[Marxism] Beethoven: the politics of a musical revolutionary | Thomas Gibbs | Counterfire
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[Marxism] Unsurvivable heat extremes have emerged earlier than expected: study - The Washington Post
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. * Every time I see a new report, surprise is registered at how much reality exceeds expectations. And mass migration emerges more urgently with each successive pile-on. ["...researchers were surprised to find such sharp increases in moist heat waves in part because computer model projections don’t show these occurrences becoming common for a few more decades"...it is disturbing to see it happening in real time. It will only get worse and more widespread from here." "The computed heat index [in Bandar Mahshahr, a city in southwest Iran] for this brutal combination was 165 degrees (74 Celsius), among the highest recorded. However, the National Weather Service cautions such conditions are so extreme that they are beyond the limit the heat index was designed to calculate..."“Of all of the climate risks coming this century, the thing I am most concerned about is excessive heat in the tropics,” said Ken Caldeira, senior scientist emeritus at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, in an email. “Rich countries have brought much of their economy indoors where air conditioning is a possibility, but many developing economies rely on labor-intensive outdoor agriculture,” he wrote. “The combination of poverty and extreme temperatures can be lethal...would make agriculture that relies on outdoor picking impossible. ”] Unsurvivable heat extremes have emerged earlier than expected: study Andrew Freedman, Jason Samenow - The Washington Post - Friday, May 8, 2020 Welcome to “Steambath Earth,” featuring sauna-like temperatures and humidity too high for humans to tolerate. Extremely humid heat that is more intense than most Americans have experienced — approaching a crucial, immovable human survivability limit — has more than doubled in frequency in some coastal subtropical regions of the world since 1979, according to a new study published Friday. The study is the first to find that wet bulb temperatures of 95 degrees (35 Celsius), which renders ineffective the human heat response of sweating to shed heat through evaporation, leading to hyperthermia, are already occurring for short periods of time at a few weather stations. These tend to be located in parts of the Persian Gulf shoreline and coastal southwest North America, where sizzling lands border sultry seas, as well as in northern South Asia, where extreme heat and humidity combinations overlap just before the annual monsoon begins. With computer model projections showing the world will continue to warm rapidly in response to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, warns that highly populated regions of the world will be rendered uninhabitable sooner than previously thought for parts of each year. This will come to pass unless people take wide-ranging and costly steps to adapt to the heat during the next few decades, while nations undertake measures to slash emissions of greenhouse gases. The study depicts a world steadily marching toward a future in which many locations approach or reach that survivability threshold, as well, a trend that could throw a spotlight on the divide between rich nations that are able to adapt to this new reality and poor countries that suffer productivity losses and deaths. The heat in the subtropics constitutes a threat to global stability, some researchers say, since they could prompt millions to become climate migrants, searching for more temperate conditions elsewhere. For the research, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Columbia University examined surface temperature data around the world on land and sea. They detected, for the first time, the arrival of what some scientists have called “Steambath Earth,” with heat waves that humans cannot survive after prolonged exposure. The threshold for survivability occurs when the wet bulb temperature hits 95 degrees (35 Celsius). Meteorologists measure wet bulb temperatures by wrapping a wet wick around the bulb of a thermometer. While it may seem to be an esoteric figure, it’s highly significant in heat wave situations, since the higher the wet bulb temperature gets, the more difficult it becomes for the human body to shed metabolic heat into the air through the evaporation of sweat. In fact, mortality increases during heat waves when wet bulb temperatures reach temperatures of 88 to 91 degrees (31 to 33 Celsius), the study states. According to study co-author Radley Horton of Columbia University, the combination of high temperature with high humidity is, “Maybe the most underappreciated of the direct climat
[Marxism] Rewind | 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. * “Rewind,” a powerful documentary about the sexual abuse of children, was initially scheduled to open in theaters on March 27th at the IFC Center in New York, and April 3rd in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow. However, like all other film releases nationwide, the movie’s theatrical opening was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Like other films I have been covering since early April, it is now available as VOD as well as to be shown on PBS’s Independent Lens on May 11th (complete screening information at www.rewinddocumentary.com). The film was directed by Sasha Joseph Neulinger, the 30-year-old filmmaker who, along with his sister, was molested repeatedly by two uncles and a cousin. The film is structured as a kind of deeply personal series of recollections by Sasha and his rueful mother and father who failed to intervene. “Rewind”, as the title implies, conflates his memories with the action taken on a VCR to go backward. It becomes clear from the start of the film that his family was obsessed with home recordings that serve as the narrative thread that ties this horrifying family drama together. At the beginning of “Anna Karenina”, Tolstoy writes, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” One might surmise that when sexual abuse takes place, each tale has its own peculiar twist. In Sasha’s family, there was a big appetite for mugging for the videocamera and competition as to who could be the most “entertaining”. full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/05/09/rewind/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] [UCE] Webinar today, 7 pm EDT - SHINING THE LIGHT ON CUBA'S MEDICAL SOLIDARITY
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. * Earlier this week I posted an announcement of the Webinar "SHINING THE LIGHT ON CUBA'S MEDICAL SOLIDARITY" that will take place this Saturday evening. David Duport followed up with a question, "Cuba still charges host countries for these medical missions, right?" It's an important question that others have raised as well. Several list subscribers have weighed in on the matter, but I think that more can and should be said. Cuba's outstanding demonstration of medical internationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn world attention, provoking astonishment and admiration from many, and hostility and alarm from reactionaries in many quarters. The Trump administration is continuing to pressure countries to refuse Cuban offers of medical assistance. It has stepped up its campaign of lies and slanders about the island's international solidarity efforts. Turning to David's question, let's begin by noting that one core principle of the Cuban medical missions is that Cuban international assistance does not depend on the host country's ability to pay. A sliding scale is applied, and many countries where Cuban doctors and nurses serve, pay little or nothing. The case of Bolivia is instructive. Shortly after Evo Morales was elected president in 2006, Cuba began providing medical services to the country. The Cubans went to areas that had never seen a doctor or a nurse. Cuba covered the full cost of its medical missions. Over time, the Bolivian economy prospered while Cuba encountered serious economic problems. The terms of the agreement were then revised, and Bolivia began to pay some or all of the cost of the medical services from Cuba. (After the coup against Morales last October, the new authorities expelled the Cuban medical staff and terminated the agreement.) Another principle that Cuba insists on is that, however the host country's health system may be organised, the Cuban health workers do not charge their clients or patients for their services. Medical care is free to those who need it. Here I’d like to turn the floor over to a representative of the Cuban government. On Wednesday, in a live-streamed interview with CODEPINK, Cuba's Ambassador to Canada Josefina Vidal explained how her country finances the international medical missions, and what it does with the payments that it receives for their services. See https://tinyurl.com/ybpn8dyf . The portion dealing with the question of funding begins at approximately 16:00. (In a previous assignment, Josefina Vidal led the Cuban side in the negotiations with the Obama administration that resulted in the breakthrough in US-Cuban relations that were announced on December 17, 2014.) Another reliable source is the Canadian professor John Kirk. As Richard Fidler has noted, a recent interview with Kirk appears at https://johnriddell.com/2020/04/08/cubas-unique-model-of-medical-internationalism/ . Kirk's explanation is the same as Vidal's. For those interested in looking into Cuban medical internationalism in greater depth, I recommend Kirk's 2015 book, "Healthcare without Borders". Fortunately, both Josefina Vidal and John Kirk will participate as panelists during the webinar on Saturday night. An ample period for Q&A is planned, so anyone who wishes will be able to take up this question with them. The webinar will begin at 7 pm Eastern Time; registration is via https://tinyurl.com/ycg3frnx . Art Young _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] From a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning
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. * >From a rough draft of a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning >being written with Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina and Brendan Sullivan. -- Visions of Socialism: One of the most striking phenomena in US politics since the 2008 economic crash has been a revival of interest in socialism, especially among the Millennial generation. In fact, you would have to go back some eighty or more years ago to see a time when there was such a big interest in socialism. Even in the 1960’s, the last period when we saw the flourishing of major leftist political movements , there wasn’t so much a mass interest in socialism as much as there were movements led by people who identified as socialists or communists. Most public discussion then was over things like civil rights, black power, and opposition to the Vietnam War. There wasn’t that much talk as to what a socialist alternative to capitalism would look like, even though many political activists back then would have described themselves as being anti-capitalist. It must be said that up to now, things haven’t seemed all that different. As much as half of the Millennial generation, according to recent opinion polls, seems willing to identify as socialists. Yet, it is not at all clear as to what they mean by that term. Do they mean an economic order where the means of production are owned by workers and their use is the product of democratic deliberation, as Marx stated “a community of associated producer” (the classic definition)? Or do they mean a more humane capitalism with a more generous welfare state - more or less like what exists (and is being meticulously disassembled) in the Scandinavian countries? Right now, a major candidate in the race to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2020, Bernie Sanders, calls himself a socialist. But what does he mean by that? It would seem that for him, socialism is basically just the liberalism of FDR and Truman, something that he has reiterated time and time again in his speeches. So is socialism nothing more than a revival of the liberal reformism of FDR, or God forbid, JFK? For many, that is perhaps all they mean by the term. A matter of pouring old wine into new bottles, while sticking on somewhat misleading labels. Having said that, it is evident that many people are seeking something more radical than that. In the face of the environmental threats being posed by climate change, not to speak of the ever increasingly growth of economic inequality, reaction, racism and sexism, it doesn’t seem that a revival of FDR’s liberalism is a panacea. In other words, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just seek a reformed capitalism. That has been tried before, and we have seen that while in the short and medium run, capitalists can acquiesce when reforms are legislated, they will, over the long run, seek to gut and overturn them. This is the confirmed history of social democratic reforms, a history that has played out in the US and most other industrial countries over the last 50 years. So, what is to be done? It is clear that at least a sizable minority of the people who now identify as socialists are in fact seeking a new economic order to replace capitalism outright. This entails that working people will actually own the means of production and the market economy that we have now will be replaced by a planned economy. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math Sponsored by https://www.newser.com/?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_taglines_more Nations Praised for Their Virus Policies Run Into Problems http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f742bee0377424eccst02vuc1 America's 'Virus Hero' Is Suddenly Taking Heat http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f742e185c77424eccst02vuc2 The Coronavirus Gets Closer to Trump http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f743fd7377424eccst02vuc3 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Who Sabotaged the American Economy? Thorstein Veblen Knows - Los Angeles Review of Books
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[Marxism] The Pandemic Jobless Youthquake | David Blanchflower | The New York Review of Books
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[Marxism] Still Facing Reality: A Reply to Our Critics - New Politics
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[Marxism] Nae Hauf-Way Hoose: Tradition and Liberation: a memory of Neil Davidson (1957 - 2020)
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[Marxism] Putin's People by Catherine Belton review – a groundbreaking study that follows the money | Books | The Guardian
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 renowned business journalist who spent years covering Russia for the Financial Times, Belton follows the money. She has an unrivalled command of the labyrinthine history of share schemes, refinancing packages, mergers, shell companies, and offshore accounts that lay bare the stealthy capture of the post-Soviet economy and state institutions by a coterie of former KGB officers, or siloviki. Belton combines this financial history with testimony from a dazzling array of Kremlin insiders, diplomats, intelligence officers, prosecutors, mobsters and oligarchs. The result reads at times like a John le Carré novel. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/06/putins-people-by-catherine-belton-review-a-groundbreaking-study-that-follows-the-money _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Call for academic solidarity – Kritikai földrajzok
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[Marxism] Who is Judy Mikovits in ‘Plandemic,’ the coronavirus conspiracy video just banned from social media?
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. * (Gee, I wonder if she hasn't written something about false flag chemical attacks in Syria for Grayzone by now.) Washington Post, May 9, 2020 Who is Judy Mikovits in ‘Plandemic,’ the coronavirus conspiracy video just banned from social media? By Katie Shepherd When Judy Mikovits co-wrote a 2009 research paper that linked the mysterious condition known as chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus that came from mice, thousands of sick patients hoping for relief rallied behind her. The scientific riddle was solved, they thought. Less than two years later, those hopes were dashed when follow-up studies failed to replicate the findings and the respected journal “Science” retracted the paper. Researchers posited that the study’s inaccurate conclusions were the result of contamination of the lab samples, and the theory that a virus might be the source of the still-mysterious condition died. But Mikovits’s conviction that her theory was correct, and her belief that the top scientific minds in the United States conspired to ruin her career, never faded. She has now accused the scientific establishment of conspiracy again. In a film called “Plandemic,” and in a recently published book that topped the Amazon bestsellers chart this week, she makes a bizarre and false claim: that the doctors and experts shaping public policy in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic have silenced dissenting voices and misled the public for sinister reasons. She falsely claims that wealthy people intentionally spread the virus to increase vaccination rates and that wearing face masks is harmful. The coronavirus-related theories Mikovits presented defy accepted science and wilt under scrutiny, according to dozens of experts who spoke up after “Plandemic” trended this week. Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access. The film is so questionable that social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo on Thursday scrubbed it from their sites. A Vimeo spokesperson, for example, said that the company “stands firm in keeping our platform safe from content that spreads harmful and misleading health information. The video in question has been removed … for violating these very policies.” It was the latest chapter in the saga of Mikovits’s troubled career. In the years after the 2009 study was retracted, Mikovits was fired from her job leading a research institute, arrested for theft and sued by her former employer. Meanwhile, she doubled down on debunked theories linking retroviruses that originated in mice to medical conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome and autism. In the absence of crucial evidence of how the new coronavirus began comes many theories — one is that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. (Sarah Cahlan, Meg Kelly/The Washington Post) In response to an inquiry from The Washington Post, Mikovits said she could not participate in an interview until after Mother’s Day but offered up a PowerPoint presentation that she claimed backed up the allegations she made in “Plandemic.” She acknowledged her past legal troubles — including the arrest — in the film, but suggested her woes stem from an alleged conspiracy to crush her once-promising career and destroy her credibility as a scientist. Mikovits also flung false and wild allegations at several high-profile scientists in “Plandemic,” including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. In the weeks before the “Plandemic” trailer launched, she had been positioning herself as an expert and an anti-Fauci voice in interviews with conspiracy-hawking and far right-leaning websites like the Epoch Times and the Gateway Pundit. Mikovits, who graduated with a PhD in biochemistry from George Washington University, spent 22 years working for the National Cancer Institute. She left that job in 2001, and the New York Times reported in a 2009 profile that Mikovits moved from Maryland to California to work for a drug company that later failed. She ended up bar tending for a yacht club, the Times reported, before she was recruited to helm a privately funded research clinic, Whittemore Peterson Institute, which was dedicated to finding the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. After other scientists failed to replicate Mikovits’s research on chronic fatigue syndrome, her employers at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Nevada fired her in October 2011, “Science” magazine reported, though t
[Marxism] De Blasio Shrugs Off Leaked Data Showing Massive Racial Disparities In NYPD's Social Distancing Arrests - Gothamist
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. * This fucking Mayor De Blasio used to show up at Nicaragua Network meetings in 1988. What a phony. https://gothamist.com/news/de-blasio-shrugs-leaked-data-showing-massive-racial-disparities-nypds-social-distancing-arrests _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com