[Marxism] Still more US and Gulf support to Syrian jihadists!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Kuwait strips 10 people and top cleric of citizenship http://bigstory.ap.org/article/kuwait-strips-10-people-top-cleric-citizenship Aug. 11, 2014 12:16 PM EDT •Kuwait pulls cleric from TV for sectarian comments •Kuwait announces $500 million pledge to Syria KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Kuwait revoked the citizenship of 10 people on Monday including an influential young sheik who has openly criticized the government of **bowing to pressure from Washington to clamp down on financial assistance to Syrian rebels.** Just last week, the **U.S. sanctioned three Kuwaitis it said helped finance terrorist groups** and urged its ally to do more to stem such financing. A few days before that, the Gulf country stripped five critics of their citizenship in what appears to be part of a larger crackdown on dissent that casts a net on both suspected financiers of extremist groups and people calling for political reform. Human Rights Watch over the weekend criticized the Kuwaiti government's decision to strip citizens of their nationality, and called on authorities to drop this malign policy. No government has the right to strip away its people's citizenship simply because it disapproves of them, their opinions, or their actions, said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. This is yet another downward step in Kuwait's assault on the right to free speech. The official Kuwait News Agency reported the Cabinet's latest decision, which said that the 10 had been naturalized citizens but failed to meet requirements for the status. The Cabinet statement did not list the names of the people whose citizenship was revoked and did not specify which requirements for naturalization they had failed to meet. Sheik Nabil al-Awadi, however, confirmed on Twitter that he was among those affected and wrote, To God we belong, and to God we will return along with a video about how good can come from hardship. Al-Awadi, who has nearly 4.5 million followers on Twitter, is part of a collective of religious Sunnis in the Gulf who raise funds for Syria. He has advocated for supporting Sunni rebels and foreign jihadi fighters in Syria battling President Bashar Assad's Shiite-backed forces. Two of the men sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly helping finance al-Qaida **and the Islamic Front** (so the US even sanctions people for supplying the Islamic Front! - MK) in Syria and Iraq have close ties to al-Awadi. Washington called on its Western Gulf ally to do more to curb the financing of such groups, and the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. responded last week by saying that his country is committed to fighting terrorism. In a recent interview on television, al-Awadi said he was under mounting pressure from the Kuwaiti government to stop collecting even humanitarian aid for Syria, but said that money is still finding its way through back channels 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: Two years after Marikana massacre, a challenge to South Africa's ruling ANC - CSMonitor.com
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There's no doubt that the sixteenth of August was a turning point in post-apartheid South African history,” says Luke Sinwell, a researcher at the University of Johannesburg who studies the platinum strikes. Marikana set a militant tone for labor negotiations in the country and created an opportunity for a new “left, socialist politics” to emerge to challenge the ANC, which has governed the country since the end of apartheid. full: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/0817/Two-years-after-Marikana-massacre-a-challenge-to-South-Africa-s-ruling-ANC 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: How Dare Mayor de Blasio Tell New Yorkers To Submit to the NYPD | VICE News
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == By the irrepressible Natasha Lennard. Amazing to think that she ever worked for the NYT, even as a stringer. https://news.vice.com/article/how-dare-mayor-de-blasio-tell-new-yorkers-to-submit-to-the-nypd 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: As Repression Escalates on US Campuses, an Account of My Ordeal With the Israel Lobby and UC
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Five years ago, I was attacked by the Israel lobby in the United States, led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and nearly run from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), where I work as a professor of sociology, global and Latin American studies. The campaign against me lasted some six months and garnered worldwide attention, but I am hardly alone. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professors and student groups have been harassed and persecuted for speaking out against Israeli occupation and apartheid and in support of the Palestinian struggle. Some of these cases have been high profile in the media and others have gone relatively unknown. The latest victim, Steven Salaita, a respected scholar and professor of English literature and American Indian Studies, was fired in August from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for denouncing on social media the most recent Israeli atrocities in Gaza. full: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25587-as-repression-escalates-on-us-campuses-an-account-of-my-ordeal-with-the-israel-lobby-and-uc 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: The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race | TIME
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The U.S. Census Report finds that 50 million Americans are poor. Fifty million voters is a powerful block if they ever organized in an effort to pursue their common economic goals. So, it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long. One way to keep these 50 million fractured is through disinformation. PunditFact’s recent scorecard on network news concluded that at Fox and Fox News Channel, 60 percent of claims are false. At NBC and MSNBC, 46 percent of claims were deemed false. That’s the “news,” folks! During the Ferguson riots, Fox News ran a black and white photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with the bold caption: “Forgetting MLK’s Message/Protestors in Missouri Turn to Violence.” Did they run such a caption when either Presidents Bush invaded Iraq: “Forgetting Jesus Christ’s Message/U.S. Forgets to Turn Cheek and Kills Thousands”? How can viewers make reasonable choices in a democracy if their sources of information are corrupted? They can’t, which is exactly how the One Percent controls the fate of the Ninety-Nine Percent. full: http://time.com/3132635/ferguson-coming-race-war-class-warfare/ 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: The new PKK: unleashing a social revolution in Kurdistan | ROAR Magazine
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Imprisoned PKK leader converted to Murray Bookchin's philosophy??? http://roarmag.org/2014/08/pkk-kurdish-struggle-autonomy/ 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: Block the Boat Oakland CA 8/16/2014 - an album on Flickr
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Photos taken by Alex Chis of blockade against ship carrying arms to Israel. https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexchis/sets/72157646163188270/ 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] http://www.marxmail.org/msg123583.html
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == OK...for those that find the photo of me I was NOT drunk at the demo! (Arm around R. Schoenman). 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] ZIM/Zionist Ship turned away last night AGAIN!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On August 17th, 2014 Palestine was once again victorious in Oakland, California. For the second day in a row the Bay Area community held off the Israeli ZIM ship from unloading at the Port. Thousands of people rallied on Saturday and successfully kept the ship at Bay on its regular scheduled day. Today we got word that the ship had arrived and workers were being called to unload it. Within 30 minutes we mobilized over 400 people back to the Port. And we won! Workers honored our picket and stood on the side of justice, as they historically have. Oakland said no to Zionism and blocked the boat for an entire weekend. This is the first time in history that this has happened. Israeli apartheid is falling one port at a time! Palestine will be free from the river to the sea. Long live international solidarity and the struggle for liberation! https://www.facebook.com/events/1447374682195857/permalink/1454759481457377/ 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] Radical Anthropology talks
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dear friends, Please circulate widely. Many thanks, Chris - Radical AnthropologyAn Introduction to AnthropologyAutumn 2014Symbolic culture emerged in Africa over 100,000 years ago, in a revolution whose echoes can still be heard in myths and rituals around the world. These talks are a general introduction to anthropology, including the latest findings from genetics, biology, primatology, cave painting research and archaeology. There is plenty of time for questions, discussion and socialising. 1. Anthropology Taster DaySaturday Sep 6 ‘Myths, rituals and human origins’ (11am – 5pm) Camilla Power, Chris Knight___2. Talks on Tuesday evenings (6.30 – 9pm) Sep 23 What does it mean to be human? An introduction to anthropology Chris KnightSep 30 Claude Lévi-Strauss: The science of myths and fairy tales Chris Knight Oct 7 Africa, hunger and big business: How ‘development’ aids the corporate takeover of food Chris WalkerOct 14 Did women once rule the world? A new look at the myth of matriarchy Chris KnightOct 21 The stars and the stones: An introduction to archaeoastronomy Fabio SilvaOct 28 Out of Africa or Multiregional Evolution for modern humans – why is there still a debate? Chris Stringer Nov 4 The problem of economics. Homo economicus and human scienceWilliam DixonNov 11 The Golden Bough: Yesterday and today Robert Fraser Nov 18 British Pakistani women and the menopause Mwenza Blell Nov 25 ‘Woman’s Biggest Husband Is the Moon’: How hunter-gatherers maintain social equality Jerome LewisDec 2 How language evolved from singing Jerome LewisDec 9 Spirits of the Forest: a workshop on African polyphonic singing Ingrid LewisDec 16 A Christmas fairy tale: ‘The shoes that were danced to pieces’ Chris Knight All events held at the Cock Tavern, 23 Phoenix Rd., NW1 1HB (Euston). Talks are free but small donations welcome. More Info: http://radicalanthropologygroup.org For updates on meetings and anthropology news, follow us on @radicalanthro and Facebook 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: Did Iran Just Knife Putin in the Back? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mike Whitney has written some useful analyses of the American economy but when it comes to geopolitics, he is one of the worst. In this piece, he writes: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/18/did-iran-just-knife-putin-in-the-back/ If you follow pipeline politics, there was a development last week that will blow your socks off. In a nutshell: Iran sold out and switched over to the dark side. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this from World Bulletin: ”As the Ukraine crisis puts Russia and Europe at odds, leaving Europe with no choice but to search for alternative natural gas resources, Iran looks likely to fulfill Europe’s demand. Iran’s deputy oil minister Ali Mejidi has indicated that the Nabucco Project, which was presented as an alternative to Russian gas with the potential of fulfilling a large proportion of Europe’s need before being put on hold last year, is now back on track. Speaking to Russian press, Mejidi confirmed that two separate delegations were sent to Europe. “With Nabucco, Iran can provide Europe with gas. We are the best alternative to Russia,” he said. Mejidi also said that though a number of routes to deliver the gas to Europe were being considered, Turkey was the “right address.” The Nabucco project, which was first presented in 2002, plans to pump gas to Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The project will also pump 31 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani and Iraqi natural gas to Europe.” (“Iran to provide Europe with alternative to Russian gas”, World Bulletin) --- Okay. So what happened to the axis of resistance? You tell me... 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: We keep pledging to study the cause of riots like Ferguson’s. And we keep ignoring the lessons. - The Washington Post
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From my friend Merlin Chowkwanyun. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/18/we-keep-pledging-to-study-the-cause-of-riots-like-ferguson-and-we-keep-ignoring-the-lessons/ 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] The Carnage of Capitalsim
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/carnage-capita The Carnage of Capitalism August 17, 2014 | AlterNet [1] / By Paul Buchheit [2] Capitalism is expanding like a tumor in the body of American society, spreading further into vital areas of human need like health and education. Milton Friedman said in 1980: The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. The father of the modern neoliberal movementcouldn't have been more wrong. Inequality has been growing for 35 years, worsening since the 2008 recession, as a few well-positioned Americans have made millions [3] while the rest of us have gained almost nothing. Now, our college students and medicine-dependent seniors have become the source of new riches for the profitseeking free-marketers. Higher Education: Administrators Get Most of the Money College grads took a 19 percent pay cut in the two years [4] after the recession. By 2013 over half [5] of employed black recent college graduates were working in occupations that typically do not require a four-year college degree. For those still in school, tuition [6] has risen much faster than any other living expense, and the average student loan balance has risen 91 percent [7] over the past ten years. At the other extreme is the winner-take-all free-market version of education, with a steady flow of compensation towards the top. Remarkably, and not coincidentally, as inequality has surged since the 1980s, the number of administrators at private universities has doubled [8]. Administrators now outnumber faculty on every campus [9]across the country. These administrators are taking the big money. As detailed by Lawrence Wittner [10], the 25 highest-paid presidents increased their salaries by a third between 2009 and 2012, to nearly a million dollars each. For every million-dollar public university president in 2011, there were fourteen such presidents at private universities, and dozens of lower-level administrators aspiring to be paid like their bosses. At Purdue [11], for example, the 2012 administrative ranks included a $313,000-a-year acting provost, a $198,000 chief diversity officer, a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief. All this money at the top has to come from somewhere, and that means from faculty and students. Adjunct and student teachers, who made up about 22 percent [10] of instructional staff in 1969, now make up an estimated 76 percent of instructional staff in higher education, with a median wage [12] in 2010 of about $2,700 per course. More administrative money comes from tuition, which has increased by over 1,000 percent [13] since 1978. At the for-profit colleges, according to a Senate report [14] on 2009 expenses, education companies spent about 23 percent of all revenue on marketing and advertising, and almost 20 percent of revenue on pre-tax profits for their shareholders. They spent just 17.2 percent of their revenue on instruction. Medicine: A 10,000 Percent Profit for Corporations As with education, the extremes forced upon us by free-market health care are nearly beyond belief. First, at the human end, 43 percent [15] of sick Americans skipped [16] doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. It's estimated [17]that over 40,000 Americans die every year because they can't afford health insurance. At the corporate end, drugmakers are at times getting up to $100 for every $1 spent. That's true at Gilead Sciences [18], the manufacturer of the drug Sovaldi, which charges about $10 a pill to its customers in Egypt, then comes home to charge $1,000 a pill to its American customers. The 10,000 percent profit is also true with the increasingly lucrative, government-funded Human Genome Project [19], which is estimated [20] to potentially return about $140 for every $1 spent. Big business is quickly making its move. Celera Genomics [21], Abbott Labs [22], Merck [23], Roche[23], Bristol-Myers Squibb [23], andPfizer [24] are all starting to cash in. The extremes of capitalist greed are evident in the corporate lobbying [25] of Congress to keep Medicare from negotiating better drug prices for the American consumer. Americans are cheated further when corporations pay off generic drug manufacturers to delay entry [26] of their products into the market, thereby ensuring inflated profits for the big firms for the durations of their shady deals. Global Greed Lives are being ravaged by unregulated, free-market capitalism, in the U.S. and around the world. According to the Global Forum for Health Research [27], less than 10 percent of the global health research budget is spent on the conditions responsible for 90
[Marxism] Fwd: French anti-Semitism: important resources from Lenin’s Tomb | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On July 25th I wrote an article titled “The anti-Semitism Canard” that took aim at the smears of the pro-Palestinian protests in Europe. The gist of my analysis was that an amalgam of long standing between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism formed the foundation of the pro-Zionist attacks. But one comment on my article caught my eye: here too it’s worth considering this investigative report. According to Edwy Plenel’s online paper Mediapart, hooligans and skinheads partial to the call of Dieudonné are systematically infiltrating the Gaza protests in France. the reemergence of european antisemitism is not a canard, rather a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by zionist intransigence and the genocidal acts perpetrated by the idf. http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/290714/comment-la-galaxie-dieudonne-squatte-les-manifs-propalestinienne I was frustrated in my attempt to read the article, not just because it was written in French but also because it was behind a paywall. Fortunately, there have been some very important articles investigating the Dieudonné connection that have appeared on Lenin’s Tomb that are essential for understanding the challenges facing the Palestinian solidarity movement in France and anywhere else where anti-Semitism is interjected. I don’t think that anti-Semitism poses any serious threat to Jews anywhere in Europe but ability of backward elements either consciously or unconsciously serving the propaganda aims of the Zionists must be thwarted since the ultimate victims will be Palestinians rather than Jews. Every article smearing the mass movement on the basis of slogans shouted on demonstrations such as “kill the Jews” will help allow the next attack on Gaza or the West Bank to proceed with greater impunity. full: http://louisproyect.org/2014/08/18/french-anti-semitism-important-resources-from-lenins-tomb/ 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] The Carnage of Capitalsim
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == try this one http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-carnage-of-capitalism Brian -Original Message- From: Dennis Brasky dmozart1...@gmail.com To: mckenna193 mckenna...@aol.com; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Sent: Mon, Aug 18, 2014 2:06 pm Subject: Re: [Marxism] The Carnage of Capitalsim link not working On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Brian via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/carnage-capita The Carnage of Capitalism 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] Why I am a self-hating Jew - excellent 9 minute video with important links
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39436.htm 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: Breaking: UI Trustees meeting, as we tweet | Corey Robin
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Away all weekend and offline, but came home to this breaking news: the Executive Committee of the University of Illinois Trustees is meeting, right now (Monday, 2:30 pm), to discuss the following: In closed session, the Executive Committee will consider University employment or appointment-related matters, and pending, probable or imminent litigation against, affecting, or on behalf of the University. I have no idea if this meeting had been previously scheduled or not. And I have no idea if this is in reference to Steven Salaita’s case. You’ll recall that Wise or some other administrator had said that the Trustees weren’t scheduled to meet until September, when they would have been expected to vote on Salaita’s appointment. This would suggest this meeting (which, it should be pointed out, is of the Executive Committee rather than the full Board) is an emergency meeting to consider the Salaita affair, but again, I can’t know for sure. full: http://coreyrobin.com/2014/08/18/breaking-ui-trustees-meeting-as-we-tweet/ 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] Being Black, Being Palestinian
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.civilarab.com/being-black-being-palestinian/ 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] Life on other planets?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting article by the guy who wrote The Cancer Chronicles, the book I am now reading. NY Times, August 18 2014 The Intelligent-Life Lottery by George Johnson Almost 20 years ago, in the pages of an obscure publication called Bioastronomy News, two giants in the world of science argued over whether SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — had a chance of succeeding. Carl Sagan, as eloquent as ever, gave his standard answer. With billions of stars in our galaxy, there must be other civilizations capable of transmitting electromagnetic waves. By scouring the sky with radio telescopes, we just might intercept a signal. But Sagan’s opponent, the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, thought the chances were close to zero. Against Sagan’s stellar billions, he posed his own astronomical numbers: Of the billions of species that have lived and died since life began, only one — Homo sapiens — had developed a science, a technology, and the curiosity to explore the stars. And that took about 3.5 billion years of evolution. High intelligence, Mayr concluded, must be extremely rare, here or anywhere. Earth’s most abundant life form is unicellular slime. Since the debate with Sagan, more than 1,700 planets have been discovered beyond the solar system — 700 just this year. Astronomers recently estimated that one of every five sunlike stars in the Milky Way might be orbited by a world capable of supporting some kind of life. That is about 40 billion potential habitats. But Mayr, who died in 2005 at the age of 100, probably wouldn’t have been impressed. By his reckoning, the odds would still be very low for anything much beyond slime worlds. No evidence has yet emerged to prove him wrong. Maybe we’re just not looking hard enough. Since SETI began in the early 1960s, it has struggled for the money it takes to monitor even a fraction of the sky. In an online essay for The Conversation last week, Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, lamented how little has been allocated for the quest — just a fraction of NASA’s budget. “If you don’t ante up,” he wrote, “you will never win the jackpot. And that is a question of will.” Three years ago, SETI’s Allen Telescope Array in Northern California ran out of money and was closed for a while. Earlier this month, it was threatened by wildfire — another reminder of the precariousness of the search. It has been more than 3.5 billion years since the first simple cells arose, and it took another billion years or so for some of them to evolve and join symbiotically into primitive multicellular organisms. These biochemical hives, through random mutations and the blind explorations of evolution, eventually led to creatures with the ability to remember, to anticipate and — at least in the case of humans — to wonder what it is all about. Every step was a matter of happenstance, like the arbitrary combination of numbers — 3, 12, 31, 34, 51 and 24 — that qualified a Powerball winner for a $90 million prize this month. Some unknowing soul happened to enter a convenience store in Rifle, Colo., and — maybe with change from buying gasoline or a microwaved burrito — purchase a ticket just as the machine was about to spit out those particular numbers. According to the Powerball website, the chance of winning the grand prize is about one in 175 million. The emergence of humanlike intelligence, as Mayr saw it, was about as likely as if a Powerball winner kept buying tickets and — round after round — hit a bigger jackpot each time. One unlikelihood is piled on another, yielding a vanishingly rare event. In one of my favorite books, “Wonderful Life,” Stephen Jay Gould celebrated what he saw as the unlikelihood of our existence. Going further than Mayr, he ventured that if a slithering creature called Pikaia gracilens had not survived the Cambrian extinction, about half a billion years ago, the entire phylum called Chordata, which includes us vertebrates, might never have existed. Gould took his title from the Frank Capra movie in which George Bailey gets to see what the world might have been like without him — idyllic Bedford Falls is replaced by a bleak, Dickensian Pottersville. For Gould, the fact that any of our ancestral species might easily have been nipped in the bud should fill us “with a new kind of amazement” and “a frisson for the improbability of the event” — a fellow agnostic’s version of an epiphany. “We came this close (put your thumb about a millimeter away from your index finger), thousands and thousands of times, to erasure by the veering of history down another sensible channel,” he wrote. “Replay the tape a million times,” he proposed, “and I doubt that
[Marxism] 'All power to the Soviets': Biography of a slogan, by Lars T. Lih
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Posted today on johnriddell.wordpress.com: 'All power to the Soviets': Biography of a slogan, by Lars T. Lih (last paragraph:) Although Lenin’s high expectations were not met, we can still say that the slogan “all power to the soviets” is the key to the Russian revolution—and indeed, that the slogan was translated into reality. As we saw from the observations of Rheta Childe Dorr, soviet power as established during the February days, with all its strengths and weaknesses, was a reality throughout 1917. This soviet power beat off the attempts of the Provisional Government to defang or eliminate it, and it continued to defend itself successfully against later attempts to destroy it. Although highly undemocratic in very many ways, soviet power continued to be an expression of the Russian narod, creating a new society where the narod set the tone—for better or for worse. For the full text, see http://bit.ly/1pX2dsH 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: Syria in Revolt | Boston Review
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == All Damascus knows that the army, Ba’ath Party, security agencies, Soviet-style managed economy, and state administrative apparatus—all Alawi-dominated—represent one side of the complex. The other side—urban and business-minded—is dominated by Sunnis. The people who run this complex have over the years formed an arrogant and corrupt elite. The men manage the day-to-day affairs of Syria, and on their own time they close deals, interact socially, and arrange marriages between their children. They party together, frequent the same restaurants and clubs. Their wives, mothers, sisters, and female cousins attend the same cultural and philanthropic events. Both sides despise each other, but they tolerate each other’s hatred because their relationship is mutually beneficial. According to today’s younger analysts, the two sides have coalesced into an insolent, Brahman-like upper caste that sees itself beyond all accountability, with an assumed right to lord over the common people, whom they regard as no more than rabble—ignorant, backward, unprepared for democracy, and undeserving of liberty of any sort. Each side is strong in its destabilizing capacity but weak in its constructive power, so they stick together in the face of any possible opposition. full: http://bostonreview.net/world/sadik-al-azm-syria-in-revolt 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] Fwd: Did Iran Just Knife Putin in the Back? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Completely hilarious. Whitney expresses amazement that Iranian capitalists act in the interests of Iranian capitalists by selling oil to Europe to replace Russian capitalists who were looking after the interests of Russian capitalists by doing the same. I guess he expected solidarity or something. What that could even mean in the first place to a regime that carries out ISIS-style punishments like these 75 lashes for a cartoonist for doing a sketch (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/iranian-photographers-face-lash-criticising-officials-book?CMP=twt_gu) I have no idea, let alone what the Putin regime would think that word means. Knife? Doesn't that mean betray? How can a capitalist betray another capitalist? -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect via Marxism Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 12:52 AM To: Michael Karadjis Subject: [Marxism] Fwd: Did Iran Just Knife Putin in the Back? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mike Whitney has written some useful analyses of the American economy but when it comes to geopolitics, he is one of the worst. In this piece, he writes: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/18/did-iran-just-knife-putin-in-the-back/ If you follow pipeline politics, there was a development last week that will blow your socks off. In a nutshell: Iran sold out and switched over to the dark side. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this from World Bulletin: ”As the Ukraine crisis puts Russia and Europe at odds, leaving Europe with no choice but to search for alternative natural gas resources, Iran looks likely to fulfill Europe’s demand. Iran’s deputy oil minister Ali Mejidi has indicated that the Nabucco Project, which was presented as an alternative to Russian gas with the potential of fulfilling a large proportion of Europe’s need before being put on hold last year, is now back on track. Speaking to Russian press, Mejidi confirmed that two separate delegations were sent to Europe. “With Nabucco, Iran can provide Europe with gas. We are the best alternative to Russia,” he said. Mejidi also said that though a number of routes to deliver the gas to Europe were being considered, Turkey was the “right address.” The Nabucco project, which was first presented in 2002, plans to pump gas to Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The project will also pump 31 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani and Iraqi natural gas to Europe.” (“Iran to provide Europe with alternative to Russian gas”, World Bulletin) --- Okay. So what happened to the axis of resistance? You tell me... Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/mkaradjis%40gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
