[Marxism] Superbugs are winning

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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While there are no exact data on the total number of people dying each year
from resistant microbes, the authors calculate it to be at least 1.5
million. This number outstrips deaths from road accidents (1.2 million) and
approximates the number of deaths from diabetes (1.5 million).

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/06/28/superbugs-are-winning-antibiotics/
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Re: [Marxism] Has the Trump-Kim Summit Opened the Road to Peace in East Asia?

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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Michael Karadjis says:  "... the Israel-Iran clash is a
war of rhetoric, predicated on geographic distance."

It is not purely a war of rhetoric.  Israel has bombed Iranian targets in Syria.

While Iran is distant from Israel, Lebanon is not.  Israel is worried at the 
growing strength of Hezbollah, which is an ally of Iran.  Hence Israel takes 
military action against the Iran-Hezbollah alliance.


Neither RKOB nor Michael Karadjis mention the conflict between the Turkish 
state and the Kurdish people, even though I would have thought that this was 
one of the "fundamental and long-term conflicts of interest" in the Middle 
East.  Turkey is currently occupying parts of northern Syria and Iraq, with the 
goal of suppressing Kurdish self-determination as well as the broader struggle 
for democracy.

Chris Slee





From: Marxism  on behalf of mkaradjis via 
Marxism 
Sent: Monday, 18 June 2018 1:28:19 AM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Has the Trump-Kim Summit Opened the Road to Peace in 
East Asia?

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Some comments on your reply. Stressing again that I am in agreement
with the great majority of what you say, especially on Syria.

> In our RCIT statements we have not given a timeline for the next war. But I
> think we have to look at the fundamental, irreversible lines of class
> contradictions. Against the background of a global crisis of capitalism, the
> contradictions both between the Great Powers as well as between the regional
> powers are accelerating. I think that we can agree on this.

In general terms yes. But (a) as you say there is no timeline for "the
next war", so it may, when (and if) it comes, be very far away in time
from whatever the current rounds of rhetoric are, keeping in mind that
rhetoric serves its own purposes, (b) growing contradictions between
powers, and war (of any substantial scale) are not the same thing, and
(c) the main contradictions between various powers may be very
different to which powers happen to hurling the most rhetoric. So, on
that point, it seems the main competitors with US imperialism are
European imperialism and Chinese imperialism. That thus looks a little
different to your list of what you call "fundamental and long-term
conflicts of interests" in the Middle East, where you list:

> U.S. vs. Russia
> Iran vs. Saudi Arabia
> Israel vs. the Palestinian people
> Israel vs. Iran/Hezbollah
> U.S. vs. Iran
> Russia vs. U.S. vs. Iran vs. Turkey vs. Assad in Syria

The one and only fundamental contradiction I see in that list is
between Israel and the Palestinian people, which of course has no
connection to the inter-imperialist contradictions we are talking
about. Rather, it is part of the more general main contradiction in
the region, that between all the imperialist and regional reactionary
regimes you listed, on one side, and the peoples of the region on the
other. In the last 7 years, this has above all meant the Syrian
people, though earlier in the Arab Spring it also meant the Egyptian,
Bahrainian etc people.

As such, where you claim that one of the "fundamental" contradictions
is "Russia vs. U.S. vs. Iran vs. Turkey vs. Assad in Syria", then
respectfully I disagree. I see no fundamental contradiction in any
sense between the Russia, the US, Iran, Turkey and Assad (or Saudi
Arabia or Israel) in Syria. The differences are largely tactical (eg,
over how best to crush the revolution), or reflect secondary alliances
and trying to get some ally's interests a little ahead of someone
else's within the overall fundamental agreement that exists over the
counterrevolutionary victory.

The only other contradiction on your list that I think has a powerful
reality and so I suppose comes close to "fundamental" is the Iran vs
Saudi Arabia one: clearly these are two sub-imperialist powers who are
rivals for regional domination, and this geopolitical rivalry often
takes on sectarian overtones. By contrast, the Israel-Iran clash is a
war of rhetoric, predicated on geographic distance. It might be easier
to explain it as rivalry like the Saudi-Iran clash, but over what?
Given that Israel can have zero influence in the Arab world (unless it
did some kind of deal with Palestine, the opposite direction from
Israeli governments for at least 20 years).

The much hyped US vs Russia one may have some more importance to

[Marxism] Harvard University, bias against Asian-Americans, affirmative action and “life itself” | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://louisproyect.org/2018/06/17/harvard-university-bias-against-asian-americans-affirmative-action-and-life-itself/
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[Marxism] 6th NY taxi driver commits suicide

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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 NY Taxi Workers Alliance


June 15 at 6:02pm  ·


SIXTH NYC DRIVER DEAD FROM DESPAIR

With heavy hearts, we write to tell you that yellow cab lease driver Abdul
Saleh hung himself today, becoming the sixth of our driver brothers to
commit suicide in recent months.

Reach out for help. It is there for all of us.

If you are feeling desperate please know that you are not alone. The
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact
the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.

Unite to win change. Together, we have the power. We will not stop until we
win the regulations we need.

DO NOT GIVE UP. WE WILL OVERCOME THIS CRISIS TOGETHER.

Join us for our press conference
This Monday, June 18th
11:00AM
Outside City Hall Gates: Broadway & Murray

Statement from NYTWA ED Bhairavi Desai:

On Eid al-Fitr, a day that Muslim families come together to celebrate the
end of the holy month of Ramadan, Abdul Saleh took his life because he saw
no end to the burden of poverty.

Six of our brothers have now committed suicide in recent months, their
livelihoods devastated by a business model that fails to recognize the
basic humanity of the workers who keep our city moving and by a political
system that prefers sound bytes to solutions to economic desperation.

Brother Abdul was 59 years old and he should have been planning for
retirement and rest after 30 years of serving the public and the city, but
instead he was exhausted by the cruelty of ending each 12-hour workday with
less in his pocket than the day before. Many aging drivers no longer see
retirement in sight and can't imagine continuing to work such a grueling
job until their last day on earth.

These suicides from financial desperation come at a time when income
inequality is at a record high and after the CDC acknowledged that economic
hardship increased the risk of suicide. This is more than a mental health
issue.

We will not allow the status quo of callousness toward struggling drivers
to continue for one more day. We will not sit idly by as Wall street
behemoths and their shills try to derail regulation or limit it to just one
sector of drivers when every driver in every sector - including yellow taxi
lease drivers, yellow taxi owner-drivers, green cab drivers, livery drivers
black car drivers, and app-dispatched drivers - is sinking deeper into
profound desperation.

Suicide can't be the only way that desperate poor people find mercy.
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[Marxism] Seymour M. Hersh — the Journalist as Lone Wolf

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Coming back from a run in Central Park yesterday, I stopped in at 
Barnes and Noble to see if they had a copy of "Reporter" to check what 
Hersh had to say about chemical attacks in Syria. There was only a 
perfunctory defense of his reporting amounting to less than a thousand 
words. Either his editor wised him up to lay off or he finally figured 
out that he wasn't serving his legacy well by trafficking in conspiracy 
theories. I'll probably get around to reading it at some point since 
browsing other pages revealed a very candid and witty memoir.)


NY Times Sunday Book Review, June 17, 2018
Seymour M. Hersh — the Journalist as Lone Wolf
By Alan Rusbridger

REPORTER
A Memoir
By Seymour M. Hersh
Illustrated. 355 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

The lone wolf — in journalism, as in nature — is a rare creature. Many 
reporters prefer the reassuring comfort of the pack. But every age 
throws up a few hunters who prefer to go it alone, scorning the safety 
and consensus of the crowd. They are often noble beasts, even if they 
can present formidable challenges to their handlers.


Seymour  M. Hersh (better known as Sy) is perhaps the most notable lone 
wolf of his generation. Now 81, he has nearly always operated on his 
own: There has been no Bernstein to his Woodward; no investigative team 
into which he could easily blend. He broke some of the biggest stories 
of his time. He fell out with editors. He threw typewriters through 
windows. He could be petulant, unreasonably stubborn and prudish. But, 
boy, could he report.


His memoir is — with some niggling reservations — a master class in the 
craft of reporting. People sometimes shorthand the act of dogged 
discovery as “shoe leather” journalism — pounding pavements rather than 
sitting at the desk Googling. In Hersh’s case reporting involved long 
hours in libraries as well as jumping on last-minute flights to far-off 
small towns to hunt down reluctant witnesses. It meant knocking on doors 
in the middle of the night; learning how to read documents upside down 
while pretending to make notes; painstakingly cultivating retired 
generals; showing empathy, winning trust.


His chosen areas of investigation were often the hardest to penetrate: 
He burrows away at the secrecy of the state, the military, intelligence, 
foreign policy and giant corporations. Over nearly six decades he 
exposed brutality, deception, torture, illegal surveillance, 
government-sponsored fake news and much else. More often than not — much 
more often — he was right. From the My Lai massacre of 1968 to the 
degrading treatment of detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, 
Hersh delivered the goods.


He introduces himself as a survivor from the golden age of journalism, 
“when reporters for daily newspapers did not have to compete with the 
24-hour cable news cycle, when newspapers were flush with cash from 
display advertisements and want ads, and when I was free to travel 
anywhere, anytime, for any reason, with company credit cards.” Back then 
reporters were given the time and money to tell “important and unwanted 
truths” and made America “a more knowledgeable place.” He makes the 
classic case for public interest journalism.


The book has its journalistic heroes — Harrison Salisbury, I. F. Stone, 
Neil Sheehan, Bob Woodward among them — and political villains, 
including Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger (“the man lied the way most 
people breathed”), Dick Cheney and neocons. It also has its editorial 
enemies. He scorns the practitioners of “he said, she said” journalism 
as stenographers. He ridicules reporters who claim not to have an 
opinion on what they’re writing about. He chides other news 
organizations for not following up his exclusives. He holds in especial 
contempt the Vietnam-era press room of the Pentagon for what he regarded 
as its collective lazy gullibility.


The skepticism that made him such a considerable reporter extended to 
the organizations that employed him and the editors who commissioned 
him. There is a fine line, in Hersh’s ever-suspicious mind, between 
editing and censorship. His nose was always twitching for a sniff of 
cowardice or collusion. On one occasion he investigates his own editor, 
suspecting that a loan from the company’s directors to help him buy an 
apartment could have compromised him when he should have been solely 
“beholden to the newsroom and the men and women in it.”


That editor was A. M. Rosenthal, executive editor of this newspaper from 
1977 to 1986, one of several editors with whom Hersh had a complicated 
relationship torn between mutual respect and something close to despair. 
Hersh — brought up in

[Marxism] How One Company Scammed Silicon Valley. And How It Got Caught.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Sunday Book Review, June 17, 2018
How One Company Scammed Silicon Valley. And How It Got Caught.
By Roger Lowenstein

BAD BLOOD
Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
By John Carreyrou
352 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden visited the Newark, Calif., laboratory 
of a hot new start-up making medical devices: Theranos. Biden saw rows 
of impressive-looking equipment — the company’s supposedly game-changing 
device for testing blood — and offered glowing praise for “the 
laboratory of the future.”


The lab was a fake. The devices Biden saw weren’t close to being 
workable; they had been staged for the visit.


Biden was not the only one conned. In Theranos’s brief, Icarus-like 
existence as a Silicon Valley darling, marquee investors including 
Robert Kraft, Betsy DeVos and Carlos Slim shelled out $900 million. The 
company was the subject of adoring media profiles; it attracted a who’s 
who of retired politicos to its board, among them George Shultz and 
Henry Kissinger. It wowed an associate dean at Stanford; it persuaded 
Safeway and Walgreens to spend millions of dollars to set up clinics to 
showcase Theranos’s vaunted revolutionary technology.


And its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was feted as a biomedical version of 
Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, a wunderkind college dropout who would make 
blood testing as convenient as the iPhone.


This is the story the prizewinning Wall Street Journal reporter John 
Carreyrou tells virtually to perfection in “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies 
in a Silicon Valley Startup,” which really amounts to two books. The 
first is a chilling, third-person narrative of how Holmes came up with a 
fantastic idea that made her, for a while, the most successful woman 
entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. She cast a hypnotic spell on even 
seasoned investors, honing an irresistible pitch about a little girl who 
was afraid of needles and who now wanted to improve the world by 
providing faster, better blood tests.


Her beguiling concept was that by a simple pinprick — drawing only a 
drop or two of blood — Theranos could dispense with the hypodermic 
needle, which she likened to a gruesome medieval torture, and perform a 
full range of blood tests in walk-in clinics and, ultimately, people’s 
homes. The premise was scientifically dubious, and Theranos’s technology 
was either not ready, unworkable or able to perform only a fraction of 
the tests promised. Many of the people who showed up at clinics actually 
had their blood drawn from old-fashioned needles. And most of the tests 
were graded not by Theranos’s proprietary technology, but by routine 
commercially available equipment.


Despite warnings from employees that Theranos wasn’t ready to go live on 
human subjects — its devices were likened to an eighth-grade science 
project — Holmes was unwilling to disappoint investors or her commercial 
partners. The result was a fiasco. Samples were stored at incorrect 
temperatures. Patients got faulty results and were rushed to emergency 
rooms. People who called Theranos to complain were ignored; employees 
who questioned its technology, its quality control or its ethics were 
fired. Ultimately, nearly a million tests conducted in California and 
Arizona had to be voided or corrected.


Image
The author’s description of Holmes as a manic leader who turned coolly 
hostile when challenged is ripe material for a psychologist; Carreyrou 
wisely lets the evidence speak for itself. As presented here, Holmes 
harbored delusions of grandeur but couldn’t cope with the messy 
realities of bioengineering. Swathed in her own reality distortion 
field, she dressed in black turtlenecks to emulate her idol Jobs and 
preached that the Theranos device was “the most important thing humanity 
has ever built.” Employees were discouraged from questioning this 
cultish orthodoxy by her “ruthlessness” and her “culture of fear.” 
Secrecy was obsessive. Labs and doors were equipped with fingerprint 
scanners.


The heart of the problem, Carreyrou writes, was that “Holmes and her 
company overpromised and then cut corners when they couldn’t deliver.” 
To hide those shortcuts, they lied. Theranos invented revenue estimates 
“from whole cloth.” It boasted of mysterious contracts with 
pharmaceutical companies that never seemed to be available for viewing. 
It spread the story that the United States Army was using its devices on 
the battlefield and in Afghanistan — a fabrication.


Even for a private company like Theranos, disclosure is the bedrock of 
American capitalism — the “disinfectant” that allows investors to gauge 
a company’s prospects. Based on Carreyro

[Marxism] In an Age of Gene Editing and Surrogacy, What Does Heredity Mean?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Sunday Book Review, June 17, 2018
In an Age of Gene Editing and Surrogacy, What Does Heredity Mean?
by Jennifer Raff

SHE HAS HER MOTHER’S LAUGH
The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
By Carl Zimmer
656 pp. Dutton. $30.

“The greatest scare of all, the one that made the world suddenly 
unfamiliar, swept over me while I was sitting with my wife, Grace, in 
the comfort of an obstetrician’s office.” In trying to map out his 
family tree in order to identify potential health risks to his unborn 
child, Carl Zimmer realized just how little he knew about his ancestors. 
“I had willingly become a conduit for heredity, allowing the biological 
past to make its way into the future. And yet I had no idea of what I 
was passing on.”


Parents will relate to this. We invest as much care in our young ones as 
we possibly can, but many of us also pass along to them the black box of 
our genomes. We usually have little understanding and virtually no 
control over that inheritance. As Zimmer’s healthy daughters grew up, 
his thoughts moved from their specific genetic legacies to a broader 
wonder about heredity itself and how we understand it.


In his extraordinary new book, “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh,” Zimmer (who 
writes the Matter column for The New York Times) uses history to offer a 
rigorous introduction to the basic principles of genetics, and molecular 
and developmental biology. To the Romans, heredity was a tool for 
passing on the assets of long-dead ancestors — they were concerned with 
what it meant to be an heir. In the Middle Ages the concept shifted and 
connoted instead the connection between the present and a noble past. 
Prominent families came to use visual depictions of these connections — 
pedigrees — to announce their proximity to greatness. Bloodlines were 
ways to pass on property and power, but also indicators of both inherent 
virtue and vice. It was only much later, as scientists like Gregor 
Mendel began to figure out how genetics works, that we would begin to 
understand which traits get passed on and why.


“She Has Her Mother’s Laugh” challenges our conventional wisdom about 
heredity, especially as we enter the new realms of surrogate pregnancy 
and gene editing. One of the most astonishing insights is that mothers 
don’t just pass traits to their children — they receive them as well. I 
read Zimmer’s book (occasionally out loud) while feeding my baby son. 
Like Zimmer, I had genetic counseling and my partner and I experienced 
the same anxieties as he did. But unlike Zimmer, I was able to assuage 
our fears using a drop of my own blood. That’s because my baby’s DNA, 
floating freely in my bloodstream, could be tested for hundreds of 
genetic disorders at an early point in my pregnancy. We took great 
comfort in the test, without realizing all of its implications. The baby 
wasn’t just sharing his genetic secrets during the pregnancy. Fetal 
cells can persist for years after birth; as I sit and write these 
sentences, I may very well be a chimera: a mixture of some of my son’s 
cells and my own. This microchimerism may even have eventual effects on 
my health, although it isn’t fully understood. And he may carry some of 
my immune cells, too.


How does this sharing affect our current conception of heredity? And 
what about the other inherited elements that influence our development — 
like culture, microbes and (to a limited extent) the epigenetic factors 
that affect the expression of our genes? Zimmer cautions that we should 
not ignore their influence, arguing that “we cannot understand the 
natural world with a simplistic notion of genetic heredity.”


The popular notion of “a gene for” a trait is largely a misconception. 
The Mendelian laws of inheritance — what most people study in school 
today — are not just “exquisitely fragile” but “regularly broken.” Most 
complex traits, such as height or intelligence, arise out of the 
intricate, combined action of hundreds of genes and depend strongly on 
the environmental conditions under which an individual develops. And 
failing to understand that has had dire results: “At the dawn of the 
20th century, scientists came to limit the word heredity to genes. 
Before long, this narrow definition spread its influence far beyond 
genetic laboratories. It hangs like a cloud over our most personal 
experiences of heredity, even if we can’t stop trying to smuggle the old 
traditions of heredity into the new language of genes.”


To illustrate this point, Zimmer highlights the story of Emma Wolverton, 
a woman condemned as mentally defective and institutionalized. In the 
early 20th century she became a focal 

[Marxism] The Assad regime: Building the case against Assad’s regime | In English | EL PAÍS

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/06/12/inenglish/1528799235_796657.html
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Re: [Marxism] Agroecology and the fight against deadly capitalist agriculture

[DW via Marxism]

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I generally agree with the direction this article goes but I think it tends
to be ultimatistic. My biggest disagreement with it is this line in a
sub-head: "*Agroecology requires that shift in fundamental beliefs*". This
is wrong. It doesn't require that, not under the present system of small
and large commodity agricultural processing...it requires a system of
incentives and education on the *part of the producers*.

Agroecology is only one of many forms of sustainable agriculture being
promoted by those that recognize that the current system of high input
chemical fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides is unsustainable. And it
is helping destroy the climate as well as fresh water reserves
and...depleting the soil of organic (and carbon!) matter. Other forms of
this, and actually as widely or more deployed are terms and methods that go
under: "Holistic Management & Regenerative Agriculture" (Alan Savory
institute), "no-till agriculture", "mob-grazing" (as opposed to "free range
grazing" or factory feedlots), pasture farm animal husbandry, etc etc. All
overlap in one way or another.

Many people are familiar with this because of Michael Pollen's book "The
Omnivores Dilemma" 2007 book that profiled Poly Face Farms in Virginia.
What the author of the climate and capitalism blog doesn't recognize or
didn't address is that there is an absolutely huge educational process
initiated by the promoters of sustainable agriculture...no...by the
*practitioners* of such methods to promote these methods and many farmers
around the industrialized western nations and developing nations are in
fact adopting some or all of these methods. Conferences are held all the
time in agricultural areas, sometime sponsored by the ag depts of major
state universities, promoting such visions. The issue of the ecology
agriculture is a positive spin off of this but the incentive is strictly
financial: the promoters of this argue that with an animal centered form of
agriculture (where the cattle are used to naturally fertilize the fields in
a symbiotic mimicking of nature) most inputs...which cost money by the
farmer...can be reduced almost to zero on most cases. This runs directly
counter to the chemical industry/feed lot industry's methods of feeding
cattle grain...when cattle evolved eating only grasses and legumes. The
realization of this by farmers has been revolutionary and is spreading. One
doesn't need to change one's "belief" on this, only need to see the
immediate advantages to this form of animal centered farming.

Australia actually leads in this but searches for some of the terms I used
above is worth looking into. Look up "Gabe Brown" on Youtube...a cattle
rancher in N. Dakota with 5,000 acres. He will blow your mind as he hasn't
written a check to fertilizer or insecticide company in 20 years! Listen to
how he developed these methods and where he's tripled the organic matter of
his soil and zero run off of rain into the river by creating soil that is
almost as rich as the original Plains before farming destroyed them. Most
of us on the left haven't really investigated this but we should. Here is
an article that I think addresses more seriously the issues involve,
especially with regard to climate change:

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/claims-against-meat-fail-to-see-bigger-picture/


David
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Re: [Marxism] Has the Trump-Kim Summit Opened the Road to Peace in East Asia?

[mkaradjis via Marxism]

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Some comments on your reply. Stressing again that I am in agreement
with the great majority of what you say, especially on Syria.

> In our RCIT statements we have not given a timeline for the next war. But I
> think we have to look at the fundamental, irreversible lines of class
> contradictions. Against the background of a global crisis of capitalism, the
> contradictions both between the Great Powers as well as between the regional
> powers are accelerating. I think that we can agree on this.

In general terms yes. But (a) as you say there is no timeline for "the
next war", so it may, when (and if) it comes, be very far away in time
from whatever the current rounds of rhetoric are, keeping in mind that
rhetoric serves its own purposes, (b) growing contradictions between
powers, and war (of any substantial scale) are not the same thing, and
(c) the main contradictions between various powers may be very
different to which powers happen to hurling the most rhetoric. So, on
that point, it seems the main competitors with US imperialism are
European imperialism and Chinese imperialism. That thus looks a little
different to your list of what you call "fundamental and long-term
conflicts of interests" in the Middle East, where you list:

> U.S. vs. Russia
> Iran vs. Saudi Arabia
> Israel vs. the Palestinian people
> Israel vs. Iran/Hezbollah
> U.S. vs. Iran
> Russia vs. U.S. vs. Iran vs. Turkey vs. Assad in Syria

The one and only fundamental contradiction I see in that list is
between Israel and the Palestinian people, which of course has no
connection to the inter-imperialist contradictions we are talking
about. Rather, it is part of the more general main contradiction in
the region, that between all the imperialist and regional reactionary
regimes you listed, on one side, and the peoples of the region on the
other. In the last 7 years, this has above all meant the Syrian
people, though earlier in the Arab Spring it also meant the Egyptian,
Bahrainian etc people.

As such, where you claim that one of the "fundamental" contradictions
is "Russia vs. U.S. vs. Iran vs. Turkey vs. Assad in Syria", then
respectfully I disagree. I see no fundamental contradiction in any
sense between the Russia, the US, Iran, Turkey and Assad (or Saudi
Arabia or Israel) in Syria. The differences are largely tactical (eg,
over how best to crush the revolution), or reflect secondary alliances
and trying to get some ally's interests a little ahead of someone
else's within the overall fundamental agreement that exists over the
counterrevolutionary victory.

The only other contradiction on your list that I think has a powerful
reality and so I suppose comes close to "fundamental" is the Iran vs
Saudi Arabia one: clearly these are two sub-imperialist powers who are
rivals for regional domination, and this geopolitical rivalry often
takes on sectarian overtones. By contrast, the Israel-Iran clash is a
war of rhetoric, predicated on geographic distance. It might be easier
to explain it as rivalry like the Saudi-Iran clash, but over what?
Given that Israel can have zero influence in the Arab world (unless it
did some kind of deal with Palestine, the opposite direction from
Israeli governments for at least 20 years).

The much hyped US vs Russia one may have some more importance to the
East Europe theatre, though I think that has more to do with the US
trying to keep its main European rival in tow by bolstering the
ongoing "need" for NATO due to a Russian "threat", rather than
"rivalry" with Russia as such: what is the hyped US-Russia rivalry
over. It certainly doesn't appear to be over Syria, for example: when
John Kerry stated that the US and Russia see Syria "fundamentally very
similarly," for those of us following the issues closely, it appeared
no truer word had been spoken. Are the US and Russia involved in
rivalry over control of Syrian oil? No, they are not. Has the US been
trying to expel the long-term Russian bases on Mediterranean Syria?
No, not at all? Does Russia fear the US wants to do this? No, it
doesn't. Is there any small-scale rivalry, over things like
credibility etc? Sure, like anywhere, just adds a little flavour to
the main game as correctly described by Kerry. Russia has very close,
warm ties to Israel, the main US ally in the region, and also very
close ties to Saudi Arabia.

Trump did a few things last week. He threatened new tariff wars with
his G7 "allies" (ie, the US main imperialist rivals), talked to them
in a very rude, undiplomatic fashion, declared that Russia showed be
allowed back into the G7 (ie G8) and that Crimea is Russian because
"everyone there speaks Russian", went on to a summit with 

[Marxism] Agroecology and the fight against deadly capitalist agriculture

[Ian Angus via Marxism]

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Agroecology and the fight against deadly capitalist agriculture

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/06/17/agroecology-and-the-fight-against-deadly-capitalist-agriculture/
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[Marxism] After 2 years, ominous signs for Colombia's peace accord

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Washington Post, June 17, 2018
After 2 years, ominous signs for Colombia's peace accord
By Anthony Faiola

Nearly two years after a historic peace accord ended Latin America's 
longest-running insurgency and garnered a Nobel Prize, an old scourge is 
again spreading across the rural valleys and jungle towns of Colombia's 
northeast - guerrilla warfare.


Here in the Catatumbo region - a rugged terrain dotted with streams, oil 
fields and palm plantations - guerrilla groups have been fighting for 
three months to take over a former domain of the FARC, the Marxist force 
disbanded under the peace deal. The violence has generated the largest 
wave of displaced people since 2007, according to the United Nations' 
Refugee Agency.


Fighting is intensifying as the cultivation of the coca leaf, the 
building block of cocaine, has soared to record highs, topping even 
levels seen when the FARC - the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia - ruled large swaths of the region. Since 
March, more than 9,000 people have been at least temporarily forced to 
flee their homes. During the same period, according to a leading human 
rights group, dozens of people have been kidnapped, assassinated or 
wounded - either by land mines or by armed forces operating in the 
region, which include the Colombian military.


The peace accords were reached after a years-long offensive by Colombian 
security forces and a $10 billion security aid package from the United 
States, which regards this South American country as a top ally. Now, 
with violence rising in numerous former guerrilla strongholds, the peace 
process is at a crossroads. Colombians on Sunday will chose between two 
starkly different presidential candidates - a right-wing senator 
critical of the peace deal, and a leftist former mayor and ex-guerrilla 
who backs it.


Whoever wins will be forced to confront a troubling truth: From the 
Pacific coast in the west to the Venezuelan border in the east, 
Colombia's new era of peace is already fraying.


"We had hope after the peace accord but now we see its limitations," 
said Maria Carvajal, a 47-year-old merchant forced to flee to this 
isolated town in April after receiving threats from a resurgent 
guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).


At a shelter where she lives with 31 families, she pointed at the old 
mattresses lined up against a wall and shook her head. "This is no life, 
and we are tired of living in fear," she said, rubbing her eyes. "We're 
tired of it all."


Repeating a war-torn past?

As recently as a year ago, the future of the peace deal seemed bright. 
Outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos struck the deal in August 2016, 
for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After Colombia's 
Congress ratified the peace deal in December 2016, thousands of members 
of the FARC turned in their arms in an operation heralded by the United 
Nations as a textbook case of conflict resolution. The impact was felt 
nationwide. In a country with a history of extreme violence, 2017 was 
the least deadly on record since the 1970s.


Yet by late last year, Congress was struggling to implement key parts of 
the deal. Lawmakers ultimately passed legislation on only half of the 
accord's provisions under a fast-track authority associated with the 
deal that ran out in December.


There have been delays in planning and funding for key elements of the 
accord - including providing roads, schools and services to communities 
long dominated by the FARC. Tired of waiting for promised agricultural 
training and the establishment of collective farms, scores of 
ex-combatants have abandoned camps set up for their reintroduction to 
civilian life.


Some have returned to the forests with the intention of forming their 
own armed bands or joining others, according to the Rev. Victor Peña, a 
Catholic priest in the regional hub of Tibu who has regular dealings 
with former FARC fighters.


"We're going to find ourselves in the same situation as before," Peña 
said. "Why? Because the government has not done enough to secure peace."


The peace deal was always envisioned as a long-haul mission, one that 
could take decades to fully implement. But as a result of a slow-moving 
process, critics say, violence has started to spike again. During the 
first four months of the year, killings jumped 32.4 percent in 170 
municipalities in post-conflict zones and 45 percent in areas where the 
government is seeking to supplant coca cultivation, according to Ideas 
for Peace, a Bogota-based think tank.


The violence has surged as the Colombian government has struggled to 
reassert itself in are

[Marxism] In Trump’s Madness, There’s Opportunity in Korea: Bruce Cumings | The Nation

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-madness-theres-opportunity-korea-bruce-cumings/
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[Marxism] 'People still believe in Syria': Searching for a shattered nation

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/people-still-believe-in-syria-searching-for-a-shattered-nation-20180613-p4zl5r.html
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[Marxism] Requiem for a steelworker: Mon Valley memories of Oil Can Eddie | MR Online

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://mronline.org/2018/06/15/requiem-for-a-steelworker-mon-valley-memories-of-oil-can-eddie/
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[Marxism] Graffiti boys who lit Syria war brace for regime attack

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/160620182
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[Marxism] Full list of Members of the European Parliament who voted against the resolution on political prisoners in Russia (Anton Shekhovtsov)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.tango-noir.com/2018/06/16/full-list-of-members-of-the-european-parliament-who-voted-against-the-resolution-on-political-prisoners-in-russia/
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