[Marxism] Mercenaries, pandemic and riots in Venezuela: a grassroots perspective

2020-05-08 Thread Chris Slee via Marxism
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https:// 
www.greenleft.org.au/content/mercenaries-pandemic-and-riots-venezuela-grassroots-perspective


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[Marxism] Rivers Merge in St. Louis. So Do Racism, Violence and Exclusion.

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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NY Times, May 8, 2020
Rivers Merge in St. Louis. So Do Racism, Violence and Exclusion.
By Jennifer Szalai

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the 
United States

By Walter Johnson
Illustrated. 528 pages. Basic Books. $35.


A century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about St. Louis, a city that 
“sprawls where mighty rivers meet,” and offered an autopsy of a tragedy. 
In the summer of 1917, after a labor dispute at an aluminum plant, black 
residents of East St. Louis were chased down, strung up, beaten, burned 
and shot. Their white neighbors had turned on them with a viciousness 
that was gratuitous and grotesque — a cruelty too extravagant to be 
understood as a matter of mere survival. “It was not that the white 
American worker was threatened with starvation,” Du Bois wrote, pointing 
to the booming wartime economy, “but it was what was, after all, a more 
important question — whether or not he should lose his front-room and 
Victrola and even the dream of a Ford car.”


The East St. Louis Massacre of 1917 features in “The Broken Heart of 
America,” a new book by Walter Johnson, as one particularly horrific 
example of how St. Louis figures into the entwined history of white 
supremacy, capitalism and violence in the United States. Johnson begins 
with the Lewis and Clark expedition of the early 19th century and ends 
with the police shooting of an unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., 
in 2014.


A professor at Harvard and the author of two previous books about 
slavery, Johnson allows that he has a personal interest in the subject — 
not as a victim of racial capitalism but as an unwitting beneficiary of 
it. He grew up two hours west of St. Louis, in a white suburb where 
people talked about “high property values” and “good schools,” and tried 
to distance themselves from the overt racism of their neighbors by 
deeming it unseemly. That gave them an “alibi,” he writes, for failing 
to recognize how their own privileged lives were built on exclusion.


I’m using the word “built” advisedly: One of Johnson’s arguments is that 
racism and inequality don’t just course through the city’s history but 
were built into its architecture and even its physical landscape. 
Located at the juncture of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, St. 
Louis was where the Southern system of slavery met the push for western 
expansion. The city functioned as the administrative center for the 
policy that became known as Indian Removal; with the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820, it became one of the northernmost outposts of slavery in the 
Union. The 20th century brought redlining and the destruction of black 
neighborhoods. The embodiment of the city’s “urban renewal” policies of 
the ’50s and ’60s was the enormous Pruitt-Igoe housing project, 
neglected to the point of utter disrepair before it was dynamited into 
rubble.


When it comes to the history of racism and exclusion in the United 
States, St. Louis wasn’t unique in this regard; what it was, Johnson 
says, was more extreme. For a chapter on the 1904 World’s Fair that was 
held there, he has chosen the title “The Babylon of the New World”; the 
phrase originated from a Gilded Age civic booster who meant it as a 
compliment, equating St. Louis with an imperial center for culture and 
learning, but Johnson prefers the more ignominious connotations from the 
Old Testament — a city that presented itself “in the splendor of its 
boundless ambition, but rotten at the core.”


Johnson is a spirited and skillful rhetorician, juggling a profusion of 
historical facts while never allowing the flame of his anger to dim. 
Sometimes his metaphors can get a little overheated; after describing 
how the city of Ferguson levies outrageous fines on its poorest 
citizens, effectively harvesting them for operating expenses, he doesn’t 
really need to compare another form of revenue extraction to “a junkie 
using his kids’ lunch money to fund a bad habit.” He also errs on the 
side of rolling, multiclausal explications where a sharper indictment 
might sometimes do. But the story he’s telling has so many elements that 
it makes sense he would immerse himself in the intricacies of tax 
increment financing and municipal bond debt. As he ably shows, so much 
exploitation lies in the details.


In “The Broken Heart of America,” St. Louis emerges as a place of 
firsts: one of the first recorded lynchings, in 1836; the first city to 
pass a residential segregation ordinance by popular referendum, in 1916. 
Dred Scott filed his original freedom suit in St. Louis, where he lived; 
it eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice 
Roger 

[Marxism] NY Times: Denis Goldberg, South African Freedom Fighter, Is Dead at 87

2020-05-08 Thread Alan Ginsberg via Marxism
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He was the only white defendant to be convicted alongside Nelson Mandela
and others in 1964 for resisting apartheid. He spent 22 years in prison.

By Alan Cowell May 8, 2020

Denis Goldberg, one of two surviving political activists convicted in the
so-called Rivonia Trial, which put Nelson Mandela and seven others in
prison for many years and proved a turning-point in South Africa’s long
struggle against apartheid, died on April 29 in Cape Town. He was 87.

His family, in confirming the death, said he had been treated for lung
cancer.

Mr. Goldberg’s career, first in the armed resistance movement and later in
the post-apartheid era, encapsulated much of his country’s modern history,
from the racial nuances of the struggle against white minority rule to the
reluctant acknowledgment of — and disillusion with — the corruption that
became a byword in early 21st-century South Africa.

At the trial, which lasted from 1963 to 1964, many of those accused of
sabotage were expecting the death sentence. Indeed, in a celebrated address
from the dock, Mr. Mandela said his ideal of a democratic and free South
Africa was, “if needs be, an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

When Judge Quartus de Wet pronounced life sentences on eight defendants,
Mr. Goldberg’s mother, Annie Goldberg, who was in the public gallery, did
not hear what he said.

“Denis, what is it?” she called out. “What did the judge say?”

Mr. Goldberg replied: “Life! Life is wonderful!”

In all, 11 people faced charges as the trial approached. Of those, the
state withdrew its accusations against one potential defendant, Robert
Hepple, and he was released. Two others — Lionel Bernstein, who was known
as Rusty, and James Kantor — were acquitted. All three fled to London.

Those convicted along with Mr. Mandela and Mr. Goldberg were Walter Sisulu,
Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed
Kathrada. With Mr. Goldberg’s death, the sole survivor of those convicted
is Mr. Mlangeni, now 94.

At 31 Mr. Goldberg was the youngest of those convicted and the only white
person among them.

The hearings came at a crucial juncture in South African history. The
authorities there had increasingly resorted to force in suppressing
opposition to apartheid, the white rulers’ draconian system of racial
separation, and their adversaries had turned to armed struggle in response.
The trial was intended to crush and silence Mr. Mandela and his followers.

But the prisoners turned the occasion into a global indictment of
apartheid, particularly with Mr. Mandela’s speech from the dock.

“It was the most important trial in South Africa’s history,” Nick Stadlen,
a former High Court judge in Britain who made a documentary film about the
trial in 2017 that featured Mr. Goldberg and others, wrote in The Guardian
after Mr. Goldberg’s death.

The origins of the trial date to July 1963, when the South African security
forces raided Liliesleaf Farm, a hideout in the Rivonia district in the
northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Members of mKhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the
Nation), the clandestine military wing of the African National Congress —
both of them outlawed organizations — were meeting there when the police
stormed in. At the time, Mr. Goldberg, a member of the banned South African
Communist Party, had been a technical officer in the military unit,
cloaking his sabotage activities behind a day job in the construction of a
power station in Cape Town.

Many of the documents produced at the trial had been written by him.
Indeed, he offered to assume responsibility for all the charges so that his
co-defendants could be acquitted. But they rejected his offer.

Before the trial, Mr. Goldberg was interrogated and threatened in a police
effort to secure confessions or persuade their captives to testify against
their fellow detainees. Under harsh laws permitting detention without trial
for 90 days, Mr. Goldberg’s wife, Esmé Goldberg, was also held for many
days.

Even Mr. Goldberg’s sentencing did not escape the strictures of apartheid.
While Mr. Mandela and six defendants were sent to serve their sentences on
Robben Island, off Cape Town, Mr. Goldberg was ordered to the Central
Prison in Pretoria, the administrative capital.

In more recent times the facility has been known as the prison where the
Olympic and Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius served part of a sentence
for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. It is also the setting for a
2020 movie “Escape from Pretoria,” starring Daniel Ratcliffe, which
chronicles a real-life breakout by three prisoners in 1979. Mr. Goldberg,
who helped facilitate the escape but did not participate in it, was 

[Marxism] Revealed: major anti-lockdown group's links to America's far right | World news | The Guardian

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/lockdown-groups-far-right-links-coronavirus-protests-american-revolution

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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] [UCE] Social Distancing and its Discontents - The Philosophical Salon

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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The young transgressors, the ultimate jouisseurs, are in fact nothing of 
the sort. They are, on the contrary, I claim, symptoms of the neoliberal 
and consumer culture ethic of the past half century. They prove that 
there is nothing inherently emancipatory about a politics of 
transgression. The kids on Spring Break in Florida help us make sense of 
the contradictions ingrained into the demands of neoliberalism and 
consumer society, particularly where a culture privileges the individual 
over society.


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[Marxism] Support tenants in need! | Chuffed | Non-profit charity and social enterprise fundraising

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Philly Socialist comrades involved with important pandemic activism. 
Please contribute.


https://chuffed.org/fundraiser/tim-stands-with-tenants

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[Marxism] Cash Cows | Joshua Specht

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://thebaffler.com/latest/cash-cows-specht

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[Marxism] The Planet of the Humans | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Ever since Mother Jones owner Adam Hochschild fired Michael Moore for 
refusing to publish Paul Berman’s attack on the Sandinistas in 1986, 
I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for him. But when he got down on his 
knees on the Bill Maher Show in 2008 to beg Ralph Nader not to run for 
President, a lot of that affection disappeared. For the past dozen 
years, I had grown weary of his conventional Hollywood liberalism that 
smacked of Rob Reiner and all the other millionaires who always ended up 
pleading for a vote for the lesser evil.


You could have knocked me over with a feather after I discovered that 
Moore had executive produced a film titled “Planet of the Humans” that 
broke with the liberal establishment. Like poking a stick in a hornet’s 
nest, all the voices of establishment liberalism, from The Nation to 
Rolling Stone, swarmed around his head. The editors of the pink-tinted 
Jacobin must have suffered whiplash when news of the film broke. Only 
last November, Meagan Day’s adulatory piece titled “Michael Moore Was 
Right” appeared. Like Trotsky losing favor in the mid-20s, Michael Moore 
became an unperson after “Planet of the Humans”.


Jacobin unleashed their ecomodernist hitman Leigh Phillips, who penned a 
piece titled “Planet of the Anti-Humanists” that predictably condemned 
the film as “Malthusian.” He even raised the possibility that Moore and 
director Jeff Gibbs were “anti-civilization,” as if they were plotting 
to recreate the world of Alley Oop and The Flintstones.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/05/08/the-planet-of-the-humans/

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[Marxism] An Appreciation of Neil Davidson (1957-2020) – Bella Caledonia

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/05/07/an-appreciation-of-neil-davidson-1957-2020/

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[Marxism] Is Bolsonaro About to Fall? – Spectre Journal

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://spectrejournal.com/is-bolsonaros-fall-nearing/

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[Marxism] Transcending convention - Weekly Worker

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1298/transcending-convention/

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[Marxism] Robin D. G. Kelley - What is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter? - YouTube

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--gim7W_jQQ

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[Marxism] Aren't We Tired Of The Obamas Yet? | Hood Communist

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://hoodcommunist.org/2020/05/07/arent-we-tired-of-the-obamas-yet/

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[Marxism] London Green Left Blog: Capitalism and Nature - A Really Inconvenient Truth

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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http://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2020/05/capitalism-and-nature-really.html

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[Marxism] ‘Plandemic’, the Viral Coronavirus Documentary, Stars a Discredited Doctor and Sham ‘Science’

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/plandemic-the-viral-coronavirus-documentary-stars-a-discredited-doctor-and-sham-science

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[Marxism] Beware! Cuomo Adds Another Billionaire to "Reimagine" Post-Pandemic Public Education | Common Dreams Views

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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By Diane Ravitch

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/06/beware-cuomo-adds-another-billionaire-reimagine-post-pandemic-public-education

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[Marxism] Catastrophism

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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So, unemployment has hit 1930s Great Depression levels and Laurie 
Garrett says that a 36-month pandemic is a best case scenario. Seven 
years ago, Sasha Lilley edited a book that warned the left against 
"catastrophism", a POV that likely included me. Well, it looks like 
Sasha and company's book had a pretty short shelf-life.


https://louisproyect.org/2013/03/20/catastrophism-and-the-left-a-response-to-sasha-lilley/

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[Marxism] Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and the origins of American anthropology.

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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The Nation
MAY 18/25, 2020, ISSUE
The Circle
Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and the origins of 
American anthropology.

By Jennifer Wilson

BOOKS IN REVIEW
GODS OF THE UPPER AIR: HOW A CIRCLE OF RENEGADE ANTHROPOLOGISTS 
REINVENTED RACE, SEX, AND GENDER IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

By Charles King

In 1949 a Columbia anthropologist named Geoffrey Gorer published an 
essay in his study The People of Great Russia, in which he attempted to 
provide insight into why those living in the Soviet Union were not more 
resistant to Stalinist authoritarianism. It was not because they were 
tortured or threatened with the gulag, according to Gorer and the 
study’s coauthor, the psychoanalyst John Rickman; it was because they 
had been swaddled for too long as babies. Gorer had studied 
child-rearing practices across Western and Eastern Europe and found that 
Russian peasants tended to swaddle their children for longer periods 
than other parents did, sometimes up to nine months. Therein lay the 
explanation, Gorer and Rickman insisted, for why the Soviets preferred 
the warm cloak of authoritarianism to the freedoms of Western 
liberalism. The theory, which came to be known as the swaddling 
hypothesis, was roundly and rightfully mocked. One critic called it 
“diaperology.” Gorer’s friend and fellow anthropologist Margaret Mead 
defended and even doubled down on his theory; she insisted that in 
swaddling them for so long, “Russians communicate to their infants a 
feeling that a strong authority is necessary.”


The swaddling hypothesis and the ire it justly provoked dealt a 
considerable blow to the prestige of the national character studies 
program just as it was reaching its zenith at Columbia, raising 
questions about the methodologies being employed there and even the 
value of culture as a heuristic. It also highlights a problem with the 
work of these anthropologists, which is often framed as revolutionary 
and egalitarian for insisting that human differences are rooted in 
culture rather than race. That such a worldview would be any less 
dangerous is belied by the reality of how this research—culture 
cracking, as it was known—was employed. From World War II into the early 
years of the Cold War, anthropologists in the program were repeatedly 
tapped by the US government to create national profiles for countries 
deemed threats to US national security. The most famous of these was 
Ruth Benedict’s wartime study of Japanese culture, later published as 
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), but the program produced 
countless reports for the government on China, Syria, Eastern European 
Jews, and other “cultures” that needed decoding before they could be 
exploited.


Thus, while it attracted the most attention, the diaperology controversy 
did not represent a break with the tenets of cultural anthropology so 
much as it exposed the problems that had always been lurking beneath the 
surface, obscured by the hallowed lineage of the discipline. Besides 
Gorer, Mead, and Benedict, Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Cara 
Deloria, and Edward Sapir all considered themselves cultural 
anthropologists. At a time when the country’s foremost social 
scientists, figures like the eugenicist Madison Grant, were insisting 
that different cultures fell along a continuum of evolution, cultural 
anthropologists asserted that such a continuum did not exist. Instead of 
evolving in a linear fashion from savagery to civilization, they argued, 
cultures were in a constant process of borrowing and interpolation. Boas 
called this process “cultural diffusion,” and it would come to be the 
bedrock of cultural anthropology, inspiring an entire generation of 
anthropologists to travel the world searching for examples of it. 
Hurston went to Florida to collect African American folklore, Deloria to 
the American Southwest to codify Native American languages, and Mead to 
American Samoa to ask teenagers about their sex lives. And while their 
findings have been heralded as revolutionary—within the social sciences 
and for the general public—they also laid the groundwork for a new form 
of liberal racism centered on cultural rather than physiological difference.


Boas referred to himself and his students at Columbia as “our little 
group,” and in a new book, Gods of the Upper Air, Georgetown professor 
Charles King puts their lives, habits, and missteps on full display. He 
paints their rise as a heroic struggle against xenophobia, racism, and 
theories of cultural supremacy. “This book,” he tells us, “is about 
women and men who found themselves on the front lines of the greatest 
moral battle of our 

[Marxism] Is 5G Going to Kill Us All? | The New Republic

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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By Christopher Ketcham

https://newrepublic.com/article/157603/5g-going-kill-us-all

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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] bellingcat - The Killing of Muhammad Gulzar - bellingcat

2020-05-08 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Today, in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and Forensic 
Architecture, with reporting from Der Spiegel, and research from Pointer 
and Sky News, we release an investigation which demonstrates that Greek 
security forces likely used live rounds on 4 March 2020 against refugees 
and migrants trying to break through the Turkish-Greek border fence. We 
identified seven people who were wounded over a period of about 40 
minutes, one of whom later died. His name was Muhammed Gulzar.


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