[Marxism] Fwd: (572) Assessing the Role and Consequences of the Far Right's Involvement in the Ukrainian Revolution | Anton Shekhovtsov - Academia.edu
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * An intrinsic (and disturbing) characteristic of almost all the reports and analyses condemning the far right's participation in the Ukrainian revolution is that they do not discuss Ukraine as a country willing to become a full member of the liberal democratic community. Ukraine as such is absent from these debates, yet these commentators would be discussing topics such as Western expansionism, US involvement, enlargement of Nato, EU-Russia relations, Russian sphere of influence, Russian legitimate interests. In this context, the Ukrainians are deprived of agency; they are objectified into non- subjectivity, into a mob allegedly manipulated by the West against Russia. However, these publicists and journalists still need to focus on the far right to secure a rhetorical retreat in case someone would indeed be willing to discuss the Ukrainians' agency. The line of argumentation - adopted especially by some left-wing circles in the West - was as patronising as it was revealing intellectual laziness: it is the West that is trying to divorce Ukraine from Russia, but even if it is the Ukrainians themselves, then they are all fascists anyway and cannot be supported. For the far left, these two arguments blended together: the West conspires against Russia and deliberately supports the Ukrainian far right because the West itself is a non-democratic imperialistic monster. Google fascist Nato; the search results are amusing. full: https://www.academia.edu/8613130/Assessing_the_Role_and_Consequences_of_the_Far_Rights_Involvement_in_the_Ukrainian_Revolution _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Anton Shekhovtsov's blog: Vladimir Zhirinovsky's contacts with the European far right in the Yeltsin era
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the misleadingly named far right Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) tried to forge relationships with European radical right-wing parties already in the early 1990s. Eduard Limonov of the National-Bolshevik Party, while living in France, introduced Zhirinovsky, in autumn 1992, to Jean-Marie Le Pen, contemporary leader of the Front National (FN). Their meeting turned out to be beneficial to Zhirinovsky, as later the FN “provided logistical support [to the LDPR], including computers and fax machines, in short supply in Moscow at that time”. full: http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/vladimir-zhirinovskys-contacts-with.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: On the Left or in Russia? The Strange Case of Foreign pro-Kremlin Radical Leftists (Pt.2). | KRYTYKA
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * In the first part of this article I pointed out that pro-Kremlin leftists are blind to Russian imperialism past and present.1 Today, regardless of their support of anti-colonial and national movements in Asia and Africa, as in the past, they oppose Ukrainian national ambitions in general and the Maidan movement in particular. None of them seem to have heard of Ivan Dziuba.2 Alongside the Russophilism, neo Soviet sympathies, material interest, delusion and ignorance that can account for this double standard among pro-Kremlin leftists, is the anti-Americanism that has overshadowed anti-imperialism in their thinking.3 Foreign pro-Kremlin leftists, I remarked, did not consider the possibility that Ukrainians might prefer the EU to the Russian variant of capitalism because their experience as foreign workers and reading has shown them the latter is more destructive and rapacious than the former.4 Such leftists do not take into account that Russian-style neo-soviet capitalism in Ukraine is not tempered by a strong left opposition, trade unions, independent political parties and rule of law -- what Marx considered the “bourgeois rights and liberties” established in Europe between 1789 and 1914. Neither Russian media nor pro-Kremlin leftists consider Russia’s neo-liberal capitalist government as imperialist – however defined.5 full: http://krytyka.com/en/community/blogs/left-or-russia-strange-case-foreign-pro-kremlin-radical-leftists-pt2 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: How will the universe end? A bubble of alien matter will consume the world.
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/10/how_will_the_universe_end_a_bubble_of_alien_matter_will_consume_the_world.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The face of the nouveau riche hedge-fund lumpen-bourgeoisie
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Oct. 29 2014 Bill Ackman and His Hedge Fund, Betting Big By ALEXANDRA STEVENSON and JULIE CRESWELL William A. Ackman, the silver-haired, silver-tongued hedge fund mogul, gestured out the window of a 42nd-floor conference room at Pershing Square Capital Management in Midtown Manhattan. The view was spectacular, but Mr. Ackman’s arm extended not downward, toward the vibrant fall foliage of Central Park, but skyward toward the top of a glittering glass building just around the corner on 57th Street. He was pointing toward One57, a new 90-story, lavish hotel and condominium building described by one critic as “a luxury object for people who see the city as their private snow globe.” Specifically, Mr. Ackman was referring to the penthouse apartment. Named the Winter Garden, for a curved glass atrium that opens to the sky, it is a 13,500-square-foot duplex with an eagle’s-eye view of the park. And it will belong to Mr. Ackman. When the sale closes, the reported $90 million price would be the highest ever paid for a Manhattan apartment. It is, he explained, “the Mona Lisa of apartments.” Never will there be another like it. But Mr. Ackman, 48, doesn’t intend to live there. He lives at the Beresford, off Central Park, with his wife and daughters. The Winter Garden is just another investment opportunity for him and a few others. “I thought it would be fun,” he said, “so myself and a couple of very good friends bought into this idea that someday, someone will really want it and they’ll let me know.” Maybe he will hold some parties there in the meantime. Whether it’s a top-of-the-world apartment, an attack on a company or even his annual vacations with friends (the next trip is Navy SEAL training), Bill Ackman does everything big. And this may be his biggest year yet. Overseeing more than $17 billion, his hedge fund is up 32 percent in a year when many other hedge funds are just breaking even. He recently completed a public offering of stock in Europe of part of Pershing Square, and while the shares are trading below the offering price, he still raised $2.7 billion that he can use to make more big bets. He’s also a driving force behind one of the biggest — and certainly the most controversial — potential mergers of the year: Valeant’s $53 billion hostile takeover bid for Allergan, the maker of Botox. His critics agree that he’s big. They say he stands out for his big mouth and oversize ego, an accomplishment in the hedge fund world. (Even back in high school, his tennis teammates presented him with a T-shirt that read: “A closed mouth gathers no foot.”) Others warn that his fund has a risk of blowing up. His portfolio is made up of bets on less than a dozen companies. (The Allergan stake alone made up 37 percent of his fund earlier this fall, according to filings.) That means when things go bad, they can go really bad. That’s what happened when his $2 billion bet on Target through a separate fund lost 90 percent of its value at one point. He has wagered $1 billion that Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company, will fail. So far, that bet hasn’t panned out, and even one of his closest advisers has called his theatrics on the subject — including a teary, three-hour rant this summer in front of nearly 500 people — a mistake. But on that crisp fall morning at Pershing Square, Mr. Ackman was uncharacteristically taciturn. Reserved, even. Or maybe he was just a bit annoyed. When asked if he has had to make bigger, riskier bets as his fund has grown, he answered, a bit petulantly: “We certainly have to make bigger investments, that’s definitely true. But not riskier investments.” Asked about failures, like the Target bet, he sighed deeply. “Target was a bad investment,” he said, “but out of 30 investments, I don’t know of another investor with as high a batting average.” He certainly has an enviable long-term record: His funds, excluding the Target and four other separate funds, have returned 21 percent net of fees over 10 years, annualized. He has achieved it by going on the offensive. Mr. Ackman’s role as an activist hedge fund investor is to persuade other shareholders that he knows how to run companies better than current management does. This involves research, argument and, perhaps most important, a sensitivity to how every pronouncement and gesture will be perceived. “I was angry at Carl Icahn for many years, as you know,” Mr. Ackman said of the longtime activist investor, when asked if he holds grudges. He swiped at his eye and added, lest the movement be misinterpreted: “My eye is tearing. It’s not
[Marxism] book for review
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Socialism and Democracy is looking for someone to review a new book on the Grenada Revolution. Contact me at george.snede...@verizon.net if you would like to review this book. Here is the blurb from the publisher: The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory by Shalini Puri is the first scholarly book on the subject of the Grenada Revolution and the US intervention. It is simultaneously a critique, tribute, and memorial. It argues that in both its making and its fall, the 1979-1983 Revolution was a transnational event that deeply impacted politics and culture across the Caribbean and its diaspora during its life and in the decades since its fall. Drawing together studies of landscape, memorials, literature, music, painting, photographs, film and TV, cartoons, memorabilia traded on e-bay, interviews, everyday life, and government, journalistic, and scholarly accounts, the book assembles and analyzes an archive of divergent memories. . The book also deals with the political factions at work in the Grenada Revolution. George _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: The Syrian Labyrinth » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (This is a review of Reese Erlich's new book on Syria by Conn Hallinan. I have found Erlich's articles most useful over the past 3 years.) Erlich maintains that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s economic “reforms” helped impel the current uprising. Adopting neoliberal policies, Assad sold off state-owned enterprises—generally to regime allies and insiders—and opened the economy to outside competition. The result—aided by a long-running drought—was growing impoverishment and lots of unemployed youth. Joblessness and economic crisis is a volatile mix and needs only an “incident” to set it off. That happened in March 2011 in the southern city of Daraa, when Syrian security forces brutally attacked peaceful demonstrators. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/29/the-syrian-labyrinth/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: 5 Things About Slavery You Probably Didn't Learn In Social Studies: A Short Guide To 'The Half Has Never Been Told'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Well, I'm sure you're so much busier than I am, but if you don't have time to discuss it--and insist on attributing whatever positions to me--I just won't bother trying either. ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] US/Iran backed Shiite ISIS (Iraq regime) ethnically cleanse town of 80, 000 Sunni
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Comments forwarded from friend: IRAQ: all the western press has been celebrating for days US-iran-iraqi regime's victory against ISIS .in Jurf al-Sakhar Insignificant details : 1. the sectarian alliance US-Iran - iraq totally ethnic cleansed levelled Jurf al-Sakhar The town is now emptied of its 80,000 residents, and building after building has been destroyed — by airstrikes, bombings and artillery fire. Defeating the militants involved clearing out all of the residents and leaving the town nearly flattened 2. ALL the 80,000 sunni residents (including women kids ) have been declared ISIS memebrs . None of its Sunni residents remain or are likely to return anytime soon. Those who had stayed in the town until last week were considered combatants, said Hassan Shakir Oda, a member of the provincial council and the Badr Brigade (iran /US-backed shua death squads ) . “We considered every family that stayed al-Qaeda or Daesh,” he said, referring to the Islamic State by its Arabic acronym. “If anyone against Daesh had stayed, Daesh would have killed them.” 3. US-supported shia militias' trucks blaring religious music from loudspeakers drag decaying bodies of alleged insurgents in the streets . Needless to say the despicable Washington Post doesn't criticize at all the ethnic cleansing of Jurf al-Sakhar : we all know that according the US its disgusting press sunni arabs don't deserve to live iran sectarian shia death squads have the full right to mas murder them Iraq’s victory over militants in Sunni town underlines challenges government faces http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqs-victory-over-militants-in-sunni-town-underlines-challenges-government-faces/2014/10/29/c53c4886-6f61-4567-904a-918060f6f2f5_story.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Time to totlly feak out: two Facebook posts on Ebola
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The following were status posts on the Facebook account of my real-world alter-ego, Jose G. Perez. The first is from Sunday the 26th. The second from today, Wednesday the 29th. What moved me to send them to this list were posts here comparing the impact of an Ebola pandemic to the plague. The plague may have set European civilization back decades or centuries, but I think an Ebola pandemic would have qualitatively different results. Today there can be no talk of European civilization, but only of human civilization. And I think anything on the scale of the plague, or even within an order of magnitude or so, will not mean a setback to current human civilization, but its collapse. The current population density of the urban areas of industrialized nations and those countries' ratio of food consumers to food producers cannot be sustained in he face of Ebola or another pandemic EBOLA: THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ISN'T REPORTING THE REAL REASON IT IS TIME TO TOTALLY FREAK OUT That reason is, quite simply, that 11 weeks after the World Health Organization said there was an international public health emergency, the epidemic is growing worse, spreading geographically with the virus infecting increasing numbers of people. And our politicians in the United States are not rallying people to support an all-out fight against Ebola. Instead they are whipping up a hysteria with an eye to the November congressional and gubernatorial elections. But if an all-out push isn't made to stop Ebola RIGHT NOW these may be our last mid-term elections. The human race will survive an Ebola pandemic, but I can't imagine how modern civilization could. Nor, if it allows such a catastrophe, why it should. On the African epidemic, the attention is all on the total number of cases, now more than 10,000, and of deaths, which had almost reached 5,000 as of the last report. But the most important figure to look at is the number of *new* cases being reported. The World Health Organization's Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 1, says that as of August 25, there has been 3,052 cases, but nearly half, 1,355 had been reported over the previous 21 days, for an average of 452 a week. Four weeks later, the number of cases had doubled and of deaths nearly so, but so had the number of new infections in the previous three weeks. And the most recent weekly report, number 8, gave a figure for new cases in the previous seven days of 976, the highest weekly number yet. That is a rate of increase in NEW cases of 14% a week. And although almost all of the increase was in the first four reports, the number of new cases keeps going up, and the areas affected by the epidemic in the three countries keeps growing. In Sierra Leone, for the first time every one of the country's 14 districts had new cases in the latest report week. Liberia had the highest number of new cases in four weeks. Much, much more needs to be done. We have not yet taken the first step in turning the tide, which is REDUCING the number of new cases each week and reducing the number of outbreaks. Yet attention in the U.S. is narcissistically focused on the couple of cases here, while politicians pretend that the United States can be isolated from the epidemic through demagogic quarantines that health experts say are unnecessary and only make things worse by punishing brave doctors and nurses who go to the front lines to fight the epidemic where it needs to be fought: in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. If the numbers from the World Health Organization don't freak you out, the response of the American political class should. * * * LATEST REPORT SUGGESTS NEW EBOLA CASES HAVE INCREASED TO 1,000 OR MORE A WEEK The latest Ebola response roadmap situation report has come in from the World Health Organization, and the news only keep getting worse. As of the the October 22 report, there had been 9,911 cases; there are now 13,676 reported, an increase of almost 40% in one week. Not to worry, WHO's scribblers assure us: The marked increase in the cumulative total number of cases compared with the situation report of 22 October results from a more comprehensive assessment of patient databases. The additional 3 792 cases have occurred throughout the epidemic period, not only since 22 October. In other words, the epidemic didn't get that much worse, it had been much worse all along, but the institution in charge of the fight against it is just now figuring it out. Great. Very reassuring indeed. But there is even worse news in the details of the main chart, the one in the Countries with Widespread
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: 5 Things About Slavery You Probably Didn't Learn In Social Studies: A Short Guide To 'The Half Has Never Been Told'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Just got home from work and too tired to care. Clay Claiborne, Director Vietnam: American Holocaust http://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com Linux Beach Productions Venice, CA 90291 (310) 581-1536 Read my blogs at the Linux Beach http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/ http://wlcentral.org/user/2965/track On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Mark Lause markala...@gmail.com wrote: Well, I'm sure you're so much busier than I am, but if you don't have time to discuss it--and insist on attributing whatever positions to me--I just won't bother trying either. ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
