[Marxism] Mailing List

[Manohar Notani]

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Post Mailing List

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Re: [Marxism] Ghadars, Sikhs, M.N. Roy, German imperialism, and Alexander Berkman | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Adam Richmond]

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Oh, is he out of jail already?

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[Marxism] Chomsky on Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- Harvard May 1, 2013

[mckenna193]

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This May 1, 2013 talk is just out. .  .Paulo Freire will hopefully soon surge 
again in the culture with attention like this. . . 
 
slow going at first, but becomes great. . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ll6M0cXV54 
 
Brian McKenna



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Re: [Marxism] From the Belly of the Beast

[Jeff]

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At 16:17 23-06-13 -0400, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>True, but some on this list would add (silently, to themselves)  
>"especially if they were sent, lock, stock, and drone" to the
>Syria-Hezbollah-Iran front!

Many reasonable people would recommend just ignoring such a childish
remark, but I'm not good at being reasonable nor do I ever say things
"silently to myself" that I wouldn't tell the world about. So I will point
out that NO ONE on this list, nor any (to speak of) among the Syrian rebels
advocate sending imperialist troops to fight in Syria. If Shane believes
otherwise then he is free to browse the archives of this list and offer a
quote to the contrary. Or elaborate on his mind-reading powers whereby he
knows what people are saying "silently, to themselves." If I had something
of wisdom to say to myself I would say it to all.

I have repeatedly mentioned the danger of imperialist intervention. However
I have pointed out that the reason for imperialist intervention will not be
to insure the victory of the revolution, but to determine the forces
allowed in (or excluded from) the revolutionary government, and to "secure"
the chemical weapons and any anti-aircraft missiles (which they have
successfully kept out, so far).

I await Shane's apology for making such a clearly fallacious remark
regarding myself or anyone else on this list. 

- Jeff




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Re: [Marxism] From the Belly of the Beast

[Shane Mage]

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On Jun 23, 2013, at 3:29 PM, Jeff wrote:


The only issue as far as I'm concerned is getting the U.S. the hell  
out of

there, lock, stock and drone.


Well finally a statement that everyone on this list can fully agree  
with!


True, but some on this list would add (silently, to themselves)  
"especially if they were sent, lock, stock, and drone" to the

Syria-Hezbollah-Iran front!



Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64






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Re: [Marxism] Ghadars, Sikhs, M.N. Roy, German imperialism, and Alexander Berkman | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Andrew Pollack]

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event on Ghards this week, conference in October:
from the South Asia Solidarity list:

We welcome you to a discussion and conversation on the The Ghadar Party and
it's continuing relevance today. Join author and activist, Maia Ramnath, of
the book, The Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global
Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire, and Sangay
Mishra, a teacher and researcher interested in the political mobilization
of racial and religious minority groups.

What: The Ghadar Party and Transnational Solidarity

In 1913 in California, a coalition of South Asian immigrant workers and
students called the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association formed the Ghadar
Party. These revolutionaries organized uprisings against imperialism,
fighting alongside comrades in South Asia and elsewhere. The Ghadar Party
made explicit links between their own fights against imperialism and
entrenched oppressions globally. The Ghadar Party forms the historical
bedrock for diaspora activism on which SASI will organize the Ghadar
Convergence – NYC in October 2013.

Where: The BlueStockings Bookstore and Cafe
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington. Nearest metro stop is 2nd
Avenue on the F line.

Here's the facebook link to the event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/465768120175888/

This is a free event, but we will be accepting donations for the Ghadar
Party convergence in October.

Please donate: Echoes of Ghadar: Convergence of grassroots activists from
South Asia to the U.S.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/echoes-of-ghadar?c=home
**Please note that the donations are tax-deductable and will be going
through our fiscal sponsor, The SINGH FOUNDATION.**

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Re: [Marxism] From the Belly of the Beast

[Jeff]

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At 17:59 22-06-13 -0700, DW wrote:
>
>#Military uses. My view has always been, knowing that drones offer a far
>more precises reconnaissance abilities because they *fly so slowly* that
>the U.S.'s so-called "Drone War" in Afghanistan and Pakistan is in fact a
>terror campaign, pure and simple. There are no "mistakes"

Well these are still controlled by trigger-happy soldiers, so there
certainly can be mistakes. My guess is that their policy is to fire on any
individual who is on a list, knowing full well that the rocket will kill
anyone in his immediate vicinity, and that the "collateral damage" = "bad
PR" will most often never be picked up by the international press. And if
is, they can say that all of them were "enemy combatants" anyway. And if
they turn out to be women and children, then claim that it was the
"terrorist" that put innocents in harms way. Only when they totally
misidentify the intended person and none of the above are plausible does
some soldier sitting at a computer terminal get chewed out.

But you are also right: insofar as there are no wider repercussions, the
effect of these operations is to terrorize the population, and cause them
to avoid sheltering "the enemy" for fear of drawing fire. This is the goal
of collective punishment.

>The only issue as far as I'm concerned is getting the U.S. the hell out of
>there, lock, stock and drone.

Well finally a statement that everyone on this list can fully agree with!


>#The communications thing you brought up I never knew about and it's
>another layer of scary NSA shit to worry about, especially if I lived in
>other countries. They of course don't need this here in the U.S.

But I believe that is the historic modus operandi of the NSA,
surreptitiously tapping telephone lines and intercepting microwave links.
But..

> as they
>can order 'our' comm corporation to simply pony up people's phone calls and
>emails. 

Yes, but that is a relatively recent (perhaps last 20 years) phenomenon,
enabled by the much higher concentration of data (including telephone
calls) through high capacity fiber optic channels (the so-called "backbone"
of the internet). In other words, a much greater portion of these data pass
through a smaller number of nodes, and gaining access to these points is
sufficient to intercept most non-local phone calls and essentially all
internet traffic.

>My understanding is that ALL satellite comms are router or shunted through
>the facility the UK run by the NSA *anyway*. 

I didn't know that, but in general its the case that internet traffic takes
many hops, and international data (including phone calls) will generally
pass through countries friendly to the US/NSA. I'll bet they have a huge
amount of duplicate data to sort out as the same traffic is intercepted in
two continents!


>Jeff...that was...fascinating, especially about the communication issues
>with drones.

Well now this is really off topic! And indeed I hadn't ever thought about
communications between drones either before this guy mentioning his
application for free-space optical communications (the topic of actual
interest to me). Normal communications with a drone wouldn't be much
different from Wi-Fi (with a bit more transmitter power and range), but
this project involved a huge data rate.

> My question would be why worry about microwaves (which have to
>be targeted and received in a pin point manner

Do you mean my asking him why not just use a microwave link? That was just
an off-the-cuff question but the ultimate answer was that they needed a
higher data rate than microwaves would support. You're right that generally
microwave links require directional antennas (dishes) pointed toward the
other station. There is a general trade-off between antenna directivity (or
"gain" which is also proportional to the area of the dish), transmitter
power, distance, and data rate. So for instance Wi-Fi and mobile telephones
use microwaves with NO directivity (well, some directivity at the mobile
service towers) and rather low power, but consequently the range and data
rate are very limited. But now that you brought it up, having a dish of
practically any size would be problematic on a smallish airplane. And as
you say, its pointing would have to be controlled during flight, but such a
control system is possible, and an optical system also requires an even
more precise pointing system.

> when they can
>simply use satellites? Any thoughts on this?

Well communications through satellites still uses microwaves, with all of
the above concerns (such as a dish now pointed upwards) so you haven't
gained anything. What's more, communications satellites in geosynchronous
orbits are 40,000 km away so you need to increase the transmitted power
and/or antenna gain b

Re: [Marxism] Arming the RRRRevolution

[Jeff]

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At 11:25 23-06-13 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>I made an exception in this instance for Shane's 50,000 byte 
>crossposting from the Baathist outlet "Moon over Alabama" 

Fine, but that doesn't mean I had the time (or stomach) to read through the
whole thing. Anyone convinced that the Syrian rebels are sufficiently armed
needs to tell me how many of the dreaded airplanes bombing them have been
shot down (or are we still arguing about whether the one Iranian airplane
fired at was carrying weaponry or was a food shipment?).

- Jeff




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Re: [Marxism] Biodeterminism and Violence

[Andrew Pollack]

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thanks, this is important

As I've probably said here ad nauseum, the Times is responsible for
promoting biodeterminism itself by reporting every bogus claim of some
quack to have found a gene for this or that behavior, handling it with
"balance," or not even bothering to present the scientific explanation for
why it's horseshit.


On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Glenn Kissack  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Today's NY Times has a friendly, mildly critical review of "The Anatomy of
> Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime," by Adrian Raine, a British
> psychologist who holds a special chair as the University Professor of
> Criminology & Psychiatry in the Department of Criminology of the School of
> Arts and Sciences:
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/books/review/the-anatomy-of-violence-by-adrian-raine.html?ref=books&_r=0
>
>

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[Marxism] More on Martin Bernal

[Louis Proyect]

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NY Times June 22, 2013
Martin Bernal, ‘Black Athena’ Scholar, Dies at 76
By PAUL VITELLO

Martin Bernal, whose three-volume work “Black Athena” ignited an 
academic debate by arguing that the African and Semitic lineage of 
Western civilization had been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece 
by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their 
times, died on June 9 in Cambridge, England. He was 76.


The cause was complications of myelofibrosis, a bone marrow disorder, 
said his wife, Leslie Miller-Bernal.


“Black Athena” opened a new front in the warfare over cultural diversity 
already raging on American campuses in the 1980s and ’90s. The first 
volume, published in 1987 — the same year as “The Closing of the 
American Mind,” Allan Bloom’s attack on efforts to diversify the 
academic canon — made Mr. Bernal a hero among Afrocentrists, a pariah 
among conservative scholars and the star witness at dozens of sometimes 
raucous academic panel discussions about how to teach the foundational 
ideas of Western culture.


Mr. Bernal, a British-born and Cambridge-educated polymath who taught 
Chinese political history at Cornell from 1972 until 2001, spent a fair 
amount of time on those panels explaining what his work did not mean to 
imply. He did not claim that Greek culture had its prime origins in 
Africa, as some news media reports described his thesis. He said only 
that the debt Greek culture owed to Africa and the Middle East had been 
lost to history.


His thesis was this: For centuries, European historians of classical 
Greece had hewed closely to the origin story suggested by Plato, 
Herodotus and Aeschylus, whose writings acknowledged the Greek debt to 
Egyptian and Semitic (or Phoenician) forebears.


But in the 19th century, he asserted, with the rise of new strains of 
racism and anti-Semitism along with nationalism and colonialism in 
Europe, historians expunged Egyptians and Phoenicians from the story. 
The precursors of Greek, and thus European, culture were seen instead as 
white Indo-European invaders from the north.


In the first volume of “Black Athena,” which carried the forbidding 
double subtitle “The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization: The 
Fabrication of Ancient Greece — 1785-1985,” Mr. Bernal described his 
trek through the fields of classical Greek literature, mythology, 
archaeology, linguistics, sociology, the history of ideas and ancient 
Hebrew texts to formulate his theory of history gone awry (though he did 
not claim expertise in all these subjects).


The scholarly purpose of his work, he wrote in the introduction, was “to 
open up new areas of research to women and men with far better 
qualifications than I have,” adding, “The political purpose of ‘Black 
Athena,’ is, of course, to lessen European cultural arrogance.”


He published “Black Athena 2: The Archaeological and Documentary 
Evidence” in 1991, and followed it in 2006 with “Black Athena 3: The 
Linguistic Evidence.”


Another book, “Black Athena Writes Back,” published in 2001, was a 
response to his critics, who were alarmed enough by Mr. Bernal’s work to 
publish a collection of rebuttals in 1996, “Black Athena Revisited.”


One critic derided Mr. Bernal’s thesis as evidence of “a whirling 
confusion of half-digested reading.” Some were more conciliatory. J. 
Ray, a British Egyptologist, wrote, “It may not be possible to agree 
with Mr. Bernal, but one is the poorer for not having spent time in his 
company.”


Stanley Burstein, a professor emeritus of ancient Greek history at 
California State University, Los Angeles, said Mr. Bernal’s 
historiography — his history of history-writing on ancient Greece — was 
flawed but valuable. “Nobody had to be told that Greece was deeply 
influenced by Egypt and the Phoenicians, or that 19th-century history 
included a lot of racial prejudice,” he said in a phone interview 
Tuesday. “But then, nobody had put it all together that way before.”


The specific evidence cited in his books was often doubtful, Professor 
Burstein added, but “he succeeded in putting the question of the origins 
of Greek civilization back on the table.”


Martin Gardiner Bernal was born on March 10, 1937, in London to John 
Desmond Bernal, a prominent British scientist and radical political 
activist, and Margaret Gardiner, a writer. His parents never married, a 
fact their son asserted with some pride in interviews.


“My father was a communist and I was illegitimate,” he said in 1996. “I 
was always expected to be radical because my father was.”


His grandfather Alan Gardiner was a distinguished Egyptologist.

Mr. Bernal graduated from King’s College, Cambridge, in 1957, earned a 
diploma of Chinese language from Peking University in 1960 and did 
gradua

[Marxism] Brazil: Statement on the attacks against left wing organisations on the June 20 demonstrations

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.marxist.com/statement-brazil-june-20-attacks-on-left-wing.htm


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[Marxism] Martin Bernal obituary | Education | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect]

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The author of "Black Athena", dead at 76.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jun/21/martin-bernal


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[Marxism] Spain United Left

[Adam Turl]

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Spain: Rising United Left tackles new challenges

By *Dick Nichols*

June 21, 2013 -- *Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal* --
The latest opinion polls in the Spanish state have been stirring waves of
concern in the ruling elites, of hope on the left and storms of comment in
the media.

Nationally, they show the radical federation United Left (IU) within reach
of closing the gap on the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party
(PSOE). In the June Metroscopia
poll
IU
trailed just 4.7% percentage points behind the PSOE (16.8% to 21.5%).

Spanish social democracy’s decline is most advanced in Catalonia and
Galicia, and in the capital Madrid. A May 5 Asca
poll
showed
the Galician Left Alternative (AGE)—in which IU participates with the
left-nationalist ANOVA, the all-Spanish green party Equo and the Galician
Ecosocialist Space (EEG)—doubling its presence in the 75-seat Galician
parliament to 18 seats. That would put it just one seat behind the PSOE
(represented in Galicia by the Party of Socialists of Galicia, PSG).

A June 6 Gesop 
poll
put
IU’s Catalan affiliate , the United and
Alternative Left (EUiA), which acts in electoral coalition with Initiative
for Catalonia-Greens (ICV), in a similar position. The alliance is now
level-pegging on 12.2% with the Party of Catalan Socialists (PSC, the
PSOE’s Catalan affiliate).

the rest online: http://links.org.au/node/3404

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[Marxism] Ghadars, Sikhs, M.N. Roy, German imperialism, and Alexander Berkman | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect]

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When I had occasion to speak by phone with Hari Dillon, the former 
director of Tecnica, on the occasion of the untimely death of Michael 
Urmann, the group’s founder, I mentioned the interview I had done with a 
Sikh activist who I had met at work. Hari reminded me of the 
conversations we had had long ago about the Ghadar Party that a relative 
of his had been a member of in California, where it was particularly 
strong. The Ghadar (Hindi for mutiny) group was a revolutionary 
nationalist formation spearheaded by Sikhs that was an alternative to 
Gandhi’s pacifism. After chatting with Hari, I had made a mental note to 
look into the Ghadars but put them on the front burner after discovering 
that M.N. Roy worked with them to procure weapons from the Germans 
during World War One to use against British colonialism.


full: 
http://louisproyect.org/2013/06/23/ghadars-sikhs-m-n-roy-german-imperialism-and-alexander-berkman/



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[Marxism] Brazil: Report and balance sheet of the first big rally in Joinville

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.marxist.com/brazil-report-and-balance-sheet-of-first-big-rally-in-joinville.htm


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Re: [Marxism] Arming the RRRRevolution

[Louis Proyect]

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On 6/23/13 10:57 AM, Shane Mage wrote:


“Everybody knows we do not have the weapons we need to defend
ourselves,” said Abu Trad, a commander of the Saraqib Rebels Front,
shortly before he allowed visitors into this mortar-round plant. “But we
have the will, and we have humble means, and we have tools.”


I made an exception in this instance for Shane's 50,000 byte 
crossposting from the Baathist outlet "Moon over Alabama" but in the 
future comrades should send along a link and few paragraphs.


For newcomers to Marxmail, Shane must be understood as quite a bit of 
Islamophobe himself who bared his teeth at the FLN in Algeria in the 
1960s in terms that would have embarrassed Albert Camus.


With respect to "Moon over Alabama", this was one of the early purveyors 
of the lie that the FSA was responsible for the massacre at Houla and 
has never issued a retraction. These scumbags (or scumbag) lost their 
right to make pronouncements on media disinformation long ago.


But the thing that really gives that cesspool away was this:

"The Washington Post editors believe that Syria must be bombed because 
Putin is harsh on Russian lunatics..."


Russian lunatics? Anybody who describes people sick and tired of a 
nationalist pig who sentences women to two years in prison for 
"blasphemy" in an Orthodox Church, one of the pig's main allies, as 
"lunatics" is obviously in love with neoliberal dictators--obviously on 
the basis that anybody who the Washington Post editorializes against we 
should support. Although I doubt it would do much good, I'd advise Shane 
to reread Trotsky's "Learn to Think".


Here's Moon Over Alabama justifying the two year sentence of Pussy Riot:

	Abusing places of worship for a "free speech act", especially when that 
act is subjectively blasphemous to the religion, is an infringement of 
the right of freedom of religion. In my view such an infringement, as in 
this case, can not be justified by the right of free speech. There are 
many other places where the free speech can be made. I therefore find 
the sentence against Pussy Riot quite obviously justified.


full: 
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/08/criticizing-the-pussy-riot-sentence-stinks-of-hypocrisy.html


One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how "rebellious" 
people like Shane Mage and his brother John and John's crackpot hireling 
Yoshie Furuhashi can adopt the same "law and order" mentality as Nixon's 
"silent majority". The state has to defend itself against unruly 
Islamists. What is going on here? In Yoshie's case, it might be her 
dad's JCP politics lingering influence. Shane, were you and John red 
diaper babies? I figure that might be the case since John was put in 
charge of the MR Foundation that depends so much on the geezers who used 
to go to Paul Robeson concerts.











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Re: [Marxism] Arming the RRRRevolution (part II)

[Shane Mage]

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On Jun 23, 2013, at 10:57 AM, Shane Mage wrote:



« Kiribati Drowns? Bomb Syria! | Main | Obama: Network Spying Is  
Serious Human Rights Abuse »

June 22, 2013



The 11 countries who form the friends for the destruction of  
Syria met today in Qatar. Before the meeting started Secretary of  
State Kerry hadplanned to organize a common distribution of weapons  
through the CIA controlled Free Syrian Army head General Idris to  
somewhat cut out the jihadist from the weapon stream:


Western and Arab opponents of Bashar Assad met in Qatar on Saturday  
to tighten coordination of their support for rebels battling to  
overthrow the Syrian president.
Ministers from 11 countries including the United States, European  
and regional Sunni Muslim powers, held talks that Washington said  
should commit participants to direct all aid through the Western- 
backed Supreme Military Council, which it hopes can offset the  
growing power of jihadist rebel forces.


That move was thought to be was necessary as Saudi Arabia as well as  
Qatar were freely distributing weapon to the various takfiri  
terrorist groups:
Two Gulf sources told Reuters on Saturday that Saudi Arabia, which  
has taken a lead role among Arab opponents of Assad, had also  
accelerated delivery of advanced weapons to the rebels.
"In the past week there have been more arrivals of these advanced  
weapons. They are getting them more frequently," one source said,  
without giving details. Another Gulf source described them as  
"potentially balance-tipping" supplies.


Before today's meeting Qatar made an attempt to put the takfiris it  
supports under the nominal umbrella of the Free Syrian Army:
The Free Syrian Army has offered powerful Islamist rebel groups a  
share of advanced new weapons if they unify under the FSA banner.
"Idriss offered to support the Islamist factions by sharing the  
weapons he expects to receive, if they joined an alliance with the  
FSA and agree to certain conditions," the Damascus-based rebel said  
yesterday.

...
He also said a delegation from Qatar had been in attendance - the  
only non-Syrian presence at the meeting. That had surprised those  
taking part, the rebel said, but might have been linked to the  
summit of opposition backers, known as The Friends of Syria, due to  
take place in Doha today.


The conference in Qatar has ended by now and Kerry has (again) failed:
Ministers from the 11 main countries which form the Friends of Syria  
group agreed "to provide urgently all the necessary materiel and  
equipment to the opposition on the ground, each country in its own  
way in order to enable them to counter brutal attacks by the regime  
and its allies".
"Each country in its own way" means Kerry failed - badly - to united  
the weapon flow. It seems then that Saudi Arabia and Qatar will  
continue to provide weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra and the other takfiri  
terrorist groups in Syria.
This disunity should let the Obama administration recognize that  
their argument to feed weapons to the "good rebels" to starve the  
takfiris will not work. When Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to  
provide these "in their own way" then the takfiris will continue to  
be the strongest section of the insurgency.


As a lot of new weapons are streaming in the Syrian Arab Army should  
probably stop its current offense and stay defensive while devising  
new tactics against such weapons. Tanks advancing openly or as  
sitting ducks at checkpoints are massive targets and will not  
survive an onslaught of Konkurs-M, Kornet and other modern anti-tank  
weapons. There are ways to counter them but that will need some time  
to be prepared and trained. Meanwhile large weapon transports can be  
observed and raided in quick and surprising raids could interdict  
them.
« Kiribati Drowns? Bomb Syria! | Main | Obama: Network Spying Is  
Serious Human Rights Abuse »

















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Re: [Marxism] Arming the RRRRevolution (part I)

[Shane Mage]

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On Jun 23, 2013, at 11:13 AM, Shane Mage wrote:



On Jun 23, 2013, at 10:57 AM, Shane Mage wrote:



« Kiribati Drowns? Bomb Syria! | Main | Obama: Network Spying Is  
Serious Human Rights Abuse »

June 22, 2013


On June 12 The NYT's CJ Chivers reported from Syria on workshops  
that make some ammunition for the foreign supported insurgency in  
Syria. The piece, starting with the headline, was a long whine  
about the alleged lack of arms of these poor killers. It included  
photos from the workshops by Chiver's sidekick Tyler Hicks.

Starved for Arms, Syria Rebels Make Their Own

“Everybody knows we do not have the weapons we need to defend  
ourselves,” said Abu Trad, a commander of the Saraqib Rebels Front,  
shortly before he allowed visitors into this mortar-round plant.  
“But we have the will, and we have humble means, and we have tools.”

...
[T]he arms plants remain a prominent feature of the opposition’s  
logistics, as arms flows from the Arab world fail to keep up with  
demand.

...
“All we need is effective weapons,” [Khaled Muhammed Addibis, a  
rebel commander,] said. “Effective weapons. Nothing else.”
When Chivers wrote the above the official propaganda line said that  
the US was not actively arming the "rebels" but that Obama was  
"withstanding the pressure to do so". That was nonsense and Chivers  
knew it was. While he wrote the story of those poor "rebels" who  
had to make weapons themselves because they do not get them  
elsewhere, Chivers also saw many modern weapons coming in from  
Libya and elsewhere and he knwe that the CIA was involved in  
distributing them. But he never reported on that. Instead he wrote  
the above lies. How do we know that? Well, just look what Chivers  
writes today:
Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and  
interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and  
officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and  
active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to  
transport arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters.

...
[W]hile the system appears to succeed in moving arms across  
multiple borders and to select rebel groups, once inside Syria the  
flow branches out. Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al  
Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many  
rebels are willing to sell.

...
But the Libyan influx appears to account for at least a portion of  
the antitank weapons seen in the conflict this spring, including  
Belgian-made projectiles for M40 recoilless rifles and some of the  
Russian-made Konkurs-M guided missiles that have been destroying  
Syrian tanks in recent months.

...
Signs of munitions from the former Qaddafi stockpile are readily  
visible.
Late last month The New York Times found crates, storage sleeves  
and spent cartridge cases for antitank rounds from Libya in the  
possession of Ahfad al-Rasul, a prominent group fighting the  
government and aligned with the Supreme Military Council.


While he reported on insurgents "starved of arms" Chivers and his  
photographer Hicks, actually had seen the recoilless rifles, the  
guided missiles and lots of crates of ammunition from Libya. But at  
that time the official propaganda theme was "poor underarmed  
rebels" and Chivers diligently followed it. That propaganda theme  
was used to create some public support for escalating the war by  
pushing even more arms into the rebels hands. The story of the  
"starved of arms rebels" was untrue and Chivers knew that "late  
last month" when he traveled in Syria. As always their are some  
nuggets of truth in the NYT's and Chivers' reporting. But often, as  
shown here, the writers are pushed, or oblige silently, to keep to  
the official line the White House is distributing. The few time the  
NYT is going against the official U.S. propaganda are just  
diversion to keep up an image of a free press.

---

« Kiribati Drowns? Bomb Syria! | Main | Obama: Network Spying Is  
Serious Human Rights Abuse »



















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[Marxism] Arming the RRRRevolution

[Shane Mage]

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« Kiribati Drowns? Bomb Syria! | Main | Obama: Network Spying Is  
Serious Human Rights Abuse »

June 22, 2013


On June 12 The NYT's CJ Chivers reported from Syria on workshops that  
make some ammunition for the foreign supported insurgency in Syria.  
The piece, starting with the headline, was a long whine about the  
alleged lack of arms of these poor killers. It included photos from  
the workshops by Chiver's sidekick Tyler Hicks.

Starved for Arms, Syria Rebels Make Their Own

“Everybody knows we do not have the weapons we need to defend  
ourselves,” said Abu Trad, a commander of the Saraqib Rebels Front,  
shortly before he allowed visitors into this mortar-round plant. “But  
we have the will, and we have humble means, and we have tools.”

...
[T]he arms plants remain a prominent feature of the opposition’s  
logistics, as arms flows from the Arab world fail to keep up with  
demand.

...
“All we need is effective weapons,” [Khaled Muhammed Addibis, a rebel  
commander,] said. “Effective weapons. Nothing else.”
When Chivers wrote the above the official propaganda line said that  
the US was not actively arming the "rebels" but that Obama was  
"withstanding the pressure to do so". That was nonsense and Chivers  
knew it was. While he wrote the story of those poor "rebels" who had  
to make weapons themselves because they do not get them elsewhere,  
Chivers also saw many modern weapons coming in from Libya and  
elsewhere and he knwe that the CIA was involved in distributing them.  
But he never reported on that. Instead he wrote the above lies. How do  
we know that? Well, just look what Chivers writes today:
Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and  
interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and  
officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and  
active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport  
arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters.

...
[W]hile the system appears to succeed in moving arms across multiple  
borders and to select rebel groups, once inside Syria the flow  
branches out. Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al Qaeda,  
have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are  
willing to sell.

...
But the Libyan influx appears to account for at least a portion of the  
antitank weapons seen in the conflict this spring, including Belgian- 
made projectiles for M40 recoilless rifles and some of the Russian- 
made Konkurs-M guided missiles that have been destroying Syrian tanks  
in recent months.

...
Signs of munitions from the former Qaddafi stockpile are readily  
visible.
Late last month The New York Times found crates, storage sleeves and  
spent cartridge cases for antitank rounds from Libya in the possession  
of Ahfad al-Rasul, a prominent group fighting the government and  
aligned with the Supreme Military Council.


While he reported on insurgents "starved of arms" Chivers and his  
photographer Hicks, actually had seen the recoilless rifles, the  
guided missiles and lots of crates of ammunition from Libya. But at  
that time the official propaganda theme was "poor underarmed rebels"  
and Chivers diligently followed it. That propaganda theme was used to  
create some public support for escalating the war by pushing even more  
arms into the rebels hands. The story of the "starved of arms rebels"  
was untrue and Chivers knew that "late last month" when he traveled in  
Syria. As always their are some nuggets of truth in the NYT's and  
Chivers' reporting. But often, as shown here, the writers are pushed,  
or oblige silently, to keep to the official line the White House is  
distributing. The few time the NYT is going against the official U.S.  
propaganda are just diversion to keep up an image of a free press.

---

The 11 countries who form the friends for the destruction of Syria met  
today in Qatar. Before the meeting started Secretary of State Kerry  
hadplanned to organize a common distribution of weapons through the  
CIA controlled Free Syrian Army head General Idris to somewhat cut out  
the jihadist from the weapon stream:


Western and Arab opponents of Bashar Assad met in Qatar on Saturday to  
tighten coordination of their support for rebels battling to overthrow  
the Syrian president.
Ministers from 11 countries including the United States, European and  
regional Sunni Muslim powers, held talks that Washington said should  
commit participants to direct all aid through the Western-backed  
Supreme Military Council, which it hopes can offset the growing power  
of jihadist rebel forces.


That move was thought to be was necessary as Saudi Arabia as well as  
Qatar were freely distributing weapon to the various takfiri terrori

Re: [Marxism] Beyond Leninism

[Randyjet]

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I could not agree more since that is exactly what Trotsky observed about  
the Kronstadt mutineers. The best of the CP had died in the Civil War. One 
also  has to ask, what would Lincoln have done in our Civil War if Britain had 
sent  troops to fight for the Confederacy? What would he have done if as 
happened in  the Soviet Union the main opposition party had declared WAR on 
the government?  Would US democracy have survived if the War Democrats had 
declared that Lincoln  had betrayed the cause by issuing the Emancipation 
Proclamation, and then shot  him, had all their members of Congress leave and 
join the Confederacy? That is  exactly what happened in the Soviet Union after 
the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was  forced on them and the Left SRs declared 
war on Lenin and the CP and the  Soviets. Think that there would have been a 
free election in 1864 with Democrats  running in the election? I doubt it. 
Randy
 
 
In a message dated 6/23/2013 9:04:52 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
h...@mailoo.org writes:

This is  very true.  Many of those who died at the battlefield were among
the  most committed supporters of workers democracy. They were the
volunteers  who headed first to the front lines in  1918.


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Re: [Marxism] Beyond Leninism

[Marv Gandall]

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On 2013-06-23, at 10:04 AM, h0ost wrote:

>> On 6/22/13 7:10 PM, Adam Turl wrote:
>>> 
>>> http://anticapitalists.org/2013/05/23/beyond-leninism/
>> 
>> I would tend to look at the civil war in the USSR from 1918 to 1920
>> as a much more important factor of the decline of workers democracy
>> than Bolshevik norms.
>> 
> 
> This is very true.  Many of those who died at the battlefield were among
> the most committed supporters of workers democracy. They were the
> volunteers who headed first to the front lines in 1918.

I think it was Louis rather than Adam who made that observation. Not wanting to 
speak for him, but he probably equally had in mind the movement of workers back 
to farms to escape the  starvation in the cities, also brought about by the 
disruption and deprivations of the civil war, as being as much of a factor as 
the battlefield losses in reducing the militant core of the urban proletariat 
which gave birth to and sustained soviet democracy.



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Re: [Marxism] Movement in Paraguay

[Anon Anon]

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It's about electricity privatisation (which seems to have been stopped).

Greg McDonald wrote:
>Anyone else following this story?


Sector eléctrico paraguayo se declara en estado de huelga
http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2013/06/21/sector-electrico-paraguayo-se-declara-en-estado-de-huelga-2245.html



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Re: [Marxism] Beyond Leninism

[h0ost]

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On 06/22/2013 07:27 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
> ==
>
> 
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
> 
> 
> On 6/22/13 7:10 PM, Adam Turl wrote:
>> 
>> http://anticapitalists.org/2013/05/23/beyond-leninism/
> 
> I would tend to look at the civil war in the USSR from 1918 to 1920
> as a much more important factor of the decline of workers democracy
> than Bolshevik norms.
> 

This is very true.  Many of those who died at the battlefield were among
the most committed supporters of workers democracy. They were the
volunteers who headed first to the front lines in 1918.





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[Marxism] Rebuilding Australia's union movement

[en . passant]

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As Australia lurches towards a likely Abbott landslide, it?s worth taking stock 
of our union movement writes Jerome Small in Socialist Alternative.

http://enpassant.com.au/2013/06/23/rebuilding-australias-union-movement/


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