Re: [Marxism] Eating Shit and Liking IT: USA--The Case against Ground Beef and Chicken
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[Marxism] Eating Shit and Liking IT: USA--The Case against Ground Beef and Chicken
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. * Consumer Reports recently issued a warning on ground beef: Putting beef to the test Given those concerns about the safety of ground beef, *Consumer Reports *decided to test for the prevalence and types of bacteria in ground beef. We purchased 300 packages—a total of 458 pounds (the equivalent of 1,832 quarter-pounders)—from 103 grocery, big-box, and natural food stores in 26 cities across the country. We bought all types of ground beef: conventional—the most common type of beef sold, in which cattle are typically fattened up with grain and soy in feedlots and fed antibiotics and other drugs to promote growth and prevent disease—as well as beef that was raised in more sustainable ways, which have important implications for food safety and animal welfare. At a minimum, sustainably produced beef was raised without antibiotics. Even better are organic and grass-fed methods. Organic cattle are not given antibiotics or other drugs, and they are fed organic feed. Grass-fed cattle usually don’t get antibiotics, and they spend their lives on pasture, not feedlots. We analyzed the samples for five common types of bacteria found on beef—clostridium perfringens, E. coli (including O157 and six other toxin-producing strains), enterococcus, salmonella, and staphylococcus aureus. The results were sobering. All 458 pounds of beef we examined contained bacteria that signified fecal contamination (enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli), which can cause blood or urinary tract infections. Almost 20 percent contained C. perfringens, a bacteria that causes almost 1 million cases of food poisoning annually. Ten percent of the samples had a strain of S. aureus bacteria that can produce a toxin that can make you sick. That toxin can’t be destroyed—even with proper cooking. Just 1 percent of our samples contained salmonella. That may not sound worrisome, but, says Rangan, “extrapolate that to the billions of pounds of ground beef we eat every year, and that’s a lot of burgers with the potential to make you sick.” Indeed, salmonella causes an estimated 1.2 million illnesses and 450 deaths in the U.S. each year. One of the most significant findings of our research is that beef from conventionally raised cows was more likely to have bacteria overall, as well as bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, than beef from sustainably raised cows. We found a type of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus bacteria called MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), which kills about 11,000 people in the U.S. every year, on three conventional samples (and none on sustainable samples). And 18 percent of conventional beef samples were contaminated with superbugs—the dangerous bacteria that are resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics—compared with just 9 percent of beef from samples that were sustainably produced. “We know that sustainable methods are better for the environment and more humane to animals. But our tests also show that these methods can produce ground beef that poses fewer public health risks,” Rangan says. http://consumerist.com/2015/08/24/how-safe-is-your-ground-beef/ http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/the-five-worst-contaminants-in-chicken-products Feces *Poultry Slaughter Procedures*, a USDA training video recently obtained by the Physicians Committee through the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that the chicken slaughtering process ends with carcasses soaking in cold water—“fecal soup”—for up to one hour before being packaged for consumers.2 Large chicken processing plants, such as Tyson and Perdue, can slaughter as many as 30,000 chickens an hour.2 During processing, chicken carcasses are mechanically disemboweled and later soaked in a chill tank before being packaged and sent to distributors. A federal inspector said, “We often see birds going down the line with intestines still attached, which are full of fecal contamination. If there is no fecal contamination on the bird’s skin, however, we can do nothing to stop that bird from going down that line. It is more than reasonable to assume that once the bird gets into the chill tank, that contamination will enter the water and contaminate all of the other carcasses in the chiller. That’s why it is sometimes called ‘fecal soup.’” In 2012, the Physicians Committee tested chicken products sold by 15 grocery store chains in 10 U.S. cities for the presence of fecal bacteria. 48 percent of chicken samples tested positive.4 Applying high cooking heat to poultry products does not remove the feces, it merely cooks it along with the muscle tissue. In March 2013, the Physicians Committee submitted a legal petition requesting that
[Marxism] Jeremy Corbyn is cheating by pushing policies that are actually popular
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. * Many on the left in Australia are watching with interest and some jealousy. After all, our Labor Party is so hollowed out, there is more chance of a Corbyn-like figure falling into our parliament from the moon than emerging from the ALP. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/59898 -- “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] Fwd: The War on Syria | Jacobin
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[Marxism] How Brazil’s China-Driven Commodities Boom Went Bust
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. * WSJ, August 28 2015 How Brazil’s China-Driven Commodities Boom Went Bust Developing nation’s big bet on China turns sour as China’s appetite for By JOHN LYONS and PAUL KIERNAN SÃO PAULO—Not long ago, Brazil stood as the leading example of how a developing nation could rise toward global prominence on the force of a China-driven commodity boom. As its economy surged, Brazil stormed the world stage—hosting a World Cup, demanding more say at the United Nations and blocking a U.S. free-trade plan for the Americas. Now Brazil is looking like a symbol of something else: resource-rich nations’ habit of ending their booms with spectacular busts. Brazil’s stock market is down 22% in the past year. Its currency has lost a third of its value against the dollar. And on Friday, Brazil is expected to report that in the second quarter, its economy shrank at a pace of about 1.7%. Economists are voicing fears of prolonged stagnation. China has caused turmoil in many places, but none more so than in this prime supplier of commodities to a country whose once-voracious appetite for them has dimmed. Brazil’s pain from China’s slowdown isn’t largely confined to the financial markets, as in some countries, but goes to the heart of its real economy. “We went from Brazil mania to Brazil nausea,” said Marcos Troyjo, a former Brazilian diplomat who leads a Columbia University center studying emerging markets. “We are looking at a lost decade, where growth stagnates, inflation is high, and, most sadly, a decade where you’ve learned nothing.” For Brazilians who believed, as their leaders were saying, that the country would climb to first-world status during the resources boom, the downturn has come as a profound disappointment. Big antigovernment demonstrations are now regular events: Protesters decry the corruption that a sweeping investigation is uncovering, and many call for President Dilma Rousseff’s ouster. As inflation nears double-digits and as unemployment and interest rates rise, middle-class households are starting to miss car payments and the poor are eating less meat. “Beef is the first to go!” said Janeide Ferreira, a 54-year-old cleaner in Rio de Janeiro who must take a sweaty two-hour bus ride to work each day from the slum where she lives. “Things were so much better five years ago.” Brazil is in danger of losing its investment-grade rating, to judge by the negative views of credit-rating firms, potentially sparking a disorderly currency decline. Some wealthy Brazilians aren’t sticking around to find out. Rich Brazilians are snapping up homes from South Florida to Scarsdale, N.Y., often with the long-term plan of raising families there. A cover story on the phenomenon in the weekly magazine Istoé this month is titled: “Bye-Bye Brazil.” Poised to Benefit Looking back, it is easy to understand the frenzy of optimism. If the biggest economic story this century was China’s rise, Brazil was uniquely poised to benefit from it. Rich in iron ore, soybeans and beef, not to mention oil, Brazil was positioned as a supplier of many things China needed. Its annual trade with China, only around $2 billion in 2000, soared to $83 billion in 2013. China supplanted the U.S. as Brazil’s largest trading partner. China’s rise helped spur global investors to pour more than $1 trillion a year into emerging markets by 2011, a fivefold increase in a decade. Brazil was a leading destination. Because its securities markets were more transparent than China’s, some investors bought Brazil as way to play China. In the midst of this, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company made a huge deep-water discovery, at a time when oil analysts were focused on tight supply and prices were rising. Voters in this nation of deep economic inequality had elected a president who rose from poverty, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He positioned himself as a voice for millions being lifted in the commodities boom, clinching Rio de Janeiro’s right to host the 2016 Olympics in a stirring speech saying the games would be a gift to the poor. But Brazil had boomed several times in past decades, only to go bust. A 1966-1973 expansion was dubbed the “Brazilian Miracle.” What followed it in the 1980s was a tumultuous decade of hyperinflation, debt crises and falling living standards. This time was supposed to be different. In digging out from the 1980s mess, Brazil had cut spending, stabilized its currency and tamed the four-digit inflation. A combination of fiscal rectitude and increasingly competent government was meant to allow Latin America’s biggest economy to converge with
[Marxism] Fwd: Verita$: Harvard's Hidden History
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. * A critical examination of Harvard’s monumental but disconcerting global influence and power, this book examines aspects of Harvard’s history not generally known. The “hidden history” announced in the book’s title begins with analysis of Harvard’s involvement in the Salem witch trials and the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Similarly disquieting, Harvard provided students as strikebreakers in both the 1912 Bread and Roses textile workers strike and the 1919 Boston police strike. Harvard administrators and scientists promoted eugenics in the early twentieth century and had a deep impact on Nazi Germany’s race theories. Its contemporary ties to U.S. foreign policy and neoliberalism are also profound. Harvard’s management of Russian economic reform left nightmarish memories, and the university was compelled to pay more than $26 million after the U.S. government sued it. The book also examines Harvard’s investment policy for its massive endowment, its restrictive labor polices, and its devastation of the adjoining Allston-Brighton neighborhood into which it is expanding. http://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detailp=683 _ 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] Guatemala President Faces Arrest as Business Interests and U.S. Scramble to Contain Uprising
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.democracynow.org/2015/8/27/uprising_in_guatemala_could_anti_corruption?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21utm_campaign=9cbb70403f-Daily_Digestutm_medium=emailutm_term=0_fa2346a853-9cbb70403f-190199021 _ 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: Recalling their own war, Belgraders embrace Syrian refugees - Business Insider
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Re: [Marxism] Marxmailer, a character in a movie
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 Freitag, 28. August 2015 at 19:22, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: Last night I told Gibney in the QA that Rod was a comrade and that all the crap that Jobs did, depicted in full detail in the film, Rod had the highest regard for him. Somewhere in the second part of that sentence some word is missing to make it understandable. Cheers, Lüko Willms _ 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: Steve Jobs | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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. * I don't know enough to comment on Jobs and I came to the computer thing so late, that it doesn't have the romance for me that is has for so many others. I am also a reductionist when it comes to business folk. But the concept of the bourgeois hero does interest me and Jobs would seem to fit that, just as Princess Diana represented the bourgeois suffering. In any case a great blog and so informative and full of that insider flavour comradely Gary On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 7:15 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: 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. * Last night I attended a press screening for Alex Gibney’s documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” that opens in theaters and on VOD on Friday, September 4th. The film is a brilliant analysis of both the man and the company he built. Since Gibney’s last documentary was on Scientology, it was natural to wonder whether he decided to take on another cult. When Jobs died, Gibney was struck by the mass grief that poured out for the CEO after the fashion of Princess Di. What explained such devotion? Since Gibney owned and treasured his IPhone, this was a question that provoked him into making this film. As someone who likes but does not exactly love his Macbook, and who spent 44 years working as a systems analyst and a programmer, the question of Apple’s place in the American economy and society is also of great interest to me. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/28/steve-jobs/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com _ 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] Kenan Mailk on Free speech in the age of identity politics
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. * It is truly an honour and pleasure to be able to deliver this lecture, and to be able to follow the speakers who have gone before me; speakers such as Walter Sisulu, Wole Soyinke, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky. It is an honour, too, to be the fiftieth speaker in this great series. But being the fiftieth speaker raises an interesting question: Is there anything left to say about academic freedom that the 49 before me have not already said? To appreciate why the debate about academic freedom is not yet exhausted, and probably never will be exhausted, we need to understand two points. First. . . . full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/free-speech-in-the-age-of-identity-politics/ _ 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] United Electrical Workers endorse BDS, call for a peace settlement on the basis of self-determination for Palestinians and the right to return
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. * Delegates upheld the UE tradition of taking courageous stands on foreign policy issues when they adopted the resolution on Palestine and Israel. It points to Israel's long history of violating the human rights of the Palestinians, starting with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1947-48 that turned most of Palestine into the State of Israel. It calls for cutting off U.S. aid to Israel, U.S. support for a peace settlement on the basis of self-determination for Palestinians and the right to return. The resolution also endorses the worldwide BDS movement – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – to pressure Israel to end its apartheid over the Palestinians just as similar tactics helped to end South African apartheid in the 1980s. UE is now the first U.S. national union to endorse BDS ... http://www.ueunion.org/ue-news/2015/convention-wraps-up-with-resolutions-on-peace-safety-civil-liberties-and-worker-rights The resolution text is here: The source of the conflict goes back to the origins of the State of Israel. The population was overwhelmingly Palestinian Arab (Muslim and Christian) before 1947-48, when well-armed Zionist militias seized most of the territory of Palestine and expelled 750,000 people from their cities, villages and farms. They executed much of the Palestinian leadership and declared the founding of the State of Israel. As a result millions of Palestinians are refugees both in the occupied territories and in other countries. Israel prohibits their return to their homes ... http://portside.org/2015-08-28/ue-becomes-first-national-us-union-endorse-bds -- Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. _ 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] Marxmailer, a character in a movie
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. * Saw Alex Gibney's documentary last night on Jobs. A new narrative film on him will be shown at the Lincoln Center Film Festival next month directed by Danny Boyle that I plan to see. But right now I am watching the one that starred Austin Kutcher as Jobs. In a scene showing the birth of the Apple II, Rod Holt drives up on a motorcycle looking like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. His job is to design a power supply that does not need a fan. Last night I told Gibney in the QA that Rod was a comrade and that all the crap that Jobs did, depicted in full detail in the film, Rod had the highest regard for him. More in my review this afternoon. _ 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: Steve Jobs | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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. * Last night I attended a press screening for Alex Gibney’s documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” that opens in theaters and on VOD on Friday, September 4th. The film is a brilliant analysis of both the man and the company he built. Since Gibney’s last documentary was on Scientology, it was natural to wonder whether he decided to take on another cult. When Jobs died, Gibney was struck by the mass grief that poured out for the CEO after the fashion of Princess Di. What explained such devotion? Since Gibney owned and treasured his IPhone, this was a question that provoked him into making this film. As someone who likes but does not exactly love his Macbook, and who spent 44 years working as a systems analyst and a programmer, the question of Apple’s place in the American economy and society is also of great interest to me. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/28/steve-jobs/ _ 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] 'Buen vivir' and the dilemmas of the left governments in Latin America - I
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. * Introduction Argentine Marxist scholar Atilio Borons book, Latin America in the Geopolitics of Imperialism América Latina en la geopolítica del imperialismo was awarded Venezuelas coveted Libertador Prize in Critical Thinking in 2012. Published in several editions throughout Latin America, the book has attracted much attention, and some debate, for its detailed analysis of Latin Americas strategic importance to the United States and the challenge this poses to the continents left governments and progressive social movements. Of particular interest to ecosocialists are two chapters ch. 6, on Common goods in Latin America: The debate between pachamamismo and extractivismo, and ch. 7, on Buen vivir (sumak kawsay) and the dilemmas of the left governments in Latin America. The following is my translation of most of chapter 7. Because of its length, I have divided it into three separate parts. This is Part I. The others are: II Two crucial questions III A new development model? They are all available at http://lifeonleft.blogspot.ca/ Richard Fidler Full: http://lifeonleft.blogspot.ca/2015/08/buen-vivir-and-dilemmas-of-left.html Part II: http://lifeonleft.blogspot.ca/2015/08/buen-vivir-and-dilemmas-of-left_28.htm l Part III: http://lifeonleft.blogspot.ca/2015/08/buen-vivir-and-dilemmas-of-left_90.htm l _ 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
