date:20100116

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Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-01-14 at 10:23:12 in  about 
Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is   Dead 
at 98:


  About the small-scale German unification facilitated by the German-French 
war of 1870-71:
 
   sorry but IMHO, basic logic and moral reasoning will illuminate the
 basic differences.  The Civil War was a necessary war that liberated
 millions from slavery.  

  which was a historic necessity for the development of capitalism, which 
needs free labor (free of property). The slave economy grew to a cancer 
on the US-american capital, in order to exist, the slavocracy had to expand 
to other states besides Dixieland. 

 The Prussian war did no such thing at all but was solely 

   It was not a Prussian war. The positive thing was that the Prussian 
aristocracy managed to arouse a popular national mobilisation of all of 
Germany, to draw the southern German principalities into the common war 
effort, and thus lay the basis for the proclamation of the second Reich 
(empire) by the Prussian king in Versailles. 

 designed to advance the imperial interests of greater Germany 

  like the US civil war, it was a historic necessity to unite the German nation 
into one nation state, both as national internal market for capital and as the 
forum in which the workers movement could grow in a larger, national scale 
instead of those little duodez principalities. 

 and thus merited no support from progressive people.

   both. But both wars were also mixed bags. The Union originally had not the 
intention of liberating the slaves, it only stumbled towards it during the war. 

  The German war of 1870/71 not only brought most of Germany together in 
one state, and not only overthrew Boustrapa [1], but also allied with the 
French bourgeoisie against the French workers. 

   One has to analyse the contradictory reality. 



Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany

visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in 
German


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Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is Dead at 98

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Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-01-14 at 14:52:21 in  about 
Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is   Dead 
at 98:
 
 
  Again, the war 

   of 1870/71

 was not against the  other German states but against France 
 which was used as a foil -- the bogeyman or lightning rod --
  to motivate everyone to mobilize under one flag, 

  exactly. 

 something that surely would have happened anyway peacefully 
 in short order as no one was in any position to credibly oppose it, 

  all the powers that be, especially in the Southern German kingdoms and 
principalities 

 particularly when coming from the
 most industrialized and militarily powerful country in Europe.

  which German was not yet at that point in time. Germany was a late comer, 
very much so, _because_ of its political splintering over the centuries. 

  And to make that clear, too: Prussia was not a big power for centuries. It 
rose only in the 18th century. 


Cheers,
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany



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Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Re sistance, Is Dead at 98

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S. Artesian (sartes...@earthlink.net) wrote on 2010-01-14 at 15:43:01 in  
about Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is 
Dead at 98:
 
 
 Nestor in a second piece provides extensive quotes from Mehring on the
 situation to bolster his argument of Marx's and Engels' wholehearted
 endorsement of Prussia, and support for Prussia's war as a war of national
 unity.  Except... 

   that the war was not a Prussian war, but a Prussian led German war, and 
the workers did not endorse Prussia, but the German unification, which was a 
historic necessity for both the capitalist class and the working class (and 
executed for them by the landed aristocracy, because the bourgeoisie was 
too weak and too cowardly in 1848 to unify the German nation under their 
leadership). 


Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany



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Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is Dead at 98

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Shane Mage (shm...@pipeline.com) wrote on 2010-01-14 at 17:24:31 in  
about Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is 
Dead at 98:
 
 
   Berlin has given  
 virtually nothing (Hegel is the sole exception) to our cultural and  
 spiritual heritage.  
 
  How about David Bowie? 


Cheers,
L.W.

Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany



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Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is Dead at 98

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S. Artesian (sartes...@earthlink.net) wrote on 2010-01-14 at 18:30:10 in  
about Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is 
Dead at 98:
 
 
 So-- I know 8 or 9 years is a long time.  I agree it's a long time.  But 
 first principles and fundamental rules are supposed to be timeless, no? 
 They apply in all ages under all conditions.  

  No, principles arise from the objective conditions. 

  They don't have any existence in and by themselves. 


Cheers,
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany



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[Marxism] FW: Edmond Kovacs is dead at 85

2010-01-16 Thread Fred Feldman

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  _  

From: Leslie Evans [mailto:lbev...@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2010 2:21 AM
To: Leslie Evans
Subject: Edmond Kovacs is dead at 85

 

Edmond Kovacs, a lifelong socialist, died in Los Angeles today at the age of
85. He was born in Austria in April 1924. His father was a member of the
Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party and took part in the Schutzbund
uprising against the protofascist Dolfuss regime in 1934, during which
Edmond at the age of ten carried messages to the front lines. At sixteen his
family emigrated to the United States. After high school he joined the army,
where he enrolled in the famed 10th Mountain Division, ski troops that
underwent lengthy training in the Rocky Mountains before being dispatched to
Italy in the last days of the war, in early 1945. Edmond took part in the
assault on Riva Ridge, a 1500 foot vertical assault on a heavily fortified
German position in which the ski troops rapelled up ropes with pitons, an
approach the Germans had considered to be impossible. His unit took 50
percent casualties.

 

Back in the United States he became a member of the Trotskyist Socialist
Workers Party. Trained as a chemist, he worked in aircraft in Southern
California until he was blacklisted during the McCarthy witchhunt. At that
point his father taught him watch-making and thereafter he made his living
operating a small jewelry store. Under the party name Theodore Edwards for
many years he hosted a weekly radio broadcast on KPFK radio and was a
frequent speaker at party forums. A crack shot and an athlete, on several
occasions over the years he defended himself from armed gunmen who tried to
rob his store, once defending his mother who was in the store at the time.
The last of these episodes took place in 1983 when three anti-Castro Cubans
entered his store in Glendale. Two of them drew pistols while a third began
to pull a shotgun from under his coat. Already facing two drawn guns Edmond
grabbed his own gun and shot it out with the robbers, killing one, wounding
another, and holding the man with the shotgun until police arrived. The SWP,
then in the early stages of its planned break from the Fourth International,
was looking for grounds to expel older members who were unlikely to agree to
its still unstated new policy. Edmond was the first victim, being put on
trial in Los Angeles and expelled from the party over a sudden sympathy for
the robbers. 

 

Afterward he was a founding member of Socialist Action, and later of
Solidarity, in which he was still active at the time of his death. Until his
late sixties he was a fine bicyclist, often going on hundred mile rides with
other cyclists. His wife of some fifty years, Shirley Kovacs, died in late
October, preceding Edmond by less than three months. Over the fall his
breathing became extremely labored, which he attributed to asthma, from
which he has suffered for many years. Finally, on January 12 he drove to his
HMO, where he was hospitalized. An MRI revealed that he had a very large
growth in his throat that was pressing on his airway. This proved to be a
fast-growing cancer, which had also spread to his lungs. That night he
lapsed into a coma from which he did not awaken. A small number of his
friends gathered at his bedside this morning, and when his doctors confirmed
that his situation was hopeless his breathing tube was withdrawn and he
died. A fighter to the end, we saw that his heart continued to beat for ten
minutes after he had stopped breathing. I first met Edmond in the fall of
1961 and was one of the few people who remained close to him in his last
years. I will miss him greatly. 

 

Leslie Evans

Los Angeles


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[Marxism] Even Charles Manson could beat him now

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(The author of this article was on a panel discussion on Obama with Doug 
Henwood and Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Brecht Forum last year. Younge and 
Coates were boosters of Obama while Doug took the opposite position. 
Younge seems to have lost his enthusiasm for obvious reasons, but still 
attributes Obama's unpopularity largely to white racism. Go to the link 
below to hear interviews with American workers who are fed up with the 
economy and the President who presides over it.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/16/gary-younge-obama-first-year

Even Charles Manson could beat him now
by Gary Younge'

One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at 
this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the 
optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?


Barack Obama's 'rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially 
exclusive but they have also proved highly effective.' Photograph: Jewel 
Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle 
rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the 
Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with 
families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for 
food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this 
part of America has become a routine part of life.

More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; 
half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food 
stamps. This Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no 
one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the 
old Route 23 – the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd 
Country native) sang in Readin', Rightin', Route 23. It was the road 
that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and 
Cleveland and the good life they had never seen. Now those cities are 
broke and there's nowhere left to go.

We're getting more and more people coming here as time goes by, says 
Tom Price, who helps administer the church's Feed My Sheep pantry. The 
bottom's just fallen out of it all. He blames it on Barack Obama. Is 
there a direct correlation [between Obama's victory and the region's bad 
times]? I don't know. But I do know a lot of people are hurting.

Part 1, Meet the 9-12ers - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio

A week may be a long time in politics. But a year has not been enough 
for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy, 
deal with the situation he inherited or defuse the barbed charges of his 
detractors. For many the change that Obama promised when he was 
inaugurated a year on Wednesday has ended up being a change for the 
worse. Unemployment is rising, houses prices are falling, unpopular wars 
are still raging. After 100 days only Ronald Reagan had higher approval 
ratings for his first few months in office than Obama. But as his first 
year draws to a close nobody has had lower ratings at this stage since 
Dwight Eisenhower.

Part 2, Miner issue - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio

Keith Bartley, Floyd County's Democratic chairman, says one key reason 
why Obama's such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap 
and trade policy on the coal industry. Lt Governor Daniel Mongiardo, the 
Democratic frontrunner in Kentucky's senatorial race later this year, 
says he would not want Obama to come and stump for him on the campaign 
trail, particularly because of his environmental policies. With some of 
the positions he has taken, especially on coal, no. He certainly can't 
come into eastern or western Kentucky and help. Nor would I want him to.

But the disenchantment goes beyond one region or one industry. The 
official narrative of Obama's inauguration – the fairytale most of the 
US media told itself and that the international community wanted to 
believe – was that after a rancourous campaign a divided country came 
together to celebrate the historic election of its first 
African-American president. The reality was always quite different. The 
editor of the Grayson County News Gazette in Leitchfield, a small town 
230 miles west of Prestonsburg, recalls that the day after the election 
much of the area wore sombre faces. The week he was elected gun sales 
across the country leapt about 50% compared with the same period the 
year before.

For all of his aspirations for bipartisanship, after the first three 
months Obama had the most polarised early job approval ratings of any 
president in the past four decades. The gap between how Democrats and 
Republicans rated him at this stage was greater than George Bush Jr's in 
2001 and twice as high as

[Marxism] Patrick Cockburn on Haiti

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-the-us-is-failing-haiti-ndash-again-1869539.html
January 16, 2010
Patrick Cockburn: The US is failing Haiti - again
There is nobody to co-ordinate the most rudimentary relief and rescue
efforts

The US-run aid effort for Haiti is beginning to look chillingly similar
to the criminally slow and disorganised US government support for New
Orleans after it was devastated by hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Five years ago President Bush was famously mute and detached when the
levees broke in Louisiana. By way of contrast, President Obama was
promising Haitians that everything would be done for survivors within
hours of the calamity.

The rhetoric from Washington has been very different during these two
disasters, but the outcome may be much the same. In both cases very
little aid arrived at the time it was most needed and, in the case of
Port-au-Prince, when people trapped under collapsed buildings were still
alive. When foreign rescue teams with heavy lifting gear does come it
will be too late. No wonder enraged Haitians are building roadblocks out
of rocks and dead bodies.

In New Orleans and Port-au-Prince there is the same official terror of
looting by local people, so the first outside help to arrive is in the
shape of armed troops. The US currently has 3,500 soldiers, 2,200
marines and 300 medical personnel on their way to Haiti.

Of course there will be looting because, with shops closed or flattened
by the quake, this is the only way for people to get food and water.
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. I was in
Port-au-Prince in 1994, the last time US troops landed there, when local
people systematically tore apart police stations, taking wood, pipes and
even ripping nails out of the walls. In the police station I was in
there were sudden cries of alarm from those looting the top floor as
they discovered that they could not get back down to the ground because
the entire wooden staircase had been chopped up and stolen.

I have always liked Haitians for their courage, endurance, dignity and
originality. They often manage to avoid despair in the face of the most
crushing disasters or any prospect that their lives will get better.
Their culture, notably their painting and music, is among the most
interesting and vibrant in the world.

It is sad to hear journalists who have rushed to Haiti in the wake of
the earthquake give such misleading and even racist explanations of why
Haitians are so impoverished, living in shanty towns with a minimal
health service, little electricity supply, insufficient clean water and
roads that are like river beds.

This did not happen by accident. In the 19th century it was as if the
colonial powers never forgave Haitians for staging a successful slave
revolt against the French plantation owners. US marines occupied the
country from 1915 to 1934. Between 1957 and 1986 the US supported Papa
Doc and Baby Doc, fearful that they might be replaced by a regime
sympathetic to revolutionary Cuba next door.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic populist priest, was
overthrown by a military coup in 1991, and restored with US help in
1994. But the Americans were always suspicious of any sign of radicalism
from this spokesman for the poor and the outcast and kept him on a tight
lead. Tolerated by President Clinton, Aristide was treated as a pariah
by the Bush administration which systematically undermined him over
three years leading up to a successful rebellion in 2004. That was led
by local gangsters acting on behalf of a kleptocratic Haitian elite and
supported by members of the Republican Party in the US.

So much of the criticism of President Bush has focused on his wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq that his equally culpable actions in Haiti never
attracted condemnation. But if the country is a failed state today,
partly run by the UN, in so far as it is run by anybody, then American
actions over the years have a lot to do with it.

Haitians are now paying the price for this feeble and corrupt government
structure because there is nobody to co-ordinate the most rudimentary
relief and rescue efforts. Its weakness is exacerbated because aid has
been funnelled through foreign NGOs. A justification for this is that
less of the money is likely to be stolen, but this does not mean that
much of it reaches the Haitian poor. A sour Haitian joke says that when
a Haitian minister skims 15 per cent of aid money it is called
corruption and when an NGO or aid agency takes 50 per cent it is
called overheads.

Many of the smaller government aid programmes and NGOs are run by able,
energetic and selfless people, but others, often the larger ones, are

[Marxism] Obama confidant's spine-tingling proposal

2010-01-16 Thread Dennis Brasky

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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/index.html


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[Marxism] WBAI's sad decline

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(A depressing article on NYC's Pacifica network station that I have 
stopped listening to completely, except for Doug Henwood's show that I 
generally check out on his website. I do an occasional interview with 
Prairie Miller about the movies as well. Basically, the station's 
problem is a lack of professionalism. The fact that a nincompoop like 
Mitchell Cohen can end up as a board member supports the conclusion that 
the problems are unresolvable. Cohen is a 9/11 conspiracy nut and 
believes that vitamin C can cure cancer, views that are fairly 
widespread at this awful radio station.)


NY Times, January 16, 2010
99.5 FM, Where the Board Meetings Make the Broadcasts Seem Tame
By MICHAEL POWELL

Comrades, comrades.

Alex Steinberg, a late-middle-aged self-described revolutionary 
Socialist in a pullover sweater, attempted to bring to order to the 
board of WBAI, also known as “free-speech radio.” And even better known 
as New York City’s last FM outpost of lefty, vegan, hip-hop, 
poetry-reading and — often but not invariably — conspiracy-minded radio.

His efforts did not go terribly well.

“You’re a reactionary fraud, Alex!”

“Why don’t you resign, you scab?”

Mr. Steinberg held the microphone on Wednesday evening, a bemused smile 
frozen in place. He waited out the hecklers, not a few of whom were his 
fellow board members, and turned to the next order of business: whether 
to seat a newly elected member, Lynne F. Stewart. Ms. Stewart is a 
well-known radical lawyer — or rather was a lawyer until she was 
convicted of material support for terrorism, disbarred and packed off to 
a federal prison. Such credentials are like catnip to WBAI voters, who 
elected her last autumn before she began serving her sentence. Some 
board members worry that for WBAI, which is forever on the edge of 
insolvency, not to mention anarchy, an imprisoned member is of little 
utility.

For Stewart partisans, however, such talk is profoundly 
counter-revolutionary. So Nia Bediako, a board member, dressed down the 
chairman, Mitchel Cohen, who opposed seating Ms. Stewart. “You very 
insensitively, very unprogressively, said perhaps we could meet in 
prison,” said Ms. Bediako, her voice dipped in an inkwell of disdain. 
“This from a so-called revolutionary!”

For 50 years, WBAI, at 99.5 FM, has occupied a wavelength all its own as 
one of the more eccentric outposts of countercultural politics and arts 
in the nation. The station’s license is controlled (that being a loose 
term of art) by the Pacifica Foundation, which was founded in 1946 by 
Lewis Hill, a wealthy conscientious objector during World War II. 
Pacifica also owns four other radio stations, in Washington, Houston, 
Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif.

WBAI is where George Carlin in 1973 uttered “seven words you can never 
say on television,” not one of which can be printed in this newspaper. 
The F.C.C. fined the station, and was upheld in a case that went to the 
Supreme Court.

This is where Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre, and 
where the station’s reporters dug deep into the Iran-Contra scandal of 
the 1980s. It is where Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman exchanged howls 
and where international celebrities once pulled off a four-day, 
round-the-clock, reading of “War and Peace.”

Margot Adler is one of many WBAI alumni who have moved over to National 
Public Radio. “It was a wild smorgasbord, from politics to 
parapsychology to psychology to feminism,” Ms. Adler recalled this week. 
“And it created community on the air in a way that nothing does anymore.”

WBAI still produces and broadcasts innovative programming from its 
cramped studios on Wall Street. “Democracy Now!,” an investigative news 
program that was born at WBAI and is broadcast weekdays at 8 a.m., is 
now carried by well over 100 radio and public-access television 
stations. Its co-host, Amy Goodman, and WBAI’s senior national 
correspondent, Robert Knight, have each won mainstream journalism’s 
highest honors for reporting from Indonesia, Panama and Nigeria.

And yet, WBAI has fallen into a trough in the past decade. It has 
suffered management coups and countercoups, and assailed some of its own 
journalists as running dogs. (The descriptive language can tend toward 
early Lenin.) A governing structure that Mr. Knight describes as 
“so-called democracy,” controlled by elected boards steeped in political 
and ethnic sectarianism, has threatened to extinguish what made the 
station unique.

WBAI is awash in debt. Before Pacifica imposed new managers last year, 
the station had fallen so far behind on rent for its transmitter atop 
the Empire State Building that it nearly went off the air.

Even staying on the air — on a coveted spot at the center of an FM dial 
— does

[Marxism] History of Haiti

2010-01-16 Thread Pat Costello

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The best book I have read on the history of Haiti was The Uses of Haiti by 
Paul Farmer. Yesterday I wanted to recommend it to a friend and was surprised 
to find that used copies of this paperback book range from $50 to over $100 on 
Amazon and other sites. Pity. 

Yesterday NPR asked for listeners to call in and express their opinions on 
whether the U.S. was obligated to send aid to Haiti. It was sickening to hear 
how many listeners of the liberal NPR felt that since Haitians had supported 
corrupt regimes for many years, the Haitians themselves are responsible for 
Haiti's extreme poverty and dysfunctionality. A typical comment went something 
like this: We have sent them billions in aid and it just does not seem to 
help. America should not have to solve the problems of the world. Oh, the 
irony!


  


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[Marxism] Motherless Brooklyn

2010-01-16 Thread S. Artesian

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/nyregion/10hardware.html?pagewanted=3


On the surface, a run-down hardware shop in Flatbush might seem an odd place 
for a person like George to thrive. But if you set aside the sheets of pegboard 
and the metal cabinets and the key-making machine, what is left are hundreds 
and hundreds of small, obscure utilitarian objects, many almost identical to 
the casual observer. George can identify each nut and bolt and screw on sight, 
as Mr. Abraham's test was intended to show, and he knows where, exactly, in the 
store it is kept. He can tell you its cost. And he can tell you the name - and 
often the phone number - of the company that made it.

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Re: [Marxism] Patrick Cockburn on Haiti

2010-01-16 Thread Les Schaffer

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On 1/16/2010 8:55 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
 In New Orleans and Port-au-Prince there is the same official terror of
 looting by local people [snip]
 Of course there will be looting because


the official cheerleading media has switched its approach to the story 
in the last day. security is in almost every other sentence now. there 
was a whole piece about how the US trrops are setting up a security zone 
this morning, and the cheerleaders explained carefully how security and 
water distribution go hand in hand. actually, there is quite a bit of 
cheerleading for the troops this morning on CNN. almost as if someone 
figured out that cheerleading for US forces was needed.

Les





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Re: [Marxism] Obama confidant's spine-tingling proposal

2010-01-16 Thread Mark Lause

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I suspect that in cyberspace and real space, they've been doing much of this
same thing for years, if not decades.

ML

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Re: [Marxism] Freya von Moltke, Part of a Core of Nazi Resistance, Is Dead at 98

2010-01-16 Thread Tom Cod

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To sum up my view on this, all sorts of things can be compared by analogy,
analogy by definition not being an equality or identity of items; that is
analogy is always by definition an imperfect comparison.  Thus to say that
the Prussian war on France has the same character as the US Civil War or is
similar to it in any fundamental sense is an incredible stretch.  The point
of departure for me is not what the needs of capital or great powers are,
but the human aspect.  Thus as with the Holocaust in World War II, the issue
of human slavery actually was the fundamental human and moral issue of high
order that caused this war to be justified and necessary to progressives and
people of good will.  The needs of capital and great power reasoning, while
perhaps interesting and illuminating in an academic sense, are alien ruling
class doctrines that should be rejected and certainly aren't my point of
departure, although it is of the think tank elite who are always, with
genteel equivocations about contradictory realities etc etc.(hey, aren't we
nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan?) justifying imperialist
adventures on that basis.  Thus any equitable similarities between the cause
of Prussia and its minions in the 1870 and the US Civil War, a social
revolution on a great scale, are very slight.  The argument to the contrary
is, quite frankly, an insult to the millions of Americans, particularly
African-Americans, who fought in this struggle.

To listen to Marxists  give apologies and justifications for this is very
disturbing and foreshadows what socialists did in 1914 and also brings to
mind Bakunin's warning that Marx and Marxism is something people need to
really watch their backs around, a potential tyrannical menace of the
intelligensia who can justify anything with their contempt for morality and
their [fascistic] scientific reasoning.  Personally, I could care less
what the needs of German capitalists were in 1870 or now, beyond
understanding the machinations of these creeps.  that somehow this impinged
slightly on the prospects of the labor aristocracy at the time. . . Hey,
tell me a sob story!  that's comparable to the plight of the African slaves
in the South? Bullshit!!  go ahead and have a war over it, but don't expect
me to support it.  Shouldn't it be telling that actual Hitler was a big
advocate of this narrative of 1870,  No?

No, in 1870 Prussia had more railroad track than all of France according to
Wikipedia.  It's cause was thus not a compelling one.  Thus, as in 1914,
neither side-the gravediggers of the Paris Commune-merited support.  Thus,
sadly, it was actually Bakunin's position that foreshadowed the approach of
Lenin and the socialist-and anarchists-in 1914.




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Re: [Marxism] Patrick Cockburn on Haiti

2010-01-16 Thread Anthony Fenton

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This American Enterprise Institute brief calls for Aristide supporters  
(gangs) to be suppressed by the Marines, who've now taken control  
Haiti's airspace.

http://www.defensestudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cds-issue-alert-haiti-1-15.pdf


On 16-Jan-10, at 7:03 AM, Les Schaffer wrote:

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 On 1/16/2010 8:55 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
 In New Orleans and Port-au-Prince there is the same official terror  
 of
 looting by local people [snip]
 Of course there will be looting because


 the official cheerleading media has switched its approach to the  
 story
 in the last day. security is in almost every other sentence now.  
 there
 was a whole piece about how the US trrops are setting up a security  
 zone
 this morning, and the cheerleaders explained carefully how security  
 and
 water distribution go hand in hand. actually, there is quite a bit of
 cheerleading for the troops this morning on CNN. almost as if  
 someone
 figured out that cheerleading for US forces was needed.

 Les




 
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[Marxism] Haiti’s Lesson By Fidel Castro Ruz

2010-01-16 Thread Bonnie Weinstein

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Haiti’s Lesson

By Fidel Castro Ruz

January 14, 2010

http://www.periodico26.cu/english/reflections/jan-jun2010/ 
haiti011510.html



Two days ago, close to 6 in the evening Cuba time, already dark in  
Haiti due to its geographical location, the TV channels started  
carrying news that a violent earthquake, --of 7.3 intensity in the  
Richter scale—had severely shaken Port au Prince. The seismic  
phenomenon had originated at a tectonic fault in the sea only 9.4  
miles from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population  
lives in fragile houses built with clay and adobe.

The news continued almost uninterrupted for hours. There were no  
images but it was said that many stouter constructions like public  
buildings, hospitals, schools and other facilities had also  
collapsed. I have read that a 7.3 earthquake equals the energy  
released by the explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.

The descriptions were dramatic. In the streets, the wounded cried for  
medical help surrounded by ruins and their families buried under the  
debris. But, for many hours no one could broadcast any image.

The news took us all by surprise. Rather often we had heard news of  
hurricanes and large floods in Haiti but we did not know that our  
neighbor was threatened by a major earthquake. It surfaced now that  
200 years ago a major earthquake had hit that city, which at the time  
was certainly inhabited by a few thousand people.

At midnight there was still no estimate of the number of victims.  
Senior UN officials and various Heads of Government spoke of the  
impressive event and announced that they would be sending rescue  
brigades. Since MINUSTAH -UN international forces- are deployed there  
some Defense ministers spoke of the possibility of casualties among  
their personnel.

Actually, it was yesterday morning that sad news started flowing in  
on the high number of human casualties in the population and even  
such institutions as the United Nations reported that some of their  
buildings in that country had collapsed; a word that usually does not  
say much but that could mean a lot under the circumstances.

For hours increasingly dramatic news of the situation in that country  
continued to flow uninterrupted with reports of different numbers of  
deadly victims that depending on which version fluctuated between 30  
thousand and 100 thousand. The images are appalling.  Obviously, the  
catastrophic event has been widely reported all over the world and  
many governments, sincerely moved, are making efforts to cooperate to  
the extent of their capabilities.

A lot of people are sincerely touched by the tragedy, especially  
natural unassuming people but perhaps few stop to think on why Haiti  
is such a poor country and why almost 50 percent of its population  
depends of family remittances. And in this context, would it not be  
proper to also analyze the reality leading to the current situation  
of Haiti and its huge suffering?

It is amazing that no one says a word on the fact that Haiti was the  
first country where 400 thousand Africans, enslaved and brought to  
this land by Europeans, rebelled against 30 thousand white owners of  
sugarcane and coffee plantations and succeeded in making the first  
great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable  
glory were then written there where Napoleon’s most outstanding  
general tasted defeat. Haiti is a complete product of colonialism and  
imperialism, of more than a century of using its human resources in  
the hardest labors, of military interventions and the extraction of  
its wealth.

Such a historic oblivion would not be so grave if it were not because  
Haiti is an embarrassment in our times, in a world where the  
exploitation and plundering of the overwhelming majority of people on  
the planet prevail.

Billions of people in Latin America, Africa and Asia endure similar  
privation although probably not all of them in such high proportion  
as Haiti.

No place on earth should be affected by such situations, even though  
there are tens of thousands of towns and villages in similar and  
sometimes worse conditions resulting from an unfair economic and  
political international order imposed worldwide. The world population  
is not only threatened by natural catastrophes like that of Haiti  
that is but a pale example of what can happen to the planet with  
climate change; an issue that was the target of mockery, scorn and  
deception in Copenhagen.

It is fair to say to every country and institution that have  
sustained the loss of citizens or members to the natural catastrophe  
in Haiti that we do not doubt that at this point they will make the  
greatest effort to save human lives and to alleviate the pain of

[Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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Here in the US, certain self-proclaimed Marxists, say, in Monthly Review 
(New York) had already thrown out the anti-fascist and forthright 
tradition of their magnificent founders to the toilet bowl and, in 
conjunction with providing an outlet to propaganda by habitual 
opportunists (including the known agents of the Islamic Republic in the 
United States) defended this atrocious, anti-women, anti-worker, and 
anti-democratic regime in Iran.

full: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/OPE/archive/1001/0090.html


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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

2010-01-16 Thread Richard Levins

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Self-proclaimed is a frequent term in the glossary of sneers. Surely there is 
no licensing bureau to proclaim marxists?
 

=
Richard Levins

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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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On Jan 16, 2010, at 5:07 PM, S. Artesian wrote:

 I think Dr. Bina intended just such sneering.


Yes, self-proclaimed was excessive. Inverted commas would have  
sufficed.

Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos


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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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Shane Mage wrote:
 
 Yes, self-proclaimed was excessive. Inverted commas would have  
 sufficed.
 

As in John Mage, Marxist editor at Monthly Review.


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Re: [Marxism] Patrick Cockburn on Haiti

2010-01-16 Thread Gary MacLennan

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Has anyone seen any reference to what the Cubans are doing to help?  They
have not been mentioned on the news here, except for one item that they have
permitted American planes to fly over Cuban airspace thus saving time.

It seems clear to me that the Americans are primarily interested in using
the Haitian disaster as part of their attempt to restructure the
relationship with South America.  Hence the emphasis on treating this as a
military rather than a civilian emergency.

It is all deeply sickening.  Obama's windy rhetoric just makes it all the
more so. Truly he is the original hollow man.

regards

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Haiti’s Lesson By Fidel Castro Ruz

2010-01-16 Thread Gary MacLennan

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Just read this.  Very inspirational.  Needless to say there is no mention of
it at all in the Aussie media.

Thank your for posting it, Bonnie.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Patrick Cockburn on Haiti

2010-01-16 Thread S. Artesian

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I read that 30 medical teams had been sent.

- Original Message - 
From: Gary MacLennan gary.maclenn...@gmail.com

 Has anyone seen any reference to what the Cubans are doing to help?  They
 have not been mentioned on the news here, except for one item that they 
 have
 permitted American planes to fly over Cuban airspace thus saving time.

 It seems clear to me that the Americans are primarily interested in using
 the Haitian disaster as part of their attempt to restructure the
 relationship with South America.  Hence the emphasis on treating this as a
 military rather than a civilian emergency.

 



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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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On Jan 16, 2010, at 6:49 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

 Shane Mage wrote:

 Yes, self-proclaimed was excessive. Inverted commas would have
 sufficed.


 As in...Marxist editor at Monthly Review.


That is totally uncalled for.  Bina is not at all disrespectful of MR.  
If you have a personal grudge against my brother, tough shit. If you  
want to take issue with anything published in the magazine do so  
openly here or in MR itself.


Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos


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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

2010-01-16 Thread killakai

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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

-Original Message-
From: Shane Mage shm...@pipeline.com
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:40:31 
To: Kaikilla...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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On Jan 16, 2010, at 6:49 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

 Shane Mage wrote:

 Yes, self-proclaimed was excessive. Inverted commas would have
 sufficed.


 As in...Marxist editor at Monthly Review.


That is totally uncalled for.  Bina is not at all disrespectful of MR.  
If you have a personal grudge against my brother, tough shit. If you  
want to take issue with anything published in the magazine do so  
openly here or in MR itself.


Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos


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[Marxism] Bina's paper

2010-01-16 Thread MICHAEL YATES

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One thing I noticed about Bina's paper is the considerable amount of 
self-referencing; it borders on the egomaniacal.  I once reviewed a book of 
essays he and some colleagues edited.  It's mentioned in his end notes in the 
Iran article.  A truly dreadful collection, with a couple of exceptions.  And 
Bina's own essay was most dreadful of all.  Maybe he was over his head talking 
about labor.  His notes in the Iran essay seem to say that he is expert on 
nearly everything else.  He trashes Baran and Sweezy nearly as badly as he does 
Monthly Review on Iran. My guess is that if Bina and Sweezy were taking 
insights out of their brains and throwing them in the ocean, Bina would exhaust 
his first and by a long margin.

 


 
  

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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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On Jan 16, 2010, at 10:44 PM, S. Artesian wrote:

 So  Shane, did you actually read Bina's paper?  Just
 asking for the hell of it...

I certainly did, and find myself in strong agreement with his basic  
thesis (or he with mine?).


Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos


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Re: [Marxism] Cyrus Bina on Monthly Review

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 On Jan 16, 2010, at 10:44 PM, S. Artesian wrote:

 So  Shane, did you actually read Bina's paper?  Just
 asking for the hell of it...

 I certainly did, and find myself in strong agreement with his basic
 thesis (or he with mine?).

I should add that I'm referring to his argument for the the  
obsolescence of the 1916 Imperialism pamphlet (and the anti- 
imperialism meme) and what he says about the nature of the Iranian  
Islamic regime.  As to MRzine , it has exposed different views, some  
indeed abominable,  but nothing I've read in MR itself seems intended  
to justify Ahmadi-nejad  co.




 Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos

 
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Shane Mage

 This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
 always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
 kindling in measures and going out in measures.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos


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Re: [Marxism] Bina's paper