[Marxism-Thaxis] Another obit for Jerry Cohen, The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-jerry-cohen-maverick-philosopher-who-subjected-marxism-to-the-rigours-of-analytical-philosophy-1770667.html The strong, silent type. Click here for great looking bamboo flooring! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTJs36jYVO7qcpNsctbuPIYdE71h0lUS955cqa2uZww3wunyqkrV1u/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Wooo !
Over the Top and Beneath Contempt By: Roger Simon Politico.com - August 11, 2009 04:44 AM EST http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25991.html Today, we live in the age of rabid response. Not rapid response. Rapid response was yesterday. Rapid response was the political tactic of responding quickly to all attacks, no matter how outrageous or unbelievable. Those who did not respond rapidly, those who told themselves the public would not believe outright lies, failed to win higher office. (Thus Democrats still blame John Kerry for not responding rapidly enough in 2004 to the attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.) Rabid response is different. The purpose of rabid response is to scorch the earth, to raise the stakes, to go nuclear in the hope that your opponent will be so shellshocked he can make no response at all. The purpose of rabid response is to grab the public by the throat and not let go. Have concerns over Barack Obama's health care plan? I don't doubt it. The plan is very long and very complicated and still a work in progress. But there is one thing we do know about it: It will establish death panels. These death panels will determine whether you, your baby, your parents or your grandparents will receive health care or be left to die. In the street. Like a dog. How will the death panels operate? Who will be on them? Will they validate parking? We do not know. We know only that the death panels will judge each individual's level of productivity in society and render a life or death judgment. So says Sarah Palin on her Facebook page. In olden times, Palin might have made this claim at a speech or during a news conference where reporters might have asked questions like: What proof do you have? or Aren't you just trying to scare people? But Palin does not risk that. She takes no questions. She has done her duty as a rabid responder. She has rung the tocsin, sounded the alarm, lit the signal fire. Truth? Accuracy? Responsibility? Not her territory. Glenn Beck is a rabid responder on race. This president, I think, he has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture, Beck says. This guy is, I believe, a racist. Rush Limbaugh is a rabid responder on Nazis and swastikas. He knows a lot about swastikas. He sees them everywhere. He looks at the Obama health care logo - which incorporates the familiar medical symbol of twin serpents on a staff - and sees it as being damn close to a Nazi swastika logo. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi muddied the waters - surprise! - by saying those who oppose Obama's health care plan are carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care. But Limbaugh had a rabid response for that: There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that's being heralded by a Hitler-like logo. And then, out of left (or right) field, came this: Ted Kennedy's dad, by the way, Joe Kennedy, sympathetic to Hitler, sympathetic to the Nazis, Limbaugh said. But Limbaugh was not done with the Nazis or Hitler. In the world of rabid response, invoking the ultimate symbols of evil to describe one's political opponents is routine. It doesn't matter what you say, as long as it is over the top and beneath contempt. Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate, Limbaugh said. Hitler said he didn't need to meet with his Cabinet; he represented the will of the people. He was called the messiah. He said the people spoke through him. Which means, I guess, if Hitler were alive today, he would be a talk show host. [Roger Simon is POLITICO's chief political columnist.] c 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Nature and Paradoxes of Freedom
farmelantj at juno.com farmelantj at juno.com Concerning the concepts of negative freedom that were embraced by both Hayek and Isaiah Berlin, Dogan is quite correct that for both men, the embracing of negative liberty (and the rejection of positive liberty) was very much motivated by their desire to defend capitalism. Where the two men differed, is that Berlin's embrace of negative liberty was in the context of his pluralism. By pluralism, Berlin meant a value pluralism or a pluralism of values (not unlike Max Weber's conception) in which there are a plurality of ideals, which may all be equally valid, but which are not entirely compatible with one another. For Berlin, while negative liberty was a valid social ideal, it was not the only one. Berlin recognized as valid, the social ideals of equality and solidarity. Therefore, for Berlin, unlike Hayek, the good society while embracing negative liberty also might embrace other ideals like equality or solidarity. Therefore, Berlin was able to rationalize the emergence of the welfare state in the UK and the New Deal in the US. In this way, as Dogan suggests, Berlin's pluralism of values was closely tied to the pluralism of classes under capitalism, and so Berlin like a good social democratic liberal attempted to mediate between the interests of capitalists and workers under capitalism. Jim F. CB: Berlin seems to be espousing ye olde liberal creed of e pluribus unum. It is on US money as a sort of official American motto or something ... E Pluribus Unum included in the Seal of the United States, being one of the nation's mottos at the time of the seal's creation ... ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Detroit
Waistline2 In respect to AIG, I have not done the investigation into the rates charged to Detroit to determine if insurance of Detroit bonds required a higher premium rate. ^ CB: This switcheru was voted on in a public session, so, I'm sure of what I'm saying. AIG was insuring some of Detroit's bonds. When AIG went bankrupt, the bond agency lowered Detroit's bond rating , because its insurance was no good. Detroit had to enter into a draconian revision ( higher priority for the Wall Street bhe ond company to a casino revenue stream to the City) against its interests of its contract with the Wall Street bond company/parisite in order to avoid bankruptcy/receivership/in Michigan: Emergency Financial Manager. The Emergency Financial Manager acts as a financial dictator in cutting City jobs and stealing tax money for Wall Street. Wall Street Dictators by John Henry If one looks at the big picture, the City of Detroit is being set up by the powers-that-be, including the news media, for the same treatment as the school system - a financial dictatorship, with Wall Street and its agents ripping off the City workers and People of Detroit. Mayor Bing is demanding that the City workers take a 10% paycut over two years. The City unions are picketing today and may strike. A big part in this set-up is the years long project of portraying the elected officials of the City,Mayor and City Council, as so bad that the masses will accept a non-elected financial dictator to clean up the mess of these oh so foolish people elected by the citizenry. Whatever, faults they have, they are no worse than the dozens of white men who exclusively ran Detroit City government for so many decades. It is no coincidence that once the City Council became majority Black and women the forces that shape public opinion turned them into a bunch of fools in the minds of so many suckers and naive ones among us. Detroit financial problems are not due to City officials' bad decisions, but the disinvestment from and failures of corporate America in Detroit, and the related long term depopulation begun 60 years ago. The last thing the City needs is CEO thinking in leadership. CEO thinking has bankrupted all Wall Street, GM, Chrysler ! No exaggeration. At any rate, the effect of brainwashing so many citizens ignorant of Detroit's history and current events. has brought just such a CEO-style Mayor , who has all the appearances of someone who will facilitate handing the City over to a financial dictator, or emergency financial manager as over the DPS. Critically related to this looming financial rightwing coup, within the last several months, Wall Street bond holders tightened the noose through a swithcheroo perpetrated by Wall Street giant AIG's failure lowering Detroit's bond rating , triggering and threatening an emergency financial manager, i.e. financial dictator event. In the end Detroit was forced to let a Wallstreet firm get its teeth deeper into a City juggler vein/revenue stream from a casino. Then AIG was bailed out and Detroit was not by the federal government. Rushing Detroit to bankruptcy is very much about enriching Wall Street, the nation wide financial sector of America, at the expense of City workers and the People of Detroit. The financial dictator selected will be an agent of that finance capitalist class. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Michigan event launches drive to abolish nuclear weapons
Michigan event launches drive to abolish nuclear weapons Author: John Rummel People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/11/09 16:01 BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — Imagine if the threat of nuclear weapons and the billions that go to building and maintaining them instead went to provide health care, education and the prevention of global warming. It could become a reality when the United Nations meets in the spring of 2010 for the final review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. While the campaign to make it happen will be worldwide in scope, a local kickoff here came last week at the annual memorial service to commemorate the killing of innocent civilians in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 44 years ago this month. Speaking to the assembled crowd, Al Fishman, a board member of Peace Action of Michigan, said this will be the first worldwide effort to ban nuclear weapons since 1950. “We have a chance to make this a success because for the first time in history, we have a president committed to goal of the abolition of nuclear weapons,” Fishman said. He read aloud part of a petition addressed to President Obama that will be circulated during the next nine months leading up to the UN meeting: “Dear President Obama, We wholeheartedly applaud you for declaring in Prague, ‘I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.’ We commend you for your courageous and historic recognition that ‘as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the U.S. has a moral responsibility has to act.’” According to Fishman, another positive action the president is taking is his plan in the near future to resubmit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Fishman said such initiatives from our president “gives us space to move.” Fishman said the petition to Obama will be circulated by many groups and that model resolutions will be available to take before organizations, city councils and other elected bodies. “This is a winner,” he said. To back up that confidence the first announced action will be signature collecting in Plymouth, Mich., the home district of conservative Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter. jrummel @ pww.org ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Socialist Feminist Revival
Socialist Feminist Revival If not now, when? August 09, 2009 By Reihana Mohideen Reihana Mohideen's ZSpace Page Join ZSpace [Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications] There is a revival of socialist feminism in Latin America, spearheaded by the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions. I just returned from a workshop on gender-based violence organised by the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Venezuela and the UNDP. Speakers at the workshop included Maria Leon, Minister of Women's Affairs and Nora Casteneda President of Banmujer or Bank for the Development of Women. The two women explained the gains made by women as a result of Bolivarian socialist revolution in Venezuela. A record which was truly amazing in the attempts made in empowering women towards achieving gender equality, reported candidly by both women, who also outlined the challenges women in that country have as yet to overcome. The Bolivarian constitution is the first in the South (and possibly the world) to recognise women's housework as a legitimate economic activity producing wealth and contributing to the social welfare of the population: The State will recognise household chores as an economic activity that creates added value, produces wealth and social welfare. Housewives have the right to social security according to the law. (Article 88) As Maria Leon explained in Article 88 the work of all previous generations of women are also recognised and valued. In March 2007 the right of women to live a life free of violence became an organic law enacted by the National Assembly of Venezuela. Now the law must be effectively implemented. This includes setting up special courts or legal units to handle violence against women cases across the country, with some 19 courts already set up covering all regions. These courts were described as 'new institutions of the Venezuelan state to eradicate violence against women'. The first courts were on violence against women were set up in Caracas on June 27, 2008. These courts have the authority to temporarily arrest perpetrators of violence against women and prohibit them from leaving the country. The first dates for the trial should be set ten to twenty days after the act of violence, with sentencing on the same day with penalty and fines. Appeals processes exist. These courts were also described as 'specialised organs on violence against women' and as 'weapons in the struggle against violence against women'. According to Maria Leon, Talking is not enough. Laws are not enough. Institutions are not enough. We need a cultural change in our views and outlook. This required mobilising women to become a real force, a deterrent force, an army to combat violence against women and to change the notion of women as battered victims and weak human beings. To mobilise women some 25,000 'points of encounter' for women are being set up where women have easy access to information and services without cumbersome requirements and bureaucratic regulations. These 25,000 'points of encounter' will consist of at least ten women, who will then organise more women to create an army to combat violence against women ... the point is not only to decrease violence against women, but to eradicate it. The Ministry for Women's Affairs and Gender Equality was set up on March 8, 2009. One of the first activities of the new Ministry was to organise a congress of women to consult women on the plans and work of the Ministry. A key objective of the Ministry is to advice the President on 'human development with gender equality' and the 'active participation in the defence and guarantee of women's rights in the revolutionary transformation of the country'. Linked to this a key task of the Ministry is to 'design the criteria for allocating financial and social resources and investments targeting women, especially those who are marginalised and excluded, suffering discrimination, exploitation and violence ... in order to promote a socialist production model with gender equity in the socialisation of the means of production'. Maria Leon and other Venezuelan women speakers all emphasised the importance of the local popular power structures, the commune councils, in the mobilisation and empowerment of women. According to Leon Peoples power, popular power, is most important [and] 70% of the commune councils are headed by women. Nora Castaneda provided updates on the work of Banmujer. Banmujer is a key political instrument of the revolution in the economic and political empowerment of poor and ethnic minority women. Since 2001, Banmujer has redistributed wealth of around US$179 million in 106,616 microcredits to poor women. In 2008 alone it approved a total of 13,689 microcredit loans worth US$35 million. Meanwhile in Cuba pathbreaking proposals and measures are being advocated and discussed amongst the entire population to advance gender equality in relation to sexual rights, spearheaded by the National
[Marxism-Thaxis] Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie Title page of the Encyclopédie.Main article: Encyclopédie André Le Breton, a bookseller and printer, approached Diderot with a project for the publication of a translation of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences into French, first undertaken by the Englishman John Mills, and followed by the German Gottfried Sellius. Diderot accepted the proposal. During this translation his creative mind and astute vision transformed the work. Instead of a mere reproduction of the Cyclopaedia, he persuaded Le Breton to enter upon a new work, which would collect all the active writers, ideas, and knowledge that were moving the cultivated class of the Republic of Letters to its depths; however, they were comparatively ineffective due to their lack of dispersion. His enthusiasm for the project was transmitted to the publishers; they collected a sufficient capital for a more vast enterprise than they had first planned. Jean le Rond d'Alembert was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague; the requisite permission was procured from the government. In 1750 an elaborate prospectus announced the project to a delighted public, and in 1751 the first volume was published. This work was very unorthodox and had many forward-thinking ideas for the time. Diderot stated within this work, An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge. Upon encompassing every branch of knowledge this will give, the power to change men's common way of thinking. This idea was profound and intriguing, as it was one of the first works during the Enlightenment. Diderot wanted to give all people the ability to further their knowledge and, in a sense, allow every person to have any knowledge they sought of the world. The work, implementing not only the expertise of scholars and Academies in their respective fields but that of the common man in their proficiencies in their trades, sought to bring together all knowledge of the time and condense this information for all to use. These people would amalgamate and work under a society to perform such a project. They would work alone in order to shed societal conformities, and build a multitude of information on a desired subject with varying view points, methods, or philosophies. He emphasized the vast abundance of knowledge held within each subject with intricacies and details to provide the greatest amount of knowledge to be gained from the subject. All people would benefit from these insights into different subjects as a means of betterment; bettering society as a whole and individuals alike. This message under the Ancien Régime would severely dilute the regime's ability to control the people. Knowledge and power, two key items the upper class held over the lower class, were in jeopardy as knowledge would be more accessible, giving way to more power amongst the lower class. An encyclopedia would give the layman an ability to reason and use knowledge to better themselves; allowing for upward mobility and increased intellectual abundance amongst the lower class. A growth of knowledge amongst this segment of society would provide power to this group and a yearning to question the government. The numerated subjects in the folios were not just for the good of the people and society, but were for the promotion of the state as well. The state did not see any benefit in the works, instead viewing them as a contempt to contrive power and authority from the state. Diderot's work was plagued by controversy from the beginning; the project was suspended by the courts in 1752. Just as the second volume was completed accusations arose, regarding seditious content, concerning the editors entries on religion and natural law. Diderot was detained and his house was searched for manuscripts for subsequent articles. But the search proved fruitless as no manuscripts could be found. They were hidden in the house of an unlikely confederate—Chretien de Lamoignon Malesherbes, the very official who ordered the search. Although Malesherbis was a staunch absolutist-loyal to the monarchy, he was sympathetic to the literary project. Along with his support, and that of other well placed influential confederates, the project resumed. Diderot returned to his efforts only to be constantly embroiled in controversy. These twenty years were to Diderot not merely only a time of incessant drudgery, but harassing persecution and desertion of friends. The ecclesiastical party detested the Encyclopédie, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophic enemies. By 1757 they could endure it no longer. The subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000, a measure of the growth of the work in popular influence and power. The Encyclopédie threatened the governing social classes of France (aristocracy) because it took for granted the justice of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Detroit
AIG was insuring some of Detroit's bonds. When AIG went bankrupt, the bond agency lowered Detroit's bond rating , because its insurance was no good. Detroit had to enter into a draconian revision ( higher priority for the Wall Street bhe ond company to a casino revenue stream to the City) against its interests of its contract with the Wall Street bond company/parisite in order to avoid bankruptcy/receivership/in Michigan: Emergency Financial Manager. The Emergency Financial Manager acts as a financial dictator in cutting City jobs and stealing tax money for Wall Street. Comment Without a doubt Detroit faces trouble. The issue was if this trouble was the result of racism because the controllers and executors of all major countries in America are white. Detroit has lots of financial problems, currently dealing with a $300 million structural imbalance - as it is called, and calls on swap termination agreements totaling $400 million. Standard and Poors stripped Detroit of its investment grade rating affecting $2.4 billion of limited and unlimited tax general obligation bonds, along with its pension certificates. Changes - downgrade, in bond and credit worthiness can trigger a call demand. That is what happened. Detroit is involved in some complex swap agreements, specifically the Detroit Retirement System Fund issuing $948.5 in bond obligations back in 2006. Involved in this agreement were AG, UBS and SBS Financial Products. It is true that that the termination agreement triggers a call for a large payment, of which Detroit does not have. The agreement was to tie payment to the Casino revenue stream which amounts to roughly $180 per year. The agreement in place releases this revenue stream after $4.2 million a month is paid. $4.2 times 12 months equals a little over $50 million a year. Whether these actions are the result of racism and racist because the executives in the financial architecture are white and Detroit is majority, black with black politicians was the issue raised. Without question, the city of Detroit has faced stiff opposition and white supremacist opposition by the state bureaucracy and some of its neighboring political jurisdictions. On the other hand it is a fact that bonds for the entire state of Michigan were downgraded during the same period. Defining the problem defines the solution. If the problem is white executives and white supremacy, the solution is removal of white executives and replacing them by non-whites and ending whites supremacist attitudes and actions towards Detroit. Defining the problem defines the solution. A big part in this set-up is the years long project of portraying the elected officials of the City,Mayor and City Council, as so bad that the masses will accept a non-elected financial dictator to clean up the mess of these oh so foolish people elected by the citizenry. Whatever, faults they have, they are no worse than the dozens of white men who exclusively ran Detroit City government for so many decades. It is no coincidence that once the City Council became majority Black and women the forces that shape public opinion turned them into a bunch of fools in the minds of so many suckers and naive ones among us. Comment Detroit City Council has been majority black since 1977, which ushered in the following representatives. Erma Henderson Maryann Mahaffey Nicholas Hood II Clyde Cleveland Jack Kelley David Eberhard Kenneth Cockrel, Sr. William G. Rogell Herbert McFadden, Jr. Two years later Chrysler went bankrupt in the bond market and had to be bailed out by the feds. The point is that this is the economic and political juncture marking a transition or restructuring in the form of capital, which would go on to write the agenda for the world total capital in the 1990’s. The rise of the non-banking financial architecture is a phenomenon of capital rather than racism. Without question, the election of blacks throughout city government was of history making significance for all of America. Blacks representing the black masses is the gage for the degree to which desegregation was shattered. There is and was no other gage. Period. Once the ideological concept of racism is thrown away, it becomes obvious that blacks conform to the ethic history of America, no different from the emergence of the ethnic Italian or ethnic Irish politician. As Italians were grouped together in neighborhoods, at a certain point in their quantitative density, Italian politicians are elected to office. Blacks are no different in their quantitative density. Segregation meant the black politician could not go national. The election of Obama alters history and closes out a chapter in American history. The manipulation of public opinion is not against the black representatives as black, inasmuch as Detroit is going to remain
