======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ June 6, 2011
$$$ Oops, no donation this time around... $$$
Note from the Editors: The dumbing down of America appears to be the
only thing that is working effectively in the country, when one
considers that the populace is at present more interested in whether
Representative Anthony Weiner tweeted a photo of his bulging underwear
to a female college student than if the ruling elite will succeed in
destroying Medicare. From the demise of the health care system to that
of education, the future does not look pretty, particularly when one
considers Professor Jonah Raskin's observations that college students
have become an infantilized generation of illiterates. Actually, one
institution that is going strong is the prison-industrial complex.
Michael Barker reports on Michelle Alexander's study that concludes
"that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a
stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social
control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow." As
for the health care system, Gilles d'Aymery looks at the Randian roots
and neoliberal efforts of Representative Paul Ryan, the current champion
of the bipartisan anti-Medicare cause. Also threatened are rural health
care centers across the country, including the Anderson Valley Health
Center near Swans headquarters that lost its state funding and is months
away from perhaps closing its doors, while the federal grants that could
have helped were compromised away in the recent budget debate... As
Charles Marowitz observes, we assume in the Middle East that the status
quo must be overthrown -- whereas in America we delude ourselves that
new elections will save us. According to Louis Proyect's book review,
there are alternatives, and we must do everything in our power to build
a world movement that understands that without democracy, there cannot
be socialism and that without socialism, there cannot be democracy.
In light of the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic
and the death of Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the former secretary of state
and career foreign service civil servant, we are republishing Gilles
d'Aymery's July 2005 article "Srebrenica Mon Amour." Eagleburger spent
seven years of his career in Yugoslavia, whose dissolution he likened to
a Greek tragedy. From Italy, Peter Byrne takes us on a trip to the
buried heart of Matera -- not your typical small Italian city; while
from Ghana, Femi Akomolafe calls for his fellow Africans to dream big
and ask what exactly is wrong with them. Raju Peddada concludes his
series on the engineers with big dreams who developed the F-1 rocket
engine. In the French corner, Francesca Saieva contemplates the social
aspects of Italian writer Italo Calvino's protagonist Marcovaldo, and
Simone Alié-Daram's poem makes a splash with three angels. Guido Monte's
blending describes the night thoughts of a Tunisian woman on a
death-boat along the waves of the Sicily Channel, and we close with your
letters, with thoughts on Aymery's coverage on the last edition's
scandal du jour, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and more.
# # # # #
All the articles and the Letters to the Editor can be freely accessed
from Swans front page. Please go to:
http://www.swans.com/
You can also access our past issues at:
http://www.swans.com/library/past_issues/past_issues.html
And you have access to over 15 years of archives by date, author, and
subject at:
http://www.swans.com/library/archives.html
Remember, what's free to you is not to us! To help our work financially
please visit http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html
# # # # #
Swans (aka Swans Commentary), ISSN: 1554-4915, is a bi-weekly
non-commercial ad-free Web-only magazine which provides original content
to its readers. We encourage pulp publications to republish Swans Work
in print format. Please contact the publisher at <aymery AT
ix.netcom.com>. Please, do not repost Swans Work on the Web and other
mailing lists: "Hypertext" links to any pages of Swans.com are
authorized; however, republication of any part of this site, inlining,
mirroring, and framing are expressly prohibited.
(You are receiving this E-mail notification for you have expressed your
interest in Swans and the work of its team. If you wish not to receive
these short notifications, simply reply to this E-mail (delete the
content) and enter the word REMOVE in the subject line.)
Cordially,
Gilles d'Aymery
-- Swans
"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
