Re: [Marxism] Coming in at number 4 in my top ten of 2015 – Jeremy Corbyn through my Australian eyes

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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John's comments on the absence of a Corbyn figure in the Australian Labor
Party are so very true.  Partly I suspect because any such figure would
have been de-selected long, long ago.

That is not to say however that if events become so traumatic as they have
in Spain, Ireland, Scotland and Greece that there will not be an enormous
shake up that will be reflected in the Labor Party.  Should such occur,
then we would need to abandon any simplistic formulations (& I am sincerely
not suggesting John does this) or apriori assumptions about what is likely
to happen.

But such a fluid, and dynamic situation does not exist at present.

comradely

Gary

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 5:18 PM, John Passant via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> Coming in at number 4 in my top ten of 2015 – Jeremy Corbyn through my
> Australian eyes
>
> I wrote this in September in response to the enthusiasm for change that
> Jeremy Corbyn's campaign for and stunning election to the leadership of the
> British Labour Party inspired. It compares that enthusiasm and upsurge in
> Labour Party membership to the insipid Labor Party here. I say in part:
>
> 'Many of my readers will be hoping for a Jeremy Corbyn in Australia to
> move the Labor Party here to the left. There is no Corbyn in the
> Parliamentary Labor Party. The Labor left, such as it is, is thoroughly
> imbued with the logic of neoliberalism. In the main it is a tribal
> allegiance rather than an ideological ferment of ideas to challenge
> capitalism. You never hear the S word from these very models of a modern
> major general of capital. None of the possible contenders for Corbyn down
> under have the same track record as Corbyn in opposing austerity or
> fighting against social and political injustice. Indeed people like
> Albanese and Plibersek have been Ministers in Labor governments that have
> implemented neoliberal policies and attacked public services and workers’
> rights and conditions. They are part of the very problem Corbyn is fighting
> against.'
>
> To read the whole article click here.
>
>
> http://enpassant.com.au/2015/12/31/coming-in-at-number-4-in-my-top-ten-of-2015-jeremy-corbyn-through-my-australian-eyes/
>
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[Marxism] [UCE] Re: Sabotaging the water tax in Ireland

[modulus via Marxism]

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> Wait...what? Water is FREE in Ireland? Seriously? Out of curiosity...are
> there any other countries where water is not metered?

In the UK water isn't free, but it isn't (or isn't always) metered.
There are two options: to pay rates according to the band of council tax
(which is related to the size, location and facilities of the housing
unit) or to have it metered. There are some other rules about it, like
if one has an electric shower the water must be metered. (The UK water
system is very old and has a lot of legacy components; much of it is
gravity fed and pressure is low, so for a good shower one must have
pumps on site.)

--David.

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Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Re: Sabotaging the water tax in Ireland

[Lüko Willms via Marxism]

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 on Donnerstag, 31. Dezember 2015 at 10:07, modulus via Marxism wrote:

> if one has an electric shower the water must be metered. (The UK water
> system is very old and has a lot of legacy components; much of it is
> gravity fed and pressure is low, so for a good shower one must have
> pumps on site.)

  ah, so by "electric shower" you do not mean that the water is heated by 
electricity, but that the water is pressurised by an electrically motored pump? 
 
Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
http://www.mlwerke.de
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[Marxism] Fwd: Will we ever understand the beginning of the univers...

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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To solve these mysteries, cosmologists must make guesses about events 
that are absurdly remote from us. Guth’s theory of inflation is one such 
guess. It tells us that our Universe expanded, exponentially, a 
trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big 
Bang. In most models of this process, inflation’s expansive kick is 
eternal. It might cease in particular parts of the cosmos, as it did in 
our region, after only a fraction of a second, when inflation’s energy 
transformed into ordinary matter and radiation, which time would sculpt 
into galaxies. But somewhere outside our region, inflation continued, 
generating an infinite number of new regions, including those that are 
roaring into existence at this very moment.


Not all these regions are alike. Quantum mechanics puts a slot-machine 
spin on the cosmic conditions of every region, so that each has its own 
physical peculiarities. Some contain galaxies, stars, planets, and maybe 
even people. Others are entirely devoid of complex structures. Many are 
too alien to imagine. The slice of space and time we can see from Earth 
is 90 billion light years across. Today’s inflationary models tell us 
that this enormous expanse is only one small section of one tiny bubble 
that floats along in a frothy sea whose proportions defy comprehension. 
This vision of the world is wondrous, in its vastness and variety, in 
the sheer range of possibilities it suggests to the mind. But could it 
ever be proved?


full: 
https://aeon.co/essays/will-we-ever-understand-the-beginning-of-the-universe

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[Marxism] A History Defined by the Trade in Human Beings

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-history-defined-by-trade-in-human.html


Best in 2016!

ron jacobs

-- 
Check out my newest book, Daydream Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s

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[Marxism] Patients Struggle With High Drug Prices

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Dec. 31 2015
Patients Struggle With High Drug Prices
Out-of-pocket costs for pricey new drugs leave even some insured and 
relatively affluent patients with hard choices on how to afford them

By Joseph Walker

BELLEVILLE, Ill.— Jacqueline Racener ’s doctor prescribed a new leukemia 
drug for her last winter that promised to roll back the cancer in her 
blood with only moderate side effects.


Then she found out how much it would cost her: nearly $8,000 for a full 
year, even after Medicare picked up most of the tab.


“There’s no way I could do that,” Ms. Racener says. “It was just 
prohibitive.” Worried about depleting her limited savings, Ms. Racener, 
a 76-year-old legal secretary, decided to take the risk and not fill her 
prescription.


The pharmaceutical industry, after a long drought, has begun to produce 
more innovative treatments for serious diseases that can extend life and 
often have fewer side effects than older treatments. Last year, the Food 
and Drug Administration approved 41 new drugs, the most in nearly two 
decades.


The catch is their cost. Recent treatments for hepatitis C, cancer and 
multiple sclerosis that cost from $50,000 annually to well over $100,000 
helped drive up total U.S. prescription-drug spending 12.2% in 2014, 
five times the prior year’s growth rate, according to the Centers for 
Medicare and Medicaid Services. High drug prices can translate to 
patient costs of thousands of dollars a year. Out-of-pocket 
prescription-drug costs rose 2.7% in 2014, according to CMS.


For many of the poorest Americans, medicines are covered by government 
programs or financial-assistance funds paid for by drug companies.


For those in the middle class, it is a different story. Though many 
patients can get their out-of-pocket costs paid by drug companies or 
drug-company-funded foundations, some patients make too much money to 
qualify for assistance. Others are unaware the programs exist. Medicare 
patients, who represent nearly a third of U.S. retail drug spending, 
can’t receive direct aid from drug companies.


The upshot is even patients with insurance and comfortable incomes are 
sometimes forced to make hard choices—tapping savings, taking on new 
debt or even forgoing treatment.


“Drugs are so expensive that once they flow through our ragtag insurance 
system, we have patients who can’t afford them, or they can barely 
afford them, so they’re not getting therapies,” said Peter Bach, a 
physician and health-policy researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering 
Cancer Center in New York.


A quarter of U.S. prescription-drug users said it was difficult to 
afford them, in an August survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 
another survey, published in the journal Lancet Haematology in 
September, 10% of insured U.S. patients with the blood cancer multiple 
myeloma said they had stopped taking a cancer drug because of its cost.


A look at how patients are coping with the cost of the medicine 
prescribed for Ms. Racener, called Imbruvica, illustrates the issues.


The drug blocks proteins that cause malignant cells to multiply and stay 
alive. Approved in 2013 for a rare illness called mantle-cell lymphoma, 
the medication, which is known generically as ibrutinib, was later 
approved to treat some patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the 
condition Ms. Racener has.


Jacqueline Racener’s doctor recommended a drug called Imbruvica to treat 
her leukemia. The catch: Her annual income at the time disqualified her 
for copay-assistance programs for the costly treatment. Photo: Whitney 
Curtis for The Wall Street Journal
“People who had one foot in the grave after failing multiple prior 
chemotherapies, when given ibrutinib, had dramatic responses,” said 
Kanti R. Rai, a leukemia expert at North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute in 
Lake Success, N.Y.


The drug’s wholesale list price is $116,600 a year for leukemia 
patients. For the higher dose needed for lymphoma, it is about $155,400. 
Producers gave insurers discounts averaging 11% in 2014, financial 
statements show.


For patients on Medicare—more than half of Imbruvica users—the federal 
insurance picks up the bulk of the cost under the Part D 
prescription-drug plan. But most Medicare patients still faced 
out-of-pocket costs of $7,000 or more a year.


For patients with insurance purchased privately or provided by an 
employer, out-of-pocket costs vary widely, from a small copay to 
thousands of dollars. The Affordable Care Act capped commercially 
insured patients’ out-of-pocket costs for all care, including drugs. The 
2016 cap is $6,850.


Drug companies, aware that costs borne by 

[Marxism] Fwd: Pharma Exec for Maker of $150,000 Cancer Drug Tells Investors Its Pricing Is “Very Responsible”

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/pharma-exec-for-maker-of-15-cancer-drug-tells-investors-its-pricing-is-very-responsible/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Farmers Try Political Force to Twist Open California’s Taps - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Agribusiness tries to use Latinos in its efforts to funnel water to 
almond and pistachio nut production, crops that are water-intensive.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/us/farmers-try-political-force-to-twist-open-californias-taps.html
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[Marxism] Fwd: The Sweet Life of Sidney Mintz | Boston Review

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Another signature contribution: at the heart of Sweetness and Power lies 
an understanding of the history of capitalism in the Atlantic world that 
goes far to explain slavery’s enduring legacy. Mintz was among the first 
historians—again, recall that he was an anthropologist foremost—to write 
about Atlantic slavery as a unified system, internally differentiated by 
commodity and colony in ways that shaped the lives of enslaved people 
and the prosperity of plantation society. Mintz’s inversion of 
conventional history upended a long-accepted “fact” that capitalism 
arose within Europe’s borders. For Mintz, capitalism began instead in 
the New World, in the slaving colonies that created the capital that 
fueled Europe’s economic shift. Here’s how he described it in a 2013 
email to Boston Review editor Deb Chasman:


	My point—it is now absorbed into what is called “common knowledge”—was 
that Western civilization really first “rose” in its colonies; and of 
all those colonies, the first were the sugar colonies. It could not have 
been possible for Marx to argue that way because for him there could be 
no capitalism without a proletariat, and the proletariats arose in Europe.


Recent lauded books (Greg Grandin’s Empire of Necessity, Sven Beckert’s 
Empire of Cotton, Ned Sublette’s American Slave Coast, Daniel 
Rassmussen’s American Uprising) pick up on the scholarship launched by 
Mintz to explain how we live today—still—with the blood of enslaved 
Africans on our hands.


full: http://www.bostonreview.net/books-ideas/sidney-mintz-in-memoriam
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[Marxism] Fwd: Aaron Hess Obituary - Bloomfield, Connecticut - Carmon Community Funeral Homes

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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I used to run into Aaron at Columbia University from time to time when 
he was in the ISO chapter there. I actually liked him and all the other 
ISO'ers I'd run into even though I obviously disagreed with the way they 
were organized. He was a frequent contributor to their press and a long 
time member. Died much too young at 39.


http://hosting-19758.tributes.com/obituary/show/Aaron-Mann-Hess-103146946
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[Marxism] 5 points to make on Syria and its future prospects

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

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Excellent analysis of the current situation from an excellent site
MK

5 points to make on Syria and its future prospects
https://eternispring.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/5-points-to-make-on-syria-and-its-future-prospects/

by eternispring

5 Points to make on Syria and its future prospects:

1) In any imperialist-imposed “political solution” Nusra will of course 
be targeted in as similiar an intensity as ISIS (of course it has 
already been significantly targeted but all restrictions will be off 
once the US can achieve its “political solution” and ignore complaints 
by the Syrian opposition), however having alienated quite a lot of Syria’s 
rebels it is questionable whether all will run to its support. Of course 
they should rally to defend it against any US/Russian attack, as for all 
its faults (and these would have to be challenged by Syrians in their 
own time) it came to support the Syrian people at a time when no one 
else did – and has more importantly committed far less crimes than 
either the US coalition, Russia, Assad or his sectarian loyalist 
militias (who will be spared from the “terror” list, including 
Hezbollah) – however I suspect Nusra will be a prickly subject.


It is Ahrar al-Sham however which will be the connecting and crucial 
junction. It is almost certain that Ahrar al-Sham will be put on the 
US-Russian “terror” list. While unfortunately I think the majority of 
the FSA (Southern Front in particular) are likely to accept the 
“political solution” (that brings about the promise of Assad’s eventual 
resignation and keeps intact the regime), the FSA MUST stand in 
solidarity with Ahrar al-Sham if it gets attacked. This cannot be 
stressed enough.


2) Jaish al-Fatah were repeatedly bombed by the US long before Russia’s 
intervention for precisely the reason that it did not respect the 
operational red lines that the US had imposed on other rebel coalitions, 
notably the Southern Front (with regards to the extent of military 
campaigns undertaken, such as taking over the entirety of Idlib and 
proceeding onto Latakia). They were not attacked because they were 
“extremist”, as we could see in the bombing of even its non-ideological 
(FSA) components. The same fate could be expected of factions that do 
not accept the regime-relegitimising “political solution”.


(It is also important to note that any distinctions between attacking 
the FSA or other rebel groups by the US should be made essentially 
obsolete, as the vast majority of the 150 or so rebels killed by the US 
coalition were likely to have been “FSA” at one point in time, and 
departed it due to a combination of poor funding & lack of operational 
independence, and the US fully knows this)


3) The US has not “been defeated” by Russia in Syria, and not even 
remotely. Russian strikes in Syria came *right off the back* of an 
intensification of US bombing against Jaish al-Fatah. [This again 
betrays a lack of understanding of Russia’s rise being indicative of a 
return to a “Cold War”, when it is in reality much more reminiscent of a 
return to a 19th century – not 20th century – world order, in which 
imperialist relations are based primarily on *geopolitical expansion* 
not on ideological competition (though the USSR was of course still an 
imperialist power); this was a form of relationship which routinely 
entailed ‘competitor alliances’ between ostensibly adversarial powers 
when dictated by the common interest (in this case, an anti-Islam “War 
on Terror”)]. For the follower of the Syrian context it is not a stretch 
to say that the US may have directly (& covertly) requested Russian 
strikes on the Syrian rebels (incidentally even before this began it was 
directly wondered whether this would occur), after seeing that its 
strikes were insufficient to stop Jaish al-Fatah’s advances (requiring a 
much larger operation, which is what has happened – with Russia’s 
blitzes hitting everything liberated, military targets or civilian 
installations and infrastructures – Jaish al-Fatah’s advances have 
grinded to a halt). Even if the US had not “directly” requested Russian 
intervention, they had already sent a clear signal to Russia that 
bombing mainstream Syrian rebels was fair game.


The fact that the US continues to block Arab provided anti-aircraft 
missiles from the revolutionary forces 3 months into Russia’s massacres 
should pay put to any idea of the US trying to draw Russia into an 
“Afghanistan”. That the Russian airstrikes have come with US approval, 
tacit or requested is beyond dispute.


[Note: there is a reason I focus on US policy in my analyses rather than 
Russia, because it – not the Russ

[Marxism] Number 3 in my top ten for 2015 – I hate Australian capitalism; will I be stripped of my Australian passport ?

[John Passant via Marxism]

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Number 3 in my top ten for 2015 – I hate Australian capitalism; will I be 
stripped of my Australian passport ?

I wrote this in May 2015 in response to the Abbott government proposals to 
strip Australian citizenship from those who hate 'our values'. Here is part of 
what I said:

'The terrorism hype and changes to our immigration laws throw away basic rights 
to a trial and give incredible powers to the Minister for Immigration and 
Border Protection. They undermine our freedoms here and now. They set a 
dangerous precedent. They prepare the way for further criminalising dissent in 
Australia.'

To read the whole article click here. I hate Australian capitalism. Will I be 
stripped of my Australian passport?

http://enpassant.com.au/2016/01/01/number-3-in-my-top-ten-for-2015-i-hate-australian-capitalism-will-i-be-stripped-of-my-australian-passport/

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