[Marxism] Fwd: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 1939, and the Russian-German War 1941-1945
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. * Hello, World War II began 80 years ago today, on 1 September 1939. The following commentary is at heart a critique of ideologically-driven historical revisionism, which distorts the the truth and promotes falsehoods, and is thus a disservice to the public. It begins as my rebuttal to an article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, by the Belgian-Canadian professional historian Jacques R. Pauwels; that article being published by CounterPunch on August 26. I give the web-link. My rebuttal is a combination of history, most recited from memory (so minor details are undoubtedly off), and criticism of ideologically-driven historical revisionism that distorts the truth and even promotes falsehoods, which is what I see in Pauwels’ polished article. My hastily-written rebuttal was dashed off on August 27 and sent to CounterPunch to remain unpublished (okay, really). I revised that draft, added to it and corrected date errors and the like, up to August 30. On that day a superior rebuttal appeared on CounterPunch, by Louis Proyect and Pawel Szelegieniec. I cite and give a web-link to the very authoritative, very detailed history and rebuttal to Pauwels, written by Louis Proyect and Pawel Szelegieniec and published by CounterPunch, where my commentary on the years 1932 to 1945 ends. After that I have added my commentary, written in 2011, on the “anti-Atlanticist Communisant French intelligentsia” of the 1950s, because I seen Jacques Pauwels as a second generation of that intellectual orientation of historians and social commentators. This entire posting is a steam-blast of my indignation at having been confronted by another example of promoted factually inaccurate ideology: propaganda. I realize I’m old, our world today is more than ever awash in lying propaganda, and people seem quite blasé about it as they collide into each other mesmerized by their electronic blinders and flat-screen opioids. But an antique like me can still have his equanimity trammeled by a ubiquitous aspect of our times like propaganda, and even more pathetic, propaganda about the ‘ancient’ past. Sometimes, I can’t help getting riled up by promotional falsehood and the approval of cruel dictatorship. That’s it. *Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 1939, and the Russian-German War 1941-1945* 1 September 2019 https://manuelgarciajr.com/2019/09/01/molotov-ribbentrop-pact-1939-and-the-russian-german-war-1941-1945/ <><><><><><><> Enjoy, Manuel Garcia, Jr. http://manuelgarciajr.com _ 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] A Plan to Win Socialism In America
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. * A Plan to Win Socialism In America By Peter Gowan https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/a-plan-to-win-socialism-in-america --- John Reimann responds on FB: I used to watch my children play make-believe when they were little. They'd invent this whole scenario - "you're the daddy. I'm the mommy. Here is the teacher." Then they'd go on to fantasize different developments between these make-believe people. That's what this article is. All sorts of different things that a president Sanders could do. The fact that he seems increasingly unlikely to even win the nomination is irrelevant. So is the fact that he has proven over and over that he won't do it. So is the fact that any appointments he makes must be approved by the Senate. So is the fact that this fantasized legislation would be killed by the US Supreme Court quicker than you could say "socialism". The article also has a very pleasant and nice make-believe attitude towards the Democratic Party. Even in the event that they became the majority in the Senate... Well, look at the House. They won't even consider Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal, which by the way is completely inadequate anyway. What makes Jacobin think that the Senate would be any better? They write, "Many representatives are merely careerists who will acquiesce to a leftist program if it is a choice between that or irrelevance." They really think they can bring the majority of the Democrats over to "our" side? Another childish fantasy! At best, it will be "just enough" to **almost** win the legislation. I must admit, though, that there is one realistic piece of thinking in their article: They call the approach of winning socialism through legislation the "Salvador Allende" scenario. Even if it would go that far, which it won't, I guess they've forgotten how Allende ended up. But the name is realistic in the strategy of even the left most social democrats. _ 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] Assad Receives a Delegation From the French National Rally - The Syrian Observer
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[Marxism] 'We're Dying Like Flies': Sick, Retired Coal Miners Betrayed by GOP Senators | Common Dreams News
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[Marxism] Why People Hate Religion
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 Op-Ed, Aug. 31, 2019 Why People Hate Religion By Timothy Egan You don’t hear much about Sister Norma Pimentel in the secular press. She’s not a wacko, a hypocrite, a sexual predator or a political operative. Her life’s work, she says, is guided by seeing “the presence of God” in migrant children in the shelter she oversees in the Rio Grande Valley — vulnerable souls that her president would otherwise put in cages. What you hear about is the phonies, the charlatans who wave Bibles, the theatrically pious, and they are legion. Vice President Mike Pence wears his faith like a fluorescent orange vest. But when he visited the border this summer and saw human beings crammed like cordwood in the Texas heat, that faith was invisible. “Trump Orders Pence to Find Passage in Bible Where Jesus Tells People to Get the Hell Out.” Though a satirical headline, from the comic writer Andy Borowitz, the above could pass for any day in Trump world. Pence is the chief bootlicker to a president who now sees himself in messianic terms, a president who tweets a description of himself as “the second coming of God.” As hard as it is to see God Part II boasting about grabbing a woman’s genitals, paying hush money to a porn actress, or calling neo-Nazis “very fine people,” millions of overtly religious Americans believe in some version of Jesus Trump, Superstar. What you hear about are the modern Savonarolas. In Indiana this summer, Archbishop Charles C. Thompson stripped a Jesuit prep school of its Catholic identity for refusing to fire a gay, married teacher. The same threat loomed over another Indianapolis school, until it ousted a beloved teacher with 13 years of service. He was fired for getting married to another man — a legal, civil action. The archbishop claimed he was upholding Catholic teaching, an example of the kind of selective moral policing that infuriates good people of faith. Catholic teaching also frowns on divorce. But when a divorced teacher, at the same school where the gay teacher was fired, remarried without a church-sanctioned annulment and posted her status on Facebook as a dare, the archbishop did nothing. For this is a road that leads to thrice-married, politically connected Catholics like Newt Gingrich, whose wife Callista (with whom Gingrich carried on an adulterous affair before getting married) is now Donald Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican. Archbishop Thompson says he tries to be “Christ-centered” in his decisions. If so, he should cite words from Christ condemning homosexuality, any words; there are none. That may be one reason a healthy majority of Catholics are in favor of same-sex marriage, despite what their spiritual sentries tell them. Religious hypocrites are an easy and eternal mark. The French Revolution was driven in part by the revulsion of starving peasants toward the overfed clerics who had taken vows of poverty. The Protestant Reformation took flight on disgust at a church in Rome that sold passages to heaven, enriching men who had multiple mistresses after taking vows of chastity. White evangelical Christians, the rotting core of Trump’s base, profess to be guided by biblical imperatives. They’re not. Their religion is Play-Doh. They have become more like Trump, not the other way around. It’s a devil’s pact, to use words they would understand. In one of the most explicit passages of the New Testament, Christ says people will be judged by how they treat the hungry, the poor, the least among us. And yet, only 25 percent of white evangelicals say their country has some responsibility to take in refugees. Evangelicals give cover to an amoral president because they believe God is using him to advance their causes. “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump,” said Ralph Reed at a meeting of professed Christian activists earlier this summer. But what really thrills them is when Trump bullies and belittles their opponents, as counterintuitive as that may seem. Evangelicals “love the meanest parts” of Trump, the Christian writer Ben Howe argues in his new book, “The Immoral Majority.” Older white Christians rouse to Trump’s toxicity because he’s taking their side. It’s tribal, primal and vindictive. So, yes, people hate religion when the loudest proponents of religion are shown to be mercenaries for a leader who debases everything he touches. And yes, young people are leaving the pews in droves because too often the person facing them in those pews is a fraud. They hate religion because, at a moment to stand up a
[Marxism] Shortchanged: Why British Life Expectancy Is Falling
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, Aug. 31, 2019 Shortchanged: Why British Life Expectancy Is Falling By Stephen Castle HARTLEPOOL, England — Britons are no longer living longer than before. Just ask Callum Hills. His father died of a heart attack last year at age 52. Mr. Hills had found him stricken on the floor in the middle of the night, and today is still haunted by his memory. “I keep having dreams, and he’s in them,” said Mr. Hills, a thoughtful and articulate 23-year-old. While attention is riveted on the Brexit turmoil in Westminster, with dire forecasts of possible chaos, food shortages and recession, a dispiriting trend is already visible in struggling towns and cities across the nation. For the first time in modern history, Britain’s gains in life expectancy have stalled — at 79.2 years for men and 82.9 years for women for the years 2015 to 2017. That is better than the United States, but Britain is slipping down the ranks in Western Europe. In 1841, life expectancy in Britain was around 40 for men and 42 for women, and its rise through improvements in infant mortality, sanitation, nutrition and medical care became a symbol of progress. In recent times, the figures had generally improved by about three years every decade. But no longer. Alcohol and drug abuse, poor diet, obesity, smoking and a lack of exercise have taken their toll, increasing the risks of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Older people are dying prematurely, their conditions worsened by isolation and depression, experts say. Bait diggers searching for worms that they will use to fish for sea bass. The remains of the once thriving shipyard of Hartlepool, England, loom in the background.CreditMary Turner for The New York Times Underlying many of the problems, they say, is the government’s austerity program, which was instituted after the 2008 financial crisis and has eaten away at funding for social programs, transportation and other things that might counter the negative trends. Things have probably not been helped by the chaos in Parliament over Brexit, which has forestalled efforts to come to grips with the growing problems. While the rate of improvement in life expectancy had long slowed, “2010 marked a turning point in long-term mortality trend,” according to the King’s Fund, a health research institute. Across the country, mortality rates in the first few months of 2018 were higher than in any quarter since 2009. Among British cities, Hartlepool (pronounced HART-lee-pool), a proud seafaring and manufacturing town battered by deindustrialization, has suffered one of the largest drops in life expectancy. It has the second-highest stroke rate in its region, its death rate tied to drug abuse recently tripled, and its smoking rates are much higher than the national average. Statistics on deaths from cancer and cardiovascular, liver and respiratory disease are troubling. The average life expectancy for men in Hartlepool was 76 years and one month from 2015 to 2017, fully a year and a half less than in 2011-13. For women, the figure of 81 years and four months ticked up slightly in the most recent set of statistics, but is still lower than it was in 2011-13 or 2013-15. In the town’s pockets of poverty, some lives are ending very prematurely. Gemma Sampson, the vicar at St. Aidan’s Church, said that two regular users of the church’s food bank have died since it opened in 2017. One was a 56-year-old man who lay undiscovered in his apartment for six days. The other was a homeless woman who had slept in a parking lot, got help with accommodations but disappeared and was later found dead. She was 43. Such cases are extreme, but the broader trend has upset long-running assumptions. At the sharp end of this is one of Britain’s most cherished, if creaking, institutions: the National Health Service, which many see as an efficient health care provider, particularly by comparison with the United States. But some wonder whether it might, inadvertently, be part of the problem. The N.H.S. focuses more resources on acute care than on preventive measures, mental health and early screening for cancer and other conditions. That, said Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University College London and director of its Institute of Health Equity, reinforces a tendency to favor medical procedures over efforts to combat obesity, smoking, and drug and alcohol dependence. “We need to fund our N.H.S., but let’s also talk about the health of the population,” Professor Marmot said. “The causes of premature death are an unhealthy diet, drinking, lack of exercise, et cet
[Marxism] Israeli rulers bomb Tehran’s bases in Syria and Iraq – The Militant
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 generally don't refer to this tiny, bizarre sect-cult on Marxmail but this is an extraordinary escalation of their support for Israel. They seem to be in a competition with Spiked Online over who can sound more like Alan Dershowitz. https://themilitant.com/2019/08/31/israeli-rulers-bomb-tehrans-bases-in-syria-and-iraq/ _ 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] Flight Shame: The Climate Hazards of Air Travel | by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
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. * About Greta Thunberg's refusal to fly. I should add that someone posting something on FB about her support staff flying over to help organize her tour. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/31/flight-shame-the-climate-hazards-of-air-travel/ _ 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] Earth First? On “The Ecocentrists” and Pregnancy in the Anthropocene - Los Angeles Review of Books
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[Marxism] Lessons for capitalism from the East India Company | Financial Times
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[Marxism] Post-environmentalism: origins and evolution of a strange idea | Kallis | Journal of Political Ecology
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[Marxism] Black Confederate myth debunked in new history book.
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://slate.com/human-interest/2019/08/black-confederate-myth-history-book.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
