Re: [Marxism] Relief Package is neither stimulus nor workers' lifeline, it’s again massive bailout to tottering corporations By Mike Whitney

[J.B. Nicholson via Marxism]

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Dayne Goodwin via Marxism wrote:

AOC blasts 'shameful' $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill for bailing out
corporations


She raised some correct points in her rant. But don't let her empty theatrics 
("blast") fool you. She didn't shame anyone but herself. She voted for that bill.


Instead of mobilizing 'the squad' and sympathetic Republicans to work against the 
bill including stalling it while the public is made aware of its many shortcomings, 
the so-called progressives gave grandstanding speeches like AOC's aforementioned 
speech. Instead of voting against the bill and being in a position to say she was 
looking out for her constituents' interests (even if the bill passed it wouldn't have 
been because of her), she now joins Tulsi Gabbard, Ayanna Pressley, Ro Khanna, 
Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, "and anyone else who wants to call themselves a 
progressive" (as Jimmy Dore said) in voting for this massive big business bailout 
bill that is the largest wealth transfer. That one-time $1,200 check some Americans 
will get won't purchase what Americans need and deserve.


Jimmy Dore has been making YouTube videos on this recently 
(https://www.youtube.com/user/TYTComedy/videos is his channel) including pointing out 
how shameful it is to think that AOC's arm-waving speech is in any way comparable to 
Congressional votes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfOPSq705To), how California's 
3-month mortgage payment moratorium is going to be followed by allowing banks to 
demand all of those unpaid payments on month 4 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQmn9o6NZVo) meaning that in month 4 one owes the 
unpaid 3 payments plus the regular monthly payment -- 4X their regular mortgage 
payment in one lump sum.


And, as Dore has been explicitly clear, "It is stunning to watch progressive media 
fall down on this". Very few news and/or commentary outlets are covering what a bad 
bill this is for the 99% and how things look very bad for a lot of Americans in the 
short-term future. One notable example: Democracy Now! earned a reputation for 
championing progressive politics during the run-up to the 2003 US/UK-led invasion of 
Iraq. DN has squandered all of that good will in recent years as Amy Goodman 
uncritically repeated Russiagate lies, echoed talk of the alleged gas attack in Douma 
that now 4 OPCW scientists say did not happen, and DN lost critical voices like 
former DN reporter Aaron Maté (who has tweeted about why he left DN and talked on 
Jimmy Dore's show about why he left DN).


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Re: [Marxism] Relief Package is neither stimulus nor workers' lifeline, it’s again massive bailout to tottering corporations By Mike Whitney

[Dayne Goodwin via Marxism]

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AOC blasts 'shameful' $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill for bailing out
corporations
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-aoc-ocasio-cortez-corporate-bailout-airlines-cruise-industry-a9430771.html

As Congress Pushes a $2 Trillion Stimulus Package, the “How Will You Pay
For It?” Question Is Tossed in the Trash
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-stimulus-package-spending/



On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 8:16 PM Dayne Goodwin 
wrote:

> “Total System Failure”: Congress Pushes $2 Trillion Pandemic Bill. Will
> Dems Allow “Corporate Coup”?
> https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/27/coronavirus_relief_bill_matt_stoller
>
> The Rich Eat First - A guide to the stimulus package from DSA's COVID-19
> Response Team
> https://www.dsausa.org/news/dsa-covid-19-bulletin-5/
>
> The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1%
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/28/opinions/stimulus-bill-tax-break-for-1-mccaffery/index.html
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 1:47 PM Ralph Johansen via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>> The Senate’s Coronavirus Relief Package Must be Stopped!
>> By Mike Whitney
>> Global Research, March 27, 2020
>> Region: USA Theme: Global Economy, Law and Justice, Science and Medicine
>>
>   . . .
>
> https://www.globalresearch.ca/senate-coronavirus-relief-package-must-stopped/5707727
>
>
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[Marxism] Group Behind Central Park Coronavirus Tent Hospital Asks Volunteers To Support Anti-Gay Agenda - Gothamist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://gothamist.com/news/samaritans-purse-franklin-graham-anti-gay-evangelical-central-park

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[Marxism] Whole Foods Employees Are Staging a Nationwide 'Sick-Out' - VICE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dmeka/whole-foods-employees-are-staging-a-nationwide-sick-out

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[Marxism] Adam Hanieh on the COVID-19 pandemic

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4623-this-is-a-global-pandemic-let-s-treat-it-as-such

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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-CivWar]: Cowsert on Hewitt and Schott, 'Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Volume 3: Essays on America's Civil War'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: March 30, 2020 at 9:02:45 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-CivWar]:  Cowsert on Hewitt and  Schott, 
> 'Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Volume 3: Essays on America's 
> Civil War'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Lawrence L. Hewitt, Thomas Edwin Schott, eds.  Confederate Generals 
> in the Trans-Mississippi: Volume 3: Essays on America's Civil War.  
> Knoxville  University of Tennessee Press, 2019.  374 pp.  $64.95 
> (cloth), ISBN 978-1-62190-454-0.
> 
> Reviewed by Zac Cowsert (West Virginia University)
> Published on H-CivWar (March, 2020)
> Commissioned by G. David Schieffler
> 
> _Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi, Volume 3_ constitutes 
> the final volume in a series that has shed tremendous light on 
> Confederate leadership, strategy, and politics west of the 
> Mississippi River. In their preface, editors Lawrence Hewitt and 
> Thomas Schott dispel the notion that the Trans-Mississippi served as 
> "a dumping ground for generals who failed east of the river or whom 
> President Davis want to shield from controversy" (p. xv). Likewise, 
> in his forward, Daniel Sutherland argues that these commanders 
> "acquitted [themselves] as well as most generals on either side. It 
> is also clear that these men were not the ones responsible for the 
> collapse of the Confederacy" (p. xiii). Instead, Sutherland contends 
> that factors unique to the Trans-Mississippi posed difficult problems 
> for Rebel leaders: the distance and apathy from Richmond, the early 
> territorial gains by the United States, and the primacy of guerrilla 
> warfare. 
> 
> The two essays on Trans-Mississippi department commanders illustrate 
> these problems best. The sheer size and numerous strategic objectives 
> within the theater could easily lead Rebel commanders astray. Joseph 
> Dawson III's essay on Earl Van Dorn depicts a mediocre commander 
> promoted far above his talents, in part due to the patronage of 
> Jefferson Davis. Allured by the desire to bring Missouri into the 
> Confederacy, Van Dorn instead blundered into disastrous defeat at Pea 
> Ridge, "the most important and consequential battle in the 
> Trans-Mississippi" (p. 17). Further defeat at Corinth only verified 
> Van Dorn's "ineptness as an independent field commander" (p. 25). 
> 
> Echoing Steven Woodworth's argument in _Jefferson Davis and His 
> Generals_ (1990), Dawson contends the Confederate president was 
> partially to blame for Confederate military failures, positing that 
> "Davis too often chose or reappointed high-ranking officers from a 
> limited pool of generals unsuited or unfit for their assignments," 
> citing Earl Van Dorn and Theophilus Holmes as examples (p. 24). 
> 
> Though faring better than Van Dorn, Edmund Kirby Smith likewise 
> struggled with the military, political, and administrative headaches 
> of department command. Jeffery Prushankin depicts a general pulled in 
> different directions by strategic and political needs during his 
> first year in command. Richmond wanted Smith to prioritize the 
> defense of Louisiana and the Mississippi River Valley, yet Smith felt 
> local political pressure to defend Arkansas and liberate Missouri. As 
> Prushankin shows, Kirby Smith attempted to accomplish both objectives 
> by adopting a conservative defensive strategy that prioritized 
> interior lines of defense and the ability to project force either 
> north to Arkansas or south to Louisiana as necessity dictated. Such a 
> strategy created a paradox: "To achieve his military goal of 
> concentration, Kirby Smith had to surrender territory, but his 
> political imperative required holding territory and thus dispersing 
> his forces. It was an impossible dilemma" (p. 115). Feeling pressure 
> to keep a strong Confederate presence everywhere, the result was 
> Kirby Smith's inability to unleash a coordinated Confederate 
> offensive anywhere. Complementing this view of Kirby Smith is Richard 
> Holloway's essay on Smith's chief of staff, William R. Boggs. Boggs 
> proved a competent, if opinionated, staff officer whose experiences 
> offer a window into the administrative and personnel headaches within 
> the department. 
> 
> Holloway's examination of Hamilton Bee suggests that capable 
> administrators do not always make capable field commanders. 
> Successful, if not always popular or scrupulous, at managing the 
> local and 

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Kornweibel on García, 'Gothic Geoculture: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Cuba in the Transamerican Imaginary'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: March 30, 2020 at 11:01:34 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]:  Kornweibel on García,  'Gothic Geoculture: 
> Nineteenth-Century Representations of Cuba in the Transamerican Imaginary'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Ivonne M. García.  Gothic Geoculture: Nineteenth-Century 
> Representations of Cuba in the Transamerican Imaginary.  Columbus  
> Ohio State University Press, 2019.  x + 170 pp.  $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 
> 978-0-8142-1395-7.
> 
> Reviewed by Karen Kornweibel (East Tennessee State University)
> Published on H-LatAm (March, 2020)
> Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz
> 
> The political, economic, and cultural relationship between the United 
> States and Cuba is a long and fraught one. The nineteenth century in 
> particular saw an increasing fascination with Cuba on the part of its 
> northern neighbor, a fascination heightened in the context of slavery 
> and Manifest Destiny. From a US perspective, Cuba was a coveted, but 
> complicated, bit of real estate, particularly as the conflict over 
> slavery intensified. Many Cubans--particularly those in exile in the 
> United States--had strong and varied opinions about the benefits and 
> dangers of relationships the island might have with the United 
> States. From the perspective of Cubans hoping to throw off the 
> Spanish yoke, the United States had varied potential as a model, or 
> ally, or nation to join, or threat to future sovereignty. The United 
> States played a crucial role in how versions of Cuban identity were 
> developed in the nineteenth century even as the island played a 
> significant role in how US identity was renegotiated during the same 
> period. 
> 
> In her book,_ Gothic Geoculture: Nineteenth-Century Representations 
> of Cuba in the Transamerican Imaginary, _Ivonne M. García details 
> representations of Cuba from the literary archive from the 1830s to 
> 1890s. García's study builds on the foundation of a growing body of 
> scholarship that furthers our understanding of the literary and 
> historical realities of the Americas by moving beyond national 
> literatures to examine how shared experiences in the "New World," 
> like colonialism and slavery, led to analogous complexities in the 
> way systems of race, gender, and nation developed. Positioning 
> herself within this conversation, García employs the term 
> "transamericanity" to capture this idea and her work is based on the 
> "transamerican imaginary" that is most notably characterized in the 
> nineteenth century by the geoculture of slavery. Her title, _Gothic 
> Geoculture,_ refers to what she effectively argues is the gothic 
> nature of the representations of Cuba in the nineteenth-century 
> transamerican imaginary. As she explains in the introduction, 
> "_Gothic Geoculture_ focuses on the juncture where the gothic and 
> transamericanity meet, and where slavery, race, gender and 
> nationality become imbricated discourses that not only serve to 
> explain and justify, but also to challenge, US imperialist expansion 
> in the region" (pp. 13-14). 
> 
> García effectively situates her study in the historical and cultural 
> context. Focusing on a number of different genres including travel 
> guides, letters, novels, short stories, and essays, she explores how 
> cultural production by both US and Cuban writers during this period 
> drew on gothic themes such as "monstrosity, doubleness, corruption, 
> possession, and infection" to represent Cuba as dangerous and/or 
> imperiled (p. 5). García then discusses what these representations 
> reveal about the political and cultural relationship between the 
> island and the United States, and the breadth of genres covered lends 
> strength to her overall argument. Although she frames the chapters as 
> case studies--the first four of which focus on nuanced and apt close 
> readings of pairs of texts by different authors, with the final one 
> dedicated to several works by José Martí--her analysis has a clear 
> arc as she demonstrates the way in which the nature of the 
> gothicization of Cuba changed over time, most notably toward the end 
> of the nineteenth century. 
> 
> Each of García's chapters develops a central aspect of gothic 
> geoculture to further delineate the gothicization of Cuba in the 
> transamerican imaginary over the course of the nineteenth century. 
> The travel narratives of William Cullen Bryant and 

[Marxism] General Electric Workers Launch Protest, Demand to Make Ventilators - VICE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mjxg/general-electric-workers-walk-off-the-job-demand-to-make-ventilators

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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Nationalism]: Bellows on Downs, 'The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 1:47 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Nationalism]: Bellows on Downs, 'The Second
American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth
of the American Republic'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


Gregory P. Downs.  The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era
Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic.  The
Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era Series. Chapel
Hill  University of North Carolina Press, 2019.  232 pp.  $27.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-5273-3.

Reviewed by Amanda Bellows (The New School)
Published on H-Nationalism (March, 2020)
Commissioned by Evan C. Rothera

In his thought-provoking new book, _The Second American Revolution:
The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American
Republic_, Gregory P. Downs presents a compelling new interpretation
of the US Civil War (1861-65). He argues that the war was "not merely
civil--meaning national--and not solely a war"; rather, it was a
transnational event that was "part of an international crisis" and
"was fought, in part, over competing visions of the world's future"
(p. 1). Furthermore, while some scholars diminish the extent to which
the Civil War altered the course of national development, Downs
contends that historians should think of "the Greater Civil War as a
revolution" (p. 4). By doing so, they will gain a clearer
understanding of the war's domestic and transnational consequences.

Downs is a professor of history at the University of California,
Davis where he studies nineteenth-century US political and cultural
history. He joins a distinguished group of scholars who have sought
to place the history of the US Civil War era in global perspective in
the last two decades. Historians Richard Blackett, Matthew Clavin,
Enrico Dal Lago, Don Doyle, Gerald Horne, Gale Kenny, Caleb McDaniel,
Edward Rugemer, and Brian Schoen have recently written monographs
that examine the international origins and outcomes of the war or
emancipation. In writing his book, Downs incorporated primary sources
from archives located in Cuba, Spain, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and
the United States. By setting the Civil War and its aftermath in
broader international context, he seeks to show through his
methodological approach that the conflict was "an externally oriented
revolution" that "no longer looks moderate or restorative, in its
leaders' intentions, in its methods, or in its effects" (p. 57).

Downs's central argument relates to the definition of the Civil War
as a "second American revolution" in US history (p. 2). The _New York
Herald _used the phrase to describe the Civil War in March 1869 just
prior to Ulysses S. Grant's presidential inauguration. Downs contends
that it is an apt term because of the Civil War's nationally and
internationally transformative political and social consequences. In
the domestic context, Downs focuses on the federal government's use
of force during the 1860s via "martial law, military governments, and
Washington ultimatums to force states to transform the Constitution
in ways unimaginable in the 1850s" (p. 3). Postwar legislation and
constitutional changes permanently reshaped the nation, particularly
through the abolition of slavery and the reformation of labor
relations via a process he describes as "bloody constitutionalism"
(p. 6). Downs also highlights the international impact of the
abolition of American slavery, an event that would reverberate
throughout the Atlantic World, especially in regions where slavery
still existed. Ultimately, he argues, the "second American
revolution" led to significant changes that included the liberation
of four million enslaved African Americans, the reduction of the
Southern planter class's power, and the production of a revolutionary
wave that "reverberated back to Cuba, Mexico, and Spain" (p. 7).

_The Second American Revolution_ is composed of an introduction,
three chapters, and an afterword that assess the Civil War,
Reconstruction, and the rise of the Jim Crow era. In the
introduction, "The Second American Revolution?," Downs explores the
notion of the Civil War as a revolutionary event and presents his
central arguments. Next, in chapter 1, "The Second American
Republic," he examines the role of federal force in securing the
constitutional amendments that would lead to the acquisition of
critical civil rights for African Americans during the period of
Reconstruction. Downs argues that "Republicans turned to military
power ... to revolutionize Southern society ... [and] to enact a
constitutional revolution" (p. 13). He 

[Marxism] Pastor warns of virus hoax, but . . . .

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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This from the _Christian Post_:

Pastor Ronnie Hampton of New Vision Community Church, a Free Methodist
Church Planting Project scoffed at all that concern about the pandemic.

He warned::“They’re gonna come up with a vaccine and in that vaccine
everybody is gonna have to take it … and inside of that vaccine there’s
going to be some type of electronic computer device that’s gonna put some
type of chip in you and maybe even have some mood, mind-altering
circumstances … and they’re saying that the chip would be the mark of the
beast."

He died of Covid-19 last Wednesday.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/3-pastors-killed-by-coronavirus-one-thought-god-allowed-infection-so-he-could-get-a-little-rest.html
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[Marxism] Hydroxychloroquine proves ineffective against coronavirus in small Chinese trial | Genetic Literacy Project

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/03/30/hydroxychloroquine-proves-ineffective-against-coronavirus-in-small-chinese-trial/

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Re: [Marxism] The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration | The New Yorker

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

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Thanks for posting -- the journalist did a VERY GOOD job ---  I hope people
read the article carefully ...
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Re: [Marxism] [UCE] coronavirus bailout, inflation and Marx

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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John Reimann wrote:  " A large chunk of the bailout will be going to
workers, in effect raising their buying power or at least limiting the fall
in their buying power.
Will that lead to inflation and does it contradict the views of Karl Marx?"

I had written a response to a very similar proposition where in an article
(Short View) in the FT the following statement was to be found:

"...there is growing interest in the power of another type of Chinese
consumer — the more regular, less flashy sort. Incomes for China’s poorest
40 per cent are rising at about 9 per cent a year."

Because it is behind a 'paywall' I have appended the FT article below my
comment that was published in the FT on 12-21-15.

JAI

Marx’s meditation on Citizen Weston revisited

https://www.ft.com/content/d3474ce2-a588-11e5-a91e-162b86790c58

December 21 2015

Sir,

Jennifer Hughes’s comments on the increase in purchasing power of China’s
poorest 40 per cent (Short View, December 17) illustrates why it is that a
rise in the minimum wage does not result in an increase in unemployment.
Nor does such an increase engender anything more than but a brief but
passing inflationary episode.

After describing a fall in the Chinese luxury goods market, Ms Hughes
writes that “there is growing interest in the power of another type of
Chinese consumer...Incomes for China’s poorest 40 per cent are rising at
about 9 per cent a year — more rapidly than for the better off . . .
investors should think about sectors that could get a boost from the bottom
40 per cent.”

Suppose that against a given level of production such an increase occurs.
The additional purchasing power then causes a rise in the price level of
what AC Pigou called “wage-goods” as the pay rise does not allow ventures
into “non-wage goods” (luxury items), only an increase in purchasing of the
former.

This rise in the price level — and through that, the profitability — in the
“wage-good” sector entices some entrepreneurs to exit the “non-wage good”
sector and enter into “wage-good” production. The consequent rise in the
level of this production soon strips the inflation away, sending pricing,
profitability and the general level of inflation back towards their
pre-wage increase mean levels. Only now there is relatively more production
of “wage-goods”.

In addition there will be an increase in the tempo of the economy as income
will have been transferred towards sectors inhabited by those with greater
marginal propensity to consume. Of course some pre-existing concerns
operating marginally at profitability will be unable to afford the wage
rise and will exit the field. These losses will be more than compensated by
the job growth in the “wage-good” industries as a portion of the market’s
productive forces come to be shifted away from the fashioning of luxury
items as “investors . . . think about sectors that could get a boost from
the bottom”.

There is nothing new in this thinking. Marx described the same almost
exactly 150 years ago in his meditation on *Citizen Weston in Value, Price
and Profit
*.

John A Imani
Los Angeles, CA, US

Short View-Jennifer Hughes 12-16-2015

*https://www.ft.com/content/e0b7db56-a3aa-11e5-8d70-42b68cfae6e4
*

“Lower end of the market adds to China’s mass appeal Incomes for poorest 40
per cent rising at about 9 per cent a year.”

“If 500 stormtroopers posing on the Great Wall of China don’t give a film a
boost, then nothing will. As markets digest the implications of the Federal
Reserve’s interest rate decision, the launch on Thursday of the latest Star
Wars installment speaks to another key trend for next year: the Chinese
consumer. Luxury goods sales there are still dropping at an alarming rate.
This week Prada reported a 26 per cent slump in its China business and LVMH
has begun closing some stores. But there is growing interest in the power
of another type of Chinese consumer — the more regular, less flashy sort.
Incomes for China’s poorest 40 per cent are rising at about 9 per cent a
year — more rapidly than for the better off, according to Gavekal
Dragonomics. The middle 40 per cent has greater spending power, so they
drive the bulk of consumption and overall consumption growth is still
likely to slow. But investors should think about sectors that could get a
boost from the bottom 40 per cent.

The sheer numbers involved would be significant if, as elsewhere, their
extra funds go towards better quality goods and experiences. More lipsticks
and cosmetics might be one example. China’s biggest beauty chain, AS

Re: [Marxism] The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration | The New Yorker

[wytheholt--- via Marxism]

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Among his many endearing characteristics, Epstein is a self-centered blowhard 
and is always right, no matter what it is. Remind you of anyone? Most of what 
he says is not to be taken seriously. As you say, Louis, Epstein is the 
paradigmatic asshole.

> On March 30, 2020 at 8:26 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism 
> mailto:marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu > wrote:
> 
> 
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> 
> Isaac Chotiner takes down Richard Epstein, an NYU law professor who is a
> libertarian know-it-all and the biggest asshole in the world.
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-contrarian-coronavirus-theory-that-informed-the-trump-administration
> 
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[Marxism] Particle politics | Richard Seymour on Patreon

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Sign up for Richard Seymour on Patreon. Only $5 a month and far better 
than Chapo Crap House.)


We are surrounded by, covered with, infected by, in living symbiosis 
with trillions upon trillions of particles of data. Every millimetre of 
seawater alone contains hundreds of millions of fragments of genomic 
information.


By themselves, these particles are inert. They are not life, despite the 
fact that they are capable of evolution. Unlike cells, these particles 
cannot appropriate energy from the surrounding environment. They cannot 
metabolise or self-replicate. To be replicated, they must be introjected 
into living organisms. We use agentive metaphors to describe what they 
do. They 'break into' the cell, 'hijack' the organellese, 'parasitise' 
the autopoietic chemistry of life. But these are just chemical 
reactions. The virus has no agency without its host. The primary agency 
in any pandemic is human.


https://www.patreon.com/posts/particle-35423614

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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Judaic]: Herman on Levine, 'Jewish Law and American Law: A Comparative Study, Volume 2' and Levine, 'Jewish Law and American Law: A Comparative Study, Volume 1'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: March 30, 2020 at 3:00:00 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Judaic]:  Herman on Levine, 'Jewish Law and American 
> Law: A Comparative Study, Volume 2' and Levine, 'Jewish Law and American Law: 
> A Comparative Study, Volume 1'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Samuel J. Levine.  Jewish Law and American Law: A Comparative Study, 
> Volume 2.  New York  Touro College Press, 2018.  238 pp.  $109.00 
> (cloth), ISBN 978-1-61811-657-4.
> 
> Samuel J. Levine.  Jewish Law and American Law: A Comparative Study, 
> Volume 1.  New York  Touro College Press, 2018.  384 pp.  $109.00 
> (cloth), ISBN 978-1-61811-655-0.
> 
> Reviewed by Marc Herman (Yale)
> Published on H-Judaic (March, 2020)
> Commissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz
> 
> Jewish Law and American Law: A Comparative Study collects twenty-six 
> essays by Samuel J. Levine--all previously published--on an 
> impressive array of topics that fall under the broad headings of the 
> Jewish and American legal traditions and, frequently, the 
> interrelationship between the two. Each chapter displays Levine's 
> mastery of both legal corpora, through clear arguments and copious 
> documentation of primary sources and secondary literature in both 
> Jewish and American law. The work is divided into eight topically 
> arranged sections; the essays address such diverse subjects as 
> Holocaust-era responsa, prosecutorial ethics, and the possible 
> contributions of Jewish hermeneutics to American constitutional 
> jurisprudence. The subjects of some of the essays overlap and 
> chapters can often be read together fruitfully (e.g., chapters 2 and 
> 3, "An Introduction to Interpretation in Jewish Law, with References 
> to American Legal Theory," and "An Introduction to Legislation in 
> Jewish Law, with References to the American Legal System"). Other 
> essays stand on their own, such as chapter 22, which analyzes Goldman 
> v. Weinberger (1986), when the US Supreme Court evaluated the 
> propriety of an Air Force psychologist wearing a skullcap in a 
> military hospital, and chapter 19, which traces the history of an 
> antisemitic legend in legal writing, from its appearance in a 
> nineteenth-century Irish periodical to an early twentieth-century 
> American textbook. 
> 
> In the programmatic essays in these volumes, Levine articulates--with 
> impressive force--the idea that the Jewish legal tradition has a 
> great deal to add to contemporary American legal thought. This 
> position also underlies Levine's discussions of three themes: the 
> ethical and legal values that inform debates about capital punishment 
> (section 2); the constitutional protections against 
> self-incrimination (section 3, where Levine explicates and 
> interrogates Chief Justice Earl Warren's citation of Moses Maimonides 
> and other Jewish thinkers); and methodological considerations in 
> constitutional interpretation (section 5). Levine, however, does not 
> explain precisely why Jewish law is better able to contribute to 
> American jurisprudence than other religious legal traditions, such as 
> Islamic law or Hindu law, nor does he explore, except in passing, if 
> or how American law might help researchers reconsider ideas penned by 
> Jewish jurists. And when Jewish law is disappointingly silent on 
> central problems that Levine seeks to tackle, he turns to broad and 
> often vague ethical exhortations of the Jewish tradition (e.g., his 
> discussion of the ethical demands placed on American lawyers is 
> informed by a sweeping call to realize Jewish ethics in all aspects 
> of daily life; vol. 1, p. 233). 
> 
> Levine explicitly participates in a larger discourse within the legal 
> academy that looks to Robert Cover (1943-86) as its pioneer. Rather 
> than methodological innovation, then, Levine's strength is his deep 
> engagement with Jewish legal sources and their long history of 
> interpretation. Writing about capital punishment, Levine explains: 
> "It is not uncommon to find both proponents and opponents of the 
> death penalty attempting to support their respective positions 
> through citations of sources in Jewish law. Such attempts, however, 
> often fail to consider the full range of Jewish legal scholarship, 
> relying on a few sources that appear, superficially, to favor one 
> position over the other" (vol. 1, p. 85). Levine instead provides a 
> richer--albeit terse--account of Jewish 

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Marquez on Kraay, 'Bahia's Independence: Popular Politics and Patriotic Festival in Salvador, Brazil, 1824-1900'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: March 30, 2020 at 11:30:22 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]:  Marquez on Kraay, 'Bahia's Independence: 
> Popular Politics and Patriotic Festival in Salvador, Brazil, 1824-1900'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Hendrik Kraay.  Bahia's Independence: Popular Politics and Patriotic 
> Festival in Salvador, Brazil, 1824-1900.  Montreal  McGill-Queen's 
> University Press, 2019.  xiv + 416 pp.  $39.95 (paper), ISBN 
> 978-0-7735-5748-2.
> 
> Reviewed by John C. Marquez (University of California, Irvine)
> Published on H-LatAm (March, 2020)
> Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz
> 
> On July 2, 1823, members of the Exército Pacificador (Pacifying 
> Army) expelled remaining Portuguese forces from Salvador, effectively 
> consolidating Brazilian national independence as it unfolded in 
> Bahia. Brazil declared its independence from Portugal in 1822, but it 
> was not until the second of July that following year that Bahians 
> took control of the city of Salvador. For this reason, Bahians from 
> the nineteenth century to the present commemorate Dois de Julho 
> (second of July) as a marker of independence, alongside the more 
> familiar date of September 7 celebrated throughout Brazil. As Hendrik 
> Kraay describes, the "bedraggled patriots who marched in Salvador on 
> 2 July 1823 likely knew they were participating in momentous events, 
> although they could not have known that their actions would soon be 
> symbolically re-enacted, year after year" (p. 43). 
> 
> _Bahia's Independence: Popular Politics and Patriotic Festival in 
> Salvador, Brazil, 1824-1900 _comprehensively explores this symbolic 
> reenactment in the civic ritual known as Dois de Julho, particularly 
> as it mapped onto and shaped the province's nineteenth-century 
> political culture. Civic rituals and public celebrations following 
> Brazil's independence offer historians a unique window into social 
> beliefs and political customs throughout the empire and the tensions 
> that surrounded them. Based on more than twenty years of research, 
> and building off his previous work that explored Brazil's "days of 
> national festivities," Kraay sets out to understand the invention and 
> reinvention of Dois de Julho and popular mobilization around Bahians' 
> distinct remembrance and celebration of national independence. Kraay 
> argues that Dois de Julho celebrations in nineteenth-century 
> Salvador, rather than embodying a "regional identity project," 
> provided Bahians a living ritual through which to articulate 
> distinctly Bahian narratives of independence (p. 9). Indeed, Dois de 
> Julho "celebrates independence not in a nation-state but in one of 
> its constituent parts" (p. 7). In turn, Kraay demonstrates that civic 
> rituals celebrating July 2, 1823, mobilized popular support and 
> participation among Bahians across the long run of the Brazilian 
> Empire. The meanings of such civic rituals, however, varied among its 
> participants, making it a key site for understanding political life, 
> exclusion, and popular struggles over citizenship in Bahia's public 
> sphere. 
> 
> To trace Dois de Julho's evolution across the nineteenth century, 
> Kraay expertly pieces together various sources, including memoirs, 
> provincial correspondence, plays, and newspapers. Reading across 
> these sources, Kraay finds contradictions and errors in surviving 
> accounts of nineteenth-century Dois de Julho, making it challenging 
> to paint a full picture of early celebrations. Kraay engages the work 
> of folklorists like Manoel Raimundo Querino, reading their accounts 
> against surviving newspapers in order to challenge the "official 
> histories" that those writers generated. The result is a new history 
> of Dois de Julho and Bahian political culture that is sensitive to 
> broader historical shifts and that corrects common misconceptions of 
> the celebration still present today. 
> 
> _Bahia's Independence_ is organized chronologically and thematically 
> across six chapters. The first half of the book traces key shifts in 
> Dois de Julho celebrations within Bahia and Brazil's social and 
> political context. Chapter 1 describes the invention of Dois de Julho 
> in 1824 by Exaltados (radical liberals) who adapted and reworked 
> old-regime civic rituals into new expressions of radical liberalism. 
> While "official" histories of Dois de Julho frame its origins as a 

Re: [Marxism] The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration | The New Yorker

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Aside from the fact that Epstein talks in complete gobbledygook, he does
two interesting things:
First, in truly Trumpian fashion, he makes grandiose statements about his
expertise. ("I'm trained in all of these things" - in relationship to
science.)

Second, as somebody who is totally untrained, he makes a mistake that I
actually made at first, before I started investigating the facts: He
understands that like all viruses, coronaviruses mutate and evolve. It is
true, to a degree, that a virus has it in its interest not to kill its
host, in order that the host can live long enough to pass on the virus to
others. He thinks, though, that the differences in severity of Covid-19 are
due to different strains of the virus. All the scientists dispute that as
far as I can tell, and as the article also says. And, as far as the
interest of the virus in not killing its host: *That is only true so long
as it doesn't kill the host immediately, or before the host can pass on the
virus. *

I'm reading Rob Wallace's "Big farms make big flu", and that's exactly one
point he makes: That if a virus can be passed on fairly quickly and easily,
it doesn't matter if it's ultimately fatal or not; it can survive and
multiply just as easily. But what do facts matter? Epstein has his
theories, and the facts that don't fit aren't facts. They don't exist.

But the interview is a terrific example of what I wrote about the lunatic
wing of the capitalist class.

John Reimann

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] AOC breaks with Bernie on how to lead the left - POLITICO

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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It was obvious from the start that she was a conventional liberal 
politician. Nothing wrong with that. I loved Bella Abzug even though I 
understood that she was a member of a party that had to be wiped off the 
face of the earth.


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/new-aoc-divides-the-left-150767

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[Marxism] Michael Sorkin, 71, Dies; Saw Architecture as a Vehicle for Change

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, March 30, 2020
Michael Sorkin, 71, Dies; Saw Architecture as a Vehicle for Change
By Joseph Giovannini

Michael Sorkin, one of architecture’s most outspoken public 
intellectuals, a polymath whose prodigious output of essays, lectures 
and designs, all promoting social justice, established him as the 
political conscience in the field, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71.


In lectures and in years of teaching, Mr. Sorkin inspired audiences and 
students to use architecture to change lives, resist the status quo and 
help achieve social equity. His motivational writings and projects 
helped reset the field’s moral compass.


With degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and 
a master’s in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, he moved in 1973 from Cambridge to New York, a city he said 
he adored for its opera and toasted bagels. It remained his home for the 
rest of his life.


He and his wife, a professor of film theory at Brown University, spent 
decades in a modest, rent-controlled, two-bedroom floor-through 
apartment on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, from which he commuted 
daily on foot to his studio in TriBeCa. He based one of his dozen books, 
“Twenty Minutes in Manhattan” (2009), on his pedestrian odyssey.


His writings ranged in scope from urban theory to the Israeli border 
wall to issues of sustainability. He specialized in compressing biting 
wit and intellectual scope in irresistible sentences that buoyed serious 
arguments.


His designs, mostly unbuilt statements of theory, were equally 
wide-ranging: a small-lot apartment competition in New York, a master 
plan for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, vast urban planning 
schemes for competitions in China. He laced his urban proposals with 
green zones and designed lighthearted zoomorphic buildings, like a 
seaside hotel shaped like a jellyfish drifting in the current.


A natural radical who saw architecture through a political and social 
lens, Mr. Sorkin maintained an outsider’s critical perspective even as 
he entered the establishment as head of his own architecture firm and as 
director of the graduate urban design program at the City College of New 
York. His practice, writings and academic position gave him a public 
platform. At the beginning of his career, he made his reputation by 
speaking truth to power; when he achieved a degree of power, he 
continued to speak truth, as though still an outsider.


He first established himself as a public figure from 1980 to 1990 at The 
Village Voice, where he wrote searing critiques, leavened with humor, 
that were often delivered at the expense of people who lived uptown. “He 
said what everyone was really thinking but were afraid to say,” said Max 
Protetch, whose Max Protetch Gallery specialized in architects’ drawings.


Philip Johnson, long since ensconced as the dean of American 
architecture by the time Mr. Sorkin began writing, was a conspicuous 
target. He ripped into Johnson’s post-Modernist AT Building on Madison 
Avenue (1984), designed like a Chippendale highboy, calling it a 
tarted-up “Seagram Building with ears.” In the humor magazine Spy, he 
outed Johnson as a former Nazi sympathizer, a fact no one at the time 
dared whisper.


When he attacked Paul Goldberger, then the architecture critic of The 
New York Times, in The Voice, Mr. Goldberger fired back that Mr. 
Sorkin’s writing “is to thoughtful criticism what the Ayatollah Khomeini 
is to religious tolerance.” The mischievous Mr. Sorkin advertised that 
retort as a credential when he used it as a blurb on the back cover of a 
volume of collected essays, “Exquisite Corpse: Writings on Buildings” 
(1991).


“I thought of Michael as a bomb thrower because his pieces always shook 
things up,” said Cathleen McGuigan, editor in chief of Architectural 
Record, where Mr. Sorkin was a longtime contributing editor.


Mr. Sorkin was an activist critic with a social agenda. He started his 
career identifying abuses of power while facing the headwinds of the 
conservative Reagan era. “Politics programs our architecture,” he wrote.


He advocated for housing and green energy rather than prisons and malls, 
and for citizens to participate in the design of their own urban 
destinies. As architecture’s largest expression, the city shaped how 
people led their lives, behaved and therefore thought, and he viewed 
urban design as an instrument of enlightened social engineering, 
political justice and power sharing. He inveighed against the 
privatization of public space.


“Ultimately Michael was a humanist: He believed in building for people, 
not the 

[Marxism] An Emergency Field Hospital Is Going Up In Central Park As Coronavirus Cases Surge In NYC - Gothamist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://gothamist.com/news/emergency-field-hospital-going-central-park-coronavirus-cases-surge-nyc

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[Marxism] Ecosocialism or barbarism: an interview with Ian Angus - ROAPE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://roape.net/2020/03/24/ecosocialism-or-barbarism-an-interview-with-ian-angus/

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[Marxism] The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration | The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Isaac Chotiner takes down Richard Epstein, an NYU law professor who is a 
libertarian know-it-all and the biggest asshole in the world.



https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-contrarian-coronavirus-theory-that-informed-the-trump-administration

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[Marxism] A war economy? | Michael Roberts Blog

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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What is clear is that the lockdowns in so many major economies have and 
will deliver a humungous slump in production, investment, employment and 
incomes in most economies.  The OECD sums up the picture best.  The 
impact effect of business closures could result in reductions of 15% or 
more in the level of output throughout the advanced economies and major 
emerging-market economies. In the median economy, output would decline 
by 25%…. “For each month of containment, there will be a loss of 2 
percentage points in annual GDP growth”.


https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/a-war-economy/

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[Marxism] factory farming, habitat loss and the two wings of the capitalist class

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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I am reading "Big Farms make big flu" by Rob Wallace. I Have just gotten
50+ pages into it, but already what is so very clear is this: While we can
and must develop demands that protect workers and limit the spread of
Covid-19, that is only dealing with the symptoms of the crisis. Wallace
explains part of the basis of it: factory farming. (The other half of the
basis, as I understand it, is habitat loss and the breakup of habitat into
segments. This seems to be the main reason why the viruses in bats, which
are hosts to many viruses, have spread to other animals and to humans.) So,
millions of sane people look to figures like Anthony Fauci or NY governor
Andrew Cuomo as the leaders who will save us.

In fact, the difference between them and lunatics like Trump and the Wall
St. Journal editors is similar to the difference between Herbert Hoover and
FDR. Hoover represented the wing of the capitalist class that just wanted
to let 'er rip - let the economy go into free fall and eventually recover,
whereas FDR understood that some reforms were necessary. Neither wing was
able to prevent the total disaster to both the human species and the planet
of WW II.

So today, one wing wants to allow Covid 19 to spread unchecked in the
lunatic belief that it will burn itself, while it has a low mortality rate.
(The percentage of those who get it and die may be low, but the total
number would be disastrously high, and made worse by the massive lack of
hospital beds and medical equipment.) The other wing understands that some
checks are necessary. Ultimately, however, a new virus will emerge or an
older one will evolve that will have the same transmission rate as the
present coronavirus but something closer to a 50% mortality rate. It seems
to me that that is inevitable unless we end factory farming and habitat
destruction. In other words, unless capitalism is overthrown. (After I
finish reading Wallace's book I will write more on this.)

John Reimann
-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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