[Marxism] Has Capitalist Restoration in North Korea Crossed the Rubicon or Not?

[RKOB via Marxism]

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https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/has-capitalist-restoration-in-north-korea-crossed-the-rubicon-or-not/



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[Marxism] Harold Cardenas on Cuba's Special Period

[Marce Cameron via Marxism]

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To subscribe to my blog posts, switch to desktop view (at the foot of
mobile/cell phone view) and see the options on the right hand margin of the
homepage.

http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com/2018/07/harold-cardenas-on-special-period.html?m=1
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[Marxism] The end of the Celtic Tiger

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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This book came out six or seven years ago and the review is almost six
years old, but still very relevant, especially for those interested in
Irish politics, economy, history.

https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/explaining-and-countering-the-crisis-irelands-credit-crunch-reviewed/
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Re: [Marxism] German Soccer Star Quits National Team, Citing Racism

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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Terrible international player? I think you may be overstating you case.

In the previous World Cup, UEFA play, and in the qualifying rounds for the
World Cup in Russia, he had plenty of assists and some goals. He was the
toast of Berlin when Germany won the cup 4 years ago for his stellar play.
Maybe if they had played him in more than 2 matches this time ‘round the
German side would not have sucked so loudly, but then again it’s difficult
to see how any one individual could have saved the German team from such
lackluster performance in Russia.

Greg

> 
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Re: [Marxism] German Soccer Star Quits National Team, Citing Racism

[Jeffrey Masko via Marxism]

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Didnt help he had a terrible International Record is a footballer. Yaya
Toure has been outspoken about football racism and noticed when he played
well, things were fine, but when he was off, th slurs came out.

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 9:26 AM Dennis Brasky via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> “I am German when we win, but an immigrant when we lose.” So said
> third-generation German Mesut Özil, who has Turkish
> <
> https://track.cordial.io/c/275:5b55a982d6ab4e366f5fa518:ot:591dfa4cac0c811781b71e6e:1/6d1f6e83/ac4b6f8675a46767b273817536e63ad7/
> >
> ancestry,
> in a three-page letter announcing his retirement from *Die Mannschaft*. The
> 29-year-old Arsenal midfielder said he faced “previously hidden racist
> tendencies” from fans, media and the German Football Association after he
> was photographed with Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
> in May. Özil, who described being unfairly blamed for Germany’s early World
> Cup exit, says he’ll “no longer stand for being a scapegoat.”
>
>
>
> https://www.dw.com/en/mesut-%C3%B6zil-quits-germany-over-erdogan-controversy/a-44777380
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Re: [Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://www.recordonline.com/news/20180722/falling-demand-for-milk-puts-future-of-sullivan-dairy-farms-at-risk
 



No doubt there are disadvantages to a supply management system, but the 
experience of farmers being driven out of business in the US certainly 
highlights the advantages.
ken h
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[Marxism] The Water Wars of Arizona - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Early one morning in July 2014, Lori Paup awoke in her new home in the 
Sulphur Springs Valley of Arizona and began unpacking boxes of clothes, 
hanging photographs and prepping the day’s home-schooling lessons for 
her two teenage children. Paup, who until a few days earlier had never 
been to Arizona, was exhilarated to have finally arrived at the house on 
East Hopi Drive — a blue two-bedroom trailer on two acres of land — but 
also exhausted. The move from Fallentimber, Pa., where the family lived 
for 15 years, required a cross-country trip in the semi-truck that 
Lori’s husband, Craig, drove for work, and now a long list of chores 
awaited. Outside, the day was already north of 80 degrees. Lori was just 
beginning to fill a glass of water when she noticed the stream from the 
faucet was cloudy and brown. “The water looked like the desert 
surrounding the house,” she said. “The same color.” Running her hand 
under the stream, she found what appeared to be small grains of sand.


A small woman with a tight smile and a bright orange streak in her hair, 
Lori was immediately unnerved by the sight. Like all homes in the 
valley, where there are no reservoirs or rivers, the Paups’ house drew 
its water from a private well drilled into the underlying aquifer. 
According to the real estate listing, the well reached a depth of more 
than 300 feet. Lori, who is 51 and a mother of five, reminded herself of 
this when, a few moments later, the sand appeared to clear and the water 
again looked normal. Busy with other projects, she scribbled a note to 
call the previous owners, figuring there was dirt clogged in the kitchen 
pipes. Soon enough, she forgot about it.


A few days later, Lori and her daughter Amy were doing laundry when the 
washing machine stopped filling with water. Then, a few hours later, the 
dishwasher conked out, too. Craig, who had serviced his own diesel truck 
for some 20 years, inspected both machines but couldn’t find anything 
wrong with either. It was the pipes feeding them that seemed to be the 
issue; they merely trickled, then sputtered out sand. Having lived in 
the rural mountains of Pennsylvania, Craig and Lori were both familiar 
with wells; they picked the house on East Hopi for its sweeping views 
eastward to the Chiricahua Mountains but also for the solitude that came 
with owning a remote piece of property, which was only possible so long 
as they had their own source of water. But as worrisome as the incidents 
seemed, they didn’t yet form any recognizable pattern. One evening 
sometime later, Lori drew a bath and left the room. When she returned a 
while later, she found the tub stood only half full, the water murky 
with silt. She watched, over the next few moments, as a thin layer of 
sand settled along the bottom.


full: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-of-arizona.html

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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Early-America]: Lee on Thompson, 'Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 4:34 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Early-America]: Lee on Thompson, 'Working on the
Dock of the Bay: Labor and Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port'
To: 


Michael D. Thompson.  Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and
Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port.  Carolina Lowcountry and
the Atlantic World Series. Columbia  University of South Carolina
Press, 2015.  312 pp.  $44.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-61117-474-8.

Reviewed by Kristin C. Lee (Washington University in St. Louis)
Published on H-Early-America (July, 2018)
Commissioned by Joshua J. Jeffers

Dockhands skip around open hatches. Carts thump across wooden planks.
Work songs rise and fall in rhythm. Stevedores shout directives as
heavy cargo disappears into ship holds, sometimes followed by the
cries of injury. Cotton-menders furtively stuff fiber strands into
their work bags.

Michael D. Thompson's _Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and
Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port _offers a vivid picture of
the risks, rewards, and routine happenings of the nineteenth-century
Charleston waterfront, viewed first and foremost from the perspective
of its free and enslaved, black and white dockside workers. The book
challenges the popular narrative of this post-1819, South Carolina
town as in an irrelevant state of commercial decline by showing its
laborers in uninterrupted motion--not only navigating the rising
number of cotton bales, rice barrels, tobacco sheaves, and other
goods circulating through its ports, but also negotiating
contemporary concerns of slave rebellion, sectionalism, and illness
that threatened their continued employ. Thompson emphasizes that the
waterfront was "neither a safe nor easy place to make a living" but,
for those able to take on its burdens, it offered much-desired
moments of autonomy (p. 29). Indeed, _Working on the Dock of the Bay
_ultimately contends that it was the daily struggles of antebellum
dockside workers to dictate the conditions of their labor that laid
the  "groundwork for astounding triumphs [by organized labor unions]
in the otherwise tragic New South" (p. 2).

These opportunities were located among the many dichotomies of
Thompson's text: control and mobility, security and prosperity,
"slavery and freedom, restriction and agency" (p. 3). On one hand,
_Working on the Dock of the Bay _situates its workers in a political,
social, and cultural context dictated by the traditional big movers
of history, including city officials, merchants, and slaveholders.
The Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822, he acknowledges, created a
"siege mentality" among white Charlestonians, who lived with a black
majority until about 1860 (p. 31). The overwhelmingly enslaved
laborers on the docks, at least until midcentury, only cemented this
anxiety. Slaveowners certainly wanted the money that came with
leasing underutilized slaves to the waterfront, or more conveniently
allowing these workers to contract out their own labor. Yet, they
were uncomfortable knowing that this work brought with it contact
with free artisans of color and sailors from the abolitionist North
and, with this contact, an awareness of a life beyond slavery. But
what, asks Thompson, were they to do? If they curtailed the ability
of slaves to move freely in the antebellum city or required written
agreements between masters for each hourly bit of work, they made
this labor more onerous on themselves. Plus, in the lead-up to the
Civil War, slaveholders were particularly sensitive about others
telling them what they could do with their human properties, whether
these demands originated from federal politicians or local city
councils.

On the other hand, _Working on the Dock of the Bay _shows that
Charleston's waterfront workers found significant wiggle room
despite, and sometimes because of, local and national fears. There
continued, for example, to be efforts to confine the economic
activities of enslaved laborers, including limits on where they could
advertise for work, on their ability to reject job offers, and on
their daily pay. Yet, a cap on daily wages from 1801 to 1837, meant
to prevent overcharging, also helped slaves maintain their hold on
waterfront labor by deterring white competition until midcentury.
After 1845, these racial rivals--largely non-native Irish and
Germans--acted in a similar manner, encouraging suspicions of black
laborers as thieves while promoting themselves as good taxpayers. The
tactic was aimed, unsuccessfully, at reserving higher-paying roles
like that of stevedore for themselves. It was more successful in
pushing free workers of 

[Marxism] Watergate - context for today's debates

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Type Watergate in the keywords field:

http://www.index.themilitant.com/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=NI_Index_Public&-loadframes

Full of useful context for understanding why and what the ruling class does
when it's in political crisis (and how to know when it isn't).
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[Marxism] A close look at AOC

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(From a FB friend who prefers to remain anonymous.)

I am reading all I can of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's interviews.

I would say that this is not being done in the Left's debate on strategy 
around her election.


Last week on Democracy Now, she said that she wants to "Abolish ICE" but 
she does NOT support open borders. She does not call for amnesty, 
legality, citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. She objects to 
ICE being particularly brutal and cruel and to child kidnapping and to 
ICE being under Homeland Security and not under the Dept of Justice. But 
she does NOT object to COURTS deporting un-authorized immigrants. She 
comments that Border Patrol is a different agency and then says that 
whether Border Patrol should exist is a matter for debate.


At the same time, she urges continuation, preparation, and escalation of 
the tactics of mass protests to be able to embarrass disrupt and 
delegitimize the local offices of ICE.


(Similarly she criticizes Israel but has now (on 2 occasions) refused to 
call it a structurally racist and oppressing system of rule, or to call 
for the overturn of any of its elements, even saying she needs to confer 
and think before calling it "occupation")


What does this mean?

I would say it means she expresses some of the radicalization of the 
country and sometimes concretely urges militant action, but this is the 
MINORITY OF the cases and opportunities and only when she is certain 
that it will be a case where it will cost nothing and on balance gain 
support for the Democratic Party.


But, at the same time, in sweeping ways, she refuses and in fact 
actually opposes fundamental liberatory / Left demands. Thus she has a 
border where she opposes, literally taking action to urge and foster 
further socialist consciousness


She explains the reason for this openly:

1. She says she considers it a primary and overriding objective to 
ensure that the Democratic party wins more than 50% of the House 
congressional seats in November


2. She considers the Democratic party "we" and believes that its 
conservative political stance is a mistake because it causes them to 
lose elections and that they can be persuaded to alter it


3. Mainly by persuading "10 to 30" members of the Congressional 
Progressive Caucus Democrats to form a bloc demanding reforms and more 
desirable goals.


4. Meanwhile she rejects admitting in public that the Left has reason to 
oppose Nancy Pelosi.


This is the issue.

I am not saying that this is my opinion, in as much as each of my points 
are explicitly stated in her interviews:


NBC 1 July
Jacobin 11 July
PBS 13 July
Democracy Now 16 July
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[Marxism] What Is Democratic Socialism?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(What a fucking idiot.)

It’s one thing to know what democratic socialists fight for, and another 
to lay out a convincing path to realizing it. This is where democratic 
socialists truly differ with some of our friends on the socialist left. 
We reject strategies that transplant paths from Russia in 1917 or Cuba 
in 1959 to the United States today, as if we could win socialism by 
storming the White House and tossing Donald Trump out on the front lawn.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/democratic-socialism-bernie-sanders-social-democracy-alexandria-ocasio-cortez
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[Marxism] German Soccer Star Quits National Team, Citing Racism

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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“I am German when we win, but an immigrant when we lose.” So said
third-generation German Mesut Özil, who has Turkish

ancestry,
in a three-page letter announcing his retirement from *Die Mannschaft*. The
29-year-old Arsenal midfielder said he faced “previously hidden racist
tendencies” from fans, media and the German Football Association after he
was photographed with Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
in May. Özil, who described being unfairly blamed for Germany’s early World
Cup exit, says he’ll “no longer stand for being a scapegoat.”


https://www.dw.com/en/mesut-%C3%B6zil-quits-germany-over-erdogan-controversy/a-44777380
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[Marxism] The New York City real estate/housing crisis, part 3 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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An ongoing impromptu demonstration across the street from my high-rise 
building on Manhattan’s exclusive upper east side reminded me of a 
series of posts I started on real estate. Kaia, a tiny wine bar that 
featured mostly appetizers native to South Africa that was shut down by 
the tax collectors, has prompted its loyal customers to post statements 
of solidarity on its windows next to the tax collector’s scary looking 
red sign. In all the years I have been living in Manhattan, I have never 
seen such a proclamation even though bankruptcy notices are omnipresent.


full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2018/07/23/the-new-york-city-real-estate-housing-crisis-part-3/

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[Marxism] Decade After Crisis, a $600 Trillion Market Remains Murky to Regulators

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/business/derivatives-banks-regulation-dodd-frank.html

$600 TRILLion!!!

Who's out there ready to push for abolition of derivatives?

AND who's also ready to argue for worker control of the banks?
(remember to read Lenin in 1917 and 1918)
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Re: [Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 7/23/18 8:52 AM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote:

what explains the falling demand?


Almond and soy milk mostly. Also, mega-dairy farms play a role in 
putting family farms out of business. Here's something I posted to the 
list a while back:


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/nyregion/farmer-suicides-mark-tough-times-for-new-york-dairy-industry.html
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[Marxism] Moderator's note

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Comrades have to pay attention to the reminder to clip extraneous text. 
This got caught in the moderator's queue because it exceeded 35k, a 
result of the previous emails that got reposted in their entirety. I am 
only including the whole thread just for illustration's sake.


So REMEMBER TO CLIP EXTRANEOUS TEXT.


On 7/23/18 8:25 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

I've seen the same statistics on Republican voters' approval of Putin. I
think it has a lot to do with similar social and political attitudes
(anti-gay, religious, etc.) But in any case, I think that those statistics
actually support my contention. The reason is that the old, mainline
conservatives in the Republican Party have lost out. This is exactly the
wing that represents the capitalist class. Take what happened in the
presidential primaries. The mainstream conservatives and the wing of the US
capitalist class they represented had it all set up for Jeb Bush to win the
nomination. It was a sure thing. Guaranteed. We know how well that worked
out.

Now, we hear it over and over again - how different Republican politicians
are afraid to stand up to Trump because he will get them "primaried". In
other words, the next time they run for reelection, he'll mobilize their
base to get them knocked out in the primaries.

In fact, this is a common theme heard over and over in US politics - how
Trump has completely captured the Republican Party. How the traditional
conservatives have capitulated to him. This is why a series of Republicans
are not running again - they don't want to get "primaried" but they fear
that continuing to capitulate to Trump will tarnish their future careers
and reputation. Probably the foremost Republican strategist, Max Boot, has
actually left the Republican Party because of this.

In other words, the capitalist class has not only lost control over the
presidency; they have lost control over their preferred political party.
(Not that the Democrats won't do when needed.) This is a huge development.

On the US-Russian rivalry: Even the closest capitalist allies are always
rivals also to some degree or another. I agree that the basis for the
US/Russian rivalry is not the same as it is with the US/Chinese rivalry.
There, economic competition is clear. But look at the whole issue of the US
alliance with Germany and other Western European countries. Is there not a
conflict there with a Russian alliance? Yes, maybe the whole world order
can get shaken up and a whole new alignment could develop. But it seems to
me that this could not happen without a reordering of the pecking order -
who is on top. And that cannot happen without a real settling of accounts,
meaning without a new world war.

I think the capitalist class in the main dreads something like that too.

Meanwhile, the daily attacks on Trump continue. NBC just did a short
segment on Trump's role as a money launderer for the oligarchs. As I said,
if this starts to come out, then all hell could break loose, but maybe
they'll have to bring it out. If Trump is not a "traitor" to their class,
then we have to explain why they are attacking him in such strong language.
It certainly is unprecedented.

John Reimann

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 2:26 AM, mkaradjis  wrote:


Lots of good discussion. John and others are emphasising how
"treasonous" Trump appears to be from the point of view of much of the
ruling class; his highly idiosyncratic nature; his financial ties to
the Russian oligarchy etc. My post wasn't aimed at suggesting he was a
"perfect" representative of a wing of the ruling class, whatever that
may look like; and probably some of his wing would prefer he didn't
come with the personality defects and sheer brazenness etc.

But on the ties to the Russian oligarchy for example. Is that unique
to Trump? Would be interesting to know how much of the US ruling class
has ties to the Russian oligarchy. After all, that' what 1991 and the
"fall of Communism" was supposed to be all about wasn't it? If members
of the US ruling class developed ties to Russian oligarchs in the
Yeltsin era, would anyone have batted an eyelid? Wouldn't it have been
considered normal business activity now that Russia had done the right
thing and got rid of "communism"? It might seem less normal than the
powerful ties the US ruling class has with the Israeli ruling class,
but it seems to me that's mainly about tradition, especially when we
consider that the US-Russia connection goes so strongly through
Israel.

Consider these stats:

"in just four years, Gallup shows Republican approval of Russia and
Putin has increased from 18% to a whopping 40%. CBS polling shows a
27-point swing toward a 

Re: [Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

[DW via Marxism]

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Health food fads? Education that drinking cow's milk really isn't that
healthy for humans? that 1/3 of the world is lactose intolerant? It's odd
because cheese consumption has actually gone up.


David
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Re: [Marxism] Helsinki: Was it "excellent"? Should we care?

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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I've seen the same statistics on Republican voters' approval of Putin. I
think it has a lot to do with similar social and political attitudes
(anti-gay, religious, etc.) But in any case, I think that those statistics
actually support my contention. The reason is that the old, mainline
conservatives in the Republican Party have lost out. This is exactly the
wing that represents the capitalist class. Take what happened in the
presidential primaries. The mainstream conservatives and the wing of the US
capitalist class they represented had it all set up for Jeb Bush to win the
nomination. It was a sure thing. Guaranteed. We know how well that worked
out.

Now, we hear it over and over again - how different Republican politicians
are afraid to stand up to Trump because he will get them "primaried". In
other words, the next time they run for reelection, he'll mobilize their
base to get them knocked out in the primaries.

In fact, this is a common theme heard over and over in US politics - how
Trump has completely captured the Republican Party. How the traditional
conservatives have capitulated to him. This is why a series of Republicans
are not running again - they don't want to get "primaried" but they fear
that continuing to capitulate to Trump will tarnish their future careers
and reputation. Probably the foremost Republican strategist, Max Boot, has
actually left the Republican Party because of this.

In other words, the capitalist class has not only lost control over the
presidency; they have lost control over their preferred political party.
(Not that the Democrats won't do when needed.) This is a huge development.

On the US-Russian rivalry: Even the closest capitalist allies are always
rivals also to some degree or another. I agree that the basis for the
US/Russian rivalry is not the same as it is with the US/Chinese rivalry.
There, economic competition is clear. But look at the whole issue of the US
alliance with Germany and other Western European countries. Is there not a
conflict there with a Russian alliance? Yes, maybe the whole world order
can get shaken up and a whole new alignment could develop. But it seems to
me that this could not happen without a reordering of the pecking order -
who is on top. And that cannot happen without a real settling of accounts,
meaning without a new world war.

I think the capitalist class in the main dreads something like that too.

Meanwhile, the daily attacks on Trump continue. NBC just did a short
segment on Trump's role as a money launderer for the oligarchs. As I said,
if this starts to come out, then all hell could break loose, but maybe
they'll have to bring it out. If Trump is not a "traitor" to their class,
then we have to explain why they are attacking him in such strong language.
It certainly is unprecedented.

John Reimann

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 2:26 AM, mkaradjis  wrote:

> Lots of good discussion. John and others are emphasising how
> "treasonous" Trump appears to be from the point of view of much of the
> ruling class; his highly idiosyncratic nature; his financial ties to
> the Russian oligarchy etc. My post wasn't aimed at suggesting he was a
> "perfect" representative of a wing of the ruling class, whatever that
> may look like; and probably some of his wing would prefer he didn't
> come with the personality defects and sheer brazenness etc.
>
> But on the ties to the Russian oligarchy for example. Is that unique
> to Trump? Would be interesting to know how much of the US ruling class
> has ties to the Russian oligarchy. After all, that' what 1991 and the
> "fall of Communism" was supposed to be all about wasn't it? If members
> of the US ruling class developed ties to Russian oligarchs in the
> Yeltsin era, would anyone have batted an eyelid? Wouldn't it have been
> considered normal business activity now that Russia had done the right
> thing and got rid of "communism"? It might seem less normal than the
> powerful ties the US ruling class has with the Israeli ruling class,
> but it seems to me that's mainly about tradition, especially when we
> consider that the US-Russia connection goes so strongly through
> Israel.
>
> Consider these stats:
>
> "in just four years, Gallup shows Republican approval of Russia and
> Putin has increased from 18% to a whopping 40%. CBS polling shows a
> 27-point swing toward a majority seeing Russia as an ally in just
> three short years. To be sure, voters overall are still quite
> skeptical of Putin’s regime, but that is fast changing among
> Republicans." (from this very useful article, even if I don't love the
> title:
> https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/07/21/the-putin-trump-
> 

[Marxism] Workers say no to Vietnams Special Exploitation Zones

[mkaradjis via Marxism]

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For anyone who wants a thorough analysis of the issues behind the
recent mass movement in Vietnam against new SEZ's, I highly recommend
this article. Angie Ngoc Tran has long been one of the best writers on
Vietnam labour issues. The article shows both the deeply anti-worker
nature of these latest SEZs but also the way they so clearly rising
Chinese imperialist domination of the region.


Workers say no to Vietnams Special Exploitation Zones

Angie Ngoc Tran - 18 Jul, 2018

On Sunday, 10 June 2018, thousands of people took to the streets in
major Vietnamese cities—Nha Trang, Binh Thuan, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh
City, among others. Academics, independent journalists, and overseas
Vietnamese signed petitions to join in their protest against the Draft
Law on the 99-year lease of the three Special Administrative and
Economic coastal zones in Vietnam. Workers, too, went on strike in two
industrial zones in Long An and Tien Giang provinces. These collective
actions led to a concession from the government: it would delay the
National Assembly’s ratification of the Draft Law to its next meeting.

http://www.newmandala.org/workers-say-no-vietnams-special-exploitation-zones/

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Re: [Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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what explains the falling demand?
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[Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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From my home-town paper. The collapse of dairy farming in NY State has 
hit this area very hard. Like the hotel industry that collapsed 40 years 
ago, this will be the next to go.


http://www.recordonline.com/news/20180722/falling-demand-for-milk-puts-future-of-sullivan-dairy-farms-at-risk
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[Marxism] Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the U.K. What Comes Next?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/21/ecuador-will-imminently-withdraw-asylum-for-julian-assange-and-hand-him-over-to-the-uk-what-comes-next/
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[Marxism] Where Did Donald Trump Get Two Hundred Million Dollars to Buy His Money-Losing Scottish Golf Club? | The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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It is very likely that there will be no smoking gun in the Mueller 
investigation as far as "collusion" is concerned but Trump is anxious to 
shut it down because it will lead inevitably to a look at his finances, 
which are almost certainly enough to lead to his impeachment. 
Furthermore, if he used his authoritarian powers to remain in office, 
the contradictions will become much more intractable than they are today.


---

From: 
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/where-did-donald-trump-get-200-million-dollars-to-buy-his-money-losing-scottish-golf-club


Instead, Trump turned to a new source of other people’s money. He did a 
series of deals in Toronto, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Azerbaijan, 
and Georgia with businesspeople from the former Soviet Union who were 
unlikely to pass any sort of rigorous due-diligence review by pension 
funds and other institutional investors. (Just this week, the Financial 
Times published a remarkably deep dive into the questionable financing 
of Trump’s Toronto property.) He also made deals in India, Indonesia, 
and Vancouver, Canada, with figures who have been convicted or 
investigated for criminal wrongdoing and abuse of political power.


We know very little about how money flowed into and out of these 
projects. All of these projects involved specially designated 
limited-liability companies that are opaque to outside review. We do 
know that, in the past decade, wealthy oligarchs in the former Soviet 
Union and elsewhere have seen real-estate investment as a primary 
vehicle through which to launder money. The problem is especially 
egregious in the United Kingdom, where some have called the U.K. luxury 
real-estate industry “a money laundering machine.” Golf has been a 
particular focus of money laundering. Although the U.K. has strict 
transparency rules for financial activity within the country, its 
regulators have been remarkably incurious about the sources of funds 
coming from firms based abroad. All we know is that the money that went 
into Turnberry, for example, came from the Trump Organization in the 
U.S. We—and the British authorities—have no way of knowing where the 
Trump Organization got that money.


The goal of laundering money is to take the proceeds of a criminal 
activity—government corruption, tax fraud, drug trade, or many 
others—and to disguise its origin. Many oligarchs in the former Soviet 
Union who made their money by expropriating the state’s wealth want to 
move their money into a more stable nation with greater rule of law. 
This presents a challenge: How can one insert illegally obtained funds 
into a system that requires due diligence? The answer, quite often, is 
to use shell companies to disguise the flow of funds. Although we cannot 
say that Trump himself knowingly engaged in money laundering, we do know 
with certainty that much of his business in the past decade was in the 
industries most known for money laundering, in the locations most 
conducive to money laundering, and with people who bear the key 
hallmarks of money launderers.


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[Marxism] America’s Reporter: the Hersh Method

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Vijay Prashad:
So much more could be said about Reporter. One hopes that Hersh will 
come back and write another book about matters to which he alludes at 
the close of this one. Some of his most important stories in recent 
years have been about the allegations of the use of chemical weapons in 
Syria. Hersh’s stories, which raised important questions about the 
validity of these allegations, had been reported mainly from U.S. 
government sources. He does not say enough about these stories. One 
would like to know more. One would like, as well, to know why U.S. 
publications had refused to run these stories, which eventually ran in 
British and German publications. “I will happily permit history to be 
the judge of my recent work,” he writes in the final pages. But this is 
not enough. Hersh is a good raconteur of the process of his reporting. I 
would have liked more of his sense of those stories and his judgment 
about how they were squelched and then received.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/23/americas-reporter-the-hersh-method/

Good points. If Vijay ever gets an opportunity to speak to Hersh 
personally, I hope he can ask him to explain how he got the curious 
notion that it was not a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed 
people but instead a missile that accidentally hit a supply of chlorine 
that was used by the dreaded jihadis not for use against Assad's 
military but for ritual cleansing of their own dead fighters before 
burial, especially since Islam stipulates soap and water for that purpose.

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[Marxism] Orbán in Jerusalem: The illiberal axis tightens | Lefteast

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/orban-in-jerusalem-the-illiberal-axis-tightens/
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[Marxism] The Rise of the Right Wing Is Not Due to the Working Class Because Workers Don’t Vote – Cold and dark stars

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://colddarkstars.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-is-not-due-to-the-working-class-because-workers-dont-vote/
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