[Marxism] Hey, Do you guys ever read the Libya Herald?

[Clay Claiborne]

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I see a lot of loose talk on this list and on the left in general about
what has happen to Libya and what is going on now, who is running the
show, etc. While I know some on the left prefer a fact-free diet, for
the rest of you, if you really want to know what is going on in Libya
now and why I call it the most important revolution of the 21st Century
(so far), I suggest you get familiar with the new independent [English
language] Libya Herald .

For example, today's headlines:

Extra armed forces deployed to Ghadames


Defence Minister's son killed in car accident


New Benghazi council to elect leader on Friday



Ministry of Culture and Civil Society to regulate relationship between
foreign and domestic NGOs


Jordan, Libya sign medical cooperation accord


Cyrenaica Federalists quit Wadi Al-Ahmar


Rixos manager arrested, then released amid food poisoning claims


Foreign Minister heads to Tunisia for Fifth China-Arab Forum


Cars without number plates to be impounded


Constitutional legality of Law 37 to be debated in open court


Deputy PM Abushagur heading back to Mauritania; discussions to include
Al-Senussi


Body of Zlinten man tortured to death dumped in local hospital


Media event for The Nation Party on 2 June


Local administration law sent to NTC, should be passed soon: Minister


NTC denies announcing election postponement


Just how serious is Derna's "Islamist problem"?


Antiquities thieves arrested say Benghazi police




Or this opinion piece about a possible delay in the elections presently
still scheduled for Juneteenth inspite of what you may have read from
Reuters

and others:
>
>
>   The delay in elections and optimism in Libya
>
> The talk of elections being postponed for a few weeks is doing rounds
> again but the response from the common man is not of surprise or anger
> but of wait --- the wait to hear the new date of the elections, if
> there is one, and get ready for the upcoming storm of political activity.
>
> A minor delay seems possible as there are certain things that
> elections commission has not yet finished like finalizing the voters'
> and candidates' lists and the distribution of electoral material.
>
> The election commission has so far done a good job by registering
> roughly 80 percent of eligible voters and that too within only four
> months of its formation and just eight months after the fighting
> stopped, which itself shows the willingness of the Libyan people to
> move on.
>
Note this: On the left we hear that all is chaos in post-Qaddafi Libya.
Armed gangs rule! Fighting everywhere! No viable government! Country
falling apart! Meanwhile, far away from the cynical pronouncements of
the left, the liberals and the imperialists, the Libyan's have quietly
registered 2.7 million voters and already held local elections in
Misrata and Benghazi without incident.
>
> The job of the commission is not easy, especially with all the
> warranted and unwarranted criticism and yet they didn't let the Libyan
> people down and so far successfully achieved the targets set by them.
>
> The commission has worked hard, so much so that the talk only a few
> months ago of delaying the elections for three to four months seems
> unreal now. That 

Re: [Marxism] White Slavery: The Irish Slaves That Time Forgot

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 31.05.2012 18:39, michael perelman wrote:


Regarding Irish slavery, here is a section from my new book ms. Sex,
Lies, and Economics.

   Earlier, Petty proposed to improve upon his dream by engineering a
wholesale dislocation of the Irish people.  This measure offered a
potential means to wipe out backwardness while providing profit both
for affluent people, such as himself, as well as those with whom he
sought to ingratiate himself.  One such program had already begun
before Petty's arrival -- the enslavement of the Irish people sent to
be employed in the Americas.  This program peaked around 1652-3, just
when Petty landed in Ireland (Jordan and Walsh 2008, p. 147).  The
scale of this program was substantial:
   ##It is impossible to say how many shiploads of unhappy Irish were
dispatched to America by the sole negotiation of the commissioners of
precincts. No mention of such shipments would be likely to appear in
the State Papers, and no record of them is likely to be discovered
elsewhere. They must have been very considerable in number. It is only
in those cases of a merchant or captain who petitioned the government
for special license to transport such vagrants that any information
remains.  [Smith 1927, p. 165]
   Also, on September 18, 1655, Henry Cromwell wrote to Secretary of
State, John Thurloe, that 1,500 or 2,000 boys of twelve or fourteen
years be sent to the West Indies plantations (Smith 1927, p. 169).
The best estimate from the number of Irish transported to Europe and
the West Indies runs about 50,000 (Gwynn 1931, p. 301).


I don't know the sources but I do remember being taught about Irish 
youth being shipped to the West Indies as slaves in school in Ireland in 
the early 1960s. I believe Montserrat was one major destination - 
surnames of Irish origin are quite common there as is red hair, 
apparently. At least that's what we were told.


I'M very interested in reading more about this, being as I'm descended 
from people who were sent "to Hell or to Connacht" and arrived in the 
latter.


Einde O'Callaghan


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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Clay Claiborne]

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On 05/31/2012 06:34 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
The PSL article claimed that the lack of democracy in Syria can be 
traced to external threats. Just so there is no mistake, let me quote 
the article:


"Even in countries that broke free from imperialist domination – such 
as Syria, Libya and Iran following the 1979 revolution –the threat of 
invasion and overthrow were not exactly conducive to the expansion of 
democratic rights." 
Boy, the PSL is more screwed up than I thought. They imply that the 
expansion of democratic rights make a country weaker in resisting 
imperialism.


It is precisely the lack of democratic rights in Syria, Libya and Iran 
that has necessarily given rise to the democratic movements against the 
national state that are providing the opening for the imperialist to 
meddle in the affairs of these countries.


Please note I said meddle in, not hijack. I for one don't see the 
imperial powers, even the US, as all powerful so I immediately conclude 
that because they are involved, they are in control.


I'm not one of those who think they run the NTC in Libya with no visible 
or verifiable presence on the ground when after almost a decade of 
occupation in Iraq with hundreds of thousands of troops, they haven't 
even been able to manage a government there that won't back Assad.


In Solidarity,

Clay


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[Marxism] Video: David Hicks speaks at Julian Assange protest in Sydney, dire warning of what could lay in store

[Stuart Munckton]

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http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51187

-- 
“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] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Clay Claiborne]

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On 05/31/2012 09:43 AM, Eli Stephens wrote:
> Ooops! Too bad the author of this speculation failed to note that in fact,
> the majority of those killed in Houla were NOT killed with heavy weapons at
> all, but at close range.
It sound like to really didn't read my piece before commenting on it,
but here it is again, from my comments to the blog:

/Some of the killing was done with heavy weapons. We know Assad's
forces did that because only they had heavy weapons. Most of the
people were killed by small arms and knives, but they were part of
the same target./

/One theory, backed up by a mountain of eye-witness testimony, says
that the same force that did the shelling and had the tanks, then
sent in, as would be expected, ground forces, that finished people off./

/The pro-Assad theory is that it was ATGs that finished off what the
Assad forces started, making it some sort of joint operation. That
begs a number of questions 1.) why would Assad's opposition target
their own people, and at the same time as Assad? 2) Where were
Assad's ground forces and why didn't he send them in after he killed
by shelling. Why was there no big close-combat battle between these
alleged ATGs and the Syrian Army?/

/So far, NATO has no role, and wants no role, in Syria. People who
focus on that scare, people who peddle the fake BBC picture to cast
doubt on what really happened in Houla and people who like to
pretend that there isn't a mountain of real evidence of Assad's
responsibility for the slaughter of peaceful protesters are
objectively pro-Assad and a very low form of human being./


>
> The author seems to believe that no attempts at disinformation could
> possibly come from the "activists" who are routinely quoted in the Western
> corporate media. 
Where is your head? Because I question one attempt at disinformation you
jump to the conclusion that I believe no attempts at disinformation is
possible. Well that is a much easier position to critique because it
would be absurd if I held it.

Now I have a question for you and others that argue that publishing this
fake photo, for all of 90 minutes according to the BBC, was a purposeful
act by the BBC:

The BBC has very extensive inventories of images of atrocities, owing to
their long history of reporting on such things. Why would they
purposefully pick an image they didn't own, and image already publicly
available on the Internet and already publicly identified as being from
Iraq in 2003? Do you really think they are that stupid? There are much
better examples of purposefully media misinformation including from the
BBC. I personally have no doubt that they published what they thought
was an image from Houla and they pulled it as soon as it was exposed as
a fake. One could argue that they were so hot to tar Assad with a
massacre that they didn't do the fact checking they should have done.
One could argue that they shouldn't publish any uploads from Syrian
activist until they can verify the fact themselves. This will certainly
be the view of the regime that won't allow them to verify the facts for
themselves. And its supporter too, I might add.

As I said in the diary, I think sowing doubt and mistrust for these
activist-journalist was the real target of this disinformation
operation, and the more I look into it, the more I suspect a pro-Assad
setup. I have been doing some work on the timeline of this fake photo
and it makes for interesting reading. First, this all took place in the
middle of the night. The BBC editor claim it was only up for 90 min. ,
the photographer says he spotted it on the BBC website, at 3am, and a
number of screen shots from various timezones were taken while it was up
and have been circulated by pro-Assad websites to imply that every
report about the Houla massacre is as fake - I think that was another
target of this operation.

I have also been trying to trace the origins of this Iraq picture being
IDed as Houla. I now know it was circulated that way via Twitter before
the BBC got hold of it. It was retweet at least 50 times. I think I have
even IDed Tweet Zero
, but would
like to check more before I name names. Interestingly, this fake picture
from Houla appears to have shown up on Twitter just minutes after a real
picture  from
Houla started being tweeted and retweeted 958 times.

The trick of it is that you are less likely to question evidence of
something that you already know to be true. Someone can make you a
"gift" of such evidence, then expose it and used that to entirely
discredit you and imply that your whole proposition is as false. Th

Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/12 8:36 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:


You're kidding, right? Instead of discussing your blatant falsification of
the PSL's characterization of the Syrian state, you want me to discuss a
speculative (and completely irrelevant) hypothetical which quite literally
has no answer and never will.


You had the gumption to compare Allende's Chile to Assad's Syria, not 
me. In fact there is little difference between Baathist rule and 
Mubarak's. The notion that the US considered Syria as some kind of 
obstacle to its interests in the Middle East is a *joke*.


The PSL article claimed that the lack of democracy in Syria can be 
traced to external threats. Just so there is no mistake, let me quote 
the article:


"Even in countries that broke free from imperialist domination – such as 
Syria, Libya and Iran following the 1979 revolution –the threat of 
invasion and overthrow were not exactly conducive to the expansion of 
democratic rights."


This is bullshit.

The Baathists were never interested in democracy, nor was Qaddafi, nor 
were the clerics in Iran. They used repression to defend their *class 
interests*. The PSL is basically provided left cover for disgusting 
dictatorships in the same fashion that the CPUSA provided cover for 
Stalin through Brezhnev. It is really weird that the only true 
expression of Stalinism today comes out of a current that had its 
origins in the Trotskyist movement nearly 60 years ago when someone 
named Sam Marcy decided that Soviet tanks were defending "socialism" in 
Hungary.



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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[DW]

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So, first, Eli, Proyect corrected his grammar and noted what you keep
trying to hammer in for YOU to avoid a real discussion However,
one can't but suspect by implication that the mentioning of
'Socialism' in a polemical article about the nature of the regime in
Syria that there wasn't a little approval of this. Just say'n...

So, here are some points made by Ralph Schoenmen when I showed him
this debate. It was in response to articles that appeared on the
pro-Assad Global Research site to a third party who writes for them:

The Ba'ath Party has always been an anti-communist nationalist
formation with its own ties to world capital. Within the Ba'ath Party
itself, Hafez al Assad was part of a right-wing faction.

The President of Syria under the Baath was Nureddin Al-Atassi. His
Presidency coincided with the plots by Israel and Jordan to massacre
the Palestinians in their camps in Jordan. Al-Atassi challenged this.
He stationed the Syrian army on the Jordanian border and warned King
Hussain that an attack on the Palestinian camps would be met by Syrian
intervention to defend the Palestinian people.

Hafez al Assad and members of the miilitary staged a coup and
overthrew al-Atassi. He then demobilized the Syrian army from the
Jordan border.

Black September followed shortly thereafter with the massacre of the
Palestinians and their expulsion to Lebanon in great numbers.

The Lebanese civil war would ensue in which the right-wing Phalange
Party in Lebanon - based upon Franco's fascist phalange in Spain - was
pitted against the PLO, the Sunni Muslems of the North and the Shia
villagers of the South of Lebanon. They were conjoined to the Druze.

The right-wing Phalange was backed by Israel for which it was a
surrogate. The Phalange had notorious killer militia that called for
the extermination of the Palestinian virus.

The alliance between the PLO and the Sunni and Shia and the Druze had
a large popular base. They defeated the Phalange who were down to 24
hours of ammunition.

At this point, Hafez al Assad invaded Lebanon on the side if the
Phalange. Syrian troops surrounded the huge Palestinan refugee camp of
Tal al-Zattar.  Then the killer militia of Bashar Gemayel
systematically slaughtered the Palestinian inhabitants.

The head of the Syrian army oversaw this in the company of Israel's
Defense Minister Shimon Peres.

THIS is the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad and of his son Bashar.

Its secret police jailed and tortured Communists, left intelligentsia,
trade unionists - and the U.S deported leftist Syrians who were
promptly disappeared into dungeons.

There was a popular uprising in Hama. The Baath regime massacred the
population in one of the most bloodthirsty repressions of the current
era.

The popular opposition to the regime is rooted in this history.

It reached a new stage 14 months ago - largely in response to the Arab Spring.

Hence, the repression by the Syrian regime is real enough.

It is in these conditions that imperialism stepped in - exactly
parallel to why and how they did so in Libya.

Now, the terror operations and the armed corridors and the full scale
imperial propaganda machine is mobilized to replace the regime BUT the
basic predicate for this has been the coordinated imperial hijacking
of the popular opposition and substituting these CIA/Saudi/Turkish,
Qatari terror squads combined with old CIA "Al Qaeda" (right-wing
muslim operatives) elements.

What I am saying to you,  is that the left camp that romanticizes
Qaddafi or Bashar al-Assad, is pitted against not just imperial
plotting but against the Syrian people.

It is not true that the Syrian government was not repressive or did
not target civilian centers of disaffection brutally.
It is not true that the popular opposition had no political opening
under the regime.

The opposition movement was genuine and in its dynamics reflected the
experience of the opposition in Egypt and in Bahrain.

So in exposing the brutal and cynical nature of the imperial operation
in Syria - as in Libya - it is no service to the population in either
country - nor to the truth - to confound resistance to imperial
aggression with  sanitizing the regime.

If we do this, we play into the hands of imperialism and we leave the
Syrian people with no options.

That is my assessment.

 R. S.


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Re: [Marxism] Glow in the dark sushi

[Rod Holt]

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Dear Comrades
My reply to DCQ of Wednesday, May 30,2012 was based on my reading of the first 
sentence of his last paragraph: "My opposition to nuclear power doesn't come 
from Luddism or ignorance, but from a knowledge of our own ignorance." 

But not that alone. DCQ also states when speaking of the article Proyect 
forwarded:  "I took the point of linking the article to be that the speed with 
which the radiation from Fukushima spread both into the food chain and around 
the world surprised everyone, even the supposed experts who thought they could 
predict things like this. This is a chink in the armor of the defenders of 
nuclear power who claim they know all of the consequences and are very careful, 
at least now, even if they weren't in the past, and it's very safe, or at least 
safer than anything else, yada yada yada. The truth is, we don't really know 
much about nuclear physics, in the big scheme of things. And, as much as we 
know about it in pristine lab conditions, we know even less about how these 
isotopes and elements interact with our ecosystems and bodies."

As I read this, I took DCQ's point of difference to be, The problem today is 
not only our immense ignorance, but further, our ignorance of what we don't 
know. It was this argument I objected to in my reply of May 30. I believe that 
if what I wrote were taken in this context, there would have been no further 
discussion. The point DCQ makes is that the scientists were "surprised" by the 
appearance of cesium-137 in young tuna that had migrated from the seas around 
Japan. Please consider that 5 Bq of Cs-137 is 1.6 x 10^-15g or 1.6 billionth of 
a microgram of Cs-137. The only way a scientist could find such a quantity of a 
substance is to LOOK FOR IT. They were—as a fact—looking for it. I guess they 
knew what they didn't know, after all. Or maybe it was an experiment.

I realize that numbers of such magnitude are strange to us, perhaps 
unfathomable to the casual layman. But there are people who deal in things like 
this (with or without the profit motive). I mentioned Avogadro's number in one 
previous reply, as some may remember. Using that number, we find that (at 5 Bq) 
there are about 7 million atoms of Cs-137 in a kilogram of meat of the sampled 
young tuna, or roughly 10 cesium atoms in 3 trillion trillion trillion atoms of 
everything else. (That's a real needle in a hay stack, for sure.) Now, if 
anybody wants more mind-blowing numbers, just write and I'll talk of the 
probability of a tuna cell's DNA being damaged by one or more of the 3 1/2 
million gamma rays given off by the Cs-137 over the first 30-year period. Then, 
what is the likelihood of damaged DNA being passed on to following cells; then 
what is the likelihood that the result is a cancerous cell; then what is the 
likelihood of … (ad nausium).

I'd like a reference from someone about the impact of nuclear testing fallout 
on children born ca. atom bomb testing; Hans put it "There are timeseries 
showing a correlation between nuclear testing in the USA and lowered IQ levels 
of babies born at that time." I'd love to see this statistical legerdemain. 

And for those who want to speculate, what would the life expectancy be for 
people here and elsewhere were it not for atom bomb testing? Another "and" … 
Ever since the atom bomb tests and nuclear power plants, people in the US have 
been living longer and longer. That's a really clear correlation that any fool 
can plainly see. (life expectancy at birth in 1945 was 65.9 years and in 2010, 
78.3 years.)  (And the automobile really helped out too. Before Ford, the life 
expectancy was 60.4.)

--rod

On May 30, 2012, at 8:26 AM, DCQ wrote:

> My opposition to nuclear power doesn't come from Luddism or ignorance, but 
> from a knowledge of our own ignorance.



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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Eli Stephens]

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Louis: "Thanks for answering my question about whether Allende would have
ever agreed to extraordinary renditions in partnership with the CIA. Now I
can go back to sleep."

You're kidding, right? Instead of discussing your blatant falsification of
the PSL's characterization of the Syrian state, you want me to discuss a
speculative (and completely irrelevant) hypothetical which quite literally
has no answer and never will.

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




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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/12 6:50 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

Second of all, have you been reading "The Stalin school of falsification"?
Because here we go from later in the article, a sentence describing Syria
TODAY:

"Syria¹s regime can be characterized as bourgeois-nationalist, which means
that it stands for the country¹s independence, but is organized along
capitalist lines."



Thanks for answering my question about whether Allende would have ever 
agreed to extraordinary renditions in partnership with the CIA. Now I 
can go back to sleep.



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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Eli Stephens]

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Louis: "From the above article:
In 1963, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party took power in Syria. The Ba¹ath
Party, which also took power in Iraq the same year, had been founded in
Syria in 1947 but established branches in different Arab countries. Under
the motto of "Unity, Liberty, Socialism," Ba¹athism represented a left
tendency of the Arab nationalist movement.

By the mid-1960s, the left wing of the Ba¹ath under the leadership of Salah
Jadid had defeated rightist forces within the party. Jadid launched the
widespread nationalization of industry and agriculture and extensive social
programs to benefit the workers and peasants."

First of all, NOTHING in what you clipped from the article says Syria is (or
ever was) a socialist state. NOTHING.

Second of all, have you been reading "The Stalin school of falsification"?
Because here we go from later in the article, a sentence describing Syria
TODAY:

"Syria¹s regime can be characterized as bourgeois-nationalist, which means
that it stands for the country¹s independence, but is organized along
capitalist lines."

Anyone who pretends that this article characterizes Syria as a "socialist
state," or that the PSL does, is simply lying. Pure and simple. And
willfully.

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




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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/12 5:30 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

By the way, Louis, you really must learn how to read. Saying that "Syria
remains too much like the socialist state the Arab Socialist Ba¹ath Party
founders envisaged for it, and too little like a platform for increasing the
profits of overseas banks, investors and corporations" is NOT the same as
saying that "Syria is a socialist state."


Okay, why quibble. The PSL must agree with Gowans that Syria "remains 
too much like the socialist state" that the Baathists envisioned. that 
position, of course, can only be sustained by ignoring economic facts.




There are MANY examples of countries which few if any people here would
characterize as a "socialist state," but which were still in the crosshairs
of imperialism because they were "too much like [a] socialist state" - Chile
under Allende, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, Venezuela under Chavez,
etc., etc.


Do you think that Allende would have collaborated with the CIA to have 
people brought to Chile to be tortured?




And while we're on the subject of not reading very carefully (or willfully
ignoring what you read), there's this latest comment from you, intended to
warn off "new comrades" against believing anything I have to write,
apparently: "Well, it just might strike some people as odd that you are so
intent on making Assad look good." Apparently you think that refuting the
lies that appear in the imperialist press can only have one motive, to "make
Assad look good."


You can't have it both ways, Eli. As long as the PSL prettifies the 
Baathists, you will be reminded of this. Stephen Gowans is an 
embarrassment for the left. Anybody who has good words to say about 
Mugabe is pretty messed up.




And while we're on the subject of slanders, you really should examine your
motives for claiming that the PSL characterizes Syria as a "socialist
state." Here's the most extensive recent analysis of the Syrian situation I
could find:

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/oppose-intervention-vs-syria.html



From the above article:
In 1963, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party took power in Syria. The Ba’ath 
Party, which also took power in Iraq the same year, had been founded in 
Syria in 1947 but established branches in different Arab countries. 
Under the motto of "Unity, Liberty, Socialism," Ba’athism represented a 
left tendency of the Arab nationalist movement.


By the mid-1960s, the left wing of the Ba’ath under the leadership of 
Salah Jadid had defeated rightist forces within the party. Jadid 
launched the widespread nationalization of industry and agriculture and 
extensive social programs to benefit the workers and peasants.


---

I much prefer the analysis of the Monthly Review from around that time:

The recent coups in Iraq and Syria realize the six-year-old Eisenhower 
Doctrine’s goal of anti-Communist “Arab unity” under United States 
protection. The coups’ authors are the international oil interests, the 
U.S., and their local placemen—the Baath and Arab Nationalist 
(Nasserist) parties, assorted militarists and feudal left over from 
Hashemite rule in Iraq, and in Syria elements from the right-wing of the 
Moslem Brotherhood.







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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[En Passant with John Passant]

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Louis says: 'Now, as I understand it, the leadership of PSL claims to be 
Marxist. If they can endorse Gowans's rather hallucinatory claims  about a 
"socialist state" in Syria, you can expect other rather  far-fetched 
analyses to flow from that.'


Hear hear Louis.

John Passant 





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[Marxism] Syrian government concludes investigation

[Eli Stephens]

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http://news.yahoo.com/syria-anti-government-groups-committed-houla-massacre-
161038724.html

Unfortunately there isn't enough in this article to assess its
trustworthiness. I can predict one thing with 100% certainty - the report
will be completely discounted by the U.S. government and the corporate
media. Oh, and by Louis Proyect as well.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria said on Thursday a preliminary investigation showed
that anti-government armed groups carried out a massacre last week in Houla
region with the aim of encouraging foreign military intervention against the
government.

   Brigadier General Qassem Jamal Suleiman, head of the investigation
committee formed by the government, said the victims were families "who
refused to oppose the government and were at odds with the armed groups".

   He said that before the massacre, 600 to 800 armed men attacked posts
of the security forces in the area while armed men from outside Houla
murdered the families, adding that many of the victims were relatives of a
member of parliament.

   "The aim is to bring foreign military intervention against the
country in any form and way," he told reporters at a news conference in
Damascus that was aired on television.

   The massacre in Houla, in which 108 people were killed, was condemned
around the world. Western powers expelled Syrian diplomats and Syrian
rebels, aiming to topple President Bashar al-Assad, urged Kofi Annan to
declare his seven-week-old ceasefire plan a failure.

   But Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said Syria wanted the
peace plan to succeed in ending the violence so the 14-month-old crisis
could be resolved through political dialogue.

   He also called on opposition groups that reject foreign intervention
to come to Syria for talks with the government.

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




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[Marxism] The company they keep

[Eli Stephens]

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Since Louis started the "guilt by association" thread, I thought I'd add
this which just came across the wires:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31165

CIA SABOTAGE OF SYRIA PEACE PLAN:  Miami Cuban Dissidents Join Hands with
Syrian "Opposition"

An excerpt from the "agreement":

Cuban-Syrian Joint Declaration of Agreement

We, Cubans and Syrians, in resistance against the tyrannies which deprive us
of our God-given, inalienable rights, proclaim: That human rights and
dignity are universal and intrinsic to the human condition, and that all
humans are created equal in obeisance to same; That in defense of these
rights, the Cuban Resistance and the Syrian Revolution agree to unify our
struggles in order to accelerate the hour of liberation; Therefore:

The Cuban Resistance recognizes the Syrian Revolution as a legitimate
expression of the highest aims and ideals of the Syrian people;

The Syrian Revolution recognizes the Agreement for Democracy as a legitimate
expression of the highest aims and ideals of the Cuban people;

The Cuban Resistance joins those nations, which have recognized the Syrian
Revolution as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people;

The Syrian Revolution adopts the Vilnius Resolution of the Parliamentary
Forum of the Community of Democracies in recognizing the Cuban Resistance as
a legitimate representative of the Cuban people;

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




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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Eli Stephens]

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By the way, Louis, you really must learn how to read. Saying that "Syria
remains too much like the socialist state the Arab Socialist Ba¹ath Party
founders envisaged for it, and too little like a platform for increasing the
profits of overseas banks, investors and corporations" is NOT the same as
saying that "Syria is a socialist state."

There are MANY examples of countries which few if any people here would
characterize as a "socialist state," but which were still in the crosshairs
of imperialism because they were "too much like [a] socialist state" - Chile
under Allende, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, Venezuela under Chavez,
etc., etc. Of course it's not JUST being "too much like a socialist state"
which puts you in those crosshairs, as a country like Sweden proves; no,
it's being "too much like a socialist state" COMBINED with political
independence, with probably more emphasis on the latter than the former.

And while we're on the subject of not reading very carefully (or willfully
ignoring what you read), there's this latest comment from you, intended to
warn off "new comrades" against believing anything I have to write,
apparently: "Well, it just might strike some people as odd that you are so
intent on making Assad look good." Apparently you think that refuting the
lies that appear in the imperialist press can only have one motive, to "make
Assad look good." Since you refuse to refute those lies, but apparently
accept them, I can only assume that YOUR motive it to "make Hillary Clinton
and Susan Rice (et al.) look good." Are you happy now?

And while we're on the subject of slanders, you really should examine your
motives for claiming that the PSL characterizes Syria as a "socialist
state." Here's the most extensive recent analysis of the Syrian situation I
could find:

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/oppose-intervention-vs-syria.html

It's characterization of Syria as a "bourgeois-nationalist state" couldn't
be clearer, even to someone intent on misreading it.

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




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[Marxism] 'Change the world without taking power, Marxist edition'

[John Riddell]

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Published today in http://johnriddell.wordpress.com: 


Change the world without taking power, Marxist edition


In the following guest article, Pham Binh, responding to the Weekly Worker's
Eddie Ford, argues that the working people of Greece, now engaged in a
titanic struggle against capitalist austerity, should seek governmental
power -JR

By Pham Binh. The Weekly Worker's Eddie Ford wrote richly detailed and
engaging overviews of a political earthquake in Greece that is rattling
international investors and European governments alike: SYRIZA, a radical
left coalition, may soon control the Greek government. 

For the full text, go to 
http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/.

To post further comment, click on the "comment" line at the bottom of this
article.

To receive e-mail alerts regarding new articles on my website, fill in the
box "To be notified of new posts" in the right-hand column at
http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/.

John

 

 


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[Marxism] Request #2!

[james pitman]

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 Hi comrades,

Another request if anybody can help?

'Marxism and Methodological Individualism' by Jutta Weldes, Theory and
Society, Vol.18, no.3 (1989)

Comradely,

Jamie.





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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/12 4:43 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

Louis, any chance you might actually respond to what I WROTE (in this case,
about the massacre in Houla and the fake BBC photo) instead of posting
random McCarthyite accusations (bringing in such utterly extraneous issues
as Robert Mugabe) about not even me, but friends of mine?


Well, it just might strike some people as odd that you are so intent on 
making Assad look good. So I am providing some background. We are 
dealing with a current on the American left that is okay with calling 
Syria a "socialist state". That is highly problematic and explains all 
the frenetic spin-doctoring. I doubt that you or the PSL would, for 
example, do that kind of "behind the news" journalism for the government 
of Sri Lanka that is also involved with bloody repression. But then 
again, since it calls itself "The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri 
Lanka", who knows.



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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Eli Stephens]

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Louis, any chance you might actually respond to what I WROTE (in this case,
about the massacre in Houla and the fake BBC photo) instead of posting
random McCarthyite accusations (bringing in such utterly extraneous issues
as Robert Mugabe) about not even me, but friends of mine?

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




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[Marxism] BREAKING: GOP Judges Declare DOMA Unconstitutional

[Ralph Johansen]

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http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=8868.150648.mOjB_5&id=936544&rd=1&t=2 




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[Marxism] Journal article request

[james pitman]

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Hi comrades,

Can anybody access this article and send me the pdf if possible?

'Individualism, Capitalism and the Dominant Culture: A Note on the Debate'
by Bryan S. Turner, Journal of Sociology (Sage).

Solidarity,

Jamie.

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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Louis Proyect]

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On 5/31/2012 12:43 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

As with the Houla massacre, we know that the blame lies
squarely with the Assad government because much of the killing is done
with heavy weapons the opposition doesn't have.


Ooops! Too bad the author of this speculation failed to note that in fact,
the majority of those killed in Houla were NOT killed with heavy weapons at
all, but at close range.



For new subscribers, it should be understood that Eli is a 
supporter of the group Party for Socialism and Liberation that has 
a rather odd take on the Baathist ruling party in Syria. They 
posted an article by Canadian blogger Stephen Gowans, a great 
admirer of Robert Mugabe, that says the following: "All in all, 
Syria remains too much like the socialist state the Arab Socialist 
Ba’ath Party founders envisaged for it, and too little like a 
platform for increasing the profits of overseas banks, investors 
and corporations."


Now, as I understand it, the leadership of PSL claims to be 
Marxist. If they can endorse Gowans's rather hallucinatory claims 
about a "socialist state" in Syria, you can expect other rather 
far-fetched analyses to flow from that.





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[Marxism] A brief response to the Bolshevik Tendency

[Ken Hiebert]

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I regularly read Socialist Action  and don't often have reason to disagree with 
their line.  But last September when I read their article Imperialist Victory 
Is No Gain For Libyan People 
http://socialistaction.blogspot.ca/2011/09/imperialist-victory-is-no-gain-for.html
  I was moved to write a response.  I circulated it to those I thought might be 
interested and gave them permission to pass it along as they saw fit.  Before 
long it was on the International Viewpoint website alongside the SA article and 
other contributions on Libya. 
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2301

More recently I learned that my short piece was quoted in an article on the 
website of the Bolshevik Tendency. 
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no34/ibt_1917_34_02_libya_and_left.html  There's 
nothing wrong with that.  My article was very public. 

I am sometimes too cryptic  in speaking and writing.  This can lead to 
misunderstandings.
In my piece I said,  "If indeed, '... .Libya’s short-lived February 2011 ‘Arab 
Spring’ was rapidly transformed into a six-month imperialist-led onslaught...,' 
doesn’t this show that the leadership of rival political groups, such as the 
Workers World Party, was more far-sighted than the leadership of SA?" 
What I was referring to was the hostility from the very beginning on the part 
of the Workers World Party and others to the original revolt, even before the 
NATO intervention.  But I did not make that clear, so I cannot blame the BT for 
seeing this through their own lens.   The BT reports it this way.  "Hiebert 
suggests that the logic of SA’s new position means that those groups that 
wanted to see a victory by Qaddafi’s forces against NATO were 'more far-sighted 
than the leadership of SA'."  
Even so, I can't see why calling for "...a victory by Qaddafi’s forces against 
NATO..." would require foresight.  Isn't it simply the expression of a 
political position already adhered to?

The BT is interested in one part of my argument and that is the part they 
quote.  There was another part of my argument that might be summed up under the 
heading What do we have to say to the Libyan people?
"If there are people in Libya who wish to follow the advice of SA, how should 
they be relating to the struggle today? Should they be putting forward a course 
of action for Libyan working people? What should that be?"
The BT does not appear to be interested in these questions. 

The BT article was picked up by a site known as Libya 360  
http://libya360.wordpress.com/   (This website is closely linked to Syria 360 
http://syria360.wordpress.com/ and to Ephmeris 360 - 9/11 - NWO  
http://imperialtwilight.wordpress.com/ , check them out).  On the Libya 360 
website the BT article Libya and the Left becomes The Left and the Destruction 
of Libya 
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/the-left-and-the-destruction-of-libya/ 
 If there are other alterations to the article, they are not immediately 
apparent to me.  Libya 360 does the bare minimum to acknowledge the source of 
the article.  It wasn't until someone from the BT pointed it out to me that I 
realized you can click on the word Source at the bottom of the article and be 
taken back to the BT site.
The Libya 360 website is, to say the least, eclectic.  Along with articles from 
the left you can access The Green Book By Muammar Gaddafi

Did the Libyan air force bomb Libyan civilians?  
At one point in Libya and the Left the BT says,
"The eagerness with which the overwhelming majority of the world’s 
self-proclaimed “Trotskyist” organizations accepted the imperialist narrative 
graphically illustrates their distance from the political heritage they claim 
to represent."
Earlier in the piece they say,  "The lurid tales of “massacres” of civilians by 
the Libyan air force turned out to be grossly exaggerated."
Two comments.  First, reports of bombing often are lurid.  How else should they 
be?  Secondly, as much as they might wish to, the BT does not deny that Gaddafi 
used his air force against his own people.  Does this make the BT guilty of 
accepting "the imperialist narrative?"
To their credit, while they seek to minimize the significance of the bombing, 
they stop short of actually praising Gaddafi for the measured and restrained 
way that he conducted the bombing.

As the events were unfolding, it was possible to have many different 
appreciations of what was actually happening.  The passage of time will allow 
us to sort out who was right and who was wrong.

Ken Hiebert
May 31, 2012


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Re: [Marxism] Fake Houla Massacre Photo: Was the BBC set up?

[Eli Stephens]

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> As with the Houla massacre, we know that the blame lies
> squarely with the Assad government because much of the killing is done
> with heavy weapons the opposition doesn't have.

Ooops! Too bad the author of this speculation failed to note that in fact,
the majority of those killed in Houla were NOT killed with heavy weapons at
all, but at close range.

The author seems to believe that no attempts at disinformation could
possibly come from the "activists" who are routinely quoted in the Western
corporate media. Unfortunately for that thesis, those activists have been
repeatedly caught with their pants down, claiming the death of various
Syrian government officials who turned out to be alive, and have also been
the ones propagating the absurdity (routinely and dutifully quoted in the
corporate media) that it is the Syrian government which has on several
occasions now bombed MILITARY INTELLIGENCE HEADQUARTERS of its own
government, and killed members of its own military (and not just the
"grunts" in the field) to discredit the opposition.


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




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Re: [Marxism] White Slavery: The Irish Slaves That Time Forgot

[michael perelman]

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Regarding Irish slavery, here is a section from my new book ms. Sex,
Lies, and Economics.

  Earlier, Petty proposed to improve upon his dream by engineering a
wholesale dislocation of the Irish people.  This measure offered a
potential means to wipe out backwardness while providing profit both
for affluent people, such as himself, as well as those with whom he
sought to ingratiate himself.  One such program had already begun
before Petty's arrival -- the enslavement of the Irish people sent to
be employed in the Americas.  This program peaked around 1652-3, just
when Petty landed in Ireland (Jordan and Walsh 2008, p. 147).  The
scale of this program was substantial:
  ##It is impossible to say how many shiploads of unhappy Irish were
dispatched to America by the sole negotiation of the commissioners of
precincts. No mention of such shipments would be likely to appear in
the State Papers, and no record of them is likely to be discovered
elsewhere. They must have been very considerable in number. It is only
in those cases of a merchant or captain who petitioned the government
for special license to transport such vagrants that any information
remains.  [Smith 1927, p. 165]
  Also, on September 18, 1655, Henry Cromwell wrote to Secretary of
State, John Thurloe, that 1,500 or 2,000 boys of twelve or fourteen
years be sent to the West Indies plantations (Smith 1927, p. 169).
The best estimate from the number of Irish transported to Europe and
the West Indies runs about 50,000 (Gwynn 1931, p. 301).
  Charles Hull, Petty scholar and editor of his economic works, was
appalled: "Again and again Petty advocates sweeping public measures
which take no account whatever of the rights and sensibilities of the
citizen.  He is quite ready to suggest that the majority of the Irish
and Scotch be transplanted to England whether they consent or not"
(Hull 1899, p. lxii).
  No evidence survives indicating that Petty ever advocated
transporting the Irish to the colonies.  His silence in this regard is
not evidence of some humanitarian instinct.  Petty's interest was
always personal enrichment and advancement rather than any animosity
toward the Irish.
  Despite the fact that the purpose of his survey was to facilitate
the relocation of Irish, clearing the land for English occupants
conflicted with the English need Irish workers (Gwynn 1931, p. 301).
Specifically, moving too many people from Ireland would deny Petty the
cheap labor he needed to make the development of his Kerry lands
profitable (Roncaglia 1977, p. 5).  For the same reason, he opposed an
earlier scheme to transport the Irish to the province of Connaught.
Again Petty's objection was the damage such a plan would do to his
projects.
  Even so, at one point, Petty went well beyond anything that the
government envisioned, proposing a grandiose scheme for remaking an
Ireland, almost devoid of the Irish people: "there shall be but 300
Thousand Souls in Ireland, and those all Herdsmen and Dairy-Women
(whereas there are now 1300 Thousand of higher Quality)" (Petty 1687b,
p. 559).  In this way, the country would be reduced to "a Kind of
Factory" (Petty 1687b, p. 560).





-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com


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Re: [Marxism] The Story of My Arrest for Disrupting Tony Blair

[Gulf Mann]

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Good advice, apparently painfully learned.

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> Counterpunch May 31, 2012
> Diary of a Mad Carney
> The Story of My Arrest for Disrupting Tony Blair
> by LAWRENCE REICHARD
>
> On May 20 I was arrested for yelling “liar” and “warmonger” at Tony Blair
> as he spoke to the graduating one percenters at Colby College in
> Waterville, Maine, 50 miles from my Bangor home.  As the cops led me away,
> before they arrested me, I calmly led fully 4-6 of them in a serpentine
> pattern weaving in and out of a line of planted stately trees.  It took
> them about four or five trees to figure out I was yanking their chain.  And
> as they led me away I continued to yell.  Hence my arrest.
>
> Much to my surprise the news shot around the world, thanks largely to an
> AP story that cited Blair’s current faux job of negotiating a solution to
> the Palestine problem.  Never mind that he supported Israel’s 2008-2009 war
> on the people of Gaza.
>
> The story of my arrest made papers in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New
> Zealand, Ukraine, Iran and Ghana.  And it made the front page of the Bangor
> Daily News, my hometown paper, replete with my name and mug shot.  That’s
> when things got interesting.
>
> The next day I showed up for a previously scheduled substitute teaching
> gig at Hampden Academy, a public high school in Hampden, Maine, where I had
> been a substitute teacher for more than eight years.  Before first period I
> was asked by a school administrator to keep a low profile.  I agreed to do
> this, and I did.  During the course of the day a half-dozen or so students
> asked me why I had protested Blair, and in a few short, calm sentences I
> told them.  They uniformly supported me, and the students in general were
> more vocally and demonstrably friendly than normal that day.
>
> The next day I got a call from a local TV reporter who said she had heard
> I might be fired from my sub job because of the Tony Blair incident, and
> she asked to interview me.  Thinking it might be an opportunity to further
> publicize Tony Blair’s war crimes, I agreed.
>
> I was wrong.  All the reporter cared about was the possibility of my being
> fired.  All my efforts to direct the interview back to the real issue at
> hand quickly and inexorably found their way to the floor of the editing
> room.  The Iraq war is old news.  It doesn’t sell.
>
> Bright and early the next morning I called my supervisor at Hampden
> Academy and asked to come in and speak with him.  My request was granted.
>  In that meeting I was told that I was innocent  until proven guilty but
> that my presence at Hampden Academy had produced a “carnival-like
> atmosphere” and that this was not needed.
>
> In other words I had been fired.  So much for innocent until proven guilty.
>
> I had been called to sub 12 of the 16 school days prior to my arrest.
>  After my arrest I did not get called for six straight days and I emailed
> the school in an attempt to clarify my status.  I received a reply asking
> me to call the school and I did.  I was then told that I should apply to
> sub elsewhere and that the school wanted things to “calm down a little bit.”
>
> So I went public.  In the week following my arrest the Bangor Daily News
> ran no less than three op-eds about my arrest, one of them by me.  A local
> talk radio station had me on.  And there was the aforementioned TV report.
>  Clearly there was media interest in the story.
>
> I fired off a press release, and I got two bites and one nibble that has
> yet to play out.  The Bangor Daily News wrote an online piece that will
> likely make its print edition, and the same TV reporter called and
> interviewed me again.
>
> Some people are a little slow to learn, and I am apparently one of them.
>  Again I thought this would be an opportunity to talk about a war that has
> killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, has killed almost
> 5,000 Americans, has gravely wounded some 30,000 Americans, has wrought
>  considerable environmental destruction, and has utterly squandered an
> estimated $3 trillion of national wealth.  Meanwhile Hampden Academy is
> laying off personnel.
>
> But the media cares not one whit about all this.  As had happened the week
> before, they wanted to talk only of my firing and the mechanics of my
> arrest, not the real issue at hand – Blair’s extremely costly lies.
>
> And so ends my more than eight years of unblemished subbing at Hampden
> Academy.  In January I was fired from my other job af

[Marxism] The Story of My Arrest for Disrupting Tony Blair

[Louis Proyect]

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Counterpunch May 31, 2012
Diary of a Mad Carney
The Story of My Arrest for Disrupting Tony Blair
by LAWRENCE REICHARD

On May 20 I was arrested for yelling “liar” and “warmonger” at 
Tony Blair as he spoke to the graduating one percenters at Colby 
College in Waterville, Maine, 50 miles from my Bangor home.  As 
the cops led me away, before they arrested me, I calmly led fully 
4-6 of them in a serpentine pattern weaving in and out of a line 
of planted stately trees.  It took them about four or five trees 
to figure out I was yanking their chain.  And as they led me away 
I continued to yell.  Hence my arrest.


Much to my surprise the news shot around the world, thanks largely 
to an AP story that cited Blair’s current faux job of negotiating 
a solution to the Palestine problem.  Never mind that he supported 
Israel’s 2008-2009 war on the people of Gaza.


The story of my arrest made papers in the UK, Ireland, Australia, 
New Zealand, Ukraine, Iran and Ghana.  And it made the front page 
of the Bangor Daily News, my hometown paper, replete with my name 
and mug shot.  That’s when things got interesting.


The next day I showed up for a previously scheduled substitute 
teaching gig at Hampden Academy, a public high school in Hampden, 
Maine, where I had been a substitute teacher for more than eight 
years.  Before first period I was asked by a school administrator 
to keep a low profile.  I agreed to do this, and I did.  During 
the course of the day a half-dozen or so students asked me why I 
had protested Blair, and in a few short, calm sentences I told 
them.  They uniformly supported me, and the students in general 
were more vocally and demonstrably friendly than normal that day.


The next day I got a call from a local TV reporter who said she 
had heard I might be fired from my sub job because of the Tony 
Blair incident, and she asked to interview me.  Thinking it might 
be an opportunity to further publicize Tony Blair’s war crimes, I 
agreed.


I was wrong.  All the reporter cared about was the possibility of 
my being fired.  All my efforts to direct the interview back to 
the real issue at hand quickly and inexorably found their way to 
the floor of the editing room.  The Iraq war is old news.  It 
doesn’t sell.


Bright and early the next morning I called my supervisor at 
Hampden Academy and asked to come in and speak with him.  My 
request was granted.  In that meeting I was told that I was 
innocent  until proven guilty but that my presence at Hampden 
Academy had produced a “carnival-like atmosphere” and that this 
was not needed.


In other words I had been fired.  So much for innocent until 
proven guilty.


I had been called to sub 12 of the 16 school days prior to my 
arrest.  After my arrest I did not get called for six straight 
days and I emailed the school in an attempt to clarify my status. 
 I received a reply asking me to call the school and I did.  I 
was then told that I should apply to sub elsewhere and that the 
school wanted things to “calm down a little bit.”


So I went public.  In the week following my arrest the Bangor 
Daily News ran no less than three op-eds about my arrest, one of 
them by me.  A local talk radio station had me on.  And there was 
the aforementioned TV report.  Clearly there was media interest in 
the story.


I fired off a press release, and I got two bites and one nibble 
that has yet to play out.  The Bangor Daily News wrote an online 
piece that will likely make its print edition, and the same TV 
reporter called and interviewed me again.


Some people are a little slow to learn, and I am apparently one of 
them.  Again I thought this would be an opportunity to talk about 
a war that has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of 
Iraqis, has killed almost 5,000 Americans, has gravely wounded 
some 30,000 Americans, has wrought  considerable environmental 
destruction, and has utterly squandered an estimated $3 trillion 
of national wealth.  Meanwhile Hampden Academy is laying off 
personnel.


But the media cares not one whit about all this.  As had happened 
the week before, they wanted to talk only of my firing and the 
mechanics of my arrest, not the real issue at hand – Blair’s 
extremely costly lies.


And so ends my more than eight years of unblemished subbing at 
Hampden Academy.  In January I was fired from my other job after 
my heavy and much publicized involvement with Occupy Bangor.  I 
was simply told my services were not needed for the time being, 
until further notice, but that I would be called back at some 
point.  But when the state Department of Labor investigated my 
unemployment claim it was told the law firm had no intention of 
calling me back.  And so it is that for the last eight years of my 
work life I

[Marxism] Is Assad losing control?

[Louis Proyect]

==
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==


(A telling piece by a Qaddafi apologist.)

Counterpunch May 31, 2012
Is Assad Losing Control?
Sorting Out the Houla Massacre
by PETER LEE

Juan Cole jumped the gun a bit by attributing the hundred-plus 
deaths in the Syrian town of Houla to a Syrian Army artillery assault.


In a perverse way, a massacre by the Syrian military would have 
been almost a stabilizing phenomenon.


It would have placed the bad-guy hat firmly and irrevocably on the 
heads of the Syrian armed forces.


It would also have served as an affirmation that the Assad regime 
is in complete command of the security forces and responsible for 
the atrocities committed against Syrian civilians.


And it would have given Dr. Cole added ammunition to argue for a 
new humanitarian intervention in Syria against the convenient and 
vulnerable target of the Assad regime, one that might banish the 
embarrassing memory of the last intervention he promoted: the 
fiasco in Libya.


Instead, the Syrian conflict appears to be spiraling out of 
control, with Syrian army military commanders either turning a 
blind eye to, condoning, or supporting the activities of local 
death squads.


The picture, murky as it is, of the atrocity at Houla is of a 
fierce battle between government and insurrectionary forces in 
Houla, followed perhaps by a tactical withdrawal by the rebels. 
Then some combination of soldiers and pro-government irregulars 
moved in for a massacre that might have been local score-settling 
for the assassination of a pro-government informer in a nearby 
village, a horrific warning to Syrian soldiers who defect (Houla 
was reportedly a refuge for many defectors and their families), or 
a brutal escalation in COIN-style terror.


In any case, the people who perpetrated the atrocity apparently 
knew who they were looking for, if a persuasive account in the 
Guardian is accurate:


“They came in armoured vehicles and there were some tanks,” said 
the boy. “They shot five bullets through the door of our house. 
They said they wanted Aref and Shawki, my father and my brother. 
They then asked about my uncle, Abu Haidar. They also knew his name.”


From the point of view of the Assad regime, credible accusations 
that its military, security personnel, and irregulars are 
operating death squads shred its rather threadbare claim to the 
role of protector of Syria’s citizens against terrorists.


As Patrick Cockburn points out in a lengthy piece in CounterPunch, 
the Annan peace process was something of a lifeline for Assad. The 
regime has demonstrated considerable more forbearance than the 
rebels, who would prefer to see the peace process collapse, and 
had little to gain and much to lose from the carnival of massacre 
in Houla.


From the point of view of Assad’s patrons in Russia and China, 
Houla hints that Assad is losing control of the military and 
security apparatus, casting severe doubts on his abilities to 
manage a political transition for Syria.


Reporting from Damascus, Cockburn wrote:

The government in Damascus yesterday appeared to be somewhat 
leaderless and seemed slow to take on board the impact of an 
outrage in which people across the world are blaming the Syrian 
authorities for the murder and mutilation of children. “I get the 
impression that there is nobody in firm control of Syrian policy 
and the Syrian armed forces,” said a diplomat yesterday.


Therefore, Russia and China have both been prompt to call for an 
investigation of the massacre at Houla.
Possible but unlikely outcomes are that Houla turns out to have 
been some hideous false flag operation, or some local freelance 
murder spree.


If, on the other hand, evidence shows that the official security 
and military apparatus, presumably at a local or regional level, 
orchestrated the operation, I expect that Beijing and Moscow will 
be very interested to see if Assad can enforce accountability and 
demonstrate, to the satisfaction of Russia and the PRC if not the 
international community, that he can punish and reassign the 
commanders and security chiefs responsible for dealing the Annan 
plan so conspicuous a setback.


If Assad can’t do it, it is possible that Russia, which is 
reportedly impatient for a change at the top in Syria, will 
probably find somebody who can.


It does not appear that Russia or China (or, for that matter, 
Iran) are interested in backing proxies in a sectarian civil war 
in Syria.  They will support the Annan plan and the political 
process as long as they see a chance for a successor regime to 
claim, even in some diminished way, the mantle of Syrian national 
legitimacy.


If the government becomes irrevocably identified with death squads 
as well as the well-known brutality of its military and security 
apparatus, B

Re: [Marxism] College Graduates on the Brink: A Double Waste

[Mark Lause]

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==


True enough, but the same process pulling them out before they get
their degree .

Things have always been much worse economically for college grads than
the institutions pretended.  I recall when I was starting the process
of fitting in around here twenty years and I'd run into former student
I knew because they worked in restaurants around here.  And, after
they graduated, they'd be doing the same thing in the same restaurant.

But now, evidently, that's an option that's disappeared for them as well.

ML


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Re: [Marxism] College Graduates on the Brink: A Double Waste

[Christopher Hutchinson]

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==


True, but there was a sharp spike in 2010 6,000 college grads enlisted
where as in 2008 only 2,000 college grads enlisted.

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Mark Lause  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> It might be where I'm at, but this has been an ongoing issue for
> twenty years with me. For many years, they kept me teaching those
> large survey sections, where I had the usual proportion of
> stereotypical male freshmen screwup who couldn't get to class, never
> studied or took notes, couldn't get work done on time, and whined
> continually.  My policy is always to be as tough as I can with those
> kids, for all the obvious reasons.
>
> More than I care to remember, after they screwed up everything
> completely, one of them would come up just to let me know that they
> knew they had screwed up but that they had just signed up for the
> military, which was going to "make a man out of them."  This would
> invariabley prove to be the work of some witless adult male in their
> family, who was, of course, not in the military because they had such
> a miserable time there.
>
> And people wonder why professors drink.
>
> ML
>
> 
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>

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Re: [Marxism] College Graduates on the Brink: A Double Waste

[michael perelman]

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==


It makes me sick.  Thanks for your note.

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 5:15 AM, Christopher Hutchinson
 wrote:
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Michael,
> Thank you for writing this. A close friend's husband, a composer with a
> phd, joined the military last year and is now in Iraq. Since then two more
> friends both with college degrees have enlisted. It amazes me because the
> pay is not great. My friend who is now, for lack of a better term, an "army
> wife", living on a base in Hawaii says that rent  is priced well over
> market value and the quarters are shabby. The good news is that she and
> other families on the base participated in Occupy on the island and carried
> signs saying "end the wars." They were also preparing to lead a fight if
> the government shut down and their partners didn't get paid.
>
> chris hutch
>
> On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:51 AM, michael perelman <
> michael.perelm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ==
>> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> ==
>>
>>
>> In the last week, 3 of my best students told me that they were joining
>> the military.  One came for a letter of recommendation and another
>> whom I knew when he was in high school only told me today when I asked
>> about his plans. Another bright young guy from basketball is dropping
>> out to join.  Again, financial considerations are dominant. I assume
>> they are the tip of the iceberg among students with whom I am close.
>> They see no decent job prospects in the civilian sector.  What is
>> going on when our economy creates such a double waste: not providing
>> decent opportunities and then drawing them into a killing machine.
>>
>> --
>> Michael Perelman
>> Economics Department
>> California State University
>> Chico, CA
>> 95929
>>
>> 530 898 5321
>> fax 530 898 5901
>> http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
>>
>> 
>> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
>> Set your options at:
>> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/christopher.hutch%40gmail.com
>>
> 
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> Set your options at: 
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-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com


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[Marxism] A Brief Note on Method

[Ismail Lagardien]

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Pardon the pretentious subject ...

Just thought I should mention the standard Twitter rule :^;

Retweeting is not endorsement. I am not now, or never have been a fan of Dan 
Quayle. Sometimes I read stuff and wonder what everyone else on the two lists 
think.

Dasoll
 

Ismail Lagardien

Nihil humani a me alienum puto

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Re: [Marxism] Fascism in Germany: How Hitler Destroyed the World’s Most Powerful Labour Movement

[Tom Cod]

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[consistent with this, today this group calls unions themselves, not
their leaders, institutions of capitalist rule that must be rejected
by workers.  Thus during the auto strike, they aimed their main fire
at the UAW]

Author’s Postscript

After the completion of the foregoing Appendix, the author came into
the possession of the Draft Political Perspectives of the WRP’s
Special Conference, 13-14 July 1974. The general line and method of
this document encapsulates the enclosed world of the sectarian. First
there is intoned the ritualistic chant of perspectives being ‘proved a
thousand times correct’ (p 4). But far more important is the total
lack of a policy and demands to draw the mass of the workers into
struggles that pose a challenge to the reformists. Despite the
document’s speaking of the ‘maturing of a situation where Bonapartist
forms of rule appeal to growing sections of the bourgeoisie’ (p 4),
the bourgeoisie discarding ‘traditional democratic institutions’ as it
‘turns to the state machine itself to impose order’, and ‘devoting
more and more resources to the mobilisation of the fascist bands’ (p
4), there is nowhere a single call for a united workers’ front to
fight these sinister developments. Every other tendency in the
workers’ movement is denounced for its complicity in the drive to
reaction, but not confronted with a principled challenge to unite
their forces on the basic issue of the defence of workers’ democratic
rights, which the document so rightly says are threatened by the
bourgeoisie and its various agencies. True, the document does have a
plan to defeat reaction, but it leaves out those millions of workers
still organised in the reformist-led organisations: ‘The real
preparation to defeat reaction in all its forms including the
emergence of fascist movements, is the turn more and more deeply into
the working class by the revolutionary party.’ (p 5) What is this if
not the ‘united front from below'? The ‘turn’ is to the working class
in the abstract, as individuals susceptible to the propaganda of the
WRP, and not to the class as it is, organised in the Labour Party and
the trade unions, and ready to move into action against ‘reaction’
only in and through their traditional organisations. To fight fascism,
the WRP must address itself to the organisations to which these
workers belong, as Trotsky insisted in his many polemics against the
Third Period Stalinists. Perhaps a clue as to why the WRP feels unable
to apply this Leninist tactic is to be found in the same document,
where we read that the ‘Social Democrats and the trade union
bureaucrats, supported by the Stalinists, play their classical role of
corporatist class collaboration’ (p 6, emphasis added). So Social
Democracy (and Stalinism) = corporatism! Like the Third Period
Stalinists, the WRP now attempts, with its reference to the ‘classical
role’ of the ‘corporatist’ reformists, to project back far into the
past the allegedly corporatist (fascist) nature of Social Democracy.
But most disturbing of all, and again in the treacherous traditions of
Third Period Stalinism, is the blatant attempt made in the document to
minimise, if not to deny, the danger of fascism becoming a mass
movement in Britain. The role allotted to the National Front (and,
presumably, to similar movements in Ulster) is that of providing the
ideological ‘basis for a supplementary force through which the police
carries out its operations’ (p 5, emphasis added). Thus the fascists
will not function as a plebeian battering ram against the organised
working class (which, in order to carry through its
counter-revolutionary task, acts to a large degree independently of
the traditional state agencies), but as an ‘ideological base for a
provocation squad’ (p 5, emphasis added).

What we have expressed here is the British version of national
exceptionalism. The German Social Democrats – and Stalinists – argued
that fascism was a strictly Italian phenomenon, attributable to the
retarded socio-economic development of that nation. It could never
become a mass movement in so advanced and civilised a country as
Germany. This essentially chauvinist argument in the case of the
Stalinists fed the theory that it would be the Social Democrats, and
not the Nazis (as late as 1928, capable of winning a mere 800 000
votes), who would carry through the ‘fascisation’ of Germany. As this
book has attempted to show, this theory was still advanced at a time
when the Nazis were already well on the way to becoming the mass
movement of counter-revolution, not merely supplanting, but
threatening with destruction, the mass reformist organisations. The
crisis in the middle class, the ‘Liberal revival’, Powell’s challenge
to the Tory leadership and his flirtation with the Ulster ultr

[Marxism] Fascism in Germany: How Hitler Destroyed the World’s Most Powerful Labour Movement

[Louis Proyect]

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==


An online book by Robin Blick written in 1975. Blick (a pseudonym) 
came out of the Healyite movement in Britain.


http://www.marxists.org/subject/fascism/blick/


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[Marxism] White Slavery: The Irish Slaves That Time Forgot

[Dennis Brasky]

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* *

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31436.htm

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Re: [Marxism] Marxism Digest, Vol 103, Issue 44

[DCQ]

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==


comrade,

1) While your smoking, drinking, eating, and lounging habits might be the stuff 
of local legend, it's irrelevant to a discussion of the environmental 
degradation of the planet.

2) Who exactly advocated "enthusiastically crusading for a very narrow cause," 
let alone that of the "Pacific fish"? The issue is the relative safety of 
nuclear power plants and the rapid spread of radiation from the Fukushima 
Daichi disaster.

3) I thought the "piecemeal regulation" vs. "collective emancipatory change in 
the mode of production" argument had been satisfactorily answered a century ago 
by Luxemburg.

Also, just as a note on style, your 9th-grade-biology-textbook-level science is 
pretty condescending. I hope you don't speak to your comrades in struggle like 
that (the ones not on your computer screen).

solidarity,
DCQ

On May 30, 2012, at 7:31 PM, dan wrote:
[snip]

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[Marxism] Greece at a Crossroads:, Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery

[Louis Proyect]

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http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/psy300512.html


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[Marxism] Greece: answering the critics of the United Front

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.socialistunity.com/greece-answering-the-critics-of-a-united-front/


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Re: [Marxism] College Graduates on the Brink: A Double Waste

[Jeff]

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==


At 21:51 30-05-12 -0700, michael perelman wrote:
>
>In the last week, 3 of my best students told me that they were joining
>the military.  One came for a letter of recommendation

So do him (her?) a big favor. Write a glowing referral letter pointing out
that he:
* Is an independent thinker, always prepared to challenge authority.
* Is an excellent student in (whichever) liberal arts discipline who will
continue with grad school after his stint in the military.
* Has an excellent knowledge of international law and rules of war
specified in the Geneva accords.
* Is a gentle person with excellent peace-making and conflict-resolution
skills.
* Has great compassion toward common people of all nationalities and
decries any abuse of their rights.
* Greatly respects the rule of law and reports any abuses or corruption he
detects, no matter how high the status of the abuser.
* Has significant experience in written and photo-journalism with good
connections to the press and knowledge of internet resources.
(+ a few more you can probably think of!)

Perhaps someday he will thank you after his friends start coming back in
body bags from Iran (or wherever).

- Jeff




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[Marxism] Not Sure How I Feel About This: "Dan Quayle was Right"

[Ismail Lagardien]

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==


Twenty Years Later, It Turns Out Dan Quayle Was Right About Murphy Brown and 
Unmarried Moms

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice 
President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him 
nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of 
California, he chided Murphy Brown—the fictional 40-something, divorced news 
anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom—for her decision to have a 
child outside of marriage. 

“Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong,” the vice president said. 
“Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal 
about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a 
character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid 
professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone 
and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”


http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/05/25-unmarried-mothers-sawhill




Ismail Lagardien

Nihil humani a me alienum puto

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Re: [Marxism] College Graduates on the Brink: A Double Waste

[Christopher Hutchinson]

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==


Michael,
Thank you for writing this. A close friend's husband, a composer with a
phd, joined the military last year and is now in Iraq. Since then two more
friends both with college degrees have enlisted. It amazes me because the
pay is not great. My friend who is now, for lack of a better term, an "army
wife", living on a base in Hawaii says that rent  is priced well over
market value and the quarters are shabby. The good news is that she and
other families on the base participated in Occupy on the island and carried
signs saying "end the wars." They were also preparing to lead a fight if
the government shut down and their partners didn't get paid.

chris hutch

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:51 AM, michael perelman <
michael.perelm...@gmail.com> wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> In the last week, 3 of my best students told me that they were joining
> the military.  One came for a letter of recommendation and another
> whom I knew when he was in high school only told me today when I asked
> about his plans. Another bright young guy from basketball is dropping
> out to join.  Again, financial considerations are dominant. I assume
> they are the tip of the iceberg among students with whom I am close.
> They see no decent job prospects in the civilian sector.  What is
> going on when our economy creates such a double waste: not providing
> decent opportunities and then drawing them into a killing machine.
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA
> 95929
>
> 530 898 5321
> fax 530 898 5901
> http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/christopher.hutch%40gmail.com
>

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[Marxism] A turning point in Syria?

[En Passant with John Passant]

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==


The revolution will be won by Syrians themselves or it won't be won at all.

See more at 

http://enpassant.com.au/2012/05/31/a-turning-point-in-syria/

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