Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Eli Stephens]

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Louis: "Chemical weapons attack by the rebels? Is there some information
you'd like to share with the list?"

To start with:
1) The attack occurred in a government-held area
2) The attack was immediately publicized including video footage of the
victims in hospital by the Syrian government
3) The Syrian government quickly called for a U.N. investigation into the
attack.

These three facts alone make a prima facie case for the rebels having
committed the attack, without knowing anything else.

Then to that add:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/25/295153/militants-behind-syria-chemic
al-attack/

Now I admit that the sources in that cited article are unnamed, so by itself
that article would be suspect. Combined with facts 1-3, however, I'd say the
case is incontrovertible.

I'll add just one more fact. Although the western media and the U.S.
government have been doing their usual "he-said, she-said" thing, in fact in
this case for once (unlike countless previous examples), the "rebel
spokespeople" have been noticeably silent about claiming it was the
government who did it. Usually, you can count on the first stories hitting
the press containing counterclaims from both sides, but in this case, all
the initial stories contained only the government's charge, with no
counterclaim.

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




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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Ralph Johansen]

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Louis Proyect wrote

On 3/30/13 11:15 PM, Ralph Johansen wrote: And

   destroys even the viability of autocratic regimes


Now  there's a slogan to unite 
MRZine, Global Research, PSL, Voltairenet, and Moon Over Alabama:


Defend the viability of autocratic regimes!


 Lou, I always assume that you have at least read what I wrote before 
you respond, and that's what you're responding to. Am I mistaken? You 
wouldn't say that your response was evasive cherry-picking?


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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Louis Proyect]

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On 3/30/13 11:15 PM, Ralph Johansen wrote:  And

destroys even the viability of autocratic regimes


Now there's a slogan to unite MRZine, Global Research, PSL, Voltairenet, 
and Moon Over Alabama:


Defend the viability of autocratic regimes!





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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Louis Proyect]

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On 3/30/13 10:44 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

"one of life's deeper mysteries" to me is how anyone who calls themselves a
socialist could "rally around" the CIA-coordinated overthrow of an
independent country, socialist or not. And, as the Washington Post and NY
Times acknowledge, that ain't no "conspiracy theorist" speaking.


It really doesn't matter if the CIA is involved or not. The PSL backed 
the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 even though 
Washington had no connection to them. It is warmed over Stalinism. At 
least with the CPUSA there was an understandable instinct to defend 
"socialism". With the PSL it was an instinct to back the gang that was 
transforming China into another Asian Tiger.





And, by the way, MANY of those "80,000 Syrians" (an undocumented and
questionable number if there ever was one) who have died have been either
armed rebels (many of them foreign) or government troops killed by rebels,
not to mention civilians (like 25 killed the other day in a chemical weapons
attack and 15 killed at a university) killed by rebels.


Chemical weapons attack by the rebels? Is there some information you'd 
like to share with the list? Not even the Russian media has made such a 
charge: http://rt.com/news/syria-rebels-chemical-aleppo-479/.
That you can recirculate the Syrian Foreign Ministry's charges is a sad 
commentary on the state of the Marcyite left.




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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Ralph Johansen]

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Lou, you been reading anything about Libya? About Mali, where just 
minutes ago, a suicide bomber and landmines are rocking the northern 
part of the country? About AFRICOM and the accelerated primitive 
accumulation planned for that continent, in a contest with China? Or do 
we know enough by now to first take on the crimes of the government that 
most directly owns us, and that has the most, and the most unopposed, 
power to shape events, covertly or overtly, through control of 
surveillance, communications, diplomacy, alliances, military supremacy 
and economic clout? Deciding who the main enemy is? Or anything about 
'shock doctrine" and how capitalist powers have become increasingly 
adept over the years at using others' crises as precipitating events to 
divide and rule? Select and groom surrogates to take power? And 
otherwise flip events to their own advantage? Or about nationalism, 
compliant domestic capital in the affected countries? About the 
influential role of interpenetrating finance capital in determining 
outcomes? Isn't the main reason that they haven't invaded Syria months 
ago that they weren't timely enough on the ground to get the lay of the 
land and to spot their chosen appointees to take power, those who could 
be counted on to act in their interests? Isn't it most probable that the 
forces that they are finally supplying increasingly are just those 
compliant agents? In that respect, isn't the only difference between 
Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan - and if their design holds, ultimately 
probably Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, even Iran and certainly 
Palestine - the precipitating event by which dominant capital invades 
and lays waste, with its own and no one else's benefit in mind? And 
destroys even the viability of autocratic regimes, leaving the landscape 
and its inhabitants in desolation, as again in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, 
Yemen, Palestine and ongoing, Iran? The only less bleak prospect is that 
they back the wrong puppets, as to some limited extent may have occurred 
in Iraq, or that it turns out that they're the puppets who by some 
accident confer somewhat less harm to the people affected - which is 
most generally not known in advance, by us or anyone else - until it 
does or does not happen. And until that enormous capacity has been 
overcome, whom do we know enough about, specifically, to back, as we 
oppose our own government?


Or is that conspiratorial talk?





Louis Proyect wrote

On 3/30/13 8:16 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

   "The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and
   continued 
   intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much
   heavier
   flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more
   than 160
   military cargo flights ..."

   "Conspiratorial leftist perspective" my a--.


I guess that the PSL and its sympathizers won't be happy until another 
80,000 Syrians have been killed by Scud missiles, cluster bombs, armored 
helicopters, tanks, and rockets. I can understand how people could have 
been suckered in cheering for Soviet tanks in Hungary for at least you 
can argue (even if falsely) that it was a CIA plot to destroy socialism. 
But why anybody would rally around the Baathist flag for a clique of 
millionaires  who have about as 
much to do with socialism as I do with 7th Day Adventism is one of 
life's deeper mysteries.


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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Eli Stephens]

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"one of life's deeper mysteries" to me is how anyone who calls themselves a
socialist could "rally around" the CIA-coordinated overthrow of an
independent country, socialist or not. And, as the Washington Post and NY
Times acknowledge, that ain't no "conspiracy theorist" speaking.

And, by the way, MANY of those "80,000 Syrians" (an undocumented and
questionable number if there ever was one) who have died have been either
armed rebels (many of them foreign) or government troops killed by rebels,
not to mention civilians (like 25 killed the other day in a chemical weapons
attack and 15 killed at a university) killed by rebels. Your echoing of the
corporate media with the implied claim that the "government has slaughtered
80,000 of its people" says a lot about your perspective, or rather, your
loss of it.

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





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[Marxism] France & Mali: Left assesses Mali military intervention and its aftermath | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[glparramatta]

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By *Roger Annis*

March 30, 2013 -- /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -- 
Two leading voices against France's military intervention in Mali, Paul 
Martial and Bertold du Ryon, have written a comprehensive dossier on the 
subject. It is published in the weekly print and web bulletin of the New 
Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France, /Tout est à nous/, dated March 14, 
2013 (#186).


The dossier is a valuable overview of the situation in Mali and stands 
out for its unyielding opposition to the intervention. That's no small 
feat in a France that is awash in national patriotism and anti-Islamic 
prejudice over the issue.


The intervention was planned and initiated by a Socialist Party 
president and government. The Communist Party of France is an 
enthusiastic backer. Sadly, leading spokespeople of the Left Front 
(/Front de gauche/) electoral coalition (in which the Communist Party 
plays a prominent role) have chimed in for the war.



Full article at http://links.org.au/node/3281

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[Marxism] Gramsci conference at Duke U, Durham, North Carolina, April, 2013

[Red Arnie]

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Although my good friend and comrade will lightheartedly admonish me for
being an obscurantist, I call your attention to an upcoming series of
events on Gramsci - 2 weekend teach-ins followed by a conference - at Duke
University, Durham, NC in April, 2013. At the following site with
information about the events are hyperlinks to suggested readings (in pdf
format) for the teach-ins. Sorry for the short notice, but I just heard
about the conference myself.

http://gramsciintheworld.wordpress.com

I also found a useful course syllabus on Gramsci at Duke Professor Roberto
Dainotti's website.

http://people.duke.edu/~dainotto/classes/gramscu/index.html

Cheers, Red Arnie
Moraga, California

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Re: [Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Louis Proyect]

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On 3/30/13 8:16 PM, Eli Stephens wrote:

"The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued
intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier
flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160
military cargo flights..."

"Conspiratorial leftist perspective" my a--.


I guess that the PSL and its sympathizers won't be happy until another 
80,000 Syrians have been killed by Scud missiles, cluster bombs, armored 
helicopters, tanks, and rockets. I can understand how people could have 
been suckered in cheering for Soviet tanks in Hungary for at least you 
can argue (even if falsely) that it was a CIA plot to destroy socialism. 
But why anybody would rally around the Baathist flag for a clique of 
millionaires who have about as much to do with socialism as I do with 
7th Day Adventism is one of life's deeper mysteries.




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[Marxism] The conspiratorial leftist perspective

[Eli Stephens]

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Robin Yassin-Kassab, linked by Louis Proyect, wants us to believe that there
is a "conspiratorial leftist perspective."

Which I guess means that the Washington Post and the NY Times must be
leftists:

Washington Post, March 27:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-27/world/38064684_1_syrian-rebels
-rebel-commander-damascus

"Mideast powers opposed to President Bashar Assad have dramatically stepped
up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels in coordination with the U.S. in
preparation for a push on the capital of Damascus, officials and Western
military experts said Wednesday.

"A carefully prepared covert operation is arming rebels, involving Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, with the United States and other Western
governments consulting..."

NY Times, March 24:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-re
bels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?pagewanted=all

"With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply
increased their military aid to Syria¹s opposition fighters in recent
months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising
against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews
with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

"The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued
intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier
flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160
military cargo flights..."

"Conspiratorial leftist perspective" my a--.

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




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[Marxism] Notes on modern art, part 1

[Louis Proyect]

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A look at the "Inventing Abstract Art" showing at the MOMA until April 15.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/notes-on-modern-art-part-1/


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[Marxism] A subtle shift may mean Syrians will get the tools to resist Assad

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/a-subtle-shift-may-mean-syrians-will-get-the-tools-to-resist-assad

A subtle shift may mean Syrians will get the tools to resist Assad

Robin Yassin-Kassab
Mar 30, 2013

From the very start, some commentators convinced themselves that the 
Syrian popular revolution was plotted, funded and armed by the West.


Left-wing journalists Seamus Milne, John Pilger and Glenn Greenwald, as 
well as the UK politician George Galloway, all described the West 
supplying oppositionist "jihadist elements". Author Tariq Ali spoke on 
Russia Today of "Russia and China resisting attempts by the West to take 
Syria over". Russia is resupplying Bashar Al Assad's regime with the 
materiel with which to slaughter the Syrian people, making Ali's 
performance on Russia's satellite television unedifying, and as distant 
from reality as that of a commentator telling Fox News that Palestinian 
resistance is simply an Iranian attempt to take over Israel.


These commentators have staked their positions against the evidence. 
They have done so by forcing Syrian realities, breaking the edges of the 
jigsaw puzzle pieces to fit their prior geopolitical concerns (their 
opposition to concurrent Israeli-American and Saudi enmities towards 
Iran) or ideological stances (that the West is always the troublemaker 
in the Arab world).


But Syria is neither Palestine nor Iraq; Syrian events are moved 
primarily by internal dynamics - namely the violence of the regime and 
the anger of the Syrian people. The conspiratorial leftist perspective 
misses this, first by vastly overestimating western influence on current 
events (a failure to accurately diagnose the historical moment) and, 
second, by misunderstanding how unenthusiastic the West is for any rapid 
democratic or revolutionary change in Syria.


Months into the slaughter, then-US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, 
continued to describe President Bashar Al Assad as a potential reformer 
and called for regime-led transition - a position not so different from 
Russia's or Iran's today. The Israel lobby is fundamental to US Middle 
East policy, and Israel remained happy enough with the devil it knew in 
Damascus, a facilitator of Lebanon's Hizbollah certainly, but also the 
guarantor of Israel's quietest border - on the occupied Golan Heights.


For not only did the Al Assad regime ensure that not a single bullet was 
fired across the line since 1973, or that Israeli planes striking 
targets in Syria were never engaged, it also locked up innocents like 
Tal Al Malouhi, a young woman whose only crime was to write blog posts 
on Palestinian suffering.


For the first months the revolution was a peaceful protest movement, but 
as civil society leaders were targeted for torture and death, as the 
numbers of those shot and raped escalated, Syrians began arming 
themselves, buying black-market weapons from Beirut or from corrupt army 
officers. Revolutionary soldiers brought their weapons with them when 
they defected. Expatriate Syrians and Arabian Gulf businessmen bought 
weapons in Turkey and Iraq and sent them across the border.


Finally, the Saudi and Qatari regimes delivered light weapons, but were 
prevented from sending heavy weapons by their American ally, which 
feared these may one day be directed against Israel or fall into the 
hands of anti-western Islamists. In the words of Syrian National 
Coalition head (now resigned) Moaz Al Khatib, "the length of the beards 
of the fighters" seemed more important to the West "than the massacres".


Just as it once left Bosnian Muslims defenceless against already-armed 
Serbs, the European Union placed an arms embargo on Syrian fighters. 
Russia and Iran, meanwhile, rejected any ban on arms sales to the 
regime. Politicians talked in vain of achieving an obviously 
unattainable international consensus.


In the absence of real international support, the lengths of some of the 
fighters' beards, and their anti-westernism, only increased.


Like the regime, which predicted "armed gangs" and "takfeeri militias" 
before they existed, then created the conditions for their birth, the US 
has also found itself in the self-fulfilling prophecy business, creating 
by inaction the extremist danger it was warning about.


Syria has been so traumatised by two years of war that it now faces 
warlordism and national disintegration. The refugee crisis and growing 
sectarian polarisation are destabilising the wider region. Worst of all 
from a western perspective, the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al Nusra has 
grown from an irrelevance to a key player. Raqqa, the first completely 
liberated city of the revolution, was captured by Jabhat Al Nusra in 
alliance with others bearing black flags.


As 

[Marxism] Marxism and Anarchism: Occupy and the Politics of Consumption

[Ben Campbell]

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North Star is hosting a roundtable discussion: What is the relation between
Marxism and anarchism today? What does the status and practice of anarchism
tell us about Marxism, and vice versa?

We begin with Richard Estes on what the Occupy movement tells us about
Marxism and anarchism: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=8185

We invite further submissions, at edit...@thenorthstar.info

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Re: [Marxism] Argentina: PTS statement against CFK government’s McCarthyism,

[Louis Proyect]

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On 3/30/13 11:38 AM, DW wrote:

Few groups on the left are investigating the "other" death squad
period...when the right-wing Peronist organizations were murdering
left-wing Peronist and Marxists prior to the coup in 1976. The current head
of one of the large Peronist unions is currently under investigation for
taking part in such murders.



Argentina has terrible problems that make effective revolutionary 
organizing almost impossible. You have the continuing allegiance of 
workers to Peronista politics that functions in many ways like the DP in 
the USA or the PRI in Mexico, a toxic combination of labor bureaucracy 
and bourgeois populism. Just as was the case in the USA, leftist inertia 
and sectarianism largely prevented left unity from posing some kind of 
serious alternative. As the Wikipedia article I posted earlier, the 
Morenoite MAS split into 20 different groups. Who knows why?


Against a divided and super-vanguardist Marxist left, you have the most 
extreme forms of autonomism/anarchism in the world with its fetishes 
over recovered factories, militancy for the sake of militancy, etc.


In some ways, it is a much more advanced form of the disunity that 
afflicts Greece. Not surprisingly, the PST hates SYRIZA.




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[Marxism] Trotsky and Stalin, polish socialismRE: Argentina: PTS statement against CFK government's McCarthyism,

[Dan Weiner]

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You guys are going to love this question--smile.
Since we are mentioning Trotskyism, Stalin, etc.
I am in my forties and have been interested  and favorably  inclined towards
 Marxism-Leninism, etc. since my teenage years but I would like to hear
different points of view:
Since  the person who just wrote that post said that workers' control in
Soviet Russia was defeated by Stalinism, I must ask, was it?
I have nothing against Trotsky or Stalin, I mean in the realm of theory for
that matter, setting aside claims or counter claims.

So, an array of  opinions or direction to some sources or forums would be
welcome.
I had always thought that the USSR survived and socialism in some form  did
whether because of Stalin or in spite of him I have not been able to
decide--smile.

Now another question, any good sources for accounts of the crises in Polish
socialism during the early eighties, I am specifically interested in Marxist
or communist analysis whether pro-Polish Government of that time or not.

Just some questions to feed and stimulate my mind as frankly in daily life I
don't' have too many people to discuss this stuff with--smile.

My approach to Marxism has always been that it's a guide do action and that
the only way it really makes sense is using it to understand the world in
order to improve it so I get weary of too many debates about the past
exclusively without reference to today's struggles but  it is interesting
nonetheless.
Remember, I'm just asking and have nothing against Trotsky or Stalin as
political figures per se, just trying to figure this out for myself--smile
.

If this is not the right forum for this type of discussion I sincerely
apologize.

Yours cordially,

Dan

 



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Re: [Marxism] Argentina: PTS statement against CFK government’s McCarthyism,

[Val]

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I´ve understood that an important factory under worker control who gained
control after taking the factory, get the support of the people (workers
from other factories, education workers, unemployed workers, intellectuals,
students, indigenous communities, etc.) and facing the repressive forces,
is in Argentina and is called ZANON. The political leadership of that
process of working-class struggle, almost unique in the world, was led by
the PTS.

It is true that Trotskyism is a very minor power compared with the
bourgeois parties (it could not be otherwise after the defeat of the
working class at the hands of stalinism, you know) but it is also true that
being the direction of a process like ZANON (currently still run by the
PTS) is something that goes beyond the details: something must be willing
to say about PTS. I´m just doing a simple reasoning, of course.



2013/3/30 DW 

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The statement is worth reading not because the PTS is particularly
> significant, but because it's significantly accurate.
>
> The PTS is one of over a dozen Trotskyist type organizations that spun off
> from the explosion of the 10,000 plus membership of the MAS back in the
> late 1980s. Even among Trotskyist groups there the PTS is not the largest
> or most influential.
>
> This group, among others, in fact does play an important role in the union
> movement challenging the old-line Peronist domination of the unions in
> Argentina. The Peronist unions themselves divided over the Peronist gov't
> economic policies.
>
> Few groups on the left are investigating the "other" death squad
> period...when the right-wing Peronist organizations were murdering
> left-wing Peronist and Marxists prior to the coup in 1976. The current head
> of one of the large Peronist unions is currently under investigation for
> taking part in such murders.
>
> David
> 
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> Set your options at:
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>



-- 
Val

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Re: [Marxism] Argentina: PTS statement against CFK government’s McCarthyism,

[DW]

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The statement is worth reading not because the PTS is particularly
significant, but because it's significantly accurate.

The PTS is one of over a dozen Trotskyist type organizations that spun off
from the explosion of the 10,000 plus membership of the MAS back in the
late 1980s. Even among Trotskyist groups there the PTS is not the largest
or most influential.

This group, among others, in fact does play an important role in the union
movement challenging the old-line Peronist domination of the unions in
Argentina. The Peronist unions themselves divided over the Peronist gov't
economic policies.

Few groups on the left are investigating the "other" death squad
period...when the right-wing Peronist organizations were murdering
left-wing Peronist and Marxists prior to the coup in 1976. The current head
of one of the large Peronist unions is currently under investigation for
taking part in such murders.

David

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[Marxism] A Thousand Kinds of Life: Culture, Nature, and Anthropology | Dissent Magazine

[Louis Proyect]

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Sahlins versus Chagnon,

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/a-thousand-kinds-of-life-culture-nature-and-anthropolgy


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Re: [Marxism] John Foster is not speaking at the British SWP Marxism 2013 Festival in London this July

[Einde O'Callaghan]

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On 30.03.2013 14:09, Peggy Dobbins wrote:

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Huh?


A rather stupid sectarian one-liner.

Einde O'Callaghan


On Mar 29, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Charlie  wrote:




They apologize for listing John Bellamy Foster. It was supposed to be John 
Foster Dulles.




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[Marxism] Brian Becker: The war danger in Korea

[Eli Stephens]

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http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/the-war-danger-in-korea.html

The war danger in Korea
Pentagon's false propaganda conceals truth about crisis

By Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition
March 29, 2013

The American war propaganda machine does a thorough job in misleading the
public about the high-stakes struggle the Pentagon is waging against North
Korea.

On March 28, the Obama administration ordered and the Pentagon executed a
mock bombing attack on North Korea by U.S. B-2 stealth bombers equipped to
drop nuclear bombs‹the most advanced nuclear-capable plane in the U.S. Air
Force. In recent months, the U.S. has also used nuclear-capable B-52 bombers
to simulate the bombing of North Korea.

The B-2s, each of which costs taxpayers more than $3 billion, dropped inert
bombs near North Korea.

It is not necessary to speculate how the United States would react if North
Korea sent nuclear-capable bombers close to U.S. territory and dropped inert
bombs as part of a "war game."

By itself, this B-2 mock bombing of North Korea cost approximately $5.5
million, according to Foreign Policy magazine. The B-2 flights by some
estimates cost $135,000 per hour‹almost double that of any other military
airplane, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.

The U.S. carpet-bombed North Korea for three years

It is not possible to overstate the impact on North Korea of this week's
simulated destruction of their country and people by U.S. war planes.

Between 1950 and 1953, U.S. bombers carpet-bombed North Korea so
relentlessly that a main complaint of U.S. pilots became the absence of
anything left to bomb.

Between 1950 and 1953, U.S. bombers carpet-bombed North Korea so
relentlessly that a main complaint of U.S. pilots became the absence of
anything left to bomb. By July 1953, when an armistice was signed ending
open military hostilities, there was not one structure standing higher than
one story left in North Korea.

More than 5 million Koreans died during the war, according to the
Encyclopedia Britannica of 1967. They died from bombs and bullets. They died
from disease and exposure to the cold. They died in horrific massacres
committed by retreating U.S. troops, who burned "pro-communist villages" as
they were fleeing in retreat from North Korea in the face of a surprise
counteroffensive launched by Chinese and North Korean units in late October
1950.

It was the United States that remained after the armistice to occupy South
Korea with tens of thousands of troops. The Pentagon required that its
occupying troops be exempted from ever having to stand before Korean courts
if they were charged with the murder or rape of Korean citizens. South
Korea's military dictators, who had earlier served as proxies of the
Japanese occupation forces prior to 1945, were more than happy to oblige
their new bosses.

Pentagon backed the military dictatorship in South Korea

Under the tight control and supervision of the Pentagon, a brutal military
dictatorship ruled South Korea for decades.

In 1961, General Park Chung-hee, formerly an officer in the Japanese
Manchuko Imperial Army during the time of Japan's brutal colonial occupation
of Korea, seized power and held it until his assassination by other military
officers in 1979. Any South Korean person who said anything sympathetic
about communism, socialism or North Korea was sentenced to decades-long
prison terms where torture was a given.

South Korea's current president, Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of General
Park Chung-hee. 

The role of the Pentagon and its continuing occupation has been decisive in
Korean politics. After the assassination of Park Chung-hee, massive protests
were staged in May 1980 against the military dictatorship in the South
Korean city of Kwangju.

The pro-democracy movement in Kwangju was labeled "communist-inspired" and
the rebellion was crushed in blood. More than 2,000 people were killed May
18 to 27, 1980. Later released secret documents revealed that it was the top
brass of the U.S. occupation force that authorized soldiers of the Korean
Army's 20th Division to be sent to Kwangju to suppress the protesting
students. 

The Pentagon and the South Korean military today‹and throughout the past
year‹have been staging massive war games that simulate the invasion and
bombing of North Korea.

Few people in the United States know the real situation. The work of the war
propaganda machine is designed to make sure that the American people do not
join together to demand an end to the dangerous and threatening actions of
the Pentagon on the Korean Peninsula.

The propaganda campaign is in full swing now as the Pentagon climbs the
escalation ladder in the most militarized part of the planet. North Korea is
depicted 

Re: [Marxism] John Foster is not speaking at the British SWP Marxism 2013 Festival in London this July

[Greg McDonald]

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That's what they commonly refer to as a joke, Peggy.


On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Peggy Dobbins  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Huh?
>
> On Mar 29, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Charlie  wrote:
>
> > ==
> > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> > ==
> >
> >
> > They apologize for listing John Bellamy Foster. It was supposed to be
> John Foster Dulles.
> >
> >
> > 
> > Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> > Set your options at:
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/pegdobbins%40gmail.com
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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>

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[Marxism] Catastrophism?

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/frank-fenner-sees-no-hope-for-humans/story-e6frgcjx-1225880091722

Frank Fenner sees no hope for humans

by: Cheryl Jones
From: The Australian
June 16, 2010 12:00AM

FRANK Fenner doesn't engage in the skirmishes of the climate wars. To 
him, the evidence of global warming is in. Our fate is sealed.


"We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever 
we do now is too late."


Fenner is an authority on extinction. The emeritus professor in 
microbiology at the Australian National University played a leading role 
in sending one species into oblivion: the variola virus that causes 
smallpox.


And his work on the myxoma virus suppressed wild rabbit populations on 
farming land in southeastern Australia in the early 1950s.


He made the comments in an interview at his home in a leafy Canberra 
suburb. Now 95, he rarely gives interviews. But until recently he went 
into work each day at the ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research, 
of which he was director from 1967 to 1973.

Digital Pass $1 for first 28 Days

Decades after his official retirement from the Centre for Resource and 
Environmental Studies, which he set up in 1973, he continued a routine 
established when he was running world-class facilities while conducting 
research.


He'd get to work at 6.30am to spend a couple of hours writing textbooks 
before the rest of the staff arrived.


Fenner, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and of the Royal 
Society, has received many awards and honours. He has published hundreds 
of scientific papers and written or co-written 22 books.


He retrieves some of the books from his library. One of them, on 
smallpox, has physical as well as intellectual gravitas: it weighs 
3.5kg. Another, on myxomatosis, was reprinted by Cambridge University 
Press last year, 44 years after the first edition came out.


Fenner is chuffed, but disappointed that he could not update it with 
research confirming wild rabbits have developed resistance to the 
biological control agent.


The study showed that myxo now had a much lower kill rate in the wild 
than in laboratory rabbits that had never been exposed to the virus.


"The [wild] rabbits themselves had mutated," Fenner says.

"It was an evolutionary change in the rabbits."

His deep understanding of evolution has never diminished his fascination 
with observing it in the field. That understanding was shaped by studies 
of every scale, from the molecular level to the ecosystem and planetary 
levels.


Fenner originally wanted to become a geologist but, on the advice of his 
father, studied medicine instead, graduating from the University of 
Adelaide in 1938.


He spent his spare time studying skulls with prehistorian Norman Tindale.

Soon after graduating, he joined the Royal Australian Army Medical 
Corps, serving in Egypt and Papua New Guinea. He is credited in part 
with Australia's victory in New Guinea because of his work to control 
malaria among the troops.


"That quite changed my interest from looking at skulls to microbiology 
and virology," he says. But his later research in virology, focusing on 
pox viruses, took him also into epidemiology and population dynamics, 
and he would soon zoom out to view species, including our own, in their 
ecological context.


His biological perspective is also geological.

He wrote his first papers on the environment in the early 1970s, when 
human impact was emerging as a big problem.


He says the Earth has entered the Anthropocene. Although it is not an 
official epoch on the geological timescale, the Anthropocene is entering 
scientific terminology. It spans the time since industrialisation, when 
our species started to rival ice ages and comet impacts in driving the 
climate on a planetary scale.


Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and "unbridled 
consumption".


The number of Homo sapiens is projected to exceed 6.9 billion this year, 
according to the UN. With delays in firm action on cutting greenhouse 
gas emissions, Fenner is pessimistic.


"We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island," he says. 
"Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing 
remarkable changes in the weather already.


"The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon 
dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 
years. But the world can't. The human species is likely to go the same 
way as many of the species that we've seen disappear.


"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he says. 
"A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation. I 
think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying

Re: [Marxism] John Foster is not speaking at the British SWP Marxism 2013 Festival in London this July

[Peggy Dobbins]

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Huh?

On Mar 29, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Charlie  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
> 
> 
> They apologize for listing John Bellamy Foster. It was supposed to be John 
> Foster Dulles.
> 
> 
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at: 
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/pegdobbins%40gmail.com


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[Marxism] Myths about North Korean militarism

[en . passant]

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David Whitehouse explains the backdrop to the ratcheting up of conflict in the 
Korean peninsula--and the role the U.S. government is playing.

http://enpassant.com.au/2013/03/30/myths-about-north-korean-militarism/


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