[Marxism] MRzine madness
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, I know that this amounts to dog bites man but I could not help from drawing your attention to an academic paper on punishment in Iran that appears just above a cartoon deriding the idea that Iran has human rights problems. The article states: Rebellion and corruption on earth and burglary are punished by amputation. The perpetrator of rebellion is to be punished either by cross maiming of his/her hand and foot, crucifixion for three days, banishment or death. According to Iran’s penal code the judge has the discretion to decide on the type of punishment. However, the administration of crucifixion has not been reported. On January 6, 2008, ISNA, Iranian Students’ News Agency, reported the imposition and execution of the Hadd of Muhariba on five criminals in Sistan, a south eastern province of Iran. One of the criminals was convicted of blocking the highway with force and resisting the police officers through which an officer was injured; two others were convicted of armed robbery, hostage taking, and disturbing public order, and two others were convicted of armed theft and disturbing public safety. They were sentenced to cross-amputation of the right hand and left foot (ISNA 2008). --- Human rights, indeed. The only puzzle is whether the editor of MRzine published this stuff in sympathy with perpetrators of rebellion and corruption on earth being crucified for 3 days. Sigh. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Sunni/secular revival in Iraq?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703416204575145952052909276.html WSJ MARCH 26, 2010 Upset Vote Reshapes Iraq Scramble Is On to Form a Ruling Coalition as Minority Sunnis Take First By MARGARET COKER BAGHDAD—Ayad Allawi's predominantly Sunni alliance won Iraq's national election, narrowly edging out Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's list to become the largest bloc in the country's next parliament, and kicking off a scrum among political and religious blocs to form a majority government. Ayad Allawi's predominantly Sunni alliance wins Iraq's national election. Margaret Coker in Baghdad and Adam Horvath join the News Hub to discuss what the outcome means for the future of Iraq. Plus, Evan Ramstad reports from Seoul on the sinking of a South Korean Naval ship. The Allawi upset threatens to end the lock on power that Iraq's majority Shiites have enjoyed since 2003 after decades of oppression under the Sunni-led government of Saddam Hussein, and could severely test the country's fragile institutions. In the two weeks between the March 7 election and the vote tallies Friday, Shiite politicians warned of violence should their parties lose the election. In a hastily convened news conference, Mr. Maliki didn't accept defeat. The incumbent repeated an earlier demand for a manual recount of the ballots, citing suspicions of fraud. However, he also said his bloc would follow the legal procedures in place to challenge the results announced by the Iraqi electoral commission. According to the Iraqi electoral process, candidates have a three-day period to lodge complaints before the Supreme Court ratifies the results. The preliminary results announced Friday show Mr. Allawi's Iraqiya bloc winning 91 seats in the 325-member parliament to 89 seats for Mr. Maliki's State of Law party. The country's other Shiite alliance won 70 seats, enough to add up to nearly a majority for either of the other groups—making them likely kingmakers in a coalition government. In a raucous victory celebration at his home in Baghdad, Mr. Allawi jumped and kissed his supporters who had gathered with a traditional band and dancers to celebrate their win. Car loads of cheering supporters braved the pouring rain, clogging the neighborhood streets. He said there would be no red lines ruling out politicians his bloc would invite to join a coalition. We are open to all political blocs without any exception provided they take a national and secular attitude, said Mr. Allawi, himself a secular Shiite who formed a partnership with leading Sunni figures. As the political slate with the largest number of seats,Mr. Allawi's group will have the first shot at forming a government. Negotiations are expected to take several weeks as various alliances cut deals over ministerial portfolios and contentious issues, such as which ethnic group will be awarded the country's ceremonial presidency. Most analysts find the horse-trading too complex to predict yet. The two leading parties, the largely Sunni group Iraqiya and the Shiite bloc State of Law, have enough votes to form an overwhelming coalition if they combine. But in the weeks since the election, as the race appeared even and the two groups began reaching out to smaller parties, aides to both leaders shunned one another. They said privately that they were unlikely to combine forces, given their leaders' contentious relations. Mr. Maliki could also lead a government of a grand alliance of Shiites, but there is bad blood among those leaders too. Mr. Allawi, meantime, has strong ties to veteran Kurdish leaders, but their votes would not be enough—and it could be difficult for him to pick off any Shiite groups to put him over the top. Washington is closely watching the transition of power, ahead of the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq this summer. Political disagreements between Shiite and Sunnis and a boycott by Sunnis of the 2005 national election ushered in more than two years of bloody internecine violence. As the country awaited the results, Iraqi security forces were on high alert much of the day, and Baghdad streets were largely empty. In noon prayers, religious leaders appealed for calm. Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric whose militias were responsible for much of the instability in the last few years, ordered his supporters to respect the electoral commission's work. The preliminary final results confirm that the country remains fractured along sectarian lines, with few voters crossing religious and ethnic lines. Mr. Allawi's Iraqiya bloc was the only group to succeed in appealing to a broad array of voters. The list dominated the Sunni sections of the country and also secured a large
Re: [Marxism] Another view of the health care legislation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 3/26/2010 3:26 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote: I don't think the list has an archive. But the best way to know what they're saying is to follow pnhp.org. i'll be damned if i can find an activist list on their site though... Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Another view of the health care legislation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Fred Feldman ffeld...@bellatlantic.net wrote: I think the very small and powerless far left in this country went way off the deep end in calling for the defeat of the health care bill. . . . This statement seems to me to be simply a logical or hypothetical proposition and a tautological provocation or set-up: 'the far left is stupid for being ultraleft'. I don't think it has much traction in political reality. I'm not aware that any far left organization *campaigned* for the defeat of the health care bill (that has just been signed by Obama). Maybe none of them suffered from the illusion that they could muster a significant campaign... The Socialist Worker (the only organization Fred referred to) did hold up voting against Obamacare as preferable to supporting it but within a context primarily dedicated to political education about the capitalist political system, liberals and the Democrat Party. And consider this phrase in Alan Maass's lead article in Socialist Worker on the 'reform' bill as passed: Even the small steps forward in the health care legislation are mixed--the new regulations on the insurance company practices are outweighed by provisions that give the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex more power than ever over the fate of ordinary people. http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/24/cause-for-celebration The higher profile individuals and groups that called for the defeat of 'Obamacare' (afaik) were liberals like Howard Dean, PDA, DSA, Green Party - such calls peaking at the end of last year as debate about alternative legislative proposals was concluding. I suspect that (like Kucinich, or Stupak on the right of the DP), most of them were on board in supporting the actual final bill when it came down to the conclusive voting. The serious explicit supporters of single-payer, like Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Labor Campaign for Single-Payer (LCS-P), simply continued to explain and support single-payer as the needed systemic health care reform, while criticizing the 'Obamacare' reform legislation. I'm not aware that they put any effort into calling on congresspeople to vote against 'Obamacare.' http://www.healthcare-now.org/diary-of-a-wimpy-health-care-bill/ www.pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured I call Obamacare a capitalist reform which isn't worth working class support. We should continue to explain and support single-payer, or medicare for all, as a reform that is in the interest of working people. Dayne Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Another view of the health care legislation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The serious explicit supporters of single-payer, like Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Labor Campaign for Single-Payer (LCS-P), simply continued to explain and support single-payer as the needed systemic health care reform, while criticizing the 'Obamacare' reform legislation. I'm not aware that they put any effort into calling on congresspeople to vote against 'Obamacare.' http://www.healthcare-now.org/diary-of-a-wimpy-health-care-bill/ www.pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured I call Obamacare a capitalist reform which isn't worth working class support. We should continue to explain and support single-payer, or medicare for all, as a reform that is in the interest of working people. Dayne This is from the Labor Campaign's latest communication on the question of the Obama bill. I agree with it. In fact, now that the bill is passed we will have an opportunity to reach the Obama bills erstwhile supporters when all the loopholes become exposed. As they are already. Jon Flanders At the Labor Campaign for Single Payer's National Meeting in early March, we came to the conclusion that, in the end, the debate between those who maintain that the current legislation is better than nothing versus those who believe it will make things worse will lead us nowhere. What is important now is to make sure that this incredible movement that has arisen to fight for the right to healthcare for all in America continues beyond this moment. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Another view of the health care legislation
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Jon Flanders wrote: This is from the Labor Campaign's latest communication on the question of the Obama bill. I agree with it. In fact, now that the bill is passed we will have an opportunity to reach the Obama bills erstwhile supporters when all the loopholes become exposed. As they are already. Returning from shopping, I spotted four women passing out leaflets downstairs from the ballet studio upstairs (I once ran into David Harvey escorting his daughter from a lesson.) It turned out that they were protesting Obamacare. At first I couldn't figure out whether they were a tea-party brigade or what, especially since I heard one of them say something about choice. When I asked if they were anti-abortion, they said absolutely not. They were protesting Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney who was speaking there. (2 cops were at the door downstairs.) They were pissed that she voted for a bill that discriminated against women. At that point, I jumped up and down whooping with glee and told them that it was great to see people finally taking action against the sell-out reform. It was the first time I saw activists out on the street in my neighborhood since around the time the US was threatening to invade Iraq 8 years ago or so. I told them that I had been blogging about Obama and health care for months now and was happy to see people finally waking up. They asked me what my blog was called and I replied the unrepentant Marxist. One then said, Oh, you're Louis Proyect. Wow! I always wondered who among the 1500 to 2000 visits to my blog were. Now I know. Their leaflet mentioned their own blog: www.correntewire.com, which was interesting considering the mix of electronic and traditional print media that represented. They also urged people to go to www.pnhp.org and www.singlepayeraction.org for more info. I'm really stoked now. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] How US far left went off rails on health care
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Some thoughts on a way out of the current impasse (got reprinted by a few liberal pubs like Commondreams : http://theactivist.org/blog/a-cloward-piven-strategy-for-single-payer Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Test
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == test Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Unions and WWI
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Wait a second, didn't French SP leader Jaures oppose the war and get assasinated for it? Ditto for US SP leaders, not only Debs, but central bureaucratic leaders like Morris Hillquit and Victor Berger who was deprived of his seat in the US House as a result? Let's give them their due in this regard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Jaures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Hillquit On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Dan d.koech...@wanadoo.fr wrote: 1914 was a major defeat, in France, in Germany, in the US, for the concept of industrial (and internationalist) unionism. But at least, they did a better job at opposing the war, on class lines, than did the political parties linked to the 2nd International that all rallied to form a patriotic front and voted for the war. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
JF:The problem was that Lysenko with the baking of the Soviet regime continued to hang on to neo-Lamarckiansm, and more importantly was able to coerce other Soviet scientists into hanging on to it, long after it had been discredited in the West. That caused immeasurable harm to Soviet biology, especially when that led to scientists like Vavilov being imprisoned for being Mendelians. That is an assertion of all the harm done, but no actual support, even in reasoning, is offered here. It could be the reaction--the backlash-- was as much an issue in holding back science as anything Lysenko said or did. The Mendelians didn't really pioneer the 'green revolution'--the techniques turned on horticultural techniques of crossing strains based on their adaptation to certain environments, looking for hybrids that expressed the desired traits and passed them on. Much of what held back the Mendelians turned on a simplistic idea of the relationship between chromosomes and other units of genetic inheritance and expressed traits. That was Lysenko's points about statistics--the patterns were there, but they weren't yielding the information required to come up with new strains required to improve agriculture. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Borlaug is often called the 'father of the green revolution' and in later life came to be identified with Mendelian genetics and even for his advocacy of GM crops. HOWEVER, the accomplishment that started the 'revolution' was him doing the SAME sort of inter-species hybridizing as Burbank, Michurin and Lysenko (when he was an active horitculturalist). Basically, he crossed Mexican wheat with E. Asian wheat to get a hybrid that had short straw so the crop could take heavy doses of fertilizer. He then crossed that with E. African to get a more drought resistant variety. The Mendelian aspects of this were worked out AFTERWARD. The techniques didn't require Mendelian genetics (which at the time concentrated on research of INTRA-SPECIE breeding). http://www.idrc.ca/evaluation/ev-115017-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html Now that horses have been replaced with machines, the need for long straw has largely disappeared, and the dangers of lodging have also disappeared. This is because the modern trend has been towards the exact opposite of long straw. The so-called dwarf and semi-dwarf wheats have very short straw, measuring as little as two feet in length. These dwarf wheats have the advantage that they can be given heavy doses of fertilizer without danger of lodging. As a result, their yields can be increased considerably. This was the basis of the Green Revolution. In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation decided to undertake agricultural research in non-industrial countries and, with the cooperation of the Mexican Government, they started in Mexico. One of their scientists was Norman Borlaug who was breeding improved varieties of wheat. He became aware of the falling prices of fertiliser, of the yield increases that could be obtained from this fertiliser, if there were no lodging, and of the possibility of developing dwarf wheats that were resistant to lodging. This became the basis of his research. The dwarf character in wheat originated in Japan, and it was incorporated into American wheats by O. A. Vogel. Borlaug took Vogel's dwarf wheats to Mexico in 1954. He bred new dwarf wheat varieties from them, and they yielded so well that it was economic to grow them with artificial fertilisers, on irrigated land, in northwest Mexico. The increase in wheat production was dramatic. Within a few years, Mexico became self-supporting in wheat. The next development was that scientists in India heard about these new varieties and, after a few experiments, they imported bulk quantities of seed from Mexico. Very soon, India changed from being a wheat importing nation to being a wheat exporting nation. Similar increases in production occurred in Pakistan, China, and various countries of the Middle East and North Africa. In the meanwhile, other scientists of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were copying Borlaug's work in the Philippines, except that they were working with rice. They too produced new dwarf varieties that could be grown with cheap fertiliser, and which then had greatly increased yields. Quite quickly, countries such as the Philippines, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, increased their rice yields as much as the wheat growers had increased their wheat production. The public relations people of these two Foundations coined the terms miracle wheat, miracle rice, and green revolution. We can forgive them for their euphoria, and their Madison Avenue terminology. The effects of the green revolution really were stunning. Here, at last, was technical aid, from the Industrial World to the Non-Industrial, that really meant something. Millions of people were saved from starvation, and at least one billion people were saved from serious malnutrition. And, as we saw in the last chapter, Norman Borlaug was given the Nobel Peace Prize. It was possibly the most richly deserved Peace Prize ever awarded. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Descartes Marxism: Selected Bibliography
OK, here's my work in progress: Descartes Marxism: Selected Bibliography http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/descartes-marx.html Passing references to Descartes are legion, but substantive additions are needed and welcome. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
The Soviet Union was obsessed with one grain in particular: wheat. And on quite a number of occasions Lysenko and his researchers were criticized for not producing a variety that could grow well in the short growing season. And then there was the controversy over winter vs. spring wheat (with the wrong approach apparently originating from the US actually). At any rate, eventually the Soviet Union over-planted and over-extended the range of winter wheat for the climates, and after a series of harsh winters, experienced disastrous crop failures requiring them to import huge amounts of wheat. But wheat is a complex plant that doesn't yield easily to Mendelian genetics. It's a haploid hybrid of three diploid grasses. In the terms of the more advanced genetics, it is genomically unstable. Mendelians mocked Lysenko when he reported grains of rye appearing in ears of wheat grain. But Lysenko was right about this; it's quite possible for wheat to introgress with diploids like rye as well as tetraploid species. There is even a hybrid of wheat and rye now produced commercially (this was done without advanced GM techniques). The Soviet Union had long been interested in this, but as Lysenko himself reported, the results they got were sterile. They also tried crossing wheat with other native grasses to make it more hardy and productive in the harsher climates of the Soviet Union. Success at getting a wheat-rye cross that could reproduce came much later. The major advances in improving wheat production came in the 19th century more or less indifferent to Mendelian genetics. Mendelian genetics and inbreeding techniques in the first half of the 20th century did yield some gains into disease resistance. This was combined with the traditional plant breeding methods (of which Michurin and Lysenko approved) in Mexico to yield the so-called Green Revolution's hybrids (the key was old-fashioned cross-breeding with E. Asian dwarf wheat). One irony would be that such a big step forward was based on such an old technique. The other irony might be that it couldn't be done today because some company or government might have a patent on the Japanese wheat's genes! http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/msi196v1 Introgressive hybridization has played a crucial role in the evolution of many plant species, especially polyploids. The duplicated genetic material and wide geographical distribution facilitates hybridization and introgression among polyploid species having either homologous or homoeologous genomes. Such introgression may lead to the production of recombinant genomes that are more difficult to form at the diploid level. Crop genes that have introgressed into wild relatives can increase the capability of the wild relatives to adapt to agricultural environments and compete with crops, or to compete with other wild species. Although the transfer of genes from crops into their con-specific immediate wild progenitors has been reported, little is known about spontaneous gene movement from crops to more distantly related species. We describe recent spontaneous DNA introgression from domesticated polyploid wheat into distantly related, wild tetraploid Aegilops peregrina (syn. Ae. variabilis), and the stabilization of this sequence in wild populations despite not having homologous chromosomes. Our results show that DNA can spontaneously introgress between homoeologous genomes of species of the tribe Triticeae and, in the case of crop-wild relatives, possibly enrich the wild population. These results also emphasize the need for fail-safe mechanisms in transgenic crops to prevent gene flow where there may be ecological risks. Keywords: Introgression; Wheat; Triticum aestivum; Aegilops peregrina; Polyploidy; Transgenic crops. http://www.desicca.de/plant_breeding/Rye_introgression/body_rye_introgression.html Current list of wheats with rye introgression of homoeologous groups 1, 4 and 5 After the first reports on spontaneous wheat-rye chromosome substitutions 5R(5A) by Katterman (1937), O'Mara (1946) and Riley and Chapman (1958), during the past three decades particularly, 1R(1B) substitutions and 1RS.1BL translocations were described in more than 200 cultivars of wheat from all over the world (Blüthner and Mettin 1973; Mettin et al. 1973; Zeller 1972; Zeller 1973; Zeller and Fischbeck 1971). Their most important phenotypic deviation from common wheat cultivars is the so-called wheat-rye resistance, i. e. the presence of wide-range resistance to races of powdery mildew and rusts (Bartos and Bares 1971; Zeller 1973), which is linked with decreased breadmaking quality (Zeller et al. 1982), good ecological adaptability and yield performance (Rajaram et al. 1983; Schlegel and Meinel 1994). The origin of the alien chromosome was intensively discussed by genetic and historical reasons. It turned out that basically four sources exist - two in Germany (it might be one source, see
[Marxism-Thaxis] Prion theory is not little wrinkle either
The dogma of the Mendelians was in thinking of genetic coding as something exclusive that somehow transcended the physical world and interactions and processes in it. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324611.400 Lamarckism finds new lease of life in a prion * 21 August 2004 by Philip Cohen * Magazine issue 2461 EVOLUTION can occur in a way never previously shown. Geneticists have discovered that the strange proteins called prions can temporarily give yeast cells new powers which can then be quickly, and permanently, assimilated into their chromosomes. This provides a novel way for organisms to try out different traits, survive and adapt to fluctuating environments, says Susan Lindquist who led the work at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The finding unexpectedly brings together the theories that Charles Darwin and his chief rival Jean-Baptiste Lamarck developed to explain evolution. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheNcpsidt=956708 Résumé / Abstract The experimental evidence accumulated for the last half of the century clearly suggests that inherited variation is not restricted to the changes in genomic sequences. The prion model, originally based on unusual transmission of certain neurodegenerative diseases in mammals, provides a molecular mechanism for the template-like reproduction of alternative protein conformations. Recent data extend this model to protein-based genetic elements in yeast and other fungi. Reproduction and transmission of yeast protein-based genetic elements is controlled by the prion replication machinery of the cell, composed of the protein helpers responsible for the processes of assembly and disassembly of protein structures and multiprotein complexes. Among these, the stress-related chaperones of Hsp100 and Hsp70 groups play an important role. Alterations of levels or activity of these proteins result in mutator or antimutator affects in regard to protein-based genetic elements. Protein mutagens have also been identified that affect formation and/or propagation of the alternative protein conformations. Prion-forming abilities appear to be conserved in evolution, despite the divergence of the corresponding amino acid sequences. Moreover, a wide variety of proteins of different origins appear to possess the ability to form amyloid-like aggregates, that in certain conditions might potentially result in prion-like switches. This suggests a possible mechanism for the inheritance of acquired traits, postulated in the Lamarckian theory of evolution. The prion model also puts in doubt the notion that cloned animals are genetically identical to their genome donors, and suggests that genome sequence would not provide a complete information about the genetic makeup of an organism. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
