[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Environment]: Heslop on Beaven and Bell and James, 'Port Towns and Urban Cultures: International Histories of the Waterfront, c.1700-2000'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 5:09 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Environment]: Heslop on Beaven and Bell and James,
'Port Towns and Urban Cultures: International Histories of the Waterfront,
c.1700-2000'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


Brad Beaven, Karl Bell, Robert James, eds.  Port Towns and Urban
Cultures: International Histories of the Waterfront, c.1700-2000.
London  Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.  289 pp.  $74.99 (e-book), ISBN
978-1-137-48316-4; $119.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-137-48315-7.

Reviewed by Madison Heslop (University of Washington)
Published on H-Environment (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Daniella McCahey

Histories of ports have focused overmuch on mercantile perspectives,
write editors Brad Beaven, Karl Bell, and Robert James in the
introduction to _Port Towns and Urban Cultures_. In this collected
volume, they instead present a series of cultural histories of
port-city relationships that explore "the contrasts and connections
between maritime communities and their urban hinterlands" (p. 4). As
a whole, the contributors argue that port towns have been hosts to
distinctive cultural entities that formed in relation to their
specific geographies and cultural plurality.

_Port Towns and Urban Culture_s is, as the subtitle claims, an
international history, but it is an international history that
remains decidedly Eurocentric. The chapters barely glance at the
Pacific, John Griffiths's chapter on Australia and New Zealand port
cities excepted, and none touch the Indian Ocean--two areas of robust
scholarship in recent decades. This lack of geographic diversity is
likely due to the book's origin within the University of Portsmouth's
Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group, in which scholars of
Europe predominate.

The book has been sorted into two thematic sections, each ordered
chronologically. "Urban-Maritime Cultures," the first section,
"explores the nature and character of land-based maritime culture"
(p. 4). This section interrogates the persistent "otherness" of
portside neighborhoods; tensions between cities and their sailor
towns; and the fluid identities of the sailors, soldiers, and others
who spanned the urban-maritime threshold. The second section,
"Representations and Identities," offers analyses of depictions of
port towns, their inhabitants and visitors, the ways sailors
identified themselves, and mechanisms of authority and control in the
urban-maritime setting. The two sections have significant thematic
overlaps. The examination of identity is a strong through line across
_Port Towns and Urban Cultures_--fitting for a book focused on
culture.

One manifestation of the authors' interest in identity is the
recurring argument that community identities can coalesce from
intimate relationships with local environments, usually a sea or
river in these cases. This notion that groups might build personal or
collective identities around environments or extractive industries
should strike a chord with environmental historians who have explored
other iterations of this theme in mining or logging towns.[1] In
chapter 3, Paul Gilchrist argues that his great-great-great
grandfather, Newcastle poet, songwriter, and sailmaker Robert
Gilchrist's songs and sonnets celebrated connections with the sea and
contributed a sense of place based on a port town identity. Tytti
Steel's chapter observes how oral history interviewees used ports to
construct local, professional, and personal identities, connecting
"otherness" to "identity work" in 1950s Finnish port towns. In each
of these chapters, however, and across the majority of the volume,
environments function as a setting, not a method of analysis.

Contributors' peripheral treatment of environmental factors
illuminates potential avenues for future research. The seasonal
nature of maritime work in the age of sail, for example, is an
established fact with wide-ranging implications for urban-maritime
cultures. As Nigel Worden argues in the second chapter, local
dynamics in mid-eighteenth-century Cape Town hinged on the seasonal
nature of sailors' presence in the city. Climate and seasons,
nevertheless, are subjects left for other scholars to explore.

A few chapters shed light on built environments. Others offer mere
tantalizing glimpses. Jo Byrne's contribution, "Hull, Fishing and the
Life and Death of Trawlertown: Living the Spaces of a Trawling
Port-City," especially stands out in this respect. Byrne applies Tim
Ingold's "taskscape" concept to oral history testimonies in order to
analyze the specific character of the port-city relationship in Hull,
England, in the late twentieth 

[Marxism] Fwd: On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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Thank you for these historically and contemporaneously, comradely and
brotherly,thoughts.
Roll Tide!

JAI

-- Forwarded message -
From: Wythe Holt jr. 
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and
its Social Implications
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition 
Cc: A.R. G , John A Imani ,
Jeffrey Masko 

This is a strange submission, for one who, like myself, was born and reared
a white racist in the American South, who has fought for decades to
overcome his racism, and who has lived almost all of his life with people
who still think the Confederacy is one of the most meaningful things in
their lives.

For my black friends, it (the Confederacy) is deeply negative -- it means
thoroughgoing and tangible racism -- being "raced" every minute of every
day, being subject to outlandish cruelty and, worse, dismissal as full
human beings, being subjected to second class citizenship and overt haughty
discrimination, a lesser level of imagined possible competence in many
white minds and in much of the law and culture, in education, in
government, in all walks of public and private life -- all offshoots and
holdovers from the human slavery that most of their American ancestors
suffered under.

For a large number of my white friends, it often means unquestioning
glorification of and identification with the white people who led the
Confederacy in military defense of the institution of human slavery.  (NOT
"states rights" -- the "state's right" that -- when I ask them -- these
folks immediately first think about is the "right" to hold human beings in
legal thralldom.)

For all of these people the Confederate flag is centrally meaningful as a
symbol of these wildly differing views and experiences of hundreds of years
of the degradation and enslavement of dark-skinned people.

This needs to be said again, and at length.  Anthema to the former
(African-Americans), and a symbol of life and worth and deep if racist
meaning to the latter (so-called Caucasians), is the Confederate flag.  It
means "slavery" -- still -- to every Southerner born and bred there.  It
means racism.  It means cruelty and overlordship.  It means defiance of the
law, it means being a traitor to the original Constitution and government
of the US, it means that equality is impossible and always nonexistent, it
means that a whole group of people who are black are STILL TO THIS MINUTE
thought to be inherently ignorant and uncivilized and inhuman by many white
people, many of whom do not live in the South.  Look at the continuing
murder of black men by white policemen, something which still seems to
happen monthly or more frequently, 155 years after Appomattox.  For many
black people it means constant struggle in their own minds and culture to
assert and maintain a sense of humanity, a sense denied them by the racism
which envelops them.  Amith, the Confederate flag MEANS racism.  Wherever
you live in the South, look around and discover how many African-Americans
fly this flag, or defend its use, much less glorify it.  How many of them
speak well of it?

Amith, you live in this world of the Old Confederacy now, though you were
not born in it.  My own forebears, all born and reared in Virginia, owned
human beings as slaves and fought -- my great-grandfather for all four
years of the war -- to preserve the malign, ghastly, and deeply prejudicial
institution of slavery.  All the wealth created by that society was due to
enslaved people's work and deprivation but was claimed as theirs and as
their own work-product by their non-laboring white owners.  His son, my
grandfather, a successful politician from about 1895 through 1933, held
black people in contempt and gloried in the supposed military exploits of
his father (whom he could not remember, the man having drunk himself to
death when my grandfather was four) and the other men and women who fought,
often to the death, to preserve slavery and a regime using the labor of
horribly treated black workers to build everything.  The worth of the slave
South was embodied in, and produced by, the labor of people thought to be
and treated as not really human.  This is what that flag means.  This is
what it meant at NASCAR (which still has ONLY ONE nonwhite driver, the one
who protested the use of the flag).  This is what it means to just about
everyone in the US who sees it.

Wythe


From: John A Imani 
Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and
its Social

Agree that other symbols of oppression are relatively 

[Marxism] [UCE] Upcoming Online Event: Marxism in a New Time of Struggle

[Reid, Moira [hsmreid2] via Marxism]

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Marxism in a New Time of Struggle
Online Event
Thursday 18 June (19:00 – 20:30 BST)

Join the Marx Memorial Library 
(www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk) as 
it launches the 2020 issue of Theory & Struggle, a journal published by 
Liverpool University Press. Volume 121 features articles on international and 
local struggles as well as theoretical debates, browse the complete issue 
here.



The event’s panel of contributors will include:



  *   Professor Mary Davis, Historian
  *   Andrew Murray, Chief of Staff at Unite the Union
  *   Maxine Peake, Actor

For full programme and registration details please visit the event page:
bit.ly/MarxismInANewTimeofStruggle

If you have any questions about the event please contact Meirian Jump, MML 
Archivist & Library Manager, at 
m.j...@marx-memorial-library.org.uk.


Moira Reid, Journals Marketing Assistant
L I V E R P O O L  U N I V E R S I T Y  P R E S S   |   F O U N D E D  1 8 9 9
4 Cambridge Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZU
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk | 
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Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[Jeffrey Masko via Marxism]

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My father was a truck-driver and I traveled quite a bit with him and never
saw as many confederate flags in the south as I did when I did my phd work
at Penn State about 7 years ago. Coming from Pittsburgh, it's well known
that JUST BEFORE you cross the mason-dixon line, there are LOADS of
confederate flags to demarcate "where" the south *really* begins.
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[Marxism] Fwd: Press release and invitation - Distinguished panel discusses climate change tomorrow at 2:30 PM

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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 Forwarded Message 
Subject: 	Press release and invitation - Distinguished panel discusses 
climate change tomorrow at 2:30 PM

Date:   Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:46:47 -0400
From:   SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New York 



Dear Press and Media Friends and Colleagues,
This is a gentle reminder that tomorrow at 2:30 PM a panel of 
distinguished women discusses a group of impactful short films on 
Climate Change and Women as part of SRFF 2020 
 online. This session was scheduled to take 
place back in March, as part of NGO CSW parallel events. This is a 
chance to see the films online and attend the discussion.
Here  is the link to the original 
press release, and below is the invitation to the panel tomorrow. Please 
feel free to post and share the invitation with your readers and 
friends. Links to the trailers of the films are in the press release.
Please let us know if you have any questions, or would like to preview 
the films.

Thank you for your continued support.
Kind regards,
Nora Armani


INVITATION

You are invited to a Zoom webinar at SRFF2020.
When: Jun 19, 2020, 02:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Fri 6/19 2:30 PM - Preview Spotlight Panel
https://www.ratedsrfilms.org/srff2020previewpanel

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wJXoHgTSSzKu3yD9zuwaxg

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing
information about joining the webinar.



-- Forwarded message -
From: *SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New York* 
mailto:ratedsrfi...@gmail.com>>

Date: Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 3:55 PM
Subject: Press release for immediate release - Distinguished panel of 
women on 6/19 discusses climate change & women
To: SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New York >


Dear Press and Media members,
Here is the link to the second press release of #SRFF2020 online.
Please feel free to share amongst your colleagues, and cover the event. 
Let us know if you have any questions, or need images, film links, 
participant interviews. Talks are free and can be joined through the 
festival website.

*https://www.prlog.org/12826170.html*
Thank you for your ongoing support,
Nora & the SRFF 2020 team


*Nora Armani*
Founding Artistic Director
SR - Socially Relevant Film Festival NY 
Tel: +1 (212) 253 2022

  * "SR is sure to appeal to cinema fans of all interests. So come on
and support New York’s latest festival.” Catherine Fisher:
Tribecafilm


  * "..an important program of films” Peter Belsito: IndieWire: Sydney’s
Buzz


  * “..it would be very good if it became a permanent feature of New
York’s rich cultural and political tapestry” Louis Proyect:The
Unrepentant Marxist


  * "Amy Goodman /provided a rousing keynote address" /Chris Atamian:
The Huffington Post



SR Socially Relevant™ Film Festival New York - 7th edition - Online June 
18-28


/SRFF was founded in 2013 by actress/filmmaker Nora Armani //in //a 
response to the proliferation of violence and violent forms of 
storytelling. SRFF //is// anon-profit 501(c)3 film festival 
whose// mission is the promotion of filmmakers who produce socially 
relevant™ film content. //Close to 350 films from 35 countries have been 
screened to date. //Spokespersons of SR Socially Relevant™ Film Festival 
NY include Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Erin Brockovich, Martin Sheen, 
Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winner Robert Schenkkan, best-selling 
French novelist Marc Levy, Academy Award Nominee and Emmy Award Winner 
Guy Davidi, American TV person and author Gretchen 
Carlson.//http://www.ratedsrfilms.org//


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[Marxism] The feminist Mysteries of Amanda Cross

[Ian Angus via Marxism]

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One of my favorite mystery authors, but I didn't know much about her real
life. Interesting that the victim in one novel was based on Edward Said.


https://crimereads.com/crime-in-a-tenured-position-the-feminist-mysteries-of-carolyn-heilbrun/
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[Marxism] Robin D. G. Kelley: What Kind of Society Values Property Over Black Lives?

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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NY Times, June 18, 2020

The hackneyed emphasis on “Why loot?” obscures the question, which black
people have asked for centuries.

By Robin D. G. Kelley

Dr. Kelley is a professor of American history.

“Why are they looting?”

It’s asked every time protests against police violence erupt into civil
unrest.

We know the answers by now: Poverty, anger, age, rage and a sense of
helplessness. For some, it is a form of political violence; for others,
destructive opportunism. There appears to be no single motive. That white
youth figured prominently among looters during the recent wave of unrest
confounds easy explanations.

Often the catalyst is economic — grabbing necessities, stealing goods to
sell, snatching luxury items few can afford or retaliating against
merchants thought to be exploitative. Looting is theft; it violates the
law. But stealing commodities isn’t senseless. Given that we are in the
worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, looting should not
surprise anyone.

Let me offer a more productive question instead: What is the effect of
obsessing over looting?

It deflects from the core problem that brought people to the streets: The
police keep killing us with impunity. Instead, once the burning and looting
start, the media often shifts to the futility of “violence” as a legitimate
path to justice. Crime becomes the story. Riots, we are told, cause harm by
foreclosing constructive solutions. But such rebellions have not only
shined a spotlight on American racism; they have also spawned
investigations and limited reforms when traditional appeals have failed.

At the same time, looting has also been used as a pretext for expanding the
police, which is what happened in Baltimore after the 1968 riots. By
branding looters a criminal element in black communities, law enforcement
officials could demand bigger budgets. And they were given a boost by
President Lyndon Johnson, who increased federal funding for the police as
part of his War on Poverty.

“Looter” often means “black,” as we saw in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina when a photograph of a white couple “finding” necessities from a
grocery store was compared with one of a black man whose search for similar
items was deemed “looting.” Rarely do we read about the white people who
looted during the Watts rebellion in 1965 and in Detroit in 1967. Indeed,
white people, among them far-right provocateurs, have engaged in looting
and destruction of property during the current protests; there is ample
video evidence from across the country. There are also videos of black
organizers asking them to stop because the police will “blame that on us.”

Our country was built on looting — the looting of Indigenous lands and
African labor. African-Americans, in fact, have much more experience being
looted than looting. The long history of “race riots” in America — in
Cincinnati; Philadelphia; Detroit; New York; Memphis; Wilmington, N.C.;
Atlanta; New Orleans; Springfield, Ill.; East St. Louis; Chicago; and
Tulsa, Okla. — more closely resembled anti-black pogroms than ghetto
rebellions. White mobs, often backed by the police, not only looted and
burned black homes and businesses but also maimed and killed black people.

Our bodies were loot. The forced extraction of our labor was loot. A system
of governance that suppressed our wages, relieved us of property and
excluded black people from equal schools and public accommodations is a
form of looting. We can speak of the looting of black property through
redlining, slum clearance and more recently predatory lending.

Police departments and municipal courts engage in their own form of looting
by handing out and collecting excessive fines and fees from vulnerable
communities. A 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found
that “municipalities that rely heavily on revenue from fines and fees have
a higher than average percentage of African-American and Latino
populations.” And cities rely on tax revenues not only to fund the police
but also to pay the ballooning costs to settle police misconduct cases.
Chicago shelled out more than $100 million to settle police misconduct
suits in 2018 alone.

I found it ironic that the New York Stock Exchange went silent for 8
minutes 46 seconds during George Floyd’s funeral, even though Wall Street
has profited from police misconduct. Cities and counties sometimes have to
issue bonds to pay out these settlements; banks collect fees for their
services and investors earn interest. Some of the beneficiaries of this
arrangement include Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, as well
as smaller regional banks.

The hackneyed emphasis on “why 

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-War]: Nordlund on Shevin-Coetzee and Coetzee, 'Commitment and Sacrifice: Personal Diaries of the Great War'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 9:39 AM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Nordlund on Shevin-Coetzee and Coetzee,
'Commitment and Sacrifice: Personal Diaries of the Great War'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, Frans Coetzee.  Commitment and Sacrifice:
Personal Diaries of the Great War.  Oxford  Oxford University Press,
2015.  Illustrations. 352 pp.  $36.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-933607-4.

Reviewed by Alex Nordlund (University of Georgia)
Published on H-War (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The diaries of soldiers who fought in the First World War remain a
major avenue for understanding the everyday experience of war and
soldiering. In many ways more unfiltered, less literary, and far more
reactive to immediate events and circumstances surrounding the
writers than letters home or postwar testimonies, diaries offer the
imagery of war experience "as it happened" to the ongoing historical
narrative placing soldiers as the ultimate "witnesses" to the horrors
of war. Despite attempts by military authorities to discourage--if
not outright ban--these sources, soldiers nonetheless persisted in
cataloging their wartime experiences and general happenings in these
pocket diaries, showing a complicated view of war mixed with not just
horror and trauma but also, joy, fun, and even boredom.

In _Commitment and Sacrifice_, Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans
Coetzee have compiled a collection of diaries from men of varying
armies, nationalities, and wartime circumstances during the First
World War. Offering an overview of the ways that soldiers' private
writing have shaped the history of the conflict, the editors propose
that these diaries collectively tell a story of the "education of
young men" akin to a coming of age, the "acquisition of the requisite
skills" for surviving their education (war), and the "endurance" of
these men confronted with such an ordeal over time (pp. 6, 7, 9).
Essentially, the primary objective the editors wish to convey using
these diaries revolves around the ways men of various origins and
circumstances survived the novel hardships, suffering, and trauma
provoked by the First World War, making the experience analogous to
an "education," where soldiers, internees, and prisoners had to find
ways to cope with or overcome hardships to survive.

In terms of the content of the diaries chosen and edited,
Shevin-Coetzee and Coetzee do a remarkable job of ensuring a
multifaceted approach to wartime diaries. Of particular interest are
the diaries written by Willy Wolff, a German internee in Britain, and
Felix Kaufmann, a German prisoner of war in France. The diary of
American ambulance driver Philip Cate also provides a unique look
into the internal motivations of neutrals volunteering for foreign
service, and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldier
James Hutchinson offers several allusions to the global dimensions of
the war. To readers familiar with the history of the conflict, the
other diaries will offer further insight into the individual
experiences of soldiers on the western front--sadly, with the
exception of Hutchinson at Gallipoli, Salonika, the Middle East, and
other fronts do not feature here. Diaries from civilians on the home
front beyond the internee experience of Wolff would have added
further diversity to this collection, but they do not necessarily fit
into the more "direct" experience with the hardships of war sought by
the editors.

While all of these diary excerpts provide vivid, private accounts of
war from the perspective of "the man who was there," it nonetheless
remains debatable whether these diaries are representative of the
"average" soldier's experience and written reflections. Despite
Shevin-Coetzee and Coetzee insisting that diaries were not
"censored," were discouraged by authorities, and are a richer source
than letters and other records, diaries themselves are often fraught
with self-censorship, which is even found in one of the diaries
within this collection. Additionally, there is often avoidance and,
more generally, a lack of detail and internalization commonly
observed in diaries, as not every man could find poetic inspiration
from war like Hutchinson. Indeed, in many diaries beyond these
samples, daily entries often appear as little more than weather
reports. While the sheer amount of self-reflection and description in
these diaries beyond these "weather reports" is fascinating, they are
surely not representative of the wider whole. In their overview of
common features within these sources, the editors do stress the
ongoing importance of other written 

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-War]: Montesclaros on Stahel, 'Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 9:44 AM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Montesclaros on Stahel, 'Retreat from
Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


David Stahel.  Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter
Campaign, 1941-1942.  New York  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.  560
pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-24952-6.

Reviewed by Mark Montesclaros (US Army Command and General Staff
College, Fort Gordon Satellite Campus)
Published on H-War (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The eastern front of World War II's European theater continues to
garner significant academic interest, and with _Retreat from Moscow_
author David Stahel sheds new light on multiple aspects of the
Soviet-German War's winter campaign of 1941. This effort helps to
partially correct a situation that renowned historian David M. Glantz
noted in his seminal trilogy on the Red Army at war--that a number of
battles were either forgotten or neglected during the campaign, among
them the Soviet offensive to retake the key German lines of
communication at Rzhev and Viazma, which spanned February 15 to March
1, 1942.[1] And while Stahel's focus is from the German perspective
of the Army Group Center, he masterfully covers this part of the
Soviet counteroffensive as well. Additionally, the author provides
much more than just a description of the military operations that
ensued, effectively integrating first-person narratives that capture
the essence of this war of annihilation in the East.

Stahel arranges _Retreat for Moscow _into twenty-one chapters of
uniform length, accompanied by an excellent introduction that sets
the context and an effective conclusion that emphasizes the main
points of his discourse. As with most works describing the
complexities of combat on World War II's eastern front, the book
includes a number of graphics to help the reader navigate the myriad
military units and actions within Germany's winter campaign, as well
as extensive notes accompanying each chapter that provide areas for
further research and exploration.

The author thrives on challenging some long-held views of the
Soviet-German conflict, arguing that the decisive point for the war
occurred not during seminal engagements, such as in Moscow,
Stalingrad, or Kursk, as have been posed by historians earlier.
Stahel takes a broader view, contending that the turning point in the
East had already taken place once Operation Barbarossa, Germany's
opening move in Russia, failed to achieve its strategic objective of
rapidly defeating the Red Army in the summer of 1941. And while this
may call into question the merit of scrutinizing the winter campaign
that followed, the author again challenges the common wisdom by
taking a wider, more strategic view. Stahel sees it not as Germany's
first defeat as do many of his colleagues but as a victory. How he
arrives at this surprising conclusion is at the heart of the author's
titular "new history" of the Third Reich's winter campaign.

The focal point of _Retreat from Moscow_ concerns Army Group Center,
the Wehrmacht's friendly center of gravity in its drive toward the
Russian capital. While its counterpart army groups to the north and
south targeted Leningrad and Ukraine, respectively, it was Army Group
Center that bore the brunt of the Soviet counteroffensive, which
began in earnest on December 6, 1941. Following its lightning-quick
initial victories over Soviet forces during the early stages of
Operation Barbarossa, Army Group Center's momentum eventually stalled
during the autumn rains and ensuing quagmire. Within sight of Moscow,
German forces finally culminated in the attack, hampered by stiff
enemy resistance, the onset of winter, lack of fuel and critical
supplies, and questionable decision-making by Adolf Hitler. Against
the advice of his subordinate commanders in Army Group Center, the
führer had on multiple occasions siphoned off critical armored
forces to the other groups, never considering Moscow a strategic
priority. The result of all this was that Army Group Center was
highly vulnerable once Soviet forces began their onslaught in early
December.

Stahel is masterful at portraying and simplifying the complex details
of Army Group Center's multiple operations against Soviet forces as
it went on the defensive. While too numerous to enumerate given the
scope of this review, several broad themes are worthy of mention.
Perhaps foremost is the tension between Hitler, his key advisors, and
commanders in the field as Army Group Center faced it first major
setback in the East. 

[Marxism] Journalist Eduardo Porter On Why Racial Hostility Is An 'American Poison' | On Point

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/06/18/systemic-racism-america-hostility-politics

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[Marxism] Roy Cohn Got Her Grandparents Executed. She Made a Film About Him.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(The director is the daughter of our comrade Michael Meeropol.)

NY Times, June 18, 2020
Roy Cohn Got Her Grandparents Executed. She Made a Film About Him.
By Scott Tobias

The word “evil” gets thrown around a lot in reference to Roy Cohn, the 
notoriously rapacious lawyer and “fixer” whose client list included 
Joseph McCarthy, several mafia bosses and New York elites like George 
Steinbrenner and Donald Trump, a Cohn protégé. And it comes up often in 
the new HBO documentary “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn,” 
debuting Thursday, a profile that weighs his influence and legacy 
against the contradictory details of his private life.


If anyone is entitled to use the word, it’s the film’s director, Ivy 
Meeropol. As a young attorney in 1951, Cohn pushed for the execution of 
Meeropol’s grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. 
Key to the prosecution’s case was testimony by Ethel’s brother, David 
Greenglass, who claimed that the Rosenbergs had passed atomic secrets to 
the Soviet Union. Greenglass later confessed to lying under oath, but 
Cohn never wavered in his pride over the verdict, despite evidence of 
legal improprieties.


Meeropol had wrestled with her grandparents’s story before in her debut 
film, “Heir to an Execution” (2004), but here the Rosenbergs are only a 
piece of a much larger puzzle. Meeropol’s documentary attempts to 
understand a lawyer who gamed the system on behalf of powerful, often 
arch-conservative figures but who lived as a closeted gay man, publicly 
denying his AIDS diagnosis until the day he died from AIDS-related 
complications in 1986.


But “Bully. Coward. Victim.” is about Cohn-ism as much as it is about 
Cohn, which is why Meeropol thinks a label like “evil” is insufficient.


‘Bully. Coward. Victim.’ Review: The Paradox of Roy CohnJune 18, 2020

“It’s not like Roy Cohn just comes up from hell and is this evil being, 
and that’s how he’s able to operate,” Meeropol said by phone on Monday. 
“It’s like saying that Trump is just so evil and then if we get rid of 
him, everything will be fine. We know that’s not true.”


Throughout the documentary, Meeropol intersperses footage from the 2018 
Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on 
National Themes,” which has Nathan Lane playing Cohn as a frail and 
rage-filled power broker haunted by Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost. In a brief 
phone interview, Kushner said he considered it his job as a playwright 
“to understand why people do the things they do and how they see 
themselves and how they explain themselves to themselves.” But Kushner, 
who offers commentary in the film, draws a sharp distinction between 
Cohn and his most notable client.


“I feel strongly that Roy Cohn is an infinitely more interesting human 
being than Donald Trump,” Kushner said. Trump’s “vocabulary, his 
repertoire and his worldview,” he added, “is shockingly constricted and 
impoverished.”


The connection between Cohn and Trump — and Cohn-ism and Trump-ism — is 
a running theme in “Bully. Coward. Victim.,” which doesn’t divorce them 
from the corruption and hypocrisy of the New York City ecosystem in 
which they thrived. Speaking from her father’s home in Cold Spring, 
N.Y., Meeropol talked about why she returned to this painful chapter in 
her family history, how Cohn could be called a “victim” and what can be 
done to keep more Roy Cohns from gaining power. These are edited 
excerpts from the conversation.


What inspired you to return to your grandparents’ story now and consider 
Roy Cohn through a broader lens?


The simple answer is Donald Trump. I did not relish returning to my 
family story, and in fact I never thought I would. Maybe in some other 
form, but not in a documentary. I really thought after “Heir to an 
Execution,” that was it. That film took almost five years of buildup and 
then production and then a whole year of my life, and it was an 
exhausting and emotionally draining process.


I always felt that Roy Cohn was a very interesting figure to look at and 
would make a great film subject. I really hoped that someone else would 
do it. He’s such a rich and important and complex subject and it just 
didn’t happen, except for fictional narrative treatments of him. So 
after Trump was elected, I felt that it was something I had to do. It 
was that similar feeling I had when I embarked on “Heir to an 
Execution.” I felt compelled.


You’re obviously so close to this story. Was journalistic objectivity 
important to you going in? To what extent did you feel like it was even 
possible to get any distance from him?


I was absolutely focused on having 

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Early-America]: Francavilla on Smyth, 'A Rape in the Early Republic: Gender and Legal Culture in an 1806 Virginia Trial'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 12:40 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Early-America]: Francavilla on Smyth, 'A Rape in
the Early Republic: Gender and Legal Culture in an 1806 Virginia Trial'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


Alexander Smyth.  A Rape in the Early Republic: Gender and Legal
Culture in an 1806 Virginia Trial.  Edited by Randall L. Hall. New
Directions In Southern History Series. Lexington  University Press of
Kentucky, 2017.  136 pp.  $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8131-6952-1.

Reviewed by Lisa A. Francavilla (The Papers of Thomas Jefferson:
Retirement Series and Jefferson Quotes  Family Letters)
Published on H-Early-America (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Kelly K. Sharp

In mid-January 1806, Sidney Major Hanson left her home in the
mountainous region of Tazewell County, Virginia, to consult the local
justice of the peace, Hezekiah Whitt, at his home roughly one mile
away. Carrying her absent husband's copy of _The New Virginia
Justice_ and accompanied by their trusted neighbor, John Deskins,
Hanson intended to use the law to hold another man responsible for
slandering her. Along the way, lewd talk and an attempted kiss from
Deskins prompted Hanson to jump from the horse they both rode. When
she tried to run, Deskins caught her, threw her to the ground,
threatened to kill her, and, holding her wrists in one hand and
silencing her screams with the other, raped her. But if Deskins
thought that his threats against the "diminutive" Hanson would secure
her silence, he soon learned how wrong he was (p. 87). Within minutes
of arriving at the Whitt home, Hanson first informed Mrs. Whitt and
then her husband, the justice, that Deskins had "sorely abused her"
and she was prepared to "swear the rape" against him (p. 38).

Details of the subsequent trial of Deskins, first published by
prosecuting attorney Alexander Smyth in 1811, are presented now as _A
Rape in the Early Republic: Gender and Legal Culture in an 1806
Virginia Trial_, skillfully edited by Randal L. Hall. Such a thorough
record of a rape trial for this early period is a rarity, as Hall
points out, and historians are generally forced to rely on the
watered-down clerical notations in court order books. But, as Hall
explains, Smyth was an ambitious man who relished opportunities for
self-promotion, and when prominent men requested that he "favor the
public with a report of his [Deskins's] case," Smyth was only too
willing to gratify them (p. 29). Smyth's subsequent account of the
trial was drawn from his transcript of the testimony of witnesses
gathered by Hanson and Deskins, arguments made by the panel of six
attorneys set to defend Deskins, and Smyth's own closing arguments.

Hall rightly recognized that Smyth's unique account offers readers
several topics for exploration and discussion. Some of these will be
all too familiar, particularly that once Deskins confessed to having
had intercourse with Hanson, the focus of the trial turned almost
entirely to examining Hanson's character. Witnesses were called to
prove or disprove her morality, veracity, piety, and chastity as well
as to support or refute suggestions that her behavior and choices led
Deskins to rape her, or that she was lying about having given her
consent. In arguments challenging the reliability of these witnesses,
lawyers on both sides argued that old grudges based in economic class
conflict might have motivated some to step forward. _A Rape in the
Early Republic_ also invites discussion of race and law, for example,
when Smyth argued that the testimony of some of the witnesses for the
defense should be discredited because "the general reputation of the
country" was that they were "mulattoes." Smyth subsequently recorded
in his notes that "that was refused to be admitted by the court" (p.
48). Other details in Smyth's account of the trial provide similarly
intriguing topics, like social mobility, ambition, and aspiration;
the place of cultural traditions in the evolution of formal legal
processes; arguments about whether women were to receive equal
protection under the law; the role of elite white men in the shaping
of community morality; the articulation of gendered behavior; alcohol
and the recreational activities of men and women; print and the
dissemination of information; and hints of the interactions between
free whites and enslaved blacks. Lastly, this edited work also
contributes to larger debates about the evaluation of primary source
material.

Hall offers Smyth's materials thoughtfully, avoiding imposing much of
his own interpretation of them but rather wrapping them in just
enough information to make the 

[Marxism] June 19/Longshore workers to walk off in Vancouver, BC

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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https://ilwu500.org/2020/06/work-will-stop-for-8-hours-june-19-2020/ 
  

ANTI-RACISM WORK STOP JUNE 19
Posted on June 16, 2020 

Longshore Will Observe Juneteenth

Work Will Stop for 8 Hours on Historic
In solidarity with ILWU International, there will be no work on the 8 AM shift 
of Friday, June 19, 2020 as we are supporting anti-racism – what this Union is 
founded on.

“Dockworkers will stop work on the [8 AM] shift on June 19, 2020, to show their 
commitment to the cause of racial equality and social justice.”

“Juneteenth is the day in 1865 when Black slaves in Texas first learned of 
their emancipation”, nearly 2 ½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation had 
formally freed them.

In solidarity,

Officers Local 500

Dockworkers Juneteenth 8HR Stoppage 


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[Marxism] Grocery workers walk off in solidarity with #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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"On June 16th nearly the entire staff on shift at Seward Co-op’s Franklin
Ave. store in Minneapolis walked out for a 9 minute work stoppage to mourn
the murder of George Floyd and to stand in solidarity with the
#JusticeForGeorgeFloyd protests erupting around the world. Nine minutes is
the length of time George Floyd suffocated under MPD officer Derek
Chauvin’s knee.This was an effort led entirely by rank and file workers.
With our action we also hoped to encourage the Seward Co-op to announce
it’s support for dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department and called
on the leadership of UFCW Local 663 (our union) to demand immediate
resignation of the police union’s president, Bob Kroll, who is openly
bigoted and racist.

I was a part of the core group who organized the work stoppage"
Read full article:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/06/18/grocery-workers-walk-off-in-solidarity-with-justiceforgeorgefloyd/

-- 
*“Science and socialism go hand-in-hand.” *Felicity Dowling
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] Ten-Point Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://mailchi.mp/thetricontinental.org/goliath-is-not-invincible-the-twenty-third-newsletter-819173?e=77bd6c9887

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[Marxism] What happened when Black Lives Matter came to a notorious KKK town in Texas | The Independent

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Fascinating. I used to work with a guy from Vidor at Texas Commerce Bank 
in Houston. He was okay but we never talked politics.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/vidor-texas-kkk-black-lives-matter-protests-a9571156.html

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