[Marxism] Cracked.com: 7 Things I Learned Reading Every Issue Of ISIS's Magazine
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.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/ Отправлено с Айтелеграфа _ 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] New Yorker: Bernie Sanders' New Deal Socialism
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 return of the ["socialist"] label, though, doesn’t mean that anyone knows how to get more radical than tacking toward Scandinavian social democracy, with its socialized health care and higher education and generous family leave. Sanders isn’t much of a socialist compared to F.D.R., either. At the heart of Roosevelt’s program was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which greatly strengthened the hand of unions, essential parts of every welfare-capitalist order in the twentieth century, from Scandinavia to Canada. Sanders, astonishingly, didn’t once mention unions in his Georgetown speech. Roosevelt proposed a maximum income of twenty-five thousand dollars (the equivalent of about four hundred thousand dollars today), which we won’t be hearing from Sanders. Sanders’s socialism is a national living wage, free higher education, increased taxes on the wealthy, campaign-finance reform, and strong environmental and racial-justice policies." http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bernie-sanderss-new-deal-socialism Отправлено с Айтелеграфа _ 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] At Princeton, Addressing a Racist Legacy and Seeking to Remove Woodrow Wilson’s Name
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, Nov. 22 2015 At Princeton, Addressing a Racist Legacy and Seeking to Remove Woodrow Wilson’s Name By ANDY NEWMAN PRINCETON, N.J. — Few historical figures loom as large in the life of an Ivy League university as Woodrow Wilson does at Princeton. As the school’s president in the early 20th century, Wilson initiated its expansion into a full-scale university. He lifted educational standards, created academic majors and introduced the small-group classes, often led by professors, known as precepts. To honor him, Princeton created the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs — an elite institution within an elite institution — and a residential complex, Wilson College, where quotations from the revered leader have been displayed on a TV screen in the dining hall. So central is Wilson, an alumnus, to Princeton’s identity that a theatrical revue performed for freshmen pokes fun at the obsession. “Come into our Wilsonic Temple, a sacred space devoted entirely to our 28th president!” a fervent Wilsonite tells visitors in a skit. But until posters started appearing around campus in September, one aspect of Wilson’s legacy was seldom discussed: his racist views, and the ways he acted on them as president of the United States. The posters, put up by a year-old student group called the Black Justice League, featured some of Wilson’s more offensive quotes, including his comment to an African-American leader that “segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you,” and led to a remarkable two days at this genteel campus last week. After a walkout by about 200 students, and the presentation by the Black Justice League of a list of demands, about 15 students occupied the office of the president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, overnight on Wednesday. On Thursday, Mr. Eisgruber agreed to begin discussions on campus and with trustees about the demands. At the top of the group’s list was a demand that the university “publicly acknowledge the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson” and take steps to rename the public policy school and residential college. While naming decisions are up to the university’s board of trustees (which includes Mr. Eisgruber), Mr. Eisgruber promised to push for removing a large mural of Wilson from the residential college’s dining room and to direct the trustees to survey “the campus community’s opinion” on the Wilson School name and then vote on it. The protesters also called for mandatory courses on “the history of marginalized peoples,” for “cultural competency training” for the staff and the faculty and for the creation of dedicated housing and meeting space for those interested in black culture. But as Princeton takes its turn in the national roll call of college campuses where long-festering issues of race have burst into the open, spurred by events in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Charleston, S.C., it is not surprising that the conversation would pivot around Wilson. “In some ways, that’s the role that symbols play in American politics and culture,” Mr. Eisgruber said in a phone interview on Sunday before sending an email addressing the issue to the university community. “People become very invested in symbols. And one of the benefits of having a genuine public discussion, informed by scholarly opinion, about some of these questions is that it can help educate people about problems that go beyond the symbol in our society.” In the wake of the sit-in, students were divided on the renaming; even many sympathetic to the Black Justice League’s other demands said that expunging Wilson’s name went too far, or was unlikely to serve a constructive purpose, or both. A counterpetition circulating on Change.org called the proposal a “dangerous precedent” for future students who “seek to purge the past of those who fail to live up to modern standards of morality,” as well as a bid to erase Wilson’s positive contributions. But one Black Justice League member, Wilglory Tanjong, rejected that argument. “We don’t want Woodrow Wilson’s legacy to be erased,” said Ms. Tanjong, a sophomore who was born in Cameroon and grew up near Washington. “We think it is extremely important that we understand our history of this campus. But we think that you can definitely understand your history without idolizing or turning Wilson into some kind of god, which is essentially what they’ve done.” Perhaps best known for leading the United States during World War I and for trying to start the League of Nations, Wilson as president rolled back gains blacks had made since Reconstructi
Re: [Marxism] Monthly Review editor's note on the Middle East
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 11/22/15 10:00 PM, Shalva Eliava wrote: Maybe you should e-mail MR and ask them to publish a short debate on this issue. They don't like to respond to critics. When 50 or so Iranian leftists living in the West wrote an open letter to MR over Yoshie's crap, they didn't even bother responding. If they ignore some political science professor at Yale, you think they are going to respond to me? _ 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] Monthly Review editor's note on the Middle East
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. * Maybe you should e-mail MR and ask them to publish a short debate on this issue. > On Nov 22, 2015, at 7:36 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism > 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. > * > > "In 2011 the United States (and NATO as a whole) took advantage of the Arab > Spring protests to attack Libya, destroying the regime there under Qaddafi, > while fostering a civil war in Syria with the goal of toppling the Assad > government." > > full: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/11/01/mr-067-06-2015-10_0/ > > The editor's note makes an amalgam of everyone who has picked up a gun > against the Baathist dictatorship under the rubric of "political Islam" as if > the current editorial board (minus Michael Yates) has no idea that there's > little difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia when it comes to religious > authoritarianism. > > This is really sad. The idea that the USA "fostered" a war in Syria is > asserted with zero evidence. I understand that the editor's note is not meant > for analysis but rather this sort of back of the envelope thumb-sucking > reductionism. It is remarkable in fact that in the entire 4 years Syria has > been the scene of profound social conflict involving a myriad of forces, not > a single article has appeared in the magazine. Instead John Bellamy Foster > has allowed Yoshie's tweets and crosspostings on her blog (aka MRZine) to > substitute for serious analysis. > > There was a time when Monthly Review had a much clearer class understanding > of Baathism when Paul Sweezey and Harry Magdoff were the editors. There's an > article titled “The Coups in Iraq and Syria”, written by Tabitha Petran, that > appeared in the May 1963 Monthly Review. > > Petran minces no words, beginning her article as follows: > >The recent coups in Iraq and Syria realize the six-year-old Eisenhower > Doctrine’s goal of anti-Communist “Arab unity” under United States > protection. The coups’ authors are the international oil interests, the U.S., > and their local placemen—the Baath and Arab Nationalist (Nasserist) parties, > assorted militarists and feudal left over from Hashemite rule in Iraq, and in > Syria elements from the right-wing of the Moslem Brotherhood. > > She dubs Baathism as an amalgam of demagogy and petty-bourgeois social > reforms that is “widely regarded as an instrument of American imperialism”. > It is so interesting to see the final dregs of this system being hoisted on > the shoulders of John Bellamy Foster, John Mage and Yoshie Furuhashi. > > Petran’s article decries the wholesale slaughter of Communists in Iraq, a > crime that no longer tends to bother the MR group based on Furuhashi’s > grotesque attempts to provide ex post facto excuses for the slaughter of > radicals in Khomeini’s Iran in the early 1980s. These “divisive” elements > obviously stood in the way of creating strong states that might become part > of counter-hegemonic blocs. Back in the early 60s apparently, MR magazine > viewed class criteria as having priority over that kind of leftist > realpolitik. > > It’s not much different with Iran, a country whose government rises beyond > the level of “lesser evil” and achieves the kind of hallowed status that once > brought tears to the eyes of a Communist when watching a newsreel of Stalin > receiving a bouquet of flowers from a Red Scout. Much of MRZine’s propaganda > on behalf of Syria is most certainly related to what it feels are the > geopolitical interests of Iran, as if the Middle East was a chessboard. > Questions of the class struggle are of no consequence for these leftist > versions of Metternich. > > If you go back through the MR archives, you won’t find any such malarkey > about Iran. Typical is a March 2001 article titled Clerical Oligarchy and the > Question of “Democracy” in Iran. Co-authored by Saeed Rahnema and Haideh > Moghissi, it starts with a sentence that amounts to a stake that can be > driven through MR’s heart today: > >For more than twenty years the Islamic regime in Iran, along with its > extensive repressive apparatuses, has created an impressive array of > ideological and economic mechanisms of control to construct an Islamified > civil society and build consensus for the establishment of a theocratic state. > > The article calls attention to the “thugs” who attacked students,
[Marxism] On the White New Zealand policy
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 Chinese were the people most discriminated against in New Zealand society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The formal, legal discrimination was centred on immigration controls which restricted entry in general for Chinese and which also imposed a substantial poll tax on Chinese migrants. The White New Zealand policy culminated in 1920 with legislation that passed control of Chinese immigration into the hands of a government minister. At this point Chinese migration was pretty much halted altogether. Support for these racist immigration controls united Tory-style traditional conservatives, liberals, feminists, a layer of Maori leaders, the ‘militant’ leaders of the Labour Party and ‘moderate’ elements atop the overall labour movement. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/pieces-on-the-white-new-zealand-policy/ _ 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] How the Provos lost the initiative in the south of Ireland after Bloody Sunday
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. * https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/the-burning-of-the-british-embassy-40-years-on/ _ 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 Fink does it again.
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://normanfinkelstein.com/2015/11/22/cockburn-on-isis-worth-reading/ Flakey Finkelstein, who has spent years delivering patronizing lectures to Palestinians admonishing them for their failure to find a Gandhi, now puts his imprimatur on military collaboration with "Russia, Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, Hezbollah, the Iraqi army and the Shia militias in Iraq" against Daesh. But then the Fink has always been about realpolitik, as in his two-state position. _ 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] Has this come to Australia?
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 11/22/15 4:24 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_(film) Actually, this was meant as a private message to Gary MacLennan but the film "Brooklyn" that I am watching now is rather extraordinary. _ 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] Has this come to Australia?
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. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_(film) _ 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] Australia's Far Right looking for a home
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 "Reclaim Australia" rallies appear to have been real fizzers, especially in Brisbane. Thee is a real dilemma for the Far Right. It is absolute craziness to try and pin the blame for Australia's woes on the Muslim population (around 2%). that of course in itself is no obstacle to right wing politics. But the real problem is that economically, especially in tertiary education and agricultural exports, Australia needs the Muslim markets. That limits their usefulness to the ruling class. Without the sponsorship of a section of the dominant class, the Far Right look like the pathetic losers that they are. Apparently they have made an effort to clean up their act and put the swastika tattoos on the back burner away from the cameras, but that appears to have made little difference. At present,. the Far Right seem principally to produce elan among the far left. And that is the worst of all results for the powerful. One should be careful, though, not to exaggerate the rise on the Left, but it is a long time since I attended a rally where I was almost overwhelmed by a resurgent militancy among the young. In the mean time, the agenda of the ruling class lies elsewhere with the attacks on the welfare state being led by a smooth and polished multi millionaire, Malcolm Turnbull. He is the very embodiment of cultural capital and his impressive facade on social issues is for the moment working to lull the public into a feeling that all is well. But, of course, it isn't and that will soon become apparent when the next Turnbull government produces its first budget. That will come after what looks like will be a landslide victory to the Tories. In the mean time, the Labor opposition is like the kangaroo trapped in the head lights and destined only to be road kill. comradely Gary _ 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 Novorossiya Follies | 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. * Only six months ago I got into a brouhaha with David North, the cult leader of the Socialist Equality Party whose online newspaper WSWS.org was running around like chicken little squawking that nuclear war between the USA and Russia was about to break out. This was the downside of East Ukraine’s separatist movement—it might lead to H-Bombs leveling every major city on earth. But perhaps it was a risk worth taking since the upside would be a kind of liberated territory like Rojava if you took Boris Kagarlitsky at his word: “By contrast [to Maidan], the Donetsk … is the perfect embodiment of the anarchist concept of the revolutionary order.” His co-thinker Roger Annis created a website called www.newcoldwar.org that provided a platform for separatist ideologues such as Halyna Mokrushyna who described her comrades as creating a “new state, free from corruption and nationalism.” The enthusiasm for militias that put a Vice reporter in a makeshift jail might have been lost on some but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder one supposes. Things have not quite turned out either on the downside or the upside as the pro-separatist left predicted. The only mushrooms to be seen now are those on sale at Whole Foods while the resemblance between the People’s Republics and Kropotkin is purely coincidental. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/11/22/the-novorossiya-follies/ _ 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] Monthly Review editor's note on the Middle East
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. * EXCELLENT piece, Louis. Please post it on your blog so it can be shared. Your quotes from older, no-nonsense articles in MR raises the question of the magazine's character and how they could go so far wrong. Here's a case that may help shed some light. I recently re-read Fitch&Oppenheimer's landmark "Ghana: End of an Illusion." Today's "anti-imperialists" would put Nkrumah in the category of beyond reproach/must not criticize "anti-imperialist leaders." Fitch&Oppenheimer, in contrast, explain the limits of his politics and how they facilitated the coup against him via his inability and unwillingness to mobilize the masses or to stand up to the demands of Western capital. Now at the very end of this fine book is tacked on an idiotic paean to rural guerrilla warfare - this after the reader has learned about a militant Ghanaian working class, battles with foreign and domestic bourgeoisies over minerals and finance, and a betrayed general strike. That paradox is typical of Maoists and other "anti-imperialists": able to get so much right on the surface, even to unearth hitherto-unknown truths - but at the end of the day unable to sustain these insights in a coherent politics, leaving them exposed to countervailing winds blowing them off course. On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 7:35 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. > * > > "In 2011 the United States (and NATO as a whole) took advantage of the > Arab Spring protests to attack Libya, destroying the regime there under > Qaddafi, while fostering a civil war in Syria with the goal of toppling the > Assad government." > > full: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/11/01/mr-067-06-2015-10_0/ > > The editor's note makes an amalgam of everyone who has picked up a gun > against the Baathist dictatorship under the rubric of "political Islam" as > if the current editorial board (minus Michael Yates) has no idea that > there's little difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia when it comes to > religious authoritarianism. > > This is really sad. The idea that the USA "fostered" a war in Syria is > asserted with zero evidence. I understand that the editor's note is not > meant for analysis but rather this sort of back of the envelope > thumb-sucking reductionism. It is remarkable in fact that in the entire 4 > years Syria has been the scene of profound social conflict involving a > myriad of forces, not a single article has appeared in the magazine. > Instead John Bellamy Foster has allowed Yoshie's tweets and crosspostings > on her blog (aka MRZine) to substitute for serious analysis. > > There was a time when Monthly Review had a much clearer class > understanding of Baathism when Paul Sweezey and Harry Magdoff were the > editors. There's an article titled “The Coups in Iraq and Syria”, written > by Tabitha Petran, that appeared in the May 1963 Monthly Review. > > Petran minces no words, beginning her article as follows: > > The recent coups in Iraq and Syria realize the six-year-old > Eisenhower Doctrine’s goal of anti-Communist “Arab unity” under United > States protection. The coups’ authors are the international oil interests, > the U.S., and their local placemen—the Baath and Arab Nationalist > (Nasserist) parties, assorted militarists and feudal left over from > Hashemite rule in Iraq, and in Syria elements from the right-wing of the > Moslem Brotherhood. > > She dubs Baathism as an amalgam of demagogy and petty-bourgeois social > reforms that is “widely regarded as an instrument of American imperialism”. > It is so interesting to see the final dregs of this system being hoisted on > the shoulders of John Bellamy Foster, John Mage and Yoshie Furuhashi. > > Petran’s article decries the wholesale slaughter of Communists in Iraq, a > crime that no longer tends to bother the MR group based on Furuhashi’s > grotesque attempts to provide ex post facto excuses for the slaughter of > radicals in Khomeini’s Iran in the early 1980s. These “divisive” elements > obviously stood in the way of creating strong states that might become part > of counter-hegemonic blocs. Back in the early 60s apparently, MR magazine > viewed class criteria as having priority over that kind of leftist > realpolitik. > > It’s not much different with Iran, a country whose government rises beyond > the level of “lesser evil” and achieves the ki
[Marxism] Monthly Review editor's note on the Middle East
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 2011 the United States (and NATO as a whole) took advantage of the Arab Spring protests to attack Libya, destroying the regime there under Qaddafi, while fostering a civil war in Syria with the goal of toppling the Assad government." full: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/11/01/mr-067-06-2015-10_0/ The editor's note makes an amalgam of everyone who has picked up a gun against the Baathist dictatorship under the rubric of "political Islam" as if the current editorial board (minus Michael Yates) has no idea that there's little difference between Iran and Saudi Arabia when it comes to religious authoritarianism. This is really sad. The idea that the USA "fostered" a war in Syria is asserted with zero evidence. I understand that the editor's note is not meant for analysis but rather this sort of back of the envelope thumb-sucking reductionism. It is remarkable in fact that in the entire 4 years Syria has been the scene of profound social conflict involving a myriad of forces, not a single article has appeared in the magazine. Instead John Bellamy Foster has allowed Yoshie's tweets and crosspostings on her blog (aka MRZine) to substitute for serious analysis. There was a time when Monthly Review had a much clearer class understanding of Baathism when Paul Sweezey and Harry Magdoff were the editors. There's an article titled “The Coups in Iraq and Syria”, written by Tabitha Petran, that appeared in the May 1963 Monthly Review. Petran minces no words, beginning her article as follows: The recent coups in Iraq and Syria realize the six-year-old Eisenhower Doctrine’s goal of anti-Communist “Arab unity” under United States protection. The coups’ authors are the international oil interests, the U.S., and their local placemen—the Baath and Arab Nationalist (Nasserist) parties, assorted militarists and feudal left over from Hashemite rule in Iraq, and in Syria elements from the right-wing of the Moslem Brotherhood. She dubs Baathism as an amalgam of demagogy and petty-bourgeois social reforms that is “widely regarded as an instrument of American imperialism”. It is so interesting to see the final dregs of this system being hoisted on the shoulders of John Bellamy Foster, John Mage and Yoshie Furuhashi. Petran’s article decries the wholesale slaughter of Communists in Iraq, a crime that no longer tends to bother the MR group based on Furuhashi’s grotesque attempts to provide ex post facto excuses for the slaughter of radicals in Khomeini’s Iran in the early 1980s. These “divisive” elements obviously stood in the way of creating strong states that might become part of counter-hegemonic blocs. Back in the early 60s apparently, MR magazine viewed class criteria as having priority over that kind of leftist realpolitik. It’s not much different with Iran, a country whose government rises beyond the level of “lesser evil” and achieves the kind of hallowed status that once brought tears to the eyes of a Communist when watching a newsreel of Stalin receiving a bouquet of flowers from a Red Scout. Much of MRZine’s propaganda on behalf of Syria is most certainly related to what it feels are the geopolitical interests of Iran, as if the Middle East was a chessboard. Questions of the class struggle are of no consequence for these leftist versions of Metternich. If you go back through the MR archives, you won’t find any such malarkey about Iran. Typical is a March 2001 article titled Clerical Oligarchy and the Question of “Democracy” in Iran. Co-authored by Saeed Rahnema and Haideh Moghissi, it starts with a sentence that amounts to a stake that can be driven through MR’s heart today: For more than twenty years the Islamic regime in Iran, along with its extensive repressive apparatuses, has created an impressive array of ideological and economic mechanisms of control to construct an Islamified civil society and build consensus for the establishment of a theocratic state. The article calls attention to the “thugs” who attacked students, women, and newspapers that differed with the government even if only within the framework of clerical rule. These are the same kinds of thugs who broke up street protests after the last election, being cheered on by MRZine. The concluding paragraphs of the article call for a strengthening of the secular opposition in Iran and other initiatives that would break the power of the Guardian Council and other fixtures of permanent clerical rule. In referring to this goal, the article seems to foretell the objectives of every mass movement in the Arab world today: Such developments will create real possibilit
[Marxism] Fwd: Syria Comment » Archives "A Trip to the 'Caliphate': Oppressive Justice under ISIS," By Omar al-Wardi - Syria Comment
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. * Josh Landis publishes pro-ISIS article. http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/a-trip-to-the-caliphate-oppressive-justice-under-isis-by-omar-al-wardi/ _ 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] Letter from a refugee
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. * Letter from a refugee This is my story……… In 2014, during the incident that happened my throat was cut by a local guard. http://enpassant.com.au/2015/11/22/letter-from-a-refugee/ _ 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] on being sacred
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. * Recently I was in a remote Indigenous community and was reflecting on the presence of a sacred mountain nearby. There are sacred mountains in the APY lands of Northern South Australia and in the Northern Territory. The concept of a sacred mountain is not that new to me. When in Tromso, Norway for a Critical Realist Conference in 2006, I remember with fondness a dinner where my 64 birthday was celebrated by many of the leading critical realists including my dear departed friend Roy Bhaskar. We were met in the shadow of a sacred mountain of the Sami people. As I sat meditating on all this I thought of how Indigenous Australians had still a concept of life and nature as being of value and, as Bhaskar put it, enchanted. I then thought of the absence of sacred sites for Non-Indigenous Australians. There seems no part of this land that mainstream Australians won’t have nuclear bombs set off on it or dug up for minerals. Immediately, though, the thought came to mind that, if non-Indigenous Australia had a sacred site, it was in Anzac Cove, Gallipoli Turkey, where Australian and New Zealand troops (The Anzacs) were defeated by the Turkish Army in WW1 1915-1916. I asked myself how could it be that the sacred site for White Australia was somewhere thousands of miles from Australia, and the site of a WW1 disaster. The answer came much later when re-reading the following poem by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), who died of sepsis on his way to Gallipoli. I recall admiring this poem as a high school student. I also recall a university tutorial where we all declared that we thought it was a great poem. Then our tutor set about a close reading of the poem. He asked each one of us to consider what the words ‘a richer dust concealed” might mean. I know now that the tutor was rechannelling Leavis’ criticism of the Georgian poets. But at that time the tutorial had a profound impact on me. The conclusion, that English dust was richer than foreign dust could only spring from a colonial racist mentality, was shocking for me, at the age of 18. That a foreign land was made more valuable because an Englishman died there spoke wonders about the imperial mindset and my education which until then had failed to point this out. Now my mind takes me to Anzac Cove and I wonder to what extent it is sacred to Australians because there is within that dust a richer dust concealed. He wrote If I should die, think only this of me; That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped and made aware, Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think ,this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sound; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven I recall admiring this poem as a high school student. I also recall a university tutorial where we all declared that we thought it was a great poem. Then our tutor set about a close reading of the poem. He asked each one of us to consider what the words ‘a richer dust concealed” might mean. I know now that the tutor was rechannelling Leavis’ criticism of the Georgian poets. But at that time the tutorial had a profound impact on me. The conclusion, that English dust was richer than foreign dust could only spring from a colonial racist mentality, was shocking for me, at the age of 18. That a foreign land was made more valuable because an Englishman died there spoke wonders about the imperial mindset and my education which until then had failed to point this out. Now my mind takes me to Anzac Cove and I wonder to what extent it is sacred to Australians because there is within that dust a richer dust concealed. _ 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 anti-Reclaiming Australia rally
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 was wheeled out of semi-retirement to speak at the counter rally this afternoon. Odious opportunists that they are, the "Reclaim Australia" bunch of crazies held rallies in the major cities here today. The following report is quite reasonable coming as it does from a mainstream source < http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/reclaim-australia-rally-drowned-out-in-brisbane-20151122-gl4xmn.html > We outnumbered them and out-chanted and out-sung them. Even more important we held the high ground both literally and metaphorically. The anti-Muslims are a pathetic lot here. Everyone knows that anti-Muslims sentiments would cripple key industries in Australia. The tertiary education sector would probably collapse and live agricultural exports would be wiped out.So an anti-Islam movement is not a viable option for the ruling class and the above report reflects that. What was most heartening for an old leftist like myself was the atmosphere of bright cheerful militancy among so many young people. As the poet said "It is [still] possible, possible, possible. It must be possible". comradely Gary _ 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
