Re: [Marxism] Kim Jong Il is dead
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == An obituary for Kim Il-Jong... Hmmm... Let me see... During his reign, millions died of starvation, the occasional corpses lying huddled together in a ditch along the roads. Millions of other North Koreans were so hungry, they ate "clay cakes". They dug the soil with their bare hands until their nails tore off. The security forces were the only class of people receiving FOOD. Summary executions were commonplace in the concentration camps, one lucky survivor remembers over 30 executions in the one-year period he was there. Oh yeah, around 200 000 people "populate" the 24 concentration camps (now 14 due to bureaucratic mergers of satellite camps), but the turn over is high. New people keep pilling in, officially people who disagree with the "Army First Policy", actually people picked up at random for the slightest "misdemeanour". Whole families, because according to Kim Il-JOng (and his dad), children are guilty by virtue of being born into a family that contains a subversive element. And so seven-year old children are worked to death in concentration camp n°14, 18 and especially the sinister camp n°22 (50 000 inmates spread over 130 square km in dozens of sateliite camps). Meanwhile, Kim Il-Jung basked in luxury and spared no expense when it came to his extravagant lifestyle. He had his personal chef travel overnight to Japan to bring him soggy rice cakes prepared in the traditional manner. He had his favourite brand of whiskey (Hennesys) provide him with hundreds of "special collection" bottles. He had an entire brewery dismantled and transported to North Korea for his benefit. He ordered the construction of a private high tech cinema and had 25 000 American classic films stored away in case he felt like watching a movie. Oh no, Kim Il-Jong lived a life far, far remote from that of the "adouring masses who weep incontrollably at the news of his passing". An honest obituary would state : Kim Il-Jong was one of the worst, most cruel, most hypocritical tyrants ever to blight the face of this earth. But since that may smack of American Imperialism, let's just say that the current ruler of NK has died and that his son has succeeded him, and that an orderly transition of power is to be hoped for. After all, there are hard-line factions within the army that might use war with South Korea as a means of bolstering their position within the ruling elite. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] BTW, concentration camps in NK
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodok_concentration_camp A must read. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] China: 'Down with corruption, reclaim our land' -- Call for support for Wukan
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The following petition, organised by the Hong Kong-based coalition Left21, explains the background to, and demands of, the rebellion by the people of Wukan. * * * December 15, 2011 -- On November 21, 1927, under the leadership of Peng Pai, pioneer of the Chinese communist revolution as well as a committed socialist, the country’s first rural Soviet administration was established in area of Hailufeng, Guangdong province. Thus began the first chapter of the communist movement in China. On November 21, 2011, less than a few kilometres away from the founding site, at Wukan village (part of Lufeng city in eastern Guangdong province), a few thousand villagers took to the street. Holding up signs that read "Down with dictatorship", "Curb corruption", "Down with government-business collusion" and "Return land to the people", villagers marched to the government headquarters at Lufeng city to protest against officials’ illegal land seizures and sales. Their demands were clear: to reclaim the land sold without the consent of the people, to release public accounts concerning the some 400 hectares of land seized and sold since 1978, to launch investigations into fraudulent elections and to enforce the Organic Law of Village Committees to hold fair and open elections. The demonstration ended peacefully after the acting mayor received the villagers’ petition. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/2664 * Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Or join the Links Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Mark, I am going to side-track your original point, with which I agree (by definition History starts when there is a written record) I think Lévi-Strauss means that most of the groups of homo sapiens that have inhabited this world have developed societies in which the concept of history never goes back more than a generation, before becoming part of the "mythical thought" world-view. Actually, I think Lévi-Strauss belabours the point by showing that NAtive American societies, 50 to 150 years after contact with Western civilization, had already incorporated the "white man" as part of the creation myth, explaining that the "white man" is one of the two original twins, the other being 'the Indian". Such creative incorporation of, what to us appears as a groundbreaking new fact (i.e "contact") into the normal mythical "structure" which explains the universe is proof, in Lévi-Strauss's view, of the primacy of structure over individual element. All events will become integrated into the logical classification of the world. In opposition to Lévi-Strauss, I will muster my own experience, while living in Surinam for six years, of the way the Saramakas and Djukas, black slaves who revolted and "marooned" in South America see history. Without the aid of any written history, Saramaka elders can talk confidently about "da fosi tem" (the first time) in Taki-Taki Creole. According to their epic, the first Saramakas were slaves on the "Waterman massa plantasi" (Mr. Waterman's plantation) who came from the nobility of "daomei condre" (Dahomey country) who gathered together slaves from various ethnic groups, revolted, massacred their former masters and fled deep into the jungle where they met and were helped by the "injin" (Indians). With the help of the "injins" they liberated plantations that had many females and started their own communities in the further reaches of the Maroni river where the white soldiers could not pursue them. They can recount through oral tradition many significant events in their history from the years 1710 onwards, passed on generation after generation. What is even more startling is their claim that certain individuals, when possesed by the spirits of "da fosi tem", can actually start talking "African". I actually heard some Djukas use some ancient form of the Gbe or Twa language family (Ewe or Fon), using up to 150 words from a closely related group of very tonal Western African languages (but from what I could make out without any syntax, and mixing up a good deal of English and Portuguese creole i.e muye = mulier, preto, oro ). This is a "secret" language that only the "Bonu Sma" (Vodun/Vodoo Someone) can interpret and contains allusions to Western African deities and beliefs (da langbe = the chief deity of the Vodoo pantheon, da nkisi = Cuban Spanish los inquises, da nganga, da djombo = the zombie, etc.) . Other aspects of African folklore are the many "Anansi tolis" = the Anansi [s]tories. All this wealth of African "heathenism", which persists despite the fact that 75% of the Saramakas are no longer pagans but Evangelicals (thanks to American missionaries) is astounding when one remembers that they have been cut off from Western Africa since the late 17th century. Actually, ancestor worship is very prevalent among the marrons, as the countless shrines in all the cemeteries can demonstrate. Even their first names are African in origin : many boys are called Kofi, Awaneki, Abaga, Akinwande, etc. And the meaning of these names is sometimes known (twin, born on a Monday, ...) ! Again, I was amazed at the amount of African culture that was preserved by the Surinamese maroons. They are of course totally cut off from Western Africa, but they do know they originate from there. So, my point is, historical traditions can be caried on in total isolation for five centuries without writting and quite reliable inferences (as to geographical origin) can be drawn from oral tradition alone. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] reviewer wanted
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Socialism and Democracy is looking for a reviewer for Nomad Citizen by Eugene Holland. Please write to me offline at snedek...@verizon.net if you are interested in reviewing this book. George Snedeker Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks, Dan. He's certainly an interesting thinker and I appreciate the travails of translation more and more. The point of my comment, though, wasn't about what Lévi Strauss's definition of history was, but what about what we understand to be history. A purist might well insist that historia represets the written, documentary record, variously processed. We can appreciate the merits of the spirit of this definition without being literalists about it. The written record is public and permits some sort of evaluation. I'd say that without that evaluative process, it's not history. This doesn't mean that we can't develop some understanding of the past of hunter-gatherers--or engage in some interesting and plausible speculations about how they saw their past--but it's a fundamentally different process. Indeed, my impression is that people aren't quite thinking of hunter-gatherers the same way they once did, particularly in terms of a great break between that life and the sedentary life brought on by what used to be called the Neolithic Revolution . . . Solidarity! Mark L. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Russia: Boris Kagarlitsky on Russian protests
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By *Boris Kagarlitsky* The calls by the "moderate left" for passively following behind the liberals are supposedly based on the need to "work among the people", to go where the masses are. But how, and with whom, are the forces of the left to set out after these ardently pursued masses? With badly printed leaflets full of abstract slogans? Full article at http://links.org.au/node/2663 * Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Or join the Links Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/claude-levi-strauss/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == >>"How do hunter-gatherers have a history to throw out ,. . . as opposed to a reasonable attempt to figure out what wasn't put into a written record? ml"<< OK. It so happens I have a 1,886-page volume of Claude-Lévi Strauss's collected works (édition La Pléiade, 2009) on my book-shelf. And I am ashamed to confess that I have only read his two most famous essays, "Tristes Tropiques" (a sad hommage to the Amazonian tribes he befriended in the 1930s and no longer exist) and "La Pensée Sauvage" (in which he famously claims that hunter-gatherers' reasoning and deductive abilities are just as sound as our own). The rest requires a lot of mental work to get to grips with. Let me just open the collected works and translate: "The origin of the world typically occurs as the result of an infinite series of bi-partitions, on the one hand X, on the other Y, so that genealogical explanations of history (who invented fire, who invented the fishing boat, etc.) only serve to illustrate that X and Y can never co-exist. Kinsman and foreigner, water and fire, top and bottom, etc. are forever distinct categories. Some may try to bridge the gap, but by doing so, they fail to comprehend the way the universe progresses, through eternal schism between two poles. This is the view of history that the hunter-gatherers of the Amazon hold. Hence all the tales about twins who end up fighting each other. Why are women's breasts asymmetrical ? asks the Tupi Genesis account. Because one of the original twins suckled more forcibly than the other. So even breasts cannot be symmetrical ! The deeper meaning of the myth is of course, everything is assymetrical and the product of a dis-junction. History is dynamical assymetry." (The Tale of the Lynx, Native American mythology and History, Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1991) Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Second Chinese town hit by uprising
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.smh.com.au/world/second-public-uprising-hits-china-as-town-revolts-against-power-plant-20111221-1p5pc.html -- “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 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == How do hunter-gatherers have a history to throw out ,. . . as opposed to a reasonable attempt to figure out what wasn't put into a written record? ml Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==
>>"The topic of my post was this:
"...Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that...human society emerges when, driven
by the incest taboo, early human families enter into relations of credit
and debt with their neighbors as they exchange their nubile women, and
as exchanged daughters are transformed into wives..."
That is a (fantastical) *historical* explanation: incest taboo *drives*
exogamy and that is how "human society emerges." Structuralists may
throw history out the front door (as they do by treating the
"primitives'" memories of historical catastrophe as ideological myths),
but it comes back through the window!"<<
And again, Claude Lévi-Strauss never said that "human society emerges
when, driven by the incest taboo, early human families enter into
relations of credit and debt with neighbours".
He never talks about the "emergence" of human society (in a historical
sense, since Homo Erectus onwards). He is concerned with the way a
society thinks about its own origin and organization. And Lévi-Strauss
doesn't use the expression "incest taboo" as a conceptual category (that
would be Freud).
Structuralism is all about the way a given society sees things,
expressed through marriage customs, type of filiation, reciprocity
arrangements, rights to certain resources, and that way of seeing things
is encapsulated in myths, which are the primary material for gaining an
insight into the structural classification of the universe at work
behind a specific world-view.
For example, in the Amazonian range, Lévi-Strauss famously argued for an
opposition between "raw meat" and "cooked meat" as a basic symbolic
organization of the Amazonian world-view between two opposing poles
("non-communautarian"/"chaotic" and "community"/"order"). This
opposition is to be found in the characteristics of human and animal
protagonists of myths throughout the Amazon region. Raw meat is
associated with the absence of sharing and the search for
power/domination, cooked meat is associated with sharing and reciprocity.
And again, my own knowledge of Lévi-Strauss's work is limited, this is
only a very, very simplistic outline. I know that the precise
philosophical implication of his works regarding Marxism was hotly
debated in the 60s and 70s, with such widely diverging thinkers as
Foucault and Althusser commenting favorably on his contribution.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Dec 21, 2011, at 5:28 PM, dan wrote: >>"The "great structural anthropologist" here totally inverts his own theory. What conceivable "structural" justification can there be for "the incest taboo" as a primary driving force? This is nothing but a Robinsonade, an eternalization of bourgeois sexual morality, a mystification. If the incest taboo has anything to do with exogamy the relationship, structurally considered, must derive the incest taboo from exogamy because the absence of such a taboo would be a severe impediment to the exogamy that is a structural necessity for small human groups (extended families such as clans and tribes) living in close interdependence with each other. " And Claude Lévi-Strauss never meant his discussion of the ideology (for lack of a better word) of hunter-gatherer societies as a historical explanation for the development of said societies. The topic of my post was this: "...Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that...human society emerges when, driven by the incest taboo, early human families enter into relations of credit and debt with their neighbors as they exchange their nubile women, and as exchanged daughters are transformed into wives..." That is a (fantastical) *historical* explanation: incest taboo *drives* exogamy and that is how "human society emerges." Structuralists may throw history out the front door (as they do by treating the "primitives'" memories of historical catastrophe as ideological myths), but it comes back through the window! Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The nuclear family is a recent invention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == >>"The "great structural anthropologist" here totally inverts his own theory. What conceivable "structural" justification can there be for "the incest taboo" as a primary driving force? This is nothing but a Robinsonade, an eternalization of bourgeois sexual morality, a mystification. If the incest taboo has anything to do with exogamy the relationship, structurally considered, must derive the incest taboo from exogamy because the absence of such a taboo would be a severe impediment to the exogamy that is a structural necessity for small human groups (extended families such as clans and tribes) living in close interdependence with each other. " And Claude Lévi-Strauss never meant his discussion of the ideology (for lack of a better word) of hunter-gatherer societies as a historical explanation for the development of said societies. He contends that exchange relationships between groups of economically self-sufficient human groups entails symbolical patterns where filial relationships between groups are seen as part of a greater ideological pattern, an expression of a basic "structural" view of the world. Group A's young men and women will marry with group B, C, D and E's young men and women, and there will emerge an ideological representation of the world. Each group will tend to adopt certain symbols to represent itself as a group, and the interaction between the different groups will be represented by combining symbols. The offspring of a young man from group A and a young woman from group C, for example, will closely identify with the group with which the new couple resides (say group A), while retaining strong symbolic links with group C through kinship. Claude Lévi-Strauss was a Marxist (broke with the CP but remained close to the left-wing of the SFIO), and his investigation into the world-view of hunter-gatherers, the implications of kinship in ideology, were not a "robinsonade". However, the importance of "structure" in ideology, that is the basic logical reltionships of commutation and symmetry between symbols which represent social realties is his great insight. Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died recently aged 100, was truly one of the greatest French thinkers of the 20th century. He played a key role in emphasizing the need to apprehend each society on its own terms and not through the prism of the researchers' own views. Only once all the ideological connections within a particular world-view (as a complete "structural system") have been ascertained can meaningful comparison with other world-views begin. If a certain group holds as self-evident that the dead reincarnate as specific animals, that certain specific food taboos exist, that it is natural for certain uncles to perform specific rites for their nephews, that it is to be expected for specific offspring from certain lignages to have specific dreams, that certain specific plants act as a cure for certain specific individuals at certain specific times in their lives, etc. all this disparate data actually constitues a WHOLE, a logical, functioning representation of the world in which each individual and each group symbolically acts as a constituent part. And most strickingly, each individual, though conscious of the intricate classification of things current in his community, cannot express the whole structure otherwise than by saying that "that's how it is" and instinctively knowing what is and is not "right". Claude LEvi-Strauss spent years living with Native American tribes in the Amazon, and later collected much data from Australian Aborigenes and North-West Pacific Indians. He was opposed to simplistic views of Totemism as simply "ancestor origin stories" and claimed that Totemism was an expression of a complete, ideological, representation of the world, in which each element was a consequence of a symbolic relationship, not the originator of the relationship. In other words, according to structuralism, the relationship comes first, the specific element only exists because it is required by the relationship. The snake will represent "earth", the salmon "water" and the falcon "air", because such a scheme enables to classify and organize the world along a tripartite structure which also enables to organize society among a tripartite structure. Each society has its own logic, which every member instinctively follows, which ascribes a role to each element stemming from its relationship with the other elements within the structure. The individual elements (kinship, taboos, names of spirits, rites, artistic drawings, given names, myths, cooking methods, management of territorial resources ...) make limited sense on their own, but become infinetly more intelligible
Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 21.12.2011 20:22, Marv Gandall wrote: But there's no quarrelling with his thesis that "Europe's Left has suffered a calamitous six months. Socialist governments have met historic defeats in Portugal and Spain. Greece’s Pasok party was toppled by an EU technocrat Putsch. Ireland’s soft-Left Fianna Foil lost every seat in Dublin ..." Whatever about the Social Democratic parties in Greece, Spain and Portugal, describing Fianna Fáil as "soft-left" is ludicrous beyond all compare. The Fianna Fáil has been THE party of the Irish ruling class since the 1930s when it also managed to pick up a considerable degree of support in working class areas partly because of the uttter patheticness of Irish social democracy almost since its inception (now on display yet again), partly by clever use of populist and anti-imperialist demands in its early days and partly because of a degree of clientelism that would have made Tammany Hall blush. The fact that the back of this party was broken in the last election is a major positive step forward for independent working class politics in Ireland. It's also worth bearing in mind that there are forces on the left in Europe other than discredited social democracy and that international solidarity and internationalism offer a much more fruitful perspective for the European working class in the fight against the current EU-imposed measures (read "imposed by the German Merkel government") than Euro-sceptic nationalism as represented by the Torygraph or any of its columnists. #einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 12/21/2011 2:22 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: Yet there is another parallel of equal resonance: the election of the Front Populaire in France with Communist support in May 1936, the cathartic rejection of deflation policy. Whether or not Leon Blum privately wanted to leave the Gold Standard – that inter-war replica of Europe’s unemployment union – the logic of his policies forced the outcome. Orthodoxy was overthrown. But not capitalism. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Link for Post on Conservatism and Racism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi I just accidentally hit "send" ... the post was on the relationship between US Conservatism and Racism. This is the link http://rorotoko.com/interview/20101206_smith_robert_on_conservatism_racism_why_america_they_are_same/ Apologies Ismail Lagardien Nihil humani a me alienum puto Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Conservatism in the USA and its Umbilical Relationship with Racism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In this book I systematically demonstrate the inescapable racism inherent in American conservatism. The argument unfolds in layers. First, I show that ideological conservatism is everywhere and always the conscious and reflective defense of established institutions and ways of life. In the United States this has meant a defense of racism and white supremacy. The first conscious conservative movement in America emerged in the South partly as a reaction to the movement to abolish slavery, and the modern conservative movement in America is rooted partly in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. Second, the substantive ideals of American conservatism—limited government, states’ rights, individualism, property rights, and the prioritizing of liberty over equality—when applied consistently inevitably result in racism. Third, I show that the ascendancy of the conservative movement to national power with the election of Ronald Reagan was partly based on the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy” of exploiting racist and white supremacist sentiments in the electorate beginning with the election of 1964. I am acutely aware that the argument will strike many Americans—and not just conservatives—as outrageous. Therefore, I approached the analysis and writing with unusual care. I spend the entire first chapter defining the terms of the discourse—conservatism, racism and white supremacy. The remaining chapters are thoroughly referenced and documented. By design, the book combines philosophy, history and political science. Ismail Lagardien Nihil humani a me alienum puto Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Discussion of Occupy Video with Victor Wallis and Joe Ramsey
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == African Ascent with Joseph Ramsey and Victor Wallis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=154LVg9czGk Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Whose Egypt?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Whose Egypt? Adam Shatz The awakening is not over, but the heady days of the Arab Spring have come to an end. The counter-revolution, Régis Debray once observed, is revolutionised by the revolution. And so it has been. In Syria, protests have degenerated into sectarian warfare, fomented by a thuggish ruling clique that seems ready to bring the entire country down with it. In Yemen, President Saleh has agreed to stand down after nearly three decades in power, but on the northern border with Saudi Arabia, the dirty war between Shia Houthi rebels and Salafists is getting nastier. In Libya, the oil companies are doing business again, but the country’s new rulers, swept to power by Nato, are talking about restoring Sharia law, perhaps even polygamy. In Bahrain, a peaceful uprising by the Shia majority has been crushed by the al-Khalifa monarchy, with help from troops dispatched by Saudi Arabia. (Tehran, the Saudis claimed, was behind the protests, an assertion rejected by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry in November.) Never keen on popular politics, and furious with the Americans for ‘deserting’ their mutual friend Mubarak, the Saudis have been assiduously fighting the revolutionary wave, mostly with petrodollars, sometimes with guns. The Obama administration was not pleased with the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, but it barely uttered a word of criticism: the Fifth Fleet is stationed there, and preserving the special relationship with the House of Saud is paramount. full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n01/adam-shatz/whose-egypt Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
