[Marxism] Paris attack, freedom of speech, and going after Muslims online
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[Marxism] Another Aspect of the Character of A.Dershowitz
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[Marxism] Anti-debt campaigners: We must support SYRIZA against elite attacks
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The Committee to Abolish Third World Debt (CADTM) released the statement below on January 1, calling for solidarity across borders with the Greek people in their showdown with the European elites. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/58009 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Just woke up to Paris Killings
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 3:57 PM, Gary MacLennan via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: . . . Like everyone else I condemn the killings in Paris with all my being, but is it beyond us to ask what good is served by mocking and ridiculing people's beliefs? Is politeness and respect beyond us? . . . The 'civilization' i care to be part of would not embrace disrespect and mocking of peoples' religious beliefs. Who can defend a 'western civilization' that has massacred and pillaged it's way throughout the 'third world' for centuries? A 'western civilization' built on at least apartheid oppression, if not genocide, of indigenous peoples - fostering and depending on frenzied disrespect and dismissal of their beliefs, traditions and culture. Is it so difficult to understand that many among the Muslim victims of 'western civilization' would cling more strongly to their Islamic cultural traditions? I read the western journalist trope that Muslims FEEL that lampoon caricatures of their prophet are an insulting sacrilege. This seems to be about as respectful and sensitive as the usual 'western' journalist trope that Palestinians object to blatantly illegal Israeli settlement on their occupied lands because they (questionably) WISH to have these lands be part of their (questionably) hoped for-independent nation. Do any of these journalists understand that depiction of any human figure goes against the grain of traditional Islamic culture? Meanwhile today DemocracyNow! started a time-interrupted interview with Tariq Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University who is considered one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals in Europe. Responding to reports the attack was carried out by Islamist militants, Ramadan says: This is just a pure betrayal of our religion and our principles. This interview will apparently and hopefully be continued for tomorrow. The initial interview, cut short early this morning, was taking place on the basis of rudimentary initial reports. [i originally sent this to the marxmail list about 8pm EST Wednesday January 7.] _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] What MRZine is tweeting about Charlie Hebdo
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The worst thing about Yoshie's tweets is that they allow her to be coy about her intentions. Are they posted to make a political point or are they there to provide MRZine readers food for thought? Today there are 5, all referring to the fact that the two accused killers had returned from Syria. So obviously there is an intention to make an amalgam of ISIS, al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, beards, Sunni militancy, people who yell alluah-akbar when they bring down a Baathist helicopter, and god knows what else. That's the worst fucking thing about Twitter--that it allows multiple interpretations. Just ask Steven Salaita. Of course, Salaita was innocently expressing his anger over Palestinians being murdered while Yoshie, now 4 years into one of the greatest slaughters of civilians in the Middle East in the past 50 years, continues to play the Baathist card. What a reactionary human being, and using the imprimatur of Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy all the while. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: A response to a Jacobin article on Kobane | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * While it is understandable why the international left should offer the maximum solidarity to the Kurdish struggle centered in Kobane, a Jacobin article by Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır offered in that spirit and titled “The False Friends of Kobanê” does require some scrutiny. Published originally in Infobrief Türkei, it vehemently opposes outside intervention, particularly from Turkey. The article reflects a fairly widespread belief on the Turkish left that there was nothing of value in the Syrian uprising since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was backing it. If it wasn’t enough that Erdoğan was intervening, he was implicitly intervening on behalf of the worst elements: Given that IS militants have reportedly been crossing the Turkish-Syrian border with ease, and in the context of Turkey’s longstanding hostility to Kurdish interests, it was clear that such a plan would amount to the fox guarding the henhouse. And as is so often the case with pro-Kobane material, there is a sharp distinction between the pure as the driven snow PYD—the Kurdish militia—and the sneaky Syrian rebels who apparently conspired to draw imperialism into the fray from the beginning: The PYD had previously made known that its activities were independent of the wider Syrian opposition. When the latter began conferring with Turkey and, with Western support, took up arms against the Syrian government and started calling for foreign military intervention, the PYD spoke out against such outside intervention and stressed that a democratic Syria could only be the collective project of all Syrians. If you click the link to “calling” above, you will be directed to an article in Jadaliyya.com by As`ad Abukhalil—the “Angry Arab”—that was written in 2012. My friendly advice to Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır, if they ever stumble across this article, and to Bhaskar Sunkara who surely will, is to avoid referencing the Angry Arab if they want to be taken seriously as analysts rather than cheap propagandists. The Angry Arab’s article is a long diatribe describing the war in Syria as an American-Israeli cabal and is just one brick in the edifice he has been constructing for the past four years to demonize the FSA. There are far better Baathist propagandists than him, like Nir Rosen or Joshua Landis. That is, if you want to be taken seriously. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/01/08/a-response-to-a-jacobin-article-on-kobane/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Rebel’s killing spurs war between Luhansk insurgent groups
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/rebels-killing-spurs-war-between-luhansk-insurgent-groups-376893.html The leadership of the Kremlin-backed unrecognized Luhansk People’s Republic is now facing a violent crisis, waging an effective war with rival insurgent groups in the same region. Analysts have attributed the infighting to a period of relative calm during Ukraine’s war with Russia, worsening economic conditions and efforts by the Kremlin and Igor Plotnitsky, head of the self-proclaimed republic, to introduce centralized administration and crack down on independent militias. “This reflects the relatively calm situation on the front,” said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta research group. “As a result, conflicts have intensified.” He added that the situation in the Luhansk People’s Republic contrasted with that in the Donetsk People’s Republic, where the insurgent leadership’s authority is not challenged by rival groups. The conflict flared up after Alexander Bednov, head of the republic’s Batman military unit, was killed by men loyal to Plotnitsky on Jan. 1. Bednov’s supporters have accused Plotnitsky of murder, saying that Bednov’s car was ambushed and burned with Shmel rocket launchers, while those who jumped out of the car were killed with either machine guns or assault rifles. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the unrecognized republic, Bednov refused to obey orders given by the republic’s authorities, resisted them and was killed as a result. The Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case against Bednov and his unit, accusing them of torturing prisoners. The killing has triggered resentment from Plotnitsky’s critics. Earlier this month Alexei Milchakov, head of the Kremlin-backed insurgents’ Rusich subversive group, said he would wage war both against Ukraine and the Luhansk People’s Republic. He said in an interview with Anna News released on Jan. 5 that Bednov had been targeted because he had tried to prevent looting and drug trafficking allegedly organized by his enemies in the self-proclaimed republic. The Rusich (Russian) subversive group is a unit comprising Russian ultranationalists. The group’s insignia features a kolovrat, a kind of swastika popular among Russian neo-Nazis. Milchakov, a native of St. Petersburg, has posted pictures of himself with a Nazi flag on his Vkontakte social network page. In 2012 Melnikov killed a puppy, showed off its severed head and ate the puppy, publishing pictures of the process online. Igor Strelkov, a former insurgent leader who left Donbas in August, has also lashed out at Plotnitsky’s administration and urged separatists who disagree with him to leave eastern Ukraine. “Regardless of the motives of this murder, even if (Bednov) and six of his fighters had been demons incarnate, killing them in the way it was done has no trace of lawfulness (even under emergency law) or ordinary human decency,” Strelkov said on Jan. 2. “If Bednov had deserved arrest or even execution, this should not have been done through a criminal ambush.” The killing of Bednov has also increased tensions in the south of the Luhansk Oblast, controlled by Cossack leader Nikolai Kozitsyn’s Almighty Don Host. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Jan. 7 that Plotnitsky’s units were trying to seize cities run by the Almighty Don Host. On Jan. 4 Rashid Shakirzyanov, the Cossack “commandant” of Antratsit in the Luhansk Oblast, said in a YouTube video that the Luhansk People’s Republic had no legitimacy whatsoever. Shakirzyanov’s predecessor, Vyacheslav Pinezhanin, was killed in November in a conflict between Plotnitsky’s units and the Almighty Don Host. In another YouTube video released on Jan. 4, Kozitsyn also questioned the legitimacy of the Luhansk People’s Republic, saying that he believed Putin to be the emperor and that the areas under the Cossacks’ control were part of the “Russian Empire.” Kozytsin had to leave the Luhansk Oblast for Russia in December due to the conflict with Plotnitsky before coming back to the area in the same month. In December another insurgent leader and critic of Plotnitsky’s regime, Pavel Dryomov, released a video demanding Plotnitsky’s resignation. Dryomov, head of the Stakhanov-based Cossack National Guard, accused Plotnitsky’s men of theft, including stealing coal, and of voting fraud, saying that those who did not vote were not given pensions. Dryomov also said that only one out of Russia’s 10 “humanitarian aid” convoys had reached those in need,
[Marxism] Foreign Policy: Why Greece Needs Syriza to Win
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/08/why-greeces-economy-needs-syriza-to-win-election European politics normally pauses for the Christmas break. But this time it erupted with a vengeance. On Dec. 29, Greek parliamentarians rejected the government’s candidate for president, triggering early elections scheduled for Jan. 25. Syriza, a radical-left coalition that wants to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s 205 billion euros’ worth of loans from eurozone governments, is leading in the polls. Many fear that a showdown between eurozone authorities and a Syriza-led government bent on debt relief and ending austerity could revive the panic that almost destroyed the euro in 2012 and could even force Greece out of the 19-country currency union. The Athens stock exchange has plunged. Yields on Greek government bonds have soared. The cost of insuring against a Greek default has skyrocketed. But a Syriza victory on Jan. 25 may not be a calamity for Europe in the end. It may be a necessary step toward resolving a crisis that has been festering since 2009. It’s not surprising that voters are angry with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s coalition government, which has implemented the brutal austerity demanded by the European Union and the IMF since Athens received its first bailout in 2010. Greeks have suffered six years of severe slump. The economy has shrunk by more than a quarter. Incomes have collapsed by nearly a third; many workers go unpaid. One in four Greeks — and one in two young people — is unemployed. The social safety net has been shredded. Many families scrape by on seniors’ slashed pensions. Crowds jostle for handouts at food banks. Some children are reduced to scavenging through rubbish bins for scraps. Hospitals run short of medicines. Malaria has even made a return. Eurozone policymakers insist that Greeks have only themselves to blame for their plight and that the harsh treatment thepolicymakers imposed is working. But that isn’t true. Eurozone policymakers insist that Greeks have only themselves to blame for their plight and that the harsh treatment the policymakers imposed is working. But that isn’t true. Yes, successive Greek governments splurged before the crisis, doling out jobs and favors to their political patronage networks. With tax evasion rife, they borrowed abundantly: a whopping 15 percent of GDP in 2009 alone. But Greece’s reckless borrowing was financed by equally reckless lenders. First in line were French and German banks that lent too much, too cheaply — foolishly treating the Greek government as if it were as creditworthy as Berlin and encouraged by Basel capital-adequacy rules and European Central Bank collateral-lending rules that treated sovereign bonds as risk-free. By the time Greece was cut off from the markets in 2010, its soaring public debt of 130 percent of GDP was obviously unpayable in full. It should have been written down, as the IMF later acknowledged publicly. Austerity would then have been less extreme and the recession shorter and shallower. But to avoid losses for German and French banks, eurozone policymakers, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pretended that Greece was merely going through temporary funding difficulties. Breaching the EU treaties’ “no-bailout” rule, which bans eurozone governments from bailing out their peers, they lent European taxpayers’ money to the insolvent Greek government, ostensibly out of solidarity, but actually to bail out creditors. Poor Greeks were, in effect, consigned to a debtor’s prison. While foreign banks that held on to their Greek bonds eventually took some losses in 2012, Greece’s EU creditors have bled the country dry. Thus eurozone banks share responsibility for Greece’s plight, while eurozone policymakers — as well as the Greek elites who did their bidding — are to blame for the extent of the misery that Greeks have endured. So whatever you think of Syriza’s left-wing politics, it is justified in demanding debt relief from the EU. It’s a pity more mainstream Greek voices aren’t doing so too. Debt relief isn’t just a matter of justice. It’s an economic necessity. Debt relief isn’t just a matter of justice. It’s an economic necessity. Contrary to the propaganda from the EU and Samaras’s government, Greece is not putting the crisis behind it. Yes, the economy is finally growing a little: by 1.9 percent in the year to the third quarter of 2014. Employment has edged up. The government has achieved a primary surplus — its revenues now cover its outgoings, excluding interest payments. And it managed to sell investors some longer-term bonds last year. Briefly, Samaras even thought that
[Marxism] Fwd: Charlie Hebdo, Islamophobia and the Freedom of Expression
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Author Richard Seymour says the free speech argument is being used to obscure the reality of Islamophobia in Europe http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=31Itemid=74jumival=12971 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] SYRIZA and the GREEK ELECTIONS
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * SYRIZA and the GREEK ELECTIONS Sunday, January 18 at 6:00pm Next Week Kefalos Society of America, 20-41 Steinway street, Astoria NY 11105 Invited by Peter Bratsis A Discussion with Michalis Spourdalakis Founding member of SYRIZA and a Political Science Professor at The University of Athens _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
