[Marxism] Book on radical spiritualism now in print . . .

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/42qhf6mc9780252040306.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

[Marxism] Fwd: Who is attacking the Jo Cox Fund for supporting Syria’s rescue volunteers? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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://louisproyect.org/2016/06/22/who-is-attacking-the-jo-cox-fund-for-supporting-syrias-rescue-volunteers/
_
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] Syria's forgotten revolutionaries: an interview with Leila Al Shami

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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://www.bookwitty.com/text/syrias-forgotten-revolutionaries-an-interview-wi/57641409acd0d02c995e2470
_
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: Syrian Dust: An Overview of Books | Qunfuz

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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://qunfuz.com/2016/06/21/syrian-dust-an-overview-of-books/
_
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: Tariq Ali joins with Smears against Jo Cox. | Tendance Coatesy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/tariq-ali-joins-with-smears-against-jo-cox/
_
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: » Fighting Other People’s Wars: Afghan Soldiers on the Syrian Battlefield Ajam Media Collective

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Sectarian affiliation in this case does not supersede a social hierarchy 
based on national identity. Indeed, the body count of Afghan soldiers in 
Syria suggests a less glorious reality of the united Shiite struggle. 
According to a Spiegel report, some 700 Afghans have lost their lives in 
Daraa and Aleppo alone while fighting for Assad. Recently, senior fellow 
Ali Alfoneh from the Washington Institute attempted to decipher the 
number of Afghan and Iranian casualties in Syria using data from funeral 
services in Iran. He found that at least 255 Afghans and 342 Iranian 
nationals were killed in combat in Syria between 2012 and March 2016, 
with a considerable spike this year. Even as recent death tolls indicate 
that Iranian nationals are increasingly involved in combat too, Afghans 
still made up half of Iran’s official losses in recent months. As 
Alfoneh argues, “the Islamic Republic will limit its own exposure and 
losses by fighting to its last non-Iranian proxy, even when its own 
personnel would be more effective”.


The notion that the young Afghan recruits represent expendable “bare” 
life, placed at the front line of the battle, is present throughout 
personal accounts. An Afghan teenage recruit who had fled his military 
troops in Syria and arrived to Lesbos, Greece, told a BBC reporter that 
Afghan fighters in Syria were used as “first-wave shock troops” and were 
“effectively disposable”. A Syrian officer in charge of an Afghan 
brigade was quoted in Spiegel as saying: “Do what you want with them. 
You can kill them, they’re just mercenaries. We can send you thousands 
of them.” According to the same report, the Syrian regime often engages 
in prisoner exchanges over Iranian and Hizbollah soldiers, but Afghans 
and other mercenaries of the Fatemiyoun Brigade are never part of the deal.


full: http://ajammc.com/2016/06/14/afghan-soldiers-in-syria/
_
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] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Fwd: Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS | Louis Proyect: The

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

  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.
*

Fred Murply wrote:
> I don't read the passage below in Foster's 2005 intro as "promoting
> virtues";
 
Foster also said in the same 2005 article that

   "Yet, it [The Soviet Union] remained a post-revolutionary society 
distinguished in many ways from capitalism. Competition between enterprises 
played almost no role in the economic workings of Soviet society. Private 
ownership of the means of production had been abolished. Unemployment was 
virtually non-existent. Many basic social amenities were guaranteed.

   "Despite its veering away from socialist goals, the Russian Revolution´s 
expropriation of capitalist private property, followed by the creation of a 
distinct post-revolutionary society, constituted a grave threat to 
capitalism, especially if other peoples were thereby encouraged to follow the 
same path."

So on one hand, Foster denounces some features of later Soviet society; 
on the other hand, he still holds it's a "post-revolutionary society", a 
threat to capitalism, etc.  It's shameless when someone who knows the crimes 
of the system apologizes for it; but that's what Foster does. 

   Indeed, Foster goes on to repeat the tired old propaganda from the Soviet 
revisionists about themselves; he refuses to look deeply into these claims. 
Thus, Foster writes that  "Competition between enterprises played almost no 
role in the economic workings of Soviet society." This is an important part 
of Foster's view of late Soviet society; it's part of why he believes it's a 
model for environmental planning which we need today.

But in fact, under the Soviet system of "Khozraschet" (self-financing), 
both making a profit and competing with other enterprises were major facts of 
the Soviet economic system. It worked in a somewhat different way than it 
does in Western capitalism, and there was a somewhat cloaked form of 
competition, but the rampant anarchy of production in the Stalinist and later 
Soviet system are well-known. Serious economists studying the Soviet Union, 
economists with varied political trends, recognized this, and differed mainly 
in their explanation of why it took place. 

You, FM, cite his criticism of the Soviet system and his historical account 
(which is more like a series of apologies and excuses for what happened), but 
you leave out the fact that he regards it as a model anyway.

Appendix: On competition between enterprises in the Soviet Union

It's a commonplace in certain circles to say, as Foster does,  that there was 
little competition between enterprises in the Soviet Union. But it's not 
true. One serious study of the Soviet economy after another showed the 
widespread anarchy of production that existed. It's widely known that it 
wasn't true that competition had been overcome.  Soviet managers themselves 
knew it wasn't true. They had to compete, and compete hard, if they were to 
survive in their positions.

In an article I wrote on the anarchy of production in the Stalinist and later 
Soviet system, I pointed out the following situation:

"For one thing, when one looks closely at the Soviet system, one finds a 
swirling struggle of manager against manager and factory against factory 
underneath the overall planning by the ministries. ...  

"In one form or another, this  continued after the First Five Year Plan. It 
was so widely recognized that managers openly wrote about it in the Soviet 
trade journals and newspapers. They said that they had to violate the law and 
the planning directives in order to fulfill their obligations under the plan. 
Even during the height of the bloody repression of the mid-1930s, when 
economic managers were among those most vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, 
or even execution, they continued to write about how they flouted the law. 
One professor, David Granick, who has studied Soviet management extensively, 
wrote that:

. " 'In actual fact, plant directors have possessed great authority. But in 
theory, they have not; and so they have constantly struggled to legitimize 
their power. During the course of this perennial battle, they have often felt 
sufficiently self-confident to ridicule publicly the laws they were 
violating. Even at the height of the 1930's purges, there were some plant 
directors who went out of their way to write signed articles in the national 
press describing how, in their own work, they had been violating both the law 
and instructions from superiors, announcing that they considered these 
violations to be quite proper, and stating flatly that in the future they had 
every intention of continuing and even extending the violations. '(27)

"It might be said that this shows 

[Marxism] IP now online

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  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.
*

MIA had uploaded pdfs of World Outlook, the Fourth International's news
journal in the late 50s and early 1960s.

Now issues of its successor, Intercontinental Press, have been uploaded at:
http://www.pathfinderpress.com/Intercontinental-Press

Scroll down to "Click Here" for a search form. Currently only issues from
1963 to 1974 are available (eventually they'll go through 1986). So set the
start and end date to those years so as not to bring up article titles
without the articles themselves.

(IP was eventually replaced by International Viewpoint when the US SWP went
batshit. See internationalviewpoint.org )
_
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] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Fwd: Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS | Louis Proyect: The Unrepenta

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

I don't read the passage below in Foster's 2005 intro as "promoting
virtues"; rather he offers a reasonably accurate analysis of Soviet
historical development - parallel in most ways to Trotsky's assessment but
without the "degenerated workers state" formulation. State-capitalist or
Maoist analyses such as the one you seem to put forward are at a loss to
explain developments in the 1990's, when "the ruling stratum [did] turn
itself into a true ruling class..." In this regard, see
http://monthlyreview.org/2000/02/01/the-necessity-of-gangster-capitalism/

"Second, crucial to the foregoing argument has been recognition of the fact
that the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 was not the end, as often said, of
actually existing socialism but simply the termination of a historical
process that had commenced three quarters of a century before with the
first significant attempt to break away from capitalism and to build a
working socialist society. The Russian Revolution and subsequent
revolutionary breaks had occurred under extremely unfavorable conditions in
economically underdeveloped countries. Internal struggles and external
interventions brought most of these revolutions down not long after they
emerged. In the Soviet case the society had ceased to pursue a socialist
path toward equality and cooperation, in which the direction of the society
would be determined by its own working class, as early as the Stalinist
takeover in the 1930s. After that it became a stagnant post-revolutionary
(but no longer in any meaningful sense socialist) society, which still
managed to maintain itself in existence and to provide a modicum of
benefits to its population. Yet, its very stagnation guaranteed that it
must at some point in the future either move decisively toward socialism by
turning back to the masses, or toward capitalism by allowing the ruling
stratum to turn itself into a true ruling class, which would inevitably
choose capitalism over socialism. In the end the latter transpired. Hence,
the real defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union, as opposed to the demise
of the Soviet Union as a separate nation state, occurred not with the end
of the Cold War, but had taken place decades prior in the 1930s."

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Joseph Green 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.
> *
>
> Correction to my last post on Foster's "Marx's Ecology":
>
> It was not in his book of 2000 but in his introduction to the July-August
> 2005 issue of Monthly Review  that John Bellamy Foster promoted the
> "post-revolutionary" virtues of the Soviet Union despite the bad things
> that
> happened. ("The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction":
>
> http://monthlyreview.org/2005/07/01/the-renewing-of-socialism-an-introduction/
> )
> ​...
>
-- 
Fred Murphy  |  12 Dongan Place #206  |  New York, NY  |  212-304-9106
_
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] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Fwd: Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS | Louis Proyect: The Unrepenta

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

  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.
*

Correction to my last post on Foster's "Marx's Ecology":

It was not in his book of 2000 but in his introduction to the July-August 
2005 issue of Monthly Review  that John Bellamy Foster promoted the 
"post-revolutionary" virtues of the Soviet Union despite the bad things that 
happened. ("The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction": 
http://monthlyreview.org/2005/07/01/the-renewing-of-socialism-an-introduction/
)  This is discussed in my review of Foster's "Marx's Ecology" (August 2007, 
"A review of John Bellamy Foster's 'Marx's Ecology': Marx and Engels on 
protecting the environment ": http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html). In 
the review, I note that Foster glosses over the nature of the Soviet Union in 
his book, and later gives his apology for it as "post-revolutionary" in his 
article of 2005.

-- Joseph Green
_
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: H-Net Review [H-Empire]: Masson on Cohen, 'Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

Useful reading for Palestine activists.

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff 
> Date: June 21, 2016 at 8:51:58 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Empire]:  Masson on Cohen, 'Becoming Ottomans: 
> Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era'
> Reply-To: H-Net Staff 
> 
> of
_
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] Bob Kerrey and the ‘American Tragedy’ of Vietnam

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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 Op-Ed, June 20 2016
Bob Kerrey and the ‘American Tragedy’ of Vietnam
By VIET THANH NGUYEN

Los Angeles — EVEN today, Americans argue over the Vietnam War: what was 
done, what mistakes were made, and what were the lasting effects on 
American power.


This sad history returns because of Bob Kerrey’s appointment as chairman 
of the American-sponsored Fulbright University Vietnam, the country’s 
first private university. That appointment has also prompted the 
Vietnamese to debate how former enemies can forgive and reconcile.


What is not in dispute is that in 1969 a team of Navy SEALs, under a 
young Lieutenant Kerrey’s command, killed 20 unarmed Vietnamese 
civilians, including women and children, in the village of Thanh Phong. 
Mr. Kerrey, who later became a senator, a governor, a presidential 
candidate and a university president, acknowledged his role in the 
atrocity in his 2002 memoir, “When I Was a Young Man.”


Those in the United States and Vietnam who favor Mr. Kerrey’s 
appointment see it as an act of reconciliation: He has confessed, he 
deserves to be forgiven because of his efforts to aid Vietnam, and his 
unique and terrible history makes him a potent symbol for how both 
countries need to move on from their common war.


I disagree. He is the wrong man for the job and regarding him as a 
symbol of peace is a failure of moral imagination.


It is true that Americans have been more forthcoming about some of their 
crimes than anyone in the Vietnamese government and Communist Party. But 
it is equally true that Americans tend to remember the war as an 
American tragedy, as I saw distinctly while watching “Platoon,” 
“Apocalypse Now” and other movies as a boy growing up in California.


I lived among many Vietnamese refugees for whom this war was a 
Vietnamese tragedy. President Obama’s speech on the war’s 50th 
anniversary in 2012 focused on the deaths of over 58,000 American 
soldiers; I wondered why more than 200,000 South Vietnamese and more 
than one million North Vietnamese and Vietcong fighters who died were 
not mentioned, nor the countless thousands of civilians who perished.


With Mr. Kerrey’s new position, we are returning to the familiar story 
about an American soldier’s redemption. Many Vietnamese are also focused 
on that story now, even as it comes at the expense of remembering 
Vietnamese suffering. Some opinion polls show a majority of Vietnamese 
endorsing Mr. Kerrey’s appointment, and some North Vietnamese veterans, 
like the renowned novelist Bao Ninh, have voiced their support.


Some in the United States have said that Mr. Kerrey is also a victim — 
of an unjust war and disastrous leadership — but such a claim seems 
ironic, if not outright ludicrous, when one compares Mr. Kerrey’s 
prominence to the obscurity in which the survivors of the attack he led 
and the relatives of those killed now live. His life and career have 
barely been impeded, except for any personal regrets.


Indeed, as Mr. Kerrey was once in Vietnam as an expression of United 
States power, he now arrives in a different guise but still as a symbol 
of Western influence, this time as a leader of a university.


Many Vietnamese hope the university will deliver free-market values to a 
nominally Communist country eager to continue its capitalist 
development. But such hope must be tempered with the understanding that 
Western-style universities are ambivalent places when it comes to 
encouraging greater equality.


At their best, they cultivate humane thinking. At their worst, they both 
practice and promote an economic inequality that supports the interests 
of the 1 percent: exploitation of underpaid adjunct teachers; tremendous 
increases in student debt; emphasizing the production of workers rather 
than learners.


Which role will Fulbright play? This question foreshadows how Vietnam’s 
capitalist development, guided by institutions like this one, could 
leave behind the country’s most vulnerable.


If Mr. Kerrey does continue as chairman, Americans and Vietnamese 
together should insist on symbolic and material measures to make amends 
to his victims and address his past.


First, he should visit Thanh Phong and apologize to the survivors and 
the families of the dead. Reconciliation between the two countries 
should be about more than the drama of one American veteran; it should 
also include the tragedy of 20 dead Vietnamese villagers.


Second, the Fulbright campus in Ho Chi Minh City should include a 
prominent memorial to Thanh Phong’s dead. Already visible throughout 
Vietnam are “martyrs’ cemeteries” commemorating more than one million 
soldiers who died for the 

[Marxism] Fwd: Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

Best to read on the NYT website since the graphics are key.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/us/decades-later-sickness-among-airmen-after-a-hydrogen-bomb-accident.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

[Marxism] Fwd: Trump neutralizes Democrats’ attacks by adopting their positions - The Washington Post

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-neutralizes-democrats-attacks-by-adopting-their-positions/2016/06/20/b322d924-36ea-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.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

[Marxism] Scott Lucas on the slanders against White Helmets

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

#Syria: Debunking the "White Helmets = Al Qa'eda" Smear
Since my initial post on May 10 summarizing & debunking the "White 
Helmets = Al Qa'eda" smear, Assad supporters have replied --- mostly 
with ranting and with little new "evidence". So this is an extension of 
the original 14 points further taking apart the allegations, 
distortions, and propaganda:


1. Since pro-#Assad folks rehashing "White Helmets = Al Qa'eda" smear, 
here's sum & debunking of "evidence" | #Syria .@SyriaCivilDef


2. Vid fm 2015 where 2 rescuers called out to retrieve body & found 
Jabhat al-Nusra execution in progress - They could not halt it.


3. They retrieved body so it could be buried properly --- as White 
Helmets said at time.


4. Replies by Assad supporters distort but have no evidence to rebut this.

5. Vid of 1 case (#Idlib 2015) where 2 rescuers celebrated near 
fighters, some of whom were Nusra


6. Later Facebook pics of 1 of these 2 men, posing with gun and 
appearing to be a fighter - Not established that he is White Helmets & 
fighter at same time


7. Replies by Assad supporters only add that this man, Muawiya Hassan 
Agha, was in video this week of two Khan Tuman POWs being abused --- 
They were later executed


8. No connection between White Helmets and the abuse is established --- 
Agha is not in WH role and appears to be there as fighter


9. Photo where a rescuer is carrying a gun --- No context has ever 
established, and this is only case


10. Vid of an old rescuer praising fighters (but not specifically Nusra) 
- Replies from Assad supporters offer nothing else


11. Only other "new" evidence in replies is photo of White Helmets 
burning cannabis which has apparently been confiscated by local 
authorities and ordered to be destroyed


12. This is part of burning of refuse but is converted by Assad 
supporters into White Helmets as "agents of Sharia court".


13. This is the sum total of all evidence produced for "White Helmets = 
Al Qa'eda".


13. Remainder of Assad's supporters' case are unsupported allegations, 
ad hominem attacks, and diversions.


14. For example, video posted to one man's FB page (see 7 above) becomes 
"Video posted to WH page of the brutal execution of SAA [Syrian Arab Army]"


15. Or hyperbolic question, "Are AQ recruiting WH or WH recruting AQ?"

16. Or unsupported accusation, "No mention of their desecration of SAA 
bodies"


17. Or "Calling for the burning of [regime enclaves of] #Kafarya and #Foua"

18. Or "All WH operatives only follow ISIS or Al Qaeda on Twitter"

19. Then there is shout of "$60m funding from UK & US Govts for 
#WhiteHelmets"


20. This can easily be taken apart, but it is diversion from the topic 
"White Helmets = Al Qa'eda"


21. Still, it is revealing - Logic of Assad supporters is that US is 
deliberately supporting an Al-Qa'eda-linked group, even though Al Qa'eda 
is enemy of US


22. In short: ONLY evidence for systematic "White Helmets = Al Qa'eda" 
is a photo of a man with a gun with no context and another man (who may 
have left WH some time time ago) in a video with 2 Syrian Army POWs 
being mistreated. That's it.


23. Even if these two cases were granted, what of the 100s of other 
rescuers who have saved 10,000s of lives? Are they all Al Qa'eda?


24. This is a recurring smear. Its intent is to justify the attacks on 
White Helmets rescuers, including the missile strikes that killed five 
of them near Aleppo in late April.


25. Attention should be given to this smear precisely to repeat its 
purpose --- and to contrast it with the overwhelming evidence of the 
White Helmets as savers of life even as their own lives are threatened 
by bombs --- and by the propagandists who defend the bombers.

_
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