[Marxism] Syria: Refugee crisis as Assad's forces advance

2020-02-19 Thread Chris Slee via Marxism
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https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/syria-refugee-crisis-assads-forces-advance

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Re: [Marxism] Democratic Party Crisis Deepens, New Openings for Independent Working Class Politics — A Dossier

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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I have no idea how I got on the Lambertiste mailing list but just to 
share with you comrades. Alan Benjamin, the Jeff Mackler of this sect, 
is none other than Eric Blanc's daddy. Would love to be a fly on the 
wall at their Thanksgiving dinner.



On 2/19/20 5:40 PM, The Organizer wrote:

*please distribute widely!*

*https://tinyurl.com/slmulaa*

**

*IN THIS DOSSIER ON THE U.S. WORKING CLASS AND THE 2020 ELECTIONS:*

(Editorial and three articles reprinted from the February 2020 issue of 
/The Organizer/ Newspaper)


(1) Editorial: Democratic Party Crisis Deepens, New Openings for 
Independent Working Class Politics


(2) The U.S. Labor Movement and the 2020 Elections — by The Editors

(3) “It’s About the Economy, Stupid!”: Trump and the “Success” of the 
U.S. Economy — by The Editors


(4) 2019: A Year of Mounting Resistance to Bipartisan War at Home and 
Abroad — by The Editors


* * * * * * * * * *

**

*(1) Democratic Party Crisis Deepens by the Day, **New Openings for 
Independent Working Class Politics*


**

*EDITORIAL*

**

As these lines are written, the 2020 Democratic Party primaries have 
begun in an overall political situation characterized by the /New York 
Times/ on January 27 as one where, "day after day, there is one more 
ripple in a flood of chaos streaming out of Washington."


One of the ripples in this “flood of chaos” — an electoral expression of 
the outrage by workers and youth over their deteriorating working and 
living conditions — is the sudden surge of Bernie Sanders. The 
Democratic Party leadership is beside itself. Top party officials have 
gone public with the alarm: Everything must be done to stop Sanders. The 
mainstream media and liberal pundits are unhinged. Sanders is being 
targeted as a “divisive extremist who will destroy the Democratic 
Party.” The Business Roundtable warns that Sanders “will wreak havoc 
with the economy.” Media reports speak of a “civil war” inside the 
Democratic Party.


Sanders has been given plenty of leeway by the Democratic Party 
leadership to raise pressing issues such as free college education, 
canceling the student debt, single-payer healthcare, and taxing the rich 
— as this helps to legitimize the Democratic Party at a time when its 
traditional voting base has either continued to stay home on election 
day, or bolted, in the case of white working-class men in the Rust Belt, 
to the Republican Party. His New Deal-type program has struck a 
responsive chord among working people and youth who have not experienced 
the much-touted economic “recovery.”


Being allowed onto the roster of Democratic Party presidential 
candidates, however, has come with a steep political price-tag: Sanders 
has had to pledge time and again that he will campaign actively for 
whatever candidate the Democratic Party nominates at its July 2020 
national convention — including Wall Street favorites Joe Biden and 
multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg. When Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s 
candidate in 2016, recently chastised Sanders for not doing enough to 
get behind her presidential bid, he replied that he had done “everything 
humanly possible” to support her.


Sanders also has had to pledge his support for U.S. imperialist policies 
worldwide, beginning with his unwavering support to the State of Israel 
and its “right to security” — something he has done more than willingly. 
His reply to Trump’s phony “Palestinian Peace Plan” highlighted the need 
to return to a “two-state solution” and “international law,” both of 
which have provided the cover to deny the Palestinian people’s right to 
self-determination and their right to return to their homeland. The 
so-called “two-State solution” is precisely what paved the way for the 
Trump-Netanyahu plan to expel the Palestinian people from their lands 
and extinguish the Palestinian national movement. In response to Trump’s 
unilateral assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Sanders 
called on Congress to reassert its authority over going to war with Iran 
— which only legitimizes a war endorsed by Congress, such as occurred in 
Iraq in 2003.


For the Democratic Party leadership, it was never a question of allowing 
Sanders to come into the convention with a majority, or even a plurality 
of delegates. His role was to sheep-dog stray voters back into the 
Democratic Party. It is no longer out of the question, however, for 
Sanders to enter the Democratic National Convention with the most votes; 
such is the anger from below and such is the political crisis in the 
summits of the capitalist class.


If Sanders were to come into the July 2020 Democratic Party convention 
as the 

[Marxism] Foreign Affairs on Syria

2020-02-19 Thread John Reimann via Marxism
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Interesting article in Foreign Affairs on Syria. They conclude that Assad
cannot consolidate his grip on the country because his forces are already
stretched too thin. Nor can Russia or Iran step into the breech. They are
concerned that ISIS and al Qaeda will grow as a result. Here is their
conclusion:

"The collapse of the Syrian economy and growing discontent among Assad
loyalists—as well as a Turkish military intervention that has pro-regime
forces badly overstretched—have created an opening. Renewed commitment to
Syria will be uncomfortable, given Americans’ concerns about open-ended
conflicts and coming just five months after the Trump administration’s
decision to shift most U.S. troops in Syria across the border to Iraq. But
the United States must act.

The U.S. troops that were redeployed to Iraq should be returned to Syria’s
northeastern region. Turkey’s efforts to repel Assad’s forces and protect
civilians in northwestern Syria deserve American support. But U.S. efforts
are best concentrated in the northeast. In close coordination with its
allies, the United States should work to stabilize the region and to assist
reconstruction, development, and resettlement efforts. Syria’s northeast
has a relatively strong economy compared with economic conditions in
regime-controlled areas, and focused investment will help establish it as a
model of safety, prosperity, and good governance—a credible alternative to
Assad that could help pave the way for a political transition. The United
States has a real opportunity to change the course of the brutal Syrian war
and, potentially, to shape its endgame.

From Foreign Affairs:

Time to Recommit to Syria
A Currency Crisis Has Created an Opportunity to Shape the War’s End

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-02-18/time-recommit-syria

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Urban]: Calvo Salve on Arantes, 'The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age'

2020-02-19 Thread Andrew Stewart via Marxism
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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: February 19, 2020 at 8:53:59 AM EST
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Urban]:  Calvo Salve on Arantes, 'The Rent of Form: 
> Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Pedro Fiori Arantes.  The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the 
> Digital Age.  Translated by Adriana Kauffmann. Buell Center Books in 
> the History and Theory of American Architecture Series. Minneapolis  
> University of Minnesota Press, 2019.  312 pp.  $30.00 (paper), ISBN 
> 978-0-8166-9929-2; $120.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8166-9928-5.
> 
> Reviewed by Miguel Calvo Salve (Marywood University)
> Published on H-Urban (February, 2020)
> Commissioned by Alexander Vari
> 
> The book under review is a translation and revision of the original 
> _Arquitetura na Era Digital-Financeira: Desenho, Canteiro e Renda da 
> Forma_, written by Pedro Fiori Arantes in Portuguese and published in 
> 2010 by the press of the Universidad de Sao Paulo, Brazil. The 
> original book is an adaptation of Arantes's PhD dissertation of the 
> same title completed in 2010 at the Universidad de Sao Paulo. The 
> reworked English translation brings the publication up to date as a 
> timely book, although most of the projects mentioned in it already 
> have been in existence more than ten years. Yet the topic is still 
> current in the field of architecture since the commoditization of 
> images of architecture has continued to proliferate. The elitism and 
> monopoly of the so-called star-architects in the discipline have also 
> increased, with the search for the "wow effect" masquerading as 
> architectural innovation. This approach to building design is already 
> dominant in many schools of architecture, and students fascinated 
> with digital technologies and fabrication through 3D printers, 
> robots, and so on are falling for a simplistic vision of architecture 
> as cool images and icons. 
> 
> The book, before addressing the digitalization of design as part of a 
> series of factors that are currently affecting the discipline of 
> architecture, astutely presents in its first chapter the background 
> that helped it to come into being and sets the ground, first with the 
> proliferation of highly prepared and professional images of 
> architecture, a development that is not new at all. In the expansion 
> of the mid-twentieth-century modernist movement, more had been done 
> by the vision of photographers than by architecture critics with 
> their lectures and speeches on what modernism meant. As Helio Piñón 
> has pointed out, we cannot separate Richard Neutra's architecture 
> from Julius Schulman's photographs, or Marcel Breuer's architecture 
> from Erza Stöller's photographs.[1] Chapter 1 continues with what is 
> called "the Bilbao effect," in other words, the cascading effects of 
> Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in the city of Bilbao, Spain, and the 
> ways its success made many local governments since then approve 
> strategic plans of urban revitalization and redevelopment or strive 
> to create a tourist attraction by implementing and introducing iconic 
> projects, frequently commissioned to star-architects. This effect led 
> to the concept of the "Architecture of Brands," a process that 
> started mainly in the third quarter of the twentieth century. 
> According to Robert Adam (_The Globalization of Modern Architecture_: 
> _The Impact of Politics, Economics and Social Change on Architecture 
> and Urban Design since 1990_ [2012]), by that time the structure of 
> architectural practice followed the same pattern as any other 
> business organization. The Architecture of Brands is built on the 
> belief that such iconic architecture must be instantly recognized, 
> marketed, and promoted in the media as a commodity, moving architects 
> and architecture firms toward the capitalism and monopoly of brands. 
> 
> It is not new that throughout history many architects were connected 
> with the power of financial oligarchies and upper-class society. When 
> critiquing US architecture at the end of the twentieth century in 
> _Power and Style: A Critique of Twentieth-Century Architecture in the 
> United States_ (1996), Robert Twombly already noticed how some of the 
> most famous architects in the US, like Mies van der Rohe and I. M. 
> Pei, have always designed buildings for the upper-income class and 
> big corporations and were hired by the 

Re: [Marxism] Bernie Sanders ain't seen nothing yet

2020-02-19 Thread John Reimann via Marxism
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Regarding what Michael Meeropol wrote: ("our side has only to accuse the
other side of lying to NEUTRALIZE it with the independents "): The problem
is, we're not talking about crazy Pizzagate-type conspiracy theories. What
the articles refer to isn't lies. Sanders did actually make those
statements and he did actually honeymoon in Moscow. Socialists can make
what we like of these actual facts, but that's irrelevant. What's relevant
is what that layer of middle class suburban whites make of those facts.
These were the same voters who swung so many districts from Republican to
Democrat in 2018. What's also relevant is that the overwhelming majority of
voters oppose giving Medicare to undocumented immigrants, just as they
oppose mandatory public health insurance (being forced to give up their
private plan). It doesn't matter what arguments we can make for those
steps. Again, what matters is what those people think and how it will
influence their votes.

Sanders's argument is that he will bring in enough new, young voters to
compensate for those middle class ones who would be turned off. That's
possible, but so far there is little evidence for that. In 2018, all the
seats that were flipped were done so by the mainstream (in reality,
conservative) Democrats. There were two or three liberal (i.e.
Sandersnista) Democrats who ran in competitive seats that were held by
Republicans at the time. They all lost. Nor has there been a really great
enough increase in voter turnout in the primaries so far to decisively show
Sanders to be right. I'm not saying such an increase won't happen, but I
don't think we can count on it.

John Reimann
-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] Trump is making Barr look like his stooge. And he’s apparently not going to stop.

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2020
Trump is making Barr look like his stooge. And he’s apparently not going 
to stop.

by Aaron Blake

The Washington Post broke the news Tuesday night that Attorney General 
William P. Barr is telling people that he might resign if President 
Trumps keeps tweeting about Justice Department matters. And this has 
understandably been met with skepticism.


But do note this important sentence in the second paragraph of The 
Post’s story: “The administration officials said Barr seemed to be 
sharing his position with advisers in hopes the president would get the 
message that he should stop weighing in publicly on the Justice 
Department’s ongoing criminal investigations.”


In other words, this appears to be as much about a calculation as Barr’s 
own exasperation. It perhaps shouldn’t be taken completely at face value.


But it’s also worth noting the position Barr has put himself in: If 
Trump keeps doing what he’s doing, Barr could either make good on his 
threat or look like Trump is walking all over him.


And to be clear, Trump is a man who doesn’t really heed such advice. 
Indeed, he has already disregarded Barr’s requests repeatedly — and 
continues to do so.


The Post has reported that, in the time before Barr went public last 
week with his request that Trump stop tweeting, he had been asking the 
same thing privately, directly to Trump. That clearly didn’t work.


Then Barr gave his ABC News interview Thursday afternoon, apparently 
hoping that might be more effective. By Friday morning, Trump was at it 
again, saying he had the “legal right” to weigh in on the cases.



Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
“The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” 
A.G. Barr  This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal 
right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!


107K
8:33 AM - Feb 14, 2020
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48.8K people are talking about this
That same day, it was revealed that the Justice Department had opted not 
to charge former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and had closed its 
investigation into him. Trump, who has long pushed for action against 
McCabe, apparently resisted the urge to tweet Friday, but by Saturday, 
he was lashing out again.



Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
IG report on Andrew McCabe: Misled Investigators over roll in news media 
disclosure...Lacked Candor (Lied) on four separate 
occasions...Authotized Media Leaks to advance personal interests...IG 
RECOMMENDED MCCABE’S FIRING. @FoxNews @IngrahamAngle


81.9K
9:39 AM - Feb 15, 2020
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Then came Tuesday, when Trump approvingly tweeted comments from Andrew 
Napolitano on Fox News, in which Napolitano argued that Roger Stone 
should be given a new trial.



Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
“Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the 
unambiguous & self outed bias of the foreperson of the jury, whose also 
a lawyer, by the way. ‘Madam foreperson, your a lawyer, you have a duty, 
an affirmative obligation, to reveal to us when we selected you the.


74.2K
7:58 AM - Feb 18, 2020
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Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
 · Feb 18, 2020
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
.existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative 
about the President & the people who support him. Don’t you think we 
wanted to know that before we put you on this jury.’ Pretty obvious he 
should (get a new trial). I think almost any judge in the Country.



Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
.would order a new trial, I’m not so sure about Judge Jackson, I 
don’t know.” @Judgenap (Andrew Napolitano) @foxandfriends


43K
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Trump’s comments about the Stone matter were precisely the ones that 
preceded Barr publicly urging Trump to knock it off Thursday, and here 
Trump was doing it again.


Trump on Thursday had tweeted against the seven-to-nine-year sentencing 
recommendation prosecutors had filed in the Stone case just hours before 
the Justice Department said it would reduce the recommendation. That 
announcement prompted all four prosecutors on the case to withdraw. Barr 
said he had made the decision before Trump’s tweets, but he acknowledged 
that they made the whole thing look bad.


And then Trump did it yet again Wednesday, retweeting the tweet by Rep. 
Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) about the investigation into the origins of the 
Russia probe.


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
There must be JUSTICE. This can 

Re: [Marxism] Bernie Sanders ain't seen nothing yet

2020-02-19 Thread Michael Meeropol via Marxism
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The fascinating thing about Trump style gaslighting is that Trumpistas will
believe ANYTHING that is thrown at ANY DEMOCRAT (remember the idea that
Bill Clinton had Vince Foster killed because he was having an affair with
Hilary? --- and that was before there was an internet!!) --- thus, whoever
is nominated will be subjected to lots of LIES and Half Truths that will
make them out to be --- you name it, communists, pedophiles, murderers,
drug dealers --- THUS< the "true" things they use against BERNIE (and the
lies they will build on them) will be PARALLEL to all the gaslighting that
they have prepared for every DEM---

Which means our side has only to accuse the other side of lying to
NEUTRALIZE it with the independents -- TRUMPIES will believe the worst
(remember the guy who shot up a pizza shop?) --- we won't get any whether
it's Amy, Mayor Peter or Mayor Mike --- Most independents now know that
Trump lies whenever his lips move 

BERNIE has the energy of the young which is a major plus in fighting Trump
...

On the other hand a brokered convention that steals it from Bernie may
guarantee four more years of Trump ...

**
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[Marxism] Andrew Sabisky: Boris Johnson's ex-adviser in his own words

2020-02-19 Thread William Quimby via Marxism

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[Marxism] “Iran is about to explode.” | aNtiDoTe Zine

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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https://antidotezine.com/2020/02/11/iran-is-about-to-explode/
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[Marxism] Richard Dawkins Quacks Pro-Eugenics Nonsense | Washington Babylon

2020-02-19 Thread Andrew Stewart via Marxism
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https://washingtonbabylon.com/richard-dawkins-eugenics/


Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
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[Marxism] Let Us Be Terrible: Considerations on the Jacobin Club – The Brooklyn Rail

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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(From 2016 but still relevant.)

Jacobin’s proposed demand for “full employment” would require, in fact, 
an extraordinary reinvigoration of the global capitalist economy, a 
sustained spike in economic growth and job-creation the scale of which 
would be well-nigh unprecedented. Rather than coming to terms with the 
forbidding landscape described by Summers, Carney, and Brenner, among 
others, the journal has appealed to entirely untenable scenarios. In a 
recent post on Jacobin entitled “When Wonks Attack,” J.W. Mason makes 
the extravagant claim that, according to “orthodox economic theory” and 
“every macroeconomics textbook,” the deep recession of the past eight 
years must necessarily produce, as if through the momentum of a pendulum 
swing, a “period of exceptionally strong growth.” According to Mason’s 
own back-of-the-envelope calculations, using the instruments put at his 
disposal by the regnant economic models, the next 
near-decade—coinciding, it goes without saying, with a two-term Sanders 
presidency—should bring an extraordinary resurgence of capitalist 
dynamism to the tune of 5% growth over the next eight years, and the 
addition of some three hundred thousand job per month. Such an outré 
appeal to “orthodoxy,” which requires actively bracketing, in a 
desperate Verneinung, empirical analyses generated across the political 
spectrum, is the moving sand on which even an apparently modest proposal 
of a return to tighter labor markets and rising wages—much less “full” 
employment—is premised.


full: https://brooklynrail.org/2016/04/field-notes/let-us-be-terrible
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[Marxism] Bernie Sanders ain't seen nothing yet

2020-02-19 Thread John Reimann via Marxism
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It may be true that the Democratic Party leadership is manipulating things
to edge Sanders out, but at the same time they as well as Sanders's rivals,
have been treating him with kid gloves. That's because they don't want to
alienate his many thousands of followers. If he wins the nomination, he
won't be treated so gently by Trump. Here is a sample of what they'll throw
at him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-bernie-sanders-thought-castro-and-the-sandinistas-could-teach-america-a-lesson

"Reflecting on a Potemkin tour of revolutionary Nicaragua he took in 1985,
Sanders marveled that he was, “believe it or not, the highest ranking
American official” to attend a parade celebrating the Sandinista seizure of
power.

"It’s quite easy to believe, actually, when one wonders what elected
American official would knowingly join a group of largely unelected
officials of various “fraternal” Soviet dictatorships while, just a few
feet away, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega bellows into a microphone
that the United States is governed by a criminal band of terrorists.

"None of this bothered Sanders, though, because he largely shared Ortega’s
worldview"

This is just a small sample. And it doesn't matter if you share "Ortega's
worldview" or not. What matters is how this will be played before voters
here. It's why I don't believe Sanders can defeat Trump as easily as some
people claim.

John Reimann
-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
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[Marxism] A Hint of Freedom for a Turkish Activist. Then Back to Jail.

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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NY Times, Feb. 19, 2020
A Hint of Freedom for a Turkish Activist. Then Back to Jail.
By Carlotta Gall

SILIVRI, Turkey — A Turkish court on Tuesday acquitted nine people 
accused of trying to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a 
surprising verdict interpreted as an important concession by the 
government in a trial widely criticized as unjust both at home and abroad.


Among those ordered released was a prominent philanthropist, Osman 
Kavala, who has spent over two years in detention. But within hours the 
Istanbul prosecutor announced that he had ordered him kept in custody in 
connection with an investigation into a coup attempt in 2016.


At day’s end, Mr. Kavala remained in police custody, and he may now face 
even more serious charges.


Well-wishers who had been waiting for his release near the prison after 
the verdict eventually began to disperse. According to one news outlet, 
Mr. Kavala had already been transferred from prison to police 
headquarters in central Istanbul to be detained on new charges.


“This decision resembles a deliberate and planned cruelty,” Milena 
Buyum, the Turkey campaigner for Amnesty International, said in a 
statement. “While it was decided to release Osman Kavala after keeping 
him in jail for around two and a half years, closing down the door 
towards freedom again is a destructive blow to himself, his family and 
everyone in Turkey defending justice.”


AN INMATE'S TALE“I have been in prison in Turkey for two years,” Osman 
Kavala wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed piece last year.
Under Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule, Mr. Kavala’s case 
has come to symbolize the arbitrary injustice being meted out by the 
government across the country since the 2016 coup attempt.


Unlike the tens of thousands who have been rounded up for alleged links 
to the coup, Mr. Kavala and his co-defendants were prosecuted for taking 
part in protests in Taksim Square, in central Istanbul, in 2013.


Demonstrators occupied the square to halt the construction of a shopping 
mall in one of the city’s few parks. Mr. Erdogan, who personally 
supported the development project, saw the protests as a direct 
challenge to his rule and had them crushed with riot police officers and 
tear gas.


Prosecutors had demanded life sentences in solitary confinement, without 
parole, for three of the defendants, including Mr. Kavala, and up to 20 
years for the others.


In all, the prosecutors brought charges against 16 defendants, nine of 
whom were acquitted on Tuesday. The seven others are living abroad and 
had their arrest warrants withdrawn, although they will have to appear 
in court on their return.


Human rights organizations and defense lawyers said that the case was 
deeply flawed and that prosecutors lacked credible evidence. The 
unexpected acquittals, they said, were undoubtedly a political decision, 
and came after sustained pressure on Turkey from Western governments to 
free Mr. Kavala.


The verdict, analysts said, may also reflect the government’s reading of 
the shifting political winds in the country, which have increasingly 
buffeted Mr. Erdogan since he and his party suffered a defeat in mayoral 
elections last year.


“Something is changing,” Can Atalay, one of the defendants, said as he 
embraced well-wishers after the verdict. Asked what he thought had led 
to the acquittal, he said: “I don’t know. I don’t know. Something is 
changing.”


The court, packed with friends and supporters of the defendants, erupted 
into applause and cheers at the announcement of the verdict.


As the eight-month trial went on, the defendants drew growing support, 
including from the newly elected mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who 
said on Twitter over the weekend that he had attended the protests on 
several occasions.


In a widespread campaign on social media, other supporters updated their 
social media accounts in solidarity and posted photos of themselves at 
the Taksim Square protests.


Few doubted that the verdict Tuesday reflected a decision from the top 
of government.


“It can only be read politically,” Tora Pekin, a defense lawyer, said. 
“It was a political case and a political ruling came out of it.”


Mr. Pekin described the trial as “extremely ridiculous” and warned that 
the acquittals did not mean Turkey’s justice system was improving. “We 
have a saying that one flower does not make a spring,” he said.


Mr. Kavala, 63, was met with applause from the public when he entered 
the court Tuesday carrying a blue plastic bag. He raised his hand 
acknowledging the support, but did not look around.


Mr. Kavala stooped slightly over the 

[Marxism] Social Media: The New Grapevine Telegraph - CounterPunch.org

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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By Ishmael Reed.

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[Marxism] ‘This Is an Apocalyptic Future That We’re Facing’ | FAIR

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CounterSpin interview with Karl Grossman on the weaponization of space

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[Marxism] The white swan harbingers of global economic crisis are already here | Nouriel Roubini | Business | The Guardian

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[Marxism] "Amazon Empire" is PBS' frightening look at Jeff Bezos' relentless capitalist success story | Salon.com

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[Marxism] The new “low-yield” W76-2 nuclear warhead is extremely dangerous and unnecessary.

2020-02-19 Thread Louis Proyect via Marxism

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