[Marxism] Assad Daily Halloween
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[Marxism] Fwd: Piketty and the Crisis of Neoclassical Economics | John Bellamy Foster | Monthly Review
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://monthlyreview.org/2014/11/01/piketty-and-the-crisis-of-neoclassical-economics/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Syrian’s Photos Spur Outrage, but Not Action
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Nov. 1 2014 Syrian’s Photos Spur Outrage, but Not Action By MICHAEL R. GORDON WASHINGTON — Wearing a blue hood to shield his identity, a former Syrian police photographer briefed a congressional committee over the summer on the photos he had smuggled out of the country to document the deaths of thousands of prisoners killed in President Bashar al-Assad’s jails. At a White House meeting, President Obama’s senior aides welcomed him as a man of uncommon courage who had revealed unspeakable atrocities. But now the Syrian government’s most celebrated defector, who uses the pseudonym Caesar, is no longer optimistic that the United States has the will to stop the abuses that have shocked the conscience of the world. His photographs have generated outrage but no fresh action against the Assad government. And instead of intervening militarily to support opponents of Mr. Assad, Mr. Obama is mounting airstrikes to defend Kurds, Yazidis and Turkmen in Syria and Iraq from the Islamic State. “I completely understand how he came to the defense of two American victims killed by the extremist ISIS terror group,” Caesar said in a message earlier this month from an undisclosed location in Europe that was conveyed by the Coalition for Democratic Syria, a Syrian-American organization that sponsored his trip to Washington. “But I and millions of Syrians feel depressed when we see that the killer of thousands of prisoners is left unchecked,” he added. “I believe my cause demands action and a clear position by the president of the United States.” Caesar’s complaint reflects a broader discontent within the moderate Syrian opposition that is posing a new challenge for the Obama administration’s strategy to counter the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. While ruling out United States military intervention against Mr. Assad, the administration has committed to training thousands of opposition fighters in Saudi Arabia and Turkey so they can eventually defend territory in Syria that is wrested from the Islamic State’s control. But those fighters must come from the same constituency that has been increasingly troubled by the American reluctance to act more forcefully against Mr. Assad. “There is a sense that there is discrimination against them, that the atrocities they are suffering at the hands of Assad are somehow less deserving than what is befalling other communities,” said Emile Hokayem, an expert on Middle East affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “For most of these rebels, Assad is the greatest evil, not ISIL. For the U.S., it is the opposite,” he said. Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador to Syria and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the administration’s twin policies of carrying out airstrikes to protect the Kurdish community in Syria while refraining from direct military support for Arab opponents of Mr. Assad might backfire. “It will make recruiting harder for an American-trained force, and indeed, in the short term, might help ISIL gain recruits by helping it pose, however falsely, as defenders of Sunni Arabs,” Mr. Ford said. The White House appears sensitive to the importance of Caesar’s role. Answering a letter Caesar sent in late July to the president, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, wrote last week that the aim of the American program to train moderate opposition was to help it not only contend with the “barbaric threat of the Islamic State” but also to defend itself “from the brutality of the Assad regime.” No one has done more to expose that brutality than Caesar. Described as mild-mannered and not particularly political, he has become a compelling element of the Syrian narrative because he emerged from the darkest side of the Assad government. Caesar was photographing accident scenes for the military police when the Syrian conflict erupted. He and several fellow photographers soon found themselves photographing dozens of bodies a day, many of which displayed signs of torture. Convinced that he was documenting war crimes, Caesar downloaded copies of the photos on thumb drives, sneaked them out of his office and transferred them to a hard drive, keeping a grisly record of the deaths for more than two years. But when asked to train a successor, he became alarmed that the government might be on to him, and he defected, taking a hard drive that he says documents more than 10,000 deaths. Senior American officials say his account and the photographic record he has provided are credible. “You see the evidence of broken
[Marxism] The Omidyar-Taibbi split
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Nov. 1 2014 At First Look Media, Personalities Prove Tough to Manage By RAVI SOMAIYA and NOAM COHEN When First Look Media, the journalism enterprise backed by the billionaire founder of eBay, Pierre M. Omidyar, started about a year ago, its mission was clear. Mr. Omidyar would personally invest $250 million to build a company that would hold the powerful accountable. He paid lavishly to recruit adversarial reporters like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who had received classified documents from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, and Matt Taibbi, who used a piercing wit and deep reporting to skewer most of Wall Street during his time at Rolling Stone magazine. And then Mr. Omidyar tried to manage them. Mr. Taibbi abruptly left First Look this week without ever writing a story. On Thursday, an unusual article appeared on The Intercept, a First Look-owned site started by Mr. Greenwald and others. It described a power struggle inside First Look between Silicon Valley executives “and the fiercely independent journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with disdain.” Mr. Omidyar, according to people with knowledge of internal discussions at First Look who spoke on condition of anonymity, seemed not to realize what he had gotten into by hiring so many aggressive and competitive journalists and then trying to manage them largely from his home in Hawaii, with only sporadic visits to First Look’s offices. The Racket, a so-far-unpublished digital magazine Mr. Taibbi was brought in to create, was envisioned as a modern version of Spy magazine, whose blend of satire and reporting skewered the establishment in the 1980s and 1990s. But it has so far been subject to the kind of muckraking it aspired to. As for its fate — and those of its dozen or so employees — it’s unlikely to continue as Mr. Taibbi envisioned it, people inside First Look say, though there is a desire to keep the publication in some form. Morale inside the company was damaged, these people said, and there is concern over retaining and hiring staff. Mr. Taibbi, meanwhile, has a feature article in the next issue of Rolling Stone, the magazine said on Friday. Representatives of First Look and Mr. Taibbi declined to comment. The loss of Mr. Taibbi, a journalist with an avid following, is a blow to First Look as it tries to distinguish itself in a fiercely competitive and crowded start-up digital media market. Among others, Fusion, Vox and Quartz have been hiring reporters and editors with web experience. Medium, started by two of the founders of Twitter, is something between a publisher and a platform. And BuzzFeed and Vice have recently expanded their reporting ambitions and raised millions from eager investors. Even older companies like Bloomberg Media are seeking to revamp themselves with infusions of fresh talent. First Look has been among the best funded and most promising of those sites. Mr. Omidyar’s $250 million investment matched the amount that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, paid for The Washington Post in August, and First Look’s first prominent hire, Mr. Greenwald, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Mr. Snowden. It made significant noneditorial hires, including bringing in as its top lawyer the former general counsel of The New Yorker magazine. The nearly 2,000-word article described Mr. Omidyar as a micromanager who personally approved reporters’ expenses and imposed a three-month hiring freeze just as they were building their staffs. The article also reported that a female employee had accused Mr. Taibbi of being “verbally abusive and unprofessionally hostile,” behavior that it said was perhaps motivated in part by her gender. In a statement attached to the article, Alex Pareene, The Racket’s executive editor, disputed that account and said he had never witnessed such hostility by Mr. Taibbi. First Look Media, he said, “repeatedly took incidents that should’ve been minor hiccups of the sort experienced at any media company or start-up and, through incompetence, escalated them into full-blown crises.” His account was supported by others at the company. For industry observers, a clash between a low-profile billionaire and an iconoclastic reporter was hard to resist. Paul Carr, the editorial director of PandoDaily, a Silicon Valley news site, published part of an off-the-record conversation in which Mr. Carr accused Mr. Omidyar of editorial interference. First Look’s journalists deny that charge. Others noted the inherent challenges in journalism start-ups that seek to
Re: [Marxism] Defending white supremacy
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * There are no white supremacists on the civil war either, and no defenders of slavery. They all argue that it was about states rights, freedom and being invaded. Generally speaking they argue along the lines that Mark defended the defenders of the Alamo. But don't you dare call them white supremacists. There are no white supremacists any more, maybe a few self-declared racists, but no one else - these are all legitimate debates about something else. Been there, heard that a thousand times. Clay Claiborne, Director Vietnam: American Holocaust http://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com Linux Beach Productions Venice, CA 90291 (310) 581-1536 Read my blogs at the Linux Beach http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/ http://wlcentral.org/user/2965/track On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jeff via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I found the posts on this history topic, which I had no previous exposure to, rather interesting. But I wish it could be discussed without raising the tone of the debate in terms such as: On Fri, October 31, 2014 17:38, Clay Claiborne via Marxism wrote: To make it even more clear. I said that those fighting at the Alamo were fighting for white supremacy. You said they weren't. If I am right, you are defending white supremacy. Well of course the latter conclusion doesn't follow, as I'm sure Clay would agree after thinking about it. While differing analyses of history certainly can reflect the ideologies of the respective analysts, one can never just assert such a relationship. And even if Clay could prove that Mark's views are exactly those of white sepremacists, that doesn't even prove those historical assessments wrong (very often those further on the right have a clearer view than liberals). Even if Mark is wrong and has the exact views of white supremacists (or whatever) I am quite sure that he does NOT defend white supremacy as attested to by all of his other views on various historical and political issues. We could have a more productive discussion if people don't make such charges, and especially if differing takes on historical questions are not automatically taken to reflect different world views or political positions on current issues. I know we all are tempted to do that during a heated argument. But to make such a valid charge, you would need to show how that person's conclusion flowed from the evil ideology or from flawed historical records, for instance. Let's try to keep the discussion more civil. - Jeff _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/clayclai%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Defending white supremacy
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Original message From: mtomas3 mtom...@hotmail.com Date: 11/01/2014 11:45 AM (GMT-06:00) To: Clay Claiborne clayc...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] Defending white supremacy Clay:Been there, heard that a thousand times. I think this is the main problem, here, Clay; you're reading but you're not seeing. None so blind as he who will not see. Here it is real short: You didn't understand what Mark wrote. You think that because you visited the Alamo, you somehow got englightened about the real intent of Texas war for independence and now if someone wants to elucidate further (that means to provide more information), you think he is defending White supremacy? That's not even good movement politics never mind Marxist, never mind revolutionary politics. This issue may seem arcane to you, but whether someone is expressing White supremacy in interpreting the Texas/U.S. war with Mexico is of Particular Importance to me. It is an issue NOT for tourists. Now, I am often the first to call White marxist/revolutionaries on their embedded racist education when they opine on many things, especially related to the struggles of people of color, which, of course, is most things. And Mark is among many with whom I have begged to differ on a range of questions. So, when I say that it is ridiculous to call him, or anyone, as defending slavery or White supremacy on this war because of what he expressed regarding the motives of Tejanos/Mexicanos or the Mexicans in relation to the White Texians, you should recognize that I would be among to look for it, catch it, and denounce it. What Mark expressed about this war expresses exactly what is now playing out in real life in the Oasis of White Supremacy that is currently serving the racist, semi-apartheid rulers of the State of Texas; thinking that if they nod to Chicanos/Mexicanos on issues of commonality (you know, we are white when it serves them), we will come behind the most backward anti-working class of sentiments. Understanding what is at stake in understanding the backdrop to this current problem is of paramount importance. You clearly have demonstrated you know Nothing of it. Pay attention Sent from Samsung tablet _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Defending white supremacy
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 11/1/14 1:01 PM, John Obrien via Marxism wrote: While I certainly disagree with much of the recent views and politics projected by Clay Claiborne, in his efforts to support USA government policies in Libya, Syria and Iraq, etc. - I see that O'Brien can't resist sliming Clay. Leaving aside Libya and Iraq, US policy in Syria has been non-interventionist--at least when it comes to the Baathist dictatorship. It is really difficult for me to understand at this stage of the game why people like O'Brien haven't been able to figure this out. Are they afraid to admit that everything they have written for the past three years is garbage? Maybe in the future they shouldn't allow their bias to get in the way of their understanding. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Piketty and the Crisis of Neoclassical Economics | John Bellamy Foster | Monthly Review
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis was kind enough to post a link to the article by John Foster and me in the November Monthly Review. We are proud of this piece. We think it avoids the dismissal of Piketty by some on the left because he is not a Marxist. And it also avoids the adulation others gave Piketty, as if he invented the study of inequality. We would love to get comments on the article. Here is an excerpt: The second main justification of the system provided by neoclassical economics—the notion that capitalism promotes a kind of equality, at least in terms of the determination of earnings by the marginal productivity of factors (and individuals)—has shown itself to be just as false. As this has become more apparent neoclassical economists have sought to declare the whole issue out of bounds. Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan, replied to critics of the Robin Hood-in-reverse policies of Reaganomics by stating, “Why there has been increasing inequality in this country is one of the big puzzles in our field and has absorbed a lot of intellectual effort. But if you ask me whether we should worry about the fact that some people on Wall Street and basketball players are making a lot of money, I say no.”15 Likewise Robert Lucas, Jr. of the University of Chicago, the most influential macroeconomist of his day, was merely stating the dominant view of the profession and of the establishment as a whole when he opined in 2004, “Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of [income] distribution.”16 Feldstein’s and Lucas’s sharp dismissals of any concern over income and wealth distribution reflected the mainstream economic view that inequality is benign precisely because it can be attributed to different levels of marginal productivity and the corresponding different education and skill sets. In this accounting, a person’s income is simply a function of his or her productivity and willingness to work. People are poor because they are not very productive or because they have a weak attachment to the labor force as a result of their own choices. Productivity is driven in the main by the willingness of individuals to invest in their “human capital,” and the most important type of such investment is education. Attachment to the labor force depends on “leisure preferences” of individuals. This refers to the relative weight potential workers place upon the utility they will gain by buying the goods and services that an increase in income makes possible—while factoring in, through a benefit and cost calculus, the happiness they could have by not working, by choosing more free time. Thus those with high incomes are presumed to have invested in their human capital and have low leisure preferences, while for the poor the opposite is true. Modern technology, in this view, has only made human capital more important. Many people have been left behind in the race to the top of the income distribution because they do not possess the knowledge that modern technology requires. Most mainstream economists do say that appropriate public policies could help reduce inequality, by, for example, making it easier for those without means to attend college. However, it would be dangerous, we are told, to reduce inequality too much—for example, through free higher education for all—because then individuals would not have an incentive to work hard and be productive. This would be to the detriment of the capacity of the economy to grow and thus to provide the extra income needed to distribute to those at the bottom. Equality is therefore self-defeating. The Mad Hatter logic of neoclassical economics can actually be used to demonstrate that in perfectly competitive markets there can be no wage and salary inequality at all!17 Consider a woman making a career decision. Assume, as does the neoclassical economist, that she has complete knowledge of the wages and benefits associated with every occupation she is considering entering. She also knows the costs of the education and training necessary for employment in each occupation, as well as the income she will lose by not working while she is getting this schooling and training. Any particular negative aspects of an occupation, such as physical danger, are also known, as are their costs. What should she do? She will weigh the benefits against the costs of each occupation and pick the one for which the net benefits are highest. Implicit in this scenario is a wage for each occupation that at least covers the
[Marxism] Fwd: Defending white supremacy
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Sent from Samsung tablet Original message From: mtomas3 mtom...@hotmail.com Date: 11/01/2014 12:21 PM (GMT-06:00) To: Clay Claiborne clayc...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] Defending white supremacy Mark chimed in to say I was wrong, it was about fighting slavery in Texas because they raised the 1824 flag or some such. Like I said, you didn't really read what he said or his further explanation. You really want to speak of disgusting distortions? It? They raised the 1824 flag? What and who are these pronouns? Here are some nouns: Texians and Tejanos are not th same people: Texians were (and their spawn today are) the oppressors, Tejanos--in the main, but not all to be historically accurate--are the oppressed. They had different motives and they remain being played out today. O'Brien: wow. Now here's an example of liberal guilt playing out as historical accuracy. Clay demonstrates he didn't even GET Marks's point and all of a sudden some guy jumps to his defense providing accurate statements about succession, or, as Clay expresses, or some such. Y'all want to play race cards or do you actually want to end racism? Original message From: Clay Claiborne clayc...@gmail.com Date: 11/01/2014 12:04 PM (GMT-06:00) To: mtomas3 mtom...@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] Defending white supremacy . You think that because you visited the Alamo, you somehow got englightened about the real intent of Texas war for independence and now if someone wants to elucidate That is quite the disgusting distortion that has now been repeated twice on this list. I commented after visiting the Alamo that they made know mention of WHAT I KNEW ALREADY - That the fight at the Alamo was about bring slavery to Texas Mark chimed in to say I was wrong, it was about fighting slavery in Texas because they raised the 1824 flag or some such. Clay Claiborne, Director Vietnam: American Holocaust Linux Beach Productions Venice, CA 90291 (310) 581-1536 Read my blogs at the Linux Beach On Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 11:43 AM, mtomas3 mtom...@hotmail.com wrote: Clay:Been there, heard that a thousand times. I think this is the main problem, here, Clay; you're reading but you're not seeing. None so blind as he who will not see. Here it is real short: You didn't understand what Mark wrote. You think that because you visited the Alamo, you somehow got englightened about the real intent of Texas war for independence and now if someone wants to elucidate further (that means to provide more information), you think he is defending White supremacy? That's not even good movement politics never mind Marxist, never mind revolutionary politics. This issue may seem arcane to you, but whether someone is expressing White supremacy in interpreting the Texas/U.S. war with Mexico is of Particular Importance to me. It is an issue NOT for tourists. Now, I am often the first to call White marxist/revolutionaries on their embedded racist education when they opine on many things, especially related to the struggles of people of color, which, of course, is most things. And Mark is among many with whom I have begged to differ on a range of questions. So, when I say that it is ridiculous to call him, or anyone, as defending slavery or White supremacy on this war because of what he expressed regarding the motives of Tejanos/Mexicanos or the Mexicans in relation to the White Texians, you should recognize that I would be among to look for it, catch it, and denounce it. What Mark expressed about this war expresses exactly what is now playing out in real life in the Oasis of White Supremacy that is currently serving the racist, semi-apartheid rulers of the State of Texas; thinking that if they nod to Chicanos/Mexicanos on issues of commonality (you know, we are white when it serves them), we will come behind the most backward anti-working class of sentiments. Understanding what is at stake in understanding the backdrop to this current problem is of paramount importance. You clearly have demonstrated you know Nothing of it. Pay attention Sent from Samsung tablet _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Defending white supremacy
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Some of these commends are definitively idiotic in their way. If people can freely make up whatever position they want to ascribe to somebody, there's no need for that person to even bother writing a fucking word on the subject, is there? :-) If someone want to draft me into the army of the Texians or Confederates or Nazis or whateverr, I don't see any reason I have to be there for it. Ta-ta. ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: M. Junaid Alam: presente! | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://louisproyect.org/2014/11/01/m-junaid-alam-presente/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Alternative Futures for Syria: Regional Implications and Challenges for the United States | RAND
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I told you so. Regime collapse, while not considered a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests. http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE129.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Rojava’s autonomous cantons: What a revolution looks like | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * /A YPJ fighter (right) next to a very similar picture of a female fighter in the Spanish revolution in the 1930s. The comparison is apt. The presence of such a high proportion of female front line fighters is evidence of a profound social transformation that has been happening in liberated Rojava and within the Kurdish revolutionary movement./ By *Tony Iltis* November 1, 2014 -- /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -- On November 1, protests were held worldwide in solidarity with Kobanê. Protests took place in most countries on every continent. Even in Afghanistan, protests were organised in six cities by left-wing anti-occupation groups. After withstanding more than six weeks of intense siege by the terrorist group that calls itself “Islamic State” (IS), Kobanê (also called Kobani), a small majority-Kurdish town on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, has become one of the most well-known places on the planet. The defenders of Kobanê mostly belong to the Syrian-Kurdish militias, the Peoples Defence Units (YPG) and Womens Defence Units (YPJ). The YPG has both male and female fighters. The YPJ is, as its name suggests, all female. Despite having held three cantons in Rojava as liberated zones since July 2012, until recently these militias were as obscure as Kobanê itself. However, the besieged town’s resistance, and its increasing significance in the new, vaguely defined and open-ended Western air war against IS, has brought these fighters to the world’s attention. Full article http://links.org.au/node/4129 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com