil and water sampling in Pass Christian Harbor, Mississippi; on Grand Isle, Louisiana; and around barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana, in order to test for the presence of oil from BP's Macondo Well. Laboratory test results from the samples taken in these areas show extremely high concentrations of oil in both the soil and water. These results contradict consistent claims made by the federal government and BP since early August that much of the Gulf of Mexico is now free of oil and safe for fishing and recreational use A comprehensive sampling regime across the Gulf, taken regularly over the years ahead, is clearly required in order to implement appropriate cleanup responses and take public safety precautions. http://www.truth-out.org/evidence-refutes-bps-and-feds-deceptions63843 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] [Israeli Occupation Archive] Jonathan Cook: Obama's cave-in to Israel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Jonathan Cook: Obama's cave-in to Israel In fact, the terms of Obama’s letter were drafted in cooperation with Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister and leader of the supposedly leftwing Labor party. When he was prime minister a decade ago, he insisted on a similar military presence in the Valley during the failed Camp David talks... http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-10-04/obamas-cave-in-to-israel/ 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] Israeli Soldiers Convicted of Using Boy as Shield
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By ETHAN BRONNERhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ethan_bronner/index.html?inline=nyt-per Published: October 3, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?_r=1hpw JERUSALEM — An Israeli military court convicted two soldiers on Sunday of using a 9-year-old Palestinianhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html?inline=nyt-classifierboy as a human shield by forcing him to check bags for explosives in Israelhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/israel/index.html?inline=nyt-geo’s 2008-9 Gazahttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/gaza_strip/index.html?inline=nyt-geowar. The court said that the two soldiers, both infantry sergeants, had taken part in an operation to seize an apartment building in Tel al-Hawa, a southern suburb of Gaza City, while under attack from Hamashttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/hamas/index.html?inline=nyt-orgfighters. A summary of the court’s judgment provided by the military spokesman’s office said the two had rounded up civilians and come upon bags in a bathroom. They grabbed the child and ordered him to check the bags for booby traps. “The boy, who feared for his fate and was pressured by the situation, wet his pants,” the judges said, pointedly noting that, “unlike the soldiers, the boy had no means of personal protection.” After the boy emptied the contents of one bag and had trouble opening a second, one of the soldiers shot at the second bag. The boy was returned, terrified but unharmed, to his family. Sunday’s convictions, which could carry prison terms, are the first serious ones in Israel’s criminal investigations into the conduct of its soldiers during the three-week Gaza invasion aimed at stopping rocket fire at Israeli communities. The army says it looked into 48 cases, and a third of them are still in progress. In July, the army indicted several officers and soldiershttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.htmlfor actions during the offensive, including a staff sergeant accused of deliberately shooting at least one Palestinian civilian who was walking with a group of people waving a white flag. But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient and that Israeli troops carried out a number of atrocities that require outside investigation. The United Nations Human Rights Councilhttp://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/commissioned a South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, to lead an inquiry into the war’s conduct. His report, issued a year ago, said there was compelling evidence of war crimes by both sides. It said that Israel had waged war on Gaza’s civilians and civilian infrastructure in an act of inexcusable collective punishment. Israel, which declined to cooperate with that investigation, has rejected the report’s findings, saying it is looking into wrongdoing on its own. Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the war, many of them civilians. The Goldstone reporthttp://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/a-hrc-12-48.pdfcited four episodes in which Israeli soldiers were said to have used Palestinians as shields, but those were all adults in other parts of Gaza. At the military court where the two sergeants were convicted, several former comrades attending wore shirts with the slogan “We are victims of Goldstone.” 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
