[Marxism] Hunting For Meat -- And A Game Warden Tale
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR JANUARY 1 2013 This is a little more on hunting and wildlife. As I've indicated before, we all -- my family and its connections -- have always hunted primarily for meat. Never for trophies. The verve engendered by the hunt is a factor, but a secondary one. We eat the game we take. When I was growing up at and around then small town Flagstaff, our region, Northern Arizona, generally considered itself quite apart from Phoenix and its State Capitol, and even from slowly growing but still not-large Tucson. This applied to a number of state laws -- including saloon hours and hunting. Several game wardens sent into our part of the state were either killed or wounded via ambush and I don't recall anyone being arrested. Finally, an informal detente was worked out with the state. Game wardens who were in Northern Arizona simply didn't enforce laws when it came to local residents who almost always hunted for meat and who didn't shoot doe deer when they were "carrying". This exceptionalism applied regardless, I should add, of the local person's racial background. People from Phoenix, Tucson, and out of staters from California especially, were "fair game" for the wardens if these visitors violated anything. A friend and I were camping for a few days in the mid-1950s -- south of Flag in a lower elevation. We were about the same age and had met at the University of Arizona. He was from an affluent California family and his father was a psychiatrist who had been, during his medical training, psychoanalyzed by Jung. My friend was, however, sowing some wild oats -- although later he became (unlike myself) a most respectable citizen. Quite out of season, we shot a buck deer for meat. I suggested that we take a good part of it to the not far away "Hermits" -- Dick and Jerry, quite advanced in years and of limited financial means -- who lived in the Old Packard Ranch House at the mouth of the Sycamore Canyon complex. The road to the Hermits came out of the old copper smelting town of Clarkdale, just below the mining camp of Jerome, and ended on a small hill, right above Sycamore Creek. We parked my friend's car which had California plates. Carrying the venison in two chunks, we went down to the creek, crossed it in the cold water, and then immediately were at the Old Ranch House. The Hermits, who had no vehicle, were gone -- obviously temporarily. We sat down on a log and waited for them. And then I heard a vehicle coming on the road toward us. I grabbed the venison and our guns and put them all out of sight behind the log. We could see a pickup parking by our vehicle -- and a man, sort of dressed in a half-way uniform and a widebrimmed hat, came down toward us. He was a game warden and he was obviously suspicious as hell. "Let me do the talking," I whispered quickly to my friend. For our part, our faces glowed pure innocence. Standing across the creek from us, he asked who we were and where we were from. Since he was obviously aware of the California plates, I indicated my friend, who remained judiciously silent and who I didn't identify by name, was from northern California. Moving swiftly on, I gave my name and Flagstaff as my home town, mentioning my parents owned some land not far away, near the tiny hamlet of Cornville. And I told him I was a good friend of the Hermits. But that didn't seem to quite do it. "So you've spent some time around here", he said. I responded affirmatively -- and then mentioned that, not too long before, I had spent several days traveling down the full length of Sycamore Canyon. (As I've written elsewhere: "The Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area well to the southwest of Flagstaff (Arizona) is -- Real Wilderness. It's long, wide, incredibly rough.No roads, no sedentary human habitations, no fences, no mines -- beyond probably an old 1700s Spanish mine in the Canyon's lower region. . . Very few humans get down into Sycamore and it's impossible to take a horse or a mule "down in." Although Sycamore is far from totally "boxed in", it is, in many ways, a "system unto itself" -- and still totally pristine. I may be the only human in contemporary times who has hiked its full length and I did that when I was 21. Depending on how you want to calculate its distance -- its various "head waters" or the full Canyon itself, it's about 25 miles long or more, very deep, very wide.") The game warden was obviously very surprised by that. Very slowly he asked, "Did you see Taylor Cabin?" The Cabin, ca. 1930s, was a long abandoned cowpuncher "line shack", in wide and rugged Sycamore Basin, well south of the great basic gorge of the formidable Canyon itself. Following Sycamore Creek down
[Marxism] Good article about Jerry Tucker and what labor can learn from his life
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.tnr.com/blog/alec-macgillis/111488/the-man-who-tried-save-organized-labor Some on the left are dismissive of organized labor, often with good reason. But this horrible system always brings forth brothers and sisters like Jerry Tucker. I met him just once, but I felt his strength. I've met others like him, like my comrades Fernando Gapasin and Elly Leary. Working class heroes. 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] Hollywood's Nigger Joke
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == > What are the social conditions that wold permit Django to be the big > howling, empty nigger joke that it is? > I ask myself the same question. Why do Blacks, who can elect a > President, not prevent themselves from being exploited by Hollywood? > Why can’t they demand more black directors and better scripts from the > likes of the Weinstein Company? This is probably the most silly and tone-deaf movie review I've ever read, and that's saying a lot. In Counterpunch yet! I have to think old Alex would would have spiked this one. -- -- Michael J. Smith m...@smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org Favorite political slogan from the 60s: US OUT OF NORTH AMERICA! 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] Unjust Deserts: Gaza, Syria and the Belief in a Just World
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Unjust Deserts: Gaza, Syria and the Belief in a Just World by Joe Morby on January 1, 2013 The experiment, like so many in American psychology it seems, involved electric shocks. During its course, the victim, actually a confederate of the researchers, appeared to receive a series of increasingly painful electric shocks under the guise of a punishable test, while the subjects watched, unable to help. At first, the vast majority of these ‘innocent observers’ were understandably appalled by the poor victim’s plight, but the shocks continued regardless, and as the severity of the situation increased, some began to change their minds. For some, the longer they watched, the more they began to derogate the victim – perhaps she was too slow, or too stupid, or perhaps she actually deserved a bit of punishment; anyway, it was her own fault she was getting shocked. Indeed, the researchers found that the greater the perceived injustice, the greater the tendency of observers to denigrate the victim. full: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=4208 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] Hollywood's Nigger Joke
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/01/hollywoods-nigger-joke/ Tarantino's "Django: Unchained" Hollywood’s Nigger Joke by CECIL BROWN I had little dog, his name was Dash I’d ruther be a nigger than be white trash –African American saying In order for a joke to work, Mary Douglas, the eminent British anthropologist, wrote that one had to have a social context for it to operate in. “We must ask what are the social conditions for a joke to be both perceived and permitted,” she asked in her wonderful little essay, “Jokes.” “My hypothesis,” she writes“is that a joke is seen and allowed when it offers a symbolic pattern of a social pattern occurring at the same time.” With Django: Unchained, the symbolic pattern–I’d call it historical context–is Hollywood itself. “If there is no joke in the social structure,” Mrs Douglas observed, “no other joke can appear.” In Hollywood, there are lots of jokes in the system! The social pattern that allows Quentin Tarantino’s “Nigger joke” to work is set in the South, two years before the Civil War, but my point is that this is only a pretext for Hollywood itself. Some critics, like Betsy Sharkey in the Times, think this film is a masterpiece. Sharkey calls it, “the most articulate, intriguing, provoking, appalling, hilarious, exhilarating, scathing and downright entertaining film yet.” African American critic Wesley Morris hated it. He called it “unrelenting tastelessness — [...] exclamatory kitsch — on a subject as loaded, gruesome, and dishonorable as American slavery.” Ishmael Reed, the novelist, pointed out how the Weinstein Company promoted an advertising campaign to get a black audience by promoting Jamie Foxx as the star. In fact, Foxx is only one of the stars, along with Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. As Reed points out, Foxx spends most of his time looking at Mr.Waltz and then looking at Mr. DiCaprio, with a puzzled look on his face, as if to say, What’s dese white folks, talkin ‘bout? My aim in his essay is to examine the way in which the symbolic system is a reflection of the social system. “What are the social conditions for a joke to be both perceived and permitted,” Mrs Douglass wrote in that little essay, “Jokes.” What are the social conditions that wold permit Django to be the big howling, empty nigger joke that it is? One of these social conditions, certainly, involves the relationship between black actors and Hollywood as a symbol of the plantation system. In his review of the film, for example, Mr. Reed said that Sam Jackson, in the role of the conniving, omnipresent, evil slave, is “playing himself.” If Jackson had not dominated the Hollywood system in such a sly way, then his role as Stephen, the master-worshipping house slave to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) would not have its loaded, edgy, uncanny realism. The plantation is called CandieLand (Candyland) and is meant to refer to Hollywood itself as a producer of entertainment (Candy). Get it? If Jamie Foxx is not known in Hollywood as a resourceful hustler, who will play almost any role, then his part as the “bad nigger” Django would not be so compelling (and lubricous). If he was not the “New nigger on the block,” then the confrontation between him and Sam Jackson’s character, Stephen, the off-the-hook house slave, the scene would not be powerful (and dumb) at the same time. The dramatis persona forms a homology with the enacted characters on the screen. The key that unlocks Tarantino’s sensationalistic mosaic is that it reveals the inner game of how the Hollywood studio and the plantation slave institution exploited black people. Unwittingly and unconsciously Tarantino has provided us with a scenario that makes the plantation system the symbolic equivalent of Hollywood. It is a film a clef. In other words, Hollywood forms a homology with the slave plantations system– in both cases making money is being underlined as the goal, and it does not matter how many people are hurt or offended. Tarantino approaches Hollywood–that is, the Weinstein Brothers production company as if it were a plantation, and as if he were an aspiring poor white trash overseer trying to get into the closed system by manipulating the slave code. Instead of presenting the Weinstein Company with a script, Tarantino screened a film– Django (1966.), a Spaghetti Western. How hard was that? In an age where even Hollywood execs don’t read, Tarantino made it easy for them. As it turns out, Django (1966) was itself a take-off of the Spaghetti Western, Fistful of Dollars, a film (and a genre) invented by the Italian director Sergio Leone. Tarantino’s task (as he probably explained to the Weinstein Company)
Re: [Marxism] Schoolmarm grammar
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 01.01.2013 15:01, Wythe Holt jr. wrote: Thanks, Alan. "Arse" is ALSO not in use in the US. When visiting in England I never heard "ass" (except in the donkey sense), so I have always thought "arse" and "ass" meant the same thing. So you are saying that "shit" and "shite" are two words for the same thing? Wythe That was the import of my post - two [dialectal ?] variants of the same word - confirmed by Oxford Dictionaries Online. 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] Law of Value (was Re: Did the Cuban Revolution enforce socialist realism?)
==
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==
"Viewed *ex post*, from a communist society, socialism is but one "stage" ion
the advancement of mankind toward the possibility of making its own history.
Viewed *ex ante*, from the perspective of workers oppressed by the capitalist
social order, socialism is a transitional society that they need to go through
for a prolonged period in order to achieve communism. To deny the need for a
transitional form of society ("socialism") is to affirm the immediate
possibility of communism. Which results inevitably in Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot."
Shane's comment here is among the saner ones in this discussion about the "law
of value" and it original point--Farber's pedantic criticism of the Cuban
revolution--which is to say that the discussion in its entirety is amazing in
its vapid intellectualism.
Ain't none of y'all know what a socialist transformation of society is actually
going to look like, never mind communism. Neither did Marx or Engels or Lenin
or Trotsky--although the latter at least got an inkling. Marx and Engels
understood capital and capitalism, they set the basis for understanding the
class enemy and provided revolutionaries with tools that guided them in the
overthrow of components of capitalism over the ensuing century (and perhaps a
half). But none of these figures could ever have seen the conditions we now
face despite their prophetically accurate "grand design". We are not likely to
see the transformation of society to an end to capitalism. Saying that neither
prevents us from nor absolves us of doing everything we can to try or at least
to help set the stage for revolutionaries who will accomplish those great
tasks.
I appreciate the conversations on the "law of value"; it is an important
elucidation to make. It is simply antithetical to revolutionary politics to use
such a conversation to engage in "Monday morning quarterbacking" of the Cuban
people's attempts to steer a revolutionary course in the face of imperialism
and the necessarily flawed nature of the Cuban leadership born of Cuba's own
history. Che Guevara had made some attempts to guide the establishment of Cuban
economy for advancing the aims of socialist revolution and ever since, the
whole of economic development has struggled along through successive advances,
missteps, and objective problems. It is hardly surprising, and all too easy to
criticize, that Cuban social and economic development has not marched along as
"communists" from the outside--or within--would like it. Cuba remains the best
possible example in a world gone literally insane with imperialist
profiteering. And, despite "giving the Cuban people a break" it is important to
argue and debate all aspects of Cuban economic and foreign policies--some of
these are essential in steering a world revolutionary course. However, to
engage in such debate either as a formula for world socialist transformation or
as some "bad experiment" in state capitalism is rather amateurish if not simply
wrong.
Yet, there is one really important example that we can draw from the existence
of the Cuban revolution and its subsequent history; its development of a true
revolutionary leadership from some of the most unlikely forces who in the end
coalesced to form the Cuban Communist Party. There are quite a few others here
who can discuss this issue with much more knowledge than I, but what I wonder
is why it is so difficult for revolutionaries in other countries to examine the
fact of a united revolutionary leadership in Cuba despite its obvious flaws
that still plague it with the inevitable bureaucratism that was likely
unavoidable, but still a point of struggle? It seems so much easier for
revolutionaries to try to dissociate themselves from the Cuban revolution
because it doesn't appear "pure", never mind the pedantic and petit-bourgeois
intellectuals who disdain the Cuban revolution for its antithesis to bourgeois
politics that it represents.
Perhaps this willingness to dissociate themselves is born of material reasons
in the social strata from where emanates the "popular left" (read European and
European-American radicals in the main)? Or, maybe it is because there is so
much media anti-communist hype that bleeds even into the revolutionary
consciousness as people begin to try to build local revolutionary movements? I
am not really sure. Of what I am sure is that we can learn about mass
democratic revolutionary discussion from the debates and discussions that occur
within the Cuban society as it struggles through the development of it economy
and other domestic and foreign policies. Some of these lessons are positive (I
seem to remember a description of such a pre-convention discussion by Marce
Cameron a year or
[Marxism] Leftist Jewish chicken farmers of the Catskills
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/jewish-leftist-chicken-farmers-of-the-catskills/ 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] How to defend Bashar Assad in 10 easy steps
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.facebook.com/notes/borzou-daragahi/how-to-defend-bashar-assad-in-10-easy-steps/10151186147897286 How to defend Bashar Assad in 10 easy steps by Borzou Daragahi on Monday, December 31, 2012 at 11:34am · This is my guide for Syria analysts and journalists who want to defend Bashar Assad while continuing to retain their credibility in the West. 1. Keep mentioning Jubhat al Nasra and other Islamic jihadi groups without mentioning that the vast majority of armed groups are not nearly as extreme, are mostly locally based folks defending their towns and villages. 2. When referring to the armed opposition keep using the magic word: AL QAEDA 3. Make cursory mention of the regime’s brutality (you won’t have any credibility if you don’t) but avoid resurrecting the roots of the conflict in peaceful opposition to Bashar’s dictatorship. Avoid mention of wanton use of air power against civilians in bread lines and in their homes. 4. Keep talking about NATO, the Gulf countries and Western support for opposition; that will boost Bashar’s anti-imperialist creds among the campus leftists. 5. Focus on faults of incompetent and disorganized Syrian opposition abroad instead of networks of activists and homegrown civil society already establishing governance inside. 6. Frame Russia as an honest broker trying to peacefully resolve conflict instead of a shrewd chess player that doesn't give a damn about Syrian civilians and murdered tens of thousands of Chechens in an attempt to put down a rebellion in the 1990s. 7. Keep warning about consequences of Syria state’s collapse: sectarian war, refugees in Europe, rise of an Islamist state. 8. Keep raising rare instances of rebel misconduct and faked videos and frame them as emblematic of the overall opposition. 9. Make the opposition look intransigent; they’re the ones who won’t agree to a peaceful settlement, not the president who did no reforms for 10 years and dispatched shabiha to murder peaceful protesters when they spoke out. 10. Pray to God (even if you are an athiest) that the rebels don’t get to Damascus, open up the files and find out what you did for the regime, the details of conversations on how you got your visas and your access to officials. 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] NYC subway murder - Death by Brown Skin
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/death_by_brown_skin/?source=newsletter 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] Request for article
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi all, If anyone has access to a full text db with this article, I would greatly appreciate help in retrieving it. Henry Giroux Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture Volume 1, Issue 2, 1995 Racism and the Aesthetic of hyper‐real violence: Pulp fiction and other visual tragedies in solidarity, Chris 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] World economy 2013
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Michael Roberts compares his thoughts on prospects for world economy a year ago and today: http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/the-world-economy-prospects-for-2013/ 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] Juan Cole on the decline of Iranian influence
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This is the link to the article. Louis, in cutting and pasting, you omitted the letter l. ken h http://www.juancole.com/2013/01/decline-hizbullah-middle.html 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] How Alexandria's Ideological Battles Shape Egypt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/9311/sons-of-beaches_how-alexandrias-ideological-battle 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] Juan Cole on the decline of Iranian influence
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.juancole.com/2013/01/decline-hizbullah-middle.htm 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] Schoolmarm grammar
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks, Alan. "Arse" is ALSO not in use in the US. When visiting in England I never heard "ass" (except in the donkey sense), so I have always thought "arse" and "ass" meant the same thing. So you are saying that "shit" and "shite" are two words for the same thing? Wythe -Original Message- From: marxism-bounces+wholt=law.ua@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu on behalf of Alan Bradley Sent: Mon 12/31/2012 6:43 AM To: Wythe Holt jr. Subject: Re: [Marxism] Schoolmarm grammar == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/wholt%40law.ua.edu 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
