Re: [Marxism] China to invest in Iranian oil industry

[RKOB via Marxism]

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Comrades might find this article interesting:

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/09/iran-reinforce-partnership-china-economic-relief.html

Am 19.09.2019 um 21:14 schrieb DW via Marxism:

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The most interesting aspect of this is th $280 billion they say they are
going to invest...and not use USD. Iran has of course been trying to do
this for more than a decade. They even have an "oil exchange" where bidding
on outgoing Iranian oil can be done in other currencies. There are not
takers the building is basically empty. The Russians and Chinese have done
more than this amount also not in USD. I'm not what this portends as China
holds a trillion more in USD in cash and bonds...and in the past they have
demanded that the US maintain the value of these financial entities so they
don't lose out. Yet China is willing to risk this doing this deal with
Iran. Watch the currency markets if this actually happens.

David
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[Marxism] Israeli elections herald a long siesta

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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https://rdln.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/israels-elections-herald-a-long-siesta/
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[Marxism] 10, 000 Farmers And Ranchers Endorse Green New Deal In Letter To Congress | HuffPost

[MM via Marxism]

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“Nearly 10,000 farmers and ranchers are endorsing the Green New Deal as the 
climate policy battleground expands from the oil fields to the agricultural 
fields.

“In a letter sent to Congress on Wednesday morning, the newly formed bipartisan 
coalition U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal threw its weight behind 
the sweeping industrial plan outlined in a resolution that Rep. Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) proposed in February.

…


“‘We believe these climate goals are achievable,’ the letter argues, ‘but only 
if the GND includes policies that spur two large-scale transitions: the 
transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy alternatives, and the 
transition away from industrial agriculture toward family farm-based organic 
and regenerative farming and land-use practices that improve soil health and 
draw down and sequester carbon.’” 



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/green-new-deal-farms-agriculture_n_5d814068e4b0fa0ba179722c
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[Marxism] My Voice Is the Gallows for All Tyrant

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Vijay Prashad.

https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/my-voice-is-the-gallows-for-all-tyrants-the-thirty-eighth-newsletter-2019/
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[Marxism] Birds Are Vanishing From North America - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Best seen on NYT website for graphics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html
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Re: [Marxism] China to invest in Iranian oil industry

[DW via Marxism]

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The most interesting aspect of this is th $280 billion they say they are
going to invest...and not use USD. Iran has of course been trying to do
this for more than a decade. They even have an "oil exchange" where bidding
on outgoing Iranian oil can be done in other currencies. There are not
takers the building is basically empty. The Russians and Chinese have done
more than this amount also not in USD. I'm not what this portends as China
holds a trillion more in USD in cash and bonds...and in the past they have
demanded that the US maintain the value of these financial entities so they
don't lose out. Yet China is willing to risk this doing this deal with
Iran. Watch the currency markets if this actually happens.

David
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[Marxism] Why degrowth is the only responsible way forward | openDemocracy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/why-degrowth-only-responsible-way-forward/
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[Marxism] NYT: "The socialist plan to revive organized labor"

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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I want to write more on this, but for now, here's an interesting article
from the NY Times:

A group of far-left activists huddled in the basement of a labor union in
Manhattan, aiming to upend a Democratic institution that they felt had
grown stale.

The potential target was not an entrenched politician, or the local county
party. It was a much closer ally: labor unions, including the one that was
hosting the activists’ meeting earlier this year.

The plan did not go over well. The union, a branch of the Communication
Workers of America, kicked the activists out. Labor leaders accused the
activists of plotting infiltration. The activists, in turn, recently warned
of union spies.

The dispute makes clear the growing ambition of New York’s activist left,
which over the past year has notched a string of high-profile successes,
from propelling Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to
scuttling Amazon’s plans to build headquarters in New York City.


On the national stage, progressive forces are trying to push the Democratic
agenda to the left, and challenge how party leaders

respond
to President Trump.

Emboldened by their successes, they are now preparing to take additional
steps toward political and economic transformation — including by
challenging groups that have long been in the populist vanguard of the
Democratic Party.

The unions, in turn, have been forced to reckon with the shifting political
landscape, and to decide what position they want to occupy within it.

While unions in New York and nationwide have often championed progressive
policies, some have also opposed marquee issues for the left, including the
Green New Deal and Medicare for All. No union endorsed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in
her insurgent congressional campaign last year.

Even as grass-roots labor activism has swelled in new sectors

— including
among video game makers and Uber drivers — established unions have often
kept their distance because of funding shortages or reluctance to engage
with workers outside of their formal membership.



At its heart, the debate is one between pragmatism and idealism, working
within the system versus burning it down.

It is the same debate dogging the Democratic Party at large, but amplified
by an only-in-New-York mix of vibrant activism, impenetrably blue politics
and — unlike in the rest of the country — still-mighty unions eager to
quell perceived threats to their clout.


“Given the political moment we find ourselves in, the idea that a leftist
political organization would launch disruptive attacks on their ostensible
allies in the labor movement is the definition of cutting off your nose to
spite your face,” said Peter Ward, the president of the Hotel Trades
Council, a union of hotel workers.

Activists countered that the labor movement had fallen out of step. Jeremy
Saunders, the co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, a progressive activism
group, said many union leaders seemed dismissive of the energy on the left.

“This growing left sees labor as its natural allies,” he said, “but is
frustrated by some unions who too often side with those same politics and
politicians who refuse to fight for justice.”

The current dispute involves the New York City branch of the Democratic
Socialists of America and the plan it crafted at that basement meeting. The
socialists, deeming the city’s unions overly reliant on insider
relationships, prepared a “rank-and-file strategy” for their members to
join unions and remake them from within.

The group also later published a blog post

encouraging
other chapters nationwide to follow suit.

Some backlash was immediate. But it exploded recently, after the group’s
37-page memo about its plan was reported by Politico
,
leading union leaders to accuse D.S.A. of sowing division.


In response, D.S.A. members — including State Senator Julia Salazar, the
first member of the group to serve in the Legislature — said the union
leaders were “red-baiting.”


Tensions escalated when D.S.A. issued a statement accusing the Hotel Trades
Council of sending members to spy on D.S.A. meetings in order to “thwart
H.T.C. members’ self-organization and full exercise of their democratic
union rights.” (The union denied spying; D.S.A. 

[Marxism] A Revolution in Brittany: Mayors Defy French State to Ban Pesticides

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Sept. 19, 2019
A Revolution in Brittany: Mayors Defy French State to Ban Pesticides
By Adam Nossiter

LANGOUËT, France — If France is going through an ecological awakening, 
its spiritual center may be here in Langouët, a quiet village in 
Brittany, where the environmentalist mayor has become a folk hero to 
fellow small-town officials all over the country.


Dozens of mayors are following the example of Langouët’s leader, Daniel 
Cueff, even though the French state has rapped him on the knuckles, 
dragged him into court and told him that he, the shepherd over a mere 
600 souls, had no right to ban pesticides by ordinance from his village.


The other French mayors, from the Alps to the Atlantic, don’t seem to 
care and have passed their own restrictions in as many as 40 small towns.


Meanwhile, the citizens in Langouët have plastered public spaces on the 
village’s empty main street with signs addressed to the national 
government’s regional representative: “Madame prefect, let our mayor 
protect us!” A hand-scrawled sign where fields end and village begins 
makes the same point.


When Mr. Cueff was hauled before the tribunal in the regional capital, 
Rennes, this summer, 1,000 people were on hand to applaud him.


Mr. Cueff, a steely eyed 64-year-old veteran of the environmental wars 
who earned his chops four decades ago in fighting a nuclear reactor, is 
used to being considered an outlier. Not this time.


“Isn’t the mayor of a village called on to fill in for the state’s 
deficiencies?” he asked in an interview in his wood-paneled office — 
powered by solar energy, like the other municipal buildings.


“France voted for the European directive to protect the population from 
pesticides. It’s not doing it,” he said. “I don’t want to be accused of 
nonassistance to people in danger.” His desk was piled with letters of 
support from across France.


After a scorching summer in which the French were frightened by 
successive record heat waves, brutally underscoring the reality of 
climate change, there is a premium on politicians who are seen to act. 
The Greens made a strong showing in last spring’s European Parliament 
elections, environmentalists are on the rise and establishment 
politicians are genuflecting.


The lesson has not been lost on President Emmanuel Macron, who recently 
declared, “I’ve changed,” in matters ecological.


He has made a show of new environmental initiatives, taking on Brazil’s 
president over fires in the Amazon, convening a citizens’ panel for 
recommendations on climate change, rejecting a heavily criticized trade 
agreement with Latin America on environmental grounds, and insisting 
that members of his cabinet focus on the environment, and not just the 
minister for “ecological transition and solidarity.”


With important municipal elections coming up next year and the Greens 
benefiting from solid support in France’s cities, Mr. Macron has his 
eyes on the polls. France’s leading pollster, Jerôme Fourquet, writing 
in the newspaper Le Figaro, recently described rising environmentalism 
as possibly the “new matrix” underlying the nation’s cultural identity, 
taking the place once occupied by Catholicism.


The president has even expressed cautious support for the newly 
notorious mayor in Brittany, saying of Mr. Cueff: “I support his 
intentions, but I can’t agree when the law isn’t respected,” even though 
“the mayor’s motivations are good.”


Mr. Cueff scoffed. “In politics, it’s not the intention, it’s the 
practice,” he said.


As with elsewhere in rural France, the rolling fields of corn and wheat 
surrounding this village creep up right to the doorsteps of the 
residents’ homes — along with whatever chemicals are applied to those crops.


The farmers tending their fields are not supposed to spray pesticides 
unless the wind blows at less than six miles an hour. But this is 
Brittany, a peninsula thrust into the Atlantic, where the wind blows in 
strong from the ocean.


The mayor has spent much of his career trying to put into practice what 
he calls “the ecology of action, not incantation.” In 2003, he became 
the first mayor in Brittany to install solar panels on public buildings; 
the school toilets use recycled rainwater.


On May 18, Mr. Cueff banned the use of pesticides within 450 feet of any 
dwelling, putting much of the village off limits. Some of the farmers 
were furious, the powerful farmers’ union was fiercely opposed and its 
national president, Christiane Lambert, mocked Mr. Cueff on the radio, 
asking, “Why not cars, too?”


In late August, a judge struck down his ordinance after the central 
government argued against 

[Marxism] NY Times: The Socialist Plan to Radicalize Big Labor

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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Allegations of spying, subterfuge and “red-baiting” as the left battles
over institutions at the heart of the Democratic Party.

By Vivian Wang

Sept. 19, 2019

A group of far-left activists huddled in the basement of a labor union in
Manhattan, aiming to upend a Democratic institution that they felt had
grown stale.

The potential target was not an entrenched politician, or the local county
party. It was a much closer ally: labor unions, including the one that was
hosting the activists’ meeting earlier this year.

The plan did not go over well. The union, a branch of the Communication
Workers of America, kicked the activists out. Labor leaders accused the
activists of plotting infiltration. The activists, in turn, recently warned
of union spies.

The dispute makes clear the growing ambition of New York’s activist left,
which over the past year has notched a string of high-profile successes,
from propelling Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to
scuttling Amazon’s plans to build headquarters in New York City.

On the national stage, progressive forces are trying to push the Democratic
agenda to the left, and challenge how party leaders respond to President
Trump.

Emboldened by their successes, they are now preparing to take additional
steps toward political and economic transformation — including by
challenging groups that have long been in the populist vanguard of the
Democratic Party.

The unions, in turn, have been forced to reckon with the shifting political
landscape, and to decide what position they want to occupy within it.

While unions in New York and nationwide have often championed progressive
policies, some have also opposed marquee issues for the left, including the
Green New Deal and Medicare for All. No union endorsed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in
her insurgent congressional campaign last year.

Even as grass-roots labor activism has swelled in new sectors — including
among video game makers and Uber drivers — established unions have often
kept their distance because of funding shortages or reluctance to engage
with workers outside of their formal membership.

At its heart, the debate is one between pragmatism and idealism, working
within the system versus burning it down.

It is the same debate dogging the Democratic Party at large, but amplified
by an only-in-New-York mix of vibrant activism, impenetrably blue politics
and — unlike in the rest of the country — still-mighty unions eager to
quell perceived threats to their clout.

“Given the political moment we find ourselves in, the idea that a leftist
political organization would launch disruptive attacks on their ostensible
allies in the labor movement is the definition of cutting off your nose to
spite your face,” said Peter Ward, the president of the Hotel Trades
Council, a union of hotel workers.

Activists countered that the labor movement had fallen out of step. Jeremy
Saunders, the co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, a progressive activism
group, said many union leaders seemed dismissive of the energy on the left.

“This growing left sees labor as its natural allies,” he said, “but is
frustrated by some unions who too often side with those same politics and
politicians who refuse to fight for justice.”

The current dispute involves the New York City branch of the Democratic
Socialists of America and the plan it crafted at that basement meeting. The
socialists, deeming the city’s unions overly reliant on insider
relationships, prepared a “rank-and-file strategy” for their members to
join unions and remake them from within.

The group also later published a blog post encouraging other chapters
nationwide to follow suit.

Some backlash was immediate. But it exploded recently, after the group’s
37-page memo about its plan was reported by Politico, leading union leaders
to accuse D.S.A. of sowing division.

In response, D.S.A. members — including State Senator Julia Salazar, the
first member of the group to serve in the Legislature — said the union
leaders were “red-baiting.”

[tweets omitted]

ensions escalated when D.S.A. issued a statement accusing the Hotel Trades
Council of sending members to spy on D.S.A. meetings in order to “thwart
H.T.C. members’ self-organization and full exercise of their democratic
union rights.” (The union denied spying; D.S.A. meetings are public.)

In interviews, activists — both involved with D.S.A. and not — said the
unions’ reactions affirmed their critique.

Bianca Cunningham, a leader of the New York City D.S.A., said unions’
entanglement in political relationships “prohibits them from being able to
take real chances.”

“We’re not surprised that conservative unions come out and 

[Marxism] Striking GM Workers Aren’t Backing Down

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Diane Feeley, ex-SWP and long-time UAW member.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/united-auto-workers-uaw-gm-general-motors-strike
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[Marxism] All That Is Solid ...: Marxists for Liberalism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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In his recent interview on Politics Theory Other about the long-term 
decline of Conservatives and Conservatism, Andy Beckett suggests 
incuriosity about Corbyn and Corbynism is a symptom of the establishment 
right and establishment left's disengagement from political reality. 
It's a point this blog has made plenty of times. Apart from the 
ridiculous “explanation” favoured by sundry right wingers that a quarter 
of a million Trots were waiting for their moment to swarm into the 
Labour Party as soon as Jeremy Corbyn gave them the green light. But the 
claim of incuriosity does not apply across the board. Gavin Shuker 
recently had a go explaining Change UK's failure, an endeavour that, 
euphemistically speaking, left a lot to be desired. And last year we had 
published Corbynism: A Critical Approach by Matt Bolton and Frederick 
Harry Pitts, which claims to be a Marxist critique of Corbynism. For 
this reason alone it is worth considering.


https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2019/09/marxists-for-liberalism.html
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[Marxism] Trump’s Wall is Alive in Hungary, which is why Orban is befriending Assad – LobeLog

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://lobelog.com/trumps-wall-is-alive-in-hungary-which-is-why-orban-is-befriending-assad/
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[Marxism] [Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith | Harper's Magazine

[hari kumar via Marxism]

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To David Walters: Who wrote:
dwalters
To: Louis Proyect via Marxism 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] [Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith |
Davidson clearly stands for Brexit. His arguments are quite clear. His
analysis is a clearly Marxist one. People here who oppose Brexit will be
very disappointed. A worthwhile contribution to the "EU" discussion.

David W.
_
Response:
David,
I think all on the British left agree that there is a splintering of the
current forces of reaction. That this itself has led to a very divided view
on he left is not supporting.
Here is (yet) another perspective, from the viewpoint that focuses a bit
upon the relevance of the USA vs EU inter-imperial splits. [See below].
Regards, Hari Kumar.

03 September 2019
How Should Marxist-Leninists View the Impending ‘No Deal Brexit’ Withdrawal
from the European Union (EU) of the UK?
 (661 KB)
http://ml-today.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/brexit.pdf


>
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[Marxism] Wisconsin supports their local Communist | Alexander Norton |The Morning Star

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/wisconsin-supports-their-local-communist


Sent from my iPhone

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