[Marxism] 2009 interview with hunger-striker, POW and trade union leader Tommy McKearney

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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This is an interview I did with Tommy McKearney back in 2009.

The British introduced internment in the north of Ireland in August 1971,
the same day Tommy received his high school A-level results.  He joined the
Irish Republican Army, later becoming OC of the East Tyrone Brigade of the
IRA.

Captured, he served 16 years in prison, including being on the
blanket protest, the dirty protest and the 1980 hunger strike.

After his release in 1993, he became a prominent critic of the Provos shift
to bourgeois nationalism.  Tommy himself became a socialist writer and a
key figure in the class struggle-oriented new Independent Workers Union.

https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/2009-interview-with-tommy-mckearney/
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[Marxism] Rebuilding Syria, one luxury hotel at a time | Rashmee Roshan Lall | AW

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://thearabweekly.com/rebuilding-syria-one-luxury-hotel-time
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[Marxism] Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists labor panel discussion

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Reminder: International labor panel discussion this Sunday at 7:00 p.m.
Geneva time (=10:00 a.m. Pacific time). Organized by the Alliance of Middle
Eastern Socialists. I will be one of the panelists.
https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/livestream-dialogue-between-chinese-algerian-iranian-venezuelan-and-u-s-labor-activists-on-international-labor-solidarity/

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[Marxism] Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ | Books | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists
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[Marxism] Text - The U.S. has lost the Afghanistan war

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-has-lost-the-afghanistan-war-dont-let-it-botch-the-retreat/
 

At some point in the next year, the White House will almost certainly complete 
the task it suspended last week, and negotiate a retreat from the largest 
military defeat it has experienced since Vietnam.

The word defeat will not be uttered. Nor will retreat. Instead, “peace 
agreement” and “phased withdrawal” will be the preferred euphemisms, partly out 
of respect for the 3,459 soldiers, including 157 Canadians, who have given 
their lives in this 18-year war in Afghanistan, and partly out of a sense of 
political self-preservation.

But there is no disguising the fact that it is an admission of defeat in an 
unaffordable and unsustainable conflict.

The main challenge for the Trump administration will be to make it look like 
something more noble, by extracting some visible concessions in exchange for 
its retreat. The difficulty of accomplishing this in a non-humiliating way 
helps explain President Donald Trump’s bizarre shifts in behaviour last week, 
during which he was prepared to hold a rather distasteful-looking summit with 
Taliban leaders at Camp David three days before Sept. 11, and then cancelled 
the whole thing in alleged response to yet another bloody Taliban attack.

The main challenge for the rest of the world will be to ensure that those 
concessions do not strictly serve narrow U.S. interests – that is, that they 
are not singularly focused on the chimeric threat of Afghan-based international 
terrorism – and that they include commitments that allow us to keep at least 
some of the promises we made to the Afghan people, giving them a sense that two 
decades of violence served some beneficial purpose.

At best, those gains will be marginal. The United States is leaving not because 
the Afghan National Army is in a position to take control of a country it holds 
and is fully able to secure. Rather, the U.S. is leaving because it has proved 
to be impossible, at any price anyone wants to spend, to prevent the Taliban 
from controlling half that territory and from bringing horrifying violence to 
the rest.

This is why the United States is negotiating only with the Taliban, and not 
with the elected Afghan government it installed. (In fact, the Trump 
administration this week angrily withdrew US$160-million in funding to the 
government, on the eve of elections).

It is the Taliban that is fighting the United States and its allies. There has 
not been a surrender or ceasefire on either side – both are pursuing a fight 
and talk strategy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted last week that they 
had killed “over 1,000 Taliban” in 10 days, and the Taliban has responded with 
horrific attacks, most recently a bombing on Thursday that destroyed a hospital 
and killed at least 20.

At least 82 per cent of Afghans, according to polls, have “no sympathy” for the 
Taliban. The prospect of a return to the sort of Islamic-fundamentalist 
government they meted out in the late 1990s is abhorrent to the majority of the 
population.

But the extraordinary level of violence – which has killed tens of thousands of 
Afghan civilians and maimed or impoverished far more – is also something 
Afghans desperately want to end. And that will only happen with a U.S. 
withdrawal. Big military surges under Barack Obama and Mr. Trump have only 
further inflamed the conflict and increased instability. Afghanistan is set to 
have a national election next weekend, and there are ominous signs that it will 
be blocked by awful acts of violence.

Afghans’ biggest fear is not either of the combatants, but the war itself.

The Taliban have shown that they are capable of ending the violence. When they 
called a three-day ceasefire on the eve of Eid last year, the country was 
startlingly peaceful for three days (and then for another 15 as the government 
extended its ceasefire).

They have not, however, shown any trustworthy commitment to the minimum rights 
of women and girls, to the maintenance of democracy or to basic rule of law. 
Here is where the retreat negotiations, which have so far been kept secret, can 
have some sway.

Sadly, the U.S., in their statements, have had an almost singular obsession 
with the possibility that the Taliban would once again allow al-Qaeda to use 
Afghanistan as a base for attacks on the U.S. or its allies – the issue that 
formed the legal basis for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Few terrorism 
experts consider it a plausible threat tod

[Marxism] NY Times: Annette Kolodny, Feminist Critic and Scholar, Dies at 78

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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She was a pioneer in the field of ecofeminism, in which she drew parallels
between the ravaging of the environment and the ravaging of women.

By Katharine Q. Seelye 
Published Sept. 20, 2019Updated Sept. 21, 2019

Annette Kolodny, a literary and cultural critic who was a pioneer in the
field of ecofeminism, drawing parallels between the subjugation of the
environment and the subjugation of women, died on Sept. 11 at her home in
Tucson. She was 78.

Her husband, Daniel Peters, said she learned she had rheumatoid arthritis
when she was 19 and had been using a wheelchair for the last decade. She
died of infections resulting from sores from prolonged sitting, he said.

Dr. Kolodny was a prodigious author and scholar with many areas of
interest, among them early American literature, Native American culture,
women’s studies and feminist literary criticism. Although she wrote books,
she specialized in essays, and much of her most influential work —
including perhaps her most famous piece, “Dancing Through the Minefield:
Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist
Literary Criticism” (1980) — was published in academic and literary
journals.

She was also one of the first Americans to delve into ecofeminism, a
subgenre of feminist literary criticism that grew out of the environmental
movement of the 1960s.

Through this lens, Dr. Kolodny connected the ravaging of the land,
particularly in the opening of the American West, and the ravaging of
women. She explored that concept in the book “The Lay of the Land: Metaphor
as Experience and History in American Life and Letters” (1975).

She was teaching at the University of New Hampshire when she wrote that
book, and while it broke new ground and received positive reviews, she was
denied tenure, even as men with similar credentials were promoted. That led
her to sue the university for discrimination; the university settled with
her out of court in 1980, but the experience was traumatic for her and
would have lasting effects.

“We lost almost all of the friends we thought we made,” Mr. Peters, her
husband, who is a novelist, said. “At a certain point, a number of the
women suddenly started getting tenure, and they drummed her out of their
group. She felt they had abandoned her.”

Still, Dr. Kolodny continued her scholarly and critical work. In 1984 she
published another important book on ecofeminism, “The Land Before Her:
Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630—1860.”

n 2012, she completed one of her most monumental and well-regarded books,
“In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the
Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery.” In it, she
re-examined two medieval Icelandic tales, known as the Vinland sagas, and
argued that they were the first known European narratives about contact
with Native Americans.

“Her interest in Native Americans arose with her interest in ecofeminism,
because they both dealt with issues of cultural and economic
appropriation,” Adele Barker, a friend and former professor who worked with
Dr. Kolodny in cultural studies at the University of Arizona, said in a
phone interview.

She added, “The issues that lay at the heart of feminism, issues of power
and oppression, lay at the heart of all her work.”

Annette Kolodny was born on Aug. 21, 1941, on Governors Island in New York
Harbor, where her father, David Kolodny, a dentist, was stationed while in
the Army. Her mother, Esther (Rifkin) Kolodny, was a public-school teacher.

Annette grew up in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College, graduating Phi
Beta Kappa in 1962. She went to work as a low-level employee for Newsweek
magazine’s international editions, but, like many women there, she was
frustrated.

“Women were not being promoted,” Mr. Peters said, “and she didn’t see a way
to go higher.”

She left after a year and studied English and American literature at the
University of California, Berkeley. She received her doctorate in 1969.

Her first job after that was teaching at Yale, where she met Mr. Peters, a
senior in her class on the contemporary American novel; they were married
in 1970. In addition to him, she is survived by her sisters, Nancy Weiner
and Edie Kolodny-Nagy.

With the Vietnam War raging, Mr. Peters was worried about being drafted.
The couple left Yale for Canada, where Dr. Kolodny taught literature at the
University of British Columbia and Mr. Peters attended graduate school.

They returned to the United States in 1974, and she landed a teaching job
at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. When she was denied tenure,
Dr. Kolodny, who wa

Re: [Marxism] The U.S. has lost the Afghanistan war

[Ismail Lagardien via Marxism]

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Hi
Does anyone who has a Mac and subscription to this export it as a Pdf and share 
please.
Ismail

Dr Ismail LagardienVisiting ProfessorWits University School of Governance

Nihil humani a me alienum puto
 

On Saturday, 21 September 2019, 16:40:19 GMT+2, Ken Hiebert via Marxism 
 wrote:  
 
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The U.S. has lost the Afghanistan war. Don’t let it botch the retreat

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-has-lost-the-afghanistan-war-dont-let-it-botch-the-retreat/
 


At best, those gains will be marginal. The United States is leaving not because 
the Afghan National Army is in a position to take control of a country it holds 
and is fully able to secure. Rather, the U.S. is leaving because it has proved 
to be impossible, at any price anyone wants to spend, to prevent the Taliban 
from controlling half that territory and from bringing horrifying violence to 
the rest.

This is why the United States is negotiating only with the Taliban, and not 
with the elected Afghan government it installed. (In fact, the Trump 
administration this week angrily withdrew US$160-million in funding to the 
government, on the eve of elections).
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[Marxism] Games Economists Play | Boston Review

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-games-economists-play
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[Marxism] Video of climate strike in SF yesterday

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Here is a video of the climate strike in San Francisco yesterday, along
with some commentary:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/09/21/sept-20-2019-the-start-of-a-global-youth-movement-to-prevent-climate-disaster/

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
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[Marxism] The U.S. has lost the Afghanistan war

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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The U.S. has lost the Afghanistan war. Don’t let it botch the retreat

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-us-has-lost-the-afghanistan-war-dont-let-it-botch-the-retreat/
 


At best, those gains will be marginal. The United States is leaving not because 
the Afghan National Army is in a position to take control of a country it holds 
and is fully able to secure. Rather, the U.S. is leaving because it has proved 
to be impossible, at any price anyone wants to spend, to prevent the Taliban 
from controlling half that territory and from bringing horrifying violence to 
the rest.

This is why the United States is negotiating only with the Taliban, and not 
with the elected Afghan government it installed. (In fact, the Trump 
administration this week angrily withdrew US$160-million in funding to the 
government, on the eve of elections).
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[Marxism] Review of Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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London Review of Books, Vol. 41 No. 18 · 26 September 2019
pages 5-8 | 5925 words
Wedded to the Absolute
by Ferdinand Mount

Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain by Paul Corthorn
Oxford, 233 pp, £20.00, August, ISBN 978 0 19 874714 7

There is still no plaque at the Midland Hotel, Birmingham (now rebranded 
as the Macdonald Burlington), to mark the spot where Enoch Powell 
delivered his famous speech on 20 April 1968. Yet of all the speeches 
delivered by British politicians in the 20th century, or come to that in 
the 21st, it remains the most memorable, surpassing even the snatches I 
can recall of ‘We shall fight on the beaches.’ Rereading the full text 
(some three thousand words), I find that almost every sentence is eerily 
familiar.


One should not discount the hypnotic power of Powell’s physical 
presence. Those dark glaring eyes that followed you round the room, the 
grim ironic twist of the lips that seemed to mock what you hadn’t yet 
said, the villain’s moustache he had grown, he told Malcolm Muggeridge 
in 1940, in imitation not of Ronald Colman but of Friedrich Nietzsche, 
whom he adored and to whom he bore a resemblance. Above all, that harsh, 
thrilling, unnaturally slowed-down voice. Has anyone else ever made the 
loveable Brummie accent sound sinister, at least until Peaky Blinders 
came along? In my experience, nobody, not even Oswald Mosley or Richard 
Nixon, was capable of radiating such unease in company. Harold Macmillan 
couldn’t stand having Powell opposite him in cabinet looking ‘like 
Savonarola eyeing one of the more disreputable popes’. So he relocated 
Enoch way down the table where he couldn’t catch his glittering eye.


There is only one passage in Powell’s Birmingham speech that I had quite 
forgotten, still a remarkable one, in which Powell pays tribute to the 
‘insight’ and ‘courage’ of his fellow Black Country MP John Stonehouse, 
soon to become postmaster general and then regarded as a coming man in 
the Labour Party, perhaps even a future leader. Stonehouse had denounced 
as ‘a canker’ the campaign by local Sikh bus conductors to be allowed to 
wear their turbans at work. By then, most British bus companies had 
already agreed to drop the ban on turbans. Powell’s own Wolverhampton 
dropped it the following year. In 1974, Stonehouse faked his own 
disappearance by leaving a pile of clothes on a Miami beach (forgetting 
the absence of tides strong enough to carry his body out to sea). He 
later resurfaced in Australia, then returned to England, where he joined 
the English National Party before being jailed for seven years on 21 
charges of fraud, theft and forgery. He died in 1988. More than twenty 
years later, it was confirmed that he had for most of his political life 
been spying for Czechoslovakia. He is the only person to be praised by 
name in Powell’s speech. What an ally.


Stonehouse apart, how it all comes back to me. The high-flown beginning: 
‘The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable 
evils.’ And that sonorous, sulphurous finale: ‘As I look ahead, I am 
filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber 
foaming with much blood”.’ (Actually, it wasn’t a Roman but the Sibyl 
who makes this prophecy, in Book VI of the Aeneid – a rare lapse for 
such a formidable classicist.) And, in between, the descent into the 
most vivid and shocking particulars: the widowed old-age pensioner in 
Wolverhampton who had lost her husband and two sons in the war and whose 
life was now made unbearable by the ‘negroes’ – Powell was still using 
the word in a speech he gave at Hatfield in 1987 – who had taken over 
her street:


	The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her 
out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house – at a 
price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his 
tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid to go 
out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. 
When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, 
wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they 
know. ‘Racialist’, they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is 
passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so 
wrong? I begin to wonder.


I find it impossible now not to hear echoes from closer at hand: 
‘flag-waving piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ – has anyone else 
between Powell in 1968 and Boris Johnson in 2002 used the word 
‘piccaninnies’? And what was it Johnson said about women in burkas? ‘It 
is absolutely ridiculous that people should c

[Marxism] Scathing review of Max Blumenthal’s “Management of Savagery” and Verso’s standards | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://louisproyect.org/2019/09/21/scathing-review-of-max-blumenthals-management-of-savagery-and-versos-standards/
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[Marxism] Letter from London | Shane Boyle

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Commentary on Brexit.

https://communemag.com/letter-from-london/
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[Marxism] MR Online | Marx in the museum

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Perhaps it’s not hard to visualize a ragged and moth-eaten Karl Marx 
traipsing from Dean Street to his British Museum hide out. He’d be 
shuffling along, incognito, through Soho’s crowded backstreets, headed 
for the Reading Room to plot capitalism’s downfall, forever on the 
lookout for creditors and police spies. Revolutionary hopes sustained 
him through the acute penury; Marx’s political calling was more 
important to him than anything else, he’d said, more important than even 
his health, his happiness, and his family. He’d pass up Dean Street, 
across Soho Square, through narrow Sutton Row onto Charing Cross Road, 
up to New Oxford Street and then Coptic Street, northwards towards Great 
Russell Street and, finally, climb the steps of the Museum’s majestic 
entrance. At a good lick, it’d take fifteen minutes.


https://mronline.org/2019/09/20/marx-in-the-museum/
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