Re: [Marxism] note on syria

2011-06-07 Thread Mina Khanlarzadeh
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Why can't the anti-imperialists on the list take Abu Khalil as a model?

When it comes to being politically principled I think many leftists
do a terrible job. In many cases they are just the mirror image of the
empire, have the same double standards but in an opposite direction.

For instance, What were the sources of Angry Arab for this allegation
and pro-Iranian regime propaganda?

Angry Arab: In Iran, the US covertly smuggled those cute camera pens
for demonstrators.  They were not cute enough for the Egyptian people.


This is of course like a cute joke for leftists or anarchists or
whatever. But real people in Iran, BTW they are not dolls, get
tortured for such propaganda and unsupported allegations.

Angry Arab's sources:
http://revolutionaryfesenjan.blogspot.com/2011/01/effect-of-warmongers-media-on-some.html


Another example of double standards of the so called leftists:

Angry Arab: I can't support a movement that writes its signs in
English, in order to please the White Man, and I can't be in the same
trench with Fox News.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/06/categorically.html

I saw many many signs in English in the uprisings of the people in
North Africa and the Middle East and no one has taken issue with those
English signs including Mr. Angry Arab. What happened? Signs in
English in Iran are to make the white man happy but in the rest of the
world are a sign of progressiveness and desire to communicate with the
world? Really?


Another example: And if they are looking for courageous
demonstrations against brutal regimes, I direct them to the weekly
demonstrations against the Israeli terrorist occupiers in Ni`lin. And
you may twitter my...potato.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/06/western-media-sickening.html

Wow, so the use of twitter by Iranian women and men is the potato of
the so called leftists but in the rest of the world is a sign of being
progressive? For instance, here it was a sign of being progressive:
:http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/01/furious-and-outraged-already-angry-arab.html


I can continue this list for several more pages but I guess it's
enough to explain why I don't need such anti-imperialist models.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

http://revolutionaryfesenjan.blogspot.com/2011/01/nationalism-can-cause-racism-and.html


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[Marxism] [UCE] Venezuela's PSUV: On party organisation

2011-06-07 Thread Owen Richards
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http://venezuelatranslatingtherevolution.blogspot.com/2011/06/normal-0-normal-0-following-continues.html

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[Marxism] Voters disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-loses-bin-laden-bounce-romney-on-the-move-among-gop-contenders/2011/06/06/AGT5wiKH_story.html

Obama loses bin Laden bounce; Romney on the move among GOP contenders
By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen, Tuesday, June 7, 12:05 AM

The public opinion boost President Obama received after the killing of 
Osama bin Laden has dissipated, and Americans’ disapproval of how he is 
handling the nation’s economy and the deficit has reached new highs, 
according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.


The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this 
spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a 
disappointing employment picture have raised fresh concerns about the 
pace of the economic recovery.


By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong 
track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. 
Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless 
of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has 
improved rate the recovery as weak.


New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican 
presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with 
former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 
2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues 
in his campaign.


Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, 
and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 
49 percent to 46 percent.


Overall, about six in 10 of those surveyed give Obama negative marks on 
the economy and the deficit. Significantly, nearly half strongly 
disapprove of his performance in these two crucial areas. Nearly 
two-thirds of political independents disapprove of the president’s 
handling of the economy, including — for the first time — a slim 
majority who do so strongly.


In another indicator of rapidly shifting views on economic issues, 45 
percent trust congressional Republicans over the president when it comes 
to dealing with the economy, an 11-point improvement for the GOP since 
March. Still, nearly as many, 42 percent, side with Obama on this issue.


The president has sought to point to progress on the economy, 
particularly in the automobile industry, and to argue that the policies 
he put in place at the beginning of his term are working. But the 
combined effects of weak economic indicators and dissatisfaction among 
the public are adding to the political pressures on the White House as 
the president’s advisers look toward what could be a difficult 2012 
reelection campaign.


Meanwhile, Romney emerges in the new survey as the strongest current or 
prospective Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential field. 
Although he is by no means in a secure spot, on virtually every measure, 
the former governor appears better positioned than any of his rivals.


In contrast, the poll brings more bad news for former Alaska governor 
Sarah Palin, whose bus tour along the East Coast last week renewed 
speculation that she might join the race.


Almost two-thirds of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote 
for Palin for president. She is predictably unpopular with Democrats and 
most independents, but the new survey underscores the hurdles she would 
face if she became a candidate: 42 percent of Republicans say they’ve 
ruled out supporting her candidacy.


More than six in 10 Americans say they do not consider Palin qualified 
to serve as president. That is a slightly better rating for the former 
governor than through most of last year, but is another indication of 
widespread public doubts about a possible presidential run.


The Post-ABC poll asked Republicans and GOP-leaning independents whom 
they would vote for if a primary or caucus were held now in their state. 
Romney topped the list, with 21 percent, followed by Palin at 17 
percent. No one else reached double digits, although former New York 
mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has suddenly shown interest in becoming a 
candidate, is close, at 8 percent. Without Palin in the race, Romney 
scores 25 percent, with all others in the single digits.


In another measure of the field, Republicans chose Romney as the only 
one of a dozen possible candidates they would “strongly consider” for 
the party’s nomination as opposed to stating that they definitely would 
not vote for him. He and Palin scored equal numbers of respondents who 
said they would strongly consider supporting them, but Palin has more 
than double the percentage who have ruled her out.


Other candidates fared poorly on this count, including former House 
speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), whose campaign got off to a rocky start; 
Rep. 

[Marxism] The Lebanese Left Fails in Syria

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1786/the-lebanese-left-fails-in-syria

The Lebanese Left Fails in Syria
Jun 07 2011 by Khalil Issa

This article is written in Arabic by Khalil Issa and translated into 
English by Hanna Petro]


When the left loses all the resources [needed] for its steadfastness, as 
a result of its mistakes on the one hand and because of surrounding 
local pressures on the other, it is usually left with nothing but the 
political-ethical discourse as a principled stance on the basis of which 
to fight. In the end, being a leftist is to side with justice against 
oppression, with the victim against the perpetrator, with the exploited 
against the exploiter. This is the moral position that keeps us leftists 
after the (near) death of the Lebanese left, as an organized political 
movement.


Today, in the abyss of the broad revolutionary protest movement—which is 
demanding freedom in all corners of Syria and which has faced terrifying 
repression that resulted in more than 1100 deaths and tens of thousands 
of people detained, most of whom are members of the Syrian toiling 
class, peasants and workers—came the latest memorandum from the 
political bureau of the Lebanese Communist Party (issued on April 20, 
2011), reminding the Syrian people that it has the right to “mobilize 
through all peaceful and democratic means for the sake of social, 
political, and economic reforms and the combating of corruption.” 
Conversely, it fails to name any martyrs and murder victims in Syria, 
and “wishes that [the Syrian government] be quick in implementing all 
the reforms put forth by President Bashar al-Asad.”


The ambiguous position of the party becomes more distinguishable when we 
see a nonsensical speech about “Syria confronting internal strife, which 
imperialist America and Israel strive towards in cooperation with some 
of the collaborating forces inside and outside of Syria, which are 
[themselves] steeped in reactionary politics.” But there is something we 
do not understand: Which fitna [strife] is the Lebanese Communist Party 
referring to? And why is it not appropriate to mention fitna except when 
the speech [being labeled as fitna] is assumed to be against oppression, 
murder, and terrorism? Have the national opposition members in Syria 
like Michel Kilo, Aref Dalila and Yasin al-Hajj Salih—who are all 
“comrades” by the way—suddenly become agents of the imperialist 
“circles?” Or has the absurd fitna theory, which constitutes an offshoot 
of the “conspiracy” theory, become an alternative to all the positions 
that must be undertaken by a party which is supposed to be a “party of 
the people” par excellence?


The position of the Communist Party on what is happening in Syria is a 
failure on both the ethical and political levels. Here, [failure with 
respect to] the sense that policy [is supposed to] truly serve the 
interests of the oppressed classes, [and this] makes the party one with 
a rightwing leadership. It practically rejects the change demanded by 
the toiling class and the workers in Syria, as well as adopts the 
regime’s “external conspiracy” narrative. All that remains for the 
comrades of the political bureau is to participate in the propaganda 
against the protesters, calling them “conspirators” or “armed gangs.” 
This is especially [the case] since [the Communist Party’s] Secretary 
General Khalid Hadada confirmed once again the centrality of “the 
conspiracy against Syria” in an article of his in al-Safir newspaper 
(May 28th, 2011). If he rejects the security solution in Syria, he also 
repudiates “attempted bullying by the outside.”


Here, we ask Comrade Khalid Hadada which of the protestors in Syria 
today is asking for bullying by the outside? Or have these verbal 
pretexts always been present –because the history of imperialist 
intervention in the region is well known and destructive—[so as] to 
make us produce an unethical political position, which completely 
ignores what is happening on the ground in Syria? Why is imperialism so 
inserted where it is not, that we start to see imperialism where in 
directions it does not exist. What dialogue is the Communist Party 
calling for while, for example, Azmi Bishara says in one of his latest 
media appearances that “it is clear that there is dialogue. 
Unfortunately, only dialogue pertaining to reform, but there is an 
instigation to murder and shoot at those who demand reform.”


Given that the communist leadership is rightwing to this degree, this 
does not summarize the entire problem. Many–not all, of course—of the 
Lebanese leftists, both from within the [Communist] Party and outside of 
it, are convinced that what is happening in Syria is the doing of the 
“Salafis” or the 

[Marxism] The working poor

2011-06-07 Thread robert mckee
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http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/the-working-poor/


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[Marxism] Protest Flares in Madison

2011-06-07 Thread Dan Russell
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http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/07/hey-walker-were-back

Hey Walker, we're back

Sarah Blaskey and Aongus Ó Murchadha report on the return of union and
student protesters to the streets of Madison to take a stand against Scott
Walker's budget.

June 7, 2011

MILITANT STRUGGLE returned to Madison's Capitol Square June 6 in the form of
a brief occupation and direct action.

The protest--which came three months after the last mass labor demonstration
against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union legislation--was inspired
by mass occupations in Spain. Over the weekend, activists began a tent city
named Walkerville as a base camp for fighting Walker's austerity budget,
which is under consideration in the state legislature this week. Walkerville
quickly became the stage for escalating direct action campaigns.

The first actions in what hopefully will be an intensifying series of
demonstrations came on Monday. Despite sweltering heat, a contingent of
approximately 700 union members and community activists marched on the
square beginning at 11:30 a.m. The crowd swelled to around 1,000 as it
circled the Capitol.

The action was organized by a coalition of local unions and community
groups, including International Association of Fire Fighters Local 311,
Madison Teachers Inc., National Nurses United, Family Farm Defenders, Union
Cab, Wisconsin Resists, Union Trabajadores Inmigrantes and US Uncut. The
four Wisconsin councils of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees also endorsed the protests.

The spirited march stopped at a branch of MI Bank in protest of both bank
executives' support for Walker during his campaign for governor and the
larger issue of the government bailout of banks. MI has become a symbol of
this movement, said Karen Tuerk, an activist who was arrested for holding
open the bank doors. Not only are they big Walker contributors, they are a
symbol of where our priorities are in this state and this country and,
honestly, globally. This is a global movement,

After occupying the bank's lobby until ejected by police, the demonstrators
then advanced to re-occupy the Capitol building. This action was unplanned
and the result of a failed attempt to blockade the square.

Led by a contingent of firefighters, more than 100 people forced their way
into the Capitol building at around 1 p.m. Upon entry, several people,
including two journalists and two medics, were arrested on charges of
disorderly conduct and obstruction. Protesters chanted in the Capitol's
central rotunda for some time before withdrawing and joining the remaining
protesters outside.

The day ended with a press conference, where organizers gave a summary of
what took place and predicted more and larger events in the coming days and
weeks. Some were frustrated, others were elated, and still others were on
the fence about the whole action.

I really liked the energy that was there, said Anna Ogden-Nussbaum, an
organizer for US Uncut. I thought it was positive. But we didn't end up
planning as well as we could have.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DESPITE SOME bumps in the road, the June 6 action marked an encouraging
development for the ongoing struggle in Wisconsin. Representing the left
flank of the existing movement, the organizers of this action included the
local leadership of the firefighters' union, activists in AFSCME local
unions, and leaders from the building trades, including the executive
director of the Building Trades Council Of South Central Wisconsin.

Importantly, the action saw the emergence of a large group of militant
rank-and-file workers. Those who attended the rally and subsequent actions
were unwilling to accept the purely electoral solution pushed by union
leaders and the Democratic Party, which has counterposed the attempt to
recall six Republican state senators to building an active, fighting
movement.

There were many victories throughout the day. But in general, the rally
didn't unfold according to plan. Originally, the goal had been to block all
access streets onto the Capitol Square with campers, fire trucks and
tractors brought in from the surrounding area. In reality, only a few big
vehicles showed up, and protesters were unsuccessful in their attempts at
blockading the square.

Days before the action, a deal was struck with the mayor of Madison and city
police which would have allowed the temporary blockade. However, the deal
was broken even before the rally set off.

By the time the feeder march reached Capitol Square around noon, city police
officers had barricaded all access streets in a coordinated action. A
contingent of Union Cab drivers were asked to leave or risk arrest. The same
happened to the driver of a large RV that was supposed to blockade State
Street. 

[Marxism] Workers of the World, Please See Our Web Site

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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(Catching up from my home delivery of the NY Times when I was in Costa 
Rica.)


NY Times May 22, 2011
Workers of the World, Please See Our Web Site
By JOSEPH BERGER

You can still be a card-carrying Communist in New York, but these days 
committed Communists usually register online.


“We actually have a card, but we don’t make a big deal of it,” said Sam 
Webb, the national chairman of the Communist Party U.S.A.


The Socialist Party U.S.A. does distribute red cards to members willing 
to “subscribe to the principles” of the party, but another leftist 
group, the Democratic Socialists of America, prefers online 
registration, with members using a virtual shopping cart to pay yearly 
dues of about $60 by credit card — Marx be damned.


In some ways, the Left remains locked in place. Its three major national 
parties are still confined to cramped Manhattan offices that are 
plastered with gaudy posters and honeycombed with pamphlets for 
distribution and envelopes for stuffing.


But in other ways the landscape has changed significantly. All three 
parties are finding the Internet to be a fruitful recruiting tool and 
believe their message has been given a fresh, beguiling appeal by the 
failures of capitalist symbols like Lehman Brothers and by debacles like 
the billions of dollars in securities tied to subprime mortgages.


“The economic crisis of 2008 gave us new life,” said Billy Wharton, a 
co-chairman of the Socialist Party, who grew enamored of socialism while 
battling tuition increases as a student at the College of Staten Island. 
“We have ideas for resolving the economic crisis, and people began to 
listen to them.”


Rather than trumpeting membership numbers, the parties, embracing the 
norms of the digital era, prefer to discuss the number of hits on their 
Web sites and Facebook pages. And philosophically, they take a kind of 
I-told-you-so schadenfreude in statistics that indicate a growing gap 
between the rich and the poor, with top chief executives now making 275 
times as much as the average proletarian.


Still, it is hard to imagine that the parties have inherited a 
revolutionary tradition once so popular that in the 1932 presidential 
election, Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate, garnered 884,000 votes 
and William Z. Foster, the Communist candidate, had over 100,000. But 
then again, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of 
socialist republics in Eastern Europe, some people may be surprised to 
learn that these parties are still around.


All three have greatly shrunk from their heydays. The Socialist Party 
has about 1,000 members nationally. The Communists claim 2,000. The 
Democratic Socialists, which for many years included luminaries like 
Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, have about 6,000.


“It’s not easy to make political progress outside the two-party 
structure because people don’t want to waste their votes,” said Frank 
Llewellyn, 62, the national director of the Democratic Socialists, who 
became a socialist as a result of the civil rights and antiwar movements.


Rather than battling for power through elections, all three parties try 
to sway the national conversation through coalitions with labor unions 
and other mainstream organizations. Both socialist groups turned out at 
City Hall this month to protest budget cuts, at a rally that was largely 
organized by the unions.


But on matters of principle, the leftist parties diverge. All three 
oppose President Obama’s health care program, seeing it as a giveaway to 
insurance companies and preferring either a single-payer government plan 
or a socialized system like that of Britain, where doctors work for the 
government.


The Socialists sometimes do have candidates who run in states where the 
rules for getting on the ballot are not too onerous; Greg Pason, the 
national secretary, ran for governor of New Jersey in 2009. But the 
Democratic Socialists see that effort as futile and prefer endorsements; 
they supported David N. Dinkins and Ruth W. Messinger in their mayoral 
bids in New York City.


The parties’ enduring character is obvious in visits to their offices. 
The Socialist Party is housed in a tumbledown building on Lafayette 
Street known informally as the “Peace Pentagon” or the A. J. Muste 
building, not because the name approximates its mildewed atmosphere but 
because Mr. Muste was a benefactor of the peace groups that the building 
houses. The Democratic Socialists even have a foothold on Wall Street, 
with cluttered offices in a building on Maiden Lane. It is not because 
Wall Street has suddenly adopted a philosophy of “to each according to 
his own needs.”


“It’s cheap,” Mr. Llewellyn explained. “This is an area of the city 
where you get the best deals.”


The 

[Marxism] African economic realities

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-17/world/razia.khan.africa_1_trend-growth-economic-growth-commodity-prices?_s=PM:WORLD

Africa's economic growth picking up, says expert
ECONOMIC GROWTH
January 17, 2011|From Zain Verjee. CNN

The economic outlook for several African countries is expected to 
improve this year, according to a leading analyst.


In 2011 there is a chance that we will get that much closer to those 
pre-crisis trend growth rates, said Razia Khan, head of African 
research for Standard Chartered Bank.


We were looking at 6% to 7% growth rate in a number of frontier market 
economies -- that is the key expectation, she said.


Issuing a positive outlook, Khan, whose job is to investigate everything 
that contributes to Africa's economic standing, said the continent has 
emerged from the grips of the global financial crisis much better than 
many had anticipated.


---

NY Times May 25, 2011
Chasing Riches From Africa to Europe and Finding Only Squalor
By SUZANNE DALEY

PALOS DE LA FRONTERA, Spain — Back home in Gambia, Amadou Jallow was, at 
22, a lover of reggae who had just finished college and had landed a job 
teaching science in a high school.


But Europe beckoned.

In his West African homeland, Mr. Jallow’s salary was the equivalent of 
just 50 euros a month, barely enough for the necessities, he said. And 
everywhere in his neighborhood in Serekunda, Gambia’s largest city, 
there was talk of easy money to be made in Europe.


Now he laughs bitterly about all that talk. He lives in a patch of woods 
here in southern Spain, just outside the village of Palos de la 
Frontera, with hundreds of other immigrants. They have built their homes 
out of plastic sheeting and cardboard, unsure if the water they drink 
from an open pipe is safe. After six years on the continent, Mr. Jallow 
is rail thin, and his eyes have a yellow tinge.


“We are not bush people,” he said recently as he gathered twigs to start 
a fire. “You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We 
suffer here.”


The political upheaval in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa has opened 
the way for thousands of new migrants to make their way to Europe across 
the Mediterranean. Already some 25,000 have reached the island of 
Lampedusa, Italy, and hundreds more have arrived at Malta.


The boats, at first, brought mostly Tunisians. But lately there have 
been more sub-Saharans.


Experts say thousands more — many of whom have been moving around North 
Africa trying to get to Europe for years, including Somalis, Eritreans, 
Senegalese and Nigerians — are likely to follow, sure that a better life 
awaits them.


But for Mr. Jallow and for many others who arrived before them, often 
after days at sea without food or water, Europe has offered hardships 
they never imagined. These days Mr. Jallow survives on two meals a day, 
mostly a leaden paste made from flour and oil, which he stirs with a branch.


“It keeps the hunger away,” he said.

The authorities estimate that there are perhaps 10,000 immigrants living 
in the woods in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, a region 
known for its crops of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and 
there are thousands more migrants in areas that produce olives, oranges 
and vegetables. Most of them have stories that echo Mr. Jallow’s.


From the road, their encampments look like igloos tucked among the 
trees. Up close, the squalor is clear. Piles of garbage and flies are 
everywhere. Old clothes, stiff from dirt and rain, hang from branches.


“There is everything in there,” said Diego Cañamero, the leader of the 
farm workers’ union in Andalusia, which tries to advocate for the men. 
“You have rats and snakes and mice and fleas.”


The men in the woods do not call home with the truth, though. They send 
pictures of themselves posing next to Mercedes cars parked on the 
street, the kind of pictures that Mr. Jallow says he fell for so many 
years ago. Now he shakes his head toward his neighbors, who will not 
talk to reporters.


“So many lies,” he said. “It is terrible what they are doing. But they 
are embarrassed.”


Even now, though, Mr. Jallow will not consider going back to Gambia. “I 
would prefer to die here,” he said. “I cannot go home empty-handed. If I 
went home, they would be saying, ‘What have you been doing with 
yourself, Amadou?’ They think in Europe there is money all over.”


The immigrants — virtually all of them are men — cluster by nationality 
and look for work on the farms. But Mr. Cañamero says they are offered 
only the least desirable work, like handling pesticides, and little of 
it at that. Most have no working papers.


Occasionally, the police bring bulldozers to tear down the shelters. But 
the men, who have usually used their 

[Marxism] At On-Air Haven for Dissent, a Dissenting Voice Is Silenced

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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(I've had my differences with Weinberg in the past, mostly about 
Yugoslavia, but it is a disgrace that he has been censored at WBAI.)


NY Times May 26, 2011, 7:44 am
At On-Air Haven for Dissent, a Dissenting Voice Is Silenced
By COLIN MOYNIHAN

For nearly 20 years, an East Village journalist named Bill Weinberg has 
been a familiar late-night voice on the left-leaning radio station 
WBAI-FM (99.5), ruminating about radical politics, global turmoil and 
life in New York City.


In mid-March, however, the station canceled Mr. Weinberg’s program, the 
Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, after he accused WBAI of promoting 
fringe right-wing commentators and conspiracy theories claiming that the 
United States government was behind the destruction of the World Trade 
Center.


Mr. Weinberg, who runs a blog called the World War 4 Report, has 
reported for The Nation and The Village Voice and written a book about 
the Zapatistas in Mexico called “Homage to Chiapas.” Since his ouster, 
he has hardly withdrawn — he has posted the Radio Crusade’s “Statement 
of Continued Resistance — In Exile” on World War 4 Report, and has 
spoken at any number of political forums. But on the airwaves, Mr. 
Weinberg’s insistent, raspy voice has fallen suddenly silent.


Mr. Weinberg said that though it was disappointing to lose the program, 
he did not regret speaking up. “It was ethically necessary,” he said. 
“I absolutely thought I had a responsibility.”


The station refused to comment on his departure.

In Mr. Weinberg’s two decades at WBAI, he connected peace activists from 
Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo on the air during Balkan wars and more 
recently interviewed secular Iraqis who oppose both American soldiers 
and the religious jihadis who attack them.


Mr. Weinberg said the disagreements that led to his departure began in 
2009 when he questioned gifts sent to people who had donated money to 
the station. The gifts included documentary-style DVDs like “Painful 
Deceptions” and “Loose Change 9/11,” which presented the destruction of 
the World Trade Center as “an inside job” orchestrated by the Bush 
administration or by foreign governments with ties to it.


Although the DVDs were popular with some listeners, Mr. Weinberg said 
they were intellectually lazy productions full of falsehoods and 
speculation, unworthy of a station that aspires to produce serious news.


Given WBAI’s history — the station went to the Supreme Court in the 
1970’s to battle the federal government over the broadcast of satire by 
George Carlin, and bears the motto “Free Speech Radio” on its Web site — 
Mr. Weinberg decided his program provided the perfect forum to broadcast 
his dissent.


Management, however, disagreed and called him on the carpet. Mr. 
Weinberg said he told a program director, Tony Bates, that he would 
refrain from issuing criticisms on his program. But when the station 
later broadcast comments from the Sept. 11 conspiracist David Icke, who 
is also known for his interest in “shape shifting” humans who may turn 
into reptiles, Mr. Weinberg could not hold his tongue.


“The output of the lugubrious mini-industry which has sprung up around 
9/11 conspiranoia has become increasingly toxic over the passing years,” 
Mr. Weinberg said on the air. “The most innocent of the DVDs and books 
are just poorly researched, merely exchanging the rigid dogma of the 
‘official story’ for another rigid dogma, no more founded in empiricism 
or objectivity. But, not surprisingly, lots of creepy right-wing types 
have got on board, using 9/11 as the proverbial thin end of a wedge.”


A few weeks later, his program was moved from midnight to two a.m. and 
shortened from 90 minutes to an hour. Mr. Weinberg called the change “an 
act of censure for political dissent” and declared the Moorish Orthodox 
Radio Crusade to be in a “state of resistance.” He openly  criticized 
ideas expressed by other producers.


In mid-March, Mr. Bates wrote a letter to Mr. Weinberg saying that he 
had broken “a cardinal rule” by “denigrating other programmers on the 
airwaves,” and added: “We have decided to sever the relationship between 
you and WBAI.”


Berthold Reimers, the general manager of WBAI, could not be reached at 
the station and did not respond to voicemail messages left on his cellphone.


Mr. Weinberg, who has supported himself as a freelance copy editor, has 
not yet formulated the next chapter of his radio career but is 
considering the idea of doing his program on an Internet station.


On a recent evening, he showed up at a lecture series in Chelsea called 
the Anarchist Forum. Mr. Weinberg weighed in on the dilemma facing 
leftists who deplore Western intervention in the Middle East but who 
must acknowledge that many in Libya have 

[Marxism] United Red Army

2011-06-07 Thread Louis Proyect

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In November 2010, I reviewed this Japanese movie about a wacked-out 
urban guerrilla group:


http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/united-red-army-carlos-the-baader-meinhof-complex/

It just opened at the IFC center in NYC and can be recommended in the 
same way Carlos can be recommended, as a look into the heart of 
darkness of the ultraleft student movement of 35 years ago.



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Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] African economic realities

2011-06-07 Thread Patrick Bond

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On 6/7/2011 4:39 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-17/world/razia.khan.africa_1_trend-growth-economic-growth-commodity-prices?_s=PM:WORLD

Africa's economic growth picking up, says expert
...
Issuing a positive outlook, Khan, whose job is to investigate everything
that contributes to Africa's economic standing,


except for non-renewable resource depletion, pollution, transfer 
pricing, capital flight, corporate corruption of local dictators and all 
the other systems that loot Africa.


Good antidotes are always to be found at http://www.fahamu.org 
(especially the weekly Pambazuka which this week deals with water 
privatisation struggles).


Here are a couple more on why this growth narrative is bogus:
http://www.counterpunch.com/bond05102011.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond08172010.html
http://www.counterpunch.com/bond05312011.html




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