[Marxism] thoughts on Gaza
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I am still away from Australia and so cannot link up with any protests about the slaughter that Israel is perpetrating. The papers here report a Unionist/Loyalist versus Nationalist divide on the question. As I posted earlier the Northern Irish Loyalists support the Israeli side while the Nationalists proudly fly the Palestinian flag. That is as it should be. I have begun reading the Angry Arab and Juan Cole again, and that in itself is a sign that political tensions are growing. Morsi, who did very little for Gaza when he was president, has issued a pro-Palestinian statement. The Angry Arab reports Israeli flags being burned in unlikely places such as Kuwait and Suez. The Saudi Arabia ruling family and the Egyptian dictator Sisi are probably feeling more isolated. Juan Cole blogs that Kerry and Obama are furious with Netanyahu because Israel's actions are isolating America within the Middle East. The Turkish government is talking or hinting at the possibility of sending warships to Gaza. That will never happen under Erdogan, but the fact that the hint is being aired does have some significance. Yet nothing seems to stop the Israel war machine. The original objective of weakening Hamas was in all probability a Saudi Arabian-Egyptian-Israeli initiative. The idea presumably was to kill so many Gazans then offer a truce which would weaken Hamas. The bombing failed to achieve that. Hamas rejected the 'truce' and public opinion stayed behind them in Gaza. Then Israel made the mistake of committing ground troops. This resulted in significant Israeli losses and evoked memories of IDF humiliations in Lebanon. At that stage the Israeli war machine was faced with the bad choice of accepting a truce which would leave Hamas stronger. They rejected that and as a consequence the bombing intensified and more children died. Now there is threat of an even bigger military offensive. Seemingly the objective is the tunnels. That of course is a nonsense. If the IDF fills in tunnels and they can be dug up again. Besides picture of tunnels do not cut it in the social media sphere when they are up alongside pictures of the butchered children. So where are we now? Obama and Kerry seem unable to save Zionism from the Zionists. A full on military assault on Gaza will result in more horror and the political consequences for those Arab regimes which support Israel could be very serious. The Hezbollah leader, Nasrallah, has reportedly said the situation was becoming decisive. That is exactly correct. Ultimately Israel must win militarily if it throws everything it has at the Gazans. But that will be a political disaster of the first magnitude. I personally expect Obama, Ban KI-Moon and all the other opportunists to go all out to restrain Netanyahu. But politics is not an exact science and the Zionists have embarked on a path from which they will have great difficulty in returning. comradely Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: ZCommunications » In Fortaleza, BRICS Became Co-Dependent Upon Eco-Financial Imperialism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By Patrick Bond The cleansing power of political-economic sanity absent in the BRICS elites comes from only one place: below, i.e., social activism. For example, just like any rational South African who loved the World Cup and hated its Swiss Mafiosi organizers, Fifa, Brazilian society remains furious about Sepp Blatter’s politically-destructive relationship with Workers Party president Dilma Rousseff. That and other neoliberal tendencies – such as raising public transport prices beyond affordability – mobilised millions of critics which in turn was met by vicious police repression. In Russia, recent activist challenges come as a result not only of Putin’s expansion into Ukraine, but attacks on protesters. Civil society has been courageous in that authoritarian context: a democracy movement in late 2011, a freedom of expression battle involving a risque rock band in 2012, gay rights in 2013 and at the Winter Olympics, and anti-war protests in March and May 2014. In India, activists shook the power structure over corruption in 2011-12, a high-profile rape-murder in late 2012, and a municipal electoral surprise by a left-populist anti-establishment political party in late 2013. In China, protesters hit the streets an estimated 150 000 times annually, at roughly equivalent rates in urban and rural settings, especially because of pollution, such as the early April 2014 protest throughout Guandong against a Paraxylene factory. But just as important are labour struggles, such as the recent strike against Nike and Adidas. In South Africa, multiple resource curses help explain what may be the world’s highest protest rate; certainly the labour movement deserves its World Economic Forum rating as the world’s most militant working class the last two years. But South Africa’s diverse activists, including those who on 1882 occasions last year turned violent (according to the police), still fail to link up and establish a democratic movement (though the metalworkers union seeks to change this through its United Front initiative). full: http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/in-fortaleza-brics-became-co-dependent-upon-eco-financial-imperialism/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Support Kurdish Independence | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/support-kurdish-independence/wk7K9SSp Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] It's on - this morning - NYC civil disobedience against the slaughter of Gaza
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://coreyrobin.com/2014/07/29/its-on/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Terrorism in the Israeli Attack on Gaza - The Intercept
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By Glenn Greenwald https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/29/terrorism-israelgaza-context/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Bratton, De Blasio and the subway break-dancers | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Today’s NY Times reports on the crackdown on break-dancers in the subway. The young dancers, Peppermint and Butterscotch, scanned the scattered faces aboard the New York City subway. One caught their eye. “Are you a cop?” a performer asked, as their Q train rumbled toward Canal Street. The man waved them off. Peppermint and Butterscotch were satisfied. “It’s showtime!” they shouted. Music filled the train. Legs curled around the car’s graspable bars like creeping ivy. Then came a finale that surprised even the dancers: four plainclothes officers converging in tandem, and two sets of handcuffs. Cheered by tourists, tolerated by regulars, feared by those who frown upon kicks in the face, subway dancers have unwittingly found themselves a top priority for the New York Police Department — a curious collision of a Giuliani-era policing approach, a Bloomberg-age dance craze and a new administration that has cast the mostly school-age entertainers as fresh-face avatars of urban disorder. There’s probably nobody more opposed to being a captive audience on the subways than me. I have been riding NYC subways since they cost 15 cents a ride. When they were this cheap, they lacked air conditioning and were as noisy as hell, but you could at least be assured that you would never be forced to watch a musical performance, begged for spare change, or listen to a sermon. That was a function of the city being a lot more economically and socially viable than it has been ever since the fare reached the dollar level at least. In 1961 the city was home to a million and one small manufacturing plants that provided jobs for Blacks and Latinos. This is not to speak of the jobs in heavy industry just across the river in New Jersey, such as the Ford plant in Mahwah. In those days, jobs were like low-hanging fruit for recent immigrants from the Deep South or Puerto Rico. They disappeared long ago, leaving the grandchildren of those worked them forced to beg for change or break dancing just one step ahead of the law. full: http://louisproyect.org/2014/07/29/bratton-de-blasio-and-the-subway-break-dancers/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: The Meme Hustler | The Baffler
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I haven't been a fan of Evgeny Morozov in the past (too much like Jaron Lanier who I really can't stand) but this *very* long article on Tim O'Reilly is fascinating. Basically it explains the differences between free software, advocated by Richard Stallings, and Open Source, advocated by O'Reilly. O'Reilly is a really oleaginous figure who Morozov connects to Frank Lutz, the Republican PR guy who crafted Netanyahu's strategy for dealing with the outside world. O'Reilly is a libertarian but not so obvious about as other silicon valley entrepreneurs. Finally, if you've worked professionally in a unix environment, as I did for nearly 20 years, you will likely have had at least 2 or 3 O'Reilly books on your shelf. They are excellent books, as Morozov readily admits, but in no way redeem him. http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Pro-Palestinian Activists Arrested in NYC on Vimeo
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == CD led by Norman Finkelstein https://vimeo.com/102066015 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Driven by far-right ideology, Azov Battalion mans Ukraine’s front line
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Maybe seen here already. Hey Clay and Co., these guys aren't so bad after all! Forwards with Ukrainian National Self-Determination seems to be the characteristic slogan put forward. Funny it would find echoes on marxmail. The subheader states: A volunteer military unit is confronting Russia in the east, but future clashes with pro-Western Kiev may lie ahead. Frankly I hope so, the neo-liberal capitalist oligarch looter shitheads in Kiev and their EU/US imperialist backers richly deserve being skewered on their own petard. Should that come to pass, some are going to have to chose between their favorite slogans: Defend the Ukraine Democratic Revolution and For Ukranian National Self-Determination. Cause I dunno, the Azov Brigade doesn't seem so democratic, Mommy...really, Putin should be blocking with THIS far right, they hate the EU, too: URZUF, Ukraine — From his watch post overlooking the sandy beaches of the Azov Sea, Nemets is charged with guarding the shoreline against a possible Russian incursion. “Twenty minutes by boat, and you’re in Russia,” the 30-year-old said, as he squinted into the midday sun and shrugged to adjust the heavy bulletproof vest weighing down his narrow shoulders in the summer heat. Nemets, who prefers to go only by his nom de guerre, comes from the central Ukrainian city of Kirovohrad and is a member of the all-volunteer Azov Battalion, one of Ukraine’s many paramilitary groups formed in response to the government’s struggle against pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, the territory where a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down on July 17. “This is war, and this is how people become a nation,” he said. “This is the process in which we are learning who is strong and who isn’t.” The pro-Kiev battalion was named after the blue waters of this southeastern Ukrainian sea that Nemets now guards. More than half of the battalion’s fighters are Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians, who were brought up in the region now being fought over and who may have spent summer holidays swimming in the sea’s warm waters. Many of the Azov Battalion members are, by their own description, ultra-right Ukrainian nationalists. Ideologically, they are aligned with the Social-National Assembly, a confederation of groups in Ukraine that have drawn heavy criticism for their radical form of nationalism since the start of the protest movement in Kiev last November, which eventually ousted the Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych. But in Ukraine’s current war the lines have blurred between patriotism and extreme nationalism in this former Soviet republic, now deeply divided as it muddles through its worst political crisis since the breakup of the Soviet Union. At times, the government has coordinated with groups accused of extreme nationalism in its military operation against what it says is a Moscow-sponsored separatist movement. The fighters of the Azov Battalion are a symbol of that alliance, and it is a coordination that some analysts say should be watched carefully. “Modern history shows that any opportunistic cooperation of the authorities with the extreme right in the end results in problems for the government and society,” wrote Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on Ukraine’s far right and a Ph.D. student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, in his blog last month. The Azov Battalion is recognized as part of the Ministry of the Interior’s troops and has been actively engaged in battles in key areas of what the government calls an “anti-terrorist operation,” or ATO. It has included fights for Mariupol, the largest of the port cities on the Azov Sea, on May 9 and June 13. The battalion has adopted symbols and slogans that come close to those used by neo-Nazis, drawing alarm from many moderate Ukrainians and fueling the fire of Russian media accusations that the current Kiev government is a “fascist junta.” Oleh Odnorozhenko, the chief ideologist of the Social-National Assembly and a member of the Azov Battalion, insists that they and their sister organization the Right Sector are not neo-Nazis or neo-fascist, as the Russian media have depicted them. “That is all Putinism propaganda,” Odnorozhenko said about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims that the groups are elements of an anti-Russian fascism determined to eradicate ethnic Russians from Ukraine. “We aren’t anti-Russian here. Two-thirds of the guys speak Russian. But we are anti-Putin.” For all the controversy surrounding the government’s association with paramilitary groups like Azov, some argue that it is a necessary evil in extreme times. “The country is quite radicalized on both sides now,” said Vasyl Arbuzov, a Donetsk native and an aide to the Kiev-appointed
Re: [Marxism] Driven by far-right ideology, Azov Battalion mans Ukraine’s front line
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 7/29/14 6:24 PM, Matthew Russo via Marxism wrote: Cause I dunno, the Azov Brigade doesn't seem so democratic, Mommy...really, Putin should be blocking with THIS far right, they hate the EU, too: Let's keep a sense of proportion. The Azov Brigade has 300 members. (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Meme Hustler | The Baffler
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I sent this a few months ago and then got in an argument with Clay about it. So may want to simply look that up so he doesn't have to go off again. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: ZCommunications » In Fortaleza, BRICS Became Co-Dependent Upon Eco-Financial Imperialism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks Louis, Quite a fierce debate has unfolded not over the nature of resistance to subimperialism (that will surely come) but just over analytical approaches. Here's Horace Campbell (one amongst a dozen or more lefties) who celebrates Fortaleza: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/the-future-of-the-brics-development-bank/ I'm afraid Horace - a fantastic pan-African visionary with whom we've had long-standing collaborations - has in this instance made a profound mistake. I feel he's completely misread the new BRICS financial institutions, which will /amplify /the malevolent capacity of the IMF and its WashCon ideology in the case of the CRA, and make /more likely /the helter-skelter breeding of white-elephant pro-corporate extractive-destructive mega-infrastructure projects in the case of the NDB. Although we had an excellent debate about this last year at the Left Forum in NY, and although the general theory of subimperialist I utilise is still to be worked out in its nuances given tendencies to /inter-imperialism /from Russia and China, this is the sort of fruitful debate that is animating many of us with concerns about the future of geopolitical economy. A similar dispute with Yash Tandon occupied us a few weeks ago at /Pambazuka /African e-zine: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91303 and http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91832 and http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/92085 ... What do you comrades think? Patrick Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
