[Marxism] What's new at Links: Ukraine, MH17, Barry Sheppard, Sam Gindin replies on ‘environmental catastrophism’, Indonesia, Podemos
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What's new at Links: Ukraine, MH17, Barry Sheppard, Sam Gindin replies on ‘environmental catastrophism’, Indonesia, Podemos * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to linkssocial...@gmail.com *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. *Comments welcome on all articles *Return daily for new articles * * * Ukraine: As Kiev military inflicts fresh bloodshed in east, Australia pushes Western intervention http://links.org.au/node/3975 Ukraine army blocks access to Malaysia Airlines crash site STOP PRESS, July 29, 2014: Roger Annis reports that there has been “constant and heavy shelling” by the Ukraine army during the past two days on the towns and villages in Donetsk region surrounding the crash site of MH17. The site was turned over to international investigators four days ago by Donetsk self-defence fighters, but the investigators have not been able to access it due to military operations of the Ukraine army. Self-defence fighters say the army controls the area surrounding the site. There are no observers present. * * * By *Tony Iltis *July 28, 2014 -- Malaysian Airlines lost its second Boeing 777 this year on July 17, when flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was apparently hit by a missile over war-torn eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. The incident happened while the Ukrainian army was carrying out a huge land and air offensive to crush breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine, over whose territory the plane was shot down. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3975 ‘Environmental catastrophism’: a response to Ian Angus http://links.org.au/node/3974 By *Sam Gindin* [This is a response to “On ‘environmental catastrophism’: Ian Angus replies to Sam Gindin”.] July 28, 2014 -- The most critical question confronting anyone concerned with the environmental crisis is the political one: how to build a social force able to do something about it. The most important division among social activists is not between those who think an environmental collapse is imminent and those who think we will continue to stumble on in an ever uglier, degraded world. It is between those who believe that personal recycling, technical fixes, market incentives and green jobs can solve the environmental crisis, and those who argue the solutions are necessarily much more radical, extending to a challenge to capitalism itself. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3974 Barry Sheppard: Some comments on the debate around Ukraine http://links.org.au/node/3973 By *Barry Sheppard* July 28, 2014 -- It is clear that people who consider themselves to be some form of revolutionary socialist do not agree on the facts about Ukraine. We do not even have agreement on whether or not Russia is imperialist, or even what the word means. I would urge caution and patience in assessing the current situation. But here is my take in a nutshell of what I think are the facts, culled from various sources. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3973 Indonesia: Jokowi wins presidency, but can he bring real reform? http://links.org.au/node/3972 By *Peter Boyle* July 25, 2014 – Data Brainanta is one of quite a few Indonesian socialists who have been supporting the successful presidential bid of Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi” as he is popularly known. He was very happy when Indonesia's electoral commission (KPU) finally confirmed on the night of July 22 that Jokowi had defeated his sole opponent, the sacked former Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto, by 57% to 43% of the nearly 130 million direct votes cast on July 9. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3972 Australia: Reject 'Cold War posturing' over MH17 tragedy: No troops to Ukraine! http://links.org.au/node/3971 * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3971 Spain’s Podemos: An inside view of a radical left sensation http://links.org.au/node/3969 By *Iñigo Errejón*, head of Podemos' European election campaign July 15, 2014 -/- /In Spain, the surge of discontent caused by structural adjustment policies and hostage taking of popular sovereignty by the oligarchic powers gave rise to a series of protests and created spaces for social cooperation. However, it had no effect on the political system and its internal balance. * Read more
[Marxism] Fwd: Down With Social Democracy! - Young Democratic Socialists
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Written by a high school student and member of the DSA youth group. http://www.ydsusa.org/down_with_social_democracy Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: When ‘Anti-Israel’ Looks Like ‘Anti-Semitism’ – Forward Thinking – Forward.com
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[Marxism] Argentina: LEAR workers injured by federal police repression (txt and images)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == https://www.facebook.com/eatps/posts/76406313694 Video: Police repression of Lear https://twitter.com/hashtag/Lear?src=hash workers yesterday in Argentina https://twitter.com/hashtag/Argentina?src=hash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xndV1Fjspmclist=UUrpMfcQNog595v5gAS-oUsQ … https://t.co/WkguVyXpmB | background info: http://is.gd/m7Grl0 http://t.co/l3PtqhjFZK http://www.pts.org.ar/Despidos-masivos-en-Lear Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Anti-semitism and the Israel lobby | Red Pepper
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By Mike Marqusee http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Anti-semitism-and-the-Israel-lobby/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Income Inequality and the Ills Behind It
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From the article: In his [Tyler Cowen] view, the defining challenge of our era is that workers in the bottom half of the distribution can no longer trust that their living standard will double every generation. “The right moral question is ‘are poor people rising to a higher standard of living?’ Inequality itself is the wrong thing to look at,” he told me. The real problem is slow growth. A comment I made on PEN-L in March: From what I have seen in reviews, Piketty argues that the pie will be increasingly divided to favor those who have inherited wealth. But in some ways the question of whether the pie expands is just as important since it will theoretically mollify India and other poor countries. If you are an Indian worker who benefits from capitalist growth, how much does it matter that you will never catch up to a Japanese worker? At the risk of sounding like a catastrophist, it seems to me that workers only take political action when there is some kind of brutal assault on their normal existence such as massive unemployment, war, or hyper-inflation. The ordinary worker's capacity for living inside his or her bubble and even viewing the rich as intrinsic to their own survival has always struck me as inexhaustible--and I say that as a former true believer in the revolutionary capacity of the working class. NY Times July 30, 2014 Income Inequality and the Ills Behind It by Eduardo Porter Is it time to stop obsessing about inequality? Perhaps it was President Obama’s speech last December, calling the nation’s vast income gap “the defining challenge of our time.” The American publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” must have helped. Whatever the reason, suddenly inequality seems to be not only at the top of the liberal agenda, but in the thoughts of concerned American voters. Yet amid the denunciations of inequity as the major evil of our era, persistent voices — mostly but not exclusively from the political right — have been nibbling away at the concern over distribution that is taking over the zeitgeist. Some of these counterclaims are somewhat dubious — relying, for instance, on novel definitions of income and wealth to conclude that inequality is in fact declining. Some find support in the ant and the grasshopper. As one reader articulated in a recent email: “Those who deserve to be poor should be poor. Those who desire to be rich should be rich. That is what justice looks like.” Still, aside from these extreme views, the critique does add up to a coherent argument: The income gap cleaving society between the rich and the rest may, in fact, be a red herring. It is not only that the accumulation of income at the apex of the pyramid of success is not the nation’s main problem. There is little we can do to redress it anyway. “The returns to growth are going to people in other countries, most notably China, and generally to people with high I.Q., no matter where they live,” said Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University and a contributor to the Economic View column in The New York Times. “I don’t really know how you could undermine this dynamic, short of wrecking the world. Trying to deny that logic is going to fail or worse, backfire.” Mr. Cowen, who describes himself as a libertarian with a lowercase “l,” is the author of “Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation,” (Dutton, 2013), which posits that technology and globalization have essentially split the labor market in two: high and low earners. Far fewer stable jobs are left over in the middle to support what through much of the 20th century we called the middle class. In his view, the defining challenge of our era is that workers in the bottom half of the distribution can no longer trust that their living standard will double every generation. “The right moral question is ‘are poor people rising to a higher standard of living?’ Inequality itself is the wrong thing to look at,” he told me. The real problem is slow growth. There are nuances to this narrative. N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist who was a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, contends it would be better to live in a less lopsided society. “More equality does probably mean greater social and political harmony,” he told me. Mr. Cowen does not buy that, recalling his frequent trips to New York in the 1970s, when it was much more equal yet much less harmonious. But otherwise the analyses and the prescriptions are similar: Technological progress has benefited well-educated workers with skills that are not
Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes , WMDs And Putins Aggression: Imperial Washingt on Is Intoxicated By Another Big Lie
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Oh how extremely interesting: Shane has identified another businessman/politician on the right fringe of establishment politics who comes to the defense of Putin against the confused liberal Western capitalists. Louis (and others) have pointed to numerous accounts of classical fascist groups enamoured with Putin's undemocratic character and happy to parrot his denunciation of Western imperialism. But this guy is more in the form of Paul Craig Roberts whose views also get propagated among the left, surely by those who, like Shane, marvel at how an establishment conservative has reached supposedly left positions. You'd think that when leftists keep finding such figures on the right echoing their own talking points, that they would take a step back and try to figure out whether the far right really stands far to the 'left' as Shane innocently puts it, or whether there might be something wrong with their own positions. - Jeff On Wed, July 30, 2014 18:32, Shane Mage via Marxism wrote: Stockman's is a variety of conservatism that, despite its ideological economic eccentricities, stands far to the left (ie., is clearly right) as against every variety of Liberalism or Social Democracy. http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/on-dominoes-wmds-and-putins-aggression-imperial-washington-is-intoxicated-in-another-big-lie/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes , WMDs And Putins Aggression: Imperial Washingt on Is Intoxicated By Another Big Lie
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Jul 30, 2014, at 1:53 PM, Jeff via Marxism wrote: Oh how extremely interesting: Shane has identified another businessman/politician on the right fringe of establishment politics Where do you find the US defined as the warfare state within establishment politics, fringe or not? who comes to the defense of Putin... Where do you see Stockman referring to Putin as anything other than the head of a gangster state comparable to his enemies' ? Shane Mage scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention to Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes , WMDs And Putin's Aggression: Imperial Washingt on Is Intoxicated By Another Big Lie
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 7/30/14 2:19 PM, Shane Mage via Marxism wrote: Where do you see Stockman referring to Putin as anything other than the head of a gangster state comparable to his enemies' ? Actually, Stockman is nowhere near as bad as he used to be. I saw him on Bill Maher and some other shows and he was really quite sharp on income inequality, etc. Also, I don't think ever had much to say about foreign policy back when he was an outspoken rightwinger or now. His main concern was the American economy. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes , WMDs And Putin’s “Aggression”: Imperial Washingt on Is Intoxicated By Another Big L
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Jul 30, 2014, at 1:53 PM, Jeff via Marxism wrote: Oh how extremely interesting: Shane has identified another businessman/politician on the right fringe of establishment politics [Shane Mage] Where do you find the US defined as the warfare state within establishment politics, fringe or not? who comes to the defense of Putin... Stockman identifies his stand on Ukraine with that of the rightist Pat Buchanan, and his basic idea is that whatever happens in Ukraine has nothing to do with our national security (i.e. the interests of US imperialism), while whatever happens in Ukraine is a matter of Putin's legitimate geo-political business. (See My thoughts On Pat Buchanan´s Brilliant And Incisive Take On Washington´s Ukrainian Fiasco by David Stockman at http://www.theburningplatform.com/tag/david-stockman/) Where do you see Stockman referring to Putin as anything other than the head of a gangster state comparable to his enemies' ? Maybe (I am not familiar with all of Stockman's writings), but he regards that such gangsters and gangster states have legitimate geo-political interests. There are differences among the US imperialists and their ideologues over the stand on foreign policy. The enthusiasm on the part of certain would-be anti-imperialists over the stands of Stockman and other imperialist ideologues who differ with current US policy over what best protects US imperialist interests is indeed revealing. It shows the hollowness of such supposed anti-imperialism. It shows that such supposed anti-imperialism has no progressive content and nothing to do with the interest of the working class. Stockman and similar ideologues have no concern for the Ukrainian people: let their fate be decided by the rivalary of the imperialist states and by which sphere of influence they are in. He asks why should Americans care? His argument is that it isn't our sphere of influence, but theirs. That is not anti-imperialism, but diehard cynical imperialism and realistic politics. That is not internationalism, but American bourgeois nationalism. True anti-imperialism starts with the interests of the working people of the world: it doesn't orient itself on the basis of the legitimate geo-political interests of rival gangster states. -- Joseph Green Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Brian Eno Compares Racist Israel to the Klan, Blasts Hypocritical America for Support | News | Pitchfork
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[Marxism] Fwd: 'World stands disgraced' as Israeli shelling of school kills at least 15 | World news | The Guardian
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/world-disgrace-gaza-un-shelter-school-israel Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes, WMDs And Putin’s “Aggression”: Imperial Washington Is Intoxicated By Another Big Lie
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I tend not to read things that make gross factual errors designed to serve a political agenda in the first sentence. The 5 billion was spent in the last 23 years, not the last decade as this piece states. Judging from the rest of this short excerpt, it doesn't improve. On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Shane Mage via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: in any event, it was the $5 billion that Washington spent during the last decade meddling in Ukrainian politics, Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Brian Eno Compares Racist Israel to the Klan, Blasts Hypocritical America for Support
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == a reply to the Left Zionist who disagrees with Eno http://davidbyrne.com/gaza-and-the-loss-of-civilization Peter’s reply is typical “left” Zionist horseshit. Just a few points – Returning to the “biblical homeland” to escape pogroms of the late 19th century was seen as absurd by the *overwhelming majority* of Eastern European Jews who instead followed one of three paths - 1 - retreating into religion and trusting that god would protect them; 2 – joining the revolutionary movement to overthrow Czarism and create a better society; 3 – by far the most popular – getting the hell out and coming to America. Eastern European Jews had *no desire* to come to Palestine to work as farmers. They were mostly city people and if they had an uncle or a second cousin on the Lower East Side of Manhattan or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn - THAT is where they went. Even five decades later, fleeing Nazism, European Jews wanted to come to the US, but because of anti-Jewish quotas, only about 100,000 got in. The rest were forced to come to Palestine to survive. They thus unintentionally bolstered the Zionist community which was losing more Jews than “ingathering” until the Nazis came to power. He mentions the UN Partition Plan of 1947 but neglects to tell his readers that the UN had *no business* in partitioning another people’s homeland! The Palestinians were certainly not consulted in a “plan” that called for *54% *of their country being given to the Jewish *31%* of the population. That’s why the Palestinians rejected this monstrosity, and this has been used by pro-Zionist historians ever since as a justification for what happened to them – al-Naqba – “the catastrophe.” He tells us that the Arab states declared war and “urged the Palestinians to flee.” Where is the evidence for this claim? Zionists used to claim that “Arabs went on the radio to urge the Palestinians to leave, and that after the Arab armies drove the Jews into the sea, they could return to their land.” Since the BBC monitored all radio broadcasts throughout the region in 1947-48, this should be easy to verify by citing the dates of these radio broadcasts, the names of the radio stations, and the texts of these messages. They never have – why? Because there are documented broadcasts urging the Palestinians – in the face of massacres like Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948 – *to stay*! The Palestinians fled for the same reason that civilians throughout human history flee their homes during war – to avoid violence. They had every intention of returning after the fighting was over, to resume their lives. Peter tells us that “after defeating the Arab armies Israel made it very hard for them return.” A slight understatement – Israel made it *impossible* to return. The Palestinians had all their land, homes, and property – their society - confiscated and they were declared “Absentee Landlords” and if they insisted upon returning, they were demonized as “terrorists.” In order to gain membership in the UN, Israel promised to take back these refugees – they never did. He proceeds to rewrite history by claiming that the 1967 war was “a large scale Arab attack on Israel” whereas it was an *illegal* pre-emptive attack upon Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel claimed the situation to be existential, but Israeli leaders later scoffed at that notion. He assigns responsibility for the illegal West Bank settlements to the right wing governments of the 1980s, whitewashing the fact that it was the Labor Zionists right after 1967 that got the ball rolling. He calls the monarchy of Jordan an example of “good Arab leadership” – but it was King Abdullah of (then) Trans-Jordan who secretly collaborated with the new Israeli state to carve up that part of Palestine that the Zionists had not yet glommed onto. Thus Jordan took over the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The “good” Abdullah was rewarded for his perfidy by being assassinated in 1953 by a Palestinian. Should we shed any tears for him? Peter claims to “have no support for the Israeli position”, but that’s exactly what his reply is all about. He castigates those who oppose Israel for what he implies to be a double standard, their allegedly not being outraged by other moral horrors. Must people take a stand on many issues before they can establish their moral credentials? Does he criticize activists risking their lives to fight Jim Crow in the 1950s and 60s for not endorsing the Ban-the-Bomb movement? Does he criticize 1970s Jewish activists who opposed Soviet anti-Semitism because they did not take a stand against South African apartheid or the Pinochet regime in Chile? To ask the question is to answer it. Only when everyone protests everything will he “join the demonstration.” Can
Re: [Marxism] Brian Eno Compares Racist Israel to the Klan, Blasts Hypocritical America for Support
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == on Donnerstag, 31. Juli 2014 at 05:32, Dennis Brasky via Marxism wrote: He mentions the UN Partition Plan of 1947 but neglects to tell his readers that the UN had *no business* in partitioning another people’s homeland! And that the UN in 1947 was far from representing humanity -- only the colonial powers, Latin America, the USSR and some Arab countries were represented. Ah, also India and Pakistan which had gained independence only recently, due to the weakening of British colonialism by the war. China was represented by the Kuomintang-Regime of Taiwan. And the USSR and her allies voted for the colonial partition plan! And that the UN General Assembly's decisions have no legally binding power, what the world is always reminded of, when the UN GA votes nearly unanimous, with two Nay-votes, to lift the US blockade against Cuba, or to lift the siege of Gaza. The two Nay votes coming from the State of Israel and its sponsor, the USofA. The UN minority back then called for a Republic of Palestine, with equal rights for all, without any discrimination based on birth, language, religion and so forth. This is documented in the proceedings of the various UN committes and assemblies of 1947. He tells us that the Arab states declared war and “urged the Palestinians to flee.” Where is the evidence for this claim? Zionists used to claim that “Arabs went on the radio to urge the Palestinians to leave, and that after the Arab armies drove the Jews into the sea, they could return to their land.” Nothing is further from the truth. Actually some settler posse -- the European settlers were already armed by the British colonial power as an auxiliary colonial police to fight the Arabs -- appeared at a village and did what they do today by SMS and automated phone calls: they called the Arabs to leave their homes and their village Get out, or we kill you all! We want to flatten your village and make sure that you never return to your ancester's graves! And so they made disappear from the landscape more than 400 villages and many other homes and businesses of Arabs. And try to push all Arabs out of Palestine by making life impossible in the Gaza strip. The settler state, the modern version of the Crusader states, is the world champion in descruction and demolition, and lives by it. They not only destry homes and whole quarters, but olive orchards and other agricultural areas. Maxime Rodinson reports in his very recommendable Israel - A Colonial Settler State? (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1937): An American member of the last Anglo-American commission to carry out investigations in Palestine in 1946 asked [Golda Myerson (later called Golda Meir)]: 'If the Jews as a minority had the same privileges as those you are promising the Arabs as a minority, would you be satisfied?' 'No Sir', replied Golda Meyerson- 'For there must be one place in the world where Jews are not a minority.' And since the majority population which Ms. Meyerson wanted to rule did not agree, they had to apply violence to drive out the population, and to maintain that violence in order to have a Jewish state, which means the rejection of Abraham Lincoln's formula for democracy: Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, proclaiming instead Government by the master race, of the master race and for the master race. And so the Jews were promoted from their status of outcasts to honorary members of the White Master Race, as the auxiliary racist outpost of Western colonialism against the Arab nation. Cheers, Lüko Willms Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
