Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Michael Karadjis]

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- Original Message - 
From: "Michael Smith" 


On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:12:15 +0300
Joonas Laine  wrote:


I'm sure everybody would be more
interested in reading about what the "top 10" Die Linke women's 
politics

- rather than their looks - are..


Naaah. Booorrring. They're all just Zionists.



That's why Novus would have little interest in criticising their 
politics. 




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[Marxism] "Beginning of the Great Revival" trailer on You Tube

[jay rothermel]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaH-zR6M50A&feature=player_embedded

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Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Dan DiMaggio]

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I agree with Joonas and Einde - this garbage has no place being posted on a
Marxism list like this. It's no wonder so few women post here or participate
in this list.

It would be positive if the moderator made clear that this is entirely
unwelcome.

Dan

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Re: [Marxism] Intense Clashes Ease in Cairo

[Gary MacLennan]

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it is difficult of course from this distance to judge events on the ground.
Yet I have a feeling that this latest round of tension could turn out to be
a decisive confrontation.  Illusions in the role of the Army must by now be
well and truly over.  If the split in the Muslin Brotherhood leads to the
youth wing flocking to the square after Friday prayers then the military
will either be forced to fight or retreat. A Nasser type military coup
cannot be ruled out either.

We may be about to witness the turning of the Arab Spring into a glorious
summer.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Britain: Mass public sector walk-out begins

[Stuart Munckton]

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http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/mass-british-public-sector-walkout-begins-20110630-1gs1i.html

AFP


British public sector workers have begun a one-day strike expected to
disrupt schools, airports and ports in the biggest walkout since the
government took office last year.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the estimated 600,000 teachers and civil
servants who were expected to join in the strike on Thursday over proposed
pension reforms were acting unreasonably.

UK Border Agency customs and immigration staff began to walk out late on
Wednesday as travellers coming into Britain were warned to expect lengthy
delays at airports, rail stations and ports.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Four trade unions will take part in the action which one labour union warned
could kickstart the most widespread industrial unrest in Britain since 1926.

Many parents were forced to book a day off work with 85 per cent of schools
in England and Wales expected to remain closed or face disruption while job
centres, tax offices and courts were also likely to be affected.

Cameron insisted that the government's planned reforms were "fair to
taxpayers" and the public sector.

Under the proposals, public service workers will pay more into pension
schemes and retire later as Britain grapples with a pension shortfall
attributed to increased life expectancies.

The Conservative-led coalition has been the focal point of public sector
anger after it announced a two-year pay freeze and 30,000 job losses by 2015
in an attempt to rein in a record budget deficit.

Around 220,000 members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and 55,000
from the University and College Union (UCU) will strike along with 250,000
civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) will also join in the
action, the first time its members have gone on strike in its 127-year
history.

Unison, the largest public sector union, will not be striking after it opted
to continue talks with the government.

Large-scale industrial action is rare in Britain, which loses around half as
many days to strikes as the EU average.

-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker

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Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Michael Smith]

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On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:11:55 +0100 (BST)
Angelus Novus  wrote:
  
> Funny, according to Der Spiegel, the Springer press, 
> and the neo-conservative academics Samuel Salzborn 
> and Sebastian Vogt, they're all horrible anti-Semites.
 
But of course. Who isn't, by the standards of 
Springer et al.? 

> I guess Die Linke must be doing something right 
> if they can piss of Zionists and Anti-Zionists in equal measure.

Why is it a good thing to "piss off" anti-Zionists?

We have a proverb in Amurrica: Falling between two 
stools. 

 
-- 
--

Michael J. Smith
m...@smithbowen.net

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
http://www.cars-suck.org
http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com


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[Marxism] NATO "shocked" that France armed "revolutionaries"; Netherlands urges "political solution"

[Fred Feldman]

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www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/29/nato-review-libya-france-arming-rebels
Nato reviews Libya campaign after France admits arming rebels
French defence chiefs admit providing weapons for push on Tripoli in
apparent defiance of UN mandate
 
Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 June 2011 19.24 BST 
Caption: New Libyan rebel recruits train near Benghazi. France today
admitted arming rebels in parts of the country, in apparent defiance of the
UN mandate Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/REUTERS

Nato was today urgently reviewing the conduct of its military campaign in
Libya after France admitted arming rebel fighters in apparent defiance of
the UN mandate.

The revelation surprised officials in Nato's headquarters in Brussels and
raised awkward questions about whether the French had broken international
law - UN resolution 1973 specifically allows Nato nations to protect
civilians in Libya, but appears to stop short of permitting the provision of
weapons.

Nato has consistently said it would not provide arms to rebel commanders,
saying it was beyond its remit. But that pledge came under scrutiny after
military chiefs in Paris confirmed that French planes had dropped machine
guns, rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles to rebels in the
western Nafusa mountains.

A report in Le Figaro said the French had parachuted "large amounts" of
munitions to help the rebel push on the capital Tripoli earlier this month.

This was confirmed by the armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard. He said
the French had initially provided humanitarian aid including water, food and
medical supplies to civilians in the region who were under seige from regime
forces.

"There were humanitarian drops because the humanitarian situation was
worsening and at one point it seemed the security situation was threatening
civilians who could not defend themselves," Burkhard told Reuters.

"France therefore also sent equipment allowing them to defend themselves,
comprising light weapons and munitions." The munitions were "self-defence"
assets, he said.

It appears France did not inform any of its Nato allies about the weapons
drop, or Nato headquarters, where officials were today desperately seeking
clarification from Paris about exactly what it had done and why.

Nato was also trying to establish what legal basis France had for taking
this apparently unilateral action. Officials expressed surprise over what
had happened and insisted its military approach had not changed.

"Nato knows what its mission is and that the mandate allows certain things,"
said a source.

France's admission highlights tensions within Nato over the conduct of the
campaign, and will raise new questions over whether the coalition should be
doing more to hasten Gaddafi's downfall.

Some countries are privately likely to welcome any sign of a more pro-active
effort to end Gaddafi's 41-year rule.

The Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini has previously claimed that the
UN resolution should not prohibit providing weapons to the rebels, saying
this could be "morally justified."

In a further sign of growing frustration, the Dutch defence minister Hans
Hillen today criticised the Nato campaign, saying those allies who had
thought bombing would force Muammar Gaddafi to step down "naive". He also
insisted that Nato's mission should be confined to its mandate to protect
civilians.

"If it changes into driving out a dictator, then the question is whether
Nato should accept this as a new task. Libya is too big and all the military
goals too big. The solution should be a political solution."

The Ministry of Defence said British forces had not supplied any weapons to
to the rebels, though the foreign office admitted the UN resolution could be
interpreted in different ways by different countries.

"Our position is clear," a spokesman said. "There is an arms embargo in
Libya. At the same time, UN resolution 1973 allows all necessary measures to
protect civilians and civilian populations from the threat of attack. We
think that the UN resolution allows in certain limited circumstances
defensive weapons to be provided. But the UK is not engaged in that. Other
countries will interpret the resolution in their own way."

The rebels are known to have received some arms from Qatar. But speaking on
Tuesday, after a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and rebel
chief Mahmoud Jibril, National Transitional Council Information Minister
Mahmoud Shammam said it had not asked for any further military assistance.



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[Marxism] Factual error

[Angelus Novus]

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I wrote:

> I must say, there is something sickening about the discourse of the 
> German political and academic layers that the only party in the 
> Bundestag with a co-chairman of Jewish heritage is denounced as the most > 
> anti-Semitic party in the history of the Federal Republic.


Sorry about that, actually, Gregor Gysi is no longer co-chair of the party.  
The current chairs are of course Gesine Lötsch and Klaus Ernst.

Just nostalgic about the glory days when Gysi and Lafontaine had the chattering 
classes quaking in their boots and could muster more percentage points than the 
war-mongering Greens...




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Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Angelus Novus]

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Einde wrote:

> I must say that I was most surprised to find this on this list

I was just as surprised to find it on the politics page of Spiegel Online.  


Michael wrote:


> Naaah. Booorrring. They're all just Zionists. 

Funny, according to Der Spiegel, the Springer press, and the neo-conservative 
academics Samuel Salzborn and Sebastian Vogt, they're all horrible anti-Semites.

I guess Die Linke must be doing something right if they can piss of Zionists 
and Anti-Zionists in equal measure.

I must say, there is something sickening about the discourse of the German 
political and academic layers that the only party in the Bundestag with a 
co-chairman of Jewish heritage is denounced as the most anti-Semitic party in 
the history of the Federal Republic.




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Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 29.06.2011 20:07, Michael Smith wrote:


On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:12:15 +0300
Joonas Laine  wrote:


I'm sure everybody would be more
interested in reading about what the "top 10" Die Linke women's politics
- rather than their looks - are..


Naaah. Booorrring. They're all just Zionists.

Actually that's not true - at least 4 of the 8 currently in the Top 30 
are vocal anti-Zionists and are being hounded as anti-semites by the 
bourgeois press and the Zionists.


Einde O'Callaghan


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Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 29.06.2011 17:58, Angelus Novus wrote:


According to the website Sexy Bundestag, http://www.sexybundestag.de

Number 1 sexiest member of the Bundestag is Yvonne Ploetz of Die Linke.  Number 
2 is the SPD's Carola Reimann, Number 3 Katja Dörner from the Greens.

Die Linke is also well represented in the top 10, with Caren Lay at Number 5, 
Nicole Gohlke at Number 7, and economic guru Sara Wagenknecht at Number 9.

I must say that I was most surprised to find this on this list - even if 
I do personally know several of those currently in the Top 20. - 
Incidentally it's an ongoing poll and the positions change every few 
minutes.


Einde O'Callaghan


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[Marxism] the end of Johann Hari's fledgling reputation

[Ben Ben]

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If anyone cares: upstart imperial apologist / Orwell prize winning "man of the 
left" Johann Hari (The Independent, Huffington Post) has finally met his 
comeuppance. 

Years of plagiarism uncovered starting with, ironically enough, an interview 
with Negri concerning truthfulness:

http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/hari-karihackery/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/28/johann-hari-twitter-plagiarism




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[Marxism] Polluting Afghanistan with Nuclear Material

[Bonnie Weinstein]

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Is Karzai's Accusation That Coalition Forces Are Polluting  
Afghanistan with Nuclear Material Accurate or an Over-Reaction?


Afghan President Hamid Karzai's recent comment that U.S. and NATO-led  
forces use weapons with "nuclear components" may be a reference to  
depleted-uranium munitions, whose health impact is still being studied


By Larry Greenemeier  | Saturday, June 25, 2011 | 14

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=afghanistan-karzai- 
us-depleted-uranium&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110629


President Obama has called for the withdrawal of 33,000 U.S. troops  
from Afghanistan over the next year and the remaining 68,000 by the  
end of 2014, but questions linger regarding what the troops are  
leaving behind after more than nine years of combat. In particular,  
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has accused U.S. and NATO-led  
coalition troops of littering his country with weapons that use  
"nuclear components."


Karzai made this comment last week during an address to the  
Afghanistan Youth International Conference, throughout which he  
broadly criticized coalition forces and pointed out that the U.S. has  
been in negotiations with the Taliban in an attempt to end the  
fighting set off by the September 11, 2001 , terrorist attacks. U.S.  
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates , during an appearance June 19 on  
CNN's State of the Union news program, confirmed such negotiations  
had taken place. Less clear, however, are exactly which weapons  
Karzai was referencing and their long-term impact on the Afghani  
people and their country.


Karzai's comments likely refer to ammunition that uses depleted  
uranium (DU) to pierce armor or, conversely, to strengthen armored  
vehicles, according to scientists as well as intelligence and policy  
analysts. They also note that DU is not "nuclear" in the sense that  
brief exposure to it would not cause radiation sickness or cancer in  
the way that fallout from a nuclear warhead or meltdown would. DU,  
the main by-product of uranium enrichment, is a chemically and  
radiologically toxic heavy metal that is "mildly radioactive," with  
about 60 percent of the activity of natural uranium, according to the  
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).


"In short, DU munitions are not even remotely on the same scale of  
danger as having a war in the first place," says Jeffrey Lewis,  
director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James  
Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and publisher of the  
ArmsControlWonk blog, which addresses disarmament, arms control and  
nonproliferation.


U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), a Unified Combatant Command unit of  
the U.S. armed forces whose territory includes the Middle East,  
claims that no DU weapons are currently being used in Afghanistan,  
although a spokesman acknowledges that "DU-type munitions were used  
in Iraq in anti-tank and anti-armor weapons." The U.S. military  
itself  has reported on its use of  Fairchild Republic A-10  
Thunderbolt II jet fighter aircraft in Afghanistan. Whereas the  
A-10's standard 30-millimeter rounds normally contain DU, CENTCOM  
says that the A-10s in use in Afghanistan are not using DU munitions.


Why use DU?
"Wherever we send our A-10s, soon enough we hear reports of uranium  
contamination thanks to depleted uranium," says Chris Bronk, an  
information technology policy research fellow at Rice University's  
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and a former U.S.  
State Department diplomat. Still, it is unclear how much DU  
ammunition has actually been used in Karzai's country (either by the  
U.S. or its NATO allies) and the long-term impact of DU on the  
environment, he adds.


DU kinetic-energy rounds are an effective way of penetrating armored  
vehicles. "You want something dense, and DU is denser than lead,  
something on the order of 1.6 times the density of lead," says  
Kristian Gustafson, deputy director of the Brunel Center for  
Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS) at West London's Brunel  
University. "You've now upped your energy transfer by significant  
quantity." Still, U.S. and NATO air-strike targets in Afghanistan are  
more likely to be mud–brick buildings than armored vehicles, and DU  
rounds "are useless for anything other than smashing armor," he adds.


DU is used in anti-tank shells because it is a heavy metal that can  
slam through shielding plates on armored vehicles, agrees Hans  
Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists'  
Nuclear Information Project.


How dangerous is DU?
The DU used in munitions is neither the same as natural uranium ore  
nor the radioactive uranium used in a nuclear reactor. DU is mostly  
composed of the isotope uranium 238 (U238); its more 

[Marxism] Media blackout on human rights report exonerating Libyan gov't

[jay rothermel]

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http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=635%3Arape-mercenaries-and-bloodbaths-on-the-scale-of-yemen-media-blank-amnestys-failure-to-find-evidence-in-libya&catid=24%3Aalerts-2011&Itemid=68
June 29, 2011
  Rape, Mercenaries, And Bloodbaths On The Scale Of Yemen? The Media
Blank Amnesty's Failure To Find Evidence In Libya



In the Independent on June 24, Patrick Cockburn reported
a
vital development countering official propaganda on Libya:

'Human rights organisations have cast doubt on claims of mass rape and other
abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have
been widely used to justify Nato's war in Libya.

'Nato leaders, opposition groups and the media have produced a stream of
stories since the start of the insurrection on 15 February, claiming the
Gaddafi regime has ordered mass rapes, used foreign mercenaries and employed
helicopters against civilian protesters.'

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have checked the claims and found flat
zero evidence.

And yet, earlier this month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told
a
press conference: 'we have information that there was a policy to rape in
Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi]
used it to punish people'.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
she
was 'deeply concerned' about reports of widespread rape in Libya by
Gaddafi's forces.

By contrast, Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty,
who spent three months in Libya after the start of the uprising in February,
said:
'we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who
knew about somebody being raped'.

Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women's rights at HRW, said
of
the rape claims: 'We have not been able to find evidence.'

The Amnesty investigation also found no evidence of mercenaries fighting for
Gaddafi. Rovera
commented
:

'Those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly
released. Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without
documents.'

And what about the massacres? Cockburn writes:

'During the first days of the uprising in eastern Libya, security forces
shot and killed demonstrators and people attending their funerals, but there
is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen.'

Not quite the impression given by the flood of media propaganda.

Cockburn followed up his June 24 piece with another
excellent
report on June 26: 'Don't believe everything you see and read about
Gaddafi.'

At time of writing, there has been a single low-profile response to
Cockburn's reports in Roy Greenslade's Guardian
blog
.

Greenslade quoted Cockburn, adding only that these findings of course do not
mean that Gaddafi's forces have not committed crimes.

There have been no other mentions in the UK media that we can find of this
credible information challenging key claims justifying the war on Libya.

But shouldn't a media system that so eagerly advanced these claims against
the latest target of Western violence be equally willing to publicise
counter-evidence?
Media Performance – The 'Gut-Churning Atrocities'

For once, let's sample from the performance of The Sun, which hosted a piece
by
TV celebrity and chat show host Lorraine Kelly:

'Of all the gut-churning atrocities to come out of Libya, the use of mass
rape as a weapon of war is the most horrific.

'Over the years despot Gaddafi has been accused of many heinous crimes. But
now he has been charged with procuring container loads of Viagra-like pills
which are given to his troops so they can rape their vic

Re: [Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Joonas Laine]

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On 06/29/2011 06:58 PM, Angelus Novus wrote:
> According to the website Sexy Bundestag, http://www.sexybundestag.de
> 
> Number 1 sexiest member of the Bundestag is Yvonne Ploetz of Die
> Linke.  Number 2 is the SPD's Carola Reimann, Number 3 Katja Dörner
> from the Greens.
> 
> Die Linke is also well represented in the top 10, with Caren Lay at
> Number 5, Nicole Gohlke at Number 7, and economic guru Sara
> Wagenknecht at Number 9.

Is this a Marxism list or what..?? I'm sure everybody would be more
interested in reading about what the "top 10" Die Linke women's politics
- rather than their looks - are..

--
jjonas @ nic.fi


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[Marxism] Blacks are "looting" and whites are "finding food" in New Orleans in 2005

[Bonnie Weinstein]

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http://www.o-dub.com/images/looter.jpg



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[Marxism] Cognitive dissonance on Libya

[Louis Proyect]

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Franklin Lamb in today's Counterpunch:
NATO’s bombs have united the people; forced the sometimes too 
comfortable population to face the future; even one without  Gaddafi; 
demonstrated the media strikes with false stories are stronger than the 
military assault in some respects, shown that the “Arab system” i.e. 
Arab League is worthless; shown  that it’s the poor people of Libya who 
believe in the Revolution and are remaining loyal to it. The rebels have 
exposed the Muslim Brotherhood as a US partner and also  has shown the 
true nature of the Jihadists, Al Qaeda and NATO itself,  that the 
African Union has a key function to perform, that Libya is not divisible 
because of its social and economic interdependency.


Franklin Lamb in Global Research interview: "Hezbollah under the 
leadership of Hasan Nasrallah has given the Arabs of the region restored 
self-respect following 60 years of humiliation and 41 years of repeated 
and voracious occupation and aggression."


full: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9328

---

Hezbollah lashed out Monday at the “crimes committed by the Gaddafi 
regime” in Libya:


“Anyone with honor and consciousness in this world cannot, and should 
not, keep silent on the massacres that the Gaddafi regime is committing 
across the country on a daily basis, namely in Benghazi.


Terror and violence do not protect a regime that was founded on 
corruption and crime, from the will and determination of a people that 
has taken its decisive decision,” a Hezbollah statement read.


“Hezbollah firmly condemns crimes committed by the Gaddafi regime 
against the oppressed Libyan people. We also offer our sincere 
condolences to the families of those who were unjustly killed, just for 
demanding their rights. Hezbollah expresses support to the 
revolutionists in Libya and we pray that they will triumph over this 
arrogant tyrant,” the statement added.


full: 
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=3411&frid=23&seccatid=14&cid=23&fromval=1



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[Marxism] Die Linke has the Sexiest Member of Parliament

[Angelus Novus]

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According to the website Sexy Bundestag, http://www.sexybundestag.de

Number 1 sexiest member of the Bundestag is Yvonne Ploetz of Die Linke.  Number 
2 is the SPD's Carola Reimann, Number 3 Katja Dörner from the Greens.

Die Linke is also well represented in the top 10, with Caren Lay at Number 5, 
Nicole Gohlke at Number 7, and economic guru Sara Wagenknecht at Number 9.




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[Marxism] Short Report on the Emergency Labor Network Conference(Kent, Ohio -- June 24-26, 2011)

[DW]

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[From Kwame M.A. Somburu]

To all recipients:

I drove round trip by myself.  At 1a.m. Fri. I left Medford, MA for a
690 mile drive to Kent, OH. and arrived at 12:30 noon; it was worth my
expenditure of time and money.  The conference was one of the best
that I have ever attended during my decades of activities that began
in 1960.  In consideration of the many and varied gross negatives
prevalent nationally and internationally, and the growing opposition
on every continent except Antarctica, it was a great feeling to be
part of building a national class conscious movement that is totally
opposed to any and all types of exploitation, oppression, and
discrimination world wide.

There was representation of unionists, unemployed, non-union,
immigrants, varied complexions and ethnicities; there is absolutely no
scientific basis for stating "racial groups", all humans are descended
from Africa, and the many/varied changes in humanity, took place over
tens of thousands of years, genders, and ages.  I stated that because
some recipients will disagree with the statement that all humans share
a common ancestry, and skin color or other superficial factors do not
make us inherently different in intellect, humanity, or other divisive
categories.  That gathering was composed of various elements of
humanity, in unity for freedom for all of the world's oppressed.  The
"Audacity of Hope" ship that is going to Gaza, is indicative of that:
25% of the group is composed of Jews, who are opposed to Zionism, and
the capitalist/imperialist puppet in the White House, is in total
support of the criminal Zionist Israeli government.

The first session started at 7pm.  Attendance was 125, and that
increased by over 100 for Saturday, and back to about 100 for the
closing session on Sunday.  That was great for the discussions (which
represented a very good variety of progressive opinions that were in
overall solidarity for building working class opposition to the
capitalist rulers.  I could not do any better than the official
summation of our weekend, than the report below.  Also, I have very
important duties to take care of, as a result of being away for the
weekend.

***
Action Program Adopted by the Emergency Labor Network Conference(Kent,
Ohio -- June 24-26, 2011)

1. The Emergency Labor Network Conference commits itself to helping
build a strong, independent labor movement, which, together with our
community partners, can defeat the corporate agenda and win a program
that reflects the needs, hopes and aspirations of the overwhelming
majority. Accordingly, we call upon the labor movement and our allies
-- at the local, state and national levels -- to launch a national
mobilizing campaign around the following central demands: * NO CUTS,
NO CONCESSIONS IN "ENTITLEMENTS," JOBS,  WAGES, PENSIONS, & BENEFITS
-- AND IN PUBLIC SERVICES!* Hands off Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid!* Improved Medicare for All!* Strengthen and Expand Social
Security!* Tax the Rich and the Corporations!* Federal Public Works
Jobs Program Paid for by Taxing Wall Street!* Bring Home the War
Dollars to Meet Human Needs!* Defend and Expand our Collective
Bargaining Rights!* Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs!

2. To further these efforts, we urge all participants at the ELN
Conference to go back to their cities and build Labor-Community
Fightback Committees around the demands contained in this Action
Program. We also urge these fightback committees to organize Regional
Working People's Assemblies to advance the ELN Action Program and
organize regional actions in the streets and workplaces.

3. Single-payer health care, or improved Medicare For All, would
represent a most important benefit to working people in this country.
The AFL-CIO has endorsed a single-payer system. Labor needs to
mobilize more resources at all levels to mobilize to win this crucial
fight. It is critical to the anti-poverty program and essential to
avoiding debt and deficit spending.  We also must ensure that any
single-payer health care legislation that we support covers "all
residents in the United States" (which includes all undocumented
immigrants), as H.R. 676 proposes -- and not just "all citizens," as
the newly submitted H.R. 1200 and S.915 single-payer bills propose.
With regard to Social Security, it was great when this program was put
in place, but now it mainly provides poverty retirement. We need to
revisit retirement to ensure retirement security. This will require
expansion of Social Security to make it much more robust for retired
people.

4. We support all actions called by the AFL-CIO, Change to 

[Marxism] Die Linke Protecting Israel’s Occupation and Apartheid?

[Joseph Catron]

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Posted on June 28, 2011 by Palestinian BDS National Committee

Occupied Palestine, 21 June 2011

Dear Die Linke Executive Board members,

It has come to the attention of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), a wide coalition of the
largest Palestinian mass civil society organizations, that the German
left political party, Die Linke, has equated calls for the boycott of
Israeli goods with anti-Semitism. Such inflammatory accusations are
patently false, intellectually and morally dishonest, and serve to
discredit and silence any form of criticism directed against Israel’s
violations of human rights and international law. The Boycott,
Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, led by the BNC, which
upholds as its ultimate objectives freedom, justice and equality for
all, unequivocally condemns all forms of racism, including
anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Attempts to muzzle all criticism of
the State of Israel with the intimidating and suppressive epithet of
anti-Jewish racism lend tacit support to Israel’s numerous violations
of human rights and international humanitarian law and thus betray the
most cherished principles of any movement that counts itself on the
left.

The 2005 BDS Call[1], endorsed by an overwhelming majority of
Palestinian civil society organizations, adopts a rights-based
approach that focuses on Israel’s violations of human rights and
international law, namely, its continued colonization and occupation
of Palestinian land occupied since 1967, its institutionalized system
of discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens[2], and its
denial of the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to
their homes, from which they were forcibly displaced in 1948. In this
historic Call, Palestinian civil society called for imposing broad
boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel as forms of
non-violent, effective pressure on Israel until it abides by its
obligations under international law. This civil form of resisting
Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid was reached by
Palestinians after Israel’s violations of hundreds of UN resolutions
condemning its occupation and discriminatory policies and calling for
immediate, effective remedies and after all forms of international
intervention and peace-making have failed to convince or compel Israel
to respect international law and Palestinian rights.

Since 2005, the BDS movement has grown significantly on an
international scale, and has included students, trade unions,
academics, artists, and investors, many of whom are prominent Jewish
thinkers, such as Judith Butler, Naomi Klein and Ilan Pappe. It is
also important to note that the Palestinian BDS Call has been answered
by a number of respected Israeli groups, such as the Coalition of
Women for Peace, BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian call from within,
and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). All
aforementioned groups, whose members include students, workers,
academics, intellectuals, feminists, LGBT advocates, human rights
activists, among others, have united in their conviction that Israel
will only respect international law through sustained international
pressure, especially in the form of BDS. Israel’s complete disregard
of international law and human rights is only growing, as is clear
from its 2008/2009 illegal assault on Gaza and its lethal attack on
the Freedom Flotilla. In light of the complicity of western
governments, including Germany’s, in Israel’s multi-faceted oppression
of the Palestinian people, BDS has become a moral imperative for
ending Israel’s impunity.

The characterization of a boycott of Israel as anti-Semitic is clearly
deceptive, since it conflates legitimate criticism and opposition to
Israel’s policies with racism against all Jews, thus equating Israel
and world Jewry, reducing the latter to a monolithic sum that all
thinks the same. That equation is itself anti-Semitic. The BDS
movement calls for the three fundamental, UN-stipulated rights of the
Palestinian people to be implemented, and targets Israel because of
its denial of those rights, not because of the religious identity of
most of its citizens. Calls for the international boycott of apartheid
South Africa were directed against the white-only, racist character of
the state, not against whites for their color per se. Likewise, calls
for the boycott of Israel are not directed against Israeli Jews qua
Jews, but against occupation and apartheid.

The BNC urges Die Linke to rise above unfounded slander and to fairly
examine the BDS Call, which is rooted in universal principles of
international law. “Never again,” the main lesson of one of the most
horrific genocidal crimes in history, the Holocaust, should apply to
all

[Marxism] Fueling Creativity

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee_on_energy
Fueling Creativity
June 29, 2011
By Scott McLemee

In his autobiography, Henry Adams recounts the impact of visiting one 
part of the Great Exhibition held in Paris in 1900. A friend took Adams 
to the hall where the new motors were displayed. They were interesting 
enough, and the prospect of automobiles going 200 kilometers (about 124 
miles) per hour certainly worrying to contemplate. But what really 
absorbed Adams’s attention was the sight of a dynamo.


For his mechanically minded friend, “the dynamo itself was but an 
ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons 
of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of 
sight….” The impact on Adams, by contrast, was something like a 
religious experience.


Writing about himself in the third person, the historian says: “[T]o 
Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to 
the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos 
as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The 
planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, 
annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's 
length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring….” At the cusp of 
the 20th century, Adams was becoming aware of new energies being 
summoned -- radioactivity, electromagnetism, who knows what. “He lost 
his arithmetic,” Adams writes, “in trying to figure out the equation 
between the discoveries and the economies of force.”


What part does literature play in our own efforts to reckon with 
“economies of force” now? In her editor’s column for the new issue of 
the Modern Language Association’s flagship journal PMLA, Patricia Yeager 
poses the question as a program for a new sort of cultural analysis. (Or 
a renewed sort, I suppose, if you grant that Adams was way ahead of things.)


“Instead of divvying up literary works into hundred-year intervals (or 
elastic variants like the long eighteenth or twentieth century),” asks 
Yeager, “or categories harnessing the history of ideas (Romanticism, 
Enlightenment), what happens if we sort texts according to the energy 
sources that made them possible?”


(clip)


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[Marxism] Is the movement dead or alive in Iran?

[Louis Proyect]

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This is an article by Amin Hosuri (he used to write for Khiaban 
newspaper when it was publishing), and is about the current situation of 
the opposition movement in Iran.


http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2011/06/iran-opposition-movement-dead-or-alive.html


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Re: [Marxism] American Historical Review discredits Robert Service's Trotsky bio

[Louis Proyect]

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On 6/29/11 6:14 AM, Greg Adler wrote:

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Does anyone on the list have access to this article -the AHA one
aand able to post it



Reviews of Books Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Reviewed work(s): Robert Service. Trotsky: A Biography. Cambridge: 
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2009. Pp. xxii, 600. $35.00.
David North. In Defense of Leon Trotsky. Oak Park, Mich.: Mehring Books. 
2010. Pp. xi, 194. $15.95.


Bertrand M. Patenaude

Stanford University

Robert Service, who authored biographies of V. I. Lenin and Joseph 
Stalin and a history of world communism, has now published a biography 
of Leon Trotsky. “This book's purpose,” Service announces at the start, 
“is to dig up the buried life” (p. 4). It appears that he set out 
thoroughly to discredit Trotsky as a historical figure and as a human 
being. His Trotsky is not merely arrogant, self‐righteous, and 
self‐absorbed; he is a mass murderer and a terrorist, a cold and 
heartless son, husband, father, and comrade, and an intellectual 
lightweight who falsified the record of his role in the Russian 
Revolution and whose writings have continued to fool generations of 
readers—a hoax perpetuated by his hagiographer Isaac Deutscher. In his 
eagerness to cut Trotsky down, Service commits numerous distortions of 
the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the 
intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question.


Enter David North. North is an American Trotskyist whose book collects 
his review essays of Service's volume and of earlier biographies of 
Trotsky by Ian Thatcher and Geoffrey Swain. (He does not mention my 2009 
book, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary.) Given North's Trotskyism, 
he might reasonably be suspected of hyperbole in his brief against 
Service. But a careful examination of North's book shows his criticism 
of Service to be exactly what Trotsky scholar Baruch Knei‐Paz, in a 
blurb on the back cover, says it is: “detailed, meticulous, well‐argued 
and devastating.”


Service, in his attempt to indict Trotsky, makes Exhibit #1 Trotsky's 
autobiography, My Life (1930), which Service calls “a masterpiece of 
political fudging masked by the artifices of a literary alchemist” (p. 
403). Service has examined what he says in one place is the “first 
draft” of Trotsky's memoir in the Hoover Institution Archives, “which 
has much information he excluded from the printed version” (p. xix). 
Elsewhere he writes, “By examining the drafts and proofs, we can catch 
glimpses of aspects of his upbringing that have long lain hidden” (p. 12).


Here, in the discussion of Trotsky's youth, Service targets Trotsky's 
alleged embarrassments about his parents' wealth (Trotsky's father was a 
prosperous farmer in southern Ukraine) and his Jewish origins (Trotsky 
was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein). Yet neither here nor anywhere else 
is Service able to provide a single example of a significant discrepancy 
between the published memoir and the draft. In fact, in his depiction of 
Trotsky's youth, Service relies almost entirely on the published version 
of My Life, not on earlier drafts. Service accuses Trotsky the memoirist 
of being “selective, evasive and self‐aggrandizing” (p. xxi) (as if most 
memoirs do not fit this description), yet he reads other memoirs 
completely uncritically (for example, those of Gregory A. Ziv and Clare 
Sheridan) when they show Trotsky in an unfavorable light.


Service's animus toward Trotsky is on clearest display in his treatment 
of Trotsky's relationship with Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a comrade whom he 
married in prison in 1899 and whom he left behind with their two infant 
daughters when he escaped from Siberian exile in 1902. Trotsky later 
said that it was with her blessing that he fled Russia to join up with 
Lenin and other Russian Marxists in Western Europe. But in Service's 
telling, “Bronstein was planning to abandon her in the wilds of Siberia 
… No sooner had he fathered a couple of children than he decided to run 
off. Few revolutionaries left such a mess behind them. Even so, he was 
acting within the revolutionary code of behaviour” (p. 67). Service felt 
it necessary to soften his criticism with that final sentence, yet later 
in the book he says outright that Trotsky “ditched his first wife” (p. 112).


In fact, Trotsky's family in Russia helped support Sokolovskaya and 
their daughters, and she went to her death in the Great Terror as a 
Trotskyist. Not only does Service fail to furnish a single piece of 
evidence that contradicts Trotsky

[Marxism] Ron Is Still Home: Talking Politics, Books, Libraries, Budget Cuts and Counterpunch

[Ron J]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2011/06/talking-politics-books-libraries-budget.html 




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[Marxism] Emergency actions in solidarity with arrested Malaysian activists

[Peter Boyle]

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*Sydney action: Free the Malaysian activists!*

Please join an emergency solidarity picket outside Malaysian Airlines (MAS)
office to demand release of 30 Malaysian Socialist Party
(PSM)
members and 14 other oppositionists arrested in Malaysia over last few days
in the lead up to a big pro-democracy rally (Bersih 2.0 )
planned for July 9 in Kuala Lumpur.

*When & where:* Friday July 1, 4.30-5.30pm, outside MAS Sydney offices, 16
Spring Street, Corner Pitt Street Sydney.

*For more information contact Mark Goudkamp 0422078376 or Peter Boyle
0401760577.*

* * *

*Melbourne action:*

*
*

*Drop the charges
Free the Malaysian activists
Allow the right to protest*

*Tuesday 5 July*

*12.30-1.30pm*



*Malaysian Airlines*

*Nauru House**
corner Russell & Collins Street, Melbourne CBD*

* * *

Brisbane speak out in solidarity with Malaysian activists * 4:30pm - 5:30pm
**Friday, July 1
*
*Malaysian Consulate*
*239 George Street*
*Brisbane*

* * *

*For international media coverage see:*

AFP: Malaysia makes more arrests ahead of demo (Wed, Jun 29, 2011):
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20110629-286664.html

BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13923599

UK Guardian report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/27/malaysia-activists-arrested-political-rally

Wall Street Journal report:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230431440457640608249474.html

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Re: [Marxism] American Historical Review discredits Robert Service's Trotsky bio

[Greg Adler]

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Does anyone on the list have access to this article -the AHA one
aand able to post it

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 3:36 PM, jay rothermel wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/pers-j28.shtml?utm_source=Book+Link&utm_campaign=0983c08af0-IDLT_Review6_28_2011&utm_medium=email
> “A book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship”
> The
> American Historical Review discredits Robert Service’s biography of Leon
> Trotsky
> 28 June 2011
>
> The *American Historical Review*, among the oldest and most prestigious
> academic journals in the United States, has published in its June 2011
> issue
> a critical examination of two books: the denunciatory biography *Trotsky*
> by
> British historian Robert Service and *In Defense of Leon
> Trotsky*
> *, *by David North, the chairman of both the Socialist Equality Party in
> the
> United States and the international editorial board of the *World Socialist
> Web Site*. The author of the combined review is the historian Bertrand
> Patenaude, a lecturer in history and international relations at Stanford
> University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institute. He is also the
> author of *Trotsky:
> Downfall of a Revolutionary*, published by Harper Collins in 2009.
>
>

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