[Marxism] Real News Network: Cuba's New Draft Constitution: Institutionalizing Revolution and Reversing Personalization

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

Discussion the constitution with Prof. Liz Dore and James Early

https://youtu.be/Xbkc2XmxEWA

-- 
Best regards,

Andrew Stewart
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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.
*

If you judge the article by the yardstick of the kind of evidence used in a
courtroom, you're misunderstanding what you're looking at . . . .

The article summarizes the technical evidence as "tracing control of email
and social media accounts and a tool for remote internet connections" and
specifies bits of what this means.  This all; seems quite straightforward
to me, with absolutely nothing particularly surprising as to what I'd
expect their technological capabilities.  Of course,  I'd be open to
hearing something from a technical expert in the field explain how it was.

Still, we'll find out soon enough.

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] Assad admits murders of prisoners

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/world/middleeast/syria-detainees-dead.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] Was the young Martin Luther King a socialist?

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  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 February 18, 1957, *Time *magazine put a picture of King on its cover,
describing him as “expert organizer” but “no radical.” Honey says that
*Time* was actually wrong on both counts: his strength lay more in
visionary and oratory power than organizing prowess, and he was certainly
radical in his thinking. Nevertheless, a journalistic version of King
emerged that painted him as a civil rights leader who became increasingly
radical after the Vietnam War, a long-accepted picture that scholars have
begun to challenge in recent years.

Coretta Scott King kept her husband’s letters and early sermons, in which
he expressed support for ideas like the “nationalization of industry,” in a
box in her basement for over thirty years after he died, a move that may
have been inspired by anxiety that his radical views of capitalism would be
used by the American right wing to tarnish his legacy. Which is very likely
true.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/was-martin-luther-king-a-socialist-new-book-may-surprise-you
_
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] 2978. Madness in the Iranian Socialist Movement

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2018/07/2978-madness-in-iranian-socialist.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] “Prairie Trilogy” Revisits the Days When Socialism Swept North Dakota | Village Voice

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/24/prairie-trilogy-revisits-the-days-when-socialism-swept-north-dakota/
_
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] “Prairie Trilogy” Revisits the Days When Socialism Swept North Dakota | Village Voice

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/24/prairie-trilogy-revisits-the-days-when-socialism-swept-north-dakota/
_
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] Massacres Down Under

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

  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.
*

My good friend Professor Gracelyn Smallwood has asked me to forward this
link to the list


https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/27/
evidence-of-250-massacres-of-indigenous-australians-mapped?utm_source=esp&
utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm
_term=282150&subid=24906721&CMP=ema_632


There has been enormous resistance here for many to the notion of Conquest.
The preferred word is still "Discovery". Such are the ways of settler
-colonial states. The only mildly interesting variation is the Zionist one
of "Homecoming".

comradely

Gary
_
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] Caring for Capitalism - Los Angeles Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

(The documentary discussed in this article just became available on 
Netflix.)


Under the regulatory apparatus of the Food and Drug Administration 
(FDA), the category of medical device includes everything from tongue 
depressors and heating pads to imaging technologies and implantable 
technologies ranging from stents to pacemakers. It is this last 
category, devices that become an enduring part of the patients in whom 
they are implanted, that claim the spotlight in The Bleeding Edge. Are 
such medical devices a “means to an end of unleashing innovation to 
improve and save lives,” as one industry lobbyist featured in the film 
insists to a room full of business people and politicians? Or are they 
the latest instruments of the iatrogenic culture of medicine? By 2050, 
the techno-optimists of this room are told, their organs will be 
custom-regenerated and their doctors will be computers. It’s a futurist 
fantasy that’s at least a century old but has yet to become obsolete. A 
reporter covering the medical industry goes so far as to suggest that 
the production and use of medical devices are not only “a way of life 
for post-industrial society — they are a reason for the existence of 
post-industrial society.”



full: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/caring-for-capitalism/
_
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] Alan Wald Homepage

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

So Alan is emeritus. Good for him.

https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/alan-wald-homepage/
_
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] Iran's interests in Syria

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  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 relations between Iran, Russia and Syria:

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/07/iran-russia-syria-helsinki-summit-partnership-putin-trump.html

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

  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 think articles like this are unhelpful and dangerous, and this one is
> certainly full of inaccuracies.

But are hilarious. Ted Rall has to make shit up:

"Trump doesn’t even read one-page memos. Yet we’re being asked to believe that 
he supervised a ridiculously complex Machiavellian conspiracy?"

Who has argued this?

Then of course, yes, the Seth Rich conspiracy which is just disgusting of him 
to traffic in and doesn't really warrant a response.

I think it says a lot about people like Rall when they purposely distort 
everything and ignore detailed evidence (also note that the main "alternative" 
report that people point to as proving it was an inside job proves nothing of 
the sort, but it is easy to write up some computer jargon to convince people 
like Rall).

Tristan

_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Michael Marking via Marxism]

  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.
*



The 2018.07.13 Reuters article, by Joseph Menn, observed at
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cyber/u-s-indictments-show-technical-evidence-for-russian-hacking-accusations-idUSKBN1K32X1,
is wrong. Despite the title and the content, there wasn’t evidence in
the indictment. 

Perhaps Mr Menn was mislead by his sources or advisers, or maybe he
simply does not understand what constitutes evidence. Either way, the
article doesn’t deliver what its title promises. 

“Evidence” is a term of art in law, with a precise meaning. This
specific term, evidence, is quite logically defined, so we don’t need
to contort our logic to understand how lawyers use it. Evidence is
“Something (including testimony, documents and tangible objects) that
tends to prove or disprove the existence of an alleged fact”. (Black’s
Law Dictionary, Ninth Edition) There is no ordinary requirement that a
complaint or indictment contain any evidence. An indictment might say,
“A murdered B, using a knife belonging to C, at 123 Main Street on 1
January 1900”: that is merely an allegation, that’s good enough. There
is no evidence that any murder took place, or the means by which it was
done, but the indictment is sufficient for most purposes. In fact, you
might allege the existence of evidence, but the indictment itself
usually cannot possibly contain any evidence. How, for example, would a
corpse or a bloody knife be included in an indictment? An indictment is
expected to contain only allegations. An allegation is merely an
assertion that something is true; the assertion isn’t necessarily true,
but it might be. It’s up to the trial to determine the truth or falsity
of allegations in the complaint or indictment; it’s during the trial
that the evidence is examined. 

You don’t convict on allegations, you convict on evidence. 

I’ll pick a few examples from the indictment, as discussed in the
Reuters article, to illustrate. I’ll omit the obvious adjective,
“alleged”, because, at this point, everything is alleged. So I won’t
say, “alleged conspirators”, I’ll just say “conspirators”.

The indictment alleges that the conspirators used a common bitcoin
wallet both to acquire a VPN network account and to acquire the use of
a server which hosted DCLeaks. There is no evidence here. If there were
a statement of such evidence, it might say something like “the
blockchain shows that the transaction shows bitcoin wallet identifiers
X and Y, and the accounting records of the ISP recorded a bitcoin
transaction of the same amount at approximately the same time, the ISP
claims that its own wallet identifier is Y, and the blockchain shows
that there were no other transactions during the interval A to B which
used either of the identifiers X or Y”. In other words, the evidence
would be alleged to show how we know that the allegation is true. (All
of this isn’t complete. For instance, how do we know that the ISP
claims that its wallet identifier is Y? Is there an affidavit? Do they
publish the wallet identifier to facilitate such transactions? But this
should illustrate the basic idea.) 

Here are a few more points consider: 

(1) Investigations and grand jury proceedings are normally conducted in
secret. So it shouldn’t be surprising that we don’t know, for example,
the bitcoin wallet identifiers. But why, in the lead-up to the election,
and just after the election, before a formal prosecution was
established, when this or that intelligence agency was supposedly
claiming that the Russians did it, weren’t we given even the least bit
of evidence to prove it true?

(2) We don’t at this time know, however, if the prosecution even has
such evidence as bitcoin wallet identifiers. Maybe they just came up
with a story but without sufficient evidence, hoping, perhaps, to fill
in the blanks later. 

(3) It has been speculated that the investigation has resulted in
allegations which knowingly cannot be proven. Why would the prosecutor
do this? If, as some believe, the prosecution is politically motivated,
and if such persons as Guccifer 2.0 can’t be found or extradited for
trial, then there might never be a trial, and no evidence will ever be
adduced, so there is little risk to making claims which can’t be
supported. (I’m not saying that I subscribe to this theory, but it has
been widely mentioned in the press and on line.) 

(4) It is often asserted that the spooks (NSA, CIA, or whoever) can’t
produce the evidence because it might jeopardize “sources and methods”.
That may be true, but it’s mostly crap in this case. The technology of
analyzing server logs, tracing bitcoin transactions using wallet
identifiers, and so on, has been around for yea

[Marxism] The Prairie Trilogy | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

In March 2017, I reviewed Yale Strom’s documentary on Eugene V. Debs for 
CounterPunch, a work that looked at Red states when they were really 
Red. I wrote: “Indeed, the IWW and the SP reached the most oppressed 
members of the working class (fruit pickers, longshoremen, miners, 
lumberjacks) in the boondocks. Oklahoma, a state most liberals would 
consider particularly retrograde, was fertile territory for the radical 
left at the turn of the 20th century.” For those who missed Yale’s 
documentary at the festival last year or at its brief theater run in 
April of this year, the good news is that it is available now from iTunes.


And equally good news is the arrival of the Prairie Trilogy at the 
Metrograph Theater on Friday, July 27th. The trilogy consists of three 
documentaries made in 1978 by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson about the 
radical movement in North Dakota during the heyday of the IWW, the 
Socialist Party, and the Nonpartisan League (NPL). Since the radical 
movement in North Dakota in the early 1900s was largely made up of 
homesteaders, the focus is on the Nonpartisan League, a farmer’s 
movement motivated by the same grievances that fueled the Populist Party 
in the south.


Hanson and Nilsson also made a narrative film titled “Northern Lights” 
around the same time that depicts the formation of the NPL. It received 
the Caméra d’Or prize at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival for best first 
feature film and is probably worth tracking down based on the stunning 
Prairie Trilogy. Nilsson has his own credit for a documentary titled 
“What Happened Here” that can be seen on Fandor. SF Weekly described it 
as “little more than an intellectual crush on Leon Trotsky” so that 
should be recommendation enough. This is the sort of work you might 
expect from founding members of Cine Manifest, a collective that came 
together in 1972 as a political group making films instead of artists 
making political films. Their roots were in Karl Marx and Wilhelm Reich, 
and unabashedly so.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2018/07/27/the-prairie-trilogy/
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn't Catching On

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

  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.
*

The Whitey Bulger factor is probably at play, not only within the FBI
amidst their 30 year old snooping among the Trump properties, but also
among our own ruling class, which doesn’t seem to be able to say no to
smurfs and their illicit cash, from a whole range of nefarious sources.

Greg
_
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] [UCE] A. O-C on Twitter

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

The GOP is:
- weak on fighting for working class Americans
- weak on crime
- weak on equal rights
- weak on national security
- weak on rejecting racism
- weak on moral courage
- weak on family values

So yeah, I’d say this a representative choice of their values.

---

Weak on crime, family values and national security?

How about weak on socialism?
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn't Catching On

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  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.
*

Let's get to the original subject - why the collusion conspiracy theory
isn't catching on. In the first place, "conspiracy theory" is usually used
by Marxists as a put-down of any story they don't like. I have absolutely
no tolerance for a genuine conspiracy theory of history, but that's totally
different from understanding that, yes, various forces in society do engage
in conspiracies. As to the facts of this particular matter: I think it is
beyond any serious question that the Trump campaign did collude with
representatives of Putin. All you need is one simple example: What was that
June, 2016 meeting between Donald jr., one or two others and some Putin
representatives in Trump Tower all about? It was an attempted collusion.
Pure and simple. And Donald sr. knew about it - and obviously approved it -
both before and after the meeting.

Nor should that meeting be seen in isolation. There are all the long and
deep ties between the Putin oligarchy and such top Trump officials as
Manafort and Carter Page. As for Trump, himself: I'm coming to that.

The question is raised whether the election of Trump vs. Clinton "would
have made much difference." Of course it would have made a difference, and
a rather huge one at that! No, a Clinton victory would not have resolved
anything. Under her, the world and the US as part of that world would have
continued to get worse.However, the Trump presidency has enormously
accelerated and intensified the crisis of US capitalism. It has also
brought forth a new aspect of that crisis. At the very, very least it's
like saying that whether you're in the middle of a forest fire or in the
middle of a raging hurricane with 120 mph winds doesn't make any
difference. In either case, you're in a crisis, but the nature of the
crisis is very, very different.

I think a major reason why the issue of Trump's collusion with Putin is not
catching on is that most people cannot see it in a wider picture. And what
is that wider picture? It's the fact of his having been a money launderer
for the Russian oligarchs for so many years. As far as I know, the
mainstream capitalist media has raised this issue on only three different
occasions in the last 14 months or so. Most recently was MSNBC (
https://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/report-russian-mob-money-helped-build-trump-business-empire-1002228291948
) and the New Yorker (
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/where-did-donald-trump-get-200-million-dollars-to-buy-his-money-losing-scottish-golf-club
)
and a few months ago the SF Chronicle (
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/where-did-donald-trump-get-200-million-dollars-to-buy-his-money-losing-scottish-golf-club.
Back before that was "whowhatwhy" back in March of last year (
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/03/27/fbi-cant-tell-trump-russia/) As I have
said many times, the reluctance to raise this stems from the fact that the
entire US real estate industry is rampant with money laundering for the
drug cartels.

But why have socialists so ignored the issue? I think the explanation lies
in the comment of Michael Marking that "It doesn't matter if Putin helped
Trump or if Wikileaks got the DNC files from any specific person or what
really was behind any gas attack in Syria: the class analysis subsumes
these things." Michael can be forgiven for this view since he says he's new
to Marxism, but how about the rest of us? Isn't a serious study of what is
happening *within* the capitalist class absolutely essential? Is it enough
to simply know that capitalism is in crisis, without having an
understanding of the nature of that crisis? How in the world can we figure
out where things are headed otherwise?

So, yes Trump & co. absolutely did collude with Putin's representatives
and, yes, it does matter, just as it matters whether Trump or Clinton is
president. Not because we fall for any sort of nonsense about the "national
interests" or (even worse) "patriotism", nor because we support the
thoroughty capitalist-controlled Hillary Clinton, but because we cannot
understand the nature of the crisis of US capitalism without understanding
the most basic facts of this crisis.

And as to the fact of Trump being a money launderer - I think it's a
symptom of the degeneration of the left that it still to this day fails to
publicize this fact and fails to explain the importance of it.

John Reimann
-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set

[Marxism] Era of 'Biological Annihilation' Is Underway, Scientists Warn - NY Times

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  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.
*

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal
species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass
extinction is underway, new research finds.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/climate/mass-extinction-animal-species.html

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal
species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass
extinction is underway, new research finds.

The study ,
published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and
part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction
” caused
in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five
extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.

Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México in Mexico City, acknowledged that the study is written in unusually
alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical
right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the
severity of the problem,” he said.

Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich
 and Rodolfo Dirzo, both
professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists, but are using
scientific data to back up their assertions that significant population
decline and possible mass extinction of species all over the world may be
imminent, and that both have been underestimated by many other scientists.

The study’s authors looked at reductions in a species’ range — a result of
factors like habitat degradation, pollution and climate change, among
others — and extrapolated from that how many populations have been lost or
are in decline, a method that they said is used by the International Union
for Conservation of Nature
.

They found that about 30 percent of all land vertebrates — mammals, birds,
reptiles and amphibians — are experiencing declines and local population
losses. In most parts of the world, mammal populations are losing 70
percent of their members because of habitat loss.

In particular, they cite cheetahs, which have declined to around 7,000
members; Borneo and Sumatran orangutans, of which fewer than 5,000 remain;
populations of African lions, which have declined by 43 percent since 1993;
pangolins, which have been “decimated”; and giraffes, whose four species

now
number under 100,000 members.

The study defines populations as the number of individuals in a given
species in a 10,000-square-kilometer unit of habitat, known as a quadrat.

Jonathan Losos, a biology professor at Harvard, said that he was not aware
of other papers that have used this method, but that it was “a reasonable
first pass” at estimating the extent of species decline and population loss.

Dr. Losos also noted that giving precise estimates of wildlife populations
was difficult, in part because scientists do not always agree on what
defines a population, which makes the question inherently subjective.

Despite those issues, Dr. Losos said, “I think it’s a very important and
troubling paper that documents that the problems we have with biodiversity
are much greater than commonly thought.”

The authors of the paper suggest that previous estimates of global
extinction rates have been too low, in part because scientists have been
too focused on complete extinction of a species. Two vertebrate species are
estimated to go extinct every year, which the authors wrote “does not
generate enough public concern,” and lends the impression that many species
are not severely threatened, or that mass extinction is a distant
catastrophe.

Conservatively, scientists estimate that 200 species have gone extinct in
the past 100 years; the “normal” extinction rate over the past two million
years has been that two species go extinct every 100 years because of
evolutionary and other factors.

Rather than extinctions, the paper looks at how populations are doing: the
disappearance of entire populations, and the decrease of the number of
individuals within a population. Over all, they found this phenomenon is
occurring globally, but that tropical regions, which have the greatest
biodiversity, are experiencing the greatest loss in numbers, and that
temperate regions are seeing higher proportions of population loss. Dr.
Ehrlich

[Marxism] Russiagate and ghost liberals

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  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.
*

The Democratic partisan mindset in its current form was born as a reaction
to Nader. The rejection of all criticism and the hatred of critics, the
cries of “ traitor” and the claim that they are pragmatic and understand
how to win and achieve progressive results— this all started then. But it
just keeps getting worse.

I actually found some of these arguments persuasive. In particular, the
argument for lesser evil voting when you know only one of two candidates
can win makes sense to me. I don’t think it is a moral imperative the way
the partisans claim. It is a tactical argument. But it has some force.
Where they go wrong is in their fanaticism. They claim to be pragmatic, but
pragmatic people try to argue in such a way that you want to support them.
A partisan Democrat has no interest in persuading a leftist to hold his or
her nose and vote for the lesser evil. They don’t acknowledge any weakness
or flaw in the Democrats and if you point to issues like Gaza or Yemen
where many Democrats have been bad (Democrats have improved on Yemen since
it can now be blamed on Trump) they simply ignore it. The fundamental basis
of their morality is this— Thou shalt support the Democrats.

The anger on open display is the opposite of pragmatic politics. They don’t
try to persuade people to vote for the Democrat. They demand it. It is a
moral litmus test, or rather, a judgement of one’s very soul. Good people
know they have to vote for the Democrat. Bad people vote for Republicans
and the very worst people of all claim to be left, but vote for Stein or
maybe even voted for Clinton, but criticized her. Democratic partisans have
no interest in what you say about an issue if they perceive it as in any
way an attack or a criticism of a Democrat. If you are a third party
advocate you can forget about being taken seriously on any issue because
you have already self identified as a Satanist and you need to be exorcised
from the body politic. Even if you say you support the Democrat as the
lesser evil, you speak as one of the damned and deserve no mercy. Sanders
played the game in 2016 exactly the way people said Nader should have
played it and he and his supporters were still dismissed.

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/russiagate-ghost-liberals/
_
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] Nicaragua: A View from the Left

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 7/27/18 9:41 AM, Jason wrote:
Since when was it a thing to demand movements start with a certain 
program to deserve our solidarity? This is the same kind of thinking 
that enabled some leftists to ignore and deride the Syrian revolution 
and de facto defend Assad.


Are you seriously comparing Daniel Ortega with Bashar al-Assad? If you 
were a student in the University of Damascus that passed out leaflets 
inviting people to a meeting calling for the overthrow of the Baathists, 
you'd be thrown in prison and either tortured or killed. Meanwhile, in 
Nicaragua the universities are strongholds of open anti-Sandinista 
opposition.


Furthermore, you are not responding to what I wrote. I did not line up 
with Ortega like the "Popular Resistance" article in today's 
Counterpunch. In fact, if you go through the archives of this mailing 
list, you will see my frequent attacks on his boneheaded canal scheme, 
his opposition to abortion rights, etc. I am actually in favor of his 
removal but not by some dirtbag like Eduardo Montealegre.


The movement against him in Nicaragua is deeply problematic. Even a 
supporter of the movement details its shortcomings in NACLA:


https://nacla.org/news/2018/07/03/deciphering-nicaraguan-student-uprising-descifrando-el-levantamiento-estudiantil

Yet not everyone who supports the movement shares this revolutionary 
nostalgia. In fact, many in the movement and the civic alliance are 
fervent anti-Sandinistas. These are people who do not just oppose Ortega 
and Murillo in the current context but also pro-capitalists who have 
attacked the Sandinistas since their emergence. This group includes 
Somocistas (those who defend the legacy of the Somoza dictatorship), 
Liberals, Conservatives, and former Contras. There is growing evidence 
that from the ranks of anti-Sandinistas such groups are arming 
themselves and gaining momentum.


Meanwhile, labor unions-—government-sponsored or otherwise—-appear to 
have little sway in the movement, though human rights organizations like 
the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) and the Maria Elena 
Cuadra maquila network claim to represent the interests of workers and 
women in the larger alliance and national dialogue. Some members of the 
private sector, who claim to represent the interests not only of capital 
interests but also labor, have called for a National Strike.


Further, representation of peasants and farmers, who make up over 40% of 
Nicaragua’s population, is incomplete. While some farmers are involved 
in a movement against a proposed trans-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, 
this group has little connection to the much larger northern and 
northwestern agricultural parts of the country and the demands of 
campesinos living there. So, it is unclear where farmers and other rural 
sectors might fall in the context of the national movement.



_
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] Nicaragua: A View from the Left

[Jason via Marxism]

  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 Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 6:19 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
> The question is not whether Ortega is an authoritarian, capitalist figure
> or not. Rather it is the likelihood of someone much worse than him becoming
> the new president. Until the opposition begins to coalesce around a clear,
> democratic, and economically viable program with a leader who has some kind
> of credentials as a Nicaraguan patriot, we are likely to end up with
> someone like the bastards that run Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia.


I don't see why that's "the question" at all. Since when was it a thing to
demand movements start with a certain program to deserve our solidarity?
This is the same kind of thinking that enabled some leftists to ignore and
deride the Syrian revolution and de facto defend Assad.

 -Jason Hicks
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Jason via Marxism]

  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.
*

Right, as I said in the other thread, that is a right wing talking point
and a blatant falsehood. It's yet another example of how Counterpunch has
no editorial or political standards, that it is acting without a sense of
responsibility. Maybe it's gotten less bad on Syria but that general
problem remains (and it's still publishing nonsense that calls the
Ukrainian government "fascist" which can only be done based on the same
political methods the Assadists use to dismiss the Syrian revolution).

The report https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf clearly says:

"We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on
the outcome of the 2016 election."

-Jason Hicks

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-
> trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/ <
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-
> trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/>"Anyway, the
> intelligence community — you know, the friendly folks at the CIA, FBI and
> NSA whom Democrats worship the way Republicans revered firefighters after
> 9/11 — says whatever Russian hacking occurred did not affect the outcome of
> the election.”
>
> I frankly doubt that the “intelligence community” said any such thing.
> How could they know how effective the Russian intervention was?
> Think of another historical example. The Italian election of 1948.  There
> is no dispute that’d the CIA intervened against the Communist Party.  But
> could any of us prove that the intervention was effective?  How could we
> prove that unless hundreds of thousands of voters kept diaries and we had
> access to those diaries?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy>
>
_
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] Review: In ‘Prairie Trilogy,’ All-American Stories of Socialism

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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.
*

 Review: In ‘Prairie Trilogy,’ All-American Stories of Socialism
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/movies/prairie-trilogy-review-socialism.html?rref=collection%2Fissuecollection%2Ftodays-new-york-times
_
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] (99+) The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Transition: How the American Empire Became Capitalist | James Parisot - Academia.edu

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

  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.
*

The one complaint I would make is that the author doesn't fully confront
the Jay Mandle thesis that slavery and post-Reconstruction share-cropping
and tenancy in the South represented a "plantation" mode of production
rather than capitalism --- If we insist that the concept of a mode of
production involves the relationship between people at the point of
production, then slavery and post-reconstruction relationships are CLEARLY
different from capitalist ones --- despite the role of the "law of value"
in setting prices

The emphasis on the independent mode of production and "safety first"
farming is right on .

On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 7:44 AM, Louis Proyect 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.
> *
>
> This paper aims to rethink United States history from the colonial era
> through the Civil War and Reconstruction by examining how capitalism and
> empire joined together as the logic of expansion increasingly became driven
> by the logic of capital over approximately two hundred and fifty years.
> Specically, it argues that (what became) the United States originated as a
> society with capitalism and became a capitalist society. This transition
> was a highly complex and uneven process as a  variety of social forms
> developed and interacted, and in which there was not one road to
> capitalism, but a variety, depending on the historical circumstance. To
> accomplish this, first, the article reviews the Marx-Weber debate to
> develop a theoretical and methodological approach to the historical
> sociology of capitalism. The remainder of the paper focuses on narrating an
> empirical interpretation of the transition to capitalism including the
> diversity of labor forms capital historically utilized.
>
> https://www.academia.edu/30406872/The_Two_Hundred_and_Fifty_
> Year_Transition_How_the_American_Empire_Became_Capitalist
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt
> ions/marxism/mameerop%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] Excerpt from Mike Davis's essential "Prisoners of the American Dream"

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3943-inventing-the-american-left-1986
_
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] Bill de Blasio Is a Progressive. But Is He Progressive Enough?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

My own take on this idiot: 
https://louisproyect.org/2013/08/16/a-dossier-on-bill-de-blasio/



NY Times, July 27, 2018
Bill de Blasio Is a Progressive. But Is He Progressive Enough?
By J. David Goodman and William Neuman

In his first inaugural address in 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio invoked the 
names of legendary reformers, from Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and 
Eleanor Roosevelt, and said that in their honor and spirit, he would 
“commit to a new progressive direction in New York.”


The anticipation for many of Mr. de Blasio’s supporters was particularly 
keen because it built on the sense that his predecessor, Michael R. 
Bloomberg, had presided over the city’s growth in a way that benefited 
the well-off and left the poor behind.


But midway through his fifth year in office, Mr. de Blasio has 
disappointed some of his most loyal backers, who point to a range of 
issues, from criminal justice reform and homelessness to the protection 
of immigrants, where the mayor has fallen short of his promises.


On Monday, Mr. de Blasio found himself having to explain why, after 
enacting a policy to end solitary confinement in city jails, the city 
Department of Correction increased the number of inmates shipped 
upstate, where they were put in solitary. He defended the actions as 
rare and necessary for safety.


Other promises have also run up against reality.

The city has not succeeded in opening new neighborhood-based homeless 
shelters as fast as Mr. de Blasio had vowed.


His recurring pledge to raise taxes on high-earners has been dashed in 
Albany, where the mayor holds little sway and has been embroiled in a 
yearslong feud with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.


And Mr. de Blasio has been resolute in his opposition to congestion 
pricing as a way to finance much-needed mass transit improvements, 
frustrating many progressive advocates who see his position as 
inconsistent with his goal of narrowing inequity.


“I think he’s run into the mechanics of governing, where you have to 
deal with the restraints of law and City Council and dealing with the 
practicalities of things like union negotiations,” the Rev. Al Sharpton 
said in an interview. “I don’t think he’s had a problem of commitment. I 
think he has a problem of having to govern, restraints that sometimes 
are troubling to those that are nongovernmental activists.”


Offered a list on Thursday of frequent criticisms from progressive 
advocates of his record, including expanding the secrecy surrounding 
certain Police Department records and failures at the New York City 
Housing Authority, Mr. de Blasio said: “That’s kind of the world upside 
down.”


“I’ve been a progressive my whole life, know a lot about the left,” he 
said. “I’ve talked to a whole lot of progressives about what we’re 
doing, activists, elected officials, issue experts. And I have found a 
lot of agreement with our agenda.”


The mayor is banking on it: He announced the creation of a political 
action committee, Fairness PAC, in order to fund national Democratic 
candidates, and also pay for political travel outside of New York City 
by Mr. de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray. His former campaign 
website was relaunched to push the effort, which was reported on 
Thursday by Politico.


Mr. de Blasio defended his record as a progressive leader, saying that 
there will always be advocates “who want us to take additional steps, 
and we intend to.” He said that on balance, his efforts to improve 
police discipline, end solitary confinement for young inmates and create 
neighborhood homeless shelters were “progressive and tangible” actions 
that affect “thousands and thousands” of people’s lives.


“There may be a few advocates who see it differently,” the mayor said. 
“But the vast majority of New Yorkers if you ask them, ‘Hey, this guy 
ended solitary confinement for these many thousands of inmates versus 
all the people before who tolerated it.’ What’s more progressive?”


To be sure, the mayor has made good on many of his commitments, 
including pursuing an aggressive affordable housing plan, launching a 
city-subsidized ferry service and the expansion of early childhood 
education.


Mr. de Blasio’s greatest accomplishment has been the creation of a new 
universal prekindergarten program, building on that success by expanding 
it to 3-year-olds. Yet progressives have faulted him for not tackling 
the deep-seated problem of segregation in the city’s school system.


His push to build new affordable units or preserve those that were at 
risk of shifting to market-rate rents has been met with criticism from 
housing advocates who say not enough of the apartments are a

Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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.
*

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cyber/u-s-indictments-show-technical-evidence-for-russian-hacking-accusations-idUSKBN1K32X1


On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 4:12 AM, Michael Marking 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.
> *
>
>
> Yes! Where’s the real evidence?
>
> Crossing a thread line here, I agree with Louis Proyect, who wrote on
> Friday 2018.07.20, “Frankly, I don't care if Russia helped Trump get
> elected or not.” Nor am I convinced that a Clinton victory would have
> made much difference.
>
> Trump has performed a great service to the leadership and backers of
> both parties: he has provided a highly effective distraction. While
> various supporters and opponents have vociferously made their views
> known – and garnered a lot of media coverage in the process – the
> main event, the looting of the main body of the people, has gone or
> continued pretty much unnoticed in the press and among the people in
> the street. It’s all about tweets and abuse of expense accounts and
> Russian collusion, and not about the deeper story. Yes, Trump represents
> the ruling class, in the same way that a clown represents a circus. It
> doesn’t matter whether he does it intentionally or knowingly or not, but
> he does it anyway. He’s a great distraction.
>
> This whole matter of Russian collusion and the purloined DNC files
> serves as a good example, as a part of the distraction. Whether the
> collusion issue matters or not in the grand scheme of things, it has
> resulted in the insanity of just about everyone. Maybe I’m missing
> something here, so someone help me, but where is the evidence for any
> version of this story? I looked at the indictment: it has allegations,
> but no evidence. I looked at the DNI report: the same story. The gold
> standard for forensic evidence would be Clinton’s server, but, as Trump
> asked, where is it? (I doubt if Trump really comprehends the
> significance of his own question here.) Destruction of evidence is a
> crime, too, but does anyone care? I’m certainly not defending Trump
> here, but I don’t believe any statements by anyone from the FBI, CIA,
> NSA, or anyone else in the so-called intelligence community, nor do I
> have any confidence in whatever Putin or just about anyone else says.
> This whole thing is just a big show.
>
> When I tell someone I can’t accept the official version of this or that
> story (the JFK assassination, the 2001 WTC demolition, and so on), and
> people ask me what really happened, I almost always have to answer, “I
> don’t know, but the official story doesn’t work, it isn’t consistent
> with the facts”. But people have an extremely difficult time accepting
> that. It’s as if people demand an answer, even a wrong one, and refuse
> to be put into a position of ignorance. They’d rather be wrong than
> ignorant.
>
> I’m new to this Marxism thing. Somehow, until the last two years, I’d
> never been exposed to it. But it works well for my minimalist approach
> to certainty. It doesn’t matter if Putin helped Trump or if Wikileaks
> got the DNC files from any specific person or what really was behind
> any gas attack in Syria: the class analysis subsumes these things. It
> has been a little like reading Einstein’s General Theory: it encompasses
> the Special Theory, which generalizes Newton’s laws, and so on. It makes
> predictions which can be tested. It’s not complete, as we still don’t
> have a grand theory of everything, but it’s up the ladder.
>
> Of course, I get sucked into these ancillary questions, too. It’s fun,
> I’m a sucker for unsolved puzzles, and I like a good story and
> appreciate entertainment. Meanwhile, as Michelle Wolf pointed out at the
> White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the folks in Flint still don’t have
> clean drinking water. And, I might add, they’re still dying and
> otherwise suffering all over the world.
>
> I’m not asking anyone to drop these topics. As I said, I enjoy them.
> I’ve stopped reading some “news” sites since I began reading this list:
> it’s a great source of links to news and more.
>
> So I ask all you old-timers, in all humility, what have I been missing?
> Where is the real evidence that Julian Assange was or wasn’t duped,
> that he colluded or participated? While I’d find it hard to swallow a
> line that the Russian state didn’t fool around with

Re: [Marxism] The Curious Case of Pro-Trump Leftism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 7/27/18 7:51 AM, Michael Meeropol wrote:
call me old fashioned -- or a "liberal wimp" --- but I cannot for the 
life of me understand who Draitser thinks he is "reaching" with this 
piece of writing --- I mean even if one agrees with the complete 
substance of what he's trying to communicate, the style --- the 
put-downs --- the snide references make it difficult to FOLLOW let alone 
be "convinced" .


WTF!!


Eric Draitser is an important barometer of thinking among those leftists 
who have developed a critique of opinions he once held himself. 
Counterpunch used to publish Diana Johnstone who still adheres to these 
views. Its move toward more reality-based views on Russia prompted this 
screed:


https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/21/antifa-or-antiwar-leftist-exclusionism-against-the-quest-for-peace/

If I had written such an article, I would have named names including 
Stephen F. Cohen as well as Johnstone. But not everybody is as 
contentious as me, thank goodness.

_
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] The Curious Case of Pro-Trump Leftism

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

  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.
*

call me old fashioned -- or a "liberal wimp" --- but I cannot for the life
of me understand who Draitser thinks he is "reaching" with this piece of
writing --- I mean even if one agrees with the complete substance of what
he's trying to communicate, the style --- the put-downs --- the snide
references make it difficult to FOLLOW let alone be "convinced" .

WTF!!

On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 7:23 AM, Louis Proyect 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.
> *
>
> By Eric Draitser
>
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-curious-case-of-
> pro-trump-leftism/
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt
> ions/marxism/mameerop%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] *Sorry To Bother You*’s Pro-Union Message Is An Important One | Charles Pulliam-Moore | Gizmodo

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

  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.
*


https://io9.gizmodo.com/sorry-to-bother-yous-pro-union-anti-capitalist-message-1827838232


Sent from my iPhone

_
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] (99+) The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Transition: How the American Empire Became Capitalist | James Parisot - Academia.edu

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

This paper aims to rethink United States history from the colonial era 
through the Civil War and Reconstruction by examining how capitalism and 
empire joined together as the logic of expansion increasingly became 
driven by the logic of capital over approximately two hundred and fifty 
years. Specically, it argues that (what became) the United States 
originated as a society with capitalism and became a capitalist society. 
This transition was a highly complex and uneven process as a  variety of 
social forms developed and interacted, and in which there was not one 
road to capitalism, but a variety, depending on the historical 
circumstance. To accomplish this, first, the article reviews the 
Marx-Weber debate to develop a theoretical and methodological approach 
to the historical sociology of capitalism. The remainder of the paper 
focuses on narrating an empirical interpretation of the transition to 
capitalism including the diversity of labor forms capital historically 
utilized.


https://www.academia.edu/30406872/The_Two_Hundred_and_Fifty_Year_Transition_How_the_American_Empire_Became_Capitalist
_
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] University of Iowa Labor Center to Close, petition against the closing | Working Class Studies Association

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

  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.
*


https://wcstudiesassociation.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/university-of-iowa-labor-center-to-close/


Sent from my iPhone

_
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] Alice Donovan, Russiagate and the Rabbit Hole of Sanctimony

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

By Joshua Frank

Russiagate fever has not only infected MSDNC and liberal blowhards like 
Rachel Maddow, it’s also warped the minds of a few on the left who 
believe the whole thing is an elaborate charade concocted by the Deep 
State that’s forcing Trump into a new Cold War, despite his gracious 
“peace” offerings toward Russia. Well, as Eric Draitser rightly points 
out in his essay this weekend, Trump hasn’t been all that friendly with 
Russia, despite some cranky claims to the contrary. There is the case of 
arms shipments to Ukrainian fascists, a plea for a more robust NATO, 
which is knocking on Russia’s door and that little strangulation tactic 
called sanctions. Together these don’t add up to a very Putin-friendly 
policy. On the contrary, it makes Trump look like the warmongering 
narcissist that he is. It’s just too bad some lefties don’t see it.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/alice-donovan-russiagate-and-the-rabbit-hole-of-sanctimony/
_
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] The Curious Case of Pro-Trump Leftism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

By Eric Draitser

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-curious-case-of-pro-trump-leftism/
_
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] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Michael Marking via Marxism]

  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.
*


Yes! Where’s the real evidence? 

Crossing a thread line here, I agree with Louis Proyect, who wrote on
Friday 2018.07.20, “Frankly, I don't care if Russia helped Trump get
elected or not.” Nor am I convinced that a Clinton victory would have
made much difference. 

Trump has performed a great service to the leadership and backers of
both parties: he has provided a highly effective distraction. While
various supporters and opponents have vociferously made their views
known – and garnered a lot of media coverage in the process – the
main event, the looting of the main body of the people, has gone or
continued pretty much unnoticed in the press and among the people in
the street. It’s all about tweets and abuse of expense accounts and
Russian collusion, and not about the deeper story. Yes, Trump represents
the ruling class, in the same way that a clown represents a circus. It
doesn’t matter whether he does it intentionally or knowingly or not, but
he does it anyway. He’s a great distraction. 

This whole matter of Russian collusion and the purloined DNC files
serves as a good example, as a part of the distraction. Whether the
collusion issue matters or not in the grand scheme of things, it has
resulted in the insanity of just about everyone. Maybe I’m missing
something here, so someone help me, but where is the evidence for any
version of this story? I looked at the indictment: it has allegations,
but no evidence. I looked at the DNI report: the same story. The gold
standard for forensic evidence would be Clinton’s server, but, as Trump
asked, where is it? (I doubt if Trump really comprehends the
significance of his own question here.) Destruction of evidence is a
crime, too, but does anyone care? I’m certainly not defending Trump
here, but I don’t believe any statements by anyone from the FBI, CIA,
NSA, or anyone else in the so-called intelligence community, nor do I
have any confidence in whatever Putin or just about anyone else says.
This whole thing is just a big show. 

When I tell someone I can’t accept the official version of this or that
story (the JFK assassination, the 2001 WTC demolition, and so on), and
people ask me what really happened, I almost always have to answer, “I
don’t know, but the official story doesn’t work, it isn’t consistent
with the facts”. But people have an extremely difficult time accepting
that. It’s as if people demand an answer, even a wrong one, and refuse
to be put into a position of ignorance. They’d rather be wrong than
ignorant. 

I’m new to this Marxism thing. Somehow, until the last two years, I’d
never been exposed to it. But it works well for my minimalist approach
to certainty. It doesn’t matter if Putin helped Trump or if Wikileaks
got the DNC files from any specific person or what really was behind
any gas attack in Syria: the class analysis subsumes these things. It
has been a little like reading Einstein’s General Theory: it encompasses
the Special Theory, which generalizes Newton’s laws, and so on. It makes
predictions which can be tested. It’s not complete, as we still don’t
have a grand theory of everything, but it’s up the ladder. 

Of course, I get sucked into these ancillary questions, too. It’s fun,
I’m a sucker for unsolved puzzles, and I like a good story and
appreciate entertainment. Meanwhile, as Michelle Wolf pointed out at the
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the folks in Flint still don’t have
clean drinking water. And, I might add, they’re still dying and
otherwise suffering all over the world. 

I’m not asking anyone to drop these topics. As I said, I enjoy them.
I’ve stopped reading some “news” sites since I began reading this list:
it’s a great source of links to news and more. 

So I ask all you old-timers, in all humility, what have I been missing?
Where is the real evidence that Julian Assange was or wasn’t duped,
that he colluded or participated? While I’d find it hard to swallow a
line that the Russian state didn’t fool around with computers and
opinions and engaged in propagandizing, is there any real evidence that
the DNC files ended up in the hands of Wikileaks because of the Russians
and not because of an insider’s leak? Is there any real evidence that
Assange knew one way or the other? As far as I can see, we (the
outsiders?) don’t really know anything for sure. That’s pretty
remarkable, in itself. In fact, that’s probably more interesting than
the truth behind the revelation of the files. Just as, the truth behind
the lack of a real, independent investigation into the 2001 WTC event is
probably just as interesting as, if not more so than, the event itself.
It’s one thing to commit a crime, and another thing – usu