[Marxism] Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion.

[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.
*

NY Times, April 21, 2019
Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion.
By Nellie Bowles

WELLINGTON, Kan. — The seed of rebellion was planted in classrooms. It 
grew in kitchens and living rooms, in conversations between students and 
their parents.


It culminated when Collin Winter, 14, an eighth grader in McPherson, 
Kan., joined a classroom walkout in January. In the nearby town of 
Wellington, high schoolers staged a sit-in. Their parents organized in 
living rooms, at churches and in the back of machine repair shops. They 
showed up en masse to school board meetings. In neighborhoods with no 
political yard signs, homemade signs with dark red slash marks suddenly 
popped up.


Silicon Valley had come to small-town Kansas schools — and it was not 
going well.


“I want to just take my Chromebook back and tell them I’m not doing it 
anymore,” said Kallee Forslund, 16, a 10th grader in Wellington.


Eight months earlier, public schools near Wichita had rolled out a 
web-based platform and curriculum from Summit Learning. The Silicon 
Valley-based program promotes an educational approach called 
“personalized learning,” which uses online tools to customize education. 
The platform that Summit provides was developed by Facebook engineers. 
It is funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his 
wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician.


Many families in the Kansas towns, which have grappled with underfunded 
public schools and deteriorating test scores, initially embraced the 
change. Under Summit’s program, students spend much of the day on their 
laptops and go online for lesson plans and quizzes, which they complete 
at their own pace. Teachers assist students with the work, hold 
mentoring sessions and lead special projects. The system is free to 
schools. The laptops are typically bought separately.


Then, students started coming home with headaches and hand cramps. Some 
said they felt more anxious. One child began having a recurrence of 
seizures. Another asked to bring her dad’s hunting earmuffs to class to 
block out classmates because work was now done largely alone.


“We’re allowing the computers to teach and the kids all looked like 
zombies,” said Tyson Koenig, a factory supervisor in McPherson, who 
visited his son’s fourth-grade class. In October, he pulled the 
10-year-old out of the school.


“Change rarely comes without some bumps in the road,” said Gordon Mohn, 
McPherson’s superintendent of schools. He added, “Students are becoming 
self-directed learners and are demonstrating greater ownership of their 
learning activities.”


John Buckendorf, Wellington High School’s principal, said the “vast 
majority of our parents are happy with the program.”


The resistance in Kansas is part of mounting nationwide opposition to 
Summit, which began trials of its system in public schools four years 
ago and is now in around 380 schools and used by 74,000 students. In 
Brooklyn, high school students walked out in November after their school 
started using Summit’s platform. In Indiana, Pa., after a survey by 
Indiana University of Pennsylvania found 70 percent of students wanted 
Summit dropped or made optional, the school board scaled it back and 
then voted this month to terminate it. And in Cheshire, Conn., the 
program was cut after protests in 2017.


“When there are frustrating situations, generally kids get over them, 
parents get over them, and they all move on,” said Mary Burnham, who has 
two grandchildren in Cheshire’s school district and started a petition 
to end Summit’s use. “Nobody got over this.”


Silicon Valley has tried to remake American education in its own image 
for years, even as many in tech eschew gadgets and software at home and 
flood into tech-free schools. Summit has been part of the leading edge 
of the movement, but the rebellion raises questions about a heavy 
reliance on tech in public schools.


For years, education experts have debated the merits of self-directed, 
online learning versus traditional teacher-led classrooms. Proponents 
argue that programs like Summit provide children, especially those in 
underserved towns, access to high-quality curriculums and teachers. 
Skeptics worry about screen time and argue that students miss out on 
important interpersonal lessons.


Diane Tavenner, a former teacher and Summit’s chief executive, founded a 
series of public charter schools starting in 2003 called Summit Public 
Schools and began developing software to use in the classrooms so that 
students could “unlock the power within themselves.” The resulting 
program, Summit Learning, is spinning out into a new 

[Marxism] Ukraine election: Voters protest the oligarchic system – Кампнія Солідарності з Україною

[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://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2019/04/21/ukraine-election-voters-protest-the-oligarchic-system/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More

[Chris Slee 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.
*

John Reimann claims that "...the President of the United States is seriously 
beholden to a rival capitalist class" (i.e  the Russian capitalist class).

I see no evidence that Trump is acting in the interests of Russia.  He acts in 
the interests of United States imperialism.

For example, he has imposed a severe economic blockade on Venezuela, organised 
a coup attempt, and threatened to invade.  This is typical behaviour for US 
imperialism in Latin America.

But Russia and China are beginning to challenge US dominance in Latin America, 
as elsewhere.  When the Venezuelan government asked for Russian military aid to 
deter a possible US invasion, Russia sent a small military contingent.  Thus 
there is growing antagonism between US and Russian imperialism in Latin America.

Trump's ideas on what is in the interests of US imperialism sometimes differ 
from those of foreign policy "experts".  His stated intention to quickly 
withdraw US troops from northeastern Syria was opposed by some of his advisors, 
and eventually changed into a gradual withdrawal.

But Trump's original plan was not totally irrational from the viewpoint of US 
imperialism.  It would have pleased Erdogan, who wanted to invade northeastern 
Syria and crush the revolution there.  It would thus have improved US-Turkish 
relations, at least in the short term.

But the foreign policy experts were worried about some of the other effects of 
giving a green light to a Turkish invasion of northeast Syria.  It would have 
disrupted the fight against ISIS.  It might also, in the longer term, have 
destabilised Turkey, due to economic cost of the occupation and the casualties 
inflicted by the resistance.

Certainly Trump is erratic, and a less than ideal leader for US imperialism, 
but that does not mean he is a servant of Putin.

Chris Slee



From: Marxism  on behalf of John Reimann 
via Marxism 
Sent: Sunday, 21 April 2019 7:07:01 AM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: Re: [Marxism] The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay 
Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More

  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.
*

Ralph Johnson, apparently approvingly, quotes Glenn Greenwald: "I think
Donald Trump is a huge danger and
menace to the republic for a lot of reasons that David is very adeptly
covering, and I really hope that we can now turn our attention to those
things, now that we?re done with this espionage thriller that has
dominated us for three years. I hope we can focus on the things that
matter."

Like so much of the left as well as the alt-left, Greenwald completely
misses the point, which is that the President of the United States is
seriously beholden to a rival capitalist class. This is not a matter of
patriotism nor defense of "national interests"; it's a question of
understanding the political crisis of US capitalism, something which
Greenwald is incapable of doing.

That's because he is nothing but a somewhat more subtle version of Max
Blumenthal/Ben Norton. He openly advocates a red-brown alliance, having
equated the Occupy movement with the Tea Party as both being
"anti-establishment" and concluded "I think that left and right as we
understood them for the last four decades are starting to morph into
pro-establishment and anti-establishment dynamics and that will only
continue."

Greenwald supports the Assadist Tulsi Gabbard, and is a collaborator with
the far right Tucker Carlson.

Basically, Greenwald is like so much of the left that sees any opponent of
US imperialism as an ally, which is why he in effect defends Putin & Co. So
I think his views on the Mueller Report have to be considered in this
light. That there was collaboration, or attempted collaboration, between
the Trump campaign and the Putin regime is really beyond doubt. What was
the meeting at Trump Tower all about? What were the frequent contacts
between Trump staffers and Russian representatives about?

And the story goes back decades - to the fact that it was the Russian mafia
capitalist class that provided much of Trump's financing for decades. Even
Don jr. said this. And THAT is the real scandal of the Mueller
"investigation" - that they never tried to lift the lid on that can of
worms.

But Greenwald? His views should not be taken seriously.

John Reimann
--
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. 

[Marxism] Striking a Balance Between Fear and Hope on Climate Change - The New York Times

[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.
*

(From Jared Diamond's review of Bill McKibben's new book that is 
pessimistic about humanity's future. Diamond is a shill for corporate 
environmentalism and a despicable human being. His review is not worth 
forwarding but comrades should be aware that he was chosen to review the 
book for obvious reasons. The NYT refuses to identify capitalism as the 
root cause of our environmental problems.)



In fact, there are reasons for hope besides those McKibben discusses. 
One is the change in policies of some powerful multinational 
corporations. I can already hear the horrified screams of many of my 
environmentalist friends as I say this. However, I’ve been on the boards 
of two of the most effective international environmental organizations, 
World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, both of which are 
heavily involved with big, powerful corporations. I acknowledge that 
those corporations do some very bad things. But they also do some very 
good things on a large scale that their power makes them uniquely 
capable of doing. For example, Walmart has quietly been making  efforts 
to manage its supply chain, its wastes and its truck fleet sustainably — 
partly, but only partly, because it discovered that it can save money by 
doing so.


full: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/books/review/bill-mckibben-falter.html?searchResultPosition=3

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] ‘The Lehman Trilogy’ Criticizes Capitalism, at $2,000 a Seat

[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.
*

NY Times, April 21, 2019
‘The Lehman Trilogy’ Criticizes Capitalism, at $2,000 a Seat
By Ginia Bellafante

Since its American debut at the Park Avenue Armory last month, “The 
Lehman Trilogy” has had New Yorkers of a certain breed held tightly at 
the forearms. A play about money and decline, it has been chewed over by 
those still on top.


The show was virtually sold out long before it opened, with tickets for 
the best seats costing more than $400. Tickets for some of the final 
performances have now reached $2,000 on StubHub, at which point you 
might consider flying to London — the production returns there next 
month — spending a night at Claridge’s and buying a royal-baby 
saltshaker with whatever is left.


We are lingering in a moment in which there is a fashion, or even a 
giddiness, for spending large sums of money on theatrical experiences 
that explore the foundations and promises of American capitalism. 
Commenting on the success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s singular effort in 
this vein, The Harvard Business Review ran a piece three years ago 
titled: “Hamilton’s $849 Tickets Are Priced Too Low.” The point was that 
there were so many people with plenty of money desperate to see the show 
that too much power was redounding to scalpers.


But the fact that there were — and remain — so many people willing to 
spend so many hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a single evening 
of live theater suggests something else as well. Technology has so 
democratized the consumption of culture — much of it of impressively 
high quality — that it is possible for virtually anyone to stream nearly 
anything at any time. Naturally, a new system of status was bound to 
evolve. The housekeeper can watch “The Crown,” but only the mistress of 
the penthouse can see the musical sensation that has won 11 Tony Awards 
on her own schedule.


During its run, “Springsteen on Broadway” had tickets that sold for as 
much as $850. But resale platforms made them available for many times 
that — so it was possible to pay $8,000 to immerse yourself in Bruce’s 
world of vanished working-class hope. Or you might have realized that if 
you had that kind of money lying around to spend on two hours at the 
theater, you may be the root from which the problem weed is spreading.


The “Lehman Trilogy” has in its soul a critique of these imbalances, but 
its criticisms are facile and anodyne enough to offend no one benefiting 
from them. A history play, enacted by performers of incredible stamina 
who spend close to three and a half hours on stage, it tells the story 
of the Lehman brothers — Henry, Emanuel and Mayer — from their arrival 
in the United States as poor Bavarian immigrants in the middle of the 
19th century to the downfall of the bank they eventually created, more 
than 150 years later.


Coming to this country, the Lehmans went straight to Montgomery, Ala., 
where the cotton business was roaring. They opened a dry goods store but 
at some point epiphany struck. They realized they could potentially make 
lots of money serving as middlemen between local cotton plantations and 
northern mills. The play is not entirely blind to the flaws of its 
characters but bundles up sufficiently under the pup tent of hagiography 
to have us assume that the Lehman brothers invented the notion of 
brokering, a tradition that predates them by at least a millennium. (The 
word “broker,” just so you can keep this fact on hand, derives from 
“broceur,” meaning “small trader” in a style of regional French spoken 
in the eighth century.) Cotton led to business in other commodities and 
ultimately to money lending and a banking empire.


The play’s creator, the Italian dramatist Stefano Massini, mines a 
well-established idea: that as the Lehmans, and by extension modern 
capitalism, moved further and further away from the intimate business of 
buying and selling tangible things to focus on shifting money around for 
maximum profit — developing abstract financial instruments that ordinary 
people could not possibly understand — virtue gave way to corruption.


“The Lehman Trilogy’’ is not an angry play; it would like you to believe 
that the greed of dynasties and the values of bloodline are superior to 
those of the scrappy interlopers who inherit corporate lines of 
succession when the founding families have either died off or retreated 
to lives of spirituality.


In Mr. Massini’s understanding, trouble found its true engine when the 
last of the actual Lehmans ran Lehman Brothers and management was given 
over to the ambitious roughnecks in the trading division rather than the 
well-mannered investment bankers who had been 

[Marxism] CORRECTED LINKS: James Robertson obituaries

[Alan Ginsberg 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 Spartacist League has not yet issued an obit for its founder. Here are
two recent Robertson obituaries.

1. from the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, "Obituary:
James Robertson, Spartacist League founder (1928-2019)"
https://socialistfight.com/2019/04/17/obituary-james-robertson-spartacist-league-founder-1928-2019/

2. from revolutionary programme, a piece by a supporter of the Bolshevik
Tendency (a splinter from the Spartacist splinter International Bolshevik
Tendency): "james m. robertson: a balance sheet"
https://revolutionaryprogramme.wordpress.com/2019/04/14/james-m-robertson-a-balance-sheet/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] James Robertson obituaries

[Alan Ginsberg 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 Spartacist League has not yet issued an obit for its founder. Here are
two recent Robertson obituaries.

1. from the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, "Obituary:
James Robertson, Spartacist League founder (1928-2019)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Sons#cite_note-MEY-3

2. from revolutionary programme, a piece by a supporter of the Bolshevik
Tendency (a splinter from the Spartacist splinter International Bolshevik
Tendency): "james m. robertson: a balance sheet"
https://revolutionaryprogramme.wordpress.com/2019/04/14/james-m-robertson-a-balance-sheet/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Comedian Zelenskiy wins Ukrainian presidential race by landslide: exit poll - Reuters

[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.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-election-exit-polls-idUSKCN1RX0KU
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Old Lefties: An Oral History

[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 Paul Buhle.

https://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2019/04/lefties-oral-history
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Foreign Affairs: "This time the sky may really be falling."

[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.
*

Foreign Affairs, journal for the influential Council on Foreign Relations,
has published a fascinating article entitled "This time is different; why
US foreign policy will never recover." You can read it in its entirety here
.
But for those who don't want to register, here are some key excerpts:

The American foundations undergirding the liberal international order
 are
in grave danger, and it is no longer possible to take the pillars of that
order for granted. Think of the current moment as a game of Jenga in which
multiple pieces have been removed but the tower still stands. As a result,
some observers have concluded that the structure remains sturdy. But in
fact, it is lacking many important parts and, on closer inspection, is
teetering ever so slightly. Like a Jenga tower, the order will continue to
stand upright—right until the moment it collapses. Every effort should be
made to preserve the liberal international order, but it is also time to
start thinking about what might come after its end….


The question is not what U.S. foreign policy can do after Trump. The
question is whether there is any viable grand strategy that can endure past
an election cycle….


Washington made mistakes, of course, such as invading Iraq and forcing
countries to remove restrictions on the flow of capital across their
borders. As misguided as these errors were, and as much as they alienated
allies in the moment, they did not permanently weaken the United States’
position in the world. U.S. soft power suffered in the short term but
recovered quickly under the Obama administration. The United States still
managed to attract allies, and in the case of the 2011 intervention in
Libya, it was NATO allies

begging
Washington to use force, not vice versa. Today, the United States has more
treaty allies than any other country in the world—more, in fact, than any
country ever.

The United States was able to weather the occasional misstep in large part
because its dominance rested on such sturdy foundations. Its geographic
blessings are ample: bountiful natural resources, two large oceans to the
east and the west, and two valued partners to the north and the south. The
country has been so powerful for so long that many of its capabilities seem
to be fundamental constants of the universe rather than happenstance. The
United States has had the most powerful military in the world since 1945,
and its economy, as measured by purchasing power parity, became the biggest
around 1870. Few people writing today about international affairs can
remember a time when the United States was not the richest and most
powerful country.

Long-term hegemony only further embedded the United States’ advantage. In
constructing the liberal international order, Washington created an array
of multilateral institutions, from the UN Security Council to the World Bank
,
that privileged it and key allies. Having global rules of the game benefits
everyone, but the content of those rules benefited the United States in
particular….


The United States has also benefited greatly from its financial dominance.
The U.S. dollar replaced the British pound sterling as the world’s reserve
currency 75 years ago, giving the United States the deepest and most liquid
capital markets on the globe and enhancing the reach and efficacy of its
economic statecraft. In recent decades, Washington’s financial might has
only grown. Even though the 2008 financial crisis began in the American
housing market, the end result was that the United States became more,
rather than less, central to global capital markets. U.S. capital markets
proved to be deeper, more liquid, and better regulated than anyone else’s.
And even though many economists once lost sleep over the country’s growing
budget deficits, that has turned out to be a non-crisis. Many now argue
that the U.S. economy has a higher tolerance for public debt than
previously thought.

Diplomatically, all these endowments ensured that regardless of the issue
at hand, the United States was always viewed as a reliable leader….

At the same time as the international system cemented the United States’
structural power, the country’s domestic politics helped preserve a stable
foreign policy. A key dynamic was the push and pull between different
schools of thought. An equilibrium 

[Marxism] How a network of citizen investigators is tracking airstrikes in Yemen | CBC Radio

[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.cbc.ca/radio/day6/mueller-report-impeach-o-meter-kenney-and-climate-change-avengers-fan-theories-parkinson-s-chorus-and-more-1.5103411/how-a-network-of-citizen-investigators-is-tracking-airstrikes-in-yemen-1.5103431
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich - The Washington Post

[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.washingtonpost.com/politics/capitalism-in-crisis-us-billionaires-worry-about-the-survival-of-the-system-that-made-them-rich/2019/04/20/3e06ef90-5ed8-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] In Defense of the Labor Theory of Value - COSMONAUT

[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://cosmonaut.blog/2019/04/21/in-defense-of-the-labor-theory-of-value/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Why I’m Glad Netanyahu Won – LobeLog

[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 James Zogby

https://lobelog.com/why-im-glad-netanyahu-won/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] [New post] A Socialist Defector

[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 4/21/19 12:55 AM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:

The GDR was not an example of the working class running society. In my view, to
use it as an example of "the universal appeal of socialism" is to substitute the
ideology of benevolent despotism for socialism.


Why don't you read the book, except making the predictable 
state-capitalist pronunciamiento? Oh, I know. Everybody on the left 
except for your 25 or so pure souls is an enemy of Marxism and beyond 
salvation unless they join the Communistic Workers Voice. Let me tell 
you something, comrade Green, there are sins of commission and sins of 
omission. The Stalinists committed plenty of sins but the alphabet soup 
of sects in the USA, from yours and the late James Robertson's are 
guilty of sins of omission. What did you people do to help the Central 
American revolution in the 1980s that were desperately trying to ward 
off American imperialism? Oh, don't bother. I know the answer. You were 
denouncing their treacherous leaderships rather than raising money and 
material aid for a Sister City.

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More

[John Edmundson 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.
*

John Reimann writes, quoting Glenn Greenwald:
" I think that left and right as we understood them for the last four
decades
are starting to morph into pro-establishment and anti-establishment
dynamics and that will only continue." That last comment especially, in
which he dismisses a left-right divide, is the exact position of the likes
of Steve Bannon and Alexander Dugin."

I think part of the problem there is the confusion on the left these days.
For the likes of Bannon, anyone in or left of the Democrats is 'left', and
that encompasses a lot of different thinking, some of it having little or
nothing to say about class. So in a sense Greenwald is right. Some on the
"left" are generically anti-establishment. Until there is a genuine
significant movement on the left, distinguishing what left means and
separating it from incoherent anti-establishment thinking will be difficult.

Cheers,
John

On Sun, Apr 21, 2019 at 9:27 PM John Reimann via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> I'm not sure if Ralph Johanson was asking me to document my claims about
> Greenwald or if he was just commenting, but in case it's the former, here
> goes:
>
> I had written that he is a somewhat more subtle version of Ben Norton/Max
> Blumenthal and that he supports the Assadist, Tulsi Gabbard. I had
> forgotten to mention that he too supports Assad. He does so in a more
> subtle way than do Blumenthal and Norton, for example in this article:
>
> https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/the-spoils-of-war-trump-lavished-with-media-and-bipartisan-praise-for-bombing-syria/
> Note
> how he implies that US policy has been regime change in Syria and how he
> casts doubt on who was responsible for the gas attack there.
>
> As for his support for Gabbard, see this article:
>
>
> https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-homophobic-history-defended-tucker-carlson-glenn-greenwald-2019-1
>   This article also documents his collaboration with Tucker Carlson. This
> article (
>
> https://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-greenwald-rips-msnbc-to-tucker-carlson-they-fed-people-total-disinformation-and-exploited-fears-on-russia/
> )
> does likewise. It also shows how he aligns himself with the likes of Jeremy
> Scahill.
>
>
> As for his defense of the red-brown alliance and his equating the Tea Party
> with Occupy, see this interview he did with RT while he was in Russia
> https://www.rt.com/usa/432042-greenwald-rt-interview-moscow/ In it he is
> quoted as saying, "Two of the most important protest movements in the US –
> one was the Tea Party, the other was Occupy Wall Street – were both
> perceived to be on different ends of the political spectrum. Yet they had
> very similar issues in common. They were protesting the bailout of Wall
> Street after the Wall Street crisis, the domination of corporations I
> think that left and right as we understood them for the last four decades
> are starting to morph into pro-establishment and anti-establishment
> dynamics and that will only continue." That last comment especially, in
> which he dismisses a left-right divide, is the exact position of the likes
> of Steve Bannon and Alexander Dugin.
>
> In that interview, Greenwald continues "There are factions within the
> intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that
> hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking
> classified information against him." While Greenwald dismisses the
> Trump-Russia collusion as "conspiracy theory", it is he, himself, who
> engages in this sort of nonsense here. Why would these "factions" inside
> the CIA, etc. hate Trump? The reason given by his type in the past is that
> "Trump wants peace". Is that what he's claiming?
>
> Greenwald an "exceptionally astute, well-informed spokesperson"? Hardly.
>
> Johanson dismisses my criticisms of Greenwald as being ad hominem attacks,
> but in considering the views of a commentator on a particular issue it is
> perfectly legitimate to consider their overall views. And I do think that
> Greenwald's overall views mean that he's not to be taken seriously.
>
> 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
> 

[Marxism] Washington Post: "Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich"

[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.
*

Here

is a fascinating article from today's Washington Post. It focuses on US
Congressman Ro Khanna, who is from San Mateo County. Khanna is the premier
representative of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs/capitalists. The article
follows Khanna around as he talks with different Silicon Valley
billionaires, trying to convince them to change their ways for their own
benefit. The article also makes clear what Sanders' campaign is really all
about - convincing the capitalists that they'd better change their ways.
Far from cutting his ties with the US capitalist class, Sanders has
appointed Khanna as one of four co-chairs of his election committee.
Khanna, in turn, is the direct link to the Silicon Valley billionaires.
Another co-chair is Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.

For those who can't get past the Post's pay wall, I have attached the text
as a file attachment.

-- 
*“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: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More

[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.
*

I'm not sure if Ralph Johanson was asking me to document my claims about
Greenwald or if he was just commenting, but in case it's the former, here
goes:

I had written that he is a somewhat more subtle version of Ben Norton/Max
Blumenthal and that he supports the Assadist, Tulsi Gabbard. I had
forgotten to mention that he too supports Assad. He does so in a more
subtle way than do Blumenthal and Norton, for example in this article:
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/the-spoils-of-war-trump-lavished-with-media-and-bipartisan-praise-for-bombing-syria/
Note
how he implies that US policy has been regime change in Syria and how he
casts doubt on who was responsible for the gas attack there.

As for his support for Gabbard, see this article:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-homophobic-history-defended-tucker-carlson-glenn-greenwald-2019-1
  This article also documents his collaboration with Tucker Carlson. This
article (
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-greenwald-rips-msnbc-to-tucker-carlson-they-fed-people-total-disinformation-and-exploited-fears-on-russia/
)
does likewise. It also shows how he aligns himself with the likes of Jeremy
Scahill.


As for his defense of the red-brown alliance and his equating the Tea Party
with Occupy, see this interview he did with RT while he was in Russia
https://www.rt.com/usa/432042-greenwald-rt-interview-moscow/ In it he is
quoted as saying, "Two of the most important protest movements in the US –
one was the Tea Party, the other was Occupy Wall Street – were both
perceived to be on different ends of the political spectrum. Yet they had
very similar issues in common. They were protesting the bailout of Wall
Street after the Wall Street crisis, the domination of corporations I
think that left and right as we understood them for the last four decades
are starting to morph into pro-establishment and anti-establishment
dynamics and that will only continue." That last comment especially, in
which he dismisses a left-right divide, is the exact position of the likes
of Steve Bannon and Alexander Dugin.

In that interview, Greenwald continues "There are factions within the
intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that
hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking
classified information against him." While Greenwald dismisses the
Trump-Russia collusion as "conspiracy theory", it is he, himself, who
engages in this sort of nonsense here. Why would these "factions" inside
the CIA, etc. hate Trump? The reason given by his type in the past is that
"Trump wants peace". Is that what he's claiming?

Greenwald an "exceptionally astute, well-informed spokesperson"? Hardly.

Johanson dismisses my criticisms of Greenwald as being ad hominem attacks,
but in considering the views of a commentator on a particular issue it is
perfectly legitimate to consider their overall views. And I do think that
Greenwald's overall views mean that he's not to be taken seriously.

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 your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com