[Marxism] Fidel Castro 1926-2016: A combatant to the end
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Re: [Marxism] The true Fidel Castro
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. * It isn't about Castro himself or the revolution, but I found Visions of Freedom (http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3458) to be an amazing book. And ones I can't yet vouch for myself: A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory by Steve Cushion A History of the Cuban Revolution by Aviva Chomsky The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics Edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff -- Tristan Sloughter t...@crashfast.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The true Fidel Castro
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 have been following this list for at least a year. I continue to learn from the great information posted here. But now it's time for me to post. I hope this post is appropriate. I grew in Florida during the 1970s and 80s. Fidel was a pariah. I would like to be able to say I challenged this thinking, but I didn't. However I did think even then that Miami had serious anger management issues and they just spouted the same tired angry cliches. The Cuba I learned about via my radio was vastly different from what I was told was fact. In college, around 1990, I took a course on the Cuban Revolution. It greatly changed my views not only on Cuba, but about the US's disastrous history of imperialism. What I learned and remembered dove tails with what Louis Proyect posted yesterday. < http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm> All of this brings me to my question. What books do you recommend about Fidel and the Cuban Revolution in general? I see many available, but it seems more than not, they're just anti-Castro pablum. BTW, Louis, I have now found this page of yours < http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mypage.htm> which I plan to reference as I continue my journey left. _ 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: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) | manuelgarciajr
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Re: [Marxism] 'Tomorrow is too late' -- When Fidel Castro urged urgent climate action at Rio in 1992
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. * A big thanks to//GLW and Links. As I circulate the kinds of accomplishments Castro led in the climate and energy spheres here in South Africa, it's always the Australian socialists who have provided the english-speaking left's best information on Cuba. Another example is https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/cubas-green-revolution-%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%94-achieving-sustainability _ 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: Fidel Castro obituary: revolutionary icon finally defeated by infirmity of old age | World news | The Guardian
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[Marxism] Fwd: Fidel Castro's anti-colonialist legacy - Al Jazeera English
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[Marxism] Fidel Castro's revolutionary legacy
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[Marxism] Fwd: Fidel Castro, 1926-2016 | The Nation
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[Marxism] 'Tomorrow is too late' -- When Fidel Castro urged urgent climate action at Rio in 1992
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[Marxism] Fwd: New York African Diaspora International Film Festival 2016 | 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. * As it happens, you can still see a biopic about the man whose feats CLR James celebrated in “The Black Jacobins” as part of the NYADIFF. Made for French TV in a two-part series in 2012 and directed by Phillipe Niang, a Frenchman of Senegalese heritage, this is a tightly paced historical drama with excellent performances that should be on the “must see” list of anybody trying to understand the difficulties of the colonial revolution. In many ways, the struggle led by Toussaint Louverture prefigured the chaos in Syria today with its intractable divisions and meddling by outside powers. Niang could have easily made a film that was 1800 minutes long rather than 180 and it still would have only scratched the surface of the Haitian revolution—or more properly speaking the one that occurred on the western half of the island called Hispaniola that was divided between Spanish and French rule. Known as Saint-Domingue, it was the Pearl of the Antilles to the French and just as key to the mother country’s prosperity as Jamaica was to the British. When the rebellion began in 1791, Louverture made tactical alliances first with the Spanish and then with the French but only in the interests of the underlying principle of abolishing slavery. Jimmy Jean-Louis, a Haitian actor who turns in a tour de force performance of Louverture, is adept at portraying the complex relationship between his character and all the elites he is forced to compromise with in order to achieve his ultimate goal. Not only does he have to deal with outside powers, he has to balance clashing interests in Saint-Domingue, including those of the slaves, the Mulattos (the term used by the characters in the film as was the case historically) and the white plantation owners—some of whom were British. full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/11/26/new-york-african-diaspora-international-film-festival-2016/ _ 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] Clinton Hops on the Recount Bandwagon
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Re: [Marxism] Paul Farmer on Cuba
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. * Here's a Marxist critique of Farmer. Anyone who wants the full piece, please email me. http://coa.sagepub.com/content/33/4/447.abstract Here is a snippet: *A Rigorous Detour through Marx is Essential* Dr. Farmer has vigorously renounced Marxist approaches for diagnosing and transforming the world. In a text from the bestselling *New York Times* book, *Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World*,” Kidder writes of Dr. Farmer, “He had studied the world’s ideologies. . . . .But years ago he’d concluded that Marxism wouldn’t answer the questions posed by the suffering he encountered in Haiti. And he had quarrels with the Marxists he’d read: ‘What I don’t like about Marxist literature is what I don’t like about academic pursuits–and isn’t that what Marxism is, now? In general, the arrogance, the petty infighting, the dishonesty, the desire for self-promotion, the orthodoxy: I can’t stand the orthodoxy, and I’ll bet that’s one reason that science did not flourish in the former Soviet Union.’” Like Kim, Farmer’s assertions distort Freire’s essential message. In Freire’s final publication, a posthumous collection of letters titled, *“Pedagogy of Indignation*, published in 2004, Freire’s colleague Donaldo Macedo puts the issue succinctly, “. . . . one cannot understand Freire’s theories without taking a rigorous detour through a Marxist analysis, and [any] offhand dismissal of Marx is nothing more than a vain attempt to remove the sociohistorical context that grounds *Pedagogy of the Oppressed*” (Freire 2004:xiv-xv). Macedo underscores that “the misunderstanding, even by those who claim to be Freirean, is not innocent. It allows many liberal educators to appropriate selective aspects of Freire’s theory and practice it as a badge of progressiveness while conveniently dismissing or ignoring the ‘Marxist perspectives’ that would question their complicity with the very structures that created human misery in the first place” (Freire 2004:xvi). *Naming the Pathologies of Power* For some time Farmer himself has been reluctant to critique capitalism per se, instead tending to cite “structural violence” as the source of the problems of many of the world’s poor. Still, in his recent book *Haiti After the Earthquake* he does acknowledge that “growing inequality, both within countries and between them, is the linchpin of modern servitude” (Farmer 2011:117). PIH is becoming more and more closely tied to corporate capital. In 2011 PIH generated revenues of $88 million. There were more than 15,000 new donors the last fiscal year. Among its corporate and foundation donors are Abbot Laboratories, Aetna Foundation, Inc. American Express, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, General Electric, Co, Goldman, Sachs Co., Google, Home Depot, HSBC Philanthropic Programs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Novartis, Pfizer, UPS, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation (PIH Annual Report 2011). In a February 23, 2013 article by Henry Giroux titled *The Politics of Disimagination and the Pathologies of Power*, Giroux charged that “American Society is awash in a culture of civic illiteracy, cruelty andcorruption. For example, major banks such as Barclays and HSBC swindle billions from clients and increase their profit margins by laundering money for terrorist organizations, and no one goes to jail” (Giroux 2013). Dr. Farmer, who receives support from HSBC, among other financial institutions, has chosen not to make these kinds of linkages in his public pedagogy. Drs. Farmer and Kim work closely with Presidents Obama and former President Clinton. When he was president, Clinton forced Haiti to drop tariffs on imported subsidized U.S. rice. This neoliberal policy destroyed Haitian rice farming and seriously undercut Haiti’s ability to become a self-sufficient country. It is widely viewed as contributing to Haiti’s forced urbanization, an event that increased the earthquake toll. Clinton, of course, also passed NAFTA which significantly hurt the US working class. He destroyed welfare and in 1999 was responsible for tearing down the firewalls between investment and commercial banking which opened the banking system to speculators and contributed to much human misery associated with the 2008 financial meltdown. Obama raised more than $600 million for his 2008 election and over $715 million for the 2012 election, most from corporations, and has served those same corporations as well as his Republican predecessor. He has stood by while those same corporations looted the treasury and has done little to help the millions of Americans who
[Marxism] Fwd: Fidel Castro Biography - YouTube
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[Marxism] Fwd: David Runciman · Is this how democracy ends?: A Failed State? · LRB 1 December 2016
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. * Meanwhile, the real long-term threats faced by American society will continue unaddressed. By fixing on the risks of direct political violence, we set a low bar that Trump will be able to clear with relative ease. The truly destructive violence of American society takes place under the surface and often passes unnoticed by all except its victims. It is the violence of a prison system that incarcerates and disenfranchises significant segments of the adult population, especially young African-American men. It is the epidemic of white-on-white violence that is estimated to have cost the lives of nearly a hundred thousand Americans since 1999 and yet has remained more or less invisible, until noticed by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in a paper published in 2015. These deaths are the result of self-inflicted violence, either suicides or drug and alcohol overdoses (‘poisonings’ in the language of the report), particularly affecting white Americans living in the parts of the country that voted overwhelmingly for Trump – the South, the Appalachians, the Rust Belt. People in these communities are far more likely to kill themselves than they are to kill others, and they are dying younger than their parents did, a trend that is unique in a developed society. Trump’s victory might provide the victims of this epidemic with superficial respite – including the chance to direct some of their self-loathing outwards – but it will do little to address the causes of their underlying hopelessness. America is a society where many working-age people have given up and others have had their chance for a decent life taken from them by a violently punitive criminal justice system. If it is failing, it is failing here. When the Trump bubble bursts, there won’t have been a reckoning with this reality. But there will be an ever greater sense of betrayal. full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n23/david-runciman/is-this-how-democracy-ends _ 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] Paul Farmer on Cuba
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*
From a New Yorker Magazine profile on Paul Farmer:
Leaving Haiti, Farmer didn’t stare down through the airplane window at
that brown and barren third of an island. "It bothers me even to look at
it," he explained, glancing out. "It can’t support eight million people,
and there they are. There they are, kidnapped from West Africa."
But when we descended toward Havana he gazed out the window intently,
making exclamations: "Only ninety miles from Haiti, and look! Trees!
Crops! It’s all so verdant. At the height of the dry season! The same
ecology as Haiti’s, and look!"
An American who finds anything good to say about Cuba under Castro runs
the risk of being labelled a Communist stooge, and Farmer is fond of
Cuba. But not for ideological reasons. He says he distrusts all
ideologies, including his own. "It’s an ‘ology,’ after all," he wrote to
me once, about liberation theology. "And all ologies fail us at some
point." Cuba was a great relief to me. Paved roads and old American
cars, instead of litters on the 'gwo wout ia'. Cuba had food rationing
and allotments of coffee adulterated with ground peas, but no
starvation, no enforced malnutrition. I noticed groups of prostitutes on
one main road, and housing projects in need of repair and paint, like
most buildings in the city. But I still had in mind the howling slums of
Port-au-Prince, and Cuba looked lovely to me. What looked loveliest to
Farmer was its public-health statistics.
Many things affect a public’s health, of course—nutrition and
transportation, crime and housing, pest control and sanitation, as well
as medicine. In Cuba, life expectancies are among the highest in the
world. Diseases endemic to Haiti, such as malaria, dengue fever, T.B.,
and AIDS, are rare. Cuba was training medical students gratis from all
over Latin America, and exporting doctors gratis— nearly a thousand to
Haiti, two en route just now to Zanmi Lasante. In the midst of the hard
times that came when the Soviet Union dissolved, the government actually
increased its spending on health care. By American standards, Cuban
doctors lack equipment, and are very poorly paid, but they are generally
well trained. At the moment, Cuba has more doctors per capita than any
other country in the world—more than twice as many as the United States.
"I can sleep here," Farmer said when we got to our hotel. "Everyone here
has a doctor."
Farmer gave two talks at the conference, one on Haiti, the other on "the
noxious synergy" between H.I.V. and T.B.—an active case of one often
makes a latent case of the other active, too. He worked on a grant
proposal to get anti-retroviral medicines for Cange, and at the
conference met a woman who could help. She was in charge of the United
Nations’ project on AIDS in the Caribbean. He lobbied her over several
days. Finally, she said, "O.K., let’s make it happen." ("Can I give you
a kiss?" Farmer asked. "Can I give you two?") And an old friend, Dr.
Jorge Perez, arranged a private meeting between Farmer and the Secretary
of Cuba’s Council of State, Dr. José Miyar Barruecos. Farmer asked him
if he could send two youths from Cange to Cuban medical school. "Of
course," the Secretary replied.
Again and again during our stay, Farmer marvelled at the warmth with
which the Cubans received him. What did I think accounted for this?
I said I imagined they liked his connection to Harvard, his published
attacks on American foreign policy in Latin America, his admiration of
Cuban medicine.
I looked up and found his pale-blue eyes fixed on me. "I think it’s
because of Haiti," he declared. "I think it’s because I serve the poor."
_
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[Marxism] question re Cuba
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. * re Louis's piece: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm Not surprisingly I love the parts about centralized accounting and control. But - and maybe I missed it - what would have been the role of workers' and peasants' councils at each level (local to national) in developing, implementing and checking the planning made possible by such use of data? _ 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] We have lost Fidel.
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 will be writing an assessment of Fidel Castro's career in a couple of days but in the meantime, this is something I wrote about Cuba about 20 years ago in response to the attacks on him by a member of either the ISO or the British SWP on Marxmail (can't exactly remember.) http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm _ 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
