Re: [Marxism] From the Death of the Arab Spring to the Defeat in Venezuela
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. * as bad as the defeat is, and it is a dangerous set back for all of Latin America, it is not on the scale of the defeat ins in Egypt or even Greece -- at least not yet, although it may prefigure more defeats. To loose the assembly is bad but the government remains in place and the right wing have no project and have not been elected with a mandate to unwind the revolution's gains. if they attempt to, which you would assume they will to whatever degree they judge is wise, they tear off their masks and give a new generation that has never lived under any government but a Chavista government a lesson in the reality of hte old elite. Rolling back the gains wil also come up against an organised mass movement developed over nearly two decades. So we should not assume that just because they can win a vote on the back of terror and blackmail (and incapacity of the government to act decisively int he face of worsening problems) that they will have an easy time of it.The revolutionary mass movement and its leadership obviously need to resolve some serious problems and fund a way forward -but that revolutionary mass movement remains and its far from totally defeated, it has just suffered a dangerous set back., but in a context where the political discussion is way to the left and the right have to wear left masks to win. On 7 December 2015 at 17:42, Gary MacLennan 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. > * > > One could add Syriza's disastrous capitulation to the above heading. Not > good, is my first reaction. Those who thought (and I include myself among > them) that the periphery in South America or in the Arab World would give > birth to a new revolutionary tide are licking their wounds. > > It is true that now my attention is swinging back to Europe. I do hope that > is not my Pangloss Reflex in action. But for all the setbacks, and I do > not deny the seriousness of the defeats in Egypt, Greece and now > Venezuela, I still do not believe that in the current period the > Bourgeoisie have won a decisive epoch defining victory. The crucial > battlefield is Europe. I know that might sound like my Eurocentric > tendency taking hold. Perhaps, but the Scottish, Spanish, Irish, > Portuguese working classes are still close to revolt. > > "It is 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/stuartmunckton%40gmail.com > -- “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] Background on Venezuela's assembly vote from August: Could Venezuela's socialists lose the coming elections?
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 light of results in Venezuela, this piece by Federico Fuentes is worth revisiting. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/59844 -- “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] From the Death of the Arab Spring to the Defeat in Venezuela
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. * One could add Syriza's disastrous capitulation to the above heading. Not good, is my first reaction. Those who thought (and I include myself among them) that the periphery in South America or in the Arab World would give birth to a new revolutionary tide are licking their wounds. It is true that now my attention is swinging back to Europe. I do hope that is not my Pangloss Reflex in action. But for all the setbacks, and I do not deny the seriousness of the defeats in Egypt, Greece and now Venezuela, I still do not believe that in the current period the Bourgeoisie have won a decisive epoch defining victory. The crucial battlefield is Europe. I know that might sound like my Eurocentric tendency taking hold. Perhaps, but the Scottish, Spanish, Irish, Portuguese working classes are still close to revolt. "It is 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
[Marxism] Venezuela: why the counter revolution won and what it means for the revolution
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. * By Tamara Pearson On Dec. 6 Venezuela held its 20th election in 17 years and one of its most difficult yet. With the opposition upping the ante in terms of media attacks and sabotage, 2.5 years of economic difficulties and since the passing of revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez, not to mention a recent right-wing victory in Argentina, the left and right around the world turned anxious eyes to Venezuela. Ultimately, the Bolivarian revolution -- the “Perfect Alliance” of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and other supportive parties and organizations -- lost at the polls <http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelas-President-Accepts-Assembly-Loss-Calls-for-Peace-20151206-0046.html> with the right-wing, US-backed opposition winning at least 99 seats, and 19 still to be decided. Eighty-seven is necessary for a simple majority. But what does this electoral loss for the revolutionary forces mean, politically, and given the current context in Venezuela, what will the consequences of it be, going forward? https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/60803 -- “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: New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO) 2015 awards | 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. * NYFCO awards, plus my own ballot. http://louisproyect.org/2015/12/07/new-york-film-critics-online-nyfco-2015-awards/ _ 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] ISIS Oil.
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. * Dear Friends, I have a report on ISIS oil, which came in today's BirGün, http://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/rusya-nin-suclamalari-97012.html. A longer version came in Counterpunch earlier this week, http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/isis-oil/. I previewed the reporting for this on Watching the Hawks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6qFmtAt3_g. PS: here is my story from Yemen, http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2015/12/2/war-crimes-and-humanitarian-resistance-in-yemen. Next story will be a report from Libya. Warm regards, Vijay. _ 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] Tax 'reform' in Australia and the Goods and Services Tax scam
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. * Tax 'reform' in Australia and the Goods and Services Tax scam Someone I know writing in socialist magazine Solidarity about tax reform in Australia and the GST scam. He ends up by saying: We on the left can and do campaign for taxing the rich. However growing tax inequality in Australia is a consequence of growing income and wealth inequality. The best way to address that is to win big real wage increases and reverse the shift in wealth and income from labour to capital that Hawke and Keating set in train in the 1980s and Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull have and are continuing. To read the whole article in Solidarity click on Turnbull’s tax reform aims to boost corporate profits. http://enpassant.com.au/2015/12/06/tax-reform-and-the-gst-scam/ _ 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 Nigeria, Chinese Investment Comes With a Downside
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, Dec. 6 2015 In Nigeria, Chinese Investment Comes With a Downside By KEITH BRADSHER and ADAM NOSSITER Emeka Ezelugha was excited to open a computer training center. He could teach his countrymen some skills and earn a living. But soon after the center opened in a rough, two-story concrete building in Lagos, a blaze broke out in the main classroom. The flames incinerated 30 desktop computers, as well as televisions and air-conditioners. The culprit was unmistakable: one of two dozen power strips in the classroom. The faulty equipment was made in China, even though the salesman said it was British. “The guy tried to convince me it was from the U.K. — I was surprised when it happened,” Mr. Ezelugha said. Across this populous African nation, low-cost Chinese goods are everywhere, evidence of Beijing’s growing dominance in global trade. The trade flow has helped keep life affordable for millions of Nigerian families, at a time when the country is struggling with economic stagnation and plunging prices, as well as the deadly costs of the Boko Haram insurgency. But shoddy or counterfeit products are a national problem in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, where impoverished consumers have few alternatives. Some shoddy goods are benign, like the Chinese-made shirts, trousers and dresses with uneven stitching and stray threads that fill street markets. But electrical wiring, outlets and power strips from China, ubiquitous in new homes and offices, are connected to dozens of fires a year in Lagos alone. The relationship between China and Nigeria is a complex web of dependency, one replicated in dozens of developing countries around the world, like Chile, Ethiopia and Indonesia. Such ties are integral to China’s global ambitions. President Xi Jinping of China, who was in Africa this week emphasizing economic diplomacy, just committed $60 billion in development assistance to the Continent. But such efforts also pose new and unpredictable challenges for Beijing. China has lent heavily to commodity-exporting countries, which are now struggling with low commodity prices. At the same time, China’s highly competitive manufacturing sector has devastated many smaller-scale rivals across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mr. Xi’s pledge in Africa, in part, seemed aimed at quelling criticism over what some see as a lopsided relationship that largely benefits China. To support its swelling trade in Nigeria, China is funneling billions of dollars to build roads, rail lines, airport terminals, power plants and other desperately needed infrastructure. China is the top lender to Nigeria, where political instability and violence have made Western interests skittish. Nigeria, in turn, has become the biggest overseas customer of Chinese construction companies. It is an important market for Beijing, at a time when China’s own growth is slowing. But China’s extensive reach is now meeting resistance in Nigeria, part of the broader risks for Beijing’s global strategy. In Abuja, the capital, the new government is conducting anticorruption investigations into large Chinese construction contracts signed by the previous leadership. Nigerian state governments are struggling to pay for many of those projects, exposing China to potentially heavy losses. In Kano, angry protesters in the streets blame widespread joblessness on China, which is manufacturing African fabric designs in shimmering hues more cheaply than Nigeria. Employment in Nigeria’s textile and apparel sector has plummeted to 20,000 people, from 600,000 two decades ago. In Lagos, authorities are trying to stamp out subpar Chinese electric goods. Imported power strips and wiring have inadequate copper to handle Nigeria’s 240-volt system, said Wanza Kussiy, the chief safety officer of the Nigerian government’s Standards Organization. Zhang Sen, the vice secretary general of China’s government-controlled Electronic Product Association, said that the group was reviewing Nigeria’s fires. “We still need to do some research before we can say the quality of the Chinese products is to blame,” he said. Nigerian authorities are stymied. Corruption is endemic, making it more difficult to enforce safety standards. And Chinese goods are so dominant that consumer have few other choices. In Lagos, Mr. Ezelugha borrowed heavily to reopen his computer training center after the fire. But the power strips are still made in China. He couldn’t find anything else. Idle Factories, Idle Hands Kano’s cloth industry started in the walled ancient city, a labyrinth of mud brick houses and dirt roads.
[Marxism] Molly Crabapple’s ‘Drawing Blood’
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 the best recommendation for this book is the hatred that the "Zizek Must be Destroyed" gang have for Molly Crabapple. Anybody who gets on their shit list must be doing something right.) NY Times Sunday Book Review, Dec. 6 2015 Molly Crabapple’s ‘Drawing Blood’ By DEB OLIN UNFERTH As her fast-paced autobiography attests, the artist Molly Crabapple was a quintessential wild child, irrepressible, pouty and proud, born determined and angry. At 12, she discovered punk rock. At 17, she traveled to Europe alone, slept in the famous Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris, walked the streets of Fez with her sketch pad, an artist-wanderer, claiming for herself the space formerly reserved for men. Back in New York, she began and quit art school, with its “fluorescent-lit halls hung with clumsy oil paintings cranked out by the previous semester of failures,” and that was the end of any sort of formal training for her. She came up old-school, starving-artist style. She wrestled her craft to the ground, dramatically D.I.Y. The bulk of the book is dedicated to the years she spent immersed in the thrift-store glamour of the “naked girl business.” Through her early and mid-20s, she supported herself by posing as a naked model for men in rented hotel rooms and the online soft-porn site SuicideGirls, and by dancing burlesque. She drew, struggled to sell her work and eventually became an illustrator for a famous decadent nightclub. The book reads like a notebook of New York, a cultural history of a certain set. Filtered through her eyes, we see 9/11, the excesses of the aughts boom, the aftermath of the crash, Occupy Wall Street, Hurricane Sandy and onward. But what makes the book captivating and sets it apart from other descriptions of these much-reported events is how it is essentially one long glorious description of what Crabapple drew and why she drew it. Crabapple draws like a madwoman. Drawings spool out of her. When she was in pain, she “unrolled a three-foot piece of paper.” When inspired, she drew “in ecstasy,” propping the drawing up so she “could stare at it as I fell asleep.” In a jail cell after a protest, penless, she scratched “a self-portrait into my Styrofoam cup.” No matter what happens, she draws anyway. She loads the paper until it’s cramped and bursting, until it “swarmed like an ant colony.” “I wanted to pack each page so full of life that it resembled a Bosch fantasia or a Persian miniature or ‘Where’s Waldo,’” and it does. The book reproduces a handful of breathtaking posters and panels in black and white, but they are too small to see clearly. One longs for full-color glossy inserts, to let her work breathe. The pages are also dotted with individual drawings, made specifically for the book. These are absorbing, but even they feel reined in, poised to take over the page. In 2011 as the world whipped itself into a frenzy of protests, in London, Egypt and Greece, Crabapple fell out of love with the opulence of the nightclub. As a purge she barricaded herself in a Gramercy Park Hotel room for nearly a week, live-streaming as she drew on paper taped to the walls. “My old self would be discarded,” she promised herself. “A new self would take her place.” As if from a chrysalis, she emerged a political artist. She drew posters for Occupy Wall Street. She drew Guantánamo Bay during the 2013 hunger strike. In the final pages of the book she zips through the international journalism she has embarked on since 2013, in Syria and Dubai. What will she do next? At 32 Crabapple is a lion for her own cause — ferocious and feminist, hardworking and weepy — a new model for this century’s young woman. Her next creations, whatever they are, will surely be urgent, celebratory and livid. We can’t wait. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the memoir “Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War” and the forthcoming novel “Wait Till You See Me Dance.” _ 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: Karl reMarks: I Wrote My Own Wikipedia Biography
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.karlremarks.com/2015/03/i-wrote-my-own-wikipedia-biography.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] has Jacobin seen the light?
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. * Redrawing the middle east map “...among the most-visited pages on the AFJ [Armed Forces Journal] website...” http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/peters-blood-borders-map/ --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ 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 Jacobin seen the light?
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 agree with David W's comments about the bombing of Germany in the Second World War: it took a massive ground war from east and west to overcome Nazi Germany. Aerial bombing played some part, but it was not decisive. It also played into the hands of the Nazi regime, who could present it as an attack upon all Germans and especially urban Germans, as the cities were the main target. The German bombing raids on Britain earlier in the war did not undermine the British government. To move on from this, it's pretty clear that the big powers today recognise that a ground war will be necessary to defeat ISIS's quasi-state. Yet, unlike the defeat of Germany by largely ground forces, which led to the collapse not only of the Nazi regime but of the credibility of its ideas, the defeat through invasion of ISIS-held territory will not destroy ISIS as a current, even if ISIS suffers fairly hefty losses in the process. The defeat of Germany in 1945 totally discredited Nazism as an ideology in that country. Based upon a hypertrophied variant of German imperialism, everything it stood for was massively undermined by its defeat: the supposedly 'plutocratic' USA, the supposedly effete Britain, the supposed 'untermenschen' of the 'Judeo-Bolshevik' Soviet Union had proved victorious; the 'Thousand-Year Reich' and its core in the German state lay in pieces. Based intrinsically upon the power of the German state, it could not survive the utter defeat of that state and its powerlessness at the hands of the victor states. The quasi-state that ISIS has created on the Syria-Iraq border does not equate to the Third Reich, or to other less ideologically hypertrophied nation-states that have been defeated in war. Whilst the ISIS quasi-state is useful in attracting support from like-minded Islamist people around the world in a way that al Qaeda, lacking a national base for much of the time, didn't manage to, such a territorial base is not an essential factor in this brand of violent jihadism. The ISIS ideology can withstand the defeat of the ISIS state. Rather than stand in ISIS-land and wait to be over-run in an invasion, ISIS will almost certainly send the bulk of its cadres away to other countries -- it's probably doing this to some degree now -- in order to carry out guerrilla-type activities in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Another factor is that the invasion and defeat of ISIS-land -- assuming that the fraught question of amassing sufficient forces to do it can be solved, which is a question we might discuss elsewhere -- won't deal with the factors underlying the rise of such movements as al Qaeda and ISIS. So long as the Ba'athist regime remains in power in Damascus, then this will be a permanent destabilising factor on the basis that it has lost all legitimacy amongst substantial sections of the population and it's hard to see how this could be regained; if it falls, then is there the real possibility of the type of statal collapse we've seen in Libya. The level of instability that would ensue from either of these results, along with the general conditions in the region, would almost guarantee that some form of violent Islamist movement, either a revived ISIS or some new variant, would emerge. Paul F _ 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] [Pen-l] Fwd: The Myth of Leftist Academia | Opinion | teleSUR English
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. * They are also using "faculty misconduct" charges against tenured professors who profess too much. They can get around "academic freedom" nostrums by a documenting overly emotional talk, or charging the misbehaving faculty member with micro-aggressions that elicit outrage - from either students or FELLOW FACULTY. The university is now a PSYCHIC PRISON for real leftists. It has gotten much worse in the past 5 years. Brian On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 8:54 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Myth-of-Leftist-Academia-20151204-0006.html > ___ > pen-l mailing list > pe...@lists.csuchico.edu > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Brian McKenna, Ph.D. Department of Behavioral Sciences CASL 4025 Dearborn, Michigan _ 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 Myth of Leftist Academia | Opinion | teleSUR English
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[Marxism] Fwd: Hanukkah — bah, humbug | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Writing in the Kremlin's Shadow by Masha Gessen | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
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 12/6/15 1:16 AM, Shalva Eliava wrote: Didn't read the article (and won't - I can't stand Gessen) but I would point out that Salisbury wrote a very sympathetic forward to Roy Medvedev's non-Stalinist account of the Russian Revolution: The October Revolution. I highly recommend Salisbury's "The 900 Days: the siege of Leningrad". http://louisproyect.org/2012/12/04/the-900-days/ _ 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
