from:"c b"

  Of course this stuff is silly. Aside from the obvious, it might be
  interesting to delve into the ideological content of Jackson's songs
  and his views. Also, the social basis of his pathology.
 
  But to tell the truth, I'm more interested in the Jazz Icons DVDs,
  consisting of video footage of concerts by the greats such as Sonny
  Rollins, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, etc.  I want to spend my
  time with real music, not pop culture bullshit.

 But it's immensely popular with the working class, while the stuff you
 list is not. So how does a Marxist deal with that?

 Doug



^

When an idea grips masses it becomes a material force.

Charles

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Behind the Facade

Motown was the label that gave us the Jackson 5. But when Michael and
his brothers released their first album in 1969, the label had already
reached its creative peak and most of the best work — the stunning
originality of the Miracles, the Marvelettes, Mary Wells, Martha and the
Vandellas, the Supremes, the Temptations, and others — had been done.
Hip-hop would soon appear, and then the violence and misogyny of gangsta
rap.

^^^
CB: This is a poor historical summary. He leaves out the whole 70's
which was extraordinarily rich musically. What about Marvin Gaye and
Stevie Wonder  ? Aretha Franklin. The Spinners, O-Jay's , Earth, Wind
and Fire, Ohio Players and the Isley's ? 70's Soul music is the high
point of music so far in history (smile).

Jackson became paramount in the 80's.

 Hip-hop isn't until the 90's !  And gangsta doesn't take over rap
until then.  This demonstrates that Herbert really doesn't know his
popular music much.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Michael Jackson

Well, Adorno started thinking out this over 65 years ago. And this is
when popular taste was probably far more discerning than it is today,
pace Adorno's notions about jazz.

^^^
CB: Didn't Adorno conclude that the working class is no longer the
revolutionary subject class ?

^^^

 The steady debasement of pop music
since the late '70s is not much of a mystery, and with generational
turnover and the revolution in media technology, it's easy to
condition children practically from birth to consume the shit that
gets churned out with ever having to hear any real music, popular or
otherwise. The results are easily discernable.  Oddly, one feels
older even than what one really is in confronting the young and
ignorant.  What was once mega-popular becomes completely unknown to
the clueless teenager of today.  The memory hole has swallowed up all
knowledge of the past, even the most common knowledge.  I think of a
gaggle of teenage black girls I encountered in the subway a year or
two ago. They inquired what I was listening to on my headphones, and
subsequent conversation revealed they never heard of P-Funk, George
Clinton, or Bootsy. What's this world coming to?

^

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Adorno

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_W._Adorno

Theory
Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of
disenchantment, Georg Lukacs's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as
well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history, although Weber's
influence has until recently been underestimated. Adorno, along with
the other major Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Herbert
Marcuse, argued that advanced capitalism had managed to contain or
liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the
revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it
into socialism, had passed. As he put it at the beginning of his
Negative Dialectics (1966), philosophy is still necessary because the
time to realise it was missed. Adorno argued that capitalism had
become more entrenched through its attack on the objective basis of
revolutionary consciousness and through liquidation of the
individualism that had been the basis of critical consciousness.

Whilst Adorno's work focuses on art, literature and music as key areas
of sensual, indirect critique of the established culture and modes of
thought, there is also a strand of distinctly political utopianism
evident in his reflections especially on history. The argument, which
is complex and dialectic, dominates his Aesthetic Theory, Philosophy
of New Music and many other works.

Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical
tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the
culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities
through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture
was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy
pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people
docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic
circumstances.
* (See Don't Worry; Be Happy)

 The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but
they are in fact just variations on the same theme. He wrote that the
same thing is offered to everybody by the standardised production of
consumption goods but this is concealed under the manipulation of
taste and the official culture's pretense of individualism. [10]
Adorno conceptualised this phenomenon as pseudo-individualization and
the always-the-same. He saw this mass-produced culture as a danger to
the more difficult high arts. Culture industries cultivate false
needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. True needs,
in contrast, are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness. But the
subtle dialectician was also able to say that the problem with
capitalism was that it blurred the line between false and true needs
altogether.

The work of Adorno and Horkheimer heavily influenced intellectual
discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies. At
the time Adorno began writing, there was a tremendous unease among
many intellectuals as to the results of mass culture and mass
production on the character of individuals within a nation. By
exploring the mechanisms for the creation of mass culture, Adorno
presented a framework which gave specific terms to what had been a
more general concern.

At the time this was considered important because of the role which
the state took in cultural production; Adorno's analysis allowed for a
critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of
popular culture from the right. From both perspectives — left and
right — the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root
of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of
culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasized moral
degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular
culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the
objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects,
e.g. as a form of reverse psychology.

Many aspects of Adorno's work are relevant today and have been
developed in many strands of contemporary critical theory, media
theory, and sociology. Thinkers influenced by Adorno believe that
today's society has evolved in a direction foreseen by him, especially
in regard to the past (Auschwitz), morals or the Culture Industry. The
latter has become a particularly productive, yet highly contested term
in cultural studies. Many of Adorno's reflections on aesthetics and
music have only just begun to be debated, as a collection of essays on
the subject, many of which had not previously been translated into
English, has only recently been collected and published as Essays on
Music.

His work on the culture industry has been criticized by such writers
as Christian Bethune, who point out both that Adorno's critique is not
based on a thorough knowledge of popular cultural forms, but also that
it has an end of history tone to it. Taking Adorno's critique of
popular music to its logical conclusion, one would have to conclude
that Blues or rocknroll, jazz, rap or punk, were

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

Another thing about the list below is so many of the people named were
perhaps the top person in their area. Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday,
Charlie Parker, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, John
Lennon, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix Mozart were all top superstars
of their moments.


 Another one is Duane Allman. He was in his twenties. Allman
 Brothers were a Georgia guitar band from the sixties and
 seventies.


  All
  in list were under 50!

  Partial list of famous musical artists who died as
 young or
  younger than Michael Jackson
 
 
  Michael Jackson  50
 
  Bessie Smith   37
  Billie Holiday 44
  Charlie Parker 34
  John Coltrane  40
  Jimi Hendrix   28
  Mozart 35
  Tupac Shakur  25
  Biggie Smalls  24
  Elvis Presley  42
  Fats Waller39
  Judy Garland   47
  Marvin Gaye
 44
  David Ruffin   50
  Paul Williams  34
  John Lennon40
  Edith Piaf
 47
  Janis Joplin   27
  Jim Morrison   28
  Paul Chambers  33
  Charlie Christian 26
  Hank Williams  29
  Florence Ballard 32
  Mary Wells  49
  Tammi Terrell  24
  Scott Joplin  48
  Dinah Washington 39
  Nat King Cole  45
  Buddy Holly  22
  Ritchie Valens  17
 
 
 
 


On 7/13/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote:
 Reading your posts, I dread whatever senility awaits me.

 At 08:31 AM 7/13/2009, c b wrote:
 Clearly  ,even, Michael Jackson reached out to White people in a
 graphic and bodily manner , even. He sort of turned himself into a
 White person. He married Elvis Presley's daughter, the princess of
 white anglo saxon working masses. What a political marriage of old. He
 had children with very wasp working class women. He's the original
 uniter , not divider.
 
 Black and white , unite and fight, workers of all races unite.
 
 And he was an extraordinary artist.
 
 On 7/10/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote:
   And all of them far worthier of attention than Michael Jackson,
   except for Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls--good riddance!
  
   And what this has to do with this list, I can't imagine.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

Ralph Dumain

Reading your posts, I dread whatever senility awaits me.

^
Reading your post, evidently ,your senility has already arrived

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno
First published Mon May 5, 2003; substantive revision Fri Aug 3, 2007
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/#2

2. Dialectic of Enlightenment
Long before postmodernism became fashionable, Adorno and Horkheimer
wrote one of the most searching critiques of modernity to have emerged
among progressive European intellectuals. Dialectic of Enlightenment
is a product of their wartime exile. It first appeared as a mimeograph
titled Philosophical Fragments in 1944. This title became the subtitle
when the book was published in 1947. Their book opens with a grim
assessment of the modern West: Enlightenment, understood in the
widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating
human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly
enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant (DE
1, translation modified). How can this be, the authors ask. How can
the progress of modern science and medicine and industry promise to
liberate people from ignorance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing
work, yet help create a world where people willingly swallow fascist
ideology, knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically
develop lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has
become irrational.

^
CB: Gee, interesting theory, but since they call themselves Marxists
you'd think they might mention the concepts capitalism, class
oppression in looking for an explanation of modernity's
discontents. Ya think ? Why not drop the Marxist tag to avoid this
confusion.  Put another way, what exactly is Marxist in Adorno's
thinking ?

^

^

Although they cite Francis Bacon as a leading spokesman for an
instrumentalized reason that becomes irrational, Horkheimer and Adorno
do not think that modern science and scientism are the sole culprits.
The tendency of rational progress to become irrational regress arises
much earlier. Indeed, they cite both the Hebrew scriptures and Greek
philosophers as contributing to regressive tendencies. If Horkheimer
and Adorno are right, then a critique of modernity must also be a
critique of premodernity, and a turn toward the postmodern cannot
simply be a return to the premodern. Otherwise the failures of
modernity will continue in a new guise under postmodern conditions.
Society as a whole needs to be transformed.

^
CB: Does it now ? Especially, since the whole is false.



Horkheimer and Adorno believe that society and culture form a
historical totality, such that the pursuit of freedom in society is
inseparable from the pursuit of enlightenment in culture (DE xvi).
There is a flip side to this: a lack or loss of freedom in society—in
the political, economic, and legal structures within which we
live—signals a concomitant failure in cultural enlightenment—in
philosophy, the arts, religion, and the like. The Nazi death camps are
not an aberration, nor are mindless studio movies innocent
entertainment. Both indicate that something fundamental has gone wrong
in the modern West.

^
CB: How about white supremacy, the African slave trade , the genocidal
usurpation of the Western Hemisphere and worldwide imperialism before
these ? They should have read _The World and Africa_ by Dubois.

Something had been done gone wrong in the modern West way before the
Nazi death camps and studio movies.



^

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the source of today's disaster is
a pattern of blind domination, domination in a triple sense: the
domination of nature by human beings, the domination of nature within
human beings, and, in both of these forms of domination, the
domination of some human beings by others.


CB: Now there's a contradiction. Human beings are dominating nature
and nature is dominating human beings at the same time.

^^^

 What motivates such triple domination is an irrational fear of the
unknown: Humans believe themselves free of fear when there is no
longer anything unknown. This has determined the path of
demythologization … . Enlightenment is mythical fear radicalized (DE
11). In an unfree society whose culture pursues so-called progress no
matter what the cost, that which is other, whether human or
nonhuman, gets shoved aside, exploited, or destroyed. The means of
destruction may be more sophisticated in the modern West, and the
exploitation may be less direct than outright slavery, but blind,
fear-driven domination continues, with ever greater global
consequences. The all-consuming engine driving this process is an
ever-expanding capitalist economy, fed by scientific research and the
latest technologies.

^
CB: Ok here's capitalism, but really it's scientific research.

^

Contrary to some interpretations, Horkheimer and Adorno do not reject
the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Nor do they provide a negative
metanarrative of universal historical decline. Rather, through a
highly unusual combination of philosophical argument, sociological
reflection, and literary and

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Michael Jackson - Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 69, Issue 6

On 7/14/09, waistli...@aol.com
All this stuff about MJ brings people - black and white, together is a tad
bit much. I believe what is meant is how in the flesh he expressed a
certain homogenizing of the culture. First in America with the destruction of
segregation and the race records as an industry, and then in world culture.
There is a long tradition of black artists moving overseas where American
music is more appreciated. I believe the best documentary I have seen on
John Coltrane comes from Japan. One of James Brown best performances at the
London Palladium comes out of Japan on the Sony label.

^
CB: A bit much ? (smile) from he of the very much posts.

Anyway, the few facts I presented on Jackson's race uniting symbolic
actions demonstrates fairly well that Jackson was a race uniter, which
is politically important and important to Marxists with respect to
class unity. Jackson was the ultimate crossover artist. Marrying
Presley was an obvious and wonderful gesture for racial unity. He used
his celebrity to reach across racial barriers. His We are the World
project was in the same vein.

Jackson had a unique and creative way of expressing his Dubosian
double-consciouisness.

He also cultivated a very anti-macho, gentle persona.

Interestingly, I recall an old James Brown interview where he apologizes
profusely for any disruption his performances may have caused within foreign
cultures. I do believe this was said in connection with touring Africa.
Michael Jackson body of work occurs in another period of time, when
America's imperial impact on the world cultures is such that no apology was
needed
or perceived to be necessary by Jackson.

In other words capital brings us together.

For better or worse; in victory and defeat, in life and death.

Here is the degeneracy of our ruling class and the utter bankruptcy of the
Southern political elite. Much of American popular music is southern in its
genesis. The aristocratic bourbon culture of the agrarian capitalist slave
holding class; their utter hate and disdain for slave/working class of the
South, and then the overthrow of Reconstruction, meant thy lost forever
any moral right to inherit and champion any cultural forms of American social
life. It is not like Elvis in the flesh or in death could/can thrive in
Mississippi.

From the standpoint of capital and profit if Mississippi had developed
honoring the Mississippi blues man and this unique sounds, upwards of a
million
people a year would trek to Mississippi to pay homage. David Ruffin of the
Temptations was born in Mississippi into a gospel singing family. Won't be
no monuments to a singing nig*** in Mississippi anytime soon, although
it is admitted David is one of the greatest male vocalist in American
history. Two of the other Temptations comes out of Alabama and James Brown
South
Carolina.

Interestingly there is a Bogangles statue. The statue has Bogangles
appearing as he is doing everything in his power to escape the old South.
Interesting statue.

I do feel discussion about Mr. Jackson's personal life - who he married and
his children, is inappropriate to a Marxist list, unless such discussion
is framework within the context of the changing form and structure of the
bourgeois family as a historically evolved social and economic unit. Further,
the color factor should - as much as possible, be treated as it arose a
historical question and persists.

WL.

**Can love help you live longer? Find out now.
(http://personals.aol.com/articles/2009/02/18/longer-lives-through-relationships/?ncid=emlweu
slove0001)

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

Crossover (music)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Crossover is a term applied to musical works or performers appearing
on two or more of the record charts which track differing musical
tastes, or genres.[1] If the second chart is a pop chart, such as a
Hot 100 list, the work is not a crossover since the pop charts only
track popularity and do not constitute a separate genre.

In some contexts the term crossover can have negative connotations,
implying the watering-down of a music's distinctive qualities to
accommodate to mass tastes. For example, in the early years of rock
and roll, many songs originally recorded by African-American musicians
were re-recorded by white artists (such as Pat Boone) in a more
toned-down style (often with changed lyrics) that lacked the hard edge
of the original versions. These covers were popular with a much
broader audience.

In practice crossover frequently results from the appearance of the
music in question in a film soundtrack. For instance, Sacred Harp
music experienced a spurt of crossover popularity as a result of its
appearance in the 2003 film Cold Mountain, and bluegrass music
experienced a revival due to the reception of 2000's O Brother, Where
Art Thou?. Even atonal music, which tends to be less popular among
classical enthusiasts, has a kind of crossover niche, since it is
widely used in film and television scores to depict an approaching
menace, as noted by Charles Rosen[citation needed]

The largest figure to date for a crossover hit in the US has come from
Grammy Award-winning country singer LeAnn Rimes, whose song How Do I
Live sold over 3 million copies and spent a world record breaking 69
weeks on the Hot 100 chart, more than any other song in history,
despite peaking only at number 2. It was also a massive hit in Europe.

Contents [hide]
1 Classical crossover
2 Crossover rock
3 Crossover country
4 Christian crossover artists
5 Crossover as a mix of genres
6 References
7 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 See also



[edit] Classical crossover
Particular works of classical music sometimes become popular among
individuals who mostly listen to popular music. Some classical works
that achieved crossover status in the twentieth century include the
Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel, the Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki,
and the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467
(from its appearance in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan).

Within the classical recording industry the term crossover is
applied particularly to classical artists' recordings of popular
repertoire such as Broadway show tunes, or collaborations between
classical and popular performers such as Sting and Edin Karamazov's
album Songs from the Labyrinth. Early examples of this are Deep
Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra (1969) and Gemini Suite Live
(1970) as well as Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth
(1974) and The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table (1975). Metallica's SM (1999) is a recent example of
classical music crossover.

Vocally, the most popular crossover artist was American tenor and film
star Mario Lanza, although there was no such recognized genre as
crossover at the time of Lanza's greatest popularity in the 1950s.
Signed to RCA Victor as an artist on its premium Red Seal label,
Lanza's magnificent voice reached beyond classical music-buying
audiences. His recording of Be My Love, from his second film, The
Toast of New Orleans, hit Number One on the Billboard pop singles
chart in February 1951 and sold more than 2-million copies, a feat no
classical artist before or since has achieved. Lanza recorded two
other million-selling singles that made Billboard's top ten, The
Loveliest Night of the Year and Because You're Mine. Five of Lanza's
albums hit Number One on Billboard's pop album chart between 1951 and
1955. The Great Caruso was the first and to date is the only recording
comprised exclusively of operatic arias to reach Number One on the pop
album charts. The Student Prince, released in 1954, was Number One for
42 weeks. No classical label artist, including The Three Tenors has
achieved the success on the popular charts that Mario Lanza did in the
1950s.


[edit] Crossover rock
Dream Theater had a very strange and unexpected crossover with their
song Pull Me Under in the early 1990s. Their style of progressive
metal was never intended for mainstream audiences, and yet the song
received extensive MTV rotation and radio play.


[edit] Crossover country
During the late 1960s, Glen Campbell began aiming his music at the
mainstream pop charts, adding strings, horns and other pop music
flurishes to such songs as Witchita Lineman, By the Time I Get to
Phoenix, and Galveston, which allowed his music to chart both in
country and pop. While such artists as Lynn Anderson and Charlie Rich
followed Campbell's example into the early 1970s, it was Dolly Parton
and Kenny Rogers who, during the mid- to

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

 been the subject
of several later works of fiction. (See Works based on Peter Pan for
notable examples.) J. R. R. Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter
has speculated that Tolkien's impressions of a production of Barrie's
Peter Pan in Birmingham in 1910 may have had a little to do with his
original conception of the Elves of Middle Earth.[2] Since featuring
the character in their 1953 animated film, Walt Disney has continued
to use him as one of their traditional characters, featuring him in
the sequel film Return to Neverland and in their parks as a meetable
character, and the focus of the dark ride, Peter Pan's Flight; he
appears in House of Mouse, The Lion King 1½, Mickey's Magical
Christmas, and the Kingdom Hearts video games.

The name Peter Pan has been adopted for various purposes over the
years. Three thoroughbred racehorses have been given the name, the
first born in 1904. It has been adopted by several businesses,
including Peter Pan peanut butter, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and Peter Pan
Records. An early 1960s program in which Cuban children were sent
unattended to Miami to escape feared mistreatment under the then-new
Castro regime was called Operation Peter Pan (or 'Operación Pedro
Pan'). The term Peter Pan syndrome was popularized in 1983 by a book
with that name, about individuals (usually male) with underdeveloped
maturity.

Peter Pan is depicted in public sculpture. There are seven statues
cast from a mould by sculptor George Frampton, following an original
commission by Barrie in 1912. The statues are in Kensington Gardens in
London, England; Liverpool, England; Brussels, Belgium; Camden, New
Jersey, United States; Perth, Western Australia; Toronto, Ontario,[3]
Canada; and St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Two more statues (though
not of Frampton's mould) are in Kirriemuir, Scotland, the birthplace
of JM Barrie. A new bronze statue by Diarmuid Byron O'Connor was
commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and unveiled in
2000, showing Peter blowing fairy dust, with Tinker Bell added in
2005.[4]


[edit] References
^ Birkin, Andrew (2003). J.M. Barrie  the Lost Boys. Yale University
Press. p. 47. ISBN 0300098227.
^ Carpenter, Humphrey (1977), Tolkien: A Biography, New York:
Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-04-928037-6
^ in small park on NW corner of Avenue Rd and St. Clair Ave West
^ Tinker Bell statue dedication press release
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Peter and Wendy[hide]v • d • ePeter Pan

Characters Peter Pan · Wendy Darling · Captain Hook · Tinker Bell ·
The Lost Boys · other characters

Official books
and plays The Little White Bird · Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens ·
Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up · Peter and Wendy · Peter
Pan in Scarlet

Films/TV series Peter Pan (1924) · Peter Pan (1953) · The Lost Boys
(1978) · Peter Pan no Bōken (1989) · Peter Pan and the Pirates
(1990-1991) · Hook (1991) · Return to Never Land (2002) · Peter Pan
(2003) · Finding Neverland (2004) · Tinker Bell (2008)

Video games Peter Pan and the Pirates · Hook

Related people J. M. Barrie · Llewelyn Davies boys · Sylvia Llewelyn
Davies · Arthur Llewelyn Davies · Charles Frohman


Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan;
Categories: Disney's Peter Pan characters | Fictional characters in
children's literature | Fictional immortals | Fictional sword fighters
| Child characters in written fiction | Kingdom Hearts characters |
Peter Pan

On 7/10/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote:
 Michael Jackson  50

 Bessie Smith   37
 Billie Holiday 44
 Charlie Parker 34
 John Coltrane  40
 Jimi Hendrix   28
 Mozart 35
 Tupac Shakur   25
 Biggie Smalls  24
 Elvis Presley  42
 Fats Waller39
 Judy Garland   47
 Marvin Gaye44
 David Ruffin   50
 Paul Williams  34
 John Lennon40
 Edith Piaf 47
 Janis Joplin   27
 Jim Morrison   28
 Paul Chambers  33
 Duane Allman   24

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Allman

 Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an
 American lead guitarist, co-founder of the Southern rock group the
 Allman Brothers Band, and respected session musician. He is best
 remembered for his brief but influential tenure in that band,
 expressive slide guitar playing, and formidable improvisational
 skills.[citation needed]

 A sought-after session musician both before and during his tenure with
 the band, Allman performed with such established stars as King Curtis,
 Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Herbie Mann. His contributions to
 the 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the
 Dominos went on to become a part of Rock history.

 Phillipe Wynn 43



 Philippé Wynne (April 3, 1941 – July 13, 1984), born Phillip Walker,
 was an American RB vocalist. Best known for his role as the lead
 singer in the popular RB group The Spinners (a role he shared with
 fellow group member Bobby Smith), Wynne scored notable hits such as
 How Could I Let You Get Away, The Rubberband Man, One of a Kind
 (Love Affair

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

The Great God Pan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Great God Pan
Author Arthur Machen
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Horror novella
Publisher Creation Books
Publication date 1926
Media type print (hardback)
Pages 128
The Great God Pan is a novella written by Arthur Machen. The original
story was published in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it in
1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as
degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual
content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of
horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on
Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Critical opinion
3 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
4 Influence
5 References
6 External links



[edit] Plot summary
A woman in Wales has her mind destroyed by a scientist's attempt to
enable her to see the god of nature Pan. Years later, a young woman
named Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing
many young men and causing some to commit suicide; it transpires that
she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in the
experiment.


[edit] Critical opinion
In Supernatural Horror in Literature (1926; revised 1933), H. P.
Lovecraft praised the novel, saying: No one could begin to describe
the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph
abounds; he added that the sensitive reader reaches the end with
an appreciative shudder. Lovecraft also noted, however, that
melodrama is undeniably present, and coincidence is stretched to a
length which appears absurd upon analysis. The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction (1993) notes The story begins with an sf rationale
(brain surgery) which remains one of the most dramatically horrible
and misogynistic in fiction.


[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The Great God was brought to the stage in 2008 by WildClaw Theatre
Company in Chicago. It was adapted and directed by WildClaw Artistic
Director Charley Sherman.


[edit] Influence
The story's depiction of a monstrous half-human hybrid inspired the
main plotline of Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, which refers by
name to Machen’s story. According to Lovecraft scholar Robert M.
Price, 'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and
even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's wonderful story that
does not come directly out of Machen's fiction.[1] It also inspired
Peter Straub's Ghost Story.

The book was translated into French by Paul-Jean Toulet (Le grand dieu
Pan, Paris, 1901). It was a major influence on his first novel,
Monsieur du Paur, homme public.

Stephen King wrote in the endnotes for his story collection Just After
Sunset (2008) that his newly published novella N. was strongly
influenced by Machen's piece, which he noted, surmounts its rather
clumsy prose and works its way relentlessly into the reader's
terror-zone. How many sleepless nights has it caused? God knows, but a
few of them were mine. I think Pan is as close as the horror genre
comes to a great white whale. In another interview he stated: Not
Lovecraft; it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which
is one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the
English language. Mine isn’t anywhere near that good, but I loved the
chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together
with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse. [2]


[edit] References
^ Price, pp. ix-x.
^ SELF-INTERVIEW By Stephen King 10:50am September 4th, 2008

[edit] External links


On 7/15/09, Shane Mage shm...@pipeline.com wrote:

 On Jul 15, 2009, at 11:31 AM, c b wrote:

  It would seem that Michael Jackson aesthetic was a species of the
  bourgeois Romanticists Peter Pan philosophy...child as the father
  of the man,which more abstractly is probably part of the process of
  the origin of
  the human species.  Pan is part of the species name of the
  chimpanzee.


 But pan as genus (not species) name for chimpanzees is taken from
 the resemblance of chimps and bonobos to the iconography of the Great
 God Pan. And there is absolutely nothing childlike about Pan.


 Shane Mage

  This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
  always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
  kindling in measures and going out in measures.
 
  Herakleitos of Ephesos

 ___
 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


___
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Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

.
^ Where or what was Palodes?.
^ Payne-Knight, R. Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, 1786, p.73
^ The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft,
Ronald Hutton, page 161-162
^ Patricia Merivale, Pan the Goat-God: his Myth in Modern Times,
Harvard University Press, 1969, p.vii.
^ The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft,
Ronald Hutton, page 199

[edit] References
Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion. Harvard University Press.
Kerenyi, Karl (1951). The Gods of the Greeks. Thames  Hudson.
Ruck, Carl A.P.; Danny Staples (1994). The World of Classical Myth.
Carolina Academic Press. ISBN 0-89089-575-9.
Borgeaud, Philippe (1979). Recherches sur le Dieu Pan. Geneva University.
Vinci, Leo (1993), Pan: Great God Of Nature, Neptune Press, London
Malini, Roberto (1998), Pan dio della selva, Edizioni dell'Ambrosino, Milano
Diotima, (2007), ' 'The Goat Foot God, Bibliotheca Alexandrina,

[edit] See also
Pan in popular culture
Pangu
Puck
Erotic art in Pompeii
Faun
Satyr
Kokopelli
Daveli's Cave
Syrinx

[edit] External links
 Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pan (mythology)
The story of Pan and Daphnis
Original resources on Faunus/Phaunos
Original resources on Pan
Pan Mythology
[http://www.et-in-arcadia-ego.com / Pan and the Arcadian theme in the
paintings of Poussin, Geurcino,Et in Arcadia Ego
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology)
Categories: Nature gods | Love and lust gods | Arts gods | Oracular
gods | Animal gods | Horned deities | Greek gods | Greek mythology |
Sexuality in ancient Rome | Offspring of Zeus | Offspring of Hermes

On 7/15/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote:
 The Great God Pan
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Jump to: navigation, search
 The Great God Pan
 Author Arthur Machen
 Country United Kingdom
 Language English
 Genre(s) Horror novella
 Publisher Creation Books
 Publication date 1926
 Media type print (hardback)
 Pages 128
 The Great God Pan is a novella written by Arthur Machen. The original
 story was published in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it in
 1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as
 degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual
 content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of
 horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on
 Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism.

 Contents [hide]
 1 Plot summary
 2 Critical opinion
 3 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
 4 Influence
 5 References
 6 External links



 [edit] Plot summary
 A woman in Wales has her mind destroyed by a scientist's attempt to
 enable her to see the god of nature Pan. Years later, a young woman
 named Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing
 many young men and causing some to commit suicide; it transpires that
 she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in the
 experiment.


 [edit] Critical opinion
 In Supernatural Horror in Literature (1926; revised 1933), H. P.
 Lovecraft praised the novel, saying: No one could begin to describe
 the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph
 abounds; he added that the sensitive reader reaches the end with
 an appreciative shudder. Lovecraft also noted, however, that
 melodrama is undeniably present, and coincidence is stretched to a
 length which appears absurd upon analysis. The Encyclopedia of
 Science Fiction (1993) notes The story begins with an sf rationale
 (brain surgery) which remains one of the most dramatically horrible
 and misogynistic in fiction.


 [edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
 The Great God was brought to the stage in 2008 by WildClaw Theatre
 Company in Chicago. It was adapted and directed by WildClaw Artistic
 Director Charley Sherman.


 [edit] Influence
 The story's depiction of a monstrous half-human hybrid inspired the
 main plotline of Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, which refers by
 name to Machen’s story. According to Lovecraft scholar Robert M.
 Price, 'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and
 even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's wonderful story that
 does not come directly out of Machen's fiction.[1] It also inspired
 Peter Straub's Ghost Story.

 The book was translated into French by Paul-Jean Toulet (Le grand dieu
 Pan, Paris, 1901). It was a major influence on his first novel,
 Monsieur du Paur, homme public.

 Stephen King wrote in the endnotes for his story collection Just After
 Sunset (2008) that his newly published novella N. was strongly
 influenced by Machen's piece, which he noted, surmounts its rather
 clumsy prose and works its way relentlessly into the reader's
 terror-zone. How many sleepless nights has it caused? God knows, but a
 few of them were mine. I think Pan is as close as the horror genre
 comes to a great white whale. In another interview he stated: Not
 Lovecraft; it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which
 is one of the best horror

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson's Thriller  ( video)


Michael Jackson's Thriller title card.
Directed by John Landis
Produced by George Folsey Jr.
Written by John Landis
Michael Jackson
Starring Michael Jackson
Ola Ray
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Epic Records Productions
Release date(s) December 2, 1983
Running time 13:43
Language English
Budget $500,000[1]
Sales:
9 million units
Michael Jackson's Thriller is a 14-minute music video for the song
of the same name released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John
Landis, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jackson. The mini-film
music video was broadcast on MTV three weeks before Christmas 1983. It
was the most expensive video of its time, costing US$500,000[1], and
Guinness World Records listed it in 2006 as the most successful music
video, selling over 9 million units.[2]

Thriller was less a conventional music video and more a full-fledged
short subject or mini-film: a horror film homage featuring
choreographed zombies performing with Jackson. The music was re-edited
to match the video, with the verses being sung one after the other
followed by the ending rap from Vincent Price, then the main dance
sequence (filmed at 3701 Union Pacific Avenue in East Los Angeles[3])
to an instrumental loop, and finally the final: the choruses in a big
dance number climactic scene. During the video, Jackson transforms
into both a zombie and a werecat (although makeup artist Rick Baker
referred to it as a cat monster in the Making of Thriller
documentary); familiar territory for Landis, who had directed An
American Werewolf in London two years earlier.

Co-starring with Jackson was former Playboy centerfold Ola Ray. The
video was choreographed by Michael Peters (who had worked with the
singer on his prior hit Beat It), with Michael Jackson. The video
also contains incidental music by film music composer Elmer Bernstein,
who had previously also worked with Landis on An American Werewolf in
London. The video (like the song) contains a spoken word performance
by horror film veteran Vincent Price. Rick Baker assisted in
prosthetics and makeup for the production. The red jacket that Jackson
wore was designed by John Landis' wife Deborah Landis to make him
appear more virile.[4]

Jackson, who at the time was one of Jehovah's Witnesses, added a
disclaimer to the start of the video, saying:

“ Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this
film in no way endorses a belief in the occult. ”

To qualify for an Academy Award, Thriller debuted at a special
theatrical screening, along with the 1940 animated motion picture
Fantasia.




Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Awards
2.1 Grammy Award
2.2 MTV Award
3 Making Michael Jackson's Thriller
3.1 Behind the Scenes
4 Broadway and litigation
5 In popular culture
6 See also
7 References
8 External links



[edit] Plot

Jackson dancing with the undead.It is the early 1960s. A teenaged
Michael and his unnamed date (Ola Ray) run out of gas in a dark,
wooded area. They walk off into the forest, and Michael asks her if
she would like to go steady. She accepts and he gives her a ring. He
warns her, however, that he is different. A full moon appears, and
Michael begins convulsing in agony – transforming into a horrifying
werecat. His date shrieks and runs away, but the werecat catches up,
knocking her down and begins lunging at her with its claws.

The scene cuts away to a modern-day movie theater (exteriors filmed at
the Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles[5]), where Michael and his
date – along with a repulsed audience – are actually watching this
scene unfold in a movie called Thriller starring Vincent Price.
Michael's date is scared, but he is clearly enjoying the horror flick.
Frightened, his date leaves the theatre. Michael puts his popcorn
down, and catches up to her, smiling and saying It's only a movie!
Some debate follows over whether or not she was scared by the scene;
she denies it, but Michael disagrees.

Michael and his date then walk down a foggy street, and he teases her
with the opening verses of Thriller. They pass a graveyard, where
corpses suddenly begin to rise from their graves as Vincent Price
performs his rap. Michael and his date then find themselves surrounded
by the zombies, and suddenly, Michael becomes a zombie himself.
Michael and the undead perform an elaborate song and dance number
together, followed by the chorus of Thriller (in which Michael is
changed back into human form), frightening his girlfriend to the point
where she runs for cover.

The girl is chased into an abandoned house (filmed in the Angeleno
Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles at 1345 Carroll Avenue[6]), where
Michael (who reverts back to zombie form) and his fellow zombies back
her into a corner. As Michael slowly reaches for her throat, she lets
out with a blood-curdling scream, only to awake and realize it was all
a dream. As a human Michael calmly asks What's the problem?, he
offers to take her home. As the two depart, Michael glances back

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

In the late nineteenth century Pan became an increasingly common
figure in literature and art. Patricia Merivale states that between
1890 and 1926 there was an astonishing resurgence of interest in the
Pan motif.[21] He appears in poetry, in novels and childrens' books
such as The Wind in the Willows during this period.





Pan (mythology)

Pan

Pan teaching his eromenos, the shepherd Daphnis, to play the panpipes
2nd century AD Roman copy of Greek original ca. 100 BC attributed to
Heliodorus (found in Pompeii)
God of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds and rustic music
Abode Arcadia
Parents Hermes and Penelope
Roman equivalent Faunus
This box: view • talk
Pan (Greek Πάν, genitive Πανός), in Greek religion and mythology, is
the companion of the nymphs,[1] god of shepherds and flocks, of
mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. His name originates within
the Greek language, from the word paein, meaning to pasture.[2] He
has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as
a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is recognized
as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens; because of this, Pan
is connected to fertility and the season of spring. The ancient Greeks
also considered Pan to be the god of theatrical criticism.[3]

In Roman mythology, Pan's counterpart was Faunus, a nature spirit who
was the father of Bona Dea (Fauna). In the 18th and 19th centuries,
Pan became a significant figure in the romanticist movement of western
Europe, and also in the 20th century Neopagan movement.[4]

Contents [hide]
1 Origins
2 Worship
3 Mythology
3.1 Erotic aspects
3.2 Pan and music
3.3 Capricornus
3.4 Epithets
4 The Death of Pan
5 Influence
5.1 Satan
5.2 Revivalist imagery
5.3 Neopaganism
6 Notes
7 References
8 See also
9 External links



[edit] Origins
In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindar's Pythian Ode iii.
78, [5] Pan appears as the agent, guardian or attendant of the
Great Goddess (Cybele).

The parentage of Pan is unclear;[6] in some myths he is the son of
Zeus, though generally he is the son of Hermes or Dionysus, with whom
his mother is said to be a nymph, sometimes Dryope or, in Nonnus,
Dionysiaca (14.92), a Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia.[7] Following
Plato's inventive etymology,[8] his name is sometimes mistakenly
thought to be identical to the Greek word pan, meaning all, when it
is more likely to be cognate with paein, to pasture, and to share an
origin with the modern English word pasture. In 1924, Hermann
Collitz suggested that Greek Pan and Indic Pushan might have a common
Indo-European origin.[9] In the Mystery cults of the highly syncretic
Hellenistic era[10] Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos, Zeus,
Dionysus and Eros.[11]

Probably the beginning of the linguistic misunderstanding is the
Homeric Hymn to Pan, which describes him as delighting all the gods,
and thus getting his name.[12] The Roman Faunus, a god of
Indo-European origin, was equated with Pan. However, accounts of Pan's
genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time.
Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians,
if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the
secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Panes
(Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples 1994 p 132[13]) or the
Paniskoi. Kerenyi (1951 p 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in
Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of
Arcas, and one a son of Kronos. In the retinue of Dionysos, or in
depictions of wild landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan,
but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played the same part as the
Satyrs.


[edit] Worship
The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal
seat of his worship. Arcadia was a district of mountain people whom
other Greeks disdained. Arcadian hunters used to scourge the statue of
the god if they had been disappointed in the chase (Theocritus. vii.
107).

Pan inspired sudden fear in lonely places, Panic (panikon deima).
Following the Titans' assault on Olympus, Pan claimed credit for the
victory of the gods because he had inspired disorder and fear in the
attackers resulting in the word 'panic' to describe these emotions. Of
course, Pan was later known for his music, capable of arousing
inspiration, sexuality, or panic, depending on his intentions. In the
Battle of Marathon (490 BC), it is said that Pan favored the Athenians
and so inspired panic in the hearts of their enemies, the Persians.


[edit] Mythology
Greek deities
series
Primordial deities
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Asclepius, god of
medicine
Leto, mother of
Apollo and Artemis
Pan, shepherd god
Nymphs
Anatolian deities

The goat-god Aegipan was nurtured by Amalthea with the infant Zeus in
Crete. In Zeus' battle with Typhon, Aegipan and Hermes stole back
Zeus' sinews that Typhon had hidden away in the Corycian Cave.[14]
Pan aided

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

As far as the horror story/movie genre, Michael Pan Jackson's greatest
album was _Thriller_, in the video of which he transforms from a
teenage boy dating a girl into a Wherewolf stalking her, thereby
weaving in the classic myth of The Beauty and the Beast.   He
features the voice of the classic horror film actor Vincent Price.


Thriller (album)



Thriller

Studio album by Michael Jackson
Released November 30, 1982
Recorded April 14 - November 8, 1982
Westlake Recording Studios
(Los Angeles, California)
Genre RB, dance, dance-pop, pop/rock, funk[1]
Length 42:19
Label Epic
EK-38112
Producer Michael Jackson
Quincy Jones
Professional reviews
Allmusic [1]
Robert Christgau (A-)[2]
Melody Maker (unfavorable) 1982[3]
Q [4]
Rolling Stone [5]
Slant [6]
Stylus (favorable)[7]
The New York Times (favorable)[8]

Michael Jackson chronology
Off the Wall
(1979) Thriller
(1982) Bad
(1987)

Singles from Thriller
The Girl Is Mine
Released: October 18, 1982
Billie Jean
Released: January 3, 1983
Beat It
Released: February 14, 1983
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
Released: May 8, 1983
Human Nature
Released: July 3, 1983
P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)
Released: September 19, 1983
Thriller
Released: January 23, 1984

2001 Special Edition

Thriller is the sixth studio album by American recording artist
Michael Jackson. The album was released on November 30, 1982 by Epic
Records as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially
successful 1979 album Off the Wall. Thriller explores similar genres
to those of Off the Wall, including funk, disco, soul, soft rock, RB,
and pop. Thriller's lyrics deal with themes including paranoia and the
supernatural.

With a production budget of $750,000, recording sessions took place
between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los
Angeles, California.[9] Assisted by producer Quincy Jones, Jackson
wrote four of Thriller's nine tracks. Following the release of the
album's first single The Girl Is Mine, some observers assumed
Thriller would only be a minor hit record. With the release of the
second single Billie Jean, the album topped the charts in many
countries. At its peak, the album was selling a million copies a week
worldwide. In just over a year, Thriller became--and currently
remains--the best-selling album of all time. Sales are estimated to be
over 50 million copies sold worldwide. Seven of the album's nine songs
were released as singles, and all reached the top 10 on the Billboard
Hot 100. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the
1984 Grammys.

Thriller cemented Jackson's status as one of the predominant pop stars
of the late 20th century, and enabled him to break down racial
barriers via his appearances on MTV and meetings with President Ronald
Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music
videos as successful promotional tools--the videos for Thriller,
Billie Jean and Beat It all received regular rotation on MTV. In
2001, a special edition issue of the album was released, which
contains additional audio interviews, a demo recording and the song
Someone In the Dark, which was a Grammy-winning track from the E.T.
the Extra-Terrestrial storybook.[10] In 2008, the album was reissued
again as Thriller 25, containing re-mixes that feature contemporary
artists, a previously unreleased song and a DVD.

Thriller ranked number 20 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest
Albums of All Time list in 2003, and was listed by the National
Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three in its
Definitive 200 Albums of All Time. Thriller was preserved by the
Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry, as it was
deemed culturally significant.

Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Recording
3 Music
4 Release and reception
5 Influence and legacy
5.1 Music industry
5.2 Music videos and racial equality
5.3 Contemporary appeal
6 Reissues and catalog sales
7 Track listing
8 Personnel
9 See also
10 References
11 Notes



[edit] Background
Jackson's previous album Off the Wall (1979) was a critical success
and received generally favorable reviews.[11][12] It was also a
commercial success, eventually selling over 20 million copies
worldwide.[13]

The years between Off the Wall and Thriller were a transitional period
for the singer, a time of increasing independence and struggles with
his family. In 1973, Jackson's father Joseph began a secret affair
with a woman 20 years younger than he; the couple had a child in
secret. In 1980, Joseph told his family of the affair and child.
Michael, already angry with his father over his childhood abuse, felt
so betrayed that he fell out with Joseph for many years.[14] The
period saw the singer become deeply unhappy; Jackson explained, Even
at home, I'm lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It's so hard
to make friends ... I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night,
just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming
home.[15] When Jackson turned 21 in August 1979, he fired

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

The Great God Pan

The Great God Pan
Author Arthur Machen
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Horror novella
Publisher Creation Books
Publication date 1926
Media type print (hardback)
Pages 128
The Great God Pan is a novella written by Arthur Machen. The original
story was published in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it in
1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as
degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual
content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of
horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on
Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Critical opinion
3 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
4 Influence
5 References
6 External links



[edit] Plot summary
A woman in Wales has her mind destroyed by a scientist's attempt to
enable her to see the god of nature Pan. Years later, a young woman
named Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing
many young men and causing some to commit suicide; it transpires that
she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in the
experiment.


[edit] Critical opinion
In Supernatural Horror in Literature (1926; revised 1933), H. P.
Lovecraft praised the novel, saying: No one could begin to describe
the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph
abounds; he added that the sensitive reader reaches the end with
an appreciative shudder. Lovecraft also noted, however, that
melodrama is undeniably present, and coincidence is stretched to a
length which appears absurd upon analysis. The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction (1993) notes The story begins with an sf rationale
(brain surgery) which remains one of the most dramatically horrible
and misogynistic in fiction.


[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The Great God was brought to the stage in 2008 by WildClaw Theatre
Company in Chicago. It was adapted and directed by WildClaw Artistic
Director Charley Sherman.


[edit] Influence
The story's depiction of a monstrous half-human hybrid inspired the
main plotline of Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, which refers by
name to Machen’s story. According to Lovecraft scholar Robert M.
Price, 'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and
even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's wonderful story that
does not come directly out of Machen's fiction.[1] It also inspired
Peter Straub's Ghost Story.

The book was translated into French by Paul-Jean Toulet (Le grand dieu
Pan, Paris, 1901). It was a major influence on his first novel,
Monsieur du Paur, homme public.

Stephen King wrote in the endnotes for his story collection Just After
Sunset (2008) that his newly published novella N. was strongly
influenced by Machen's piece, which he noted, surmounts its rather
clumsy prose and works its way relentlessly into the reader's
terror-zone. How many sleepless nights has it caused? God knows, but a
few of them were mine. I think Pan is as close as the horror genre
comes to a great white whale. In another interview he stated: Not
Lovecraft; it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which
is one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the
English language. Mine isn’t anywhere near that good, but I loved the
chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together
with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse. [2]


[edit] References
^ Price, pp. ix-x.
^ SELF-INTERVIEW By Stephen King 10:50am September 4th, 2008

[edit] External links
 has original text related to this article:
The Great God PanThe Great God Pan at Project Gutenberg
 This article about a 19th century novel is a stub. You can help
Wikipedia by expanding it.




On 7/15/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote:
 As far as the horror story/movie genre, Michael Pan Jackson's greatest
 album was _Thriller_, in the video of which he transforms from a
 teenage boy dating a girl into a Wherewolf stalking her, thereby
 weaving in the classic myth of The Beauty and the Beast.   He
 features the voice of the classic horror film actor Vincent Price.


 Thriller (album)



 Thriller

 Studio album by Michael Jackson
 Released November 30, 1982
 Recorded April 14 - November 8, 1982
 Westlake Recording Studios
 (Los Angeles, California)
 Genre RB, dance, dance-pop, pop/rock, funk[1]
 Length 42:19
 Label Epic
 EK-38112
 Producer Michael Jackson
 Quincy Jones
 Professional reviews
 Allmusic [1]
 Robert Christgau (A-)[2]
 Melody Maker (unfavorable) 1982[3]
 Q [4]
 Rolling Stone [5]
 Slant [6]
 Stylus (favorable)[7]
 The New York Times (favorable)[8]

 Michael Jackson chronology
 Off the Wall
 (1979) Thriller
 (1982) Bad
 (1987)

 Singles from Thriller
 The Girl Is Mine
 Released: October 18, 1982
 Billie Jean
 Released: January 3, 1983
 Beat It
 Released: February 14, 1983
 Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
 Released: May 8, 1983
 Human Nature
 Released: July 3, 1983
 P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] questions

2009-07-16 Thread c b

Usually, wooden tircotomies refers to some kind of poor and rigid
effort at Hegelian dialectic.

Look at Engels _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State_ where the Teutonic-Christian , ancient Greek and Roman forms of
the family are discussed from a Marxist standpoint.  Word family has
a Latin origin.  Roman family is pater ruled.

On 7/16/09, justicelov...@yahoo.com justicelov...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Will some one kindly let me know what was Stein's Wooden Trichotomies, and
 shed light on this passage of Marx by explaining the mentioned forms of 
 families: It is,
 of course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-Christian form of the family
 to be absolute as it would be to apply that character to the ancient Roman,
 the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] relevance

2009-07-17 Thread c b

Spoken like a true autosundry

On 7/16/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote:
 The relevance consists in this:

 IF:

 (1) You constantly submit to the list whole entries from wikipedia in
 an unreadable format, without comment, assuming that we can't use
 Wikipedia ourselves;

 (2) Randomly pick up on any idea that crosses your mind and run with
 it in an arbitrary and superficial fashion;

 (3) Mechanically correlate every piece of information that crosses
 your path with your confused understanding of isolated phrases culled
 from the classics of dialectical materialism;

 (4) Make idiotic assertions about everything based on arbitrary
 self-delusion, such as representing Obama's victory as a
 manifestation of a anti-racism;

 (5) Lie through your teeth about China being a socialist country;

 (6) Think that the USSR was your friend and had your interests at heart;

 (7) Are a follower of the Communist Party:

 THEN:

 You demonstrate to all and sundry that you are a dumb ass with
 nothing worthwhile to say about anything.

 At 06:02 PM 7/16/2009, Karl Dallas wrote:
 And the relevance of this stuff about aa deluded young pop star and a
 19th Century horror author to the subject of this list (which, I seem
 to recall, once was Marxism) would be what, exactly?


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 69, Issue 11

2009-07-17 Thread c b

Marxists should be interested in mass phenonomena, mass culture,
mass consciousness of many forms. Adorno may have been wrong about
popular music and culture (smile), but he wasn't wrong to
investigate popular music and culture vis-a-vis working class mass
consciousness. That was not a project irrelevant to Marxism.

Socialist realist aesthetics concerns itself with working class
highlife, play, fun, life _outside_ of work, because in reality
workers have life outside of work. Work hard, play hard.

See Marxist Thaxis discussions from circa 1998 -2000 on need for
Marxists to learn about working class partying, music, arts
,recreation, relaxation. See Angela Davis book on women blues singers,
and the African American music tradition as blues tradition. See
discussion of relationship between modern popular music and this blues
tradition. See discussions of relevance of this and relationships
between women and men , as well as Black culture and Black/White
relations ( on Marxism - Thaxis)



See relationship between Communists of the 30's and 40's and jazz
musicians such as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker.

Consider concerns of Sidney Finkelstein on these issues

Sidney Finkelstein
Birth/Death: July 4, 1909 — January 14, 1974.
Sidney Finkelstein was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 4, 1909,
studied at City College in New York, and did graduate work at Columbia
University and New York University. In the 1930s he was a book
reviewer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and worked for the United States
Postal Service. In the 1940s he joined the music staff of the Herald
Tribune and was also a music reviewer for New Masses, Masses, and
Mainstream. Between 1951 and 1973 he worked for Vanguard Records,
specializing in jazz and classical recordings. As an author he was
most noted for a number of books that brought a socialist realist
perspective to the arts, partricularly Jazz, a People's Music, in
1948. Finkelstein died in Brooklyn on January 14, 1974.

Resources by this Author
Inner and Outer Jazz

Jazz Studies Online is sponsored by the Center for Jazz Studies, with
funding from the Ford Foundation | Credits
© 2008 Columbia University | Copyright Policy



Sidney Finkelstein | Jazz Studies OnlineSidney Finkelstein was born in
Brooklyn, New York on July 4, 1909, ... a People's Music, in 1948.
Finkelstein died in Brooklyn on January 14, 1974. ...
jazzstudiesonline.org/?q=node/280 - Cached - Similar -
Composer and Nation. By Sidney Finkelstein. pp. 333. (Lawrence ...By
Sidney Finkelstein. pp. 333. (Lawrence  Wishart,. London, 1960, 30s.)
... Mr. Finkelstein's, wide and detailed knowledge of the music of the
past ...
ml.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/42/1/63.pdf - Similar -
Sidney Finkelstein, Welk Music Group, Santa Monica, CA in Jigsaw's
...Sidney Finkelstein in Jigsaw's business directory includes Sidney's
title, phone as well as business email address. Jigsaw's business
directory provides ...
www.jigsaw.com/scid1052451/sidney_finkelstein.xhtml - Cached - Similar -
Sidney Finkelstein - Music - Compare Prices, Reviews and Buy at
...Sidney Finkelstein - 2 results like the Jazz, a People's Music,
Composer and Nation: The Folk Heritage in Music Sidney Finkelstein -
Music.
www.nextag.com/Music--zzSidney+Finkelsteinz220026zB6z5---html - Cached
- Similar -
Jazz: A People's Music. by Sidney Finkelstein : riverrun bookshop
:Jazz: A People's Music. by Finkelstein, Sidney. Publisher
Information: Citadel 1948. 278 pp. Edition: First. Binding: Hardbound
...
www.riverrunbookshop.com/cgi-bin/rrbooks/4837.html - Cached - Similar -
Music and ideology in Cold War Europe - Google Books Resultby Mark
Carroll - 2003 - Music - 245 pages
... who had been lionised by the Left for his 'proletarian music', was
criticised ... The critique was written by the New York Marxist Sidney
Finkelstein, ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0521820723... -
Sidney Finkelstein (Open Library)How music expresses ideas. by Sidney
Finkelstein. (International Publishers, 1970). Art and society. by
Sidney Finkelstein. (International Publishers, 1947) ...
openlibrary.org/a/OL4374214A - Cached - Similar -

Also, it is not the Marxist position on philosophy and art  to ignore
bourgeois philosophies and arts, but to consider especially
progressive bourgeois and petit bourgeois thinkers and artists as
capable of giving great insight on mass thinking . The textbook
example on this is Marx liked to read Flaubert or some other French
novelist who was a reactionary politically, because even reactionary
artists can have useful insights for the cause of the working class,
and otherwise in terms of understanding humanity and society.


And always remember: The Soviet Union is your friend.



On 7/17/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote:
 Listen up better. In brief,  Michael Jackson who had the ears of
 millions sought to unite Black and White. Any _Marxist_ in the United
 States who is not concerned about this issue is not a Marxist. Are you
 a Marxist or what ?

 Pay attention

[Marxism-Thaxis] Free Thought

2009-07-20 Thread c b

MY SON WAS TAUGHT TO BELIEVE IN JESUS BY HIS MOTHER -- HOW DO I HELP
HIM BECOME A FREE THINKER?
By Danny Postel, New Humanist
Panicked by his son's Jesus references, an agnostic dad
discovers a skeptic's reading list for kids. But is
counter-indoctrination really the answer?

http://www.alternet.org/rights/141410/my_son_was_taught_to_believe_in_jesus_by_his_mother_--_how_do_i_help_him_become_a_free_thinker/

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx playing chess ?

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1278768

Karl Marx vs Meyer
Chess Manifesto (game of the day Jul-24-08)
Casual Game 1867  ·  King's Gambit: Accepted. Double Muzio Gambit
Paulsen Defense (C37

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Book on Marx and Wittgenstein

  Preview this book Marx and Wittgenstein By D. Rubinstein

http://books.google.com/books?id=F0FEE89yojQCdq=rubin+stein+karl+marxprintsec=frontcoversource=blots=sAqhn1i1vpsig=PJkih73R0XicL_vPZBkhtERFPEIhl=enei=WsVoSpWKNovUM-HFpYQFsa=Xoi=book_resultct=resultresnum=5

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] questions

Frederick Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Chapter IV. The Greek Gens




From prehistoric times Greeks and Pelasgians alike, and other peoples
of kindred stock, had been organized in the same organic series as the
Americans: gens, phratry, tribe, confederacy of tribes. The phratry
might be absent, as among the Dorians, and the confederacy of tribes
was not necessarily fully developed everywhere as yet; but in every
case the gens was the unit. At the time of their entry into history,
the Greeks are on the threshold of civilization; between them and the
American tribes, of whom we spoke above, lie almost two entire great
periods of development, by which the Greeks of the heroic age are
ahead of the Iroquois. The gens of the Greeks is therefore no longer
the archaic gens of the Iroquois; the impress of group marriage is
beginning to be a good deal blurred. Mother-right has given way to
father-right; increasing private wealth has thus made its first breach
in the gentile constitution. A second breach followed naturally from
the first. After the introduction of father-right the property of a
rich heiress would have passed to her husband and thus into another
gens on her marriage, but the foundation of all gentile law was now
violated and in such a case the girl was not only permitted but
ordered to marry within the gens, in order that her property should be
retained for the gens.

According to Grote's History of Greece, the Athenian gens, in
particular, was held together by the following institutions and
customs:

1. Common religious rites, and the exclusive privilege of priesthood
in honor of a particular god, the supposed ancestral father of the
gens, who in this attribute was designated by a special surname.

2. A common burial place (cf. Demosthenes' Eubulides).

3. Mutual right of inheritance.

4. Mutual obligations of help, protection, and assistance in case of violence.

5. Mutual right and obligation to marry within the gens in certain
cases, especially for orphan girls and heiresses.

6. Possession, at least in some cases, of common property, with a
special archon (head man or president) and treasurer.

Next, several gentes were united in the phratry, but less closely;
though here also we find mutual rights and obligations of a similar
kind, particularly the common celebration of certain religious
ceremonies and the right to avenge the death of a phrator. Similarly,
all the phratries of a tribe held regularly recurring religious
festivals in common, at which a leader of the tribe (phylobasileus),
elected from the nobility (Eupatridai), officiated.

Rest at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch04.htm


On 7/16/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote:
 Usually, wooden tircotomies refers to some kind of poor and rigid
 effort at Hegelian dialectic.

 Look at Engels _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
 State_ where the Teutonic-Christian , ancient Greek and Roman forms of
 the family are discussed from a Marxist standpoint.  Word family has
 a Latin origin.  Roman family is pater ruled.

 On 7/16/09, justicelov...@yahoo.com justicelov...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
  Will some one kindly let me know what was Stein's Wooden Trichotomies, and
  shed light on this passage of Marx by explaining the mentioned forms of 
  families: It is,
  of course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-Christian form of the family
  to be absolute as it would be to apply that character to the ancient Roman,
  the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms
 
 
 
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[Marxism-Thaxis] questions



of kindred stock, had been organized in the same organic series as the
Americans: gens, phratry, tribe, confederacy of tribes. The phratry
might be absent, as among the Dorians, and the confederacy of tribes
was not necessarily fully developed everywhere as yet; but in every
case the gens was the unit. At the time of their entry into history,
the Greeks are on the threshold of civilization; between them and the
American tribes, of whom we spoke above, lie almost two entire great
periods of development, by which the Greeks of the heroic age are
ahead of the Iroquois. The gens of the Greeks is therefore no longer
the archaic gens of the Iroquois; the impress of group marriage is
beginning to be a good deal blurred. Mother-right has given way to
father-right; increasing private wealth has thus made its first breach
in the gentile constitution. A second breach followed naturally from
the first. After the introduction of father-right the property of a
rich heiress would have passed to her husband and thus into another
gens on her marriage, but the foundation of all gentile law was now
violated and in such a case the girl was not only permitted but
ordered to marry within the gens, in order that her property should be
retained for the gens.

According to Grote's History of Greece, the Athenian gens, in
particular, was held together by the following institutions and
customs:

1. Common religious rites, and the exclusive privilege of priesthood
in honor of a particular god, the supposed ancestral father of the
gens, who in this attribute was designated by a special surname.

2. A common burial place (cf. Demosthenes' Eubulides).

3. Mutual right of inheritance.

4. Mutual obligations of help, protection, and assistance in case of violence.

5. Mutual right and obligation to marry within the gens in certain
cases, especially for orphan girls and heiresses.

6. Possession, at least in some cases, of common property, with a
special archon (head man or president) and treasurer.

Next, several gentes were united in the phratry, but less closely;
though here also we find mutual rights and obligations of a similar
kind, particularly the common celebration of certain religious
ceremonies and the right to avenge the death of a phrator. Similarly,
all the phratries of a tribe held regularly recurring religious
festivals in common, at which a leader of the tribe (phylobasileus),
elected from the nobility (Eupatridai), officiated.

Rest at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch04.htm

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

2009-07-30 Thread c b

http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/4054/1/DRUGS-THE-DESTOYERS/Page1.html

DRUGS. THE DESTOYERS

By Steve Holesey

There will be debates, new information, denials, revelations,
speculation, and just about anything else you can think of, for
perhaps years to come. But the known facts make it clear that what
took the life of Michael Jackson was his overuse of heavy-duty
prescription drugs.

Even his brother, Tito, has publicly acknowledged that there was a
serious problem as far back as the ’90s. Because he was rich and
famous, Jackson was able to get pretty much anything he wanted.

Michael was surrounded by enablers, yes-men and various other
hangers-on which made it that much easier. They formed a fence around
him that blocked the outside world, which included concerned people
who could have helped him.

BILLIE HOLIDAY was, and will always be, one the finest jazz singers of
all time. In fact, she, Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter rank as the
three most accomplished and effective female jazz vocalists ever. They
are untouchable.

Holiday was plagued by an addiction to heroin that hampered her every
step of the way. However, it was only near the end of her celebrated
career that this affliction began to affect her special voice.

But even then she was still capable of brilliance. “Lady in Satin” is
one of the most powerful and soul-touching albums ever recorded,
featuring Billie with an orchestra. The sound is lush and beautiful.
By this time there was a ravaged edge to her voice, but she still
delivers songs like “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “I Get Along
Without You Very Well” superbly. In a strange, almost haunting way,
the condition of her voice made the songs that much more effective.

AMY WINEHOUSE is a fascinating singer from England with a voice and
style steeped in Black culture and music traditions (RB and jazz
especially).

Her 2006 album, “Back to Black,” was a huge success, finding favor
with music buyers of many persuasions and ethnicities. Its success and
artistic merit also resulted in Winehouse receiving the coveted Best
New Artist Grammy.

But while all this was happening, the songstress with the exotic look
reminiscent of the Ronettes from the 1960s, was, with much media
attention, battling substance abuse (cocaine, heroin and more).
Interestingly, one of her biggest hits is titled “Rehab.” Fans are
wishing the best for the talented lady.

SLY STONE (real name: Sylvester Stewart) exploded on the music scene
in the latter half of the ’60s, offering sounds and looks no one had
heard or seen before.

The music of Sly the Family Stone was exciting, energetic and often
life-affirming. The best of the best included “Dance to the Music,”
“Everyday People,” “Hot Fun the Summertime,” “I Want to Take You
Higher” and “Stand!”

In 1971, he introduced a completely different, much slowed down sound
with “Family Affair” and continued with “If You Want Me to Stay” and
others. But drug use ultimately made Sly undependable and far less
creative. Eventually he became a recluse and today is only seen
occasionally.

WHITNEY HOUSTON knows there is a lot riding on her “I Look to You”
album, which will probably be released by the time you read this. It
can be accurately defined as a comeback project because Houston is
rising from the depths of drug hell, after reaching megastardom in the
1980s with a gift-from-God voice and outstanding material.

Some blamed her downward plunge on her former husband, Bobby Brown,
also a recovering addict, but that is not fair. She made her own
decisions, and now she has made the decision to get her life and
career back together.

The odds are in her favor.

RAY CHARLES was a heroin addict for many years, was arrested for it
and had to go through an extremely difficult detox program, all of
which was made graphically clear in the remarkable movie “Ray,” with
Jamie Foxx turning in an Academy Award-winning performance.

Although Charles would never in a million years have advocated anyone
using drugs, he said he had no regrets about his own drug use because
that was what he chose to do at the time and had to go through. Like
so many before him, Michael Jackson, one of the greatest entertainers
and recording artists of all time, became, much like Elvis Presley, a
prisoner of his massive fame.

In many ways another legend, jazz icon Miles Davis, was representative
of the many jazz musicians who were addicted to hard drugs.

No one knows for sure why jazz musicians tend to be more prone to drug
abuse. But some believe it has something to do with the music itself
emerging from such a deep place in the musicians’ psyche and heart.

This is compounded by the pain of making music that is not fully
accepted or understood, and the fact that so many jazz musicians have
to struggle to survive.

NATALIE COLE has many people praying for her and sending out other
expressions of support as she gallantly fights a battle with hepatitis
C, the result of hard-core drug use

[Marxism-Thaxis] Partial list of famous musical artists who died as young or younger than Michael Jackson

2009-07-30 Thread c b

Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke  - died at 28


Background information
Birth name Leon Bismark Beiderbecke
Born March 10, 1903(1903-03-10)
Origin Davenport, Iowa,[1] U.S.
Died August 6, 1931 (aged 28)
Genre(s) Jazz
Dixieland
Occupation(s) Musician
composer
Instrument(s) Cornet, Piano
Years active 1924-1931
Website bixbeiderbecke.com
Leon Bismark Bix Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was
an American jazz cornetist and composer, as well as a skilled
classical and jazz pianist.

One of the leading names in 1920s jazz, Beiderbecke's career was cut
short by chronic poor health, exacerbated by alcoholism. Critic Scott
Yanow describes Beiderbecke as the possessor of a beautiful,
distinctive tone and a strikingly original improvising style.
Beiderbecke's chief competitor among cornetists in the 1920s was Louis
Armstrong, but (due to their different sounds and styles) one really
could not compare them.[2] Bix Beiderbecke recorded many jazz
standards during his career in the 1920s and early 1930s, including
Riverboat Shuffle, Copenhagen, Davenport Blues, Singin' the
Blues, In a Mist, Mississippi Mud, I'm Coming, Virginia, and
Georgia On My Mind.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Death
4 Influences
5 Influence on later musicians
6 Popular culture
7 Name
8 Compositions by Bix Beiderbecke
9 Major Recordings, 1924-1930
10 Cover Versions of In a Mist
11 Cover Versions of Davenport Blues
12 Honors
13 References
14 External links



[edit] Early life

Beiderbecke's childhood home in Davenport.Bix Beiderbecke was born in
Davenport, Iowa[1], the son of Bismark and Agatha Beiderbeckes, both
natives of Iowa. He was the youngest of three children in the
middle-class family of German origin. As a teenager he would sneak off
to the banks of the Mississippi to listen to bands play on the
riverboats arriving from the south.

Illness frequently kept Beiderbecke out of school, and his grades
suffered. He attended Davenport High School briefly, but his parents
felt that enrolling him in the exclusive Lake Forest Academy, north of
Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois, as a boarding student would provide
him with both the necessary faculty attention and discipline to
improve his academic performance. However, the change of scenery did
not improve Beiderbecke's academic record, as the only subjects in
which he displayed interest were music and sports. Beiderbecke began
going into Chicago to catch the hot jazz bands at clubs and
speakeasies. He often failed to return to his dormitory before curfew,
and sometimes stayed off-campus the next day. Beiderbecke was
dismissed from the academy due to his academic failings and
extracurricular activities. His time now free, he began his musical
career.


[edit] Career
Bix Beiderbecke was one of the great jazz musicians of the 1920s, the
Jazz Age. Beiderbecke first recorded with the Wolverine Orchestra in
1924. The ensemble was casually called the Wolverines. The group
recorded the jazz standards Riverboat Shuffle, written for the band
by Hoagy Carmichael, and Copenhagen, written by Charlie Davis. Jazz
composer and pianist Hoagy Carmichael had booked their appearance at
Indiana University in 1924.

Bix Beiderbecke became a sought-after musician in Chicago and New York
City. He made innovative and influential recordings with Frankie
Trumbauer (Tram) and the Jean Goldkette Orchestra. In 1927, he
played cornet on the landmark Okeh recording Singin' the Blues, with
Frankie Trumbauer on C-melody saxophone and Eddie Lang on guitar, one
of the most important and influential jazz recordings of the 1920s.
The orchestra on that session also included Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet
and alto saxophone, Miff Mole on trombone, Chauncey Morehouse on
drums, and Paul Madeira Mertz on piano. When the Goldkette Orchestra
disbanded after their last recording (Clementine (From New
Orleans)), released as Victor 20994, in September 1927, Beiderbecke
and Trumbauer, a 'C' melody and alto saxophone player, briefly joined
Adrian Rollini's band at the Club New Yorker, New York. Beiderbecke
then moved on to the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the most popular and
highest paid band of the day. Although some historians have derided
Whiteman and lamented Beiderbecke's tenure with the large orchestra,
historian Dick Sudhalter, in his book Lost Chords, asserts:
Colleagues have testified that, far from feeling bound or stifled by
the Whiteman Orchestra, as [saxophonist and author Benny] Green and
others have suggested, Beiderbecke often felt a sense of exhilaration.
It was like attending a music school, learning and broadening; formal
music, especially the synthesis of the American vernacular idiom with
a more classical orientation, so much sought-after in the 1920s, were
calling out to him.

Bix Beiderbecke also played piano, sometimes switching from cornet for
a chorus or two during a song (e.g., For No Reason at All in C,
1927). He wrote several compositions for the piano, and recorded one
of them, In a Mist (after it was

[Marxism-Thaxis] Young muscians' deaths

2009-07-30 Thread c b

Aaliyah

This article is about the singer. For her self-titled album, see
Aaliyah (album).
Aaliyah


Background information
Birth name Aaliyah Dana Haughton
Born January 16, 1979(1979-01-16)
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
Origin Detroit, Michigan, United States
Died August 25, 2001 (aged 22)
Marsh Harbour, Abaco Islands, The Bahamas
Genre(s) RB, pop, hip hop
Occupation(s) Singer, dancer, actress, model
Voice type(s) Soprano
Years active 1991–2001
Label(s) Blackground, Jive, Atlantic, Virgin, Universal
Website www.aaliyah.com
Aaliyah Dana Haughton (January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001), who
performed under the mononym Aaliyah (pronounced /əˈliːə/), was an
American recording artist, actress and model. She was born in
Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Detroit, Michigan. At an early
age, she appeared on Star Search and performed in concert alongside
Gladys Knight. At age 12, Aaliyah was signed to Jive Records and
Blackground Records by her uncle, Barry Hankerson. He introduced her
to R. Kelly, who became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and
producer of her debut album. Age Ain't Nothing But a Number sold two
million copies in the United States and was certified double Platinum
by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After facing
allegations of an illegal marriage with Kelly, Aaliyah ended her
contract with Jive and signed to Atlantic Records.

Aaliyah worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott for
her second album, One in a Million, which sold two million copies in
the United States and over eight million copies worldwide. In 2000,
Aaliyah appeared in her first major film, Romeo Must Die. She also
contributed to the film's soundtrack, where Try Again was released
as a single. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 solely on radio
airplay, making Aaliyah the first artist in Billboard history to
achieve this feat. Try Again earned Aaliyah a Grammy Award
nomination for Best Female RB Vocalist.

After filming Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah filmed her part in Queen of the
Damned. She released her third and final album, Aaliyah, in 2001. On
August 25, 2001, Aaliyah and eight others were killed in an airplane
crash in The Bahamas after filming the music video for the single
Rock the Boat. The pilot, Luis Morales III, was unlicensed at the
time of the accident and had traces of cocaine and alcohol in his
system. Aaliyah's family later filed a wrongful death lawsuit against
Blackhawk International Airways, which was settled out of court. Since
then, Aaliyah has achieved commercial success with several posthumous
releases. Selling over 24 million records worldwide, she has been
credited for helping redefine RB and hip hop and has been named the
Queen of Urban Pop.

Contents [hide]
1 Life and career
1.1 1979–1991: Early life
1.2 1992–1995: Age Ain't Nothing But a Number
1.3 1996–1999: One in a Million
1.4 2000–2001: Romeo Must Die and eponymous album
1.4.1 Plane crash, death and wrongful death lawsuit
1.5 2001–2005: Posthumous career
2 Musical style and image
3 Legacy
4 Discography
4.1 Studio albums
4.2 Compilations
5 Filmography
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links



Life and career

1979–1991: Early life
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New
York City, New York.[1] Born of African American and Native American
descent,[2][3] she was the second and youngest child of Diane and
Michael Haughton.[4] At a young age, Aaliyah was enrolled in voice
lessons by her mother.[1] When she was five years old, her family
moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was raised along with her older
brother, Rashad.[5][6] She attended a Catholic school, Gesu
Elementary, where she received a part in the stage play Annie in first
grade; from then on, she was determined to be an entertainer.[7]
Aaliyah's mother was a vocalist, and her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was
an entertainment lawyer who was previously married to Gladys
Knight.[6] As a child, Aaliyah traveled with Knight and worked with an
agent in New York to audition for commercials and television programs,
including Family Matters; she went on to appear appeared on Star
Search at the age of nine.[1][8] She then auditioned for several
record labels and appeared in concert alongside Knight at age
11.[6][9]


1992–1995: Age Ain't Nothing But a Number
After Barry Hankerson signed a distribution deal with Jive Records, he
signed Aaliyah to his Blackground Records label at the age of
12.[10][11] Hankerson then introduced her to recording artist and
producer R. Kelly.[9] He became Aaliyah's mentor, as well as lead
songwriter and producer of the album.[12][13] They began recording her
debut album, Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, when she was 14.[11]
Released in June 1994, the album peaked at number 18 on the Billboard
200 and sold over two million copies in the United States.[14][15]
Aaliyah's debut single, Back  Forth, topped the Billboard Hot
RB/Hip-Hop Songs chart for three weeks and was certified Gold by

[Marxism-Thaxis] I'm an atheist, so what?

2009-08-06 Thread c b

O STREET PIMP MY BLOG CHALLENGE
I'm an atheist, so what?
FINALIST
By PETER JURICH • O STREET GUEST BLOGGER • August 3, 2009




I was at work when someone brought up that I am an atheist.


A nearby coworker nearly had a heart attack.


You are? she asked. But ... you're such a ... good person!



In the words of Oneita: Oh, my.

I'd like to set the record straight on atheism. Being an atheist opens
up my world to the different possibilities I may have otherwise
missed. It makes me an accepting individual because it is an exercise
in questioning that allows me to explore any and all walks of life.


Atheism breaks down the barriers put up by racism, sexism, xenophobia
and other discrimination because I have an understanding that there is
nothing more important (i.e. an invitation into heaven) than the
feelings I share with others.


I explained this to my coworker.


Well, I'm older than you, she said. I understand more.


I didn't tell her that I attended a strict, private Catholic school
for eight years, that I had questions my teachers nervously refused to
answer, and that I've since answered those questions myself. I did,
however, tell her my views were not without research. Yes, she is
older, but that doesn't mean anything.


I am capable of empathy, optimism, sadness, patriotism, guilt and love.


I told her I'm more confident because I'm not ashamed of any thoughts.
I neglected to stress that I still differentiate between right and
wrong, but I assumed she knew that.


I don't do drugs, have sex with strangers, drive insanely fast or bust
caps in asses.


Her response? Someday, you'll get it.


In respect to the warm and fuzzy feeling one gets (and I've tried very
hard to get) from organized religion, I can get that same feeling by
going to a concert. All we are feeling is the energy of a group of
people coming together enthusiastically for a common interest. The
difference is the context: Believers feel God brought them together;
fans think it was Ticketmaster.


I ended the conversation out of respect for the workplace -- a public
school. Begrudgingly, I let my coworker have the final word.


Don't give up, she said. Just try keeping a more open mind.

PETER JURICH, 23, of Dearborn is a Wayne State University student who
wrote Typing With One Hand.


Oneita the Editor's Note: I met Peter in February when he interviewed
me for a homework assignment. That was flattering, but it didn't curry
any favor: I rejected the first blog entry he submitted for this
challenge because it was lame. I chose this one because of Peter's
honesty and his perspective, and because I knew it would produce a
good conversation.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx relation to morality

[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in
c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 6 13:20:33 PDT 2009

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Marx is also an amoralist for the following reason: morality concerns
judging action that impacts that interests of _other_ people not the
self-interests of the actor. Marx is trying to get the working class,
working class individuals, to take action in their own self-interest.
Marx does not appeal to the working class to revolt against the
immorality of the ruling class, but to act in its own self-interest ,
which is an amoral motive.
In my opinion, Marx does hold that the ruling class exploitation and
oppression of the ruled class are wicked ,lbecause they have a bad
impact on the ruled class' individuals' interests. But he does not try
to get the working class to act because of this ruling class
wickedness. He appeals to a non-moral motive: self-interest.

Charles

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx and morality

[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in
c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 7 07:25:16 PDT 2009





Marv Gandall


Shane M. writes:


 On Aug 6, 2009, at 4:20 PM, c b wrote:

 Marx is also an amoralist for the following reason: morality concerns
 judging action that impacts that interests of _other_ people not the
 self-interests of the actor. Marx is trying to get the working class,
 working class individuals, to take action in their own self-interest.
 Marx does not appeal to the working class to revolt against the
 immorality of the ruling class, but to act in its own self-interest ,
 which is an amoral motive.


 But the self-interest of the proletariat, as Marx conceives it, has
 nothing to do with interest (economic advantage) as conceived by
 individuals, including individual proletarians, in bourgeois society.
 The self-interest of the proletariat as a class *fur sich* consists of
 its *abolition as a class
== But it is only when
individual workers identify their own economic self-interest with the
interest of all who work for wages and salaries that they combine for
collective action in the workplace and in politics - that which
presents them with the possibility of transcending their status as
workers, ie. the abolition of the working class. This newly awakened
social consciousness is conceived of as the highest expression of
morality in contradistinction to bourgeois morality which exalts the
individual, but it follows rather than precedes the development of
class consciousness arising out of the realm of production.


^^

c b wrote:



 Marx is also an amoralist for the following reason: morality concerns
 judging action that impacts the interests of _other_ people not the
 self-interests of the actor.



Hard to see how someone could affect their own self interest without
impacting others. ie??

martin

^

CB: No doubt. In general, in these times, an individual worker can
seek to fulfill her own self-intetest by helping to make socialism
while impacting others' self-interests positively, no ? So, no moral
dilemma in following Marx's suggestions. Marxism is selfish and moral
at the same time. The original win-win approach.

By the way, there's nothing immoral about impacting the rich's
overinflated, ballooned even, wealth by deflating it. Rich individuals
can satisfy their self-interests with much less wealth than they have
now..




Matthias Wasser


 Individual self-interest doesn't get you there, though. As far as any one
individual is concerned, your material-reward-to-effort ratio is going
to be a lot higher trying to get into the ruling class than
overthrowing them. You can push out the boundaries of the self to
include the community, of course, but that encroaches on the territory
of - gasp! - morality.

^^^

CB: So far, yes. So far it hasn't gotten us there, but the struggle
continues; victory is certain.

^

^
Shane Mage :

But the self-interest of the proletariat, as Marx conceives it, has
nothing to do with interest (economic advantage) as conceived by
individuals, including individual proletarians, in bourgeois society.
The self-interest of the proletariat as a class *fur sich* consists
of its *abolition as a class*. This is an entirely moral, not amoral,
motive because it grounds communism in a concrete teleology--the
planetary historical mission of human consciousness as the embodiment
of what Hegel called objective spirit.

^

CB: Yes, I think as it has turned out historically, the failure to
achieve socialist reovolutions, especially in the Western, big power
nations, means that there is an ironic convergence of Marxism with the
Christian trope of pie-in-the-sky-in-the-bye-and-bye or ,individual
Marxists and workers sacrificing their immediate and short-term
self-interests for the cause of the interests of others to be
fulfilled in the longer run in the planetary mission. The Party
bookstore in Highland Park 10 -15 years ago was Longview Bookstore.

However, Marx seemed to seek to help make revolution in his lifetime,
not to say that he opposed it in the long run. And each generation of
Marxists should look for a way to make revolution within their
lifetime, even if as with Sisyphus, the revolutionary rock has rolled
some ways back down the hill again.

Note that Marx -and Engels, Lenin , Angela Davis, et al, (most LBOers
) - not being in the working class were thoroughly morally motivated,
I.e. they could have met their own individual self-interests much
easier or at all, in the case of Marx and Lenin, by working for the
rich rather than the poor.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] G.A. Cohen Goes Home

 farmela...@juno.com


Above all, I found much of *Lire Capital* critically vague. It
is perhaps a matter for regret that logical positivism, with its
insistence on precision of intellectual commitment, never
caught on in Paris. Anglophone philosophy left logical positivism
behind long ago, but it is lastingly the better for having engaged
with it. The Althusserian vogue could have unfortunate consequences
for Marxism in Britain, where lucidity is a precious heritage, and
where it is not generally supposed that a theoretical statement,
to be one, must be hard to comprehend.

Alas, one consequence of Cohen's work was to revive the
very sort of mechanical materialism that Althusser had
rejected along with humanist Marxism, but which
the young Jerry Cohen seems to have imbibed along with his
mother's milk, having been born and raised within
the milieu of the Canadian CP.


CB: Seems likely that the Canadian CP's materialism was dialectical,
not mechanical. Stages of history or mode of production analysis
denigratingly labelled stagist seems to be a Trotskyist theoretical
shortcoming.

Also, history in the Soviet Union and China seem to lend support to a
more stagist interpretation of the world movement to socialism.

Perhaps this means Cohen's work is supported by these real history ,
real world developments.

^^^

 Cohen, himself, years
later, came to see the inadequacy of this type of historical
materialism but seemed to draw the conclusion that the
problem laid with historical materialism in general rather
than with the specific variety of historical materialism
that he had embraced.

^
CB: Real history is looking more stagist , actually.



Jim Farmelant
-- Original Message --
From: jksc...@yahoo.com
To: marxist philosophy marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [marxistphilosophy] G.A. Cohen Goes Home
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 17:57:20 +

Unless I missed it the death the other day of Jerry Cohen attracted no
comment on a list devoted to Marxist philosophy. I know that as first
a founder of analytical Marxism, then as a refugee from Marxism to
liberal egalitarianism, he was not favored among the participants
here. But IMHO he was one of the most influential and important
Marxist thinkers of the latter half of the 20th century, and his
legacy requires comment.

Not much time here but I will note a few thoughts;

- In the context of a sharp decline in the quantity and quality of
Marxist theory, Cohen and the AMs stood for the disconnection of
theory from practice, the entrenchment of Marxism as another academic
exercise. In some ways this was not their fault giving the collapse of
Marxism as a movement and a force in the world.

- Cohen helped bring a level of rigor and precision in Marxist
thinking that had been sorely lacking for a very long time. If it's
complained that his work lacked popular accessibility, what are we to
say about Adorno, a favorite here who gets wide discussion?

- Cohen's major work on Karl Marx's Theory Of History is very
valuable, but went down the wrong track in reviving a stagist,
mechanical, primacy of the productive forces 2d Internat'l conception
of historical materialism. (Possibly due in part to his roots in the
Canadian CP.)

 True, Marx gave that view a lot of space, but Cohen almost totally
neglected Marx's alternative class struggle view, which I think is
more true and valuable and gets no less, arguably more, space. Brenner
is far better on this (and no less rigorous).

- Cohen's turn to traditional style moral philosophy as important,
first as a complement to his idea of historical materialism, then as a
replacement for Marxism and materialist analysis, was a major
retrogression. No doubt there is more ethics in Marx and Marxism than
Marx cared to admit, but Marx pointed the way in integrating these
into materialist analysis.

Cohen's own positive ethical views were, moreover, disappointingly
primitive and underdeveloped. See his awful Egalitarianism book, but
also earlier papers on exploitation and his paper critiquing value
theory -- a real train wreck. And I don't accept value theory myself!
I haven't carefully read the last book in Rawls.

Btw in that book Cohen lists as the big three books on political
philosophy Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Plato's
Republic. Marx's Capital doesn't make his cut. Given Cohen's a priori
turn to liberal morality, Marx might be happy to be left out.

- Cohen was nonetheless a major influence, one of the few really
original thinkers in late 20th century Marxism, along with perhaps
Althusser -- who, it might argued, paralleled him in a French sort of
way. The people we tend to discuss, Marx, the Western Marxists, all
had their roots and did much or all of their important work before
1950.

It says something about the state of Marxism that Cohen and Althusser
are among the giants of postwar Marxism.

More later.

Justin

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] G.A. Cohen Goes Home

On 8/7/09, Phil Walden p...@pwalden.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
 I live in Oxford and clashed with G. A. Cohen at seminars at which I tried
 to persuade him to take Hegel's dialectics and Marx's dialectics seriously.
 In particular, Hegel's Science of Logic was a completely closed book to
 Cohen because for reasons of professional advantage, Cohen adopted the
 British Professional Philosopher view of Bertrand Russell etc. that Hegel's
 logic is simply irrational. This was always just stated as an assertion, or
 with a 'clever' Oxford academic 'joke', without any thought of having a real
 engagement with Hegel's Logic. My efforts, at least as far as Cohen were
 concerned, were completely forlorn, I think because his background in the
 Canadian CP had corroded and fixed his mind and intellect to the extent that
 he could not grasp Hegel's dialectics or Marx's dialectics, and he took
 refuge in analytical 'Marxism' and abstract moral 'theory'.

^
CB: Maybe there's a dialectical contradiction here (smile_, but CP's
teach dialectics, Hegelian and Marxist.   See for example , Lenin's
essay on Karl Marx or Engels' _Ludwig Feuerbach_ or  _Anti-Duhring_
very much featured in CP teaching in this area. _The Manifesto of the
Communist Party_ is informed by dialectics.

It seems very unlikely that Cohen'a dismissal of dialectics came from
following any example of the Canadian CP

^

His always
 arrogant dismissal of dialectics did, I think, do some and probably all of
 his students a lot of damage. He was, of course, rigorous, in an analytical
 philosophical kind of way, but at the level of imagination he was very
 limited. Ralph Dumain would have absolutely knocked spots off him, given
 Ralph's wide reading and relatively undogmatic approach. Look at 'Analytical
 Marxism' now. It has utterly disintegrated. That is partly because it never
 had any connection with Marx's thought, although it tried, through
 linguistic tricks, to claim that it did have something to do with Marx. Ask
 yourself the question: what are the positive proposals of 'Analytical
 Marxism' for how society should be in the futurean individualistic
 'utopia' in which there is a strategic denial that the fundamental
 contradiction in human society is that between capital and labour.

 Phil Walden



 -Original Message-
 From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu
 [mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of
 farmela...@juno.com
 Sent: 07 August 2009 19:14
 To: marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com
 Cc: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] G.A. Cohen Goes Home



 Well on Marxmail I had posted
 the following in response to
 another poster, who had drawn
 a comparison between Cohen and
 Althusser.

 ---
 I suspect that Jerry Cohen would
 not have minded if people took
 note of his passing by debating
 the merits of his works.

 Actually, I find his reading
 of Marx to have been closer
 to the readings that were
 provided by such Second
 International Marxists like
 Kautsky and Plekhanov.
 I believe that
 somewhere in KMTH he makes
 such an acknowledgement.
 But yet he did seem to have
 to come to such a reading by way
 of Althusser, even though
 he rejected Althusserianism.

 G.A. Cohen discussed Althusser
 in his foreword to KMTH. There,
 after detailing some of the
 positive contributions of the
 Althusserians to Marxism
 (which for Cohen included the re-emphasis
 on Marx's more mature writings like
 *Capital* rather than the earlier
 writings like the *1844 Manuscripts*
 and the attention that
 Althusser and his followers paid to
 historical materialism) then
 proceeded to note what he regarded
 as some of their more negative attributes.

 Writing thus:

 Above all, I found much of *Lire Capital* critically vague. It
 is perhaps a matter for regret that logical positivism, with its
 insistence on precision of intellectual commitment, never
 caught on in Paris. Anglophone philosophy left logical positivism
 behind long ago, but it is lastingly the better for having engaged
 with it. The Althusserian vogue could have unfortunate consequences
 for Marxism in Britain, where lucidity is a precious heritage, and
 where it is not generally supposed that a theoretical statement,
 to be one, must be hard to comprehend.

 Alas, one consequence of Cohen's work was to revive the
 very sort of mechanical materialism that Althusser had
 rejected along with humanist Marxism, but which
 the young Jerry Cohen seems to have imbibed along with his
 mother's milk, having been born and raised within
 the milieu of the Canadian CP. Cohen, himself, years
 later, came to see the inadequacy of this type of historical
 materialism but seemed to draw the conclusion that the
 problem laid with historical materialism in general rather
 than with the specific variety of historical materialism
 that he had embraced.

 Jim Farmelant
 -- Original Message --
 From:

[Marxism-Thaxis] Eating Less May Extend Your Lifespan -- But Is it Worth It?

2009-08-09 Thread c b

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141792/eating_less_may_extend_your_lifespan_--_but_is_it_worth_it/

Eating Less May Extend Your Lifespan -- But Is it Worth It?

By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet. Posted August 8, 2009.

Recent studies indicate cutting your diet by 30 percent of what you're
supposed to eat can extend your life, but living longer isn't
everything.

AlterNet Social Networks:

The idea that eating less can prolong life has been gaining traction
in recent years, thanks to studies on many organisms, including mice,
spiders, dogs and worms, that correlate fewer calories with longer
life.

A group called the Calorie Restriction Society has formed to encourage
and assist people in reducing their long-term caloric intake for the
sake of health. Their diet, called Calorie Restriction with Optimal
Nutrition (CRON), is intended to drastically reduce caloric intake
without starving the body. CRONies, as they call themselves, claim
that in addition to the possibility of living longer and retarding the
effects of aging, they experience increased energy and mental clarity.

We're talking about more than skipping dessert. The CRON diet aims for
a weight of 10-25 percent less than what you weighed in college
(assuming you were healthy, not anorexic or obese). I'm 6' 2'' and
weighed 160 pounds when I was 20. So if I were a CRONie, I'd aim to
weigh about 130 pounds -- 55 pounds less than my current weight.

That may sound extreme, but CRONies received a recent boost from the
results of a long-term study on rhesus monkeys.

The monkeys were divided into two groups, one of which was fed 30
percent fewer calories than the other. The researchers, led by Ricki
J. Colman and Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisconsin,
reported in Science magazine's July 9 issue that after 20 years, the
dieting monkeys show significantly less diabetes, cancer, and heart
and brain disease than the control group.

Calorie restriction entered the mainstream in the 1980s, when UCLA
researcher Dr. Roy Walford began publishing books, including The
120-Year Diet, based on his research with mice. Walford died at 79 of
Lou Gehrig's disease, and his daughter Lisa Walford now carries the
torch. A prominent CRONie, she's 5 feet tall, weighs 80 lbs, and
according to her recent book, The Longevity Diet, enjoys a daily
breakfast of four walnuts, six almonds and 10 peanuts, which is eerily
similar to, but somewhat less, than what I fed a five-ounce parakeet I
recently babysat.

Another of Dr. Walford's disciples is Richard Weindruch, co-author of
the recent monkey study. Weindruch also co-founded LifeGen
Technologies LLC, a company that works with drug makers to quantify
the effect of possible life-extending drugs. LifeGen's business plan,
based on the premise that most people don't have the willpower to
limit their caloric intake by 30 percent, is to identify and replicate
in pill form the biochemical processes triggered by caloric
restriction.

When I reached Weindruch by e-mail, he admitted that he himself
doesn't follow a calorie-restricted diet, though he does eat lots of
vegetables and not much meat. His co-author, Ricki Coleman, has
similarly gone on record acknowledging that she doesn't follow a
low-cal diet, despite their team's conclusion that these data
demonstrate that caloric restriction slows aging in a primate
species.

While the CRONies are fasting for joy, many scientists and health
experts don't buy it.

Most of the monkeys are still alive, and are expected to keep living
for years, so it's too early to tell if the dieting monkeys really
will live longer. And at this point, according to the researchers, the
difference between the two groups in terms of the deaths that have
occurred so far is not statistically significant.
But if there's yet to be a significant difference in mortality between
the two groups, why has this study made headlines around the world?

Researchers employed some statistical fancy footwork to exclude monkey
deaths deemed not due to age -- including deaths occurring under
anesthesia while blood samples were taken. Thus the researches were
able to show a statistically significant difference between the two
groups of surviving moneys. Skeptics argue the low-cal diet could have
made the monkeys more susceptible to health threats not usually
associated with age.

Infection, for example, isn't considered an age-related disease, but
caloric restriction has been shown to disrupt the immune system and
increase susceptibility to some types of infection, like listeria, in
fruit flies. And the effects of undereating on a number of other
health indicators, like bone density and fertility, while perhaps not
life-threatening, are nonetheless negative.

There's also reason to believe that laboratory conditions don't
adequately simulate real life. Studies that show mice to live as much
as 40 percent longer on a calorie restriction diet are done with lab
mice, which have been bred for high fertility and other

[Marxism-Thaxis] IS THE U.S. ON THE BRINK OF FASCISM?

2009-08-09 Thread c b

IS THE U.S. ON THE BRINK OF FASCISM?
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future
There are dangerous currents running through America's
politics and the way we confront them is crucial.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Detroit

AIG insuring of Detroit city bonds was not motivated by race hate or racism
 but profit motive. The first question is why did the leaders of Detroit
go to  AIG in the first place? I am not aware of any evidence that Detroit
seeking  insurance from AIG was racially motivated. AIG’s pricing of
insurance or  financial products was the motivation for Detroit
entering into this
market  relation.

^
CB:  On this  issue, racism should be analyzed _structurally_, not in
terms of individual motivation.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work

Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate
America's Dirty Work
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on August 10, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141860/

The recent spate of town hall dustups may look like an overnight
sensation, but they've been years, even decades, in the making.

Since the days in the late 1970s, when the New Right began its
takeover of the Republican Party, it has cultivated a militia of white
people armed with a grudge against those who brought forth the social
changes of the '60s.

These malcontents have been promised their day of retribution, a day
for which they are more than ready. Few seem to understand that they
are merely dupes for a corporate agenda that will only worsen the
conditions in which they live.

Why, you may ask, would men of power and fame shake the rough,
unmanicured hands of gun enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists,
gay-haters, misogynists and racists?

Because somebody's got to do the dirty work. Magnates don't like to
soil their French cuffs, and it's hard for a bunch of rich guys to
garner sympathy for threats to their bottom lines. It's the classic
inside-outside game that the right wing of the GOP has played for the
last two decades.

The Health-Care Industry Executive

Imagine you're an executive at a pharmaceutical company. Your U.S.
operations are your cash cow; they earn you wild net profits because,
unlike in other industrialized nations, you do not experience the
price controls of a government-administered program in which the
government negotiates for the best price on prescription drugs and
devices.

Along comes a government plan for health-insurance reform that
includes a public, government-financed plan. The public option, they
call it. As part of the plan, you will be required to negotiate with
the government for the price of medications and devices to be
distributed within the plan.

Now that could really screw up your massive profit margins. Private
plans might then insist on prices more like those the government is
getting.

Instead of increasing your profit by double digits in the worst year
the economy has seen since the Great Depression, as did an outfit
called The Medicines Co., your shareholders may have to settle for
profits more in line with the overall growth of the economy. And
wouldn't that just stink?

Meanwhile, polls show a clear majority of Americans -- you know,
regular Americans, the kind who don't want to own an AK-47, or who do
accept the president's citizenship status -- favor the public option.
In fact, in June, CBS News found that majority to be 72 percent.

So, whaddaya do? Well, if your lobbying firm counts former Rep. Dick
Armey, R-Texas, as its senior policy adviser, you don't have do much.
Dick will take care of the rest through FreedomWorks, the ostensibly
grassroots, nonprofit organization of anti-taxers, cold warriors and
affirmative-action opponents, which he chairs.

Need to make it look like regular Americans oppose the
health-insurance reform bills now being considered by Congress? Make
sure a handful of those angry white people turn up at the town hall
meetings now being conducted by members of Congress throughout the
country. Make sure they disrupt the meeting and rattle the
congressperson.

Capture it all on amateur video and put it up on a faux,
amateur-looking Web site, and try to kid the media into thinking
there's a widespread rebellion happening. After all, the media are
gonna want that dramatic footage.

The Republican Member of Congress

Now, suppose you're a Republican member of Congress. Your party got
totally throttled in the 2008 election, and if you don't derail this
health care thing, it's going to be a big win for your Democratic
opponents, as millions of underinsured and uninsured Americans finally
have some health care coverage -- one bright spot in a largely dismal
economy.

Meanwhile, you get a lot of your campaign cash from
health-care-related industries and from the Wall Street bankers and
brokers who want to keep those profits soaring.

A public option is going to stink for you, too. So, while Armey's army
of taxphobes is useful to you, it would be great to get some really
hard-core types to further stoke the fires -- especially if marshaled
by guys who know how to really tar Democrats with racist imagery and
slurs of unpatriotic behavior.

That's where Grassfire.org and its brother networking site, ResistNet,
come in. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who promised to make health-care
reform President Obama's Waterloo, is a big fan. Says so right there
on the Grassfire Web site. ResistNet is yet another right-wing hub for
organizing the disruption of health-care town hall meetings.

The Media Mogul

Okay, now put on the hat of a media mogul, one who rails against the
minimal restrictions the U.S. has on multi-outlet ownership, and one
for whom the bottom line is everything. In fact, you actually own the
Wall Street Journal.

If you can nip

[Marxism-Thaxis] Short obit for Jerry Cohen

G. A. Cohen, 1941-2009
by James Farmelant
Early in the morning on August 5th, one of the most notable left-wing
political philosophers of the English-speaking world, Gerald Allan
Cohen, (G. A. Cohen) or as he liked to be called by his friends, Jerry
Cohen, died after suffering a massive stroke at the age of 68.  Jerry
Cohen was probably best known for his 1978 book, Karl Marx's Theory of
History: A Defence (Oxford University Press), where he attempted to
apply the techniques of analytical philosophy (including both logical
analysis and linguistic analysis) to the elucidation and defense of
Karl Marx's materialist conception of history.  In doing so, he helped
give birth to a new school Marxist thought, Analytical Marxism.  This
school sought to clarify Marxism, using not only the tools of
analytical philosophy, along with tools of modern social science such
as rational choice theory (i.e. game theory and even neoclassical
economic analysis), to the clarification and defense of the theories
of  Karl Marx and his successors.  Besides Jerry, other leading
Analytical Marxists included the economist John Roemer, the political
theorist Jon Elster, the economist and economic historian Robert
Brenner, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright.

In this respect, Jerry Cohen offered a reading of Marx that rejected both
traditional dialectical materialism, as well as the Hegelian readings
associated with Western Marxist schools like the Frankfurt School as
well as the structuralism of Louis Althusser.  In this and other
respects, this book was the product of Jerry's unique background.  He
was born the son of working class Jewish parents in Montreal.  Both
his parents were active in leftist politics, with his father active in
trade unionism while his mother was a member of the Communist Party of
Canada.  As a young boy, Jerry Cohen for a time attended a left-wing
Jewish day school that had the distinction of being raided by Quebec's
red squad.  That raid eventually led to the school's closure.  During
his teens, Jerry was active in the National Federation of Labour
Youth, which was the youth arm of the Canadian Communists.  He
experienced the turmoil which tore the Party apart following Nikita
Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech before the Twentieth Congress in
1956 and which led to the disintegration of the National Federation of
Labour Youth in Quebec.  Out of this milieu, Jerry went on to attend
McGill University where he studied philosophy and was active in the
university's Socialist Society, of which he became president.

After graduating from McGill, Jerry Cohen then went to Oxford
University to pursue graduate study in philosophy, earning a B.Phil
degree and becoming fully trained as an analytical philosopher.  At
Oxford he studied under Gilbert Ryle who was one of the leading
analytical philosophers of the twentieth century (among other notable
students of Gilbert Ryle include A. J. Ayer and Daniel Dennett).   He
also studied under the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who was
one of the leading lights of liberal political philosophy.  While
Jerry remained very much a socialist and he was quite critical of
Berlin's analysis of negative liberty versus positive liberty, the two
men became close personal friends.  After completing his studies at
Oxford, Jerry Cohen stayed in the UK and took a teaching position at
University College London as an assistant lecturer, lecturer, and
reader in the philosophy department of that institution.  It was
during those years, in the 1960s and 1970s, that he began the work,
which led to the writing of his famous book.  He would remain at
University College London until his 1985 appointment as the Chichele
Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford.
 He would then remain at Oxford until 2008 when he took emeritus
status there and accepted a new position as the Quain Professor of
Jurisprudence at University College London.

A full evaluation of Jerry Cohen's thought and work would be beyond
the scope of this article.  However, it should be noted that his
thought (and the thought of his fellow Analytical Marxists) followed a
distinct trajectory.  They started with a focus on historical
materialism, but, over time, they became more and more focused on the
ethical justification of socialism.  Indeed, that was the focus of his
later books including Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality (Cambridge
University Press, 1995) and If you're an egalitarian how come you're
so rich? (Harvard University Press, 2000).  He became intrigued with
the arguments of libertarian political philosophers, especially those
of Robert Nozick, as expressed in the latter's Anarchy, State, and
Utopia (Basic Books, 1974).  Jerry was intrigued by the libertarians,
both because he thought that they had provided some of the strongest
arguments available in defense of capitalism and because they appealed
to premises which he himself embraced.  Therefore, Jerry devoted much
time and energy to

[Marxism-Thaxis] G.A. Cohen Goes Home

From: jkschw1 at yahoo.com
To: marxist philosophy marxistphilosophy at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [marxistphilosophy] G.A. Cohen Goes Home
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 17:57:20 +

Unless I missed it the death the other day of Jerry Cohen attracted no
comment on a list devoted to Marxist philosophy. I know that as first
a founder of analytical Marxism, then as a refugee from Marxism to
liberal egalitarianism, he was not favored among the participants
here. But IMHO he was one of the most influential and important
Marxist thinkers of the latter half of the 20th century, and his
legacy requires comment.

^^
CB: Cohen may have been important , but he was not unusually
influential among Marxist thinkers.  This conclusion can only be
reached from the tendencies in Marxism that dismiss the Marxism of
CP's and Trotskyist parties, and thinkers in these sections of Marxism

^

Not much time here but I will note a few thoughts;

- In the context of a sharp decline in the quantity and quality of
Marxist theory,

^
CB: This is a position held by only a section of Marxists,
particularly academic and anti-Party Marxists.

^

Cohen and the AMs stood for the disconnection of
theory from practice,

CB: A telling admission, given that Marx himself put so much emphasis
on the unity of theory and practice.  Philosophers (like Cohen) have
interpreted the world in a number of ways; the thing is to change it.

the entrenchment of Marxism as another academic
exercise. In some ways this was not their fault giving the collapse of
Marxism as a movement and a force in the world.

^
CB: This ignores that the Communist Party is the ruling party of
China, Cuba, Viet Nam, parts of India, et al., and the revolutions in
South America , which though they don't announce it, are obviously
part of the Marxist movement.

^

- Cohen helped bring a level of rigor and precision in Marxist
thinking that had been sorely lacking for a very long time.

^^^
CB: This is an assertion that is not demonstrated nor accepted by many Marxists.
It's also a self-serving claim by Analytical Marxists.
^

 If it's
complained that his work lacked popular accessibility, what are we to
say about Adorno, a favorite here who gets wide discussion?

- Cohen's major work on Karl Marx's Theory Of History is very
valuable, but went down the wrong track in reviving a stagist,
mechanical, primacy of the productive forces 2d Internat'l conception
of historical materialism. (Possibly due in part to his roots in the
Canadian CP.)

^
CB: Why not say that his alleged greater rigor and precision are the
results of his roots in the Canadian CP ?

^

 True, Marx gave that view a lot of space, but Cohen almost totally
neglected Marx's alternative class struggle view, which I think is
more true and valuable and gets no less, arguably more, space. Brenner
is far better on this (and no less rigorous).

^
CB: A rigorous look at actual history today would lead one to a more
stagist view. And of course CP's , including the Canadian , give
much primacy to the class struggle view. So, this is a typical
slanderous claim about CP's. If the alternative to the stagist view
is a class struggle view, then the CP's don't promote a stagist
view.

^^^

- Cohen's turn to traditional style moral philosophy as important,
first as a complement to his idea of historical materialism, then as a
replacement for Marxism and materialist analysis, was a major
retrogression. No doubt there is more ethics in Marx and Marxism than
Marx cared to admit, but Marx pointed the way in integrating these
into materialist analysis.

^
CB: There's a recent thread on LBO-talk discussing this.  Marx doesn't
claim that capitalists are moral, he just appeals to self-interest
among workers, and appeal to self-interest is not a moral appeal.

^^^

Cohen's own positive ethical views were, moreover, disappointingly
primitive and underdeveloped. See his awful Egalitarianism book, but
also earlier papers on exploitation and his paper critiquing value
theory -- a real train wreck. And I don't accept value theory myself!
I haven't carefully read the last book in Rawls.

Btw in that book Cohen lists as the big three books on political
philosophy Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Plato's
Republic. Marx's Capital doesn't make his cut. Given Cohen's a priori
turn to liberal morality, Marx might be happy to be left out.

CB:  Cohen's earlier thesis is interesting to get a discussion on
Marxism going, and to demonstrate how Marxism is different than
mid-twentieth century British philosophy . However, he's not an
unusual giant among Marxist or Marxian thinkers.

- Cohen was nonetheless a major influence, one of the few really
original thinkers in late 20th century Marxism, along with perhaps
Althusser -- who, it might argued, paralleled him in a French sort of
way. The people we tend to discuss, Marx, the Western Marxists, all
had their roots and did much

[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

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[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 ...

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[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.

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[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

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[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

[Marxism-Thaxis] Postal Service

EVERY CRISIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY
Peter Rachleff
St. Paul, Minnesota
August 10, 2009

This year's Postal Press Association Editors Conference
was abuzz with discussion of the Postal Service's
threats to close hundreds of' stations.  Virtually every
editor present knew of one or more stations at risk in
her or his own jurisdiction.  The wolf which has loomed
at the APWU's door for years - plant closings, job
losses, disruptive excessing, economic insecurity, to be
followed by the wage and benefit cuts and attacks on
retirees' benefits which workers in other industries
have experienced - is now huffing and puffing for real.
In my workshop, Learning From the Past to Conquer the
Challenges of Today, we discussed ways to turn this
crisis into an opportunity to revitalize the union, to
secure its role not only in the workplace and at the
bargaining table but also in the community, and to lead
the fight to preserve - if not expand - public service.

Our workshop revolved around three historical moments:
(1) the revitalization of unions in the Great Depression
era of the 1930s, using the Minneapolis teamsters as an
example; (2) the incorporation and weakening of unions
in World War II, the late 1940s, and 1950s; and (3) the
attack on unions and their members by business' and
government's turn to economic neoliberalism in the
1980s.  We then discussed what we can learn from these
historical moments that we can use in this crisis that
we face now, so that we can turn it into an opportunity
to rebuild the labor movement and redirect society as a
whole.

The architects of the Minneapolis teamsters' struggles
picked the right context in which to act.  They could
feel the energy and hope of working people who had
organized the summer 1932 Bonus Army protest in
Washington, had elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt
president in November 1932, and had begun a militant
unemployed movement in city upon city, demanding an end
to mortgage foreclosures and evictions and an expansion
of relief.   In February of 1934, at the depths of a
Minnesota winter, they realized that coal delivery
workers could hold an upper hand over their employer.
Their victory in a three day strike sent a message to
all Minneapolis workers - that with the right strategy
and tactics, workers could defeat anti-union employers.

Having decided that the time was right to act, the
activists who built Local 574 from one hundred members
in February of 1934 to 15,000 by August, paid particular
attention to the roles of rank-and-file members, to the
union's relationship with other unions and the
community, and to its relationship to the government.
The union asked each rank-and-file member to function as
an organizer.  Unionized drivers and helpers refused to
allow their trucks to be loaded or unloaded at non-union
warehouses, while unionized warehouse workers refused to
load or unload non-union trucks. The union also reached
out to other unions, offering them solidarity and
receiving support in return.  The Minneapolis teamsters
became known for their refusal to cross picket lines,
and they helped unions like the International Ladies
Garment Workers win their own strikes.  The union also
reached out to the community, helping the unemployed
organize in order to receive relief, participating in
protests against foreclosures and evictions, and
supporting farmers in establishing farmers' markets in
the city.  The union also pressed the government, at the
local, state, and federal levels, to create jobs, to
raise minimum wages, and to protect workers' rights to
organize.  Teamsters Local 574 experienced phenomenal
growth not only in numbers but also in power and
respect, based on the involvement of their own members,
their supportive relationships with other unions and in
the wider community, and their demands upon the
government.  Their experience typified much of what
happened to American unions in the 1930s, as they grew
from about two million members to fourteen million.

This kind of organization and culture were eaten away in
the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as unions became integrated
into a social contract with employers and the
government.  The latter, rather than opposing unions
outright (since they really couldn't), developed rules,
regulations, and institutions which limited union power.
The dues check-off removed considerable day-to-day
contact between stewards and workers.  The great strike
wave of 1945-1946 ended by allowing corporations to
raise prices despite unions' initial demands that wage
increases not be passed along to consumers.  The
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 outlawed the two most important
expressions of solidarity, the sympathy strike and the
secondary boycott.  Unions began to practice
productivity bargaining in which they granted
management authority to control the shopfloor and the
introduction of new technologies, as long as workers got
raises.  By the merger of the AFL and the CIO in 1955,
the labor movement had ceased growing and individual

[Marxism-Thaxis] Encyclopédie

The original encyclopedists were considered important contributors to
the development of materialism by Engels. Is Wikipedia in that
tradition ?  Knowledge for masses.

The whole essay, or book Marx and Engels On Literature and Art of
which the reference to discussions of Diderot is a small section, has
quite and index.

CB

Diderot

1. Ludwig Feuerbach
2. Marx to Engels 15 April 1869
3. Engels To Marx. 16 April 1869

In:  Marx and Engels On Literature and Art



Source: Marx Engels On Literature and Art. Progress Publishers. 1976;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.






http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/art/index.htm

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx and Engels On Literature and Art

Marx and Engels On Literature and Art

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/art/index.htm



Source: Marx Engels On Literature and Art. Progress Publishers. 1976;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.




Preface

Materialist Conception of the History of Culture
Social Being and Social Consciousness

1. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
2. The German Ideology

Natural Conditions and Development of Culture
Landscapes

Against Vulgarisation of Historical Materialism

1. Engels to Joseph Bloch. September 21-22 1890
2. Engels to W. Borgius. January 25 1894
3. Engels to Conrad Schmidt. October 27 1890
4. Engels to Joseph Bloch. September 21-22 1890
5. Engels to Conrad Schmidt. August 5 1890

Engels About Mehring’s The Lessing Legend

1. Engels to Franz Mehring. April 11 1893
2. Engels to Karl Kautsky. June 1 1893
3. Engels to Franz Mehring. July 14 1893

Class Relations and Class Ideology

1. The German Ideology
2. The Communist Manifesto

Scientific and Vulgar Conceptions of Class Ideology

Engels to Paul Ernst

Historical Continuity and Its Contradictions

1. The German Ideology
2. Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Uneven Character of Historical Development and Questions of Art

Introduction to the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58

General Problems of Art
Ideological Content and Realism

1. Engels to Minna Kautsky, 26 November 1885
2. Engels to Margaret Harkness, beginning April 1888
3. Review of A Chenu, Les Conspirateurs and L. de la Hodde, La
Renaissance de la République, Feb 1848

The Tragic and the Comic in Real History

1. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction
2. Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
3. Leading article in Kölnische Zeitung No. 179
4. Engels to Marx, 4 September 1870
5. Engels to August Bebel, 7 July 1892

Problems of Revolutionary Tragedy

On Ferdinand Lassalle’s Drama Franz von Sickingen

1. Marx to Ferdinand Lassalle, 19 April 1859
2. Engels to Ferdinand Lassalle, 18 May 1859

Miscellaneous Items

Language and Literature

1. Ideas do not exist separately from language, from Grundrisse
2. Materials on the History of France and Germany, Engels

Improvisation and Poetry


New-York Daily Tribune, 7 March 1853, Marx

On Literary Style

1. On Proudhon, Letter to J B Schweizer, 24 January 1865
2. Marx To Engels, 31 July 1865
3. Engels to Eduard Bernstein, 12-13 July 1883
4. Engels to Sorge, 29 April 1886

On Literary Polemics

1. On Brentano’s Polemic Against Marx over Alleged Misquotation
2. Refugee Literature, IV
3. Engels to Marx, 25-26 October 1847
4. Engels to Eduard Bernstein, 12 March 1881
5. Engels to Eduard Bernstein, 29 June 1884

On Translation

1. Engels To Marx, 23 September 1852
2. Engels To Marx, 29 November 1873
3. Engels To Friedrich Sorge, 29 June 1883
4. Engels To Eduard Bernstein, 5 February 1884
5. How Not to Translate Marx, Engels, The Commonweal, 1885
6. Engels To Laura Lafargue, 16 November 1889
7. Engels To Laura Lafargue, 8 January 1890

Additional References On Translation of Marx’s works


8. Engels To Marx, 24 June 1867
9. Engels To Sorge, 20 June 1882
10. Engels To August Bebel, 18 August 1886
11. Engels To Laura Lafargue, 13 September 1886
12. Engels To Laura Lafargue, 28 April 1886
13. Engels To Sorge, 29 June 1888


Art in Class Society
The Origin of Art

Historical Development of the Artistic Sense

1. Private Property and Communism, 1844
2. The Division of Labour and Human Needs, 1844
3. Private Property and Communism, 1844

The Role of Labour in the Origin of Art, from Part Played by Labour
Artistic Creation and Aesthetic Perception, from Critique Political Economy

Social Division of Labour

Division of Labour and Social Consciousness
Estrangement of Labour and Condition of Workers in Capitalist Society

Money and World Culture

The Distorting Power of Money

Capitalism and Spiritual Production

Relation of Art to Capitalist Mode of Production, Theories of Surplus Value
Bourgeois Taste and Its Evolution, Engels To Laura Lafargue, 14 January 1884

The Work of the Artist in Capitalist Society

1. Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4
2. Productive Labour, Economic writings of 1864
3. Theories of Surplus Value, Addenda

Freedom of the Press and of Artistic Creation

1. Debates on Freedom of the Press, Marx 1842
2. Debates on Freedom of the Press, Marx 1842
3. Debates on Freedom of the Press, Marx 1842
4. Debates on Freedom of the Press, Marx 1842
5. Stamp Duty on Newspapers, Neue Oder Zeitung, 30 March 1855

Asceticism and Enjoyment, from German Ideology
Work and Play, from Capital, Volume I
Bourgeois Civilisation and Crime, from Theories of Surplus Value, Addendum

Historical Mission of the Working Class

The Proletariat and Wealth, from The Holy Family

The Working Class and the Progressive Development of Society

1. Speech at Anniversary of

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Materialism of the Encyclopedists

The Materialism of the Encyclopedists

1. Socialism: Utopian  Scientific
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm

2. The Holy Family




Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific




II
[Dialectics]





In the meantime, along with and after the French philosophy of the
18th century, had arisen the new German philosophy, culminating in
Hegel.

Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the
highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born
natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them,
had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.
The newer philosophy, on the other hand, although in it also
dialectics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes and Spinoza), had,
especially through English influence, become more and more rigidly
fixed in the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning, by which also
the French of the 18th century were almost wholly dominated, at all
events in their special philosophical work. Outside philosophy in the
restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced masterpieces of
dialectic. We need only call to mind Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, and
Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite
parmi less hommes. We give here, in brief, the essential character of
these two modes of thought.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Hemingway, the American left, and the Soviet Union: some forgotten episodes

Hemingway, the American Left, and the Soviet Union: Some Forgotten Episodes
Journal article by Cary Nelson; The Hemingway Review, Vol. 14, 1994

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=KG9WPQZJhw8PGW8d12NnZQvpqRhgycgTMLcDJQltpBDvWWpXptlt!-229138872!-1934322800?docId=5000276828


Journal Article Excerpt


Hemingway, the American left, and the Soviet Union: some forgotten episodes



by Cary Nelson


RECENT BIOGRAPHICAL scholarship--notably Kenneth S. Lynn's Hemingway
(1987) and James R. Mellow's Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences
(1992) --suggests that a consensus may be forming about the political
judgments that coalesced in For Whom the Bell Tolls and that
presumably carried Hemingway through the next two decades of his life.
Briefly, the argument as Mellow puts it is that Hemingway by the end
of 1938 experienced growing disillusionment with the cause of the
Spanish Republic. His 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a result
became, according to Mellow, among other things, Hemingway's study of
cowards and traitors and brave men in battle, as well as his apologia
for supporting the Loyalists in the Spanish civil war (517). In both
the marriage [to Martha Gellhorn] and the romance with left-wing
politics, Lynn writes in a similar argument, Hemingway would
discover himself to have been sadly deceived (442); he said farewell
to the Comintern in For Whom the Bell Tolls (452). Putting in his own
rhetoric the lesson he would have us believe Hemingway learned, Lynn
writes that the anti-Fascist propaganda being generated by the
Comintern's cleverest liars, Willi Muenzenberg and Otto Katz (both
later liquidated on Stalin's orders) was a rhetorical cover for the
imperialistic designs of a system no less ruthless than Hitler's and
infinitely more so than the repressive regime that Franco would
establish (444).(1) One exception to this pattern is Jeffrey Meyers'
Hemingway: A Biography (1985), which sees For Whom the Bell Tolls as
flowing from Hemingway's Loyalist sympathies rather than marking their
end point. But Me...

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Reaction, fascism, fighting the ultra right and Health 2.

Shane Mage



Waistline2 at aol.com wrote:

 Attacking the ultra right is nothing more than a clever way of
 demanding
 unconditional support of the Obama administration

Exactly.

^
CB: A point upon which sectarians/ultra-lefts, whether Stalinist or
Trotskyist, can agree.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Honduras Resistance

THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER
P.O. Box 40009 San Francisco, CA 94140
Email: theorgani...@earthlink.net Website:
www.socialistorganizer.org

Honduras Resistance Deepens, With Working Class at the Helm

International Labor Solidarity Needed Urgently to Defeat the Coup

EDITORIAL:

The Honduran people -- with the working class and their trade unions playing
an increasing leadership role -- are on the move. Their revolutionary
upsurge is shaking the fragile edifice of corporate-dominated politics
across the continent and creating frictions within the U.S. ruling
establishment itself.

As we go to press, a week-long nationwide general strike of teachers and
public sector workers is under way. It is a political strike to press for
the resistance movement's three central demands: (1) the immediate and
unconditional reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as the sole and legitimate
president of Honduras, (2) a referendum on convening a Constituent Assembly
to draft a new Constitution, and (3) the immediate punishment of all the
perpetrators of the June 28 coup for their crimes against the people.

Up till now, there had been three two-day strikes (all on Thursdays and
Fridays) called by the three main trade union federations in Honduras, all
of which are part of the National Front Against the Coup. All the main
decisions regarding what to do next in the struggle are made by a weekly
Delegates Assembly of the Front, which is held at the hall of the Beverage
Industry Workers Union (STIBYS). The Delegates Assembly -- which brings
together more than 800 mandated representatives from unions and popular
organizations throughout Honduras -- has become the nerve center and
coordinating body of the resistance movement.

The recent strike has been more widely followed than the previous two-day
strikes. In addition to the teachers and State office workers, the workers
and students at the National Autonomous University of Honduras hit the
bricks, as did the workers at the National Agrarian Institute, the
electrical workers of the Empresa Nacional de Energ? ??a, some
private-sector workers, and the workers at the National Weather Service.

Also, on August 11, tens of thousands of people converged from all corners
of the country into Honduras' two main cities -- Tegucigalpa and San Pedro
Sula. Most of the participants in this National March of Popular Resistance
had left their villages and towns on August 6, the day that the unlimited
general strike began, in response to the call from the National Front
Against the Coup. Most of the marchers pledged to remain in these two cities
throughout the week to participate in the planned demonstrations, roadblocks
and plant/campus occupations. In Tegucigalpa, a mass march of 20,000
people -- with union banners displayed prominently -- buoyed people's
determination to continue the struggle. One of the chants throughout the
march was, No Somos Cuatro Gatos! -- or, we are not just a small handful
of people (literally we are not four cats) -- a reply to the Micheletti
media machine, which keeps trying to convince the world that 45 days after
the coup things have returned to normal, with only a handful of
discontents -- four cats -- stirring up trouble. Washington's Conundrum It
is now public knowledge that a wing of the Republican Party helped in one
form or another to prepare the June 28 coup that overthrew democratically
elected President Manuel Zelaya -- with hawks like John Negroponte, Otto
Reich and current U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens in the forefront
of this effort. Meetings between Llorens and the high military command took
place throughout the entire week leading up to the coup.

The mass public outrage that swept the Americas in the aftermath of the coup
compelled the Organization of American States (OAS) to call for the
immediate and unconditional reinstatement of Zelaya as the legitimate
president of Honduras. Having military coups break out in a continent
marked by growing revolutionary upheavals -- especially after President
Barack Obama's public pledge to turn the page on the era of military
dictatorship of past decades -- posed a serious risk to the overall position
of U.S. imperialism in the region. Obama and all the heads of state in the
Western Hemisphere voted in favor of the OAS resolution.

No sooner had those votes been taken, however, than the U.S. State
Department, under Hillary Clinton, set out to subvert the OAS resolution by
drafting a script for a mediated settlement in Honduras that legitimized
the perpetrators of the June 28 coup. One week later, Clinton anointed a
credible regional leader to serve as the mediator for this U.S.-initiated
plan: President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica. (Two of Clinton's associates,
Lanny Davis and Bennet Ratcliff are, in fact, running strategy for the coup
government.)

The Arias Plan calls for the return of Zelaya to Honduras BUT only if he
accepts to form a government of national reconciliation with the
perpetrators of the coup, if

[Marxism-Thaxis] Twitter: 40% pointless babble

Here's a link for Ralph the purpose meister.


http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein on Analytic Marxism

Some might conclude that the relatively hard line adopted in my Essays
toward the alien-class origins of DM sits rather awkwardly with the
apparently uncritical acceptance of ideas drawn from Wittgenstein's
work --, an allegedly bourgeois philosopher and mystic himself.

^
CB: The class of the originators of DM , Marx and Engels, was petit
bourgeois and bourgeois ( smile)

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa

Clearly, the idea that the world is rational must be forced onto
nature; it cannot be read from it, since nature is not Mind.

^
CB: This seems an a priori statement by Rosa. It is not clear that
the idea that the world is rational must be forced onto nature, nor
that to read rationality from it, it must be Mind.

For example, Darwin's theory , in contrast to intelligent design ,
can be termed intelligible happenstance.  Nature evolves its life
forms, species originated , in a rational or intelligible manner. This
is not imposing ideas on nature. It is using ideas to represent what
is in objective reality.

Similarly  dialectical and historical historical materialism, rooted
in Marx and Engels' thinking, reflect and intelligible aspect of the
objective reality of human history.

^^

 Nevertheless, it is far easier to rationalise the imposition of a
hierarchical and grossly unequal class system on 'disorderly' workers
if ruling-class ideologues can persuade one and all that the
'law-like' order of the natural world actually reflects, and is
reflected in turn by the social order from which their patrons just so
happen to benefit --, the fundamental aspects of which none may
question.


CB: Of course, Marx and Engels dialectical materialism does the
opposite with respect to rationalising the imposition of hiearchical
and grossly unequal class system on workers.  It helps expose the
exploitative class relations in objective reality , rather than
imposing them on reality.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa

Surely, the most that could legitimately be claimed here is that up to
now the available evidence supports a dialectical view of reality.

^
CB: Correct . See Marxism thaxis threads in which I point out that for
Engels, the dialectical quality of reality  is an a posteriori, not a
priori, conclusion.

^^^

 It plainly shouldn't be that this widely touted 'cautious approach'
is only possible because reality itself is dialectically structured.
If that were the case, caution could be thrown to the wind.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet philosophy preserved online

Ralph Dumain 


Though I think most of the productions of Soviet Marxism-Leninism
should have been flushed down the toilet long before they were, and
that the Soviet version of dialectical materialism has done a great
deal of harm as has most else that came from that source,


CB: You say this often, but you don't produce good arguments for it.
You just assert it in a conclusory manner, usually with cuss words.
Who cares that you think it should be flushed. You don't make even a
minimum argument as to why .

Fine to organize on the www so extensively others' essays. What a nice
service you do. But what is _your_ thinking, your theses on Marxism ?
What is your thinking _at length_ ?

^

 I am
nonetheless dedicated to preserving unjustly forgotten and neglected
work.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker

2009-08-20 Thread c b

I didn't see it in the article below, but Dobby was an assistant
prosecutor of the Nazis at the Nuremburg trials.

CB


Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented
Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

Aug 16, 2009 By Marjorie Cohn

Marjorie Cohn's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3954

Doris Dobby Brin Walker, the first woman president of
the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the
age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious
defender of human rights. The only woman in her
University of California Berkeley law school class,
Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving
significant victories for labor, and political
activists.

Doris' legal and political activism spanned several
decades and some of the most turbulent but significant
periods in US history. She organized workers, fought
against Jim Crow and McCarthyism, was active in the
civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and
actively opposed the current wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

At UCLA, Doris became a marxist. After she was sworn in
as a member of the California State Bar, Doris joined
the Communist Party USA, remaining a member until her
death. Upon graduation from law school, Doris began
practicing labor law; but a few years later, she went
to work in California canneries as a labor organizer.
When Cutter Labs fired Doris in 1956, the case was
appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the
Court refused to hear the case, Justice Douglas, joined
in dissent by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black,
wrote, The blunt truth is that Doris Walker is not
discharged for misconduct but either because of her
legitimate labor union activities or because of her
political ideology or belief. Belief cannot be
penalized consistently with the First Amendment . . .
The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be
regulated. We sanction a flagrant violation of the
First Amendment when we allow California, acting
through her highest court, to sustain Mrs. Walker's
discharge because of her belief.

Doris returned to the practice of law and represented
people charged under the Alien Registration Act of 1940
(the Smith Act) in California. The Act required all
resident aliens to register with the government,
enacted procedures to facilitate deportation, and made
it a crime for any person to knowingly or willfully
advocate the overthrow of the government by force or
violence. The work of Doris and other NLG lawyers led
to Yates v. United States, in which the Supreme Court
overturned the convictions of Smith Act defendants in
1957. After Yates, the government never filed another
prosecution under the Smith Act.

During the McCarthy era, Doris was called to testify
before the House Un-American Activities Committee and
she also represented several HUAC witnesses. From 1956
to 1961, Doris successfully defended William and Sylvia
Powell, who faced the death penalty, against Korean War
sedition charges. The US government charged that
articles Powell had written reporting and criticizing
US biological weapons use in Korea were false and
written with intent to hinder the war effort. When a
mistrial ended the sedition case, the government
charged the Powells with treason. Attorney General
Robert Kennedy dismissed the case in 1961.

A partner with the NLG firm of Treuhaft  Walker in
Oakland, California from 1961 to 1977, Doris' practice
focused on civil rights, free speech and draft cases
during the Vietnam War. She also defended death penalty
cases. Perhaps best known for her defense of Angela
Davis, Doris was part of a legal team that secured
Angela's acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and
conspiracy. In that case, which Harvard Professor
Charles Ogletree in 2005 called clearly the trial of
the 20th century, and one that exemplified the vast and
diverse talents of the true Dream Team of the legal
profession, the defense pioneered the use of jury
consultants.

Doris was elected president of the NLG in 1970 after a
bruising battle during which one opponent labeled her
a man in a woman's skirt. She paved the way for the
election of five women NLG presidents in the ensuing
years.

Serving as Vice President of the International
Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1970 to 1978,
Doris supported the struggles of victims of U.S.
imperialism throughout the world and was instrumental
in the development of international human rights law.
In 1996, Doris served as one of eight international
observers at the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission hearings led by Desmond Tutu.

In 2004, Doris submitted a resolution on behalf of the
NLG Bay Area Chapter to the Conference of Delegates of
the California Bar Association asking for an
investigation of representations the Bush
administration used to justify the war in Iraq, for
possible impeachment.

Noted writer Jessica Mitford and Doris were close
friends for years; Jessica was married to Robert
Truehaft, Doris' law partner. When Doris invited

[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

2009-08-24 Thread c b

The idea of creating better humans presuppose qualifying what is better
 and according to the founder of the eugenics movement, better is a class
and  social construct based on economic status and productive worth for
capital.  Productive worth for capital is called survival of the fittest. Those
who cannot  find a buyer of their labor power are deemed unfit, with their
idleness serving  as prove of unfitness rather than prove of capital
inherent inability to grow  human productiveness free of crisis and
catastrophe.

One can simply punch in the word Eugenics and read the wealth of material
on this subject. Eugenics is a social movement reacting to capital's
creation of  a surplus population whose value to society - organized
as capital,
could only  be realized during periods of industrial boom.


***

CB: On the other hand, there is some truth to the old saying that the
rich get richer and the poor get children under capitalism. That is,
those who are poor because they have trouble selling their labor power
may end up more fit than the rich in Darwinian sense of fitness :
being represented by children in future generations. The relative
surplus population may be more Darwinan fit than the rich, with all
their geniuses.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] It takes a fight to win

It takes a fight to win
By Sam Webb

It seems clear that the prospects for a bipartisan health care bill are
diminishing with each passing day. And as far as I'm concerned that is a
good thing. Nothing good, nothing resembling reform could come from
bipartisanship in this Congress. The Republicans have no appetite for real
health care reform. The health care system isn't broken in their view. So
why fix it? A few cosmetic changes maybe, but nothing more.

According to media reports, the Democrats have begun devising a strategy to
pass a bill without Republican support. I applaud them. While I can
understand President Obama's desire to pass a bipartisan bill, there is
nothing necessarily virtuous about bipartisanship, it should not be turned
into a principle of political governance. Conversely, political partisanship
is not necessarily a dirty word either. The appropriate method of governing
can't be decided abstractly.

Process in politics is important, but it shouldn't trump the democratic
will. Millions elected Barack Obama and a new Congress in the expectation
that they would bring real change to their lives. But the health care debate
is making crystal clear that the Republicans and to a degree some Democrats
are in no mood to assist the the legislative agenda of the Obama
administration, - an agenda that the majority of Americans elected him to
carry out.

The mission of the extreme right in the Republican Party (and the extreme
right dominates the GOP), in fact, is to sabotge health care reform and
Obama's Presidency by any means necessary. It will embrace bipartisanship
only in words and only to the degree that it stalls the reform agenda of the
President. Once negotiations become substantive, right wing extremists turn
nasty and let loose their attack dogs, including their gun toting ones, on
the President and other advocates of real change.
I know the American people would like to have less rancor and partisanship
in politics, but it is hard to imagine that changing anytime soon. For one
thing, the extreme right turned mean spirited and divisive politics into its
trademark three decades ago and there is little reason to think that will
change going forward. In fact, the noise from the right wing is becoming
more strident and shrill, more dangerous, and more irresponsible since
President Obama was elected.

For another thing, eras of deepgoing democratic reform - the 1930s and 1960s
come to mind - are a product of clashing partisan interests and political
coalitions. Feelings are intense, democratic life is charged, divisions
along class and social lines emerge in clearer form, and social inertia
gives way to social action. Like it or not, political leaders and ordinary
people take sides.

Franklin Roosevelt and John L. Lewis took sides in the New Deal era; so did
President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights era.
And in both eras, millions - most of whom were new to political activism -
threw themselves into the struggle for progressive social change. It wasn't
always pretty, but it was nearly always necessary. Had political leaders not
taken sides and had not people taken to the streets, progressive change
would have died stillborn.

With the wreckage of 30 years of right wing rule everywhere, an economic
crisis of immense proportions hanging over the country, an extreme right,
badly weakened, but still a part of the political equation, and powerful
corporate interests and their supporters in both parties who either want to
prevent or contain people's reforms, can we move this vast country in the
direction of economic justice, equality and peace without intense,
sustained, and partisan struggle with an increasingly anti-corporate thrust?
History and common sense say 'no.'

A reformer from an even earlier era famously said, Power concedes nothing
without a struggle.

http://www.pww.org/

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[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

Waistline2 :


 Shane is a racist


CB: In my opinion, based on reading Shane's many posts over the years,
his thinking and writing is not racist.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

On 8/26/09, waistli...@aol.com  cb31...@gmail.com writes:

 Shane is a racist

 
 CB: In my  opinion, based on reading Shane's many posts over the years,
 his thinking and  writing is not racist.


 Comment

 What you call racist I call  white chauvinist. What I call racist is anyone
 proceeding from a concept or idea  that biological strata and substrata
 exist amongst humanity. Anyone advocating  eugenics is a racist, but not
 necessarily a white chauvinists, although the two  tend to go together . . 
 .but
 not always.

 WL.

^
CB: Shane's posts are not racist/white chauvinist




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[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

Waistline2
cb31450 at gmail.com writes:

 CB: Shane's posts are not racist/white  chauvinist.

Comment

Why the subterfuge ?  I wrote nothing about Shane's post. I responded to the
question: What's wrong with eugenics. Why not still to the point?

^
CB: I'm replying to where you say  Shane is a racist.  All I know of
Shane is his posts to these lists. I don't know what he does aside
from posting to these lists. His posting to these lists, including his
comment on eugenics are not racist or white chauvinist or white
supremicist, in my opinion.   His what's wrong with eugenics ?  I
took as half joking, not to advocate in favor of the well known
historically racist eugenics efforts.   Not all historical eugenic
theories were based on a theory of races.

I'd say Trotsky's discussion of eugenics is not racist in the sense of
espousing a theory of human races as the basis for making eugenics
decisions. There is some ignorance of how racist the American history
and situation was in that he looks to the US to lead in eugenics,
fails to understand that US racism would likely mare any eugenics
program here. Although , he does pose it as a Soviet America, which
would mean there had been a world historic defeat of racism in the US
as a premise to a Soviet America.



What posts are you referring to?

^
CB: Shane's posts on this thread and through the years.

^^^

The striving to create better  people is racist. The eugenics movement is
inherent racist.

WL.

^
CB:  I can't say that I subscribe to any old eugenics theories, but
not all eugenics theories are based on the notion that there are
better and lesser races.

Today there is a potential for genetic engineering.  If there are
forms of genetically based blindness from birth, and there is
discovered a way to prevent that genetically based blindness, to
prevent it would not be racist or a bad thing in general. Some forms
of cancer, heart disease and other pretty much universally recognized
diseased conditions have genetic components to their etiologies.
Nothing wrong with curing these through genetic engineering

The notiion that it is preferable to be sighted than blind does not
entail a notion that the sighted and blind constitute two different
races. Same with cancered or not cancered , or heart diseased or not
heart diseased.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Mitch Miller’s part in pop hi story

Mitch Miller’s part in pop history
By Elijah Wald

Published: August 21 2009 14:38 | Last updated: August 21 2009 14:38


Record producer Mitch Miller took Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Come On-a My
House’ to the top of the pop charts for eight weeks in 1951


In the summer of 1966, Paul McCartney stood with his fellow Beatles on
stage at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall and counted off the opening beats of
“Paperback Writer”. They were starting their final tour and the
harmonies were a bit rough but the filmed performance still has a
loose infectious energy.

That performance is a highlight of The Beatles: Rock Band video game,
due to be released on September 9. But instead of using the actual
Budokan performance, the gamemakers have manipulated the concert
footage to match the studio-recorded version of the song.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/eeca345e-8de1-11de-93df-00144feabdc0.html

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[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

I of course do not support or advocate for eugenics.

Do you?


WL.

^
CB: I support genetic engineering that would cure genetically based
blindness, cancer, heart disease or other universally recognized
diseases. See below





CB:  I can't say that I subscribe to any old eugenics theories, but
not all eugenics theories are based on the notion that there are
better and lesser races.

Today there is a potential for genetic engineering.  If there are
forms of genetically based blindness from birth, and there is
discovered a way to prevent that genetically based blindness, to
prevent it would not be racist or a bad thing in general. Some forms
of cancer, heart disease and other pretty much universally recognized
diseased conditions have genetic components to their etiologies.
Nothing wrong with curing these through genetic engineering

The notiion that it is preferable to be sighted than blind does not
entail a notion that the sighted and blind constitute two different
races. Same with cancered or not cancered , or heart diseased or not
heart diseased.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Monthly Review's 60th Anniversary (NYC)

2009-08-27 Thread c b

Monthly Review's 60th Anniversary (NYC)

MONTHLY REVIEW, the leading English language publisher
of socialist thought, is celebrating its 60th
anniversary with a gala celebration at 7pm on Thursday,
September 17, at the NY Society for Ethical Culture, 2
West 64th Street, NYC. Suggested donation: $20. Doors
open at 6:30pm; reception to follow. More information
at http://monthlyreview.org/our-60th-anniversary.php

Featured speakers include longtime activist Grace Lee
Boggs, MONTHLY REVIEW editor John Bellamy Foster,
author and media activist Robert W. McChesney,
prominent lawyer and author Michael E. Tigar, Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, and political economist Fred Magdoff.
The acclaimed genre-bending singer and songwriter Toshi
Reagon will also perform.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] class and classical music

2009-08-27 Thread c b

[lbo-talk] class and classical music
Mike Beggs


-clip-Alex Ross (author of the great 'The Rest is Noise: Listening to
the 20th Century') has a very nice essay on this:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/more_to_come_6.html

[...]

The twenties saw a huge change in music’s social function. Classical
music had given the middle class aristocratic airs; now popular music
helped the middle class to feel down and dirty. There is American
musical history in one brutally simplistic sentence. I recently
watched a silly 1934 movie entitled “Murder at the Vanities,” which
seemed to sum up the genre wars of the era. It is set behind the
scenes of a Ziegfeld-style variety show, one of whose numbers features
a performer, dressed vaguely as Franz Liszt, who plays the Second
Hungarian Rhapsody. Duke Ellington and his band keep popping up behind
the scenes, throwing in insolent riffs. Eventually, they drive away
the effete classical musicians and play a takeoff called “Ebony
Rhapsody”: “It’s got those licks, it’s got those tricks / That Mr.
Liszt would never recognize.” Liszt comes back with a submachine gun
and mows down the band. The metaphor wasn’t so far off the mark.
Although many in the classical world were fulsome in their praise of
jazz—Ernest Ansermet lobbed the word “genius” at Sidney Bechet—others
fired verbal machine guns in an effort to slay the upstart. Daniel
Gregory Mason, the man who wanted more throwing of mats, was one of
the worst offenders, calling jazz a “sick moment in the progress of
the human soul.”


The contempt flowed both ways. The culture of jazz, at least in its
white precincts, was much affected by that inverse snobbery which
endlessly congratulates itself on escaping the élite. (The singer in
“Murder at the Vanities” brags of finding a rhythm that Liszt, of all
people, could never comprehend: what a snob.) Classical music became a
foil against which popular musicians could assert their earthy cool.
Composers, in turn, were irritated by the suggestion that they
constituted some sort of moneyed behemoth. They were the ones who were
feeling bulldozed by the power of cash. Such was the complaint made by
Lawrence Gilman, of the Tribune, after Paul Whiteman and his Palais
Royal Orchestra played “Rhapsody in Blue” at Aeolian Hall. Gilman
didn’t like the “Rhapsody,” but what really incensed him was
Whiteman’s suggestion that jazz was an underdog fighting against
symphony snobs. “It is the Palais Royalists who represent the
conservative, reactionary, respectable elements in the music of
today,” Gilman wrote. “They are the aristocrats, the Top Dogs, of
contemporary music. They are the Shining Ones, the commanders of huge
salaries, the friends of Royalty.” The facts back Gilman up. By the
late twenties, Gershwin was making at least a hundred thousand dollars
a year. In 1938, Copland, the best-regarded composer of American
concert music, had $6.93 in his checking account.


All music becomes classical music in the end. Reading the histories of
other genres, I often get a warm sense of déjà vu. The story of jazz,
for example, seems to recapitulate classical history at high speed.
First, the youth-rebellion period: Satchmo and the Duke and Bix and
Jelly Roll teach a generation to lose itself in the music. Second, the
era of bourgeois grandeur: the high-class swing band parallels the
Romantic orchestra. Stage 3: artists rebel against the bourgeois
image, echoing the classical modernist revolution, sometimes by direct
citation (Charlie Parker works the opening notes of “The Rite of
Spring” into “Salt Peanuts”). Stage 4: free jazz marks the point at
which the vanguard loses touch with the mass and becomes a
self-contained avant-garde. Stage 5: a period of retrenchment. Wynton
Marsalis’s attempt to launch a traditionalist jazz revival parallels
the neo-Romantic music of many late-twentieth-century composers. But
this effort comes too late to restore the art to the popular
mainstream. Jazz recordings sell about the same as classical
recordings, three per cent of the market.


The same progression worms its way through rock and roll. What were my
hyper-educated punk-rock friends but Stage 3 high modernists,
rebelling against the bloated Romanticism of Stage 2 stadium rock?
Right now, there seems to be a lot of Stage 5 classicism going on in
what remains of rock and roll. The Strokes, the Hives, the Vines, the
Stills, the Thrills, and so on hark back to some lost pure moment of
the sixties or seventies. Their names are all variations on the Kinks.
Many of them use old instruments, old amplifiers, old soundboards. One
rocker was recently quoted as saying, “I intentionally won’t use
something I haven’t heard before.”Macht Neues, kids! So far, hip-hop
has proved resistant to this kind of classicizing cycle, but you never
know. It is just a short step from old school to the Second Viennese
School.

[...]

Cheers, Mike

On Thu,

[Marxism-Thaxis] Change

2009-08-27 Thread c b

PROMISES, PROMISES: Early Katrina praise for Obama
By BEN EVANS and BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writers Ben Evans And
Becky Bohrer, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 55 mins ago
WASHINGTON – As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to
right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast
after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he's earning high
praise from some unlikely places.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama's team has brought a more
practical and flexible approach. Many local officials offer similar
reviews. Even Doug O'Dell, former President George W. Bush's recovery
coordinator, says the Obama administration's new vision appears to
be turning things around.

Not too long ago, Jindal said in a telephone interview, Louisiana
governors didn't have very many positive things to say about the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Jindal said he had a lot of respect for the current FEMA chief,
Craig Fugate, and his team. There is a sense of momentum and a desire
to get things done, the governor said.

Added O'Dell: I think the results are self-evident.

The retired Marine general served what he calls a frustrating stint as
Bush's recovery coordinator last year. What people have said to me is
that for whatever reason, problems that were insurmountable under
previous leadership are getting resolved quickly, O'Dell said.

And I really hate to say that because (the top FEMA leaders) in my
time there were good, hardworking, earnest men, but they were also the
victims of their own bureaucracy.

It's not that Obama has miraculously mended the Gulf Coast since
Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm killed more than 1,600
people in Louisiana and Mississippi and caused more than $40 billion
in property damage. Hurricane Rita followed nearly a month later, with
billions of dollars in additional damage and at least 11 more deaths.

On the fourth anniversary of Katrina, many communities remain broken,
littered with boarded-up houses and overgrown vacant lots. Hundreds of
projects — including critical needs such as sewer lines, fire stations
and a hospital — are entangled in the bureaucracy or federal-local
disputes over who should pick up the tab.

Like Bush, Obama has critics who say he's not moving aggressively enough.

Chris Kromm, director of the Institute for Southern Studies, an
advocacy group, said the coast is still waiting for Washington to
show leadership.

In many areas, such as long-term coastal rehabilitation and rebuilding
levees, it's too early to determine whether Obama will live up to the
many promises he made.

But on several fronts, there is evidence of progress.

Victor Ukpolo, chancellor of Southern University at New Orleans, said
the administration has been able to move mountains for his school,
virtually wiped out by Katrina and the breached levees.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has visited the campus
twice and awarded $32 million to replace four buildings.

It's really awesome, Ukpolo said. There's been so much progress.

Tommy Longo, mayor of Waveland, Miss., said it got so bad toward the
end of Bush's tenure that you almost couldn't get them to return a
phone call, and you certainly weren't going to get them to make any
big decisions.

It has been refreshing to be back working with people who are hungry
and want to make a difference, said Longo, a Democrat. Who knows, a
few years from now, at the end of Obama's term it may be back to the
same ol', same ol', but it is refreshing now.

Obama backed up his pledge to name an experienced FEMA administrator
by appointing Fugate, a career emergency management professional from
Florida. By contrast, Bush's director was Michael Brown, a lawyer who
worked at the International Arabian Horse Association. He resigned
after Katrina.

In half a year, Obama's team says it has cleared at least 75 projects
that were in dispute, including libraries, schools and university
buildings. The administration has embraced a new, independent
arbitration panel for the most stubborn disputes, and assigned senior
advisers to focus on the rebuilding.

The administration recently reversed a FEMA rule that barred
communities from building fire stations and other critical projects in
vulnerable areas. Local officials said the rule could have effectively
killed off some places.

The Bush administration's flat-footed response to Katrina left a
lasting stain on Bush's legacy, and the sluggish pace of the long-term
recovery has drawn continued criticism.

Local officials and civic leaders long have complained about the
changing cast of FEMA representatives who review project worksheets
and demand repeated inspections or additional paperwork. In some
cases, agency workers have subtracted costs that local officials
thought were settled.

Along with battling red tape, community officials say FEMA often
stubbornly refused to pay for work that should have qualified for
federal aid.

Under Bush, FEMA frequently argued that

[Marxism-Thaxis] Work song

2009-08-28 Thread c b

Work song


A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a specific form
of work, either sung while conducting a task (often to coordinate
timing) or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected
narrative, description, or protest song.

Contents
1 Definitions and categories
2 Hunting and pastoral songs
3 Agricultural work songs
4 African American work songs
5 Sea shanties
6 Cowboy songs
7 Industrial folk song
8 See also
9 Notes
10 External links



[edit] Definitions and categories
Records of work songs are roughly as old as historical records, and
anthropological evidence suggests that all agrarian societies tend to
have them.[1] Most modern commentators on work songs have included
both songs sung while working as well as songs about work, since the
two categories are seen as interconnected.[2] Norm Cohen divided
collected work songs into domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea
shanties, African American (gang) worksongs, songs and chants of
direction, and street cries.[3] Ted Gioia further divided agricultural
and pastorals songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and
highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of: cloth
workers, factory workers, seamen, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He
also added prisoner songs and modern work songs.[1]


[edit] Hunting and pastoral songs
In societies without mechanical time keeping, songs of mobilisation,
calling members of a community together for a collective task, were
extremely important.[4] Both hunting and the keeping of livestock
tended to involve small groups or individuals, usually boys and young
men, away from the centres of settlement and with long hours to pass.
As a result it had been noted that tended to produce long narrative
songs, often sung individually, which might dwell on the themes of
pastoral activity or animals, designed to pass the time in the tedium
of work.[4] Hunting songs, like those of the Mbuti of the Congo, often
incorporated distinctive whistles and yodels so that hunters could
identity each others locations and those of their prey.[4]


[edit] Agricultural work songs
Most agricultural work songs are rhythmic a cappella songs sung by
people working on a physical and often repetitive task. The songs were
probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of
boredom.[4] Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical
movement in a group or gang, as they are in parts of Africa with drums
as accompaniment to coordinate sowing and hoeing.[4] Frequently, the
usage of verses in work songs are often improvised and sung
differently each time. The improvisation provided the singers with a
sometimes subversive form of expression: improvised verses sung by
slaves had verses about escaping; improvised verses sung by sailors
had verses complaining about the captain and the work conditions. Work
songs also help to create a feeling of familiarity and connection
between the workers.


[edit] African American work songs
African American work songs originally developed in the era of
slavery, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Because
they were part of an almost entirely oral culture they had no fixed
form and only began to be recorded as the era of slavery came to an
end after 1865. The first collection of African American 'slave songs'
was published in 1867 by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware,
Lucy McKim Garrison.[5] Many had their origins in African song
traditions, and may have been sung to remind the slaves of home, while
others were instituted by the slave masters to raise morale and keep
slaves working in rhythm.[6] They have also been seen as a means of
withstanding hardship and expressing anger and frustration through
creativity or covert verbal opposition.[7]

A common feature of African American songs was the call-and-response
format, where a leader would sing a verse or verses and the others
would respond with a chorus. This came from African traditions of
agricultural work song and found its way into the spirituals that
developed once slaves began to convert to Christianity and from there
to both gospel music and the blues. Also evident were field hollers,
shouts, and moans, which may have been originally designed for
different bands or individuals to locate each other and narrative
songs that used folk tales and folk motifs, often making use of
homemade instruments.[8] In early slavery drums were used to provide
rhythm, but they were banned in later years because of the fear that
black slaves would use them to communicate in a rebellion,
nevertheless slaves managed to generate percussion and percussive
sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies.[9] Perhaps
surprisingly, there are very few examples of work songs linked to
cotton picking.[10]


[edit] Sea shanties
Main article: sea shanty
Work songs sung by sailors between the eighteenth and twentieth
centuries are known as sea shanties. These songs were typically
performed while adjusting

[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

2009-08-28 Thread c b

Alberta Eugenics Board

In 1928, the Province of Alberta, Canada, passed legislation that
enabled the government to perform involuntary sterilizations on
individuals classified as mentally deficient. In order to implement
the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta in 1928, a four-person Alberta
Eugenics Board was created. These four individuals were responsible
for approving sterilization procedures. In 1972, the Sexual
Sterilization Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled.
During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000
individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually
performed.

Contents [hide]
1 Historical context
1.1 Like begets like
2 Structure of the Alberta Eugenics Board
2.1 The original four members
3 Proceedings of the Eugenics Board
4 Board controversy
5 The end of the Eugenics Board
6 References

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[Marxism-Thaxis] What's wrong with eugenics?

2009-08-28 Thread c b

Racial hygiene

Racial hygiene (often labeled a form of scientific racism) is the
selection, by a government, of the putatively most physical,
intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation (selective
breeding) and a close alignment of public health with eugenics.

Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of public
health, but usually with an enhanced emphasis on heredity. The use of
social measures to attempt to preserve or enhance biological
characteristics was first proposed by Francis Galton in his early
work, starting in 1869, on what would later be called eugenics.

Contents [hide]
1 In Germany
2 After World War II
3 See also
4 Further reading
5 References



[edit] In Germany
It was the German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz who introduced the term
Rassenhygiene in his Racial hygiene basics (Grundlinien einer
Rassenhygiene) in 1895. In its earliest incarnation it was concerned
more with the declining birthrate of the German state and the
increasing number of mentally ill and disabled in state institutions
(and their costs to the state) than with the Jewish question and
de-nordification (Entnordung) which would come to dominate its
philosophy in Germany from the 1920s through the second World War.

One of the confusing aspects of racial hygiene is that race was
often interchangeably used to mean human race as well as German
race as well as Aryan race — three quite different concepts with
three quite different implications. In the 1930s, under the expertise
of eugenicist Ernst Rüdin, it was this latter use of racial hygiene
which was embraced by the followers of Nazi ideology, who demanded
Aryan racial purity and condemned miscegenation. This belief in
importance of German racial purity often served as the theoretical
backbone of Nazi policies of racial superiority and later genocide.
These policies began in 1935, when the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg
Laws, which legislated racial purity by forbidding marriage between
non-Jewish and Jewish Germans.

A key part of Nazism was the concept of racial hygiene and during
their rule the field was elevated to the primary philosophy of the
German medical community, first by activist physicians within the
medical profession, particularly amongst psychiatrists. This was later
codified and institutionalized during and after the Nazis' rise to
power in 1933, during the process of Gleichschaltung (literally,
coordination or unification) which streamlined the medical and
mental hygiene (mental health) profession into a rigid hierarchy with
Nazi-sanctioned leadership at the top.

Racial hygienists played key roles in the Holocaust, the Nazi effort
to purge Europe of Jews, Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, political
dissidents, the mentally retarded and the insane.


[edit] After World War II
After World War II, such attempts have been widely reviled as cruel
and brutal, and the racialist ideology behind them as un-scientific
and pseudoscience. What the racial hygienists didn't concern
themselves with, was the fact that it is the variety and diversity
within the human genome that accounts for the health and beauty of an
observable human specimen, for it is the practice of inbreeding and
isolation within a racial sect that accounts for at least some of the
physical and mental deformities and retardations that the eugenicists
observed and used as evidence of undesired genetic flaws that could
be bred out by only allowing the pure Aryan race to procreate.
However, in the days of the most influential eugenicists, little was
known about genetic heredity and DNA, and it relationship to diseases
such as Down Syndrome.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Ghosts of Germany's Communist Past Return for Election

Ghosts of Germany's Communist Past Return for Election

By: Erik Kirschbaum

- Erik Kirschbaum is a Reuters correspondent in Berlin. August 28th, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2009/08/28/ghosts-of-germanys-communist-past-return-for-election/

Will the party that traces its roots to Communist East
Germany's SED party that built the Berlin Wall soon be
in power in a west German state?

Or is the rise of the far-left Linke (Left party) in
western Germany to the brink of its first role as a
coalition partner in a state government with the
centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) simply a political
fact-of-life now so many years after the Wall fell and
the two Germanys were reunited?

Will a red government in Saarland scare away
investors and doom the state, as its conservative state
premier Peter Mueller argues in a desperate fight to
his job?

Or will the new leftist alliance in Saarland be able to
better tackle state's woes, as the SPD state premier
candidate Heiko Maas insists?

Depending on your Weltanschauung, that's what Sunday's
election in three German states boils down to - an
emotional debate about whether the ex Communists in
the form of the Left party should be allowed to be part
of the next Saarland government or not.

It doesn't matter that the Left has already been in
eastern state governments and will probably also be
part of the next state government in the eastern state
of Thuringia, which also elects a new state assembly on
Sunday.

The Cold War has flared up again in Germany ahead of
Sunday's elections in three German states, a closely
watched warm-up for the national election on Sept. 27
when Chancellor Angela Merkel will be seeking a second
term.

It's hard to explain to anyone outside Germany why the
Left party has been seated in state and local
governments throughout eastern Germany for the last 15
years with hardly a murmur while it was until recently
an absolute taboo in western Germany. It's also not
easy to explain to some Germans, especially those born
after the Cold War.

But here goes: Many western voters have until now had a
knee-jerk reaction to the Left party - as well as its
predecessor the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS),
which is the direct descendent of Erich Honecker's SED.
Westerners remember the Wall, the shoot-to-kill orders,
the barbed wire and the Iron Curtain that divided post-
war Germany.

It's not a big deal in Saarland anymore, Maas, the
SPD candidate in Saarland, told me in an interview on
the campaign trail in Saarbruecken this week. The CDU
is trying to make a scandal out of it. They've been
trying to whip up fears about `red-red' for months but
there hasn't been any movement in the opinion polls. I
think that shows people aren't interested in the
parties mud-slinging about coalitions. They're tired of
those games. They want political leaders to resolve
their problems.

Many eastern voters long ago realised the Left party is
not the SED that built the Wall. In the east, the Left
has become the most powerful party in many regions
partly due to nostalgia for East Germany but mainly due
to its fighting for leftist ideals as well as standing
up for the so-called losers of unification.

A `red-red' government would send Saarland down the
tubes, said CDU leader Mueller. And Merkel added at a
rally in Saarbruecken: This state cannot be allowed to
fall into the hands of `red-red'. She does not use
that line in her campaign speeches in the former
Communist east, where she was raised, because she knows
it would sound ridiculous to eastern ears.

The SPD rules out a red-red coalition with the Left
party at the national level because of deep differences
over foreign and economic policy. But it now says it is
ready to open the door to such alliances in western
states - after some painful experiences in the last few
years. And Maas in Saarland could be the first to go
through. The SPD will probably drop that ban on red-
red coalitions at the national level someday as well
after having abandoned it for eastern Germany in 1994.

So is it The Commies are at the Gate in Saarland? Or
is it just part of a democratic evolution that the
renamed, reborn East German Communists are about to
gain a small but important foothold in western Germany?

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Japan opposition takes on economy after landslide

Japan opposition takes on economy after landslide
By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer Eric Talmadge, Associated
Press Writer 1 hr 53 mins ago
TOKYO – Japan's likely next prime minister rushed to select Cabinet
ministers Monday after his party trounced the ruling conservatives in
elections and inherited a mountain of problems, including how to
revive the world's second-largest economy.

Yukio Hatoyama spoke only briefly with reporters before huddling with
party leaders. In a victory speech late Sunday, he said he would focus
on a quick and smooth transition and make a priority of choosing
Japan's next finance minister.

He has also said he wants to redefine Tokyo's relationship with its
key ally, Washington.

Prime Minister Taro Aso, conceding defeat, said he would step down as
president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

As head of the party, I feel strong responsibility and it is my
intention to resign, Aso told a news conference Monday. His successor
as party leader is expected to be named in late September.

Although the nation gave the Democratic Party of Japan a landslide
win, most voters were seen as venting dissatisfaction with the LDP and
the status quo.

The staunchly pro-U.S. LDP — teaming up with big business,
conservative interests and the powerful national bureaucracy —
governed Japan for virtually all of the past 54 years. Their election
loss has been attributed primarily to frustration with the economy,
which is in its worst slump since World War II.

Official results were still being counted, but exit polls by all major
media said Hatoyama's party had won more than 300 of the 480 seats in
the lower house of parliament. That would easily be enough to ensure
that he is installed as prime minister in a special session of
parliament that is expected in mid-September.

The Democrats controlled the less powerful upper house of parliament
with two smaller allies since 2007, but if they fail to quickly
deliver on their promises, the LDP could resurge in elections for that
house next year.

The task ahead for the Democrats is daunting.

Japan managed to climb out of a yearlong recession in the second
quarter, but its economy remains weak. Unemployment and anxiety over
falling wages threaten to undermine any recovery. The jobless rate has
risen to a record 5.7 percent. After a rapid succession of three
administrations in three years, Japan is facing its worst crisis of
confidence in decades.

It must also figure out how to cope with a rapidly aging and shrinking
population — meaning fewer people paying taxes and more collecting
pensions. Government estimates predict the population will drop to 115
million in 2030 and fall below 100 million by the middle of the
century.

The Democrats' solution is to move Japan away from a corporate-centric
economic model to one that focuses on helping people. They have
proposed an expensive array of initiatives: cash handouts to families
and farmers, toll-free highways, a higher minimum wage and tax cuts.
The estimated bill comes to 16.8 trillion yen ($179 billion) when
fully implemented starting in the 2013 fiscal year.

The party has said it plans to cut waste and rely on untapped
financial reserves to fund their programs. But with Japan's public
debt heading toward 200 percent of gross domestic product, the
Democrats' plan has been criticized as a financial fantasy that would
worsen Japan's precarious fiscal health.

Japan's stock market surged early Monday on the news of the election,
but then fell back — indicating uncertainty among investors about what
the Democrats will bring.

The key difference is the Liberal Democrats' spending on public
projects and infrastructure, but the Democrats spend on family and
education, said Martin Schulz, a senior economist at the Fujitsu
Research Institute.

The Democrats have a year to show results, he added, noting next
year's elections are looming.

The Democrats are also under scrutiny for their positions on national
security and foreign policy.

Hatoyama has been vocal about distancing Japan from Washington and
forging closer ties with its Asian neighbors.

He has said he will end a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in
support of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, and wants to
review the role of the 50,000 U.S. troops stationed across Japan under
a post-World War II mutual security treaty.

He is not expected to make any radical departures that would harm
relations with Washington, however, and the new U.S. ambassador to
Japan said President Barack Obama is looking forward to working with
the administration in Tokyo.

The challenges we face are many, but through our partnership our two
great democracies will meet them in a spirit of cooperation and
friendship, Ambassador John V. Roos said in a statement Monday.

The Democrats' first task will be to convince a skeptical public that
they can actually lead.

The party is made up of an inexperienced group of left-wing activists
and LDP defectors. It is

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ghosts of Germany's Communist Past Return forElection

 If a non-European wants to really
 understand what is going on he (she) has to read a countervailing reports
 by ot er journalists (in differenr media).

 Stephen Steiger, Praue, Czech Republic

^^^
CB  Got any countervailing reports ?

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Japan Votes for Multipolarity

 Japan Votes for Multipolarity
dredmond


Voters roundly reject the LDP's watered-down variant of a
US-subservient neoliberalism:
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908300210.html

Japan, it should be noted, is the second-largest foreign creditor of
the US (slightly behind China). Hint, hint!

-- DRR

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Japan opposition takes on economy after landslide

2009-09-01 Thread c b

Thanks Charles. I kinda thought u would clarify this thusly

On 9/1/09, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote:
 The thing to remember is this: the NEW RULING party is simply a set of
 factions that emerged from the OLD RULING party over 10 years ago.
 They ran as opposition on MORE FREE MARKETS, DEREGULATION,
 LIBERALIZATION and appeasement of big business interests that seek to
 co-habit with American big business interests and the US military.
 It's true that they said they were going to re-think the postal
 privatization (now that everyone realizes it's about the only thing in
 the country that appeasing American interests hasn't yet ruined), but
 it's also important to remember that, at the time the simpleton
 Koizumi of the old ruling party (LDP) was arguing for privatization
 and running on this issue, the DPJ was vaguely arguing the
 privatization didn't go far or deep enough.

 One would expect the usual interests of the American national security
 state empire to argue that Japan started its reforms too late or did
 too little--except the collapse of the US bubbles leaves them so
 thoroughly repudiated by their own stupid free market rhetoric (which
 was more about making Japan pay for more of the US's military spending
 while securing insider deals and monopolized markets with US-Japan
 trade anyway).

 The LDP truly sucked, the DPJ promises to suck even harder.

 CJ

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Notes on the Japanese Elections of 2009

2009-09-01 Thread c b

Yoshie Furuhashi

 Notes on the Japanese Elections of 2009


Decades of increasing poverty, inequality, and insecurity, which
created a powerful backlash against the ruling coalition of the
Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, finally put an end to Japan's de
facto one-party state.  But the backlash only benefited the social
liberal Democratic Party of Japan, which increased its seats from 115
to 308 (the DPJ block now enjoys 322 seats, more than a two-thirds
majority).  The Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party barely
hanged onto the same numbers of seats that they had before the
elections: 9 for the CP* and 7 for the SDP.  On the face of it, it is
not a debacle for the Left like those suffered by Communists in India
and Italy in the most recent elections.  But, one of the items on the
DPJ agenda is a plan to eliminate 80 proportional representation
seats, and it just so happens that all the Communist representatives
are elected to proportional representation seats.  :-0

If you are interested, look at this video of the 21 Aug 09
pre-election press conference of JCP Chaiman Shii Kazuo (which comes
with English translation):
http://www.jcp.or.jp/movie/news_mov/20090824/index.html.  You'll see
that JCP criticisms of the DPJ agenda are to the point more often than
not (which you can see in more detail at
http://www.jcp.or.jp/seisaku/2009/syuuin/index.html), but those
criticisms don't amount to a compelling vision of a new socialist
society that the party should be presenting.

The strongest point of the JCP criticism of the DPJ is that the DPJ
will pay for its promise to expand the social safety net, including
the formerly excluded, by increasing the taxes on working-class
incomes, leveling down the existing structures of entitlements such as
pensions toward the new social minimums, decreasing public works and
public-sector jobs, and so on, the trade-off that the DPJ will make
inevitable given its refusal to tax big businesses and capitalists and
to cut military spending.

But, in the process of making this point, the JCP ends up defending
the old, such as tax exemptions for dependent spouses (usually
housewives), which have discouraged many a woman from seeking
full-time jobs since wives earning only part-time incomes (roughly up
to 1,300,000 yen) are counted as dependents for the purpose of
calculating taxes, insurance and pension contributions and benefits,
etc.  What's good for working-class _families_ in material terms can
be bad for working-class _women_ looking to enhance their
gender-bargaining power vis-a-vis men, and the structures of the
Japanese welfare state that tacitly assume male family wages, lifetime
monogamous marriages, female spousal dependency, etc. are textbook
cases of the common class-gender contradiction under capitalism.  This
contradiction intensifies as more and more Japanese women are clearly
losing interest in marriage and childbearing, powerfully demonstrating
their sharp rejection of the old gender settlement and silently
erecting a strong demographic obstacle to the old methods of restoring
economic growth.  The JCP, or any other left-wing current in Japan,
needs to offer women -- and young people in general -- a new socialist
vision that assumes women as individuals, rather than a maternalist
Keynesian vision in which women are tacitly assumed to be, or become,
or have been wives and mothers.

The same goes for the JCP's defense of the Peace Constitution.  On one
hand, any constitutional revision that the DPJ will put on the agenda
will likely to be one that pushes Japan onto the course that Germany
took in the process of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, embarking on
humanitarian imperialist adventures of its own, not just as a
subordinate member of the US-led coalition of the willing.  On the
other hand, there is nothing democratic, let alone socialist, about
defending the constitution that the occupier wrote for Japan, on which
the Japanese people have not been allowed to vote.  Socialists must
present a new democratic vision for Japan.  Why not a constitutional
assembly in Japan, to write a new constitution as a step toward 21st
century socialism?


* The proportion of the total vote for the Communists, however,
registered a slight decline, from 7.25% to 7.03%:
http://www.jcp.or.jp/seisaku/2009/syuuin/20090831_seimei.html.

Yoshie

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Sahlins on Leslie White

2009-09-03 Thread c b

September 21, 2008
Leslie A. White
In the pre-’60s at the University of Michigan, rebellion consisted of
listening gleefully to the anthropologist Leslie White going mano a
mano with God. White was one of those maverick intellectuals and
politicians, like Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard and Robert La
Follette, who came out of the rural American heartland to off the
pieties-and powers-that-be. Some of these intellectuals were village
atheists from the beginning. Others, like White, only shook off the
idiocies of rural life when they went to the city and the university.

We never knew White was a member of the Socialist Labor Party in the
’30s and early ’40s, contributing articles to The Weekly People under
the name John Steel. Nor could you have guessed from his
so-Americanized version of Marxism: a theory of cultural evolution
based singularly on technological progress. Progress in the Neolithic,
he claimed, came from the increase in the amount of energy harnessed
per capita because of plant and animal domestication. He was not
amused when I objected that energy “per capita” was the same as in the
Old Stone Age, since the primary mechanical source remained the human
body.

On the other hand, I have never repudiated White’s concept of culture
as a thoroughly symbolic phenomenon. I never tired of repeating his
dictum that no ape can appreciate the difference between holy water
and distilled water — because there is none, chemically speaking.
That, for me, resolved the contradiction in his own teaching and that
of the many human scientists who separate culture from practical
activity, as if the symbolic dimension of economic behavior were an
afterthought of the material. The “economic basis” of society is
culturally constructed. Even our supposedly “rational choices” are
based on another, meaningful logic that, for example, makes steak a
more prestigious food than hamburger, or women’s clothes different in
significant ways from men’s. It turns out that materialism is a form
of idealism, because it’s wrong, too.

Marshall Sahlins is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the
University of Chicago and the author most recently of “The Western
Illusion of Human Nature.”

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Badiou

2009-09-03 Thread c b

Alain Badiou


Alain Badiou French philosophy
Contemporary philosophy

Full name Alain Badiou
Born 17 January 1937 (1937-01-17) (age 72)
Rabat, Morocco
School/tradition Continental philosophy
Main interests Set Theory, Mathematics, Metapolitics, Ontology
Notable ideas Event, truths
Influenced by[show]
Plato, Marx, Cantor, Albert Lautman, Mao Zedong, Lacan, Althusser,
Paul Cohen, Sartre, Deleuze, Hegel, Stéphane Mallarmé, Samuel Beckett,
Fernando Pessoa, Sylvain Lazarus
Influenced[show]
Slavoj Žižek, Peter Hallward, Simon Critchley, Ray Brassier, Sylvain Lazarus
Alain Badiou (born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a prominent
French philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the École Normale
Supérieure (ENS). Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou
is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental
philosophy. Particularly through a creative appropriation of set
theory from his early interest in mathematics, Badiou seeks to recover
the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that is neither
postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Key concepts
2.1 Four discourses
2.2 Inaesthetic
3 Introduction to Being and Event
3.1 Mathematics as ontology
3.2 The event and the subject
4 Works
4.1 Philosophy
4.2 Critical essays
4.3 Literature and drama
4.4 Political essays
4.5 Pamphlets and Serial Publications
4.6 English translations
4.6.1 Books
4.6.2 DVD
5 Lectures
6 Further reading
6.1 Secondary Literature on Badiou's Work in English (Books)
6.1.1 Secondary Literature on Badiou's Work in English (Essays and articles)
6.2 Secondary Literature on Badiou's Work in French (Books)
7 Notes
8 External links



[edit] Biography
Badiou was trained formally as a philosopher as a student at the École
Normale Supérieure (ENS) from 1956 to 1961, a period during which he
took courses at the Sorbonne. He had a lively and constant interest in
mathematics. He was politically active very early on, and was one of
the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was
particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria.
He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a
study group organized by Louis Althusser and grew increasingly
influenced by Jacques Lacan.

The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to
the far Left, and he participated in increasingly radical communist
and Maoist groups, such as the UCFML. In 1969 he joined the faculty of
University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis), which was a bastion
of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual
debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François
Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations
from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism.

In the 1980s, as both Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis
went into decline (with Lacan dead and Althusser in an asylum), Badiou
published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as
Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988).
Nonetheless, Badiou has never renounced Althusser or Lacan, and
sympathetic references to Marxism and psychoanalysis are not uncommon
in his more recent works.

He took up his current position at the ENS in 1999. He is also
associated with a number of other institutions, such as the Collège
International de Philosophie. He is now a member of L'Organisation
Politique which he founded with some comrades from the Maoist UCFML
in 1985. Badiou has also enjoyed success as a dramatist with plays
such as Ahmed le Subtil.

In the last decade, an increasing number of Badiou's works have been
translated into English, such as Ethics, Deleuze, Manifesto for
Philosophy, Metapolitics, and Being and Event. Short pieces by Badiou
have likewise appeared in American and English periodicals, such as
Lacanian Ink, New Left Review, Radical Philosophy, Cosmos and History
[1] and Parrhesia. Unusually for a contemporary European philosopher
his work is increasingly being taken up by militants in movements of
the poor in countries like India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and
South Africa where he is often read together with Frantz Fanon.

Lately Badiou got into a fierce controversy within the confines of
Parisian intellectual life. It started in 2005 with the publication of
his Circonstances 3: Portées du mot 'juif' - The Uses of the Word
Jew [2]. This book generated a strong response with calls of Badiou
being labelled Anti-Semitic. The wrangling became a cause célèbre with
articles going back and forth in the French newspaper Le Monde and in
the cultural journal Les temps modernes. Another philosopher
Jean-Claude Milner has accused Badiou of Anti-Semitism.[1]


[edit] Key concepts
Badiou makes repeated use of several concepts throughout his
philosophy. One of the aims of his thought is to show that his
categories of truth are useful for any type of philosophical critique.

[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama speech to students sparks new controversy

Obama speech to students sparks new controversy

By LIBBY QUAID and LINDA STEWART BALL, Associated Press Writers Libby
Quaid And Linda Stewart Ball, Associated Press Writers 2 hrs 4 mins
ago
DALLAS – When kids all across the country return to school Tuesday,
some will see a welcoming message from President Barack Obama and some
won't.

Obama's planned address to students has touched off yet another
confrontation with Republican critics, who have battered the White
House over health care and now accuse the president of foisting a
political agenda on children.

The president will speak directly to students Tuesday about the need
to work hard and stay in school. His address will be shown live on the
White House Web site and on C-SPAN at noon EDT, a time when classrooms
across the country will be able to tune in.

Schools don't have to show it. But districts across the country have
been inundated with phone calls from parents and are struggling to
address the controversy that broke out after Education Secretary Arne
Duncan sent a letter to principals urging schools to tune in.

Districts in states including Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri,
Virginia and Wisconsin have decided not to show the speech to
students. Others are still thinking it over or are letting parents
have their kids opt out.

Some conservatives, driven by radio pundits and bloggers, are urging
schools and parents to boycott the address. They say Obama is using
the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the
boundaries of federal involvement in schools.

As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the
appearance of creating a cult of personality, said Oklahoma
Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. This is something you'd expect
to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Arizona state schools superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, said
lesson plans for teachers created by Obama's Education Department
call for a worshipful rather than critical approach.

The White House plans to release the speech online Monday so parents
can read it. The president will deliver the speech at Wakefield High
School in Arlington, Va.

I think it's really unfortunate that politics has been brought into
this, White House deputy policy director Heather Higginbottom said in
an interview with The Associated Press.

It's simply a plea to students to really take their learning
seriously. Find out what they're good at. Set goals. And take the
school year seriously.

She noted that President George H.W. Bush made a similar address to
schools in 1991. Like Obama, Bush drew criticism, with Democrats
accusing the Republican president of making the event into a campaign
commercial.

Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration
created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online,
originally recommended having students write letters to themselves
about what they can do to help the president.

The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could
write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their
short-term and long-term education goals.

That was inartfully worded, and we corrected it, Higginbottom said.

In the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, the 54,000-student school
district is not showing the 15- to 20-minute address but will make the
video available later.

PTA council president Cara Mendelsohn said Obama is cutting out the
parent by speaking to kids during school hours.

Why can't a parent be watching this with their kid in the evening?
Mendelsohn said. Because that's what makes a powerful statement, when
a parent is sitting there saying, 'This is what I dream for you. This
is what I want you to achieve.'

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said in an interview with the AP
that he's certainly not going to advise anybody not to send their
kids to school that day.

Hearing the president speak is always a memorable moment, he said.

But he also said he understood where the criticism was coming from.

Nobody seems to know what he's going to be talking about, Perry
said. Why didn't he spend more time talking to the local districts
and superintendents, at least give them a heads-up about it?

Several other Texas districts have decided not to show the speech,
although the district in Houston is leaving the decision up to
individual school principals. In suburban Houston, the
Cypress-Fairbanks district planned to show the address and has had its
social studies teachers assemble a curriculum and activities for
students.

In Wisconsin, the Green Bay school district decided not to show the
speech live and to let teachers decide individually whether to show it
later.

Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer said in a statement he was absolutely
appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President
Obama's socialist ideology. Despite his rhetoric, two of the larger
Florida districts, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, plan to have classes
watch the speech. Students whose

[Marxism-Thaxis] Where jazz meets hip hop

Where jazz meets hip hop
Detroit-born Karriem Riggins grooves at the corner
By W. Kim Heron




http://metrotimes.com/music/story.asp?id=14332

SEE ALSO
More Jazz Stories
Jazz fest highlights (9/2/2009)
Some high notes among fest offerings

Life lesson (9/2/2009)
A tribute to Eric Dolphy — years in the making

The last king of swing (9/2/2009)
Gerald Wilson paints his hometown in sound

More from W. Kim Heron
Jazz fest highlights (9/2/2009)
Some high notes among fest offerings

Life lesson (9/2/2009)
A tribute to Eric Dolphy — years in the making

The last king of swing (9/2/2009)
Gerald Wilson paints his hometown in sound


By W. Kim Heron

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Materialism is a form of idealism

Materialism is a form of idealism
Chris Doss

I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is, but I meant
metaphysical materialism, not historical materialism, which is a whole
other kettle of piscines.

Metaphysical materialism is logically incoherent because matter is
an idea. Historical materialism, which is merely that human beliefs
and cultures are determined by technological development and so forth,
is not logically incoherent.

^^

CB,
Metaphysical materialism is logically incoherent because matter is
an idea. 

That's not persuasive to me. You'll have to elaborate. Ideas are
material. They are electric impulses in the brain. I just saw a 60
minutes show wherein the latest brain physiology allows paralyzed
people to control artificial limbs with hitech stuff. In other words,
they have decoded the brain waves or ideas, like left or right,
up ,down such that they can use them to do exactly what they mean
(!). No more mind/body problem in philo 101. Anyway, ideas are matter.
So, the idea matter _is_ matter. It can't be _reduced_ to matter,
it's matter and more. A la Aristotle, all ideas are matter , but not
all matter is ideas. Sort of like humans are animals and more. Anyway
turns out that some matter has a dimension that can be termed
message. Does that help ?


I term my point on this issue as dialectical materialism, as you may
know. You may even be reading _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ in
the original Russian some time. I admit I get my point from Engels
and Lenin on that.

Lenin defines materialism there as belief in the existence of
objective reality. This is realism in bourgeois philo, I think. He
and Engels develop their argument as a critique of Kantianism
especially. Kantianism is shamefaced materialism or dualism.

As to Historical materialism , I would define it somewhat differently
than you do:


that fundamental_changes__ or revolutions in human beliefs systems and
cultures are caused when serious contradictions arise between those
belief systems and their accompanying relations of production. The
latter include both social relations and means of production.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I agree this is logically
conherent..

These revolutions are rare, by the way. Most of the time the idea
systems are very determinative of people's conduct. Most of the time
of history, a form of idealism is true. This is the truth of Sahlins
puckish humor in the aritcle, I think. Ideas dictate the activities in
the economic system , conventionally. Tradition/culture/symbol systems
rules in convention. Necessity is the mother of invention.

How's that for thinking outside the box, tvarish ? Or better


a theory of how major paradoxes , cause whole new thought boxes



I disagree that materialism ( as defined by Lenin) or realism is
logically incoherent.

Maybe I'll critique Sahlins tomorrow





--- On Thu, 9/3/09, c b cb31450 at gmail.com wrote:



 We never knew White was a member of the Socialist Labor
 Party in the
 ’30s and early ’40s, contributing articles to The
 Weekly People under
 the name John Steel. Nor could you have guessed from his
 so-Americanized version of Marxism: a theory of cultural
 evolution
 based singularly on technological progress. Progress in the
 Neolithic,
 he claimed, came from the increase in the amount of energy
 harnessed
 per capita because of plant and animal domestication. He
 was not
 amused when I objected that energy “per capita” was the
 same as in the
 Old Stone Age, since the primary mechanical source remained
 the human
 body.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Materialism is a form of idealism