Re: [Marxism] email issue

[Les Schaffer via Marxism]

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This probably has to do with the way the headers are now arranged, but I 
suspect also involves how individual email apps handle the headers during 
reply. In thunderbird, Reply and reply all goes to both list and original 
sender, while reply list goes only to the ummm list. Sounds like David's email 
handles it differently?? If David could forward to me offlist what email app he 
is using (otherwise I'll snoop thru HIS headers) I can look at this after work 
tmw.

Les 

> On Jun 18, 2014, at 5:18 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> No, that's not the issue. For reasons I don't quite understand, sometimes the 
> listserv address gets included when you "reply", sometimes it does not. I 
> think Les will probably sort this out.

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Re: [Marxism] Is there an "anti-imperialist camp"?

[Matthew Russo via Marxism]

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Well, since it was recommended, here's my answer, here, since I'm not a
member of the Yahoo group:

There's an evident contradiction in the two passages quoted below.  The
Bolshevik organization of an "anti-imperialist camp" was predicated on the
success of the first socialist revolution in history, one that in fact and
not merely in concept - with all of its faults, mistakes and
inconsistencies - "forced march(ed) to the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie" as this revealing  caricature would have it.

In other words, this anti-imperialist bloc had a class predicate in the
exercise of state power.

ALBA does not.  This is not a recommendation of "forced marches" versus
some other historically appropriate path.  It is a statement of fact
concerning the class character of the states in question.  ALBA may well be
considered an "anti-imperialist camp", but as we saw with respect to Cuba
and Venezuela in connection with to Ghadaffi, that's no guarantee that camp
will be on the right side of a revolutionary uprising elsewhere. After,
that is the whole point of an "anti-imperialist camp".  Hence one suspects
ALBA is only partially "anti-imperialist", vis-a-vis the U.S., which we
inside "the Beast" are in solidarity with.  But there are other
imperialisms in "Lenin's World 2.0".

-Matt
---
ONE -- What were the Russian Bolshevik leaders trying to form at their
famous 1920 Baku conference, at which they embraced anti-colonial Muslim
activists and endorsed the call for a jihad against British imperialism and
their Empire, on which the Sun was indeed beginning to set?


My definite impression is that the bulk of such criticism and childlike
political impatience is rooted in the concept that the socialist revolution
consists of a non-stop, forced march to the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie. Such a notion, if applied today in Venezuela or other ALBA
countries undergoing revolutionary change and advances, would be a plunge
into disastrous civil war in which the capitalist classes and their
imperialist allies hold most of the cards.

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Re: [Marxism] And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 8:23 PM, Matthew Russo via Marxism wrote:

The sphere of
non-productive consumption is ipso facto not directly regulated by the law
of value, as is capitalist production.



Speaking of which.

NY Times, June 18 2014
Stamp Sells for a Record $9.5 Million
By JAMES BARRON

A tiny square of very old red paper with cut corners — a one-cent 
postage stamp from the 19th century — sold for $9.5 million on Tuesday, 
the most ever paid for a stamp at auction, but $500,000 short of the 
auction house’s $10 million to $20 million presale estimate.


The buyer, bidding by telephone at Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side, was 
not identified. The auctioneer, David N. Redden, opened the bidding at 
$4.5 million — $5.4 million once a 20 percent buyer’s premium was added.


The bids climbed in $500,000 increments to $7.5 million. After three 
more offers a bid hit $7.9 million, closing the auction at $9.5 million 
with the buyer’s premium.


Mr. Redden said he was anything but disappointed. “When you compare it 
to the record for stamps in recent history,” he said, “this is a real 
leap beyond prior levels.”


The last stamp to draw such attention at auction was the Treskilling 
Yellow, a Swedish stamp that sold for about $2.2 million in 1996, equal 
to about $3.3 million today.


A crowd of stamp dealers and collectors filled the auction room, with a 
row of television cameras in the back. “I don’t think they’d get that 
coverage for a van Gogh,” said Frank J. Buono, a stamp dealer from 
Binghamton, N.Y. “And by weight and volume and size, it’s the most 
valuable item in the world. Diamonds might fetch more, but they weigh more.”


The stamp is known as the One-Cent Magenta from British Guiana. It was 
printed by a local newspaper — the scheduled shipment of thousands of 
stamps from Britain did not arrive, and the local postmaster did not 
want to run out — and issued in 1856.


It carries the image of a schooner and Latin words that are often 
translated as, “We give and expect in return.” It had not been seen in 
public since the mid-1980s until Sotheby’s sent it on a recent tour of 
museums and libraries.


It is, as far as stamp collectors know, unique. British experts 
concluded that one that surfaced in the 1990s was, in fact, an altered 
four-cent stamp, printed around the same time. The one sold on Tuesday 
was authenticated by the Royal Philatelic Society in London this year.


Originally, it was apparently affixed to a newspaper wrapper or an 
envelope. One-cent stamps were commonly used for newspapers in British 
Guiana, according to stamp collectors.


No one knows why that particular wrapper or envelope, and that 
particular stamp, did not go the way of ordinary household trash, the 
way most newspaper wrappers did. But the stamp survived to be discovered 
by Louis Vernon Vaughan, a 12-year-old boy, in 1873. According to the 
catalog Sotheby’s prepared for the auction, the boy was the nephew of 
the person to whom the original wrapper or envelope had been addressed.


By then stamp collecting had caught on as a hobby, and the boy 
apparently believed that there were better stamps to be had. “As it was 
a poor copy with cut corners,” the Sotheby’s catalog explained, “he 
decided to sell it in order to buy some of the newer and more attractive 
issues that he had been sent on approval” by a British stamp dealer.


That decision started the One-Cent Magenta on an improbable journey that 
carried it from British Guiana to Sotheby’s via the vaults of several 
prominent stamp collectors, including Philippe la Renotiere von Ferrary 
of Paris and Arthur Hind of Utica, N.Y., a textile magnate who paid 
$35,250 for it in 1922, then a record price.


“Arthur Hind had never intended to even bid on the British Guiana,” the 
Sotheby’s catalog said.


But an encounter with a stamp dealer in London changed his mind, and 
owning the stamp changed his life. Mr. Hind later acknowledged that the 
stamp “had caused him to be ridiculed,” the Sotheby’s catalog said. “A 
London journalist described the 1856 British Guiana as ‘cut square and 
magenta in colour’ and himself as ‘cut round and rather paler magenta.’ ”


It set another record in 1980, the last time it was sold. John E. du 
Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, paid $935,000 to add it 
to his collection. He died in prison in 2010, while serving a 13- to 
30-year sentence for the murder of Dave Schultz, a wrestler and Olympic 
gold medalist who had been training on Mr. du Pont’s property in 
Pennsylvania. The stamp was sold by his estate.


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Re: [Marxism] And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Matthew Russo via Marxism]

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Budgen sounds like the Metallica of left academia.

Don't forget Routledge in the parasite rentier mix, sitting athwart the
academic-intellectual nexus.  Here's an example:

Rosa Luxemburg and the Critique of Political Economy

http://www.amazon.com/Luxemburg-Critique-Political-Routledge-Economics/dp/041540570X

Even the used paperback is $47!  Nothing on libcom, alas.  Last resort is
to scan the library copy.

And yes, this research has connection to, among others, the Marxian rent
concept.  The bloated prices for academic books is an excellent example of
the essentially arbitrary magnitude of rent/surplus profit tribute.  Unlike
in Marx's examples, set in capitalist agricultural production, these
intellectual products are non-productively consumed.  The sphere of
non-productive consumption is ipso facto not directly regulated by the law
of value, as is capitalist production.  Therefor the differential
regulation of rent magnitude analyzed by Marx does not necessarily hold
here, and is one reason capital swarms into the "consumer sector".

-Matt

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Re: [Marxism] Reinterpreting the Cotton Kingdom | Solidarity

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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Walter Johnson writes, "in actual historical fact there was no
nineteenth-century capitalism without slavery.”

In fact, this is a reinterpretation only for those who've been ignoring all
the writers who've been making the same point.

ML

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[Marxism] Reinterpreting the Cotton Kingdom | Solidarity

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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For Genovese and more recent proponents of the non-capitalist thesis 
such as Charles Post, the question of underdevelopment is central. They 
argue that the South’s inability to fully industrialize and urbanize 
sets it apart from the capitalist mode of production for the simple 
reason that they consider capitalism inseparable from 
industrialization.(6) They document the features of peripheral economies 
identified by Samir Amin’s Marxist theory of underdevelopment — 
dependent and “disarticulated” regional or national economies within 
which capital accumulation fails to instigate a synergistic development 
of agriculture and industry.(7)


They conclude, based on their a priori definition, that these traits are 
proof of the non-capitalist character of the slave-plantation economy 
while attributing underdevelopment solely to slavery.


Johnson’s critique of their approach is brief but highly pertinent. A 
materialist analysis “begins from the premise that in actual historical 
fact there was no nineteenth-century capitalism without slavery.”


However else industrial capitalism might have developed in the absence 
of slave-produced cotton and Southern capital markets, it did not 
develop that way. Extracting the history of industrial development 
(whether in Great Britain or the Northern United States) from the 
historical context of its entanglement with slavery, itemizing its 
differences from the economic field from which it had been artificially 
separated, labeling it ‘capitalism’ in pure form, and then turning 
around and comparing it to the slavery upon which it subsisted in order 
to judge the latter “precapitalist” or “noncapitalist” — this way of 
proceeding conscripts historical analysis to the service of ahistorical 
ideal types. (254)


However important and convincing this is, the medium of the historical 
manuscript (bereft of any explicit theoretical development) is not the 
place where such questions can be fully resolved. His rich narrative is 
highly suggestive and will likely be a reference point for any future 
attempts to characterize the slave-plantation economy, but Johnson’s own 
exposition unfortunately falls short of realizing that task. Political 
economists may find his work wanting for clearer argumentation and for 
concise elaboration of if or how economic categories such as 
surplus-value and fixed capital are relevant to the plantation economy.



full: http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4163

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[Marxism] Russia's New Fascists | Solidarity

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Russia's New Fascists
— Kirill Buketov

ON THE STREETS of Russian cities, it is not hard to find stalls trading 
in fascist literature and insignia. Here one can buy Hitler's Mein 
Kampf, tape cassettes of Nazi marches, swastika flags, and publications 
of the present-day fascist press.


The best-known fascist newspaper, Russkiy Poryadok (“Russian Order”), is 
distributed free of charge in the very center of Moscow -- free, 
however, only to “people of non-Jewish appearance.” Members of the group 
Russian National Unity, well-built young men with bulging torsos, hand 
out the paper as reverently as if distributing keys to the kingdom of 
heaven. Lamp-posts are pasted over with leaflets calling for Russia to 
be cleansed of Jews, of members of Caucasus nationalities, and of 
non-Russians in general.


Involuntarily, you find yourself asking how this could be in a country 
where almost every family lost relatives or friends in the war against 
German fascism.


Unfortunately, the matter is not limited to nazis distributing printed 
tracts and other goods. Young fascists regularly set out to intimidate 
opponents, invading newspaper officers and sending threatening letters. 
Press reports speak again and again of acts of thuggery committed by 
young men with swastika armbands.


full: http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/2833

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Re: [Marxism] Whyis Iraq being torn apart?

[Matthew Russo via Marxism]

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It should be obvious that the Gulf and Saudi *states* have never been
supplying support to the AQ knock-offs, but you neglect to highlight the
very unmoot point made in the article cited concerning outside sources of
"jihadist" support:

"The rise of Syrian al-Qaida"

"This giddy activity of the Gulf oppositionist bourgeoisie, preachers and
Islamic charities fed into various wings of Islamist fighters in Syria,
including, not surprisingly, al-Qaida, which appeared in Syria in early
2012."
.

"Furthermore, when getting back to trying to understand the issue here –
why many Islamist forces are better armed than secular FSA forces – the
biggest contrast is not in fact secular fighters versus Islamists, but the
majority (secular and mainstream Islamists) versus the jihadist/al-Qaida
forces. And the reason the latter are better armed than most has absolutely
nothing to do with the fantasy of arms from their arch-enemies in the Gulf
monarchies. Rather, their key strength is that the flow of arms and money
to these jihadists from the anti-monarchial Gulf bourgeois opposition is
facilitated by al-Qaida in Syria being an extension of al-Qaida in Iraq,
which exists just across the open Syria-Iraq border in Iraq’s Sunni Anbar
province. Thus with arms, organisation, infrastructure, cadres etc directly
flowing between Iraq and Syria, we can say that the most clearly and
violently sectarian part of the Islamist opposition is also the section
which arose the least organically within Syria, but is also the section the
least associated with the Gulf monarchies."

It's very important that we counter the propaganda (from various sides)
that seeks to depict this as a "sectarian" conflict with their focus on the
AQ-type groups like ISIS, by exposing the genuine mass uprising
characteristics of events in the so-called "Sunni" regions.  For the truth
is that the uprisings throughout the "Sunni" regions are an objective
threat to the existence of the conservative U.S. client regimes in the
Middle East.  Hence:

"Already in 2013, Kuwait had issued new laws criminalising “terrorist
financing,” whereby “banks will be required to note down the personal
details of all their clients as well as anyone making an international
transfer of more than 3,000 KD ($10,500). To help track and investigate
misdeeds, the Central Bank will build a new Financial Intelligence Unit
with the help of experts at the IMF” (
http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/04/shaping_the_syrian_conflict_from_kuwait).


"Despite these new laws, in April, “in a remarkably undiplomatic statement
that officials said had been cleared at senior levels, (US) Treasury
Undersecretary David S. Cohen called Kuwait “the epicenter of fundraising
for terrorist groups in Syria”,” underscoring how relatively unregulated
the situation is in Kuwait compared to the tighter control of financial
flows in other Gulf monarchies – and the level of US hostility to any Gulf
support to Syrian Islamist"s (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kuwait-top-ally-on-syria-is-also-the-leading-funder-of-extremist-rebels/2014/04/25/10142b9a-ca48-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html
).
 -Matt

http://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/the-gulf-and-islamism-in-syria-myths-and-misconceptions/

Even without examining the voluminous documentation, it's hard to deny
Michael's obvious point that these regimes wouldn't be trying to bring to
power the Jihadist movements which are so committed to their own
destruction. This error in the ISO article calls into question the
veracity of its other factual material.

And maybe the original source of funding to ISIS is a moot point now that
they have seized half a billion dollars in cash and a billion dollars
worth of military hardware. If the rise of the Jihadists in Syria was in
fact a result of their superior resources (no other good explanation
exists) then their latest acquisitions are yet another great boost to a
force that is toxic both to the Syrian revolution and to Iraqis who were
legitimately opposed to the Maliki regime.

- Jeff

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[Marxism] Boris Kagarlitsky--a blithering idiot

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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This is from his latest at Links, an article that revolves around the 
"analysis" that the western Ukraine was a drain on the more developed east.


"But ever-greater sums went to support the parasitic elite in Kiev and 
its numerous hangers-on, from the owners of expensive restaurants to the 
innumerable public relations specialists and political scientists who 
provided the clientele for restaurants of a slightly lower class."


Expensive restaurants? Those of a "slightly lower class"? This is a 
nation that has been a virtual colony of Russia since the days of the 
Romanovs and this nitwit prattles on about restaurants being a drain? 
Someone smack him in the face with a mackerel for me.


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Re: [Marxism] email issue

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 5:06 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:

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What I think Louis is talking about also got me until I looked carefully:
it's the change in the address with the addition of "csbs" in "
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu" and this needs to be inserted with the old "
lists.econ.utah.edu" losing the "econ" in the name. just change it out.

David


No, that's not the issue. For reasons I don't quite understand, 
sometimes the listserv address gets included when you "reply", sometimes 
it does not. I think Les will probably sort this out.



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[Marxism] email issue

[DW via Marxism]

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What I think Louis is talking about also got me until I looked carefully:
it's the change in the address with the addition of "csbs" in "
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu" and this needs to be inserted with the old "
lists.econ.utah.edu" losing the "econ" in the name. just change it out.

David

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[Marxism] An Obama-Al Qaeda axis against Syria and Iran? Really? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On November 8th 2013, an article of mine titled “Why Obama Did Not Make 
War on Syria” appeared on CounterPunch. I imagine it was this kind of 
article that would incite email complaints recently to the good folks at 
CounterPunch along these lines as I learned from them:


	Another violent message regarding “crypto zionist” Louis Proyect who 
deserves to be stabbed in the neck. He seems to incite these sorts of 
messages.


Likely the same individual wrote a comment on my blog as 
“killudeadkike”: “Louis Proyect = cypto-Zionist faggot White Nationalist.”


I suppose if I had been writing the same idiotic article as everybody 
else in 2013 about how Obama was preparing to invade Syria as stage one 
in a war on Iran, I wouldn’t be getting hate mail. But I’d rather get 
hate mail than write stupid bullshit like this:


	Obama is hypocritically invoking international law to justify the 
escalation of a war that Washington has pursued in large measure through 
terrorist bombings carried out by its proxy forces in Syria. The 
operational alliance between the US and Al Qaeda underscores the 
criminal character of US foreign policy and the political fraud of the 
so-called “war on terror.”


That’s from the World Socialist Website. 
(http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/01/syri-m01.html) If you do a 
search on “Syria” and “al Qaeda” there, you will find 71 articles all 
making the same point, as if American imperialism was in cahoots with 
Islamic fundamentalists


full: 
http://louisproyect.org/2014/06/18/an-obama-al-qaeda-axis-against-syria-and-iran-really/


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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 4:06 PM, David P Á via Marxism wrote:

I think I made a mistake with my mail client, and my reply on this issue
when to LP's private email instead of to the list.


You didn't make a mistake. We have a minor technical detail to sort out 
with our new email address. Sometimes a reply goes to the list, but 
sometimes it goes to the person you are replying to. Just make sure that 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu is included or use "reply all".


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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[DW via Marxism]

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Shane wrote:

"The study was originally published in 2009. Now, more than four years
later, DW is unable (he would if he could, wouldn't he?) to cite a single
criticism (let alone refutation) of any of its facts or conclusions. Yet he
cites the absence of either endorsement or refutation by the NYAS as
justification for slandering it as "junk" and slandering Harvey Wasserman
as not merely "rabid" but "most rabid!"

Shane, look AT the NYAS page...the critical reviews are listed there. By
actual peers who do that kind of reviewing. I don't have to 'cite'
anything...the NYAS provides them. Wasserman slanders himself...I don't
really have to do very much to do more than that.

David

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[DW via Marxism]

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Shane wrote:

"The study was originally published in 2009. Now, more than four years
later, DW is unable (he would if he could, wouldn't he?) to cite a single
criticism (let alone refutation) of any of its facts or conclusions. Yet he
cites the absence of either endorsement or refutation by the NYAS as
justification for slandering it as "junk" and slandering Harvey Wasserman
as not merely "rabid" but "most rabid!"

Shane, look AT the NYAS page...the critical reviews are listed there. By
actual peers who do that kind of reviewing. I don't have to 'cite'
anything...the NYAS provides them. Wasserman slanders himself...I don't
really have to do very much to do more than that.

David

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[james pitman via Marxism]

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i haven't said anything against HM. I know 99% of HM editorial board in uk.
Prob the main person is a close personal friend, another was my lodger.
Budgen is, at best, seriously disliked by the rest of the board. To claim
HM for budgen's credit, esp. on the terms you've given, seems to elide over
the fact he's never published anything etc etc

I was going to copy edit for HM, but it works out at less than a fifth of
minimum wage; this is sebastian's doing, and indicative of his poisonous
influence on the left. Gossip aside, do u not think the academic
colonisation of the radical/ marxist left is not in the tiniest bit
problematic?

Before going back to uni, aged about 36, I was a docker [longshoreman] and
then a carpenter. I can promise you people in those sort of jobs don't give
a fat fuck about anything that's ever published in HM. I, however, lap it
up. But only because I know it's niche esoterica for people like us - if
you seriously believe that articles about hegel's influence on fichteanism
or whatever = a future blueprint for humanity, then you're in need of
psychiatric help.

Myself, I tend to think somebody's attitude towards rape apology remains
fairly important.

Jamie




On 18 June 2014 20:58, Mark Lause  wrote:

> Thanx, Jamie.  Kiss, kiss
>
>
> Sent from my Windows Phone
> --
> From: james pitman
> Sent: 6/18/2014 3:31 PM
> To: Mark Lause; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who
> couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen
>
> Budgen is probably the most outspoken proponent of intellectual property
> rights since Metallica. Whoever stuck up for him on the basis of his fb
> profile is a one-man idiot. Most of the stuff he posts is behind a pay
> wall. He was the biggest single voice on the HM board for not barring the
> swp from future HM conferences for their rape apology. He bullied a marxist
> academic out of his job at SOAS on the basis of a personal feud. He calls
> people 'scabs' for downloading pdfs. He was born with a silver spoon in his
> mouth and he now uses it to beat people who 'rise above their station
> with'. If people think that's defensible then you're really not a marxist -
> you're a jerk.
>
> Jamie
>
>
> On 18 June 2014 18:35, Mark Lause via Marxism  > wrote:
>
>> ==
>> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> ==
>>
>>
>> The hierarchy is immensely more arcane and complicated than this, perhaps
>> because there has never been a UAW to make it more standardized.
>>
>> THE ideological foundation of an academic self-perception centers on the
>> notion that it is somehow, when all is said and done, a meritocracy.  And
>> that there a key signifiers that provide a shorthand for merit.  Tenure is
>> only one of them . . . and it is not necessarily the most important.  A
>> graduate student in an elite university might well rank higher than the
>> hard working employed academic in a lesser institution, whether tenured or
>> adjunct.
>>
>> As far as the organized Left is concerned, that same grad student can be
>> the voice of the oppressed proletarian against the armchair (ie., not a
>> member of a sect) petty bourgeois academic.  I have seen this, experienced
>> it and laughed about it for many years.
>>
>> Whatever the yardstick, the plebes are just not going to measure up . . .
>> particularly if they don't stay in their place.
>>
>> The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
>> notion that some institutional connection means merit.
>>
>> Solidarity,
>> Mark L.
>> 
>> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
>> Set your options at:
>> http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marinercarpentry%40gmail.com
>>
>
>

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[David P Á via Marxism]

==
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==


On 18/06/2014 21:48, Shane Mage via Marxism wrote:
> The study was originally published in 2009.  Now, more than four years
> later, DW is unable (he would if he could, wouldn't he?) to cite a
> single criticism (let alone refutation) of any of its facts or
> conclusions. Yet he cites the absence of either endorsement or
> refutation by the NYAS as justification for slandering it as "junk" and
> slandering Harvey Wasserman as not merely "rabid" but "most rabid!"

I think I made a mistake with my mail client, and my reply on this issue
when to LP's private email instead of to the list. I will reproduce it
below, linking to two studies doing exactly that:

On 18/06/2014 17:17, Louis Proyect wrote:
> The article making such a claim was from the New York Academy of
> Sciences's website. Here's info on them from "about us" page:

I'm not sure if you're familiar with this particular case. In the event
you're not, this is what the academy has to say about it:

This collection of papers, originally published in Russian, was written
by scientists who state that they have summarized the information about
the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster from
several hundreds of papers previously published in Slavic language
publications. In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its
publication does the Academy validate the claims made in the original
Slavic language publications cited in the translated papers.
Importantly, the translated volume has not been formally peer‐reviewed
by the New York Academy of Sciences or by anyone else.

Under the editorial practices of Annals at the time, some projects, such
as the Chernobyl translation, were developed and accepted solely to
fulfill the Academy’s broad mandate of providing an open forum for
discussion of scientific questions, rather than to present original
scientific studies or Academy positions. The content of these projects,
conceived as one-off book projects, were not vetted by standard peer review.

Additionally, the academy recommends papers like
http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/32/2/181/pdf/0952-4746_32_2_181.pdf
or http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00411-010-0313-1

I understand if you don't follow nuclear issues closely this may be new
to you, but it made a big splash when it was published, and,
effectively, repudiated by the NYAS, which name had been
instrumentalised to purvey very dubious science (or if you ask me
complete utter rubbish).

--David.

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


On 6/18/14 3:41 PM, DW wrote:

Then test again, do more studies, meta-studies and compare papers, etc
etc. At a certain point it becomes clear that a substance causes cancer.
This was done, by the way, with  tobacco and why all doctors and
oncologists understood it caused cancer.


You are missing the point entirely. Tobacco is certainly a proven 
carcinogen, just as was radium a cause of cancer for the people who used 
work on wristwatches and. But it is infinitely more difficult to 
establish a link between *environmental* conditions and cancer. You can 
see how NY Times reporter Gina Kolata plays the same role as Spiked 
Online on this:


http://acsh.org/2005/12/cancer-clusters-look-less-manmade/
Cancer Clusters Look Less Manmade
Posted on December 14, 2005

Efforts to link environmental factors to cancer have foundered recently, 
as highlighted in an article by New York Times science reporter, Gina 
Kolata.


But those who subscribe to the cancer cluster theory still aren’t 
satisfied. So how do you explain an alleged increased rate of cancer in 
a small area? Our Cancer Clusters: Findings vs. Feelings addressed some 
of the key weaknesses in the theory that they can be chalked up to 
manmade causes such as industrial chemicals.


---

This is from a website that Spiked Online naturally touts:


http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/1226
Elizabeth Whelan
Chemophobia cleans up

The president of the American Council on Science and Health on how New 
York's governor fell for junk science.


21 February 2005

To much of the world, New York probably seems like a place of high 
technology and unfettered capitalism, yet its governor George Pataki is 
keen to impose unscientific new regulations - on cleaning products. 
Pataki’s State of the State address last month deserves sceptical analysis.


Many Americans falsely believe we are suffering an unexplained upsurge 
in cancer rates - and that chemicals may be the culprit. Unfortunately, 
Pataki chose to reinforce that myth in his speech.  He announced that by 
means of an Executive Order, he would require ‘all state agencies and 
authorities to begin using non-toxic cleaning products that are free of 
harmful chemicals’. He added, ‘And later this session, I will submit 
legislation that requires all schools in the state to do the same’.


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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

==
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==


Thanx, Jamie.  Kiss, kiss


Sent from my Windows Phone
--
From: james pitman
Sent: 6/18/2014 3:31 PM
To: Mark Lause; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't
stand Sebastian Budgen

Budgen is probably the most outspoken proponent of intellectual property
rights since Metallica. Whoever stuck up for him on the basis of his fb
profile is a one-man idiot. Most of the stuff he posts is behind a pay
wall. He was the biggest single voice on the HM board for not barring the
swp from future HM conferences for their rape apology. He bullied a marxist
academic out of his job at SOAS on the basis of a personal feud. He calls
people 'scabs' for downloading pdfs. He was born with a silver spoon in his
mouth and he now uses it to beat people who 'rise above their station
with'. If people think that's defensible then you're really not a marxist -
you're a jerk.

Jamie


On 18 June 2014 18:35, Mark Lause via Marxism 
wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The hierarchy is immensely more arcane and complicated than this, perhaps
> because there has never been a UAW to make it more standardized.
>
> THE ideological foundation of an academic self-perception centers on the
> notion that it is somehow, when all is said and done, a meritocracy.  And
> that there a key signifiers that provide a shorthand for merit.  Tenure is
> only one of them . . . and it is not necessarily the most important.  A
> graduate student in an elite university might well rank higher than the
> hard working employed academic in a lesser institution, whether tenured or
> adjunct.
>
> As far as the organized Left is concerned, that same grad student can be
> the voice of the oppressed proletarian against the armchair (ie., not a
> member of a sect) petty bourgeois academic.  I have seen this, experienced
> it and laughed about it for many years.
>
> Whatever the yardstick, the plebes are just not going to measure up . . .
> particularly if they don't stay in their place.
>
> The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
> notion that some institutional connection means merit.
>
> Solidarity,
> Mark L.
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marinercarpentry%40gmail.com
>

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Shane Mage via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==



On Jun 18, 2014, at 1:10 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:


At any rate, you are shifting goal posts. You posted the point from  
the
study on Chernobyl as if proving that the article published by the  
New York
Academy of Sciences seemingly 'answers' a statement David P A  
because of
the reputation of the NYAS. I posted in response to this ONLY in the  
matter
of what the NYAS **actually** thinks of what it published (by  
accident) was
basically refuted by them and thus doesn't actually refute David's  
claim at

all. The paper is useless and thus is only cited by the most rabid of
anti-nukes like Harvey Wasserman.


The study was originally published in 2009.  Now, more than four years  
later, DW is unable (he would if he could, wouldn't he?) to cite a  
single criticism (let alone refutation) of any of its facts or  
conclusions. Yet he cites the absence of either endorsement or  
refutation by the NYAS as justification for slandering it as "junk"  
and slandering Harvey Wasserman as not merely "rabid" but "most rabid!"



Shane Mage


This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures.

Herakleitos of Ephesos






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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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==


Another in a string of undocumented, most likely bullshit, snotty and
childish attacks on a very valuable comrade (Sebastian) and institution
(HM).
My interactions with him, and with those who work with him, have been
nothing but positive.
HM is a huge resource for revolutionaries, and you all come off like a
bunch of wanna-be-theoretical-luminaries who are resentful at those who've
put in the work to contribute something significant.
If I'm wrong about all that you'll have to prove it with facts.


On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 3:31 PM, james pitman via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Budgen is probably the most outspoken proponent of intellectual property
> rights since Metallica. Whoever stuck up for him on the basis of his fb
> profile is a one-man idiot. Most of the stuff he posts is behind a pay
> wall. He was the biggest single voice on the HM board for not barring the
> swp from future HM conferences for their rape apology. He bullied a marxist
> academic out of his job at SOAS on the basis of a personal feud. He calls
> people 'scabs' for downloading pdfs. He was born with a silver spoon in his
> mouth and he now uses it to beat people who 'rise above their station
> with'. If people think that's defensible then you're really not a marxist -
> you're a jerk.
>
> Jamie
>
>
> On 18 June 2014 18:35, Mark Lause via Marxism  >
> wrote:
>
> > ==
> > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> > ==
> >
> >
> > The hierarchy is immensely more arcane and complicated than this, perhaps
> > because there has never been a UAW to make it more standardized.
> >
> > THE ideological foundation of an academic self-perception centers on the
> > notion that it is somehow, when all is said and done, a meritocracy.  And
> > that there a key signifiers that provide a shorthand for merit.  Tenure
> is
> > only one of them . . . and it is not necessarily the most important.  A
> > graduate student in an elite university might well rank higher than the
> > hard working employed academic in a lesser institution, whether tenured
> or
> > adjunct.
> >
> > As far as the organized Left is concerned, that same grad student can be
> > the voice of the oppressed proletarian against the armchair (ie., not a
> > member of a sect) petty bourgeois academic.  I have seen this,
> experienced
> > it and laughed about it for many years.
> >
> > Whatever the yardstick, the plebes are just not going to measure up . . .
> > particularly if they don't stay in their place.
> >
> > The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
> > notion that some institutional connection means merit.
> >
> > Solidarity,
> > Mark L.
> > 
> > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
> > Set your options at:
> > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marinercarpentry%40gmail.com
> >
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com
>

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Name

[DW via Marxism]

==
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==


So Louis, you missed my point on this, sort of. I think what is written in
this piece you provided is quite good and accurate as far as my own
dime-store understanding of the deterministic nature of various carcinogens
(I have the massive tome of "The Politics of Cancer" sitting on my table in
the living room as it happens. It's very daunting to even look at
it!)...yet they are, precisely carcinogens because we know they cause
cancer. How? How do we know? It's true, one can't do (nor would one want
too ethically) to conduct decades long double-blind studies trying to give
humans cancer. They do use animal studies (and why I oppose the movement to
ban animals from *this* sort of very needed research), especially for
hard-tumor R&D and can look at cells as they metastasize (which is what I
meant by the 'mechanism').

No...the real way is the use of medical statistics using increases of
particular forms of cancer associated with, at least in the beginning, with
what we now know are carcinogens. Taking large and targeted sections of the
population looking for correlations that are specific to whatever
environmental (or internally ingested) substance that might give rise to a
blip, or cancer 'cluster' in a given population. Then test again, do more
studies, meta-studies and compare papers, etc etc. At a certain point it
becomes clear that a substance causes cancer. This was done, by the way,
with  tobacco and why all doctors and oncologists understood it caused
cancer. There was no doubt when it went to trial. Proving it *legally* was
altogether more difficult (obviously) as the lawyers wanted and demanded
specific medical causality between tobacco and lung cancer. It wasn't
enough that people who smoked got cancer in double-digit numbers greater
than non-smokers, they demanded something that can't be actually seen: how
tar and other ingredients did it's dirty work *within the cell itself*.
There are theories but no understanding of the specific mechanism in this
case. Still, people died from smoking and everyone...as in
anyone...understood this to be case even if at the molecular level it was
hard to determine as distinguished from other environmental inputs.

So...they found the one homogenous grouping that could prove this in a
purely statistical way without all the other class, ethnic, environmentally
differing inputs that could throw the stats off: the same group used in the
very first study that started to reveal the suspicions that tobacco kills:
the group if British doctors who all lived in London in the 1950s.
Establishing a fairly good control group of those that did not smoke and
those that did showed the sharp differences in rates lung cancer without a
doubt to even...the legal profession.

With radiation, as I noted, it is not about radiation but over the issue of
how one determines if radiation at low levels, above various background
levels, are detrimental to any ones health at all. This is not the same as
the issue of tobacco where it was quite clear from the onset of the initial
studies and at many different health levels (not just cancer but heart
disease, pulmonary problems such as asthma and emphysema, renal failures,
etc). With tobacco, the issue was a kind of binary divide: those that
smoked; those that didn't. With radiation, it's far more fickle, especially
at the low end of the background level we're talking about with both the
Chernobyl situation, the Fukushima accident and nuclear plants generally
combined with the fact we exist, indeed evolved, "bathed in radiation".

So to compare the two as you do does a disservice to those who are trying
to parse out the import of low level radiation effects on humans (and
plants and other animals) and is hardly helpful.

The theory (and only regulatory guidelines) that purport to show or explain
that 'any amount of radiation is harmful' is based on the linear
non-threshold theory or "LNT", which is the majority position held by those
that study radiation, through few, it seems, do so with much heart in the
discussions that have been taking place for a long time. The famous gold
stand BRIER VII report on radiation, while raising some questions about LNT
being useful for determining cancer rates, still argues that it is the only
theory by which regulations could be adapted. The wiki article has some
really good coverage on the LNT and has statements on both sides of the
debate. For example, the NYAS (the group that 'published the paper about a
million people dying from Chernobyl that it later distanced itself from)
does continue to support the LNT hypothesis. Other organizations do not.

The problem is that the "Popular Science"  journalism of Harvey Wasserman
is really a very poor source for the issues of whether the prediction by
the W

Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[james pitman via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Budgen is probably the most outspoken proponent of intellectual property
rights since Metallica. Whoever stuck up for him on the basis of his fb
profile is a one-man idiot. Most of the stuff he posts is behind a pay
wall. He was the biggest single voice on the HM board for not barring the
swp from future HM conferences for their rape apology. He bullied a marxist
academic out of his job at SOAS on the basis of a personal feud. He calls
people 'scabs' for downloading pdfs. He was born with a silver spoon in his
mouth and he now uses it to beat people who 'rise above their station
with'. If people think that's defensible then you're really not a marxist -
you're a jerk.

Jamie


On 18 June 2014 18:35, Mark Lause via Marxism 
wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The hierarchy is immensely more arcane and complicated than this, perhaps
> because there has never been a UAW to make it more standardized.
>
> THE ideological foundation of an academic self-perception centers on the
> notion that it is somehow, when all is said and done, a meritocracy.  And
> that there a key signifiers that provide a shorthand for merit.  Tenure is
> only one of them . . . and it is not necessarily the most important.  A
> graduate student in an elite university might well rank higher than the
> hard working employed academic in a lesser institution, whether tenured or
> adjunct.
>
> As far as the organized Left is concerned, that same grad student can be
> the voice of the oppressed proletarian against the armchair (ie., not a
> member of a sect) petty bourgeois academic.  I have seen this, experienced
> it and laughed about it for many years.
>
> Whatever the yardstick, the plebes are just not going to measure up . . .
> particularly if they don't stay in their place.
>
> The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
> notion that some institutional connection means merit.
>
> Solidarity,
> Mark L.
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/marinercarpentry%40gmail.com
>

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Re: [Marxism] Universities 'get poor value' from academic journal-publishing firms | Science | theguardian.com

[Jesse Lemisch via Marxism]

==
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==


Historians (and others): read this Guardian expose, and don't even think of 
publishing with Taylor and Francis. I published recently in THE SIXTIES: A 
Journal of History, Politics and Culture (May 2014), my "Steve Kindred 
(1944-2013) and University of Chicago Students for a Democratic Society: a 
distinctive strain within the New Left, both passionate and reasoned."
Never again: they should be boycotted, just as this Guardian article 
indicates that British academics are doing with Elsevier. Before 
publication, T and F offered to sell me my article for $39, and then made it 
almost impossible for me to send copies to friends. (I ended up making it 
available outside of T and F: 
http://newpol.org/content/steve-kindred-1944-2013-and-university-chicago-students-democratic-society. ) 
This came only after numerous back-and-forths before these pirates finally 
acknowledged that I didn't have to give these pirates the copyright. Their 
almost totally computerized processing of articles freely distributes 
erroneous messages. One of the journal's editors (not Jeremy Varon) failed 
to forward to them my signed licensing agreement and then proceeded to 
lecture me on the silliness of my concern over the lengthening delay. It 
turned out that the article was going noplace because the required licensing 
agreement hadn't gotten to them. He urged a charitable attitude towards them 
because, he argued, they work on a "small margin." A truly amazing remark 
for a journal editor, especially one who edits a journal on the Sixties.


Jesse Lemisch


- Original Message - 
From: "Louis Proyect via Marxism" 

To: "Jesse Lemisch" 
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 1:08 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Universities 'get poor value' from academic 
journal-publishing firms | Science | theguardian.com




==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/16/universities-get-poor-value-academic-journal-publishing-firms

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


On 6/18/14 1:35 PM, Mark Lause via Marxism wrote:

The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
notion that some institutional connection means merit.


I got a big laugh about 15 years ago when George Rupp, president of 
Columbia at the time, gave a presentation to IT on the university's new 
drive to re-establish itself as Number One in NYC. The talk used 
Powerpoint slides to show how it was faring against NYU. I am sure you 
could have heard the same kind of pep talk at Hertz when it was trying 
to fend off Avis.


At a certain point, Rupp honed in on the prestigious hires that had been 
finalized, including John Roemer who was a "leading Marxist". Could NYU 
top that?


Back in the 1950s, I used to love Scrooge McDuck comic books. In one 
story, Scrooge is in a competition with an Indian rich guy (clearly 
anticipating the world of today) as to who could mount a more impressive 
display of his wealth.


In the final panel, Scrooge pulls away a curtain that was concealing a 
diamond-studded top hat like the one he wore. The Indian laughed, "Is 
that all you got, a measly hat?" At that point, Scrooge pulled a lever 
and the entire work came into view. It was a 50 foot edifice of Scrooge 
covered in diamonds. This made him the clear-cut winner.


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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


The hierarchy is immensely more arcane and complicated than this, perhaps
because there has never been a UAW to make it more standardized.

THE ideological foundation of an academic self-perception centers on the
notion that it is somehow, when all is said and done, a meritocracy.  And
that there a key signifiers that provide a shorthand for merit.  Tenure is
only one of them . . . and it is not necessarily the most important.  A
graduate student in an elite university might well rank higher than the
hard working employed academic in a lesser institution, whether tenured or
adjunct.

As far as the organized Left is concerned, that same grad student can be
the voice of the oppressed proletarian against the armchair (ie., not a
member of a sect) petty bourgeois academic.  I have seen this, experienced
it and laughed about it for many years.

Whatever the yardstick, the plebes are just not going to measure up . . .
particularly if they don't stay in their place.

The problem comes when we buy into that meritocracy stuff or, worse, the
notion that some institutional connection means merit.

Solidarity,
Mark L.

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
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==


On 6/18/14 1:10 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:

Louis, it's quite well established how a carcinogen and a tumor relate
medically. Both modern science and medical statistics (the latter is how
they proved conclusively that tobacco is carcinogenic but now they have the
actual mechanisms involved).


That is not true whatsoever. I suggest you have a look at Robert N. 
Proctor's "Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know And Don't Know 
About Cancer" that has a chapter on the problem of linking environmental 
factors to cancer. I have tried to keep up with the literature ever 
since I worked as a database administrator at Sloan-Kettering in the mid 
1980s. When I was there, I read Samuel S. Epstein "The Politics of 
Cancer", a book with a somewhat different angle than Proctor's. Both are 
very good.



http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-cancers-are-caused-by-the-environment/

The old two percent estimate for environmentally induced cancers is 
still commonly used – despite advances in modern cancer biology.


New areas of cancer research are focusing on the potential for 
pollutants to interact with one another and with genetic factors. 
Carcinogens can act by damaging DNA, disrupting hormones, inflaming 
tissues, or switching genes on or off.


Also, exposure to hormonally active agents during critical periods of 
human development – particularly in the womb or during childhood – may 
trigger cancer later in life. For example, the risk of breast cancer 
could be influenced by exposures during puberty.


All these elements make it tricky to calculate the magnitude of 
environmentally induced cancers.


Scientists now know that getting cancer is like being attacked by a 
multi-headed monster: How can you really be sure which part did the most 
damage?


Schettler said “we now know from cancer biology that multiple 
interacting factors” are involved so it’s impossible to assign 
percentages to certain causes.


“It’s really important that we understand the limits of this notion. We 
have to be humbled by this and know that our estimates may be way off,” 
he said.


Margaret Kripke, a professor at University of Texas' M.D. Anderson 
Cancer Center and co-author of the President’s Cancer Panel report, said 
the idea that cancer biologists can put a number on the environmental 
component of cancer is fraught with limitations.


She uses the example of a person who is genetically predisposed to lung 
cancer, but also smokes and lives in an area with high air pollution. If 
this person develops cancer, it is almost always attributed to smoking 
because almost 90 percent of lung cancer deaths are caused by tobacco. 
But researchers can't simply dismiss the remaining 10 percent. The way 
these fractions are teased apart is crucial, and important contributors 
are easily overlooked by limitations in study design.


There is substantial evidence that synergism between two different 
exposures can cause some cancers. Asbestos, for example, enhances the 
carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke, so the rate of lung cancer was 
especially high among people who smoked and also were exposed to 
asbestos in their workplaces.


The major reason that it’s so difficult to pin down how many cancers are 
due to environmental factors is that studies that allow epidemiologists 
to link human cancers to an environmental pollutant are rare opportunities.


Scientists need a setting where they can be absolutely certain about 
what and when people were exposed to something, and then be able to 
follow up with the patients many years later, since cancer takes decades 
to develop. Yet this is hardly ever possible, said Dr. Richard Jackson, 
former director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health.


Humans aren't lab rats; they tend to move around, so they don't know 
what they were exposed to, said Jackson, who is now a UCLA professor. 
Also, tracking systems for environmental exposures and chemicals are 
inadequate.


(clip)


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Re: [Marxism] Bush, Barack & Bashar BFF to Islamic Extremists in Iraq & Syria

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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I was tempted to just go with "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" because all
the minutia is so tedious, but I hadn't really seen the details on
Baghdadi, ISI, AQI, ISIS and JAN teased out it a way that is easy to digest
so I included that an it took awhile.

Did you see the piece in NRB today? Completely glossed over last 8 years of
ISIS and Baghdadi. Got a lot wrong too,

I was going to send it to you for critical review first but then I just
wanted to get it done. Its no too late, if you anything that could be
improved.

Clay Claiborne, Director
Vietnam: American Holocaust 
Linux Beach Productions
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 581-1536

Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 



On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 7:40 AM, Andrew Pollack 
wrote:

> fucking brilliant as always
> skimmed it and am now working my way through it more slowly
> the punchline:
> " The only force that is doing it right, the only force on the ground that
> is actually fighting ISIS and winning is the Free Syrian Army and its
> allies and the best course of action for those concerned about the rise of
> the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham is to see that they get the arms and
> supplies they need to defeat both ISIS and the Assad regime and set Syria
> on the road to a democratic future."
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 5:19 PM, Clay Claiborne via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>> ==
>> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> ==
>>
>>
>>
>> Major new piece from Linux Beach:
>>
>>
>>   Bush, Barack & Bashar BFF to Islamic Extremists in Iraq & Syria
>>   <
>> http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2014/06/bush-barack-bashar-bff-to-islamic.html
>> >
>>
>>
>> Exceprts:
>>
>> > When Obama reneged on his pledge to respond to Assad's growing and
>> > continued use of chemical weapons, he showed again that Western
>> > promises were worth nothing and Western regard for Arab lives was
>> > worth even less. This failure to act on long promoted "humanitarian"
>> > concerns greatly demoralized the democratic forces and represented a
>> > propaganda coup for those that said only fools would look to the West
>> > to find a vision of Syrian or Iraqi future. After 21 August 2013, many
>> > more fighters cast their lot with the jihadists. The fall of Mosul and
>> > Tikrit in Iraq to forces under the leadership of ISIS is blow back
>> > from Obama's failure to take action after Assad's chemical attacks.
>> >
>> > Odd as it may sound, the leadership of ISI may have seen its initial
>> > expansion into Syria as a defensive move! After the Syrian Revolution
>> > began, the eyes of young Arabs turned to the struggle going on in
>> > Syria against the Assad regime. Colonel Hajji Bakr feared that
>> > everyone would start going to Syria to fight, leading to a collapse of
>> > their group. Initially Baghdadi forbade anyone going to Syria and
>> > considered all who disobeyed his order to be defectors. This
>> > non-interventionist policy wasn't holding so Bakr proposed the forming
>> > of a non-Iraqi battalion to be sent to Syria. This new command would
>> > be under Syrian leadership and was to attract non-Iraqi fighters from
>> > abroad. No Iraqi officers could join. This was the beginning of Jabhat
>> > al Nusra [JAN], also know as al Nusra Front. Baghdadi sent Abu
>> > Mohammed al-Golani to Syria to run it.
>> >
>> > The "Front", as it became known, came to Syria with fresh but seasoned
>> > fighters and better arms than the Free Syrian Army. They enjoyed some
>> > notable battlefield successes and soon became famous worldwide,
>> > attracting jihadists from the Gulf, North Africa, Yemen, even Europe
>> > and the US. Meanwhile, back in Iraq, Baghdadi and Bakr were beginning
>> > to fear they'd created a monster that out shined them. They ordered
>> > al-Golani to announce that al Nusra was officially under the "State of
>> > Iraq" and Baghdadi. Golani said he'd think about it. Then he sent
>> > Baghdadi a letter saying it wouldn't be in the best interest of the
>> > revolution, sorry Charlie.
>> >
>> > Baghdadi and Bakr were furious. Then US President Obama put al Nusra
>> > Front on the terrorist list, making Golani the most wanted man in
>> > Syria. That was the last straw. They feared al Nusra was getting off
>> > the reservation so as a test of loyalty, Baghdadi told Golani at a
>> > meeting in Turkey to conduct military operations against the FSA. The
>> > Front's Shura council unanimously rejected the orders. In a strongly
>> > worded letter Baghdadi responded by tellin

[Marxism] Universities 'get poor value' from academic journal-publishing firms | Science | theguardian.com

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/16/universities-get-poor-value-academic-journal-publishing-firms

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[h0ost via Marxism]

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On 06/18/2014 12:20 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
> On 6/18/14 12:04 PM, h0ost via Marxism wrote:
>> All this to say that, in 2014, the academy is no less of a terrain for
>> class struggle, than the (almost non-existent) factory floor.
> 
> Yeah, with the tenured professors playing the role of older auto workers
> voting for a contract based on a two-tiered wage system with new hires
> getting $17 per hour and them $37.


Exactly, and with exactly the same results: the perpetuation of tiered
labor in both places of work.  Same politics, different buildings.

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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 12:26 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:

Basically this is a refutation of their supposed "endorsement" of this
nonsense that passes for 'science'. Additionally, they note the study is
out of stock and*will not be republished*. There was a huge push back from
actual oncologists and health physics specialists and the NYAS owned up to
blowing it big time for lending their name to this...study. The actual peer
reviews are listed...it did not pass muster.

David


A large part of the problem is proving that Chernobyl led to cancer 
since it is virtually impossible to establish a link between a 
carcinogen and a tumor. That is how the tobacco industry was able to 
stave off efforts to control it for so many years.


My mother-in-law in Istanbul just had surgery to remove a tumor from her 
thyroid gland, a recurrence of an illness that she had shortly after 
Chernobyl. How could I or anybody possibly prove that there is a causal 
relationship?


If you are long-time readers of Spiked Online, you will be familiar with 
their efforts to get the nuclear industry off the hook making exactly 
the same kinds of arguments.


http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/1514

Bruce Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold

Risk, cancer and manmade chemicals

Blaming synthetic chemicals for a 'cancer epidemic' is flawed science 
that makes for dubious policy.


27 January 2005

Entering a new millennium seems a good time to challenge some old ideas 
about cancer cause and prevention, which in our view are implausible, 
have little supportive evidence, and might best be left behind. In this 
essay, we summarise data and conclusions from 15 years of work, raising 
five issues that involve toxicology, nutrition, public health, and US 
government regulatory policy:


1. There is no cancer epidemic other than that due to smoking.

2. The dose makes the poison. Half of all chemicals tested, whether 
natural or synthetic, cause cancer in high-dose rodent cancer tests. 
Evidence suggests that this high rate is due primarily to effects that 
are unique to high doses. The results of these high-dose tests have been 
used to regulate low-dose human exposures, but are not likely to be 
relevant.


3. Even Rachel Carson was made of chemicals: natural v synthetic 
chemicals. Human exposure to naturally occurring rodent carcinogens is 
ubiquitous and dwarfs the exposure of the general public to synthetic 
rodent carcinogens.


4. Errors of omission. The major causes of cancer (other than smoking) 
do not involve exposures to exogenous chemicals that cause cancer in 
high-dose tests; rather, the major causes are dietary imbalances, 
hormonal factors, infection and inflammation, and genetic factors. 
Insufficiency of many vitamins and minerals, which is preventable by 
supplementation, causes DNA damage by a mechanism similar to radiation.






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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[DW via Marxism]

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Moving right along...
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

From the NYAS page (linked above) on "*Chernobyl: Consequences of the
Catastrophe for People and the Environment*"

"This collection of papers, originally published in Russian, was
written by scientists who state that they have summarized the information
about the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster
from several hundreds of papers previously published in Slavic language
publications.* In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its
publication does the Academy validate the claims made in the original
Slavic language publications cited in the translated papers*. Importantly,
the translated volume has not been formally peer‐reviewed by the New York
Academy of Sciences or by anyone else."

"Under the editorial practices of Annals at the time, some projects,
such as the Chernobyl translation, were developed and accepted solely to
fulfill the Academy’s broad mandate of providing an open forum for
discussion of scientific questions, rather than to present original
scientific studies or Academy positions. The content of these projects,
conceived as one-off book projects, were not vetted by standard peer
review."

[emphasis added]

Basically this is a refutation of their supposed "endorsement" of this
nonsense that passes for 'science'. Additionally, they note the study is
out of stock and *will not be republished*. There was a huge push back from
actual oncologists and health physics specialists and the NYAS owned up to
blowing it big time for lending their name to this...study. The actual peer
reviews are listed...it did not pass muster.

David

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 12:04 PM, h0ost via Marxism wrote:

All this to say that, in 2014, the academy is no less of a terrain for
class struggle, than the (almost non-existent) factory floor.


Yeah, with the tenured professors playing the role of older auto workers 
voting for a contract based on a two-tiered wage system with new hires 
getting $17 per hour and them $37.


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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[h0ost via Marxism]

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On 06/18/2014 11:11 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> The strange thing is that some of the most vociferous defenders of
> "classical" Marxism like Vivek Chibber seem utterly oblivious to the sea
> change taking place and are preoccupied by the widespread influence of
> Derrida, Foucault et al--as if that matters to an adjunct who can't
> afford a dentist.

The adjuncts I know are some of the most avid readers of Foucault, as
well as of Marx, Lenin and the rest of the people worth reading.  They
care as much about radical ideas as the tenured leftist in the better
offices.

Can anyone deny the fact that education is the crucial arena for the
class struggle these days?  Where did the energy come from for Occupy,
or what's happening with Sawant in Seattle?  It came from the academy.

All this to say that, in 2014, the academy is no less of a terrain for
class struggle, than the (almost non-existent) factory floor.



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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 11:10 AM, martin schiller via Marxism wrote:

I think that the point was that '... it takes one to know one.', degree of 
worse aside.


What a disappointment. For the 16 years that I have moderated Marxmail, 
I have always tried to convey a warm and fuzzy image.


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Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 11:09 AM, David P Á wrote:

I'd like to know why you're posting obvious nonsense like this. 1m dead
due to Chernobyl? As true as 100m dead from Communism. For goodness
sake, use your critical faculties when assessing this type of
information, assuming you're not too tired from using them assessing
anti-imperialist claims.

--David.



The article making such a claim was from the New York Academy of 
Sciences's website. Here's info on them from "about us" page:



The New York Academy of Sciences is a membership organization with more 
than 22,000 members in 100 countries. They include research scientists 
at universities and industry, as well as representatives of business, 
government, and policy organizations. Our Board of Governors and 
President's Council include 27 Nobel laureates and other prominent 
leaders of academia and industry, based in New York and around the world.


http://www.nyas.org


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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 6/18/14 10:53 AM, Mark Lause wrote:

I don't usually bother with ad hominem threads like this, but the
biggest offense that's passed under my eyes was that he's unfriending
people on Fb for what others deem to be trivial reasons, , , , And that
HM is generally an elitist operation.

 From my perspective, cn onferences, publishing, etc. tend to mirror the
familiar hierarchies of the academic world.  For as long as I've been
around, I've never seen a Left organization that didn't genuflect before
the right degrees from the right places.  And I suspect that it's gone
on for a lot longer than I've been around.  I see no reason to expect
that to change or any necessity that it do so in the immediate future.


There's another dimension that has to be understood. The British SWP 
(even now after the rape cover-up scandal) and the ISO have a heavy 
investment in HM. There's an overlap of the conferences, the paywall 
journals, and publishing houses that allows them to present their views 
without putting up with the hoi polloi.


The academic conference (and that for the most part is what the Left 
Forum and HM events really are) allows a group of tenured professors on 
the left to hold forth for a half-hour or so without being very much 
accountable for what they have said. I have run into two incidents 
already where I was basically heckled down when trying to respond to HM 
contributors Charles Post and Paul Le Blanc.


Ironically, as they enjoy the privilege that attends a tenured 
professorship, the ground beneath them is melting away faster than the 
polar ice caps. As the Guernica article I forwarded earlier indicates, 
only about a third of American professors are on a tenure track while a 
movement is underfoot to challenge the paywall print journal model with 
Open Source publications.


The strange thing is that some of the most vociferous defenders of 
"classical" Marxism like Vivek Chibber seem utterly oblivious to the sea 
change taking place and are preoccupied by the widespread influence of 
Derrida, Foucault et al--as if that matters to an adjunct who can't 
afford a dentist.



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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[martin schiller via Marxism]

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> 
> On 6/18/14 5:28 AM, Greg McDonald via Marxism wrote:
> 
>> *Wiki:Psychological projection* is the act or technique of defending
>> oneself against unpleasant impulses by denying
>>  their existence in oneself, while
>> attributing 
>> them to others.[1

> On Jun 18, 2014, at 6:26 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> Moron, didn't you read what I wrote on the FB thread?
> 
> "I blocked Budgen about 3 years ago. He is the creepiest person I have ever 
> run into on the Internet, much worse than me."

I think that the point was that '... it takes one to know one.', degree of 
worse aside.

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[Marxism] The sectarian myth of Iraq

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/16/sectarian-myth-of-iraq

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I don't usually bother with ad hominem threads like this, but the biggest
offense that's passed under my eyes was that he's unfriending people on Fb
for what others deem to be trivial reasons, , , , And that HM is generally
an elitist operation.

>From my perspective, cn onferences, publishing, etc. tend to mirror the
familiar hierarchies of the academic world.  For as long as I've been
around, I've never seen a Left organization that didn't genuflect before
the right degrees from the right places.  And I suspect that it's gone on
for a lot longer than I've been around.  I see no reason to expect that to
change or any necessity that it do so in the immediate future.

Academe and higher education are not mechanisms for changing the world.  At
best, its institutions can reflect change.  At worst, they coopt it.

Solidarity!
Mark L

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[Marxism] The US war in the Mideast

[Carl G. Estabrook via Marxism]

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Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in the 
Financial Times (6/15) that "...Isis, even more than the Assad regime in Syria, 
is the principal threat to western interests."

What are those "western interests" that Isis threatens? If Iraq's principal 
product were asparagus, western interests in obtaining healthy green vegetables 
would presumably not be at risk. But Iraq has the the world's second largest 
oil reserves in the world: like asparagus, the US can get oil elsewhere - but 
its attempt to control world energy flows has led it to kill a million people 
in the Mideast in the last decade - and to continue to do so. 

"Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the more 
astute of the senior planners and analysts, pointed out in the journal National 
Interest that America's control over the Middle East 'gives it indirect but 
politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also 
dependent on energy exports from the region.' If the United States can maintain 
its control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil reserves, and 
right at the heart of the world's major energy supplies, that will enhance 
significantly its strategic power and influence over its major rivals in the 
tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past 30 years: US-dominated 
North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, linked to South and Southeast Asia 
economies." [Noam Chomsky]

The day Haass' article appeared, British PM Cameron repeated the US/UK cover 
story for ongoing imperial occupations in the Mideast (now made all the more 
urgent by the China/Russia oil deal): 

'...Cameorn told MPs today that Britain cannot afford to see the creation of an 
"extreme Islamist regime" in the middle of Iraq. [The PM has apparently never 
heard of the chief US client - after Israel - in the Mideast: Saudi Arabia. 
--CGE] The prime minister said that the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq 
and the Levant (Isis) threatening the government in Baghdad were also plotting 
terror attacks on the UK.

'"I disagree with those people who those people who think this is nothing to do 
with us and if they want to have have some sort of extreme Islamist regime in 
the middle of Iraq, that won't affect us. It will," he said.

'"The people in that regime - as well as trying to take territory - are also 
planning to attack us here at home in the United Kingdom. So the right answer 
is to be long-term, hard-headed, patient and intelligent with the interventions 
that we make.

'"The most important intervention of all is to make sure that these governments 
are fully representative of the people who live in their countries, they close 
down the ungoverned space, and that they remove the support for the 
extremists."'

There's a move afoot in Parliament to impeach (an archaic remedy) Tony Blair 
for similar lies. The Bush-Blair-Obama evocation of "terrorism" (= the 
resistance of people in the Mideast to US-led invasion and occupation) as an 
excuse for more murder is wearing thin. 

--CGE

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/54d08a7e-f31c-11e3-a3f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3500Lir7X
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/18/tony-blair-impeach-iraq-war_n_5506525.html

###



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[Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The Plague of Nuclear Power
Fukushima’s Children are Dying
by HARVEY WASSERMAN

Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid 
cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty 
times (40x) normal.


More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 
kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering 
reactors nowsuffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily 
nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.


More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three 
would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the 
Radiation and Public Health Project.


The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public 
health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has 
been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some 
isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.


full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/17/fukushimas-children-are-dying

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[Marxism] The Teaching Class by Rachel Riederer - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(From a special issue on class in America)

Most university-level instructors are, like Vojtko, contingent 
employees, working on a contract basis year to year or semester to 
semester. Some of these contingent employees are full-time lecturers, 
and many are adjunct instructors: part-time employees, paid per class, 
often without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is a 
relatively new phenomenon: in 1969, 78 percent of professors held 
tenure-track positions. By 2009 this percentage had shrunk to 33.5. The 
rest of the professors holding jobs—whether part time or full time—do so 
without any job security. These are the conditions that left Vojtko in 
such a vulnerable position after twenty-five years at Duquesne 
University. Vojtko was earning between $3,000 and $3,500 per 
three-credit course. During years when she taught three courses per 
semester, and an additional two over the summer, she made less than 
$25,000, and received no health benefits through her employer. Though 
many universities limit the number of hours that adjunct professors can 
work each semester, keeping them nominally “part-time” employees, 
teaching three three-credit courses is certainly a full-time job. These 
circumstances are now the norm for university instructors, as the number 
of tenured and tenure-track positions shrinks and the ranks of 
contingent laborers swell.


full: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-teaching-class/

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Re: [Marxism] Is there an "anti-imperialist camp"?

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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From an antiwar list:

http://newsfirst.lk/english/2014/06/president-receives-peace-democracy-award-bolivia/40374

President Mahinda Rajapaksa received an award from Bolivia in recognition
of his contribution to peace and democracy.

*The Presidential Spokesperson and International Media Unit notes that the
award is the highest honour awarded by the Plurinational State of Bolivia.*

Álvaro García Linera, vice president of Bolivia and president of the
Legislative Assembly, presented President Mahinda Rajapaksa with the
‘Parliamentary Order Merit Democratic Representative Marcelo Quiroga Santa
Cruza” at the Legislative Assembly in La Paz, Bolivia, on Monday.

*Bolivia notes that President Mahinda Rajapaksa was selected for the honour
for having defeated terrorism and established peace and development in Sri
Lanka.*

*The Presidential Spokesperson and International Media Unit said the award
also recognizes President Rajapaksa’s commitment to human rights and his
initiative to improve and expand relations with South America, including
Bolivia.*

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was also scheduled to receive the award.

President Rajapaksa also held bi-lateral talks with his Bolivian
counterpart Evo Morales on Monday.

During the discussion, President Morales expressed his willingness to work
closely with Sri Lanka.

*President Morales inquired about Sri Lanka’s political, economic,
industrial, export and import sectors and showed particular interest in Sri
Lanka’s apparel sector.*

While stating that his visit to Bolivia is a new beginning in diplomatic,
economic and trade relations with South American nations, President
Rajapaksa said establishing relationships with new nations is a part of the
Government’s policy.

*President Morales also accepted President Rajapaksa’s invitation to visit
Sri Lanka.*

Following the conclusion of bilateral talks, President Morales hosted a
colorful ceremony with military honors for President Rajapaksa at the
Presidential Palace.



On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Andrew Pollack 
wrote:

> This exchange is fantastic! Felipe unwittingly commits all the errors
> inherent in a liberal perspective, and Michael skewers them all.
>
> I think this should be widely shared. It's a perfect lesson for newcomers
> about the two different perspectives, especially because the author is not
> an organized Stalinist (at least from the exchange we have no evidence he
> is), so rebutting his arguments means challenging the standpoint and
> illusions of hundreds of thousands of other liberal supporters of this
> supposed camp.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>> ==
>> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> ==
>>
>>
>> A good reply by Michael Karadjis.
>>
>> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GreenLeft_discussion/
>> conversations/messages/85613
>> 
>> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
>> Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/
>> options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com
>>
>
>

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[Marxism] Iraq Update

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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Got this from Ward Reilly, Vets for Peace:


Some Iraq reality, from a friend (Ahmed) in Mosul;

"Update on Iraq situation

After the taking of Mosul by several resistance factions along with ISIS
each operating in considerable isolation to the other, the city now enjoys
a peaceful environment, a new mayor has been appointed and each resistance
faction is assisting local dignitaries to run each area in a manner that
avoids stirring trouble between the factions on one end and ISIS on the
other. The Revolutionaries at this point seem to have received orders that
no tensions are permissible with any party fighting the central government
until the political process in iraq installed by the Americans and Iranians
is removed from power. After that is another story, as most Iraqis
regardless of their sect do not accept that ISIS be the master of the
house. The Military council and Tribes are avoiding even displaying their
full colour allowing ISIS to take the highlight in the Media this way their
bad reputation causes mont on the government side to flee thus reducing
overall casualties and blood spill. This policy obviously has it's negative
implications and allows Maliki to claim that everyone is ISIS to gather
International Political and Media support. When asked by local journalists
the Councils insist that when the time comes where ISIS is consumed by it's
creators in Battle they will choose the hour where they will clear matters
in a more public Manner. This will also force a lot of Media organisations
promoting the ISIS line to accept a new reality where people would discover
the the amount of disinformation they were fed, leaving these media outlets
in an awkward position with their readers and viewers. this is a very
tricky strategy. but they insist that ISIS is the problem of the government
and the Americans and the Military council is fighting its own war and will
not interest itself with any argument that they should fight ISIS first as
this is the government line.

Video from Mosul Markets are open and fighters NOT related to ISIS but
rather to the Military councils great the people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvZ_6rVZuE

Video of People in Mosul greeting tribal fighters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkLuSww2ZcA

Video of the municipality removing concrete barriers and checkpoint remains
people in mosul travel freely now as opposed to checkpoints that annoyed
civilians more than it protected them during Maliki's presence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQdTRxlU0bo


Interview with with a police officer in mosul after the takeover confirm
their comfort of the presence of the tribal fighters and request the
fighters to protect the city banks and infrastructure and the readiness of
the police force to work with them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w0UL57iZp0


Civilian confirming that the revolutionaries in his area are not ISIS and
that the revolution is for all iraqis and that the banks are under the
protection of the revolutionaries now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePll4XiFIO4


Civilian asking people who fled Mosul to come back after it is free roads
are all open and services are being repaired
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-KnJHbgNd8


Civilian saying that Mosul is peaceful and he has no obstruction now in
movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiX-WeAqy5A


Civilian refugee who returned to Mosul after being welcomed by
revolutionaries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wTUvB5Ueus

[Marxism] Selling terror: how Isis details its brutality

[Joseph Catron via Marxism]

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(If the *Financial Times* link below is paywalled for anyone, just run a
news search for ISIS annual reports. You'll find enough to keep you busy
for a while.)

"Called *al-Naba* – the News – the reports for 2012 and 2013 (a year in
which 8,000 civilians died in Iraq) have been analysed by the US-based
Institute for the Study of War, which corroborates much of the information
they contain. Isis's aim appears to be to demonstrate its record to
potential donors."

http://on.ft.com/1qcyc86

-- 
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað."

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Re: [Marxism] Iraq's Night is Long.

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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==


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-crisis-militants-bombard-iraqs-biggest-oil-refinery-with-mortars-and-machine-guns-as-baghdad-braces-for-impending-attack-9545034.html

  Iraq crisis: Militants bombard Iraq’s biggest oil refinery with mortars
and machine guns as Baghdad braces for impending attack



On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>
>
> ps: by coincidence the Guardian reports today on the reactionaries' seizure
> of the country's biggest refinery; hopefully we'll hear soon the oil
> workers' perspective on that:
>
> "Iraq's biggest oil refinery, Baiji, has been shut down and its foreign
> staff evacuated, Reuters reports citing refinery officials.
>
> Local staff remain in place and the military is still in control of the
> facility, officials said.
>
>
> Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have advanced into
> the town of Baiji and surrounded its refinery.
>
>
> The refinery shut down overnight, the sources said.
>
>
> Baiji is one of three oil refineries in Iraq and only processes oil from
> the north. The other two are located in Baghdad and the south and are
> firmly under government control and operational.
>
>
> "Due to the recent attacks of militants by mortars, the refinery
> administration decided to evacuate foreign workers for their safety and
> also to completely shut down production units to avoid extensive damage
> that could result," a chief engineer at the refinery said on condition of
> anonymity.
>
>
> He said that there is sufficient gas oil, gasoline and kerosene to supply
> more than a month of domestic demand.
>
> Captured oil fields have been a key source of funding for Isis
> <
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions
> >
> .
>
> Isis has secured massive cashflows from the oilfields of eastern Syria,
> which it had commandeered in late 2012, some of which it sold back to the
> Syrian regime.
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2014/jun/17/iraq-crisis-obama-deploys-troops-live-updates?view=desktop#block-53a018c8e4b0a5c0bb7d8a1f
>
>
>

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[Marxism] World Cup USA: A Team of Immigrants

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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http://soccer.fusion.net/2014/06/16/without-immigration-half-of-the-u-s-world-cup-soccer-team-disappears/

"The U.S. national soccer team plays its first World Cup game on Monday
against Ghana.

For a country where immigration reform is a such a hot button issue, it’s
interesting to note that more than half of the team was born outside the
U.S. or have parents who are immigrants.

This year’s team also has a particularly German influence. John Brooks,
Timmy Chandler, Julian Green, Jermaine Jones, Fabian Johnson — all were
either born in Germany or have a German parent.

There are also four players who are Latino and two players who are Native
American. Chris Wondolowski of the Kiowa tribe and and SBNation.com

identified DeAndre Yedlin as black, Native American and Latvian.



*Take a look at which U.S. national soccer team players disappear when you
get rid of immigrants and sons of immigrants."*


The fact that Jurgen Klinsmann is the head coach for team USA has a lot to
do with his recruitment of young players from Germany with dual
citizenship, such as Brooks, who scored the winning header against Ghana.
But the point stands. The USA still has miles to go in terms of developing
a culture of football with a solid youth program.

Greg McDonald

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Re: [Marxism] Re And I thought I was the only person who couldn't stand Sebastian Budgen

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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==


*Wiki:Psychological projection* is the act or technique of defending
oneself against unpleasant impulses by denying
 their existence in oneself, while
attributing 
them to others.[1]
 For
example, a person who is rude  may
constantly accuse other people of being rude.

Although rooted in early developmental stages,[2]
 and
classed by George Eman Vaillant
 as an immature defence
,[3]
 the
projection of one's negative qualities onto others on a small scale is
nevertheless a common process in everyday life.[4]

 A
prominent precursor in the formulation of the projection principle was
Giambattista
Vico  [5]
[6]
 (23
June 1668 – 23 January 1744), and an early formulation of it is found in
ancient Greek writer Xenophanes 
(c.c. 570 – c. 475 BC), which observed that "the gods of Ethiopians were
inevitably black with flat noses while those of the Thracians were blond
with blue eyes." In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach
 (July 28, 1804 – September
13, 1872), was the first to employ this concept as the basis for a
systematic critique of religion.[7]
[8]
[9



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