[Marxism] Venezuela: US, elite launch new attacks on democracy
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. * To seek explanations for why the US and Venezuelan elite were so determined to overthrow Maduro and destroy the Bolivarian revolution, Znet's *Michael Albert* interviewed lawyer and investigate journalist, *Eva Golinger...* https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/58401 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker _ 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] Lenin's Tomb on Greece
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. * From Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb: Syriza has been defeated in the first round of negotiations. After a period of enjoyable defiance http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/01/you-just-killed-troika.html, during which they won the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people - 80% according to a poll taken before the latest deal, published in today's *Avgi* http://left.gr/news/dimoskopisi-public-issue-gia-tin-aygi-80-egkrinei-toys-heirismoys-tis-kyvernisis - they have come back with small change. Pushed to the point where they were at risk of a collapse of the banking system, and unprepared for a Grexit (and thus unable to use it as a bargaining chip), they accepted the most comprehensive drubbing http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/greece-got-outmaneuvered. Tsipras has tried to put the best possible gloss on this, but what he said was delusional. He said that the deal shows that Europe stands for mutually beneficial compromise. No such thing. It stands, as Schauble crowed http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/20/eurozone-chiefs-meet-for-last-ditch-talks-to-avert-greece-cash-crunch, for Syriza being forced to implement austerity against its own mandate. It stands for the crushing of national democracy. Tsipras said that the deal creates the framework for Syriza to address the humanitarian crisis. Not with the commitment to a primary surplus and troika oversight, it doesn't. Not with the agreement that Syriza will not 'unilaterally' roll back austerity, it doesn't. We can admit that a 1.5% primary surplus is better than a 4.5% primary surplus. Yet even 1.5% in a depressed economy is harsh, and coupled with troika assessment of reforms for fiscal sustainability (according to neoliberal maxims), this amounts to the repudiation of most of Syriza's reform agenda. Tsipras said that austerity and the Memorandum had been left behind. That is precisely the opposite of what has happened. The Thessaloniki programme, itself a carefully trimmed agenda shorn of the most radical of Syriza's goals, is what has been left behind. The problem with Tsipras's speech goes further than this, however. Not only is it deluded. It recalibrates the government's language and goals in order to rationalise not just this thrashing but future routs. Having said that austerity and the Memorandum are now left behind by this deal, the government shifts the goalposts and terms of future negotiations. And this is part of the reason why those who speak of 'buying time' are wrong. Time is not a simple quantity that only one side gains from. The EU ruling classes have also 'bought time' and they have the resources and are on the offensive, while Syriza has retreated. There are no grounds for thinking that Syriza's bargaining position will be better in four months time than it is now. It has already weakened its stance, while its political position, after four months of continued austerity, will probably be worse. One can hardly pin most of the blame for this on Syriza. They are in a weak position, and it is doubtful that any government could have obtained better against an EU determined to humiliate Greece. Yet, the line of Tsipras and Varoufakis is simply untenable. Their commitment to trying to resolve this crisis within the terms of the euro must fail. They were simply wrong to think that they would have a single ally or interlocutor in the EU. The southern European governments are even more fanatical than Berlin on this question. Hollande, far from being a friendly face, told Syriza to shove it fairly early on: he made his decision on austerity some time ago. The question of the currency, then, was not simply a nationalist distraction as some claimed: getting an anti-austerity government elected with the specific goal of confronting the EU and struggling to overturn austerity was always going to come to a head on this very question. The alternative, what one might call a People's Grexit, is far from straightforward, as Dave Renton points out https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/when-a-pause-may-be-the-best-that-could-be-acheived/ in the latest of a series of excellent posts on Greece. The economic risks would be considerable. It would require not just economic preparedness, or secret war room gaming, but mass social and political preparedness. It would require the mobilisation of a workers movement that has been relatively quiet since 2012. And it would require a government willing to risk economic and political isolation from trading partners and a fight to the finish with the oligarchs, the Right, and the repressive state apparatuses for the future of Greek
[Marxism] Fwd: Stalin’s Caucasus crimes Putin wants you to forget -Euromaidan Press |
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. * (What the author of the Intercept article about Chechen jihadists in Ukraine never considered.) Simultaneously but unrelated to the German advance into Russia, an anticommunist insurgency erupted across the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. To be sure the Germans would come to learn about it, and try to convince the Chechen rebels to join their side, but to little effect. But as we have learned before, to Stalin the details matter little, bogus pretexts for targeting entire ethnic groups however do. And to Beria, the man who would oversee personally the punishing of the Chechen and Ingush peoples, they were tantamount to “German saboteurs.” This together with their “Anticommunism” formed the pretextual basis for their deportation which began on February 23, 1944. Beria and his NKVD officers rounded up and expelled 478,479 people from their homes and sent them to Kazakhstan and the Asiatic steppes. “Because no Chechens or Ingush were to be left behind, people who could not be moved were shot. Villages were burned to the ground everywhere; in some places, barns full of people were burned as well.” This pretext was a recurring theme in Stalin’s deportations. On December 28, 1943 Mikhail Kalinin signed a Decree ordering wholesale deportation of the Kalmyks based on the assumption that “many Kalmyks [had] betrayed their Motherland” by assisting the Germans. Between 1943 and 1944 more than 120,000 Kalmyks were to be forced out of their homes. When the Soviets came to deport the Crimean Tatars in May 1944, they again used the same pretext, and expelled 200,000 Tatars. full: http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/02/26/stalins-caucasus-crimes-putin-wants-you-to-forget/ _ 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] Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century
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. * LRB Vol. 37 No. 5 · 5 March 2015 Sad Century by David Parrott Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century by Geoffrey Parker Yale, 871 pp, £16.99, August 2014, ISBN 978 0 300 20863 4 Contemporary accounts leave little ambiguity about the character of the 17th century. Natural disasters, warfare, political unrest and rebellion combined to bring about levels of mortality, destruction and collective trauma unmatched until the mid-20th century. The confessional conflicts, rebellions, plagues and famines of the 16th century were mild by comparison. ‘’Tis tru we have had many such black days in England in former ages,’ James Howell wrote in 1647, ‘but those parallel’d to the present are to the shadow of a mountain compar’d to the eclipse of the moon.’ In his Essay on the Customs and Character of Nations, Voltaire mildly said that the mid-17th century had been an ‘unfortunate’ time for monarchs: he drew attention to the deposition of the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim, the destabilising of the Holy Roman Emperor, the flight of the young Louis XIV from Paris in the face of popular revolt, the trial of Charles I and Philip IV of Spain’s loss of Portugal and its empire: a flood of usurpations and revolutions, as he put it, ‘almost from one end of the world to the other’. Voltaire’s identification of the moment around 1650 as a high point of political unrest attracted many subsequent historians, some of whom doubted there were underlying connections between the events, but nonetheless noted the phenomenon of so many ‘contemporaneous revolutions’, as R.B. Merriman called them in his comparative study of 1938. The view that these natural and human catastrophes reached a climax around the mid-century implied that there was some improvement after that. It was logical therefore to speak of the mid-century as a ‘crisis’, the word borrowed from medical terminology. Europe did not descend into anarchy, so the crisis must have led to recovery. But if so, what was the crisis about, and what was its resolution? The original case for a crisis was made in 1954 by Eric Hobsbawm, who argued that it should be understood in the context of the transition from feudalism to capitalism: vigorous mercantile and commercial interests that had been gaining strength through the previous century reacted with rebellion and revolt to the economic and political constraints imposed by feudal elites. In 1959 Hugh Trevor-Roper replaced Hobsbawm’s economic crisis with a political/fiscal one, a struggle between the centralising efforts of princely courts and government, on the one hand, and provincial and local powers on the other. In 1965 Hobsbawm and Trevor-Roper’s articles appeared side by side in an edited collection, Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660, along with other pieces previously published in Past and Present. The volume may inadvertently have launched the most persistent criticism of the whole idea of a crisis: that ‘crisis’ is for the 17th century what ‘history’ is for other centuries. Hobsbawm’s theory lost currency with the decline and fall of doctrinaire Marxist interpretations of early modern history. Trevor-Roper’s political crisis suffered a slower disintegration, through a revisionism which steadily sapped the life out of binary models that pitted a radical centre against a backward periphery, or new bureaucratic functionaries against reactionary nobles. In the end, both interpretations were of course thoroughly Eurocentric. How useful was the concept of the transition from feudalism to capitalism when examining political upheavals in mid-17th-century China? Did it make any sense to discuss the crisis of the Ottoman Empire in terms of a struggle between a centralising monarchy and reactionary provincial nobility? The desire to re-examine the connections between a series of events that were geographically dispersed but chronologically contemporary led to another set of essays, The General Crisis of the 17th Century, published in 1978 and edited by Geoffrey Parker and Lesley Smith. Thanks particularly to the editors’ introduction and John Eddy’s essay on the effect of sunspots, the debate was pushed in a new direction: climate change and its impact on the food supply and demography now became a central theme. The absence of recorded sunspots and the presence of substantial carbon-14 deposits pointed to a lowering of average temperatures across the world in the mid-17th century, and the resulting Little Ice Age was seen as the prime cause of endemic hunger, malnutrition, subsistence crises and the resurgence of virulent epidemics. When
[Marxism] Goldman Sachs's role in the Greek crisis
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. * Q: You've investigated the role of Goldman Sachs and the way in which Goldman Sachs helped Greece and, apparently, some other countries as well, essentially cheat their way into the euro. How did this occur? Greg Palast: Yes. By the way, every nation, including Germany, is cheating on the rules of the euro. Germany does not have a 3 percent deficit; Germany does not limit itself to a debt of 60 percent of their annual economic activity; Germany cheats; everyone in the eurozone is cheating. But, when Greece was trying to get into the euro, to pretend that you had a 3 percent deficit, the government hired Goldman Sachs at a fee of nearly half a million dollars to create a set of phony transactions, fake transactions that were currency swaps between the euros held by your government and the Japanese yen. There were also some other transactions, but that's basically what was involved. There's a bunch of fake transactions to make it look as if your government had somehow earned billions of dollars speculating in the currency markets. It was phony, because the government never made that money; supposedly, Goldman Sachs lost that money, but Goldman Sachs doesn't cut deals where it loses money. In fact, it did quite well. What it was is, the deficit, in all this flimflam, the real deficit was hidden. And, by the way, Goldman did this for a couple of other countries, and I know J.P. Morgan set up a similar deal for Spain. But Greece was the worst, and when [former Greek Prime Minister George] Papandreou got into office, he said, Oh my God, we have a big deficit! I think he knew all along about the flimflam, but he thought it was economically or politically right to suddenly say, Oh my gosh, we actually have a bigger deficit than we publicly acknowledge. Once it became quite public that the deficit was much bigger, and in fact it was a lie, the amount of debt owed by Greece, and that these were all fake transactions, at that point, anyone lending money to Greece, of course, is going to demand a huge premium, saying, You guys are committing fraud; you're all liars; you're in worse financial condition than you knew, and so you ended up with bankers demanding 15 to 16 percent interest, which, because you have the euro, you have to pay in, basically, a foreign currency, in Germany's currency, to pay off these huge, high-interest debts. So Goldman Sachs - remember, they were hired by your government; they didn't just sneak in the back door - they were brought in by two governments, by two different parties, and defrauded the public, but in coordination with your own leaders. http://truth-out.org/news/item/29260-palast-to-syriza-don-t-lie-it-s-impossible-to-end-austerity-within-the-eurozone _ 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] Report on Stathis Kouvelakis - Alex Callinicos debate
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. * (From Edward Rooksby on FB. I am bit puzzled by the reference to a Stathis Kouvelakis/Alex Callinicos debate since they both come across as left critics of Syriza.) On the Stathis Kouvelakis - Alex Callinicos debate last night - you may have seen Kouvelakis' comments on FB earlier about how 'remarkable' it was and about there being 'some kind of electricity in the air'. There certainly was something quite electrifying about this meeting. I don't remember having attended anything like it for a long time. It was very full and it's the first meeting I've been to with people sticking their heads into the meeting room through windows because the hall was so packed - it contributed to the excitement of the occasion (and an oppressively hot room!). In terms of what Kouvelakis and Callinicos said - the nub of Alex's argument, it seemed to me, was a point about the 'deep state', the internal coherence of the repressive apparatuses of the state and about the need, sooner or later, to 'smash' them (though he didn't use that term). At least one of the questions from the floor for Kouvelakis was about this too. I have to say I thought Kouvelakis dodged this point. Kouvelakis stressed the acheivement of Syriza in terms of knitting together a party/movement of a new type which was actually able to challenge seriously for power and take office. He also emphasised how the Thessaloniki programme, and in particular the identification of the issue of the debt as the main question, connected concretely with Greek people's immediate concerns and presented the programme in terms of a set of transitional demands. I thought he could have responded more directly to AC's key point by pointing out that the question of rupture and a test of strength with the RSAs (which I don't think he denies is necessary) doesn't even come on to the agenda without cohering a social and political force that can take power - which Antarsya clearly hasn't. Rupture does not emerge by insisting on its necessity - if it is to emerge it will only emerge organically from a process of contestation, which for me necessitates the process of transitional demands and the radical dynamic such demands are supposed to catalyse that Kouvelakis spoke about. It also presupposes the presence of organised left forces aware of the necessity for rupture - but the point is that it won't emerge as a real possibility for those organised left forces to nurture and bring to a head without the prior emergence of a force that can galvanise the sort of change to put it onto the agenda. As Kouvelakis indicated, the Antarsya strategy is and has been concretely tested (not just the Syriza one(s)) - and the outcome was a 0.6% share of the vote. The common ground between them was an agreement that last week's agreement was a retreat and a defeat and Kouvelakis was clear that the most dangerous thing at the moment was the Syriza leadership's attempt to spin it as a victory which, he said, only paved the way for future retreats. They also agreed about the need for a challenge to the leadership from the left. The SWP/Antarsya vision of this appears to be an immediate seizure of banks and imposition of capital controls 'from below' - I'm not sure how grounded in reality this is at present. I do think that the SWP tend to counterpose a largely imaginary revolutionary movement to the real constraints and concrete dilemmas faced by those following various strategies of 'reform' and invoke 'mass struggle' as a kind of magic talisman that somehow dissolves all problems. Fantastic meeting though. More like this please! _ 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] Car Bomb in Washington, DC 1976
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.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/car-bomb-in-washington-dc/ _ 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] two new ones on Libya
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. * On 2/27/15 2:53 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote: All of which is true - but doesn't Campbell see how backing (or being silent about) Qaddafi, Assad et al. has reactionary regional implications, how the Western intervention he so correctly deplores is enabled by pseudo-Left support for such butchers and the failure to help construct a genuinely anti-imperialist political pole? Campbell actually wrote some blistering attacks on Qaddafi in the past, like this one that was written in 2010 before the uprising began: http://www.thinkafricapress.com/libya/gadaffi-was-obstacle-african-unity But like just everybody else, the focus would shift to denouncing imperialist intervention. From what I can tell, his book is not the typical how great things were under Qaddafi but how the intervention failed to advance American ambitions. He actually might have a point. _ 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] The Reality of Retreat by Stathis Kouvelakis
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. * Greek Party Syriza Retreats Under Troika Threats Popular mood shows anti-austerity, socialist policies would win huge support http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/02/25/greek-party-syriza-retreats-troika-threats by Nicos Anastasiades of Xekinima Thessaloniki, Feb. 25 Xekinima (CWI Greece); they called for voting for Syriza but they aren't part of Syriza _ 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] 1/5 of Syriza MPs didn't support deal in 2/25 party meeting
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. * No formal count was taken at this meeting, but according to Stathis Kouvelakis, 30 MPs were out of the room when the vote was taken and 40 abstained or voted against. If this is right, then a third of those present voted against. He recounts that most speakers - some 80 MPs - criticised the deal, in an emotional and turbulent meeting that went on for 12 hours. Tsipras would be smart not to bring this to a parliamentary vote. The centrist opposition want it to be voted on because they want to split Syriza and pass the deal. The KKE want it to be voted on because they want to split Syriza and take their place as the dominant left party. It was shrewd and characteristic of Tsipras’s leadership style to take an informal vote on this. Because he could have just forced it through and gone ahead with a parliamentary vote without listening to anyone, which would possibly have split Syriza in a big way. But the scale of dissent, the difficulties it creates for the agreement, and the clear rejection of the ‘famous victory’ line that Tsipras peddled, has saved Syriza’s honour. The Left Platform have been shown to be wholly correct in their approach, while the cheerleaders and the told-you-so sectarians now look a bit silly. On 27 Feb 2015, at 06:15, Dayne Goodwin via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: After facing down SYRIZA MPs, Greek PM mulls bringing deal to Parliament Kathimerini, Athens Feb. 26, 2015 Tsipras’s hesitancy comes after a meeting of SYRIZA’s parliamentary group on Wednesday that lasted more than 11 hours. During the debate about Greece’s new agreement with its lenders, a number of MPs expressed disagreement with the deal. At Tsipras’s insistence, a vote was held at the end of the meeting and some 30 of the party’s 149 lawmakers either voted against the agreement or failed to vote for it. _ 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: ISIS ‘Jihadi John’ named as Mohammed Emwazi, portrayed as victim of UK counter-terrorism policies
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://warincontext.org/2015/02/26/isis-jihadi-john-named-as-mohammed-emwazi-portrayed-as-victim-of-uk-counter-terrorism-policies/ _ 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: Why Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS | TIME
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 regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has long had a pragmatic approach to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), says a Syrian businessman with close ties to the government. Even from the early days the regime purchased fuel from ISIS-controlled oil facilities, and it has maintained that relationship throughout the conflict. “Honestly speaking, the regime has always had dealings with ISIS, out of necessity.” The Sunni businessman is close to the regime but wants to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from both ISIS supporters and the regime. He trades goods all over the country so his drivers have regular interactions with ISIS supporters and members in Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria, and in ISIS-controlled areas like Dier-ezzor. The businessman cites Raqqa’s mobile phone service as an example of how there is commerce between the regime, Syrian businesses, and ISIS. The country’s two main mobile phone operators still work in Raqqa. “Both operators send engineers to ISIS-controlled areas to repair damages at the towers,” he says. In addition, there are regular shipments of food to Raqqa. “ISIS charges a small tax for all trucks bringing food into Raqqa [including the businessman’s trucks], and they give receipts stamped with the ISIS logo. It is all very well organized.” The businessman has a driver who lives in an ISIS-controlled area near Dier-Ezzor. “My driver is always telling me how safe things are at home. He can leave the door to his house unlocked. ISIS requires women to veil, and there is no smoking in the streets. Men can’t wear jeans either. But there are no bribes, and they have tranquility and security. It’s not like there are killings every day in the streets like you see on TV.” And, he notes, ISIS pays well — slightly less than the pre-war norms but a fortune in a war-torn economy: engineers for the oil and gas fields are paid $2,500 a month. Doctors get $1,500. Non-Syrians get an expatriate allowance, “a financial package that makes it worthwhile to work for ISIS,” says the businessman. Assad does not see ISIS as his primary problem, the businessman says. “The regime fears the Free Syrian Army and the Nusra Front, not ISIS. They [the FSA and Nusra] state their goal is to remove the President. But ISIS doesn’t say that. They have never directly threatened Damascus.” As the businessman notes, the strikes on ISIS targets are minimal. “If the regime were serious about getting rid of ISIS, they would have bombed Raqqa by now. Instead they bomb other cities, where the FSA is strong.” That said, the businessman does not believe that the regime has a formal relationship with ISIS, just a pragmatic one. “The more powerful ISIS grows, the more they are useful for the regime. They make America nervous, and the Americans in turn see the regime as a kind of bulwark against ISIS.” full: http://time.com/3719129/assad-isis-asset/ _ 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: Demanding the right to breathe | lives; running
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. * David Renton's latest on Greece. https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/converting-a-defeat-to-a-victory/ _ 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: Putin's teenage fan club: the Russian president's young devotees – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian
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. * Fascinating photographs of hero worship in Russia of the bare-chested man on horseback that reminds me of how so many teens and college students adored Ronald Reagan for his macho appearance and foreign policy--joined ironically by Rudy Giuliani and 90 percent of the anti-imperialists in the USA and Britain, where this pathology seems most acute. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/27/vladimir-putin-teenage-fan-club-russia-president-young-devotees-in-pictures _ 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: In Midst of War, Ukraine Becomes Gateway for Jihad - The Intercept
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 Intercept, a website best known for Glenn Greenwald's articles and the patronage of Pierre Omidyar--the billionaire behind EBay, publishes a lurid article about Chechens fighting in Donbass against pro-Russian forces. Intercept has been in the news lately over FB friend Ken Silverstein, the guy who started CounterPunch, resigning in disgust for the same reasons as Matt Taibbi a while back. What is missing from this article, and 90 percent of the anti-imperialist Islamophobic that washes across the left like a tsunami, is any understanding of the affinity that a Chechen might have with Ukraine. These two peoples enjoy the experience of having been fucked over by the Russians more than anybody. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/ _ 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] In Spain, Hugo Chavez Lives On --- Far-left movement tied to late Venezuelan leader gains clout, challenging mainstream
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. * Wall Street Journal, Feb. 27 2015 In Spain, Hugo Chavez Lives On --- Far-left movement tied to late Venezuelan leader gains clout, challenging mainstream by David Roman MADRID -- Late in his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez told a Spanish professor he was very much heartened by a youth-led movement that briefly occupied central Madrid to protest corruption and government-mandated austerity. What recession-racked Spain needed, he said, was a true democracy to replace its capitalist system. His guest, Juan Carlos Monedero, said during their televised chat that he couldn't agree more. Venezuela is a model of Socialist revolution, he told Mr. Chavez, and Europe is starting to look at your example. Nearly four years later, Mr. Chavez is dead and Venezuela is mired in economic turmoil. But in Spain a new far-left party led by Mr. Monedero and others with ties to Mr. Chavez's movement has surged to the top of opinion polls less than a year ahead of national elections, challenging decades of moderate governance by mainstream parties. The party, Podemos (Spanish for We Can), proposes to expand the powers of the state in some of the ways Mr. Chavez did in Venezuela. Rivals have seized on those ties to depict Podemos as the ghost of Chavez, warning that it would undermine Spain's democracy and economy with a regime of Chavez-style authoritarian populism. The party's leaders deny that, describing themselves as youthful insurgents against an entrenched caste of corrupt, self-serving politicians. Podemos's rise from the political fringe parallels that of Syriza, the leftist coalition that upset establishment parties to win Greece's national election in January. Appealing to angry electorates afflicted by high unemployment, both parties reject the prevailing eurozone policies that require harsh economic austerity to meet the demands of creditors. On Jan. 31, Podemos gathered at least 100,000 followers in Madrid for Spain's largest antiausterity demonstration in years. Europe's governing mainstream parties also are under siege from the right. Nationalist, anti-immigrant parties have led recent polls in France, the Netherlands and Austria, and are growing in the U.K. and elsewhere in response to concerns about terrorism and the influence of Islam in their societies. Podemos, founded one year ago, is led by Mr. Monedero, Pablo Iglesias and Inigo Errejon -- technologically savvy political scientists who have gathered remnants of the Occupy-style movement that flourished and fizzled here in 2011. All three men have served as advisers to the Chavez regime. If current polling trends hold up, Podemos could be in a strong position to assemble a governing coalition with smaller parties following elections to be held late this year. Its leaders advocate a renegotiation of Spain's enormous debt, expanded subsidies for the poor, a 35-hour workweek, a ban on layoffs by profitable companies, a return to a fully state-controlled health-care system and greater state control over strategic industries such as banking and the media. They want to challenge institutional arrangements in place since Spain's transition to democracy after Gen. Francisco Franco's death in 1975. Podemos leaders say they favor overturning an amnesty for political crimes during the Franco dictatorship and subjecting the future of the monarchy and Spain's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to popular votes. They call for a broad review of Spain's 1978 constitution and are open to an amendment that would allow Spanish regions to secede if their voters so decide. Spain's post-Franco democracy is no stranger to far-left challenges. What is unusual about this one is that it is openly applauded by a foreign government. Venezuela's ambassador in Madrid, Mario Isea, told lawmakers from his country in November that Podemos could turn Spain into a strong ally of Venezuela and a broadcasting platform in Europe for chavismo, the Socialist, U.S.-bashing ideology propagated by Mr. Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro. The remarks, coupled with Spain's demand for the release of an imprisoned opposition leader in Venezuela, have strained relations between the countries. The two mainstream parties that have taken turns ruling Spain since 1982 wave Podemos's Venezuela connection as a red flag. This kind of party, based on demagoguery and populism, is very dangerous for the system and for democracy, said Maria Dolores de Cospedal, deputy leader of the governing conservative Popular Party. Pedro Sanchez, leader of the opposition Socialists, challenged
[Marxism] Syriza targets tax cheats
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, Feb. 27 2015 In Greece, Bailout May Hinge on Pursuing Tycoons By LIZ ALDERMAN ATHENS — As he sifted recently through a sheaf of Greek bank accounts held by executives, politicians and other members of the Greek elite, Panagiotis Nikoloudis, the nation’s new anti-corruption czar, was struck by some troubling numbers. A man who was claiming unemployment benefits and declared zero income on his taxes had more than 300,000 euros, or $336,000, stashed away at his bank. Another, who told the tax authorities that his annual income was just €15,000, turned out to have €1.5 million in various bank accounts. Mr. Nikoloudis estimated that the men had bilked Greece’s Treasury of thousands of euros in tax revenue, even as other Greeks struggled under the government’s austerity budgets and embattled economy. “I have nothing against rich people,” said Mr. Nikoloudis, a financial crimes specialist, leaning into a table one recent afternoon in his office in western Athens. “I’m against dishonest rich people. And I’m here to get them.” For years, Greece has been trying to attack corruption and tax evasion, from the smallest taverna owner to the nation’s most powerful oligarchs. Now, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is vowing to take far more action than previous administrations in cracking down. He says his government, led by his leftist party, Syriza, will succeed because having never held power, it is not beholden to the entrenched interests that have long fought to maintain the status quo. But even Mr. Nikoloudis acknowledges that fixing Greece’s finances will not be easy. Which throws into question how readily, or at least how quickly, the government can fulfill its promise to its European creditors. This week, in exchange for keeping Greece’s €240 billion financial lifeline in place for at least four more months, Athens outlined a two-pronged approach to battling corruption. The first involves going after wealthy tax evaders. The second promises a more herculean effort: reshaping a system in which Greek tycoons dominate much of the economy and engage in sometimes murky business practices — including, Mr. Tsipras asserts, tax evasion — that analysts say deprive state coffers of billions in revenue. Tax collection is the starting point for what will eventually become a broader effort to make Greece a place where the rule of law, and the civic duty to pay taxes, might finally take deeper root. Mr. Nikoloudis, 65, is the point man on that cleanup campaign. As a former prosecutor for Greece’s Supreme Court, Mr. Nikoloudis has spent decades pursuing cases on money laundering, oil smuggling and corrupt contracts. Soon, he plans to set his sights on Greece’s oligarchs. For now, though, he is focused on tax evasion more broadly, at a time when the estimated total of unpaid taxes in Greece has soared to €76 billion. Only a small fraction of that is considered recoverable. Mr. Nikoloudis said he had in hand 3,500 audits amounting to €7 billion in back taxes, €2.5 billion of which he hopes will be collected by summer. An additional 22,000 cases, worth several billion euros, will soon be ready for pursuit, he said. Frustratingly out of reach, he said, is considerable untaxable Greek wealth outside the country. That includes more than 2,000 Swiss bank accounts held by Greeks named on a list that Christine Lagarde, now the head of the International Monetary Fund, sent to Greece in 2010 when she was France’s finance minister. In all, an estimated €120 billion in Greek assets are held outside of the country, mainly in investment accounts that Mr. Nikoloudis said Greece cannot get its hands on. But as Greece redoubles its tax efforts at home, the ineffectiveness of the country's tax collection and justice systems could impede progress. Harry Theoharis, who was appointed Greece’s top tax collector by the previous government in 2013, recalled a case in which his office assessed a €5 million fine on a wealthy Greek citizen who had evaded taxes. The person took the case to court, where Mr. Theoharis said it died after prosecutors did not show up for trial. “The person was powerful enough to reverse it,” Mr. Theoharis said in an interview. He resigned last year under what he hinted was political pressure, after he pursued wealthy Greeks aggressively. He is now a member of Parliament from To Potami, an opposition party. Such influence-brokering is even more pervasive among Greece’s major tycoons, whom Mr. Tsipras accuses of costing the government billions in lost income over the years. Mr. Tsipras has vowed to “to clash with the
