[Marxism] Short piece on Hegel and Marxism

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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This was written for Redline by a young leftie student in Auckland who
sends us occasional (very good) pieces.

https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/the-reason-for-revolution-why-understanding-hegel-is-important-for-marxists/
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[Marxism] Karen Dawisha lecture on "Putin's Kleptocracy" - YouTube

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSJMXwj58nE
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[Marxism] A book too far - Russia

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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How Cambridge University Press chickened out of publishing Karen 
Dawisha's book.


https://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/04/russia
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[Marxism] Karen Dawisha, 68, Dies; Traced Roots of Russian Corruption

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, April 17, 2018
Karen Dawisha, 68, Dies; Traced Roots of Russian Corruption
By ELLEN BARRY

Karen Dawisha, a Russia scholar who researched Vladimir V. Putin’s 
circle of trusted friends from St. Petersburg in the 1990s and, in a 
2014 book, labeled the state they plotted out a “kleptocracy,” died on 
April 11 in Oxford, Ohio. She was 68.


Her husband, Adeed Dawisha, said the cause was lung cancer.

Ms. Dawisha, who at the time was a professor of political science at the 
Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami 
University in Oxford, distilled her research into “Putin’s Kleptocracy: 
Who Owns Russia?”


The book argued that corruption and authoritarianism in Russia in recent 
decades were not byproducts of the country’s emergence from communism 
but rather building blocks of a plan devised in the early 1990s by Mr. 
Putin and a circle of trusted associates. Many were, like him, former 
K.G.B. officers who were appalled by the breakup of the Soviet Union.


(clip)

I just ran across an online version of her book:

http://willzuzak.ca/cl/putin/Dawisha2014PutinKleptocracy.pdf
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[Marxism] Syrian al-Nakbah legalised: Assad confiscates homes of millions who fled war in Syria

[mkaradjis via Marxism]

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We've referred to the dispossession of half the Syrian population
(around 12 million people) as a gigantic Nakbah for years, but many
probably viewed it as rhetorical flourish. "Naturally people flee
during war but they'll return later" etc. But we understood that the
very systematic way in which the regime destroyed entire cities and
entire parts of the country, the clear focus on murdering as many
civilians as possible over actually fighting rebels as such, as
evidence that counterrevolution, while the main aim of the regime's
war, was not the only aim, and our use of the term 'Nakbah' was quite
deliberate and carefully chosen. This has been clarified in actual
legislation by the Assad regime. "It has drawn parallels with laws
enacted in Lebanon after the civil war to seize land in central
Beirut, and the absentee property law in Israel in 1950 that legalised
seizures from Palestinians driven from their lands."


10m Syrians at risk of forfeiting homes under new property law

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/10m-syrians-at-risk-of-forfeiting-homes-under-new-property-law


Assad confiscates homes of millions who fled war in Syria

Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent | Hannah Lucinda Smith, Istanbul

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/assad-confiscates-homes-of-millions-who-fled-war-qm5qnz6rw
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[Marxism] Teachers in Arizona and Colorado Walk Out Over Education Funding

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, April 27, 2018
Teachers in Arizona and Colorado Walk Out Over Education Funding
By SIMON ROMERO, JACK HEALY and JULIE TURKEWITZ

PHOENIX — Thousands of teachers in Arizona and Colorado walked out of 
their classrooms on Thursday to demand more funding for public schools, 
the latest surge of a teacher protest movement that has already swept 
through three states and is spreading quickly to others.


Hundreds of public schools were shut down in Arizona because of the 
walkouts, which turned the streets of Downtown Phoenix into seas of 
crimson as educators and their supporters marched to the State Capitol 
wearing red T-shirts and chanting “Red for Ed,” as the movement is known 
here.


Widespread teacher protests have in recent months upended daily routines 
in the conservative-leaning states West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. 
But the sight of public workers protesting en masse in the Arizona 
capital, one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country, and 
demanding tax increases for more school funding, spoke to the enduring 
strength of the movement and signaled shifts in political winds ahead of 
this year’s midterm elections.


“I’ll be voting for anyone who supports public education,” said Jamie 
Woodward, a curriculum coordinator from Cottonwood, Ariz. “We have 
impoverished teachers living in camper trailers.” Ms. Woodward, 40, was 
a registered Republican for 17 years, she said, but recently became an 
independent.


An analysis by The Arizona Republic showed that more than 840,000 of the 
state’s 1.1 million public school students could be affected by the 
school closings.


Teachers and their supporters began gathering on Thursday morning around 
Chase Field, a baseball stadium in Phoenix. From there, they marched to 
the Capitol to hold a rally calling for restoring education funding to 
pre-Recession levels, raising their pay, and halting tax cuts until 
per-pupil funding reaches the national average.


"Ms. Woodward, 40, was a registered Republican for 17 years, she said, 
but recently became an independent." I've said it before, will these...


The march unfolded peacefully, with many teachers walking with their 
children and other supporters; nearly everyone was wearing the red 
shirts symbolizing their movement. Their signs read: “This Republican 
family supports #RedforEd,” “History is Watching,” and “Arizona’s top 
exports: Citrus, Copper, Teachers.”


Much of the protesters’ ire was directed at Gov. Doug Ducey, a 
Republican, who has resisted demands to end tax cuts to bolster public 
education spending. Teachers pressed ahead with the walkout despite a 
promise by the governor to increase their salaries 20 percent by 2020. 
Betting that a growing economy will bolster revenue, Mr. Ducey said he 
could provide the raises and reinforce school budgets without tax 
increases, a proposal that many teachers and lawmakers doubted.


[What’s the difference between a walkout and a strike? Why is this 
happening now? Here’s what to know about the teacher protests.]


In a statement Thursday, the governor urged citizens to contact their 
legislators to urge approval of his pay plan. “Without a doubt, teachers 
are some of the biggest difference-makers in the lives of Arizona 
children,” Mr. Ducey said. “They need to be respected, and rewarded, for 
the work they do — and Arizona can do better on this front.”


Arizona spent $8,141 per pupil in 2017, well below the national average, 
according to the state’s auditor general. The average teacher salary in 
Arizona was $48,372 last year, also well below the national average. 
Younger and less experienced teachers can make far less than the state 
average.


“This isn’t just a political issue but a moral issue as well,” said 
Patience Sharp, 43, a writing teacher at a public middle school in 
Phoenix. Ms. Sharp, who has three children, said she earned about 
$40,000 a year and had filed for bankruptcy protection two weeks ago.


“My 17-year-old daughter recently told me she also wants to be a 
teacher,” Ms. Sharp said. “And I just cried.”


Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s 
largest teachers’ union, said that the starting salary for teachers in 
Arizona was about $35,000, which for many in the profession made paying 
off student loans or starting a family difficult. The organizers of the 
walkout, Mr. Thomas said, sought to show political leaders how much 
educators were hurting financially in Arizona, where Republicans control 
the State Legislature and years of tax cuts have drained education budgets.


“A teaching certification used to secure landing in the middle class,” 

[Marxism] Racism and Eugenics, American-Style | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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As the Trump administration’s openly racist policies become ever more 
pronounced, two timely documentaries serve as an anti-toxin. Available 
exclusively from its distributor Bullfrog Films, “A Dangerous Idea: 
Eugenics, Genetics and the American Dream” takes on the bogus science 
that underpins Trump’s complaint about too many people from “shithole 
countries” like Haiti and not enough from Norway. In September 2016, the 
Independent reported that Donald Trump’s biographer Michael D’Antonio 
accused him of subscribing to the “racehorse theory” of genetics taught 
to him by his Fred Trump, who was arrested at a KKK riot in 1927. 
D’Antonio wrote that “They believe that there are superior people and 
that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior 
man, you get a superior offspring.”


Under Trump, police terror continues unabated with the most recent 
occurrence being the killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento in his 
grandmother’s backyard. The cops thought that the cell phone he was 
holding in his hand was a gun just like the wallet that Amadou Diallo 
removed from his pocket to identify himself to trigger-happy cops who 
poured bullets into him. In reality, the fear of a cell phone and a 
wallet was lubricated by a racism that has been the high-octane fuel 
behind all these incidents. For most activists, it was the murder of 
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri that propelled Black Lives Matter 
into a mass movement. Although I am probably like most CounterPunch 
readers in keeping up with Michael Brown’s death and the aftermath, I 
was stunned by the investigative reporting manifested in “Stranger 
Fruit” that can be rented on Youtube, Amazon and iTunes. It will also 
have a broadcast premiere in June on Starz.


full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2018/04/27/racism-and-eugenics-american-style/

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[Marxism] Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher and War Protester, Dies at 74

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, April 27, 2018
Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher and War Protester, Dies at 74
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Sam Hamill, who gave up a wayward life to become an accomplished poet 
and founder of Copper Canyon Press, a leading nonprofit poetry 
publisher, and whose impromptu protest before the American invasion of 
Iraq in 2003 became a cri de coeur for artists nationwide, died on April 
14 at his home in Anacortes, Wash. He was 74.


His daughter, Eron Hamill, said the cause was complications of chronic 
obstructive pulmonary disease


Mr. Hamill was a former Marine-turned-pacifist who beat a heroin habit 
before helping to found Copper Canyon Press in 1972 with a $500 prize he 
had won for editing the literary magazine Spectrum at the University of 
California, Santa Barbara. After buying a printing press, he and three 
partners — Tree Swenson, Jim Gautney and William O’Daly — set up shop in 
Denver.


The company released its first book: “Badlands,” a collection of verse 
by Gerald Costanzo, in 1973. The next year, Mr. Hamill and Ms. Swenson 
moved Copper Canyon to Port Townsend, Wash.


Mr. Hamill served as Copper Canyon’s editor for the next three decades, 
and his refined taste and painstaking translations of Asian poets like 
Du Fu, Wang Wei and Matsuo Basho helped ensure the company’s success.


Copper Canyon has since released hundreds of new books or fresh 
translations of work by, among others, the Nobel laureates Pablo Neruda, 
Rabindranath Tagore and Octavio Paz and the Pulitzer Prize winners 
Carolyn Kizer, Ted Kooser and W. S. Merwin.


Mr. Hamill was a prolific writer himself. He published several books of 
prose and 17 collections of lyric poetry. His work could be 
autobiographical and naturalistic, but he believed that verse should 
engage with the world.


He grappled with political and social issues in poems like “True Peace,” 
about the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself 
to death in 1963 in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the 
persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. It reads, 
in part:


The master did not move, did not squirm,

he did not scream

in pain as his body was consumed.

Neither child nor yet a man,

I wondered to my Okinawan friend,

what can it possibly mean

to make such a sacrifice, to give one’s life

How can any man endure such pain

and never cry and never blink.

And my friend said simply, “Thich Quang Duc

had achieved true peace.”

And I knew that night true peace

for me would never come.

Not for me, Nirvana. This suffering world

is mine, mine to suffer in its grief.

Mr. Hamill felt obligated to take action when he received an invitation 
in January 2003 to a White House symposium to be held by the first lady, 
Laura Bush, on the work of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt 
Whitman. Outraged by the Bush administration’s proposed military 
campaign in Iraq, he sent an email to 50 friends and colleagues 
rejecting the invitation and asking them to submit protest poems to him.


“The only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and 
unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement 
like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam,” he 
wrote in the email.


Mr. Hamill’s correspondents shared his call to action, and within a few 
days he received more than 1,500 responses. He built a website to 
present the poems he received, and the White House eventually canceled 
the symposium.


More than 135 poetry readings and other protests were held around the 
country on Feb. 12, the day the symposium was supposed to begin. More 
than 13,000 poets submitted work to Mr. Hamill’s website, some of which, 
including poems by John Balaban, Ursula K. Le Guin and Adrienne Rich, 
were collected in an anthology, “Poets Against the War.”


“It was almost as if they were waiting breathlessly for someone to step 
forward and say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” Mr. Hamill told The Progressive 
magazine in an interview that April. “We became a chorus.”


Mr. Hamill’s antiwar activity left him with less time for Copper Canyon, 
and he stepped down as editor at the start of 2005 over creative 
differences with the board. Later that year The American Poetry Review 
praised his “diligent and imaginative guidance,” which it said had 
helped make Copper Canyon “one of the most important publishers of 
contemporary American poetry.”


Sam Patrick Hamill was born, by his account, in Northern California to 
an illiterate carnival fry cook. His date of birth is listed in records 
as May 9, 1943, his daughter said.


As a toddler he was adopted by Samuel Hamill, a poultry farmer, and the 

[Marxism] Jean Gump, Tireless Fighter for Social Justice, Dies at 90

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, April 27, 2018
Jean Gump, Tireless Fighter for Social Justice, Dies at 90
By SAM ROBERTS

While Jean Dalton was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, her 
parents became so disgusted by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s ethnocentric and 
monolithic Democratic machine that they not only enrolled as Republicans 
but also hid their Irish ancestry from their five children.


As an adult, Jean Gump, as she was known by then, and her husband, 
Joseph, even voted for Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 presidential 
election, rejecting John F. Kennedy and his Democratic P arty despite 
the ethnic heritage and Roman Catholicism he shared with her.


Within just a few years, though, Ms. Gump had an epiphany.

Perhaps it was inspired by the birth of her 12th and last child in 1964, 
after Kennedy’s assassination, that nonplused her about what kind of 
world her children would inherit. Maybe it was the rumblings of social 
justice reverberating from the ecumenical Vatican II council in Rome.


Or maybe it was the inconvenient question posed by her son Joe one day 
in 1965, when he turned to her despairingly from the brutal television 
images of blacks being mistreated in the South and asked what she was 
going to do about it.


“I was puzzled at first,” she told U.S. Catholic magazine in 2012. “Then 
he reminded me of my own advice about helping those hurt by bullies. I 
took the next available plane to Alabama and marched with Martin Luther 
King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery.”


Those turned out to be among the first steps in a nearly half-century 
marathon of social activism by Ms. Gump on behalf of civil rights, 
disarmament, gun control and other causes — a life that inspired the 
Gump children to describe her in a paid obituary last month as “a 
lifelong advocate for peace and justice, and a convicted felon for 
antinuclear activism.”


Ms. Gump — who died of a brain hemorrhage at 90 on March 16 in 
Louisville, Ky., where she was visiting a daughter — was arrested more 
times than she could remember.


But she had never spent more than a night in jail until September 1986, 
when she began serving an eight-year sentence in the minimum-security 
Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, in West Virginia.


She served more than four years, 63 days of that time in solitary 
confinement, for invading Whiteman Air Force Base near Holden, Mo., with 
two other Roman Catholic peace protesters on Good Friday earlier that year.


They had disabled a silo housing a Minuteman II nuclear missile, 
defacing its 120-ton cover with their own blood, poured in the shape of 
a crucifix from baby bottles, and spray-painting it with the battle cry 
“Disarm and Live.”


A young, fully armed soldier who descended from an armored vehicle to 
arrest the trio had cowered as she reached into her purse.


“Shoot if you must, sonny,” Ms. Gump said defiantly, “but I’ve got to 
blow my nose.”


Her sentence (she stubbornly refused to pay the $424.48 fine to repair 
the silo) delivered a far different lesson from what the government had 
intended.


It prompted her husband to quit his job, as a chemical engineer 
supervising the manufacture of controls for atomic power plants and 
ballistic missiles, and join the antinuclear weapons movement.


In 1987, he was convicted of conspiring to damage another Missouri 
missile site. He was imprisoned for three years.


Most people go to prison for violating their conscience. The Gumps were 
sentenced for rigidly cleaving to theirs. Ms. Gump’s moral code could be 
condensed into a single sentence: “If you don’t act against it, you must 
be for it.”


Her last arrest was in 2010, when she was 83. She was protesting 
upgrades of Trident submarine nuclear warheads at the Y-12 National 
Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.


“Accomplishment is very seldom a consideration when we take these 
actions,” she said. “If something good happens, we’re glad. But our main 
objective is for the public to know about the dangers of nuclear 
weapons. We are people of conscience who know that nuclear weapons are 
immoral, so we make our statements and expect to be found guilty at our 
trials.”


Jean Therese Dalton was born on May 24, 1927, in Chicago, the daughter 
of Hazel Dalton (formerly Hazel Knudsen), an executive secretary at the 
Walgreen Company, and John Thomas Dalton, who worked for Hiram Walker & 
Sons, the liquor and wine distributor.


“I was brought up as an absolute bigot,” she once said.

She attended Saint Xavier College in Chicago (now Saint Xavier 
University) for two years after graduating from Mercy High School, 
where, on a blind date, she met the man she would marry in 1949. Joe 
Gump’s parents 

[Marxism] A Warning Likely to Be Unheeded: A Review of Norman Pollack’s Final Book

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-warning-likely-to-be-unheeded-review.html

-- 
Check out my newest books *Still Tripping in the Dark

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and Daydream Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s
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[Marxism] NZ oppression of Samoa/Samoansx

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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Samoa: what NZ did:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/samoa-what-new-zealand-did/

Depriving Samoans of immigration and citizenship rights:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/depriving-samoans-of-immigration-and-citizenship-rights/
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