[Marxism] Ten Days in Brisbane

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Ten Days in Brisbane

The saga of Baby Asha is over for the moment.  She was a two year old
Nepalese girl, born in Darwin to parents who sought refugee status.  The
parents were transferred to the refugee detention centre on Nauru Island in
accordance with the policy which sees the Australian government process
applicants for refugee status off-shore at Nauru and Manus Islands. Asha
suffered burns on Manus Islands and was transferred to the Lady Cilento
Hospital in Brisbane.  The doctors treated her and then refused to release
her because her safety could not be guaranteed at the refugee centre. This
stance sparked a spontaneous swell of support from hundreds of Brisbane
residents.  Brisbane is a conservative city in a conservative state in a
conservative country.  The sight of so many people making signs and rushing
to the hospital to defend the child was a deeply moving experience for
myself who has been a life-long card carrying member of the “Judea National
Liberation Front”, and who has attended more demonstrations (tiny) than I
care to recall.



In face of the demonstrations the Government backed down and allowed Asha
and her parents to be placed in community detention here in Brisbane.  It
is election year after all.

The Asha Affair has to be placed in the context of the attempt by all
Australian governments to discourage refugees from coming here in boats.  Our
former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, even went to the UK and advocated his
policy of ‘stopping the boats’ as a solution to the refugee crisis in
Europe. Lest one questions the relevance of turning back boats in the
landlocked countries of Europe, one needs to understand that what Abbott
was advocating was a policy of extreme cruelty backed up by a determination
to preserve the “cultural basis” of Europe.  Australia history is one of
being a white colonial settler nation, where the local Indigenous
population have often  been treated with extreme brutality. The
constitution drawn up in 1901 also declared that Australia was White
country and accordingly non-whites were excluded.  This status was only
changed in 1972.

Consequently, there is a populist basis for racist rhetoric around “rag
heads” and “boat-people”. Both major political parties Liberal and Labor
have vied with each other to capture this inherently racist sentiment.
Xenophobia and paranoia have been milked ruthlessly for votes by Prime
Minister Howard, and Abbott on the Conservative side and by Prime Ministers
Rudd and Gillard on the Labor side.  For most Australians the refugees are
the Feared Despised Other and seemingly there was no policy too cruel that
was not electorally popular.

That seems to have changed with the Asha affair. I believe that calls for
some reflection and what follows is an attempt to begin the conversation. I
would like to initiate what hopefully will become an exchange by
contrasting two positons on what it is to be human. Firstly we have that
articulated most forcibly by Alain Badiou[1] <#_ftn1>, who incidentally is
a fearless campaigner for the rights of migrants in France. Badiou wrote

This systematic killer [‘the human animal’] pursues in the giant ant hills
he constructs, interests of survival and satisfaction neither more nor less
estimable than those of moles or tiger beetles. He has shown himself to be
the most wily of animals, the most patient, the most obstinately dedicated
to the cruel desires of his own power.[2] <#_ftn2>

 The above quote reads as a blunt neo-Nietzschean inspired attack on
humanist ethics.  But, Badiou is above all a subtle thinker and he does
leave the door ajar with his affirmation that humanity has an impulse that
seeks to take it beyond ‘being-for-death’ and towards immortality[3]
<#_ftn3>. We note, with considerable gratitude, the rejection of the
Heideggerian dogma of ‘being-for-death’ as the defining characteristic of *homo
sapiens*. Nevertheless, Badiou’s argument that it is the attitude towards
truth which will facilitate the opening towards immortality and
transcendence is at best obscure. It does though have tantalising echoes of
Bhaskar’s characterization of meta-Reality as a philosophy not of being but
as a ‘philosophy of truth’[4] <#_ftn4>

What is missing is a theory of human nature which allows for a tendency
towards decency to assert itself and also a theory which sees the moral
evolution of humanity as open[5] <#_ftn5>.  But Badiou’s radical
anti-ethical position prevents him from making such a move.  By contrast,
Bhaskar, especially in his meta-reality moment, has no such difficulty.
When  on Sunday, the 21st February, the authorities informed Asha’s mother
that she was going to be taken o

[Marxism] Constitutionalism or just plain conning?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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WASHINGTON — Antonin Scalia was the longest-tenured justice on the 
current Supreme Court and the country’s most prominent 
constitutionalist. But another quality also set him apart: Among the 
court’s members, he was the most frequent traveler, to spots around the 
globe, on trips paid for by private sponsors.


When Justice Scalia died two weeks ago, he was staying, again for free, 
at a West Texas hunting lodge owned by a businessman whose company had 
recently had a matter before the Supreme Court.


Though that trip has brought new attention to the justice’s penchant for 
travel, it was in addition to the 258 subsidized trips that he took from 
2004 to 2014. Justice Scalia went on at least 23 privately funded trips 
in 2014 alone to places like Hawaii, Ireland and Switzerland, giving 
speeches, participating in moot court events or teaching classes. A few 
weeks before his death, he was in Singapore and Hong Kong.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/us/politics/scalia-led-court-in-taking-trips-funded-by-private-sponsors.html
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[Marxism] Bolivia: Behind Evo's narrow loss in re-election referendum

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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Despite the referendum loss, Morales remains the most popular politician in
Bolivia — and one of the most popular presidents across Latin America. So
why did the “Yes” campaign lose?

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61163

-- 
“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
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[Marxism] Fwd: Bernie Sanders Is a Faux Socialist and a 'Sheepdog'

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blake-fleetwood/bernie-sanders-is-a-faux-socialist-and-a-sheepdog_b_9292618.html
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[Marxism] Southern Irish general election

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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Exit polls indicate quite a recovery for Fianna Fail, a significant loss of
votes and seats for Fine Gael (although it should remain the #1 party),
Labour losing over half its vote; the Shinners going up by maybe 50% and a
good showing for the Trotskyists and (mainly left) independents.

Most likely a hung parliament.

So a lot of horse-trading or a new election.

For an analysis from a day before the exit polls, see:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/southern-irish-elections-will-confirm-new-political-cycle/

Phil
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[Marxism] Nationalism versus internationalism. . .

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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in imperialist countries like Australia and New Zealand. . .

https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/internationalism-versus-nationalism/

Phil
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[Marxism] Fwd: Questions posed to Oklahoma Green Party about Bernie Sanders endorsement

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12463
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[Marxism] Boston Globe prints a letterr responding to Stephen Kinzer's Assadism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Distorted picture of journalists’ reporting from Syria is what is ‘shameful’
FEBRUARY 27, 2016

FROM THE safety of Brown University, Stephen Kinzer effectively cheers 
Russia’s war of extermination in Syria and implies that reports of 
regime and Russian atrocities originate from the Pentagon and think 
tanks in Washington (“Getting it wrong in Syria,” Ideas, Feb. 21). 
Kinzer presents a distorted picture of a brave generation of journalists 
who produce work that is exceptional, not “shameful,” as he purports. If 
we who cover Syria are “astonishingly brave,” as Kinzer claims, perhaps 
he should listen to what we have to say.


Information on Russian and regime atrocities comes from humanitarian 
groups such as Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the 
Red Cross, the International Rescue Committee, and the United Nations 
Relief and Works Agency. These organizations have reported on Russia’s 
use of illegal cluster munitions against civilian targets. Kinzer 
suggests that the encirclement and carpet bombing of Aleppo offers a 
“glimmer of hope” to its residents. This is appalling given how the 
regime-imposed starvation sieges in Madaya and Yarmouk have turned out.


Subscribe Now
I have been to Syria many times. Kinzer will not fool me into believing 
that regime atrocities are an illusion concocted as part of 
“Washington’s narrative.” Information on Russia’s deliberate bombing of 
hospitals comes from Medecins Sans Frontieres, not the Pentagon, as 
Kinzer would claim. In fact, MSF has condemned the US military for 
targeting its facility in Afghanistan.


Kinzer presents an inaccurate picture of the work that so many 
journalists and aid workers have literally died for. Witnessing the 
scale of the mass murder in Syria and subsequently thanking the 
perpetrators is beneath the otherwise excellent standards of The Boston 
Globe. I will publicly debate Kinzer any time he sees fit.


Patrick Hilsman

New York

The writer reported from Syria between 2012 and 2015 as a freelance 
journalist, and is currently associate editor of theinfluence.org.

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Re: [Marxism] A Miss America who protested on behalf of the Rosenbergs

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 2/26/16 9:57 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

NY Times, Feb. 26 2016
Yolande Betbeze Fox, Miss America Who Defied Convention, Dies at 87
By SAM ROBERTS

Yolande Betbeze Fox, a convent-educated Alabamian who defied convention,
and set new standards, by refusing to tour the country as Miss America
of 1951 in revealing bathing suits, died on Monday in Washington. She
was 87.

Her death was confirmed by the Joseph Gawler’s Sons funeral home in
Washington.

By the time Ms. Fox won her title on Sept. 9, 1950, in Atlantic City,
pageant officials, trying to calibrate propriety and sex appeal amid
changing mores, had already decided to stop crowning Miss America while
she was wearing a swimsuit. That pageant staple had been confined to the
swimsuit competition, an event Ms. Fox — Ms. Betbeze at the time — had
already won. She began her reign in a gown.

But given that the swimsuit competition’s chief sponsor, Catalina,
manufactured swimwear, Ms. Fox was still expected to model bathing suits
as the reigning Miss America.

What the organizers did not expect was her response. “Yolande declared,
‘I’m an opera singer, not a pinup!’ and refused posing in a bathing suit
again,” according to her official biography on the pageant’s website.


Her long-time companion who died in 2009 was also a fighter for social 
justice.


Washington Post, April 13, 2009
Cherif Guellal dies at 76; Algerian resistance fighter and diplomat
by Adam Bernstein

Cherif Guellal, an Algerian resistance fighter, businessman and diplomat 
who cut a glamorous figure in Washington society and was the longtime 
companion of a former Miss America, died of leukemia Tuesday at a 
hospital in Algiers. He was 76.


Guellal was a veteran of the bloody independence movement that in 1962 
secured freedom for his North African country from French rule. After 
serving as a top lieutenant to Ahmed Ben Bella, the rebel leader turned 
president, Guellal arrived in Washington, D.C., as post-colonial 
Algeria's first ambassador to the United States.


His good looks enhanced his popularity at soirees and made him a 
compelling presence at academic gatherings. "We wish to be masters in 
our own house and not junior partners of the great powers," he said at a 
1964 meeting of U.S. political and social scientists, describing the 
Algerian drive toward independence.


Guellal remained his country's chief envoy in Washington after military 
leader Houari Boumedienne toppled Ben Bella's government in a 1965 coup. 
Guellal told President Lyndon B. Johnson that he hoped relations would 
improve between the two countries. It was a union born of oil money, 
from Johnson's native Texas and the oil-rich states of the Arab world, 
wrote society host-turned-writer Barbara Howar in her 1973 memoir 
"Laughing All the Way."


The unmarried Guellal became a social success as he settled into the 
ambassador's residence, a French chateau-style home called the Elms, 
that had belonged at times to Johnson and grand hostess Perle Mesta.


In her book, Howar called Guellal a "handsome and brilliant young 
freedom fighter" and a "roving intellectual" who became much in demand 
among the Embassy Row elite and local society "Swing Set."


His constant companion was raven-haired Yolande Fox, the Alabama-born 
Miss America of 1951 and the widow of a movie and TV executive.


Compared with others, Howar wrote, Guellal "entertained less often and 
less lavishly but in a certain swashbuckling style that drew together 
the keener political minds, celebrated academicians, international 
radicals and showbiz luminaries who were the residuals of Mrs. Fox's 
years of salon-keeping in New York and Los Angeles."


Guellal became a fixture of society columns. His social secretary was 
Sally Quinn, who became a Washington Post reporter and chronicler of the 
city's power elite.


The 1967 Arab-Israeli War severed diplomatic ties between the United 
States and Algeria and ended Guellal's term as ambassador. He remained 
Algeria's unofficial representative in Washington while shuttling 
between homes in Georgetown, Algiers and Paris and consulting for U.S. 
companies hoping to conduct business in the Arab world.


He became a representative of the state-owned energy company Sonatrach, 
which played a crucial role helping meet demands during the world oil 
crisis of the 1970s.


Cherif Ali Guellal, a doctor's son, was born in Constantine, in eastern 
Algeria, on Aug. 19, 1932.


His mother, Fatima, became a leader in anti-French resistance groups. 
She was imprisoned and tortured by the French, as were many other 
members of the family.


Guellal graduated in 1956 from a university in A

[Marxism] CUNY Struggle Conference - 3/12/16

[Douglas Medina via Marxism]

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CUNY Struggle Conference

March 12, 2016

The Graduate Center

Room 6304.01
http://cunystruggle.org/ - visit the site for more specific information and 
background

Spread the word!

Douglas

  
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[Marxism] how does the PYD/YPG decide?

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Last night I went to a great talk by Malek Rasamny and Matt Peterson on
their trip to Rojava:
http://interferencearchive.org/rojava-building-democratic-autonomy-in-syria/
Lots of inspiring and fascinating info (I also have to mention their great
video work on Palestinian and Native American refugees).
During the discussion several of us asked about the PYD and YPG
collaboration with Assad and Russian forces in the current offensive in
northern Syria. The response focused mostly on what were deemed to be
unavoidable geostrategic circumstances.
Lord knows the Kurds have too often been caught between pillar and post -
in this case in part because of the refusal of the more bourgeois wings of
the Syrian opposition to acknowledge Kurdish self-determination.
But my question right now is how decisions like the one to fight alongside
Assad/Putin/Nasrallah et al. are made.
The PYD's proposal for peace in Syria has lots of fine words about
"democratic" and "autonomous" procedures:
http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/resources/rojava/the-project-of-a-democratic-syria/
(Although it totally ignores the existence of grassroots forces in the
Syrian opposition who would have to be part of such a process.)
I wonder though, at what level - if any - of the finely articulated Rojavan
political structure, from neighborhood councils on up to a Rojava-wide
body, are such discussions about war and alliances made?
See, for an example of how it CAN be done, discussions among the Bolsheviks
over Brest-Litovsk; in the excerpt below and the chapter as a whole, note
the raging debate in city and regional Soviets throughout Russia - debates
which often put Lenin in a small minority.
Is there something akin to this in Rojava?

"Opposition to Lenin’s peace policy now spread widely among the masses. In
February a referendum of the views of 200 Soviets was held. Of these a
majority – 105 – voted for war against Germany. In the industrial city
Soviets the majority in favour of war was overwhelming. Only two large
Soviets – Petrograd and Sebastopol – went on record as being in favour of
peace. On the other hand several of the big centres (such as Moscow,
Krondstadt, Ekaterinburg, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, Ivanovo-Voznessensk),
voted against Lenin’s policy with overwhelming majorities. Of the Soviets
of 42 provincial cities that were consulted, 6 opted for peace, 20 for war;
88 county towns and villages opted for peace, 85 for war."


https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/ch04.html
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[Marxism] Stand With JNU! Stand with Dalit students!| Saturday 2/27 W. Sq. Pk. 12PM

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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https://www.facebook.com/events/196847474009692/

NYU X Cooper Union

In recent weeks, Jawaharlal Nehru University students saw their student
body president arrested for speaking against the Indian government. How can
the world's largest democracy allow such a breach in civil rights?

STAND WITH JNU

A conversation and sit in on JNU

Saturday 2/27
Washington Sq. Park
at 12PM

--
Stand with Dalit-led student uprisings in India

2/27
Union Sq.
2PM

RSVP on FB here: https://www.facebook.com/events/689929061149464/

*Co-organized by: *South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI)

Join us as we mourn and condem the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula--
a talented, sensitive, and powerful young Ambedkarite and scientist and
stand with the ongoing resistance of the Ambedkarite student community at
University of Hyderabad (UoH) and across India.

We condemn the open support by UoH administration of extreme right wing
student groups like the RSS affiliated ABVP. RSS and affiliated groups have
been carrying out a campaign of terror to intimidate progressive forces in
society especially by using RSS - BJP political networks to protect their
cadre and persecute any democratic opposition. The death of Rohit is a
direct consequence of right wing persecution in partnership with the
casteist and corrupt university administration.

Let us join together and express our solidarity with the Bahujan and
Religious Minorities student resistance movements across all other casteist
university spaces in India.

*"Rohith,.. We will become the explosive stardust that you speak of, the
stardust that will singe this oppressive system of caste. Within every
university, every college, every school in this country, each of our
slogans will carry the spirit of your struggle. Dr. Ambedkar spoke of caste
as the monster that crosses ones path every way one turns..**. Let every
despicable casteist force wince when they encounter a Dalit, a Shudra, an
Adivasi, a Bahujan, a woman staking claim within academia, let them realise
that we have come here to end a system that has kept trying hard to put an
end to us, that we have come here to cause nightmares to those who dared to
snatch our dreams. .. Let them understand that we have stormed these
bastions to educate, to agitate, to organise; we did not come here to die.
We have come to learn, but let the monsters of caste and their henchmen
bear in mind that we have come here also to teach them an unforgettable
lesson."**-* Meena Kandasamy

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/rohith-vemula-left-us-with-only-his-words-writes-meena-kandasamy/article8120922.ece
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[Marxism] obit of progressive Miss America

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/yolande-betbeze-fox-miss-america-who-defied-convention-dies-at-87.html?ref=todayspaper
Opposed Rosenberg execution, a Southerner who supported civil rights, and
fought sexual objectification.
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[Marxism] Elizabeth Eisenstein, Trailblazing Historian of Movable Type, Dies at 92

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/books/elizabeth-eisenstein-historian-of-movable-type-dies-at-92.html?ref=todayspaper

I haven't read her pathbreaking book but it sounds like an important study
of the broader social (and hopefully economic) impact of print - and has
possible parallels with the transition to computers.

ps notice she did a biography of Philippe Buonarroti
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[Marxism] The Back Channel to Cuba

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB542-Oscars-Bridge-of-Spies-the-Sequel/
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[Marxism] Steven Salaita - Palestine and the Anxiety of Existence

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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It is critical to remember amid the hand-wringing about Arabs destroying
Israel and displacing its inhabitants that Israel has already destroyed
Palestine and displaced the Arabs. Israel’s existential fears project its
actual history.

While Zionists fret about Israel’s right to exist, Palestinians endure the
violence of nonexistence.

All of this can be understood through quick analysis of stones.  Yes,
stones—chunks of demolished hillside, construction detritus, pieces of
granite smoothed over by millennia of wind and water. That analysis can be
metaphorical, but even their geological qualities tell us all we need to
know about the colonizer’s psychology.

In September 2015, at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel increased
the severity of penalties for Palestinian stone-throwers. (Israeli
settlers, on the other hand, can throw firebombs into children’s bedrooms
without much hassle.) As is common in Israeli jurisprudence, stone-throwing
is a crime that inspires collective punishment. This zealousness leads to
all kinds of human rights violations, many committed against children—and
many affecting people who weren’t tossing stones in the first place.

Israel’s supporters say that stone-throwing can lead to death and is
therefore worthy of serious punishment. But are stones dangerous? In the
most technical and unimaginative sense, probably. However, if we’re going
to reduce a project of ethnic cleansing, illegal settlement, and military
occupation to the minuscule chance that a soldier or a settler will be
harmed by an act of resistance by the native, then we forfeit all right to
be taken seriously.

I don’t want to bog down in the stupidity of comparing the actions of the
colonizer and the colonized. That a category of colonizer even exists
should end that discussion the moment it begins. Israel’s mere presence is
a continuous act of violence.

It’s better to look at the symbolic conditions informing the Zionist’s
anxiety about stones. Do Palestinians throw stones as a weapon of warfare?
Maybe. Sometimes. They’re more often a weapon of imagination, emblems of a
dogged refusal to submit or disappear. No matter the intent when a
Palestinian throws a stone, the Israeli perceives it as an act of
rejection. It is an accurate perception. This act of rejection, not any
perceived danger, provokes the Zionist’s disdain.



Full -
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/palestine-and-the-anxiety-of-existence/?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=070dae327d-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-070dae327d-309258102
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[Marxism] A Miss America who protested on behalf of the Rosenbergs

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Feb. 26 2016
Yolande Betbeze Fox, Miss America Who Defied Convention, Dies at 87
By SAM ROBERTS

Yolande Betbeze Fox, a convent-educated Alabamian who defied convention, 
and set new standards, by refusing to tour the country as Miss America 
of 1951 in revealing bathing suits, died on Monday in Washington. She 
was 87.


Her death was confirmed by the Joseph Gawler’s Sons funeral home in 
Washington.


By the time Ms. Fox won her title on Sept. 9, 1950, in Atlantic City, 
pageant officials, trying to calibrate propriety and sex appeal amid 
changing mores, had already decided to stop crowning Miss America while 
she was wearing a swimsuit. That pageant staple had been confined to the 
swimsuit competition, an event Ms. Fox — Ms. Betbeze at the time — had 
already won. She began her reign in a gown.


But given that the swimsuit competition’s chief sponsor, Catalina, 
manufactured swimwear, Ms. Fox was still expected to model bathing suits 
as the reigning Miss America.


What the organizers did not expect was her response. “Yolande declared, 
‘I’m an opera singer, not a pinup!’ and refused posing in a bathing suit 
again,” according to her official biography on the pageant’s website.


As a result, Catalina withdrew as the pageant sponsor and began the 
rival Miss USA contest.


“In Yolande’s words, she made a stand for ‘propriety’ that has gone down 
as a significant flash of pageant history and altered the course of its 
future,” the official biography says.


Ms. Fox put it another way in an interview with The Washington Post in 
1969: “There was nothing but trouble from the minute that crown touched 
my head.”


Ms. Fox never fulfilled her goal of becoming a professional opera 
singer, though she belted out “Caro Nome” from “Rigoletto” in the talent 
competition. But she used her newfound fame to become a model, 
theatrical producer and social activist.


She participated in a vigil in 1953 at Sing Sing prison to protest the 
impending execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Manhattan couple 
convicted of conspiring to commit espionage. She joined civil rights 
protesters in picketing a Woolworth’s in Times Square in 1960 to support 
black sit-ins at the store’s lunch counters in the South. (“I’m a 
Southern girl, but I’m a thinking girl,” she said.) And she joined 
demonstrations against nuclear weapons.


In a 2006 profile, Smithsonian magazine said Ms. Fox’s “exotic Basque 
looks” — she was of Basque ancestry — and her rebellious streak may have 
made her “the most unconventional Miss America ever.”


Yolande Betbeze (her mother picked her given name from a book of 
medieval history) was born in Mobile, Ala., on Nov. 29, 1928, the 
daughter of William and Ethel Betbeze. Her father was a butcher.


She was educated in Roman Catholic convent schools and the extension 
division of the University of Alabama. She began her beauty contest 
career in 1949, when she won Spring Hill College’s Miss Torch pageant. 
She entered the Miss Alabama competition hoping to win a scholarship to 
study singing in New York.


After her one-year reign, she studied philosophy at the New School for 
Social Research in New York; married Matthew Fox, a movie executive 
(they had a daughter, Yolande Fox Campbell, who survives her, along with 
a granddaughter); and produced theater in a playhouse on East Houston 
Street.


She later moved to Washington, where she bought the Georgetown mansion 
formerly owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and became a fixture of the 
capital’s social scene.


In the 1960s, Ms. Fox criticized the Miss America pageant for its lack 
of ethnic and racial diversity. “ ‘How could we say it’s Miss America,’ 
I asked, ‘if it’s not open to all Americans?’ ” she was quoted saying in 
“Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations,” a 2011 book by Roy 
Hoffman. In the 1970s, she said the pageant perpetuated sexist attitudes.


“Today,” the Miss America website says, “Yolande feels her actions have 
been pivotal in directing pageant progress towards recognizing 
intellect, values and leadership abilities, rather than focusing on 
beauty alone.”

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Re: [Marxism] Bizarro world

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc
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[Marxism] Unknown Attackers Beat Up Russian Opposition Rally Organizer

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Unknown Attackers Beat Up Russian Opposition Rally Organizer
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FEB. 26, 2016, 9:39 A.M. E.S.T.

MOSCOW — Russian opposition activists say an organizer of a provincial 
march to commemorate the 2015 slaying of opposition politician Boris 
Nemtsov has been severely beaten.


The opposition is holding rallies across Russia Saturday to commemorate 
one year since Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was gunned down 
just outside the Kremlin. Authorities in several Russian cities have 
denied the protesters permission to rally.


Opposition activist Alexei Tabalov said on Friday that Vyacheslav 
Kislitsin was beaten by unknown attackers in the morning outside the 
factory where he works. He said Kislitsin suffered a heart attack and a 
broken rib and has been hospitalized.


Saturday's protest is expected to be the biggest opposition rally in months.
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[Marxism] Bizarro world

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Last night out of morbid curiosity, I watched a few minutes of the 
Republican Party debate. After Donald Trump said, "People are not going 
to die in the middle of the street. People are not going to die on the 
sidewalk if I’m president, okay", he was hounded by Ted Cruz who tried 
to get him to eat his words. What a strange world we are living in when 
a Christian fundamentalist tries to pull a "gotcha" on something like 
this, not that Donald Trump has anything in common with Jesus. All these 
bastards are Satanic when you stop and think about it actually.

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[Marxism] Fwd: Who are the Syrian rebels: The Genesis of the armed struggle in Syria – P U L S E

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Plenty has been written about the armed struggle in Syria, but on 
left-wing and alternative media sources much of it has been laden with 
conspiracy theories, or is merely recycled Assad regime propaganda. In 
this article, soon to be published as part of a collection about the 
Syrian Revolution, Mark Boothroyd explores the roots of the armed 
struggle, and what drove the rebellion to the situation it finds itself 
in today.


Khiyana: The Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution seeks to uproot the false 
information, reactionary “anti-imperialist” dogma, slurs and slanders 
which have characterised much of the analysis of the revolt in Syria. It 
will contain articles by Idrees Ahmed, Budour Hassan, Sam Charles Hamad, 
Leila Al-Shami, Javaad Alipoor, Louis Proyect, and Michael Karadjis.


full: 
http://pulsemedia.org/2016/02/26/who-are-the-syrian-rebels-the-genesis-of-the-armed-struggle-in-syria/

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[Marxism] The Failure of a System: A Review of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

[Ron Jacobs via Marxism]

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http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-failure-of-system-review-of-from.html


-- 
Check out my newest books , Daydream Sunset:60s Counterculture in the 70s
 and Can We Escape the Eternal Flame?

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