Re: [Marxism] Thank you, Shane

[Shane Mage]

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On Feb 21, 2013, at 5:07 PM, Kathleen McCook wrote:


Shane, as a woman on this list I deeply appreciate your response.


I must note that the post is from Shane Hopkinson, not myself.  But I  
do agree with everything in it.


Shane Mage




I was just thinking how good it was to see such a feminism post on  
MM.


Yeah Gopal men die at the hands of other men, they are bullied and  
raped by
them. Its overwhelmingly women who have raised this issue - and of  
course
men and women have fought and died for peace. But  it was feminism  
that

made domestic and family violence a public issue

What you post shows is the contempt women are held - and it can't  
help but
escape notice that the men who support ending violence against  
women are
"sissies" (ie not REAL men) salivating over women's grief but not  
it seems

over the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons.

Until men get over the idea the their manhood is more important  
than their

humanity then these contemptuous attitiudes will continue. I expected
better from MM though.

Shane



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Re: [Marxism] Day of the People: Gracchus Babeuf and the Communist Idea

[Alan Bradley]

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Engels has some interesting comments on the issue of continuity between the 
Communists and the Babouvists.
From 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1885hist.htm

"* In 1836 the most extreme, chiefly proletarian elements of the secret 
democratic-republican Outlaws’ League, which was founded by German refugees in 
Paris in 1834, split off and formed the new secret League of the Just. ... The 
new League, on the contrary, developed comparatively rapidly. Originally it was 
a German outlier of the French worker-Communism, reminiscent of Babouvism and 
taking shape in Paris at about this time; community of goods was demanded as 
the necessary consequence of “equality”. The aims were those of the Parisian 
secret societies of the time: half propaganda association, half conspiracy, 
Paris, however, being always regarded as the central point of revolutionary 
action, although the preparation of occassional putsches in Germany was by no 
means excluded. But as Paris remained the decisive battleground, the League was 
at that time actually not much more than the German branch of the French secret 
societies, especially the
 Societe des saisons led by Blanqui and Barbes, with which a close connections 
was maintained. The French went into action on May 12, 1839; the sections of 
the League marched with them and thus were involved in the common defeat."

"Reminiscent of Babouvism", and with connections to Blanqui, who acknowledged 
his debt to Buonarotti and Babeuf. I can't define "continuity", but I think 
that's an example.


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Re: [Marxism] Day of the People: Gracchus Babeuf and the Communist Idea

[Daniel Koechlin]

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>>"
The significance of Babeuf, as a leader of the radical wing of the 
French revolution, is that he stands at the beginning of what evolved 
into the socialist movement of today. There were other strands, 
obviously, but it was that current that most directly broke with 
bourgeois revolutionism and began the struggle for proletarian 
revolution. Not without a great degree of confusion, of course.


For all his virtues, there's little continuity from Winstanley and his 
contemporaries."<<


Babeuf is a product of the the French Revolution just as Winstanley is a 
product of the English revolution. They were both participants in an 
essentially popular and bourgeois revolution against the efforts of the 
monarchy to maintain an absolutist state which strove to preserve the 
aristocracy by fusing it with the emergent moneyed-class.


Do not let Winstanley's references to the Bible fool you. Winstanley 
uses the Bible to criticize the teachings of the Church. As far as 
Winstanley is concerned, the bible is merely an allegorical story which 
illustrates the fact that every individual is born free and that heaven 
and hell only exist in a person's mind. When he turns to evil, he stops 
loving his neighbour, and thus becomes entangled in his own desires and 
lust for power. The Diggers were extremely radical when it came to 
freeing the individual from the clutches of Church, State and conformity 
: divorce is a better alternative than a loveless marriage, all human 
beings are equal, paying rent is acknowledging servitude, Africans have 
as much a right to the bounties of the earth than Englishmen so slavery 
is abhorrent, ...


Modern readers do not appreciate the psychological/allegorical 
understanding Winstanley has of the bible which leads him to practice 
non-violence and extreme Pacifism as no human being is any better than 
his neighbour. Only determined and peaceful non-violent action on the 
part of the down-trodden can bring about a true revolution. Any other 
course of action will only lead to "some setting themselves as rulers 
and masters over others".


Babeuf is certainly not as astute as Winstanley,  there is a certain 
patriarchal quality to Babeuf's vision of Utopia that some modern 
readers will find disturbing. He lacks an interest in the psychological 
and sociological factors inherent in revolution, which led Marx to lump 
him together with the "Utopian socialists".


As for Babeuf's abortive "Conspiracy of the Equals", it was poorly 
planned and built on far less introspection, far less trial-and-error 
than Winstanley's "St George's Hill".





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Re: [Marxism] Day of the People: Gracchus Babeuf and the Communist Idea

[Mark Lause]

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The whole continuity issue is actually very complex.  Please define
what that means?

ML


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Re: [Marxism] Day of the People: Gracchus Babeuf and the Communist Idea

[Alan Bradley]

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From: Daniel Koechlin 
> Babeuf was only one among the many Utopian Communists of the 17th to 19th 
> centuries. In England,
> Winstanley was in many regards even more forward-looking than Babeuf.
>
> All those figures had many things in common, including a hatred of the 
> existing social order and a sense
> that the dispossesed never had a voice of their own.

The significance of Babeuf, as a leader of the radical wing of the French 
revolution, is that he stands at the beginning of what evolved into the 
socialist movement of today. There were other strands, obviously, but it was 
that current that most directly broke with bourgeois revolutionism and began 
the struggle for proletarian revolution. Not without a great degree of 
confusion, of course.

For all his virtues, there's little continuity from Winstanley and his 
contemporaries.


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[Marxism] Academic paywalls mean publish and perish - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121017558785551.html


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Re: [Marxism] Day of the People: Gracchus Babeuf and the Communist Idea

[Daniel Koechlin]

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Babeuf was only one among the many Utopian Communists of the 17th to 
19th centuries. In England, Winstanley was in many regards even more 
forward-looking than Babeuf.


All those figures had many things in common, including a hatred of the 
existing social order and a sense that the dispossesed never had a voice 
of their own. Every time I read Winstanley's "Declaration of the Poor 
and Oppressed People of England" (1647) I feel the voice of the 
disempowered welling up :


>>"We whose names are subscribed, do in the name of all the poor 
oppressed people in /England/, declare unto you, that call yourselves 
lords of Manors, and Lords of the Land, [...] That the earth was not 
made purposely for you, to be Lords of it, and we to be your Slaves, 
Servants, and Beggers; but it was made to be a common Livelihood to all, 
without respect of persons: And that your buying and selling of Land, 
and the Fruits of it, one to another, is /The cursed thing,/ and was 
brought in by War; which hath, and still does establish murder, and 
theft, In the hands of some over others, which is the greatest outward 
burden, and unrighteous power, that the Creation groans under: For the 
power of enclosing Land, and owning Property, was brought into the 
Creation by your Ancestors by the Sword; which first did murder their 
fellow Creatures, Men, and after plunder or steal away their Land, and 
left this Land successively to you, their Children. And therefore, 
though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in 
your hand, by the power of the Sword; and so you justify the wicked 
deeds of your Fathers; and that sin of your Fathers, shall be visited 
upon the Head of you, and your Children, to the third and fourth 
Generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be 
rooted out of the Land.


And further [...] our hearts begin to be freed from slavish fear of men, 
such as you are; and that we find Resolutions in us, grounded upon the 
inward law of Love, one towards another, To Dig and Plough up the 
Commons, and waste Lands through /England;/ and that our conversation 
shall be so unblameable, That your Laws shall not reach to oppress us 
any longer, unless you by your Laws will shed the innocent blood that 
runs in our veins.


For though you and your Ancestors got your Property by murder and theft, 
and you keep it by the same power from us, that have an equal right to 
the Land with you, by the righteous Law of Creation, yet we shall have 
no occasion of quarrelling (as you do) about that disturbing devil, 
called /Private propriety/: For the Earth, with all her Fruits of Corn, 
Cattle, and such like, was made to be a common Store-house of Livelihood 
to all Mankind, friend, and foe, without exception.


And to prevent your scrupulous Objections, know this, That we Must 
neither buy nor sell; Money must not any longer (after our work of the 
Earth's community is advanced) be the great god, that hedges in some, 
and hedges out others; for Money is but part of the Earth: And surely, 
the Righteous Creator, who is King, did never ordain, That unless some 
of Mankind, do bring that Mineral (Silver and Gold) in their hands, to 
others of their own kind, that they should neither be fed, nor be 
clothed; no surely, For this was the project of Tyrant-flesh (which 
Landlords are branches of) to set his Image upon Money. And they make 
this unrighteous Law, That none should buy or sell, eat, or be clothed, 
or have any comfortable Livelihood among men, unless they did bring Gold 
or Silver in their hands.


[...] Buying and selling is the great cheat, that robs and steals the 
Earth one from another: It is that which makes some Lords, others 
Beggers, some Rulers, others to be ruled; and makes great Murderers and 
Thieves to be imprisoners, and hangers of little ones, or of 
sincere-hearted men.


And while we are made to labor the Earth together, with one consent and 
willing mind; and while we are made free, that every one, friend and 
foe, shall enjoy the benefit of their Creation, that is, To have food 
and rayment from the Earth, their Mother; and every one subject to give 
accompt of his thoughts, words, and actions to none, but to the one 
onely righteous Judg, and Prince of Peace; the Spirit of Righteousness 
that dwells, and that is now rising up to rule in every Creature, and in 
the whole Globe. We say, while we are made to hinder no man of his 
Priviledges given him in his Creation, equal to one, as to another; what 
Law then can you make, to take hold upon us, but Laws of Oppression and 
Tyranny, that shall enslave or spill the blood of the Innocent? And so 
your Selves, your Judges, Lawyers, and Justices, shall be found to be 
the greatest Transgressors, in, and over Mankind

[Marxism] Thank you, Shane

[Kathleen McCook]

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Shane, as a woman on this list I deeply appreciate your response.



> I was just thinking how good it was to see such a feminism post on MM.
>
> Yeah Gopal men die at the hands of other men, they are bullied and raped by
> them. Its overwhelmingly women who have raised this issue - and of course
> men and women have fought and died for peace. But  it was feminism that
> made domestic and family violence a public issue
>
> What you post shows is the contempt women are held - and it can't help but
> escape notice that the men who support ending violence against women are
> "sissies" (ie not REAL men) salivating over women's grief but not it seems
> over the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons.
>
> Until men get over the idea the their manhood is more important than their
> humanity then these contemptuous attitiudes will continue. I expected
> better from MM though.
>
> Shane
> 

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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[Craig Butosi]

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Hello Einde, Everyone,

You are correct that, in most cases, the online texts are not available via
university library catalogues. I never suggested they were. I merely was
offering one of many suggestions that one could take to fulfill an
information need. Seeking out the bibliographic information of books
available elsewhere (like via public libraries) is a perfectly valid way of
doing research. I also did not make any normative claim as to the
superiority of my suggestion over other suggestions listed herein.
Including into one's search strategy sources that may be useful to the one
looking for them -- which in the end is up to them and not us by the way --
can only help  rather than hinder. I apologize if I sounded ungrateful and
pedantic as you say; this was not my intention. But, I believe final
judgment on this matter will rest with the original poster, Matt, and not
you. Lastly, for what it's worth there are many Marxist thinkers who have
published with houses that academic and other libraries collect, and to
somehow implicitly make the suggestion that this is not the case, as you
have Eine when you say "In addition they are, generally speaking, texts by
Marxists," is somewhat misleading. I only have to point you to such houses
as Verso, International Publishers, and Between the Lines as examples. But
this is merely my opinion, and perhaps not at all that useful in this
context.

For what it's worth,


Craig

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Einde O'Callaghan wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> On 21.02.2013 18:21, Craig Butosi wrote:
>
>> ==**==**
>> ==
>> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> ==**==**
>> ==
>>
>>
>> Apologies if I sound pedantic, but following Andrew's logic, I would also
>> recommend searching university library catalogues, which are publicly
>> available to anyone with an internet connection.
>>
>
> This isn't the case - doing a search at marxists.org gives you links to
> the actual texts online. In addition they are, generally speaking, texts by
> Marxists. So you do indeed sound somewhat pedantic - and to my "ears"
> rather ungrateful for a well-meant and helpful suggestion.
>
> Einde O'Callaghan
>
>
>
> __**__
> Send list submissions to: 
> Marxism@greenhouse.economics.**utah.edu
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>



-- 
Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: http://www.craigbutosi.ca

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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 21.02.2013 18:21, Craig Butosi wrote:

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Apologies if I sound pedantic, but following Andrew's logic, I would also
recommend searching university library catalogues, which are publicly
available to anyone with an internet connection.


This isn't the case - doing a search at marxists.org gives you links to 
the actual texts online. In addition they are, generally speaking, texts 
by Marxists. So you do indeed sound somewhat pedantic - and to my "ears" 
rather ungrateful for a well-meant and helpful suggestion.


Einde O'Callaghan



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[Marxism] Richard Seaford talks on the Origins of Money in London March 5

[Chris Knight]

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Hi,
You may be interested to know that the leading Marxist expert on ancient 
Greece, Richard Seaford (author of 'Money and the Early Greek Mind' and 
"Cosmology and the Polis') will be talking in London soon. Richard is well 
known for arguing that ancient Greece was the first ever thoroughly monetised 
society, making it crucial to an understanding of the role of money in our 
lives today. 
'Community, Individual and the Origins of Money.'A talk by Richard 
Seaford.Tuesday March 5, 6.30 - 9.00pm.St. Martins Community Centre43 Carol 
St., London NW1 OHT (2 mins from Camden tube).
Suggested donation: £10 high waged, £5 low waged and £3 unwaged/student. Come 
early if you would like a hot meal.
Please publicise as widely as possible.
Many thanks,
Chris
radicalanthropologygroup.orgTwitter: @radicalanthro 
  

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[Marxism] A new culture and a new approach - the type of organisation we need

[Louis Proyect]

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http://anticapitalists.org/2013/02/21/a-new-culture-and-a-new-approach-the-type-of-organisation-we-need/


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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[Craig Butosi]

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Apologies if I sound pedantic, but following Andrew's logic, I would also
recommend searching university library catalogues, which are publicly
available to anyone with an internet connection. Links to them can be found
by visiting university homepages. And be creative with your search queries
to find exactly what you want. Try also to make use of the library's
subject headings to hone in on the area that you can then browse within the
catalogue with more precision. Some starting-point LCC subject headings
could be: Hungary
Historyand
Hungary
History 20th 
Century.
Once you find the book info, see if your local library would have what
you're looking for, or, of course, if any online bookseller carries the
title for purchase. I'll be happy to help further, if requested.

Best to all,

Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS
www.craigbutosi.ca/

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 8:45 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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>
>
> type "hungarian soviet republic" in the search field at marxists.org.
> lots of stuff comes up
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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>



-- 
Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: http://www.craigbutosi.ca

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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[DW]

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The only book length one I remember reading was this:

Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic;: The origins and role of
the Communist Party of Hungary in the revolutions of 1918-1919 by Ivan
Volgyes

Good overview, academic cold-war liberal politics.

I'd also recommend the very short essay, translated by Marxmail list
member Juan Fajardo;

History of the World Crisis Lecture 7:
The Hungarian Revolution
by
J. C. MARIATEGUI

It's at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1924-hwc/hwc07.htm

DW


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[Marxism] Serial Blasts in Hyderabad, India

[Marla Vijaya kumar]

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Serial blasts rock Hyderabad, high alert declared
Yahoo News, 21-02-2013
HYDERABAD: At least 18 people are feared killed and over 60 injured, some of 
them critically, in three serial explosions near a busy bus stop and two cinema 
theatres at Dilsukh Nagar in Hyderabad on Thursday evening. 

Union Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde has confirmed that 11 people have been 
killed in the Hyderabad blasts.

Local reports said the five blasts all happened at Dilsukh Nagar area, which is 
a crowded locality in Hyderabad. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) though 
pegged the number to have rocked Andhra Pradesh's capital at three, while 
Hyderabad police said at least two blasts have taken place.

Police have confirmed that these blasts that ripped through the crowded area in 
Hyderabad are an act of terror attack. 

However, there is no clarity yet on who engineered these well-coordinated and 
pre-planned explosions.

Authorities have also expressed the fear that the death toll is likely to 
increase. 

The injured, meanwhile, have been rushed to Yashoda Hospital at Malakpet and to 
the government-run Osmania Hospital, and police have cordoned off the entire 
area.

Elite teams of the NIA and the National Security Guard (NSG) will be flying to 
Hyderabad, Home secretary R.K. Singh said in New Delhi.

He said the state police chief is reaching the blast site, which has been 
cordoned off.

"Our NIA team is also reaching as it has a hub there. The NIA officials are 
there at the site. Our IG NIA is also going from here. The post blast 
investigating team of NSG is also going," R.K. Singh added.

The two teams will fly at 9.30 p.m. in a Border Security Force plane, he added.

The blasts occurred near two theatres in Dilsukhnagar, a busy commercial area, 
about 15 km from the heart of the city

Eye witnesses said they heard two loud explosions within a couple of minutes. 
Police suspect one of the bombs may have been kept in a motorcycle and the 
other in a tiffin box.

The first blast occurred around 7 p.m. near a tiffin centre opposite Venkatadri 
theatre and the second near Konark theatre. Both the theatres are about 500 
meters from each other.

All the major cities in the country have been put on high alert. 

Senior police officials and ministers have rushed to the spot.

Some reports also say that an unexploded bomb too was found by the cops, 
although this has not been confirmed yet.

Police sources said that the bombs were placed at heavily crowded areas to 
cause maximum damage. 

Earlier reports had said that these were gas cylinder blasts, but that has been 
ruled out.

Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, Home Minister Sabita Indra Reddy, Director 
General of Police V. Dinesh Reddy and others visited the scene. The blasts sent 
panic in the area, close to Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway. 

YSR Congress party, in a statement, expressed shock and deep anguish over the 
bomb blasts. "YSRCP president Smt Vijayamma expressed shock and deep anguish 
over the bomb blasts in Diluskh Nagar. She mourned the death of innocent people 
who died in the explosion and conveyed her heartfelt condolences to the 
families of the blast victims," said the statement.

Authorities had feared terror attacks in the country in the aftermath of the 
Afzal Guru hanging.
Vijaya Kumar Marla

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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[Andrew Pollack]

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type "hungarian soviet republic" in the search field at marxists.org.
lots of stuff comes up


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Re: [Marxism] Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1918

[Ed George]

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There is an account in F.L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe, 
1918-19, which you can pick up second hand online easily enough.



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[Marxism] Napalm invented at Harvard University

[Louis Proyect]

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The Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, February 21, 2013

By Peter Monaghan
The Weapon That Sears Flesh

In an iconic 1972 photograph from the Vietnam War, a naked 9-year-old 
girl runs screaming from a bombing, her skin burning from the napalm 
attack on her village. The image helped rally opposition to the weapon's 
use in Vietnam and beyond.


Yet, with all napalm's notoriety, Robert M. Neer's Napalm: An American 
Biography, forthcoming from Harvard University Press, is marketed as the 
first history of the incendiary gel. It demonstrates that napalm has had 
far more severe an effect, and far more curious a life, than is commonly 
known.


Napalm, in raining hellfire on Vietnamese villagers, brought the United 
States infamy but not victory, Neer writes. And yet few historians have 
asked how it emerged and became so terrifying a weapon.


"The most striking thing about my whole project, for me, was the 
silence, as I came to call it," says Neer, by phone from New York. So 
little has been written about napalm that "basically the best public 
source of information at the moment is Wikipedia, I would say, which is 
really quite amazing."


Neer had no doubt that napalm's story was worth telling. The author, a 
lawyer and core lecturer in history at Columbia University, writes that 
the explosive, embraced by U.S. commanders as a means to stop German and 
Japanese war efforts dead in their tracks, was "born a hero but lives a 
pariah. Its invention is a chronicle of scientific discovery as old as 
Yankee ingenuity and as modern as the military-academic complex."


Napalm's history began at Harvard University, where it owed its creation 
to Louis Fieser, a brilliant organic chemist who had been entrusted with 
a secret war-research project. The first demonstration took place on a 
soccer field near Harvard Stadium, on July 4, 1942. Using such tools as 
a meat grinder from a Harvard dining hall, Fieser developed a method of 
exploding thickened petroleum into 2,100-degree "burning gobs of sticky 
gel," as he put it.


The weapon was later tested on life-sized replicas of German and 
Japanese houses, and shaved white Cheshire pigs. Fieser and his 
colleagues even tried to develop a method of arming Mexican free-tailed 
bats with small amounts, putting the animals into clustered containers, 
flying them over Japanese cities at night, and then parachuting them 
down into warm air, where the bats would awaken, wiggle free, and 
explode inside houses. Ultimately the effort failed; the bats just 
wouldn't cooperate, and many died even before their release. In one 
instance, armed bats blew up a test facility. After many millions of 
dollars of expense, the project was called off: "uncertainties involved 
in the behavior of the animal," one observer reported.


Throughout their development of napalm, Neer says, Harvard scientists 
steered around any discussion of its morality.


The use of incendiary weapons dates back to ancient times: flaming 
arrows, fiery mud poured over city walls onto attackers, foxes set 
alight and driven into fields of crops, increasingly lethal 
flamethrowers. In 1937, German planes devastated the Basque town of 
Guernica with incendiary bombs.


In 1945, the U.S. military used napalm, recently perfected and far more 
sophisticated and lethal than earlier incendiary devices, to kill about 
90,000 citizens of Tokyo and to incinerate 64 other Japanese cities. 
Neer notes that Gen. Curtis LeMay, who directed the incineration of 
Tokyo and the atomic-bomb attacks later that year, wrote after the war 
that his forces had "scorched and boiled and baked to death more people 
in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki combined."


The United States gave Greece napalm so it could bomb Communist 
positions in 1948, and American forces used it during the Korean War. 
Many other deployments followed before its infamous use in Vietnam.

The Weapon That Sears Flesh

Harvard's role resulted from an innovation in weapons development. In 
1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the National Defense 
Research Committee to coordinate collaborations among military, 
industrial, and academic personnel. It was, says Neer, the beginning of 
the military-industrial-academic "complex," providing many thousands of 
scientists with virtually unlimited funds for the atomic bomb and other 
projects.


Louis Fieser's boss and, earlier, instructor at Harvard was by then the 
university's president, James B. Conant, who nurtured Harvard's 
prominent role in the new approach. He described it as "the beginning of 
a revolution" that would transform the relationship of the university to 
the federal government.


Conant had the stomach for napalm's effects.

[Marxism] The Terror Factory

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.alternet.org/books/most-terrorist-plots-us-arent-invented-al-qaeda-theyre-manufactured-fbi

Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren't Invented by Al Qaeda -- They're 
Manufactured by the F


The following is an excerpt from The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's 
Manufactured War on Terrorism [3] by Trevor Aaronson (Ig Publishing, 2012).


Antonio Martinez was a punk. The twenty-two-year-old from Baltimore was 
chunky, with a wide nose and jet-black hair pulled back close to his 
scalp and tied into long braids that hung past his shoulders. He 
preferred to be called Muhammad Hussain, the name he gave himself 
following his conversion to Islam. But his mother still called him Tony, 
and she couldn’t understand her son’s burning desire to be the Maryland 
Mujahideen.


As a young man, Martinez had been angry and lost. He’d dropped out of 
Laurel High School, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and spent his 
teens as a small-time thief in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. By the age 
of sixteen, he’d been charged with armed robbery. In February 2008, at 
the age of eighteen, he tried to steal a car. Catholic University 
doctoral student Daniel Tobin was looking out of the window of his 
apartment one day when he saw a man driving off in his car. Tobin gave 
chase, running between apartment buildings and finally catching up to 
the stolen vehicle. He opened the passenger-side door and got in. 
Martinez, in the driver’s seat, dashed out and ran away on foot. Jumping 
behind the wheel, Tobin followed the would-be car thief. “You may as 
well give up running,” he yelled at Martinez. Martinez was apprehended 
and charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle—he had stolen the 
vehicle using an extra set of car keys which had gone missing when 
someone had broken into Tobin’s apartment earlier. However, prosecutors 
dropped the charges against Martinez after Tobin failed to appear in court.


Despite the close call, Martinez’s petty crimes continued. One month 
after the car theft, he and a friend approached a cashier at a Safeway 
grocery store, acting as if they wanted to buy potato chips. When the 
cashier opened the register, Martinez and his friend grabbed as much 
money as they could and ran out of the store. The cashier and store 
manager chased after them, and later identified the pair to police. 
Martinez pleaded guilty to theft of one hundred dollars and received a 
ninety-day suspended sentence, plus six months of probation.


Searching for greater meaning in his life, Martinez was baptized and 
became a Christian when he was twenty-one years old, but he didn’t stick 
with the religion. “He said he tried the Christian thing. He just really 
didn’t understand it,” said Alisha Legrand, a former girlfriend. 
Martinez chose Islam instead. On his Facebook page, Martinez wrote that 
he was “just a yung brotha from the wrong side of the tracks who 
embraced Islam.” But for reasons that have never been clear to his 
family and friends, Martinez drifted toward a violent, extremist brand 
of Islam. When the FBI discovered him, Martinez was an angry extremist 
mouthing off on Facebook about violence, with misspelled posts such as, 
“The sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease 
inshallah.” Based on the Facebook postings alone, an FBI agent gave an 
informant the “green light” to get to know Martinez and determine if he 
had a propensity for violence. In other words, to see if he was dangerous.


The government was setting the trap.

On the evening of December 2, 2010, Martinez was in another Muslim’s car 
as they drove through Baltimore. A hidden device recorded their 
conversation. His mother had called, and Martinez had just finished 
talking to her on his cell phone. He was aggravated. “She wants me to be 
like everybody else, being in school, working,” he told his friend. “For 
me, it’s different. I have this zeal for deen and she doesn’t understand 
that.” Martinez’s mother didn’t know that her son had just left a 
meeting with a purported Afghan-born terrorist who had agreed to provide 
him with a car bomb. But she wasn’t the only one in the dark that night. 
Martinez himself didn’t know his new terrorist friend was an undercover 
agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that the man driving 
the car—a man he’d met only a few weeks earlier—was a paid informant for 
federal law enforcement.


Five days later, Martinez met again with the man he believed to be a 
terrorist. The informant was there, too. They were all, Martinez 
believed, brothers in arms and in Islam. In a parking lot near the Armed 
Forces Career Center on Baltimore National Pike, Martinez, the 
informant, and the undercover FBI agent piled into an SUV, where the 
undercover agent showed Martinez the dev

[Marxism] Oscar Pistorius and the Global Death Cult of Misogyny

[Dennis Brasky]

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Dave Zirin –

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173033/oscar-pistorius-and-global-death-cult-misogyny

A professional athlete; a home with an arsenal of firearms; a dead young
woman involved a long-term relationship with her killer. In November, her
name was Kasanda
Perkinsand
the man who shot her was Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher.
Now her name is Reeva
Steenkamp,
killed by Olympic sprinter and double amputee Oscar “the Blade Runner”
Pistorius. We don’t know whether Pistorius is guilty of murdering a woman
he claims to have deeply loved or is guilty merely of being an unbelievably
irresponsible gun owner, firing four bullets into the door of his bathroom
in an effort to hit an imagined burglar. We do know that this is either an
all-to-familiar story of a man and the woman he dated and then killed or
it’s the story of a man who thought a burglar had penetrated the
electrified fence that surrounded his gated community to break into his
house and use his toilet.

Just as with Belcher and Perkins, we will learn more than we ever wanted or
needed to know in the weeks to come about the nature of Pistorius and
Steenkamp’s relationship. We will learn about the “allegations of a
domestic 
nature”
that had brought police to his home in the past. We will learn about
Pistorius’s previous allegedly violent
relationshipswith
women. We will learn about the variety of guns he kept at close hand.
We will surely discuss male athletes and violence against women: the sort
of all-too-common story that can create commonality between a football
player from Long Island and a sprinter from Johannesburg. We might even
ponder the way these gated communities, one of which was also the site of
Florida teenager Trayvon Martin’s murder two years ago, become throbbing
pods of paranoia and parabellums. We will learn about everything except
what actually matters: there is a global epidemic of violence against women
and South Africa is at its epicenter.

Two days before Steenkamp’s death, there were protests outside of the South
African parliament  about the
failures of the state to adjudicate the unsolved rapes and murders of women
across the country. As the executive director of the Rape Crisis Centre
Kathleen Dey said on February 12. “There are no overnight cures to the
scourge of rape that is affecting South Africa. We have the highest
instance of rape in the world and we cannot continue in this way.” The
official statistics are shocking. Every seventeen seconds a woman is raped
in South Africa yet just one out of nine women report it and only 14
percent of perpetrators are convicted. The Rape Crisis Centre and other
organizations are starved for funds, with the demand for social services,
counseling and even HIV tests far outstripping their capacity.

There have also had to be demonstrations against what the Women’s League of
the African National Congress has termed “femicide.” In this country of 50
million people, three women a day are killed by their partners. When news
of Steenkamp’s death became front-page news across the country, it pushed
out ongoing headlines of the February 2 Western Cape gang rape and
mutilation of a 17-year-old girl named Anene
Booysen.
Before her death, Booysen identified one of her perpetrators: it was
someone she both trusted and knew.

This is hardly a South African problem, of course. We are confronting
nothing less than a global system of brutal misogyny. Too many men across
the world see too many women as repositories of their rage, frustration,
narcissism, or simply their will to enact violence. The World Health
Organization’s reports that depending on the country, anywhere from “15%
(Japan) to 71% (Ethiopia) of women report physical and/or sexual violence
by an intimate partner at some point in their
lives,”
Like in South Africa, every statistic on this issue must be viewed with
skepticism because of the transnational stigmas and shame that silence
women who have survived.

In the United States, rape culture and the rape it produces has been
normalized to the point where Notre Dame athletes accused of
rapecan
take the field for a national championship football game without a
peep
from the spo

[Marxism] Asshole NYTimes reporter says Berliners have been spoiled by low rents

[Angelus Novus]

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"The problem is that Germans have been spoiled by proactive government policies 
designed to fund affordable housing and promote mixed-income living spaces."


http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/bobos-in-berlin/


Also love the typical neolib description of "globalization" as a sheer force of 
nature, that just sort of magically dismantles welfare states.






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[Marxism] Party democracy in Lenin's Comintern - and now

[Jim Moody]

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Given recent events in the SWP UK, John Riddell has just produced an apposite 
commentary entitled
'Party democracy in Lenin's Comintern - and now'

He starts his article by asking:
'How did Communist parties handle issues of internal discipline and democracy 
in Lenin's time? An
intense discussion now under way within the British Socialist Workers' Party 
(SWP) raises issues
related to the nature of internal democracy in the Communist International 
(Comintern) during
1919–23, the period of its first four congresses.'

--
Jim Moody (j...@redunity.org.uk) on 21/02/2013

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