[Marxism] [UCE] UN secretary-general contest

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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Happily, it looks like former NZ prime minister Helen Clark is back in the
also-rans for this post.

Whoever gets it will, of course, be an imperialist stooge.  But Clark is
utterly ruthless and without a principle/scruple, driven by the desire to
be the first female something.  She missed out on being NZ's first female
prime minister - beaten by a Tory.

Her track record in NZ politics is appalling:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/the-reign-of-helen-clark/

She's one of these establishment toadies who presents herself as an
'outsider'.  Little could be further from the truth.

Phil
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/wheres-debate-francis-scott-keys-slave-holding-legacy-180959550/?no-ist
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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More of the backstory on Key

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2016/07/star-spangled-bigotry-the-hidden-racist-history-of-the-national-anthem/
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[Marxism] SA recommits to its de facto pro-Assad line

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Socialist Action was from the start one of two dominant trends within UNAC,
the other being WWP and friends. Those two trends have increasingly merged
ideologically to the point where SA could endorse the vicious UNAC attack
on Terry Burke's In These Times article.

SA has just posted a report on their recent convention:
https://socialistaction.org/2016/08/29/socialist-action-
sets-ambitious-goals-for-the-coming-year/

In it is this gem:

"In regard to Socialist Action’s antiwar work, discussion was devoted to
evaluating the course of the war in Syria. The convention re-affirmed
Socialist Action’s major slogans for the U.S. anti-war movement: U.S. Out
Now! Self-determination for Syria!"

As made clear in Jeff Mackler's articles on Syria, self-determination for
Syria means U.S. -- and only the U.S. - out. This is not just a perverted
resurrection of the once-valid single-issue "Out Now!" demand from Vietnam
War days. For Jeff, self-determination means Russia et al. *IN* - because
for him, Russian involvement is PRO-self-determination because it "creates
space" for working class activity. I kid you not, that's actually in his
articles.

There have been rumors of dissension within SA on these issues; hopefully
enough so that some will leave in disgust at the convention decision.
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[Marxism] Fwd: [ufpj-activist] Fredric Jameson's War Machine

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Has any comrade read Jameson's book, critiqued at the link below by David
Swanson?

Swanson's post was sent to the UFPJ activist list but it's relevant here
for general purposes as well as because Jameson is the target.

I haven't read Jameson's book, and I don't know how accurate Swanson's
critique is. It should be noted that Swanson is hardly one to criticize:
his own panacea is to revive the Kellogg-Briand Pact and/or the League of
Nations or some such tomfoolery. Plus he has come down firmly in favor of
the "no regime change" "what atrocities?" camp in Syria.

-- Forwarded message --
From: David Swanson 
Date: Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 11:11 PM
Subject: [ufpj-activist] Fredric Jameson's War Machine
To: David Swanson 
Fredric Jameson's War Machine
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5254
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: How Obama Helped Lay the Groundwork for Trump’s Thuggery | The Nation

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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Frankly, this entire thread convinces me that monarchist assumptions and
premises remain functional for parts of the Marxist list.


On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Mark Lause  wrote:

> The "Bush" policies were not really those of Bush as an individual nor
> even of his party but a shit-stew cooked up from a bipartisan recipe and
> sold on a bipartisan basis.   So have been the "Obama" policies. The
> difference is that one of them sold the shift-stew with a sprig of parsley
> on the side away from the consumer.  The other had the sprig of parsley on
> the side towards the consumer.
>
>
> ML
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Clay Claiborne via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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>> *
>>
>> Here's another opinion along those lines, from Andrew Stewart on this
>> list:
>>
>> More typical non-Marxist silliness from The Nation. Obama did cause the
>> > rise of Trump.
>>
>>
>> Clay Claiborne, Director
>> Vietnam: American Holocaust 
>> Linux Beach Productions
>> Venice, CA 90291
>> (310) 581-1536
>>
>> Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 
>> 
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:
>>
>> > On 8/28/16 12:43 PM, Clay Claiborne wrote:
>> >
>> >> And as sadly typical of many "Left" articles that try to blame Trump on
>> >> Obama or Clinton
>> >>
>> >
>> > What in the world are you talking about? I haven't seen a single one
>> > except this. Nearly the entire left views Trump as a total departure
>> from
>> > American political traditions, understood as either DP liberalism or
>> > centrism (obviously) or RP conservatism in the National Review mold. He
>> is
>> > seen as channeling either Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. I never
>> posted
>> > any of those articles to Marxmail because they were so obvious and so
>> > widely available on Salon, Huffington Post and even the Nation. I posted
>> > the article because it was striking to see it in the Nation.
>> >
>> >
>> _
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>>
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: How Obama Helped Lay the Groundwork for Trump’s Thuggery | The Nation

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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The "Bush" policies were not really those of Bush as an individual nor even
of his party but a shit-stew cooked up from a bipartisan recipe and sold on
a bipartisan basis.   So have been the "Obama" policies. The difference is
that one of them sold the shift-stew with a sprig of parsley on the side
away from the consumer.  The other had the sprig of parsley on the side
towards the consumer.


ML






On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Clay Claiborne via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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> *
>
> Here's another opinion along those lines, from Andrew Stewart on this list:
>
> More typical non-Marxist silliness from The Nation. Obama did cause the
> > rise of Trump.
>
>
> Clay Claiborne, Director
> Vietnam: American Holocaust 
> Linux Beach Productions
> Venice, CA 90291
> (310) 581-1536
>
> Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 
> 
>
> On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:
>
> > On 8/28/16 12:43 PM, Clay Claiborne wrote:
> >
> >> And as sadly typical of many "Left" articles that try to blame Trump on
> >> Obama or Clinton
> >>
> >
> > What in the world are you talking about? I haven't seen a single one
> > except this. Nearly the entire left views Trump as a total departure from
> > American political traditions, understood as either DP liberalism or
> > centrism (obviously) or RP conservatism in the National Review mold. He
> is
> > seen as channeling either Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. I never
> posted
> > any of those articles to Marxmail because they were so obvious and so
> > widely available on Salon, Huffington Post and even the Nation. I posted
> > the article because it was striking to see it in the Nation.
> >
> >
> _
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: How Obama Helped Lay the Groundwork for Trump’s Thuggery | The Nation

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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Here's another opinion along those lines, from Andrew Stewart on this list:

More typical non-Marxist silliness from The Nation. Obama did cause the
> rise of Trump.


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

Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 


On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> On 8/28/16 12:43 PM, Clay Claiborne wrote:
>
>> And as sadly typical of many "Left" articles that try to blame Trump on
>> Obama or Clinton
>>
>
> What in the world are you talking about? I haven't seen a single one
> except this. Nearly the entire left views Trump as a total departure from
> American political traditions, understood as either DP liberalism or
> centrism (obviously) or RP conservatism in the National Review mold. He is
> seen as channeling either Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. I never posted
> any of those articles to Marxmail because they were so obvious and so
> widely available on Salon, Huffington Post and even the Nation. I posted
> the article because it was striking to see it in the Nation.
>
>
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[Marxism] Fwd: Reforming Ukraine After the Revolutions - The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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One of the most influential oligarchs is Igor Kolomoisky, who assembled 
a $1.4-billion empire through aggressive corporate raiding. Known for 
his florid, profane speech and for a gigantic shark aquarium in his 
office, he enjoyed for years effective control over Ukrnafta, a 
nominally state-owned oil company that sold crude oil at below-market 
prices to Ukraine’s largest petroleum refinery, which he also 
controlled. The refined oil was then put on the market and sold for huge 
profits.


In the months after Maidan, Poroshenko appointed Kolomoisky the governor 
of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the separatist-held enclaves 
in Donbass. At a time when the Army barely functioned, Kolomoisky funded 
volunteer battalions, and managed to keep pro-Russian groups from making 
inroads in Dnipropetrovsk.


In March, 2015, Leshchenko got a tip that Kolomoisky was plotting to 
seize control of Ukrnafta. The government had recently changed the 
structure of the company’s board, threatening Kolomoisky’s ability to 
siphon profits from what, on paper, was a state firm. On March 20th, 
Leshchenko went to the Ukrnafta building, in Kiev, and found armed men 
blocking the front entrance and welding grilles onto the windows. One of 
the militiamen told him that he was from the Dnipro-1 Battalion, a 
pro-Kiev unit financed by Kolomoisky in his role as a regional governor. 
To Leshchenko, it looked like an oligarchic coup, with mercenaries 
carrying out the will of a businessman.


Two nights later, well past midnight, Nayyem made his way to the 
Ukrnafta office. At the barricades, he ran into Kolomoisky, who, with 
his soft face, bushy gray beard, and black leather jacket, looked like a 
cross between an elf and a mafioso. Television cameramen had staked out 
the building, and the two men had a testy, almost theatrical exchange. 
“What are you doing here?” Kolomoisky asked, with an arch smile. “Are 
you a journalist or a parliamentary deputy?”


“Are you a governor or a businessman?” Nayyem responded.

Their encounter captured the anomaly of Ukrainian politics: two men who 
weren’t really politicians facing off over the country’s most urgent 
political question. Several days later, Poroshenko fired Kolomoisky as 
governor and announced a “de-oligarchization” campaign, saying, “The 
caste of the privileged will be eliminated.”


Leshchenko was happy to see an outright crisis of authority averted, but 
he suspected that the ultimate balance of power hadn’t shifted much.


full: 
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/reforming-ukraine-after-maidan

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[Marxism] Pellet Guns Used in Kashmir Protests Cause ‘Dead Eyes’ Epidemic

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, August 29 2016
Pellet Guns Used in Kashmir Protests Cause ‘Dead Eyes’ Epidemic
By ELLEN BARRY

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — The street outside is patrolled by riot police 
officers in camouflage, bracing for the nightly spasm of violence, but 
it is quiet here inside the operating room. The surgeon’s knife slides 
into an eyeball as if it were a soft fruit.


The patient’s eyelids have been stretched back with a metal clamp, so 
his eyeball bulges out of glistening pink tissue. The surgeon sits with 
his back very straight, cutting with tiny movements of his fingers. 
Every now and then, a thread of blood appears in the patient’s eye 
socket. The patient is 8 years old.


“Very bad,” murmurs the surgeon, Dr. S. Natarajan. But then, all 13 
cases he will see today will be very bad.


Since mid-July, when the current wave of protests against the Indian 
military presence started, more than 570 patients have reported to 
Srinagar’s main government hospital with eyes ruptured by lead pellets, 
sometimes known as birdshot, fired by security forces armed with 
pump-action shotguns to disperse crowds.


The patients have mutilated retinas, severed optic nerves, irises 
seeping out like puddles of ink. “Dead eyes,” the ophthalmology 
department’s chief calls them.


Every season of popular revolt in Kashmir has its marker.

This summer’s protests in the part of Kashmir controlled by India, the 
most sustained and violent since 2010, caught the authorities in New 
Delhi unaware. The stone-throwing crowds have no political leaders, put 
forward no specific demands and metastasized with alarming speed. Around 
60 civilians and two members of the security forces have been killed; on 
each side, thousands have been wounded.


But 2016 will almost certainly be remembered as the year of dead eyes. 
The eye injuries have become such a focus of public anger that last 
week, in a conciliatory gesture, India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, 
promised that the pellet guns, as they are known here, would be replaced 
by another type of nonlethal weapon in the coming days.


On the ophthalmology ward at the main Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, 
however, new patients arrive every day. Walking the hospital hallway, 
you first notice a handful of young men in blackout goggles. Then you 
see them everywhere. A weary ophthalmologist looks on from the break 
room as Dr. Natarajan’s young patient, waking from anesthesia, stirs and 
begins to moan.


“That 8-year-old boy, he will live for 70 or 80 years,” says the doctor, 
Afroz Khan. “The history remains there, even if it is not in the books.”


Retinal Repair

On July 9, Tariq Qureshi, the head of the ophthalmology department, was 
at a seminar on pediatric retinal repair.


The previous day, Indian security forces raided a village and killed 
Burhan Muzzafar Wani, a 22-year-old militant leader whose videos posted 
on WhatsApp and Facebook attracted a vast following. But major violence 
was not expected. Dr. Qureshi was in the seminar when his phone rang.


It was the hospital emergency room, calling to let him know that two 
patients had come in with pellets in their eyes. Dr. Qureshi sent a 
doctor over, and the seminar resumed. Ten minutes later, the phone rang 
again. It was the same doctor in the emergency room, telling Dr. Qureshi 
to come immediately, that the number of patients had risen to 15.


The four ophthalmologists, who were across the hospital campus from the 
emergency room, ran.


For the next 72 hours, they operated in shifts around the clock, 
suturing the eyes to keep the matter inside from leaking out. In most 
cases, it became clear, the pellets had burst into through the cornea 
and out through the retina, leaving little hope of fully restoring 
vision. Twenty-seven patients were hit in both eyes. The pellets, when 
they could be removed, were preserved on the heads of cotton swabs.


“Once it goes in the eye, it rotates like this, and destroys everything 
there inside,” Dr. Qureshi said. “It’s physics. This is a high-velocity 
body. It releases a high amount of energy inside. The lens, the iris, 
the retina get matted up.”


The doctors were told to take all possible measures to save their 
patients’ vision, including complex surgery, at a cost to the government 
of 70,000 rupees, or around $1,040, per operation, Dr. Qureshi said.


The worst cases go to Dr. Natarajan, the director of Aditya Jyot Eye 
Hospital in Mumbai, whose visits are facilitated by the Borderless World 
Foundation, a nonprofit group. Dr. Natarajan specializes in patients 
whose eyes have been punctured by projectiles — typically, children 
standing too near fireworks, 

[Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Hamas condemns Aleppo massacres - Palestinian Information Center

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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What's weird is how people like Eva Bartlett sweep the actual views on 
Syria from Hamas under the rug. Keep in mind that Hamas was strongly 
supportive of the struggle against Assad early on but was basically 
blackmailed by Iran to keep quiet. Despite the pressure put on Hamas, 
they have recently spoken out about the Russian and Syrian bombing of 
East Aleppo. You can easily understand why they would make such a 
statement since Assad uses the same talking points as the IDF about the 
need to kill terrorists, even there is unfortunate collateral damage.


http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=78330
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[Marxism] Fwd: Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/
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Re: [Marxism] How Obama Helped Lay the Groundwork for Trump’s Thuggery | The Nation

[MM via Marxism]

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> On Aug 29, 2016, at 1:14 AM, A.R. G via Marxism  
> wrote:
> 
> So
> basically it sounds like the argument she is making is that Obama did not
> do a good enough job reining in the guy before him. Not sure how much of
> that is truly Obama's fault as opposed to simply being part of a slow and
> creeping expansion of executive authority that predates him.

As someone commented on another list:

"The great achievement of the Obama Administration is to legitimize and raise 
to standard policy the wars initiated by the Bush Administration.”

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Re: [Marxism] Eva Bartlett on Syria

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Is your friend's post public? Although everything on this list is public
via the latest 100 messages page, still in this case explicit permission
might be desirable.
I have to add that an intertwined phenomenon is the domination of one wing
of the solidarity movement by PFLP types. When the knife attacks began -
which were universally recognized as a product of youth militancy and
independence - there was hope that a new more revolutionary politics would
arise or at least be widely discussed rooted in those youth.
Unfortunately to date the result instead has been a joint PFLP/bourgeois
liberal joint election slate.
All the more reason for us to find and cherish young Palestinians who are
revolutionary on both questions (on the region and world as a whole for
that matter).


On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Michael Karadjis via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> Regarding the fascist-tyrant groupie Eva Bartlett, here is what a FB
> friend, a Palestinian from Gaza recently moved to Australia, had to say
> about her:
>
> Mohammed Sulaiman
> February 14
>
> When I previously stated that support for the Assad regime and Russia is
> not a coincidental or a minor issue among Palestine solidarity groups but
> rather represents the mainstream line, I hesitated and thought I might have
> exaggerated, but since then, I haven't stopped stumbling upon more and more
> of them. This is the latest example of a journalist who was once a teacher
> of mine when I was 17 years in Gaza. About time Palestine solidarity groups
> seriously examined their moral and intellectual degeneration embodied by a
> baffling range of people that includes the unthinking ideologues, the
> do-gooders, the pro-imperialist fascists, and the anti-Semites. I think
> Palestine is a higher cause of justice that deserves better than this.
> PS: I couldn't listen beyond the first couple minutes. I have no time for
> this nonsense. (he is referring to a link below his post: 'Journalist Eva
> Bartlett: "I'm Back From Syria. The Media Is Lying To You!" » The Event
> Chronicle')
>
> This was his original post on White "solidarity activists" who have a
> special affection for capitalist tyrants who rule over all those barbarous
> brown people who are not ready for democracy:
>
> Mohammed Sulaiman
> January 22 ·
> There are (white, mostly British and American) people who have so much
> affection for the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad in a way that leaves me
> genuinely baffled. The extent to which they are so fond of Al-Assad is
> shocking; they are so preoccupied with defending, whitewashing and
> propagandising in defence of the Syrian genocidal dictatorship in a way
> that reminds me of the Zionist propagandists on social media during the
> past three onslaughts on Gaza-- particularly the last one in 2014. I was
> surprised by how many they were, and how many of them were friends with me
> on Facebook. Most of them are people I have never met, and seem to have
> become my Facebook friends because I am a Palestinian from Gaza. They do
> what they do because for them this isn't about Syria but rather about
> Israel/Palestine. They somehow give themselves the legitimacy to speak for
> Palestinians on the Syrian issue. To be honest, I was completely disgusted
> by them that I decided to have no connection whatsoever with the entire
> Palestine solidarity movement. Moreover, they are not a minority there. It
> is no exaggeration to say that they represent the official line amongst
> Palestine solidarity groups. All so called pro-Palestine groups that do not
> take an official stance and speak out publicly against the genocide in
> Syria are complicit because they passively allow their voices to be
> hijacked by these deranged people. Since the advent of the Syrian uprising,
> I haven't thought twice about voicing full support for the people's
> struggle and as this worsened and things became more complicated eventually
> descending into a civil war, these people became all the more visible and
> their voices became increasingly louder. They are so serious about what
> they do and are willing to spends hours on end and participate in endless
> (futile) discussions to recruit support for the Syrian regime and demonise
> the Syrian people and all opposition groups. These people might appear as
>