[Marxism] Fwd: [URPE] Sign Petition for Janice Harpet - Radical Political Economist & Anthropologist

[Red Arnie]

Recommend reading the linked article from Counterpunch by David Price.  
Overt intimidation and harrassment of progressives by government  
agents fueled and justified by rumors and false accusations appear to  
be on the increase.

> From: mckenna...@aol.com
> Date: August 11, 2009 5:57:09 PM EDT
> To: urpe-announceme...@lists.econ.utah.edu
> Subject: [URPE] Sign Petition for Janice Harpet - Radical Political  
> Economist & Anthropologist
>

> Dear URPE Colleagues,
>
> Please take 30 seconds to sign this petition in support of Dr.  
> Janice Harper.
>
> http://www.thepetitionsite.com/11/petition-in-support-of-dr-janice-harper
> In yesterday's CounterPunch the lead story was about my friend and  
> colleague, Janice, who was fired from the U. of Tennessee-Knoxville.  
> Anthropologist David Price wrote about the case in the August 10th  
> edition of CounterPunch in an article titled, Trial by  
> Investigation. See:   http://www.counterpunch.org/price08102009.html
>
> Here is what the petition says:
>
> Janice Harper was an Assistant Professor with the University of  
> Tennessee-Knoxville, who was denied tenure earlier this spring and  
> fired from her position with the university on July 31, 2009.  An  
> anthropologist, Dr. Harper has made valuable contributions to  
> medical and environmental issues through her teaching and  
> scholarship. In the course of her tenure evaluation Dr. Harper was  
> subjected to a Homeland Security investigation. No evidence of  
> criminal activity was found. A report by the University of  
> Tennessee's Faculty Senate Appeals Committee (June 15, 2009) has  
> fully exonerated Dr. Harper. The Faculty Senate Appeals Committee's  
> report describes multiple violations of university procedure and  
> supports claims that Dr. Harper was denied a fair tenure evaluation.
> We, the undersigned, express support for Dr. Harper and request that  
> independent bodies such as the American Association of University  
> Professors, the American Anthropology Association and the Society  
> for Applied Anthropology look into this matter.
>
> me again: Thank you for helping out!
>
> In Solidarity,
>
> Brian McKenna
> Citizen-Marxist
> Anthropologist
>
> ___
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[Marxism] Health Care: Stop Sucking Your thumbs

[Dennis Brasky]

> James Ridgeway - Unsilent Generation
>  August 11, 2009 ·
>
> Let’s cut the crap.
>
> The real question  is why is the left
> in the US so goddamned polite and domesticated that these Right Wing cranks
> look positively rowdy,”writes Dave Lindorf on Buzzflash
>
> Back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement wasn’t
> polite and domesticated. It brought activists to events in the Deep South
> all the way from New York and Boston. Its members rallied in the thousands
> to shut down segregated public and even private institutions. Its activists
> occupied buildings on university campuses, boldly confronting police and
> police dogs and armed men in white robes.
>
> In the late 1960s and early 1970s, anti-war protesters in turn shut down
> recruiting and induction centers, destroyed draft board records, tried to
> close down Washington, DC, got arrested in the hundreds, incited soldiers to
> desert and then helped hide them from the law, exposed the 1968 Democratic
> Convention as a farce, and faced down armed police and soldiers repeatedly,
> at one point in 1970 closing down the nation’s campuses in a national
> student strike when soldiers shot and killed four unarmed students at Kent
> State University.
>
> Years earlier, when workers were being abused, they occupied factories,
> forcibly shutting them down with sit-down strikes, battled Pinkerton
> detectives and armed National Guard forces, and set up tent cities in
> Washington to make themselves heard.
>
> And they won great victories.
>
> <
> http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/08/11/health-care-stop-sucking-your-thumbs/
> >
>
>
> "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."- *Voltaire*
>
>
>

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Re: [Marxism] A critique of G.A. Cohen

[Jim Farmelant]

 
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:41:38 -0400 tarr...@aol.com writes:
> I agree with you Jim. I think this was one of the main reasons. Most 
> 
> analytical philosophers were quite conservative, so that analytical 
> 
> philosophy is taken as conservative in continental Europe (that is 
> more 
> or less Europe except Britain), so that most of the 'continental' 
> Marxists rather reject it a priori.

Phul Gasper forwarded to me an article by Alex Callinicos
that makes rather similar points:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18754

As for analytical philosophers being conservative.
They certainly have had that image, but it is one
that's not always been supported by the facts.
Neither Bertrand Russell nor A.J. Ayer were
exactly conservatives.  Among the logical positivists,
Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and Philipp Frank,
were all socialists, with Neurath calling himself
a Marxist.  Among leading American analytical
philosophers, Wilfrid Sellars was a self-proclaimed
admirer of Engels, and Hilary Putnam, not unlike
Jerry Cohen, was a red diaper baby.  Back in
the 1960s and early 1970s, he belonged to
the Progressive Labor Party
(and while he gave up on radical politics,
a number of students of his from that
period have remained radical leftists).
Noam Chomsky, when he philsophizes, is rather
close to analytical philosophy, and nobody
thinks of him as a conservative.  Of course
one can pick out any number of analytical
philosophers who were conservatives
(i.e. W.V. Quine), but there have
been some notable ones who leaned
leftwards.  Still one has to agree,
that rightly or wrongly, analytical
philosophers have had that image,
and that has undoubtedly effected
the reception of their work.

(Of course we go into the reasons
why analytical philosophers
acquired such an image.  One
reason being that rival schools
like the Frankfurters were prone
to paint them as such).

> As for Cohen, he was brought up as a Marxist, and when he came in 
> Oxford, he was already a Marxist so he did not have to quarrel 
> against 
> that conservatism, he took analytical philosophy as a device for any 
> 
> philosophical understanding. He explains this at some length in the 
> 
> second chapter of "If you're an Egalitarian...". 

As I recall he said something about many of his contemporaries
on the radical left being drawn towards one continental
thinker or another, but he was not so tempted.

> The reason why he 
> easily endorsed analytical philosophy is more or less the same 
> reason 
> why he could give up Marxism, stating that being brought up in 
> thinking 
> something is not the good reason for thinking it.
> 
> Another related reason is that Cohen used to be one of the leaders 
> of 
> the Analytical Marxism group (together with John Roemer, Jon 
> Elster...). One of his main achievements was to associate explicitly 
> 
> analytical philosophy and historical materialism (as clearly stated 
> in 
> the foreword on "Karl Marx's Theory of History"). Analytical Marxism 
> 
> was not defending all Marxism, but only various pieces of Marxism 
> (except dialectical thinking). Now at that time Cohen was himself 
> quite 
> close to Marxism, which was not the case of all his fellow 
> Analytical 
> Marxists (see Elster's Making sense of Marx). He finally failed to 
> defend Marxism since he gave up historical materialism in the first 
> 
> half of the 1980s (this shift can be read in "History, Labour and 
> Freedom"). In a sense, he gave another argument for those who think 
> 
> that analytical philosophy does not fit with Marxism.
> 
> 

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Re: [Marxism] A critique of G.A. Cohen

[tarrit8]

I agree with you Jim. I think this was one of the main reasons. Most 
analytical philosophers were quite conservative, so that analytical 
philosophy is taken as conservative in continental Europe (that is more 
or less Europe except Britain), so that most of the 'continental' 
Marxists rather reject it a priori.
As for Cohen, he was brought up as a Marxist, and when he came in 
Oxford, he was already a Marxist so he did not have to quarrel against 
that conservatism, he took analytical philosophy as a device for any 
philosophical understanding. He explains this at some length in the 
second chapter of "If you're an Egalitarian...". The reason why he 
easily endorsed analytical philosophy is more or less the same reason 
why he could give up Marxism, stating that being brought up in thinking 
something is not the good reason for thinking it.

Another related reason is that Cohen used to be one of the leaders of 
the Analytical Marxism group (together with John Roemer, Jon 
Elster...). One of his main achievements was to associate explicitly 
analytical philosophy and historical materialism (as clearly stated in 
the foreword on "Karl Marx's Theory of History"). Analytical Marxism 
was not defending all Marxism, but only various pieces of Marxism 
(except dialectical thinking). Now at that time Cohen was himself quite 
close to Marxism, which was not the case of all his fellow Analytical 
Marxists (see Elster's Making sense of Marx). He finally failed to 
defend Marxism since he gave up historical materialism in the first 
half of the 1980s (this shift can be read in "History, Labour and 
Freedom"). In a sense, he gave another argument for those who think 
that analytical philosophy does not fit with Marxism.


-Original Message-
From: "farmela...@juno.com" 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] A critique of G.A. Cohen
To: marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
Message-ID: <20090811.134800.2972...@webmail19.vgs.untd.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1


Fabien,

What would reasons would you give
for G.A. Cohen's not making that
much of an impact in Europe?

Would that be due to the fact that
he was an analytical philosopher,
while most European philosophers who
were interested in Marxism tended
to identify with the continental
tradition?

Jim Farmelant




-Original Message-
From: marxism-requ...@lists.econ.utah.edu
To: tarr...@aol.com
Sent: Tue, Aug 11, 2009 8:00 pm
Subject: Marxism Digest, Vol 70, Issue 31



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Today's Topics:

   1. Re:  Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"
  (mina khanlarzadeh)
   2. Re:  Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"
  (Rohan Gaiswinkler)
   3. Re:  [Spa] Eva Per?n in Washington: Shock philantropy
  ( L?ko Willms )
   4. Re:  Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"
  (Rohan Gaiswinkler)
   5.  The yanki bases and Latin American sovereignty (Nasir Khan)
   6.  Ambassador Llorens Invites Frente Nacional for a "Chat"
  (Greg McDonald)
   7.  Couple of newspaper obits for Jeyy Cohen (farmela...@juno.com)
   8. Re:  The Indonesian left and Green Left Weekly (Nick Fredman)
   9. Re:  The Hurt Locker (Louis Proyect)
  10.  In Defense of Disruption (Greg McDonald)
  11. Re:  [Spa] Eva Per?n in Washington: Shock philantropy
  (Nestor Gorojovsky)
  12.  General Strike Comics: We're Invincible or A Tale of the
  Relentless Sycophant (Christopher Hutchinson)
  13. Re:  A critique of G.A. Cohen (tarr...@aol.com)
  14.  Kritikos V.6 July-August 2009 (Nicholas Ruiz III)
  15. Re:  A critique of G.A. Cohen (farmela...@juno.com)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:30:08 -0400
From: mina khanlarzadeh 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a
lot"
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition

Message-ID:
<3d5371650908102130jf64b457oebab8786067be...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Ahmadinejad is not an anti-imperialist. He is anti some selective
imperialists such as the US and loves the US at the same time. He was 
hurt
that Obama didn't send him a congratulation letter after the election. 
Look
at his relationship with Russia, nothing about that is anti-imperialist 
or
pro-independence.

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> Michael Friedman wrote:
> > So, Lou, in practical terms, are you suggesting that we should
> > organize protests against the Iranian regime's torture or beating or
> >

[Marxism] [Spa] Argentina in the Latin American scenario (1 of 2)

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

Though I am not in a position to translate, I guess that this conference 
by the Argentinean Marxist Enrique Lacolla may serve as a general 
introduction to the issue. I assume that those really interested in 
Latin American issues will be able to read Spanish.

 Mensaje original 
 From the Reconquista Popular mailing list

Argentina en el contexto latinoamericano

El siguiente es el texto ampliado de una conferencia dictada el 8.07.09 
en el Obispo Mercadillo, con el auspicio de la Asociación Belgrano, 
dentro del marco de tareas propuestas para el presente año por su Taller 
de Pensamiento Nacional.

La Argentina o si se quiere su opinión pública de clase media y la 
intelligentsia, han estado siempre bastante informados de lo que 
acontece en el mundo. Cosa que es buena, en la medida en que la 
situación internacional y la política externa son en efecto factores 
decisivos para configurar a un país como tal. La importancia relativa de 
una nación se observa por la escala en que se esta encuentra en relación 
a las demás.

Esa percepción de que hablamos, sin embargo, entre nosotros por lo 
general ha seguido una óptica que nos ve en relación al mundo 
desarrollado. A Europa y Estados Unidos, esencialmente. En la 
perspectiva de la historia oficial o desde el ángulo de visión de 
nuestras clases ilustradas no se ha tenido en cuenta la evolución de 
América latina o se ha prestado una atención secundaria a esta, como no 
sea en sus aspectos económicos más inmediatos, como por ejemplo en las 
proyecciones del Mercosur en lo que se refiere a las posibilidades que 
este ofrece para hacer negocios. Sin embargo la Argentina sólo puede 
tener una dimensión seria si se reconoce a sí misma como parte de un 
ámbito político continental, el único donde puede darse una 
macroeconomía y el único que puede proveer de peso específico a los 
países latinoamericanos para relacionarse en un pie de igualdad con el 
resto del mundo.

La distorsión del pasado por obra de la historia oficial ha llevado al 
desconocimiento de la situación estratégica de Iberoamérica en su 
espacio geopolítico. Ahora bien, no se puede prestar una atención 
marginal a un asunto que es de importancia decisiva para la definición 
de nuestro futuro y el de los otros países de América del Sur.

No siempre fue así, sin embargo. No siempre nuestros vecinos y hermanos 
fueron, para el hombre común, asteroides que, como nosotros mismos, 
derivaban en el espacio siguiendo la órbita de unos polos de atracción 
que variaban según quien ganase la primacía en el hemisferio norte. Cada 
cual a su manera, los prohombres de la Independencia -San Martín, 
Bolívar, Moreno, Belgrano, Monteagudo y O’Higgins- soñaron con una 
Patria Grande de la que se desprendería la unidad del conjunto de los 
países de América latina. Su no concreción en la época de la 
Independencia dejó a estos países a la deriva, ofreciéndolos como presa 
fácil para el interés externo y para los grupos locales que se 
propusieron girar en la órbita de este, porque ello les convenía a los 
fines de construir su poderío y usufructuar casi en exclusiva de bienes 
que correspondían a la comunidad entera.

Quizá por entonces las condiciones objetivas para la unidad de 
Iberoamérica no se daban, al haber fracasado la revolución liberal en 
España y al hacerse evidente que incluso en esta no había “quórum” para 
otorgar un tratamiento equitativo a las Américas. En las Cortes de Cádiz 
el requerimiento de la igualdad de derechos entre los nacidos en este 
continente y los españoles de la Península tropezó con la hostilidad del 
llamado partido “servil” –factótum del absolutismo- y la indiferencia o 
la desconfianza de los liberales.

Los obstáculos físicos que por aquella época la geografía oponía a una 
nación hispanoamericana integrada, faltando el núcleo que podría haber 
actuado como factor centrípeto –esto es, España-, sumados a la 
influencia extranjera y al interés de las oligarquías portuarias 
vinculadas al mercado externo, hicieron fracasar el sueño grande, 
sofocando asimismo a posibilidad de constituir naciones separadas pero 
más o menos bien integradas en torno de criterios que privilegiasen el 
desarrollo y la democracia. En su lugar se nos ofrecieron unos países 
restringidos en su espacio, consagrados al monocultivo y afectados por 
una ecuación que combinaba la represión salvaje y las instancias 
pseudolegales para constituir sociedades sin un sentido claro de su 
identidad e influidas por una deformación cultural operada bajo la 
influencia de todos esos factores; muchos de los cuales siguen 
gravitando hoy contra los esfuerzos para revertir sus términos.

El drama de la inexistencia de una Nación latinoamericana va de la mano 
con la dificultad de constituir sociedades democráticas. Es decir, bien 
organizadas incluso en los países que componen ese marco ideal y aun no 
realizado. El estamento conservador se ha opuesto siempre, a sangre y 
fuego o con expedientes “le

[Marxism] priceless - Att Gen Holder's "correct" and "incorrect" waterboarding

[Dennis Brasky]

>
> "Tortured logic"
> Attorney General Holder is going to prosecute those who tortured -- but
> only if they didn't do it right
> digby
>
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/10/torture/index.html
>
>

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Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"

[Louis Proyect]

Shawn Redden wrote:
> You insist there's only one protest movement in Iran, and I think it's
> more nuanced than that.

Don't you read your own bullshit? Where's the nuance in this 
saliva-flecked rant?

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.politics.marxism.marxmail/120575/match=iran

What I see is a 'revolution' with its operational headquarters
located on a handful of English-language websites and in a few
English-language news organizations (staffed by 'reporters' like Ivan
Watson) that give voice to myriad anonymous sources, talk-show hosts,
and Foundation-funded talking heads towing the same political line.

I hear about rallies of 'millions' of people in the streets, but
unless I blindly accept and trust the NY Times or CNN, I have no way
to know whether that's true.  The one commonality (besides  resource
wealth) that Iran does have with Venezuela is a relentless campaign
of media demonization aimed at regime change.

We now have a 'revolution' that has obtained full spectrum dominance
of the media (including Pacifica from what I've heard) while
articulating no political line and throwing up the Shah to cry about
government repression.

To ignore that reality - the one most relevant to us as
internationalists - while focusing like a laser on another one, is
problematic to say the least.




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Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"

[Louis Proyect]

Shawn Redden wrote:
> For the life of me, I cannot understand your pathological and
> disproportionate obsession with the unfairness of the Iranian
> electoral system and the meanness of the Iranian political state at a
> time when such criticism dovetails exquisitely with the line espoused
> by the US State Department and your Paper of Record.

Of course you can understand. People like you are screaming bloody 
murder about Iranian students being just like the Venezuelan students 
who protest Chavez. This is the heart of the debate. If this charge was 
never made by idiots like James Petras or MRZine, I never would have 
been posting so much about Iran.

> In a world with more than a few corrupt electoral systems and unfair
> governments, where the class struggle manifests itself in a myriad of
> ways places every day, it makes no sense to me that you continue to
> whale away in such a banal and divisive fashion.

What is that you are so afraid of? That Hillary Clinton will read 
Marxmail and quote me saying, "Look, we have to move now against Iran 
because the unrepentant Marxist opposed Ahmadinejad as well". Isn't that 
idiotic? There's nobody here but us Marxists and nobody reads the 
archives except people trying to keep track of debates within Marxism.

> Judging from your invective on the subject, this appears to have more
> to do with a personal vendetta against someone who has long since
> unsubbed from your mailing list than anything else.

What a ludicrous notion. I have written very little about Iran over the 
past 2 years or so. I began writing again in June because of the smear 
campaign directed against the Iranian protest movement by the 
judgment-impaired James Petras and assorted pinheads on MRZine. If they 
kept their traps shut, I never would have written a word.





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Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"

[Shawn Redden]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

> This mailing list is not the proper arena to build an antiwar movement.
> It is rather a place to sharpen our class analyses of various movements
> and governments around the world without regard to borders.
>
> We are part
> of a worldwide socialist movement that is trying to grow more powerful
> after decades of crisis and implosion.

Remind me how your scornful (yet empty) retort to Comrade Stephens's
post of Clinton's quote served this end?

To remind readers, it went something like this:

"It is galling to read this sort of thing when Iran has now admitted to
torturing the jailed protesters."

When Eli challenged the emptiness of this statement, you responded
with this olive branch:

"I guess just the sheer crudeness of it more than anything else. It is
hard for me to figure out which is more reductionist, the Marcyite
press or MRZine. Oh well, maybe we have different goals. I am trying
to solidarize with the Iranian left while people like the Party for
Liberation and Socialism are probably hoping that one of the articles
will pop up on an official Iranian website, just like MRZine. Talk
about diminished expectations."


> If Shawn wants to organize protests against...

Blah, blah, blah.

I prefer to lurk on this list and learn, as I have done for many
years.  In doing so I have gained a far better understanding of the
world, which I have attempted to bring into the classroom.  But your
decision, Comrade Proyect, to denounce anyone who even alludes to the
campaign against Iran as somehow playing into the hands of the Iranian
government is the height of myopia, as you pidgeonhole the very people
with whom you're claiming to solidarize in the most petty and juvenile
manner imagineable.


> Our purpose here should be to understand Iranian society and the class
> conflict there. For that purpose, you need to read Val Moghadam, Ervand
> Abrahamian, Maziar Nehfooz, Asef Bayat and others.

Nobody disagrees with this, Louis.  You've deluded yourself into
believing that some of us do, but that's your problem.  I appreciate
the information you've sent to the list (and, to me, off list)
concerning Iranian society, politics and culture.   I have sought out
additional information from people who take their jobs as scholars,
reporters, academics, and activists seriously, too.  But when you post
trash analysis consisting of nothing but hearsay from anonymous
propagandists from the Upper West Side, it is our duty to call a spade
a spade and remind readers of the agenda you're stovepiping onto
Marxmail, even if that means being called a 'Marcyite' or 'Marcyist'
or 'Marcyoid'.


> If there are subscribers who think that we have no business being
> engaged in discussions about the class struggle inside Iran, please
> contact me privately about how to unsub.

I never said we had no business discussing this, Comrade Proyect.  You
know this, but acknowledging that self-evident fact makes the case you
must make much tougher than confecting a straw man against which to
argue.  So you opt for the latter coupled with horseshit sufficient to
reap a record-breaking harvest come autumn.

For the life of me, I cannot understand your pathological and
disproportionate obsession with the unfairness of the Iranian
electoral system and the meanness of the Iranian political state at a
time when such criticism dovetails exquisitely with the line espoused
by the US State Department and your Paper of Record.

In a world with more than a few corrupt electoral systems and unfair
governments, where the class struggle manifests itself in a myriad of
ways places every day, it makes no sense to me that you continue to
whale away in such a banal and divisive fashion.

Judging from your invective on the subject, this appears to have more
to do with a personal vendetta against someone who has long since
unsubbed from your mailing list than anything else.

Shawn


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Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"

[Louis Proyect]

Shawn Redden wrote:
> The "reflexive, ad hominem attacks" to which I was referring generally
> occur moments after anyone makes a comment which even marginally
> touches upon the United States government's $500,000,000 ratfucking
> campaign in Iran. 

The debate here is not about the US government's subversion. Not a 
single subscriber, at least publicly, has ever backed the NED, the CIA, 
the Soros Open Society, or any other public or private institution's 
meddling in Iran (or Georgia, Ukraine, etc.)

Instead the debate is how to characterize the protest movement in Iran 
that either explicitly or implicitly is likened to Otpor or B92 in 
Serbia, or the student movement in Venezuela. In other words, as 
conscious and willing agents of US imperialism.

The very idea that the moderator of Marxmail and most of its subscribers 
I imagine are involved with what amounts to support of the moral and 
equivalent of the racist student mobs in Venezuela involves a kind of 
cognitive dissonance. For some, like Jacob Levich, the only sensible 
decision was to unsub rather than to be part of a counter-revolutionary 
cabal.

I have read Shawn Redden's posts here for some time here and have gotten 
used to his conspiratorial frame of mind. In his bat/belfry 
consciousness, the CIA was behind the 9/11 attacks and now it is pulling 
the strings in Iran. Instead of analyzing the social and economic causes 
of mass discontent, we get somebody whispering in our ear about "Twitter".

This kind of knuckle-dragging, illiterate, vulgar radicalism (I wouldn't 
even dignify it by calling it Marxism) is unfortunately a function of 
living in a country so politically backward as the US where a poor soul 
like Shawn can constitute such an obstreperous presence on a mailing 
list without ever once giving even the slightest indication that he is 
familiar with the abc's of Marxism.

It is the leftwing equivalent of the "birther" movement and the sort of 
mental haze that has practically destroyed the Pacifica network. Perhaps 
as the class struggle begins to deepen in the US, there will be a 
rebirth of interest in Marxism. When that time comes, the conspiracy 
theorists who drag our movement will become more and more 
marginalized--the sooner the better.


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Re: [Marxism] HItchens and Robert Service on Trotsky

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

Hitchens (before he became a jackass) once wrote a marvelous article on
Trotsky.. I'll have to find the link.

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[Marxism] In the Loop; Hurt Locker

[Louis Proyect]

Two idiotic movies "inspired" by the war in Iraq.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/in-the-loop-hurt-locker/


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[Marxism] HItchens and Robert Service on Trotsky

[Tom Cod]

these talking heads expound on Leon Trotsky at the Hoover Institution:
http://fora.tv/2009/07/28/Uncommon_Knowledge_Christopher_Hitchens_Robert_Service

_
Get your vacation photos on your phone!
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[Marxism] In Defense of Disruption

[Greg McDonald]

http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber08102009.html

Hit the Reset Button on Health Care
In Defense of Disruption

By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

What do:

Rush Limbaugh

Barack Obama

Newt Gingrich

Nancy Pelosi

PhRMA

Families USA

America’s Health Insurance Plans

AARP

Harry Reid

Mitch McConnell

and Fox News

have in common?

They are all freaked out by single payer.

They have all bought the corporate line:

The market has a central place in health insurance.

In contrast, the majority of doctors.

The majority of nurses.

And the majority of the American people are not freaked out by single payer.

To the contrary.

They favor single payer.

They all agree — the market has no place in health insurance.

Single payer would eliminate the 1,300 private payers (insurance companies).

And replace them with one public single payer.

As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of
Medicine puts it:

Single payer is not only the best option.

It’s the only option that will control costs and cover everyone.

We’ve been making noise about single payer all year, beginning in May,
when we asked Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana)
to invite one single payer advocate to testify at three days of
hearings before the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator Baucus refused, ordered us arrested, and charged us with
“disruption of Congress.”

We’ve been disrupting ever since — on Capitol Hill.

And at town hall meetings around the country.

And the right wing has taken a page from our playbook.

They too have started disrupting the Democrats.

Not because the Democrats are in bed with the insurance and
pharmaceutical corporations (which they are.)

But because they believe that Obamacare is back door single payer
(which it surely isn’t — if it were, why would the insurance industry
and pharmaceutical industry be supporting it?)

The right wing has garnered more attention because they have bigger
institutional megaphones — Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the mainstream
media.

Today, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, in an article in USA Today,
called the right wing protests “un-American.”

They are not “un-American” any more than we are “un-American.”

The right wing is right to seek to defeat Obamacare — with non violent
civil disobendience, if necessary.

They are seeking to defeat Obamacare for their own right wing reasons
(primarily because they fear creeping socialism.)

We seek to defeat Obamacare because it’s a bailout of the insurance
and pharmaceutical industries.

And it won’t deliver universal health care to the American people.

Time to scrap Obamacare.

And start from scratch.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and founder of
singlepayeraction.org


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Re: [Marxism] The Hurt Locker

[Louis Proyect]

J Rothermel wrote:
> *The Hurt Locker  *
> 
> /War is hell… until Oscar night./
> 
> _
> 
> “The Hurt Locker” is marketed as 2009’s Best Picture. Limited release 
> and a blockbuster media campaign are creating an atmosphere of 
> inevitability: this is the movie we must all see. Reviewers love a 
> serious (i.e. responsible and “non-partisan”) war movie they can 
> bloviate about, patting themselves and the movie’s producers on the back 
> for tackling the Big Issues. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 
> Sciences will take its own turn at the job in February 2010.

I'll be reviewing this piece of junk with "In the Loop", another crappy 
movie about Mideast war, later in the day.


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Re: [Marxism] The Indonesian left and Green Left Weekly

[Nick Fredman]

This is from the Green Left list, with me responding to DSP member  
Chris Slee.

On 11/08/2009, at 7:07 PM, slee_c wrote:
> --- In greenleft_discuss...@yahoogroups.com, "red_april65"  
>  wrote:
> >
> >
> > The Indonesian Left and Green Left Weekly
> > by Max Lane
> >
> > http://directaction.org.au/issue14/the_indonesian_left_and_green_left_weekly
>
> I am inclined to agree that there was no significant difference  
> between the 3 teams in the Indonesian presidential election, and  
> that calling for a boycott may have been preferable to calling for a  
> vote for those using anti-neoliberal rhetoric. But this is a  
> tactical question.
>

As was the number of previous examples of the PRD giving critical  
support in various ways to various bourgeois politicians and forces,  
which Max supported, but does not mention here. As was, as Chris has  
pointed out before, the recent and successful tactic of the Malaysian  
Socialist Party in standing candidates under the banner of a bourgeois  
party, a tactic Max appears to agree with. As was the PKI's critical  
(and often uncritical) support for Sukarno, and I know Max has a soft  
spot for Bung [Brother] Karno. All of these tactics have been  
denounced in toto, and as a matter of principle, by some super- 
revolutionaries. But as Trotsky says somewhere, if it suits us, we'll  
make an alliance with the devil and his mother too, and even with  
social democrats.

Unfortunately it's hard for the non-Indonesian reader to assess what  
the PRD has been saying and doing recently in an objective and  
balanced way, firstly because Green Left has lacked some of its  
previous resources to regularly translate material from and analyse  
events in Indonesia (the more prosaic reason for recent lack of  
coverage, as opposed to Max's claims). And secondly Max's  
representation of events clearly distorts what's readily available in  
English, so it's unfortunately hard to be confident about his version  
of Indonesian sources.

For example Max claims:

> Now the PRD/Papernas line is framed within the assertion that in the  
> 2009 presidential election there was a “contest between pro-people  
> policies versus pro-capital ones”. The alleged champion of the “pro- 
> people policies” is “Prabowo Subiyanto...The new PRD/Papernas line  
> was oriented towards giving electoral support to General Prabowo

Well you'll have to excuse me for interpreting the actual article, as  
opposed to the minimalist quotes Max selects, as meaning that the  
stated Papernas line was framed within and oriented towards organising  
mass actions and making demands on bourgeois politicians while  
explaining the latter's demagogic nature pretty clearly:

 From http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/801/41260

> Indonesia: Challenging the neo-liberal regime
>
> More than 2500 people from the Volunteers of People’s Struggle for  
> the Liberation of Motherland (SPARTAN) held a festive anti- 
> neoliberalism protest in front of the National Election Commission  
> on July 1 in Jakarta.
>
> The multi-sector coalition, initiated by the People’s Democratic  
> Party (PRD) to intervene in the 2009 election, held similar protests  
> involving more than 1200 people in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi.
>
> Hundreds rallied in Surabaya, Medan, Lampung, and protests occurred  
> in 11 other cities...
>
> ...Until the rise of neoliberalism as an issue in this year’s  
> presidential election, previous electoral contests did not involve a  
> contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones.
>
> However, the bitter truth is that this development is not directly  
> caused by any advances for progressive and democratic forces.  
> Rather, it comes from a conflict within the oligarchic elites. This  
> specifically involves Prabowo Subiyanto, a retired lieutenant- 
> general who commanded the notorious Kopasus elite troops involved in  
> the kidnappings and killings of pro-democracy activists in 1998.
>
> Lately, the content of Prabowo’s speeches are almost identical to  
> the arguments of progressives in recent years. This is both the way  
> he explains the nature of neoliberalism as well as, to a degree, the  
> proposed economic solutions.
>
> Prabowo is running for vice-president with the presidential  
> candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri in this election. Is his populism an  
> illusion, considering that Megawati carried out a neoliberal agenda  
> when she was in power between 2001-2004?
>
> Only time will tell...
>
> ...[Papernas is among] those who focus their attack against the most  
> obvious representation of neoliberalism, Yudhoyono, while remaining  
> critical of the other candidates.
>
> For this sector, intervening in the elections is a way of promoting,  
> and seeking to organise around, anti-neoliberal policies. This is  
> what the SPARTAN-organised protests have sought to do.
>
> Supporting this view, the National Liberation Party of Unity  
> (Papernas) have said that Yudho

[Marxism] Couple of newspaper obits for Jeyy Cohen

[farmela...@juno.com]

In the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/10/ga-cohen-obituary

In the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6790514.ece




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[Marxism] Ambassador Llorens Invites Frente Nacional for a "Chat"

[Greg McDonald]

http://hondurasoye.wordpress.com/

Ambassador Llorens Invites Frente Nacional for a “Chat”
2009 AUGUST 10

by hcvanalysis


In an article from Prensa Latina that appeared on the website of
Honduras en Lucha, we learn that Hugo Llorens, the inevitably
duplicitous US Ambassador and close colleague of John Negroponte,
invited a delegation from Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado to
meet with him a few days ago.  The article, in Spanish, appears below.

Here is a summary of the article in English — no official translation

In a meeting of an assembly of Frente Nacional on Saturday, Israel
Salinas, Secretary-General of the Federacion Unitaria de Trabajadores
(FUTH) told participants that a five member delegation met with
Ambassador Llorens.

Salinas stressed that el Frente did not request the meeting, but that
it came at Llorens invitation.

Five members of el Frente participated in the meeting. Llorens
explained that he remains in Tegucigalpa, unlike most ambassadors from
around the world, at the request of Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton, so that he can be there to help resolve the problem.

Salinas said they told Llorens that they have plenty of reasons to
know that the US knows what day and what hour Micheletti and his
golpistas will be giving up power.

El Frente made it clear that if the constitutional president, Manuel
Zelaya, is not returned to power by the election on November 29, or if
he is returned only a few days before, the popular movement will
boycott the elections.

The Ambassador changed color and became pale at having heard this firm
position from el Frente.

Salinas explained that in addition to withdrawing Ambassador Llorens,
the US could apply concrete measures such as withdrawing military and
economic support from Honduras, not just withdrawing the four
diplomatic visas of the golpistas as had been done already.

The Obama administration has not officially recognized that the
overthrow by the military of President Zelaya, his kidnapping, and
transport to Costa Rica on June 28 was a coup d’etat.





PRENSA LATINA ARTICLE

domingo 9 de agosto de 2009


Frente de resistencia de Honduras censura política de EE.UU.
Tegucigalpa, 9 ago (PL) El Frente Nacional contra el golpe de Estado
de Honduras criticó al embajador de Estados Unidos, Hugo Llorens, la
doble política del gobierno de ese país ante el golpe, reveló hoy un
líder del movimiento.


Israel Salinas, secretario general de la Federación Unitaria de
Trabajadores (FUTH), informó que una delegación del Frente se
entrevistó ayer con Llorens, a solicitud del diplomático
norteamericano.

Fue una entrevista que no solicitamos, no le pedimos audiencia,
precisó Salinas, al informar sobre la reunión a los participantes en
una asamblea nacional del Frente, celebrada esta tarde.

Añadió que una delegación de cinco dirigentes del Frente, entre
quienes se encontraba, acudió a escuchar los puntos de vista del
gobierno estadounidense, pero también a expresar las posiciones del
movimiento popular.

Salinas indicó que en primer lugar le expresaron a Llorens la crítica
a la doble postura del gobierno de Barack Obama, que por un lado
censura públicamente el golpe mientras el Pentágono les da apoyo a los
militares hondureños.

Añadió que en su respuesta, el diplomático aseguró que lo ocurrido el
28 de junio fue un golpe de estado y negó el respaldo del Departamento
de Defensa a los golpistas.

Dijo que Llorens les explicó que permanecía en Tegucigalpa, a
diferencia de los embajadores del resto del mundo, a solicitud de la
secretaria de Estado, Hillary Clinton, “para que pueda aquí ayudar a
resolver el problema”.

Salinas aseguró que los dirigentes del Frente le plantearon al
diplomático que tienen sobradas razones para saber que Estados Unidos
sabe el día y la hora que Roberto Micheletti y los otros golpistas
puden abandonar el poder.

Apuntó que el Frente le aclaró a Llorens que si el presidente
constitucional, Manuel Zelaya, no ha retornado al poder para las
elecciones del 29 de noviembre o lo hace poco antes, el movimiento
popular va a boicotear los comicios.

El embajador cambió de color, se puso pálido, al escuchar la firme
posición del Frente de Resistencia sobre el tema, dijo.

El dirigente sindical explicó que también le expusieron a Llorens que
Estados Unidos puede aplicar medidas concretas, como el retiro real de
la ayuda militar y económica, no sólo la suspensión de cuatro visas
diplomáticas a los golpistas, como ha hecho.

La administración Obama aún no ha reconocido oficialmente que el
derrocamiento por las fuerzas armadas de Zelaya, su secuestro y
traslado a la fuerza a Costa Rica el 28 de junio fue un folpe de
estado.

pgh/rl

Fuente: www.prensa-latina.cu

http://hondurasenlucha.blogspot.com/2009/08/frente-de-resistencia-de-honduras.html


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[Marxism] The yanki bases and Latin American sovereignty

[Nasir Khan]

  Reflections of Fidel: The yanki bases and Latin American sovereignty

The concept of nation emerged from the sum of common elements like
history, language, culture, customs, laws, institutions and others
related to the material and spiritual life of human communities.

The peoples of America, for whose freedom Bolívar undertook the great
feats which made him the liberator of the peoples, were called on by
him to create, as he said: “The greatest nation of the world, less
through its extension and wealth than through its freedom and glory.”

In Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre waged the final battle against the
empire that had converted a large part of this continent into the
royal property of the Spanish crown for more than 300 years.

It is the same America that dozens of years later, and after it had
already been encroached on by the nascent yanki empire, Martí named
Our America.

Continues >> http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/agosto/lun10/reflexiones.html


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Re: [Marxism] Clinton: "behind the scenes, we were doing a lot"

[Rohan Gaiswinkler]

Eli Stephens:

Iran has a gun pointed at its head. Crying "those Iranians torture
their prisoners" is just helping someone to pull the trigger, just as
those who felt it the "principled" thing to do to denounce Saddam
Hussein for his transgressions contributed to the death of more than a
million Iraqis. This isn't an idle theoretical debate. It's a debate
with very real, or at least potentially very real, consequences.

Me:

This, in context, is a blatant call for apologism that I emphatically reject.  
Are we to pretend Iran doesn't use quasi-state shocktroopers (so-called 
Revolutionary Guard) who are indoctrinated from about four years old to devote 
their lives to crushing ANY opposition to the Iranian state or government?  The 
Iranian people deserve better than our solidarity with Ahmadinejad ahead of 
them.

Rohan G



  
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