Re: [Marxism] Understanding the war in Libya

[Gary MacLennan]

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Well said Manuel (& Lou).  It is clear that the nature of the Qadhdhafi
regime makes it unsupportable; ditto for Bashar and the thugs in the Gulf.

Reading the anti-ImperiaIist posts I keep thinking that we have lost the
moral impulse behind Marxism. What do we have to say to the tortured?  That
they should suck it up because the torturers were working for an
anti-imperialist?

But as well as that moral vacuum that we have wandered into, we have lost
confidence in the people.  Faced with an uncertain good the anti-imperist
camp has chosen a known evil. We should on the contrary go with that which
is breaking the status quo and work hard to influence the direction of the
revolts.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] ... but we can't criticize an anti imperialist regime!

[Dennis Brasky]

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<
http://www.5min.com/Video/Tortured-13-Year-Old-Boy-Fuels-Protests-in-Syria-517076328?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk3%7C67257
>

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[Marxism] Egypt's 'orderly transition'? International aid and the rush to structural adjustment | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[glparramatta]

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By *Adam Hanieh*

May 29, 2011 -- /Jadaliyya/, posted at /Links international Journal of 
Socialist Renewal/ with the author's permission -- Although press 
coverage of events in Egypt may have dropped off the front pages, 
discussion of the post-Mubarak period continues to dominate the 
financial news. Over the past few weeks, the economic direction of the 
interim Egyptian government has been the object of intense debate in the 
World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Bank for 
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). US President Obama's 19 May 
speech on the Middle East and North Africa devoted much space to the 
question of Egypt's economic future -- indeed, the /sole/ concrete 
policy advanced in his talk concerned US economic relationships with Egypt.


Full article at http://links.org.au/node/2342

*

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Re: [Marxism] Understanding the war in Libya

[Manuel Barrera]

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Louis said: "This stuff makes me laugh. If there was no Arab Spring, there is 
no Benghazi revolt. . .But even the most casual study of the bourgeois media in 
2010 taking no more than a half-hour will reveal no clouds of war gathering 
around Libya."
 
Would that it was only funny, Louis. I am simply outraged that the Cuban press 
would allow this sort of "skullduggery" to occur in its pages as " global 
analysis ...to draw [our] attention to the importance of this text." 
 
It makes it appear as if Cuba is trying to be "too cute by half" in its 
rightful opposition to U.S. interventionism combining it with the dimwitted 
backhanded support to the murderer Qaddafi. It really shouldn't be this 
difficult to discern how to oppose imperialist aggression and at the same time 
support the Arab Spring on the shores of Tripoli.
  

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Re: [Marxism] Understanding the war in Libya

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/11 5:43 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:


I don't know Michel Collon at all, but this article is on the front page of Granma 
International today. Very interesting. (and don't worry, the "lang=fr" part of 
the URL gets you to the English version, for no obvious reason)

http://www.michelcollon.info/Understanding-the-war-in-Libya.html?lang=fr




What was the role of secret services ?

In fact, the Libyan case didn’t 
start in February in Benghazi, but in Paris October 21st, 2010. 
According to the revelations of Italian journalist Franco Bechis 
(Libero, 24th of March) it is that day that the French secret service 
had prepared the revolt of Benghazi. They then "returned" (or perhaps 
even before) Nuri Mesmari, Chief of Protocol of Gaddafi, who was almost 
his right hand against him. He was the only one who enters the residence 
of the Libyan leader without knocking. Coming to Paris with his family 
for a surgery, Mesmari didn’t meet any doctor there, but on the other 
side, he would talk to several officials of the French secret services 
and Sarkozy's close aides, according to the latest web Maghreb 
Confidential.
On November 16th, at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette, he 
prepared a large delegation that would go two days later to Benghazi.




This stuff makes me laugh.

If there was no Arab Spring, there is no Benghazi revolt. These ex post 
facto attempts to prove that a conspiracy of the West sought to make war 
with Qaddafi usually involve the kind of skulduggery described above. 
But even the most casual study of the bourgeois media in 2010 taking no 
more than a half-hour will reveal no clouds of war gathering around Libya.



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[Marxism] Understanding the war in Libya

[Eli Stephens]

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I don't know Michel Collon at all, but this article is on the front page of 
Granma International today. Very interesting. (and don't worry, the "lang=fr" 
part of the URL gets you to the English version, for no obvious reason)

http://www.michelcollon.info/Understanding-the-war-in-Libya.html?lang=fr


Eli Stephens
 Left I on the News
 http://lefti.blogspot.com

  

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[Marxism] Blog Post: Mother Nature, Make Me Rich

[MICHAEL YATES]

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Full at 
http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2011/05/31/mother-nature-make-me-rich/
 
NBC recently aired a show called America’s Next Great Restaurant. Contestants, 
each of whom hoped to open a restaurant chain, were put through a series of 
tests to see whose idea had the best chance for success. A panel of judges 
eliminated one person at the end of each program, until the last one standing 
was declared the winner and given money to open the chain. One of the judges 
was Steve Ells, CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a large and rapidly growing 
chain of what the company says is a radically new kind of fast-food restaurant. 
The graphic on its website shows us the image Chipotle is trying to imprint on 
the public’s mind:

 
“It’s Not Just a Burrito. It’s a foil-wrapped, hand-crafted, local farm 
supporting, food culture changing cylinder of deliciousness.” 
 
Ells, the son of a drug company executive, earned a degree in Art History from 
the University of Colorado and then graduated from the Culinary Institute of 
America in 1990. After two years in a San Francisco restaurant, he founded 
Chipotle in 1993, helped by an $85,000 loan from his father, who later put 
another $1.5 million into the business.
 
There was something about Ells on the NBC show that caught our attention. While 
the head judge, Bobby Flay, is a consummate chef and had a ready empathy for 
the would-be food entrepreneurs, Ells appeared cold and more interested in 
hard, competitive business practices than food. As it turns out, his appearance 
was not deceiving.


  

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[Marxism] Indians consider the origins of capitalism

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20110617281207400.htm

Points to ponder
C.T. KURIEN

A critical discourse on the interconnectedness of capitalism, 
colonialism and globalisation with a well-defined focus.


WHEN ‘globalisation' became a talking point a few decades ago, 
there was a lot of discussion and debate as to what it was. The 
difference of opinion was mainly between those who maintained that 
it was primarily a technological phenomenon and those who held 
that it was essentially caused by economic factors. By and large 
the latter position is now widely accepted. Most people have also 
come to accept that it is the latest manifestation of capitalism 
reflecting its innate propensity to go beyond national boundaries.


Even for those who are fairly familiar with colonialism, though, 
the link between it and capitalism, on the one hand, and between 
it and globalisation, on the other, appears to be rather vague. A 
popular point of view is that colonialism is an old and 
globalisation the latest version of capitalism. Those who do not 
see this connection frequently maintain that the colonial era is 
over and that the present is the age of globalisation. Yet another 
position is that colonialism was a crude version of capitalism 
associated with political domination, but globalisation is quite 
refined and totally devoid of any colonial element.


What the volume under review attempts is to make a critical 
evaluation of the interconnectedness of capitalism, colonialism 
and globalisation. It is a discourse among academics, the papers 
brought together having been originally presented at a panel on 
economic change organised by the Aligarh Historian Society in 
Delhi in May 2010. The papers in this volume are essentially 
exploratory in nature with a well-defined focus.


The lead essay is by Irfan Habib on “Capitalism in History” and is 
a contribution towards the old and ongoing discussion (perhaps 
debate) on how capitalism emerged and what contributed to its 
early growth. A widely held view is that capitalism emerged 
because of the innate evolutionary proclivity of social systems. 
Those who hold this position may find Habib's categorical 
statement that “[t]he arrival of capitalism was not a natural, 
internal process. Subjugation of other economies was crucial to 
the formation of industrial capital within it” rather difficult to 
accept. But Habib is not making a glib statement; he has long 
historical research to support his position. He goes on to 
indicate that if the development of capitalism in a country 
depends on the flow of resources from other countries in its early 
stages, imperialism was and is a necessary element of capitalism 
after it has developed. That is how capitalism, colonialism and 
globalisation are interlinked, according to him.


(clip


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[Marxism] Double dip in the offing?

[Louis Proyect]

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The slowdown has begun. The economy has started to sputter and 
unemployment claims have tipped 400,000 for the last seven weeks. 
That means new investment is too weak to lower the jobless rate 
which is presently stuck at 9 percent. Manufacturing--which had 
been the one bright-spot in the recovery-- has also started to 
retreat with some areas in the country now contracting. Housing, 
of course, continues its downward trek putting more pressure on 
bank balance sheets and plunging more homeowners into negative 
equity.


full: http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney05312011.html


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Re: [Marxism] My favorite passage from B. Traven

[Greg McDonald]

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Indeed. An anthro student turned me onto to Traven after I spent a
semester studying at the Universidad Autonoma de la Yucatan. My trip
to Chiapas was surreal.

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 9:34 AM, DW  wrote:

> A wiki entry worth the read. The person(s) who write this knew what
> they were writing about. Thanks to a small circle of surrealist types
> in San Francisco's North Beach, around City Lights Bookstore, I was
> turned onto Traven's novels about 25 years ago. I couldn't put them
> down. I read through everyone of them I could find at City Lights. I
> can't look a piece of lumber without thinking of the Jungle novels.
> Thanks for the link!


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[Marxism] Manifest Destiny and the Wild West Bank

[Greg McDonald]

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http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011527113150801116.html

Americans see in Israel their own preferred reflection of themselves.
They see a lone, devout and free people on the edge of a vast
continent full of dusky, hostile natives. Like the European colonists
who settled North America, the destiny of this free people is to build
a "city on a hill" on virgin land, a beacon of freedom and
civilisation in a tragic world.


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[Marxism] A Foreign Affair

[Louis Proyect]

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Until now, Billy Wilder’s 1948 “A Foreign Affair” has only been 
available as a BitTorrent download. But now thanks to Youtube, you 
can watch this fascinating 1948 film in 12 parts.


For those of who are unfamiliar with arguably one of America’s 
greatest director/screenwriters let me mention a few of the films 
he is associated with in either capacity: “Ninotchka”, “Double 
Indemnity”, “A Lost Weekend”, “Sunset Boulevard”, “Stalag 17″, 
“Some Like it Hot”, and “The Apartment”.


In both his comedies and his serious dramas, you will often find a 
lead character, either male of female, who can be described as 
either a cynic or illusion-free. William Holden is the archetypal 
Wilder hero (or anti-hero to be more exact.) In “Stalag 17″, he 
plays J.J. Sefton, an American soldier in a Nazi prison camp 
(Stalag) and opportunistic black marketeer redeemed in the climax 
through his leadership of a prison break. Here he is challenged 
earlier on by a fellow prisoner:


Duke: Come on, Trader Horn, let’s hear it. What’d you give the 
krauts for that egg?


Sefton: 45 cigarettes. Price has gone up.

Duke: They wouldn’t be the cigarettes you took us for last night?

Sefton: What was I gonna do with them? I only smoke cigars.

Duke: Niiice guy. The krauts shoot Manfredi and Johnson last 
night, and today he’s out trading with them.


Sefton: Look. This may be my last hot breakfast on account of 
they’re going to take that stove out of here, so would you let me 
eat it in peace?


full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/a-foreign-affair/


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[Marxism] THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION CLUB by Pepe Escobar

[Ralph Johansen]

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME28Ak01.html


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Re: [Marxism] The worst housing downturn since the Great Depression

[Thomas Bias]

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In every previous economic downturn since World War II, consumption has been
financed by borrowing against residential housing, whose price increased
steadily for sixty years. That ended in 2007, and now none of the King's
Horses and none of the King's Men has the least idea how to keep
consumption-and the production it pays for-continuing. Here's what I think:
http://thomasbias.wordpress.com/notes-from-the-scrap-heap-from-bailey-park-t
o-pottersville/. --Tom

-Original Message-
From: marxism-bounces+tgbias=ptd@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
[mailto:marxism-bounces+tgbias=ptd@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu] On
Behalf Of Louis Proyect
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 12:37 PM
To: tgb...@ptd.net
Subject: [Marxism] The worst housing downturn since the Great Depression

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NY Times May 31, 2011
House Prices Fall to New Post-Bubble Low as More Rent By DAVID STREITFELD

Housing prices fell in March to their lowest point since the downturn began,
erasing the last little bit of recovery from the depths plumbed two years
ago, according to data released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index for 20 large cities fell
0.8 percent from February, the eighth drop in a row. 
Prices are now down 33.1 percent from the July 2006 peak.

"Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight,"
said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the S.& P. index committee.





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[Marxism] NEW IN PAPERBACK: THE INVENTION OF PARIS by ERIC HAZAN

[VersoMail Verso]

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NEW IN PAPERBACK:

THE INVENTION OF PARIS: A HISTORY IN FOOTSTEPS

BY ERIC HAZAN

---

“Excavating the multilayered history of the city’s landmarks in meticulous 
detail, Hazan’s opinionated guide also contains plenty of romance and spleen, 
providing an antidote to the usual guidebook bromides.” – Benjamin Evans, 
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

 “Hazan has tossed aside the tourist brochures and unearthed a radical, hidden 
history of Paris at street level. Hazan’s range of cultural, literary and 
historical references is convincingly detailed; his grasp of radical politics 
is intellectually stimulating; and his revelations about how ordinary French 
lives dealt with tough conditions bring resonance to the “spirit of place and 
the spirit of time” in which complex urban issues rise and fall.” TIMES

---

A tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance 
of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan, THE INVENTION OF PARIS 
introduces a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions 
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur’s ear for a 
story with a historian’s command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable 
cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists – from 
Balzac to Baudelaire, Blanqui to Proust, and Manet to Rousseau.

In the 140th year since the Paris Commune, this history in footsteps vividly 
evokes Paris’ radical tradition, interrogating what it means to be dans la rue 
in the wake of recent student protests and the rise of the right in the French 
political sphere. Examining how the capital’s urban development resembling the 
growth rings of trees has impacted class relations by concentrating wealth and 
activity at the centre, Hazan traces the internal boundaries of the city, and 
investigates how movement across them has become a political action. Through 
illuminating past Parisian political struggles, Hazan contextualizes 
contemporary debates of globalization versus nationalism in a tradition of city 
centre versus periphery, with the recent tension in the banlieue challenging 
the assumption that revolutionary Paris only exists on the barricades of the 
past.

Illustrated with photographs and maps, including a new map of central Paris 
that reveals the radical history of the capital’s most well-known and 
frequently visited tourist icons, this is a subversive guide to Paris with a 
difference for the engaged traveller to walking in the footsteps of the 
Communards, the ‘68ers and the Jacobins, excavating the layers of 
battle-scarred and revolutionary history – and painting the town Red.

THE INVENTION OF PARIS provides a traveller’s guide to the forgotten byways of 
the capital’s vibrant and bloody past, revealing the city in striking new 
colours.

 ---

ERIC HAZAN is the founder of the publisher La Fabrique, and the author of 
several books, including NOTES ON THE OCCUPATION. He has lived in Paris, 
France, all his life.

---

FURTHER PRAISE FOR THE INVENTION OF PARIS:

“Eric Hazan’s evocation of the hidden histories of Paris is all the more timely 
in the twenty-first century as the city grows denser and more complex. This 
book is both a political and aesthetic delight, uncovering the real mysteries 
of Paris.”  Andrew Hussey

“A wondrous book, either to be read at home with a decent map, or carried about 
sur place through areas no tourists bother with.” Adam Thorpe, GUARDIAN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/paris-history-eric-hazan-review

“Hazan wants to rescue individual moments from general forgetting and key sites 
from the bland homogenisation of international city development; he is also a 
passionate left-wing historian seeking to rescue the truth of Paris’s 
revolutionary past.” Julian Barnes, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08/julian-barnes/a-city-of-sand-and-puddles

“One of the greatest books about the city anyone has written in decades, 
towering over a crowded field, passionate and lyrical and sweeping and 
immediate.” – NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/dec/23/search-lost-paris/

“[Hazan] stalks the capital, fulminating about the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries' artistic and political rebellions.” – BOOKFORUM

---

ISBN: 978 1 84467 705 4 / $19.95 / £9.99 / $25.00 CAN / Paperback / 400 pages

---

To read an extract commemorating the 140th anniversary of the fall of the Paris 
Commune visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/560-verso-commemorates-the-140th-anniversary-of-the-fall-of-the-paris-commune

For mor

[Marxism] New title: Tony Cliff: A Marxist for his Time by Ian Birchall

[Sebastian Budgen]

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Tony Cliff: A Marxist for his Time
by Ian Birchall

Hardback £25  9781905192793
Paperback £16.99  9781905192809

Tony Cliff came to political consciousness in the darkest period of  
the 20th century and spent his life developing revolutionary Marxism  
against Stalinism. From his early days as a revolutionary in British- 
occupied Palestine, through years of obscurity and isolation in London  
and Dublin to the high points of struggle in post-war Britain, Cliff  
worked to restore lost ideas and traditions, fan flames of resistance  
and develop our understanding of a system in constant change. Ian  
Birchall's lovingly crafted book is the culmination of years of work,  
drawing on interviews with over 100 people who knew Cliff and  
painstaking research in archives around the country. It is a majestic  
example of political biography at its best.


Available direct from Bookmarks Bookshop from 30 June 2011, and  
nationwide from October.


http://www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/cgi/store/bookmark.cgi?search=9781905192809&category=isbn

or http://bit.ly/lLSGBF

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Re: [Marxism] My favorite passage from B. Traven

[DW]

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A wiki entry worth the read. The person(s) who write this knew what
they were writing about. Thanks to a small circle of surrealist types
in San Francisco's North Beach, around City Lights Bookstore, I was
turned onto Traven's novels about 25 years ago. I couldn't put them
down. I read through everyone of them I could find at City Lights. I
can't look a piece of lumber without thinking of the Jungle novels.
Thanks for the link!


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[Marxism] Mew insights on Iran

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.zcommunications.org/new-insights-into-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-by-ali-fathollah-nejad


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[Marxism] Students organize against anti-union food provider

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/31/ohio_state_washington_and_emory_students_arrested_for_protesting_sodexo_university_contracts


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Re: [Marxism] My notes on a talk by Chris Hedges.

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/30/2011 10:36 PM, caroltheart...@aol.com wrote:



I went to a talk by Chris Hedges last week.  I took lots of notes.
I was wondering anyone would like to give an analysis, a Marxist analysis of it.
I like some of what he said, but he calls the Liberals ' a class '.  Maybe you 
can also talk about Liberals, a definition of it.
Don't Liberals sort of give justification to the system. They want to try to 
solve problems within the Capitalist system, reform it.
He doesn't talk in terms of the Capitalist system. Maybe  its because of his 
religious background. He said that he comes out of
the religious left.



Chris Hedges is our version of Dave Dellinger, a religious 
pacifist who was a key leader of the Vietnam antiwar movement even 
when he was doing everything he could to turn it into ineffective 
street theater. I would love to see Chris run for president with 
Glenn Greenwald (or vice versa), even though neither are 
socialists. We should only be so lucky.



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[Marxism] James Wolcott on Lady Gaga

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/05/fried-gaga.html


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[Marxism] My notes on a talk by Chris Hedges.

[caroltheartist]

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I went to a talk by Chris Hedges last week.  I took lots of notes.  
I was wondering anyone would like to give an analysis, a Marxist analysis of 
it. 
I like some of what he said, but he calls the Liberals ' a class '.  Maybe you 
can also talk about Liberals, a definition of it.
Don't Liberals sort of give justification to the system. They want to try to 
solve problems within the Capitalist system, reform it.
He doesn't talk in terms of the Capitalist system. Maybe  its because of his 
religious background. He said that he comes out of
the religious left.


 
Please tell me what you think of this kind of analysis :
 

These are my notes from a talk by Chris Hedges on May 25, on the ' Death of the 
Liberal Class ' :
 
Chris Hedges :  
 
The book started out as a book about the press. But my publishers, Knopf hated 
it; said it was too negative. Wanted the negativity
taken out.  Had a mad scramble to find someone to ublish it with the 
negativity. ( Nation books )
The Press hardly exists in a vacuum. Its a pillar of traditional democracy that 
has collapsed.  The book was broadened to look at
liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party and why when they 
functioned, they made piecemeal reform possible.
 
Going back to the time of WWI and Woodrow Wilson. World War I was the rock on 
which the popular & progressive movements broke. 
On the eve of WWI there were lots of political parties like the Socialists & 
the Communists and various dissenting publications.
Towards the end of WWI, with the collapse of Czarist Russia the bankers got 
frightened.  If the British & French were defeated then
the loans wouldn't be repaid.  Wilson ran on a " he kept us out of the war " 
campaign.
There was a massive campaign to change that. Walter Lippman & others, & the 
Creel Commission and Lippman's book ' Public Opinion ' talk
about manufacturing consednt. There was talk about a system of mass propaganda. 
They churned out articles.
People like Randolph Bourne & Jane adams talk about how people are seduced by 
war.
The intellectual class wanted to ' make the world safe for democracy '.
Harsher measures like the Sedition Act hardly had to be used at all.  
Propaganda made it so that the masses were loyal to the state.
The Committee of Public Information studied mass psychology.  People are moved 
not by fact but by emotion.
Edward Bernays wrote his book on ' Propaganda;.   ( Goebbels used it ).
People like Bourne, Adams, Eugene Debs were silenced by traditional methods, 
like the Red Scares, the Palmer Raids, etc,.  The rest of society was 
seduced.
The Culture of Fear, Permanent War silenced the Left after the War.  Radical 
publications were shut down.  There were mass deportations.
The day WWI ended, the people on the Creel Commission went to Madison Ave.   
The " Dreaded Hun " was replaced by the " Dreaded Red ".
There was a constant search for enemies. Psychosis of fear.
Marx never anticipated the Culture of Fear.  People call for their own 
imprisonment.
There was the destruction of traditional values, thrift, regional ethnic 
culture. Replaced by Consumer Culture.  Homogenization of culture.
This marked the taking out of the dissent movements.The state shut down 
radical movements.
 
The Liberal Class was the Middle Ground. The Safety Valve.  When the pressure 
was intense, it allowed piecemeal reforms.  It saved Capitalism.
The New Deal saved Capitalism. Popular mobilizations. Then liberal figures, 
like FDR -- Liberal Class. Thats why they were tolerated.
 
With the destruction of radical movements, finalized after WWII, Taft-Hartley, 
dissemboweling of liberal institutions.  Search for (& witchhunts) for Reds.
Poster Child of this was Sidney Hook. He went from Trotskyite to Cold Warrior.  
Thousands were purged from universities.
( I.F. Stone couldn't find work so he started his own weekly newsletter in the 
basement. Social workers were decimated. They traditionally worked for 
/organized
for their clients.  Purges were carried out in all the traditional institutions 
like the press--NY Times, ACLU Careerists seize on this. Forces out people
with morals.
 
The destruction of radical movements.  Radical movements were the true 
correctives to American Democracy.
( The Civil Rights Movement never actually got power. It pressured government.)
Liberals who were tolerated were constantly warding off charges that they were 
soft on Communism. This began especially in the wake of WWII.
The war ( weapons ) industry continued in the name of national security, 
consuming half of GDP.
Because we were in a battle with Soviet Communism,  Capitalism --Good, 
Communism--Bad,  Anything Capitalist is good, defeat the enemy.
 
By the 1970s, the country shifts from an empire of production to one of 

[Marxism] WikiLeaks: How the USA got access to Ireland's secrets

[John oneill]

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WikiLeaks: How the USA got access to Ireland's secrets

By Shane Phelan, Investigative Correspondent
 
Tuesday May 31 2011 

The United States is routinely given access to sensitive information by
the highest levels of the Irish government through an extensive network
of official - but highly confidential - contacts.

View more exclusive WikiLeaks videos here
  

American officials count government ministers, senior civil servants and
top diplomats among "confidential" sources, leaked US embassy cables
reveal. 

Their activities are disclosed in the Ireland Cables - a tranche of over
1,900 classified documents exclusively obtained by the Irish Independent
from the whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks. 

Today - in the first of a series of daily extracts from the Ireland
Cables - the Irish Independent takes you behind the veil of
international diplomacy and into the secret world of Ireland's foreign
policy and domestic affairs. 

One leaked cable reveals how former minister and current Fianna Fail
vice-president Mary Hanafin briefed the American Embassy on tense
ongoing coalition negotiations. 

The word "PROTECT" appears beside her name in the cable, meaning her
identity and/or her comments were not to be made public. 

Ms Hanafin last night confirmed she gave the briefing at the behest of
US Ambassador Dan Rooney. 

According to the dispatch, Ms Hanafin made a number of derogatory
comments about her Green Party coalition partners. 

"She said she had the impression that, if some of the Greens had their
way, the Programme for Government would emphasize 'hares, stags and
badgers while everyone else in the country is drowning in this
economy'," Ambassador Rooney told Washington in the cable. 

Ms Hanafin refused to say last night if she stood over the remarks
attributed to her. She described the meeting as "a frank update on the
state of politics in the country at that time". 

Other cables reveal the ease of access the US has to the top levels of
successive Irish governments - often being briefed on matters of huge
public interest prior to the Opposition or the Irish people. 

Much of this information was shared with US officials via high-ranking
Irish civil servants and diplomats. And stringent efforts were made to
keep the identities of these contacts under wraps. 

The Ireland Cables, which date from 1985 to early 2010, reflect the ease
of access the US had to sensitive information at the highest levels of
government. 

WikiLeaks: The Irish Independent lifts the veil of diplomatic secrecy
via 1,903 US Embassy cables

By Shane Doran, Executive News Editor
 
Tuesday May 31 2011 

TODAY the Irish Independent takes you behind the veil of international
diplomacy and into the secret, and sometimes murky, world of Ireland's
foreign policy and domestic affairs. 

>From Washington to Warsaw, from Dublin to Damascus, from Moscow to
Maputo, from London to La Paz, from Paris to Panama - the range and
breath of issues covered by the WikiLeaks Ireland Cables is
extraordinary. 

Former Taoisigh, senior cabinet members, diplomats, drug traffickers,
alleged Muslim terrorists, businessman, oil companies, Vatican insiders
and kidnapped aid workers all feature in the Ireland Cache, comprising
1,903 US embassy cables and totaling an astonishing 2,398,124 words. 

Over the next week we will provide our readers with a series of
unprecedented insights into Ireland's diplomatic affairs - all observed,
monitored, interpreted, commented upon, appreciated and sometimes
pilloried by diplomats cabling the State Department in Washington DC and
other US embassies. 

Roughly half the cables - dating from the Air India disaster in 1985 to
the Vatican response to the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal
in the archdiocese of Dublin in February 2010 - originate from the US
Embassy in Dublin. The rest are sourced from embassies and consulates
across the globe 

All are relevant, in varying degrees, to Irish domestic or foreign
affairs. 

Most of the cables are straightforward diplomatic dispatches, the kind
of updates any dutiful line manager would provide to their employer. 

But others provide a startling insight into how the most powerful
country in the world is keeping tabs on the rest of us - and what they
really think about us behind the shroud of diplomacy. 

As you would expect, the language used in the cables (which are
generally extremely well written) is diplomatic. 

But sometimes the mask slips a little, giving a telling insight into how
the US State Department views Ireland, all set within the context of its
own strategic interests. 

The Ireland cables wer

[Marxism] Oxfam warns of mass hunger over food prices

[John oneill]

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Oxfam warns of mass hunger over food prices

MARK HENNESSY, London Editor

Tue, May 31, 2011

PRICES OF staple foods will more than double over the next two decades unless 
urgent action is taken to change the rules of world agriculture, Oxfam has 
warned, raising fears that hundreds of millions more could face hunger.

Maize, one of the main foods of the world's poor, will cost between 120 per 
cent and 180 per cent more by 2030, with up to half of the price hike coming 
from the impact of climate change, said the London-based charity.

"Depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and the 
gathering pace of climate change is already making the situation worse," it 
said, in a report titled Growing a Better Future. The dangers, caused by demand 
outstripping production, threaten to erase much of the "steady progress in the 
fight against hunger" made over recent decades, said Oxfam.

Illustrating the international inequalities, it pointed out that in the 
Philippines, people spend four times as much of their income on food as people 
in the UK, while the average Indian spends twice the UK average. "As a 
proportion of their income, Indian people pay the equivalent of £10 for a litre 
of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice," said the charity, which tomorrow launches a 
campaign calling for reform of global agriculture rules.

By 2050 demand for food will rise by 70 per cent, yet our capacity to increase 
production is declining and the increase in yields has almost halved since 
1990, it says.

Despite the increased use of chemicals and genetically modified crops, the 
increase in yields "is set to decline to a fraction of 1 per cent in the next 
decade".

"Eight million people, the majority of them women and girls, currently face 
chronic food shortages in east Africa. Increasing numbers of regional and local 
crises could see the need for food aid double in the next 10 years," Oxfam went 
on.

The Grow campaign, launched today in 45 countries, is backed by former 
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Oxfam criticised the United States and the European Union for promoting 
biofuels, saying the policy ensures that "15 per cent of the world's maize is 
used to make fuel, even at times of severe food crisis.

"The amount of grain required to fill the petrol tank of a 4x4 vehicle with 
biofuel is sufficient to feed one person for a year. Meanwhile, EU targets in 
practice mean that 10 per cent of transport fuel will be biofuels by 2020."

Meanwhile, the number of Indians suffering hunger between 1990 and 2005 
increased by 65 million - "more than the population of France" - because 
economic development excluded the rural poor, and welfare programmes failed to 
reach them."

Five hundred million farmers, many of them women in poor countries offer "the 
single biggest opportunity to boost food production", but they must be helped 
to protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and better equipped to 
produce food.

Archbishop Tutu said: "Many governments and companies will be resistant to 
change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us - you 
and me - to persuade them by choosing food that's produced fairly and 
sustainably."

© 2011 The Irish Times

 


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