Re: [Marxism] Who cares about elections

[sobuadhaigh]

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Mark wrote:

>The SLP has been overtly socialist and insistent on the primary 
>importance of differentiating itself from the rest of the left 
>by its explicit and overt insistence on overt Marxism and all 
>that that entails. As of this year, the SLP has been pursuing 
>this course vigorously since its reorganization along these lines
>...a mere 120 years ago.

>The results of these efforts, we see around us today.

Are you saying that somehow that  Daniel DeLeon and
"DeLeonism" is the casue of the patethetic state 
of the American revolutionary left? I believe you
categorized the collective weight of that movement
as roughly equivalent to "warm spit" but do not 
understand how one thing has lead, or caused, the 
other.

Please show us.



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Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections

[Lou Paulsen]

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This argument is starting to sound a bit like some Sartre play where the 
prisoners are arguing whether to collaborate to save their lives and then they 
all get killed anyway.

Unless someone on this list is running a huge grass-roots organization that I 
don't know about, all this discussion about whether we should vote for 
Democrats has about as much practical effect as discussing whether we should 
pray for them.

The ruling class actually does rule regardless of which party gets in. The 
policies we get in 2011 are going to depend about 99 times as much on what the 
ruling class wants as on the "independent preferences" (if there are such 
things) of the voters, activists, candidates and officeholders of the parties.

Of course the ruling class is not monolithic in its preferences. Elections are 
one way (not the only way) they settle their differences among themselves much 
more than they are a way they settle their differences with us.

I wouldn't characterize voting for Democrats in the current situation as heresy 
or treason so much as surrender to overwhelming force. The ruling class comes 
to us and says, "Give your political allegiance to one of our parties, or else 
we'll kill your loved ones." (by withholding health care, lowering the wage, 
etc.) Then after the election you have no guarantee they won't do it anyway.

In the current situation I am much more concerned with whether we tell the 
truth than with whether we vote. I would say, "if you feel like you have to 
vote Democratic, so be it. But don't pretty them up, don't sell your soul to 
them. Don't pretend they aren't complicit in imperialist war. Don't pretend 
it's all Frank Capra-esque mythology. And if you run into some Socialist or 
Green who is resisting, and the exploiters tell you, as they do, 'that's the 
real enemy, that's who'll be to blame for our next wave of attacks on you,' 
recognize what game they're playing with you."

Lou Paulsen


 




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[Marxism] The Rustbelt’s Voting Day Guide

[Rustbelt Radical]

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New Post: The Rustbelt’s Voting Day Guide
http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/the-rustbeltsvoting/
  

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[Marxism] M.I.A.: a modern media assassin

[Stuart Munckton]

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M.I.A.: a modern media assassin

By Alexander Billet


It created a buzz well before its release date. For months, every pop music
outlet speculated on its content. It provoked fervent anticipation among
fans, censorship from the internet, and derision from elitist establishment
journalists.


When Sri Lankan-born Tamil musician M.I.A.’s *Maya* finally arrived in July,
it predictably polarised critics.


M.I.A.’s third studio album, some find *Maya* difficult and near
unlistenable. Others are confounded by the album’s sheer weightiness, but
nonetheless herald it as a glimpse at music’s dark, demented future.


Neither group seem willing to parse through the dense content to see what
Maya Arulpgragasam (better known as M.I.A.) is actually getting at.


http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45901

-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker

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Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections

[Mark Lause]

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So much for the "socialism of the 21st century."  Apparently, it's
Democratic voters who understand surplus value.  The worst of Daniel DeLeon
genetically spliced with William Jennings Bryan.

ML

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Re: [Marxism] per capita educational monies

[michael perelman]

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Imagine a world in which Kozol would have Duncan's job.

On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Charlie  wrote:
>
> For a start, put this into a search engine:  jonathan kozol school funding



-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com


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Re: [Marxism] per capita educational monies

[Charlie]

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For a start, put this into a search engine:  jonathan kozol school funding



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Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections

[S. Artesian]

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Wow.   And more than one enemyway more.

- Original Message - 
From: "Manuel Barrera" 
To: 


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Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections

[Manuel Barrera]

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Mark said:" doesn't advocating voting for the "lesser evil" capitalist party 
also build illusions that working people can topple capitalism through 

And Greg Parton replied: "It might?, but such is the inhuman calculus given to 
us by this wretched society?"

At the risk of being accused of touting revolutionary socialism as a religion, 
I am tempted to cry out "heresy". But I am only tempted and no, I do not 
believe what Parton states here and earlier is heresy. After all, Marxists, at 
least those who have learned it well, can never simply spout Marxist principles 
like biblical teachings. 

As a scientist, I could probably connive a potential reality where voting for 
Democrats (or for that matter, Republicans, they were, after all the party of 
Lincoln) might lead to the conditions necessary to bring the working class to 
its historical role as the arbiter of the next great step in human society. 
--It is Not the This Reality-- 


To believe that there is a "calculus", inhuman or not, that requires  
supporting the capitalist class and its politicians as a necessary step toward 
placing the working class at the head of a government that ushers in a totally 
new society that displaces profit with human need, is either foolish or 
treachery. To put it plainly using the words of Malcolm X, "a chicken cannot 
produce a duck egg". 

These are statements, in this setting, with comrades who have spent a lifetime 
miles beyond this basic understanding, that grate like a fingernail on a 
chalkboard. . . 

No, Parton is not spouting heresy. He is proposing treachery. It is the 
proposal and the words of the class enemy. Not a "petit bourgeois" intellectual 
dementia, but the venom of the oppressors that I believe is an outcome of the 
growing reaction that is taking place in the capitalist world. It should not 
surprise us to hear this poison. Not with Tea Parties here, racist xenophobics 
"there" in Europe, the boldness of capitalist plunderers to snub their noses at 
the French, Greek, and Spanish workers, the "audacity" of Honduran oligarchs to 
displace albeit weak democratically elected governments, and the repressions as 
"far away" as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India (where armed thugs of the state 
kill "Maoist" peasants and then cart them away with poles like dead animals). 
It should not surprise us, no. . . But Neither Should We Tolerate It! We are 
revolutionists and the words of the oppressor, no matter that they are uttered 
by pretend "socialists" as a "tactical" discussion about an "inhuman calculus 
given to us by this wretched society", these words should not only make us 
retch. They should steel our resolve. 

There Is No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans. They are the 
Oppressors or their Minions And Their World Must End. The Only Business 
Marxists Have in the Capitalist Elections Is To Point the Way to Workers and 
Oppressed To a Different World Where We Lead Humanity to a New Day. 

We Do That By Campaigning for Socialism, Opposing War and Plunder, Or To 
Convince Working People To Stay Away If There is No Working Class Alternative 
(Socialist or other Independent Working Class Alternative). 

Mr. Parton and any others of you lurking on this list who believe our 
principles are for sale, Your words Have at least one Enemy. Peddle your class 
collaboration to the stalinists and social democrats. At least you all will be 
in one place. That Place Is Not Here. 

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[Marxism] Seventh Day of Action in France, 2 Million in the Streets

[a_indabronx]

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From our correspondent in Paris... http://www.internationalist.org/

C'est pas fini ! Battle over Pension "Reform" Isn't Over

Seventh Day of Action in France:
2 Million in the Streets Against Sarkozy Attack

PARIS, October 29 – For the seventh time in the last two months,
millions of French working people took to the street yesterday in a day
of  workers' strikes and mobilizations against the "reform" of pensions
and retirement rights by the right-wing government of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The marches were large, and if (predictably) smaller than the last
several  mobilizations, they were also noticeably more combative. There
was lots of energy and fighting spirit. People came out because they
wanted to say that the battle continues. At the end of the march and
afterwards, the verdict was, "This shows that it isn't over" – c'est pas
fini !

Today's newspapers reflected their respective editorial lines. The
right-wing Figaro headlined, "Unions Checkmated." The slightly more
"centrist" Le Parisien and Le Monde, both of which oppose the struggle
against the pension law, said the mobilizations were "marking time."
Libération, historically close to the Socialist Party (PS) which has
equivocally supported the protests, headlined "The Surprises of a
Conflict," the surprise being that "new forms of spontaneous solidarity
struggle" are replacing strikes.

And L'Humanité, once the paper of the French Communist Party (PCF),
proclaimed, "So Much Pent-Up Anger."

Crowd estimates are a big deal in France, particularly as they influence
the political maneuvering. The police, on behalf of the government,
routinely report absurdly small crowd sizes, sometimes (notably in
Marseille) as little one-tenth of the numbers provided by march
organizers. The unions are reporting 170,000 demonstrators in Paris
yesterday and around 2 million in 269 marches around the country,
whereas the police are saying 560,000 nationally and 31,000 in Paris,
which is ludicrous. The head of the march reached the end point,
Saint-Augustin, after slowly walking 3-1/2 km, two hours before the end
of the march even left the starting point at République.

Union leaders said beforehand that they weren't looking to set any
records on October 28, coming in the middle of the two-week Toussaint
(All Saints Day) vacation when schools close and a lot of families leave
town. The law was approved Wednesday by a two-to-one margin on a
straight party-line vote of the "presidential majority" versus the
"left" opposition. Prime Minister François Fillon declared that there
was no sense demonstrating any more. Still huge numbers came out. In
terms of sheer numbers, the mobilization was a relative success, as
large as any of the strikes in 1995. Politically, however, the strike
movement is stymied by its leaders who want desperately to get out of a
sticky situation. And at present there is no significant class-struggle
opposition prepared to fight them.

What stood out was how energetic the crowd was. Lots of contingents
singing, chanting constantly, jumping up and down, doing dance steps –
not rows of marchers proceeding down the street in lock-step. At an
"Interprofessionelle" meeting of militants from different unions and
workplaces afterwards, there was some discussion evaluating the day's
events. While the union tops had made it clear that they were looking
for the exit, the spirit of the march was that people were refusing to
let it die.

On Monday, François Chérèque, head of the CFDT union federation (close
to the SP) called on the government to negotiate about jobs for youth
and seniors, saying now that the law had been voted things had changed.
This was universally understood as an announcement that the CFDT would
pull out. Government ministers greeted his remarks. On Wednesday,
Bernard Thibault of the CGT (once controlled by the Communist Party, now
not so much, although many in the ranks are still PCF supporters) said
that the movement was continuing for now, until the law is officially
promulgated (probably around November 15). So at bottom both CFDT and
CGT leaders are saying once it's official, they will stop the protests –
they just have different dates when they say that was or will be.

Yet although the CFDT tops want to get out, there the union was with a
significant contingent yesterday, and they say it will come out again on
November 6 (the eight day of action since the beginning of September).

Overwhelming popular opposition to the pension "reform" has forced the
union tops to continue. It's not hard to figure out why. If they drop
the struggle it will mean most people will have to wait until 67 to
retire, whereas now the average age for going on pension is just over
60. In addition to postponing the age for retirement, the number of
years of

Re: [Marxism] Churchill vs Hitler

[Mark Lause]

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Peggy Dobbins  wrote:


> The more Democrats defeated by Republicans locally and nationally, the less
> Democrats with state civil authority over armed forces will be able to
> exercise it.
>

Which means fewer Democrats ordering drone attacks on Pakistani villages
rather than Republicans ordering it

ML

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[Marxism] Churchill vs Hitler

[Peggy Dobbins]

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Both were elected. 
Franco wasn't.  
The US midterm 2010 election is tomorrow. 
Not voting will not speed up nor increase the probability of any kind of 
American revolution but  the reactive one  for which masses have been 
mobilized.  
The more Democrats defeated by Republicans locally and nationally, the less 
Democrats with state civil authority over armed forces will be able to exercise 
it.  
 The Spanish Revolution was not a revolution   Socialists and Communists fought 
against a reactionary government.  It was a revolution against a government 
socialists and Communists fought to defend.  A government General Franco was 
called home by the priests and plutocrats to lead a successful-- and long 
lasting --Fascist revolution against.

It is harder to tell left from right when it matters most,  and the only 
constant is change




Sent from my iPhone

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[Marxism] Doug Henwood WBAI resignation letter

[Louis Proyect]

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http://lbo-news.com/2010/11/01/my-letter-to-tony-bates/

For the record, as they say, here’s what I just wrote to Tony Bates:

 I really don’t want to do a show every other week on Saturday 
morning, and you probably knew that when you made the decision. So I 
think I’ll just quit, effective immediately.

 It takes a remarkable amount of balls for you, Tony, to engineer a 
reworking of the grid having just masterminded yet another failed 
fundraiser. Falling 1/3 short of your goal is a disgrace. But evidently 
your vision of WBAI is of chemtrails and footpads and 9/11 nuttery, so 
we obviously don’t mesh.

 The polite thing would be wish you good luck, but I don’t feel like 
being polite. It’s a remarkable devolution from Samori Marksman to you.


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Re: [Marxism] Marxists, bourgeoisie and railroad unions in Argentina [Re: Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner]

[Louis Proyect]

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On 11/1/10 6:48 PM, S. Artesian wrote:
>
> Actually, I'd like to go back to my original question.  Where is the
> evidence, previous or current, that Petroni is a liar?
>
>

I was wrong to call him a liar and want to retract that.

I should have instead said that he is a cheap propagandist and a 
sectarian, who gained some infamy for his involvement with the Simon 
Bolivar Brigades that sought to overthrow the FSLN in the months 
immediately following the triumph in 1979.


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Re: [Marxism] Marxists, bourgeoisie and railroad unions in Argentina [Re: Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner]

[S. Artesian]

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Actually, I'd like to go back to my original question.  Where is the 
evidence, previous or current, that Petroni is a liar? 



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Re: [Marxism] 280 of the signs at Jon Stewart's Rally For Sanity and/or Fear

[Jay Moore]

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For whatever it's worth -- they're not all ironically apolitical or 
self-indulgent -- you can also look at a selection of 323 of the 
"Sanity" rally signs at 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/30/the-funniest-signs-at-the_n_776490.html.
  
On the whole, however, I think Hedges has hit the nail again.


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[Marxism] Gay Marriage = bourgeois politics?

[James Holstun]

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David Thorstad says that supporting gay marriage is "bourgeois politics."

What is "bourgeois" about resisting the state that tells you that you can't 
live in this country with your foreign-born same-sex husband or wife?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/26/doma

Even if an act of oppression doesn't touch you directly, it takes only a little 
imagination to understand how it touches others. 











  

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Re: [Marxism] To My Socialists Friends: I care who wins the election.

[Glenn Parton]

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There is no doubt that the Democratic party and the Republican party are the 
two wings of the Capitalist demon that is dragging us all to hell, but it is 
equally clear, if We want to be honest, that the Republicans are worse, not 
only in the sense of their hateful intentions, but also in the sense of the 
direct impact of their policies on the daily lives of millions of Americans. 
The call for radical change meets with resistance from Dem-progressives who 
want incremental change now, and Socialists cannot overcome it by correctly 
pointing out how bad the Democrats are because the Republicans are worse?
 
In Ca., the Republican Senatorial candidate, Carly Fiorina, said last week that 
there are approximately 16 million people on Medical who don't belong there? I 
know from personal experience how stringent the requirements are for being 
accepted into this program. One must be poor to the point of destitution in 
order to qualify. Many people who have relatives in this program are not 
politically savvy. They don't have the luxury to think only long-term. They may 
be against the wars  and the privatization of SS, and so on, but they need to 
refill the medication bottles next month, as a matter of life and death. If you 
are going to tell these people not to vote, or to vote for a third party 
candidate that the polls clearly show is not going to win this time around, 
then you better have a better argument than listing many  other big problems 
that the Democrats are causing? I don't really know the answer to this dilemma 
myself, but I think it needs serious attention.
 
g 

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Re: [Marxism] 280 of the signs at Jon Stewart's Rally For Sanity and/or Fear

[Eli Stephens]

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The list missed one which was my personal favorite. Not the funniest, but the 
most in tune with my sentiments, the reference to the apocryphal "God" 
notwithstanding:

God Hates Flags!



Eli Stephens
 Left I on the News
 http://lefti.blogspot.com

  

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Re: [Marxism] American style: tomorrow elections, Obama , The Future is Up to Us

[Glenn Parton]

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WL,
 
Defeating the Republican Party is the politics of emergency, which is very 
different from building a deep, long-range radical movement, and that's why I 
vote Democratic unless there's a Green or Socialist who has a chance to win. 
 
I don't know why you say that "building a socialist movement is a middle class 
pipe dream"?
 
The idea of using "church time" for another project is a novel ideal. I like it!
 
I agree that America is undergoing an economic revolution to an 
electronic-technological regime, but the Subjective factor still lags behind?
 
Could you say more about "the historical errors of American communism". I think 
that  the ritualization of language and dogmatism are reasons why the 
socialists and communists parties have failed in America.
 
More later today
 
 
g
 
 

> 

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[Marxism] Murder of PO Activists

[Leonardo Kosloff]

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Anthony, 
 
I appreciate your comment highly, as high as the sky. However, Les has been a 
saint in all of this,...and Louis, sort of a dark angel...  


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[Marxism] To my Democratic friends [Was: Who cares who wins the elections]

[Mark Lause]

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The dogma here is the bizarre notion that somehow you CAN build socialism as
you vote for capitalism.  Do you support strikes by breaking them?  Do you
build an antiwar movement by recruiting to the arm?

Set aside your reveries about Democrats long dead  The Democratic ballot
today does not include Roosevelt and Kennedy, though it does have some
recent crossovers from the Republican party you fear so much are on the
Democratic ballot.

Regardless of the abstract good intentions between your ears, voting
Democratic does not send a message of support for Democrats haven't actually
done or said they won't do.  And it makes no protest of what Democrats have
actually done  In the real world, your ballot will be intepretted
reasonably as a mandate for the Democratic party does and says in the real
world.

Voting Democratic is voting for

 * continued tax breaks for the wealthy, inaugurated particularly under the
elder Bush, deepened by Clinton and Bush the Younger...and sustained by this
administration and its majority in Congress

* supporting the old Republican bailouts for business, coupled to an
original Democratic stimulus funneled into businesses in hopes some of it
might eventually trickle down Reagan-like on the rest of us

* no change in the policies that have created the conditions for global
warming, and done nothing to slow or reverse its effects, or even to deal
with the impact of that warming on sea levels.  This, coupled to government
collaboration in attempted coverups for environmental disasters like the
BP's oil disaster in the gulf

* in the face of blatant violations of the Constitution and the laws of the
lands by officials of the prior administration, a policy of not only failing
to prosecute the guilty parties but a deliberate and conscious refusal even
to investigate and document those blatant criminal acts.

* more wars and death in the Mideast based on lies and made at the behest of
the energy lobby

* the continued related sanctioning of the torture, kidnapping, and murder
of anyone anywhere on the planet deemed hostile to the interests of the
U.S., disregarding not only international law but the requirements of
accountability in the Constitution that Democratic officials, like
Republicans, have sworn to uphold and protect.

* the bipartisan embrace of so-called patriot acts to set aside the U.S.
Constitution to permit government warring on our citizens

* a greater disparity between blacks and whites in terms of jobs, incomes,
and standards of living.  Whatever the minimum imaginable for the first
black president to do in this country might be, Obama has done less

 * a "health care reform" that precluded at the onset anything that private
insurance companies might find objectionable, regardless of the will of the
American people and the voters who actually sent them to Washington.
Despite all the howling and the spin, the health care bill the Democrats
passed was written by an insurance company lobbyist and embodies ideas that
used to knock around the edges of Nixoniana regularly.  "Obamacare" is more,
like a friend called it, "Romneycare."

I know you probably did not vote for the Democrats last time for the
Democrats to do these things, but they did them nonetheless.

And now you want to vote for them again and want others to join you in doing
so...  It's an absurd argument on your part, made purely from habit

Still, the Democrats say, they'd have done things if only the Republicans
would have let them

Well, the Democrats have all the power and authority they need to act on
some of these questions--such as the notorious don't-ask-don't-tell
discrimination against gays and lesbians in military service--but they've
chosen not to act at all.  Voting for the Democrats at this point is simply
a vindication of that they've done on this.  Nothing.

And as to the utterly antidemocratic and antirepublican rules imposed on the
Congress, the Democrats have had a majority there for four years.  They
could have changed the way filibusters are handled at any point, but have
chosen not to do so.

They could have introduced changes in the rules of the Congress, and have
never even tried it.

The Democrats have done almost nothing to which the Republicans have
objected...because the Democrats have chosen not to do so

Out of fear of the Republicans, you elected a Democratic majority to
Congress, where that majority embraced rules that allowed it to defer to the
Republican minority on every issue on which the corporations would possibly
object.  The Democrats have not even tried to change these rules because
they really would posture as our friends while not having to make an issue
of anything to which the corporations might object.

Democrats not only rely 

Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections

[Glenn Parton]

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> 
> 2. Thinking that voting straight Democratic is anyway to build a socialist
> movement is fucknuts. 
 
> ML
 
Voting for the lesser-evil while building a deep, long-range movement for real 
change in America is not "fucknuts," but dogmatic disrespect toward fellow 
Socialists/Communists is poison.
 
No one twisted your arm to reply to my comments or questions.
 
g
 

> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
> Set your options at: 
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rain51%40hotmail.com
  

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[Marxism] Review of Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People"

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.zcommunications.org/a-ray-of-hope-from-israel-by-anthony-l-wstedt


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[Marxism] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally

[Louis Proyect]

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Truthdig

The Phantom Left
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_phantom_left_20101031/
Posted on Oct 31, 2010

By Chris Hedges

The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to 
tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify 
its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power. 
It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the 
votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators. It 
keeps the world neatly divided into a left and a right. The phantom left 
functions as a convenient scapegoat. The right wing blames it for moral 
degeneration and fiscal chaos. The liberal class uses it to call for 
“moderation.” And while we waste our time talking nonsense, the engines 
of corporate power—masked, ruthless and unexamined—happily devour the state.

The loss of a radical left in American politics has been catastrophic. 
The left once harbored militant anarchist and communist labor unions, an 
independent, alternative press, social movements and politicians not 
tethered to corporate benefactors. But its disappearance, the result of 
long witch hunts for communists, post-industrialization and the 
silencing of those who did not sign on for the utopian vision of 
globalization, means that there is no counterforce to halt our slide 
into corporate neofeudalism. This harsh reality, however, is not 
palatable. So the corporations that control mass communications conjure 
up the phantom of a left. They blame the phantom for our debacle. And 
they get us to speak in absurdities.

The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in 
Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in 
his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the 
phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and 
Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue 
costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class 
always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described 
as apathy. If the right wing is crazy and if the left wing is crazy, the 
argument goes, then we moderates will be reasonable. We will be nice. 
Exxon and Goldman Sachs, along with predatory banks and the arms 
industry, may be ripping the guts out of the country, our 
rights—including habeas corpus—may have been revoked, but don’t get mad. 
Don’t be shrill. Don’t be like the crazies on the left.

“Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution 
or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?” 
Stewart asked. “We hear every damn day about how fragile our country 
is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a 
shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is 
we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only 
place we don’t is here [in Washington] or on cable TV.”

The rally delivered a political message devoid of reality or content. 
The corruption of electoral politics by corporate funds and lobbyists, 
the naive belief that we can somehow vote ourselves back to democracy, 
was ignored for emotional catharsis. The right hates. The liberals 
laugh. And the country is taken hostage.

The Rally to Restore Sanity, held in Washington’s National Mall, was yet 
another sad footnote to the death of the liberal class. It was as 
innocuous as a Boy Scout jamboree. It ridiculed followers of the tea 
party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by 
many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made 
fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over 
the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold 
out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned 
its back on the working class for corporate money.

Fox News’ Beck and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a 
mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who 
have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who 
run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the 
liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on 
television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop 
and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks 
in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing 
backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it 
stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic 
Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the 
Republican Party.

Wall Street’s looting of the Treasury, the curtailing of our civil 
l

[Marxism] Jon Stewart Rally: Just an Exercise in Gen X Self-Indulgence?

[Louis Proyect]

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AlterNet
Jon Stewart Rally: Just an Exercise in Gen X Self-Indulgence?
By Mark Ames, eXiled Online
Posted on October 31, 2010, Printed on November 1, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148690/

Editor's note: For a different take, check out Adele Stan's piece 
arguing that the Rally for Sanity was a repudiation of Tea Party madness.

Maybe what’s happening in America today will seem funny to some other 
culture in some future time -- how it happened that in the depths of 
America’s decline, Liberals, the great opposition to everything mean and 
ruthless in this culture, couldn’t muster up a get-together for anything 
better than a mock-in. Led by a clown.

I confess, I couldn’t hack it. I came to the rally -- saw those two 
pastry chefs from the Mythbusters show get all the Liberal Elites to 
hold a post-modern human wave, an ironic human wave allowing all the 
self-conscious Liberal Elites to play like Real America, while salvaging 
their vanity because it was all ironic and post-modern… And to make sure 
that everyone knew they were not really human-waving but rather 
meta-human-waving, the Mythbusters duo deconstructed the human wave. And 
all the Liberal Elites smiled and laughed knowingly, because all 150,000 
were in on the biggest inside-joke wankathon in American history. And 
that was it for me -- I was outta there.

A century-old ideological movement, Liberalism: once devoted to 
impossible causes like ending racism and inequality, empowering the 
powerless, fighting against militarism, and all that silly hippie shit 
-- now it’s been reduced to besting the other side at one-liners…and to 
the Liberals’ credit, they’re clearly on top. Sure there are a lot of 
problems out there, a lot of pressing needs -- but the main thing is, 
the Liberals don’t look nearly as stupid as the other guys do. And if 
you don’t know how important that is to this generation, then you won’t 
understand what’s so wrong and so deeply depressing about the Jon 
Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity.

That’s what makes this rally so depressing and grotesque: It’s an 
anti-rally, a kind of mass concession speech without the speech -- some 
kind of sick funeral party  for Liberalism, in which Liberals are led, 
at last, by a clown. Not a figurative clown, but by a clown -- and 
Liberals are sure that this somehow makes them smarter and less lame -- 
and indeed, they are less lame, because they are not taking themselves 
too seriously, which is something they’re very, very proud of. All great 
political struggles and ideological advances, all great human rights 
achievements were won by clown-led crowds of people who don’t take 
themselves too seriously, duh! That’s why they’re following a clown like 
Stewart, whose entire political program comes down to this: not being 
stupid, the way the other guys are stupid -- or when being stupid, only 
stupid in a self-consciously stupid way, which is to say, not stupid. 
That’s it, that’s all this is about: Not to protest wars or oligarchical 
theft or declining health care or crushing debt or a corrupt political 
system or imperial decay -- nope, the only thing that motivates Liberals 
to gather in the their thousands is the chance to celebrate their own 
lack of stupidity! Woo-hoo!

It’s the final humiliating undoing of Enlightenment Idealism that made 
Liberalism possible -- imagine if Jefferson, Diderot, Montesquieu, 
Madison et al reduced the entire Enlightenment’s struggle against the 
old feudal order to “I’m against the monarchy because the monarchy’s 
stupid…but then again, Rousseau makes a fool of himself with his 
Romanticism, and Tom Paine is so serious with his ‘Rights of Man’, the 
Revolutionaries are just as crazy as the Monarchists, so rather than 
join either side and risk opening myself to mockery, I’m just going to 
stand back and laugh at them all and say, ‘Really? Independence? 
Everyone is created equal and has the right to pursue happiness? Really, 
TJ? You sure you want to say that about Bluebeard? Really?” [LAUGH TRACK]…

It’s not Stewart’s or Colbert’s fault, let’s be clear on that -- they’re 
the only ones doing their job here. They’re the only ones fighting this 
battle, and the only way they’re surviving is by elaborately pretending 
they’re not really fighting anyone’s battle over anything, they’re just 
having a laugh -- it’s the same rationale that jesters used in medieval 
times, and Stewart and Colbert play the same role as the jesters did 
then…and we’re also playing our role as powerless peasants reduced to 
self-mockery and snickering at our Masters behind their backs. It’s not 
their fault that Liberalism today has as its highest priority not 
looking stupid -- and that its premiere rally is framed in such a way 
that everyone who came to thi

[Marxism] Glenn Greenwald on assassination threats against Julian Assange

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/29/goldberg/index.html


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[Marxism] Peak water

[Louis Proyect]

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http://247wallst.com/2010/10/29/the-ten-great-american-cities-that-are-dying-of-thirst/


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[Marxism] Review of Gilbert Achcar's "The Arabs and the Holocaust"

[Louis Proyect]

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(A hostile review-surprise, surprise, from the New Republic written by a 
historian who makes an amalgam between Arab nationalism and Hitlerism. 
Still worth reading as an example of what's out there.)

Not in Moderation
by Jeffrey Herf

Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini
The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives
by Gilbert Achcar

Metropolitan Books, 386 pp., $30

Partisanship is almost always just beneath the surface of most writing 
about the Middle East. Gilbert Achcar’s book is no exception. In recent 
years, scholars have focused on the sensitive issue of the collaboration 
between some Arab political leaders and the Nazi regime, and on its 
ideological aftereffects. The scholarly debate became even more charged 
after September 11, when the issue of the similarities and the 
differences between Islamism and Nazism became a political matter as 
well as an academic one. In The Arabs and the Holocaust, Achcar, a 
professor in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the 
University of London, has penned a response to that discussion from the 
perspective of left-wing anti-Zionism.

The book makes three central points. First, Achcar makes the welcome 
acknowledgment that there were Arab leaders who willingly collaborated 
with Nazi Germany, and that they were embedded in the Islamist 
tradition. Second, he draws needed attention to those leftist and 
liberal Arab political and intellectual figures who opposed Nazism and 
fascism as well as Zionism. Third, he attacks Zionist leaders and a host 
of historians for making what he views as erroneous generalizations 
about the extent of Arab support for Nazism, and for focusing on these 
issues in order to legitimate Zionism.  On the first two points, Achcar 
succeeds by drawing on—and adding to—the existing work in the field. But 
his third point undermines his book’s virtues with a series of unfair 
attacks resting on partisan readings of scholars with whom he disagrees. 


Achcar’s intention is “to render the complexity” of the Arab response to 
the Holocaust. “To be sure,” he writes, “one finds many odious attitudes 
toward the Holocaust in the Arab world; but one also finds absurdly 
distorted interpretations of the Arab reception of the Holocaust in 
Israel and the West.” He especially wishes to draw attention to the 
Westernizing Arab liberals and leftists who opposed Nazism as well as 
Zionism on the basis of democratic and humanist values. He wants to 
distinguish them from the Islamists who willingly threw in their lot 
with the Third Reich.

full: http://www.tnr.com/book/review/not-in-moderation


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Re: [Marxism] Marxists, bourgeoisie and railroad unions in Argentina [Re: Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner]

[Louis Proyect]

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On 11/1/10 8:29 AM, Nestor Gorojovsky wrote:
> Arg railroad labor movement started as a movement of the labor
> aristocracy. In Argentina, railroads were not just a profit-giving
> enterprise. They were the organizing knot that kept the whole
> semicolonial agro-export system together. Workers in the railroad
> industry were a technical and economic aristocracy, which might be
> compared with airplane pilots (the locomotive engineers) and airport
> personnel (the "señaleros") in our world. But their importance was still
> larger, because railroads, unlike planes, were not just passenger
> transport but the essential transport system for any kind of wares.

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/argentina1.htm

The Collapse of Argentina, part one: Railway Imperialism

In this first post, I want to address the question of Argentina's 
"golden age", a notion that you can find in many left publications or on 
the Internet. In this version of Argentine history, the country is seen 
as an exception to the rest of Latin America where conventional notions 
of "imperialism" and "dependency" might not apply.

For example, British state capitalist theoretician Chris Harman writes:

"Argentina is an industrial country, with a higher proportion of its 
workforce in industry than in Britain. It's also a country where working 
people have, within living memory, experienced living standards close to 
west European levels. It was known as the 'granary of the world' at the 
beginning of the 20th century, with an economy very much like that of 
Australia, New Zealand or Canada, centred the massive production of 
foodstuffs on giant capitalist farms for the world market. Relatively 
high wages made it a magnet for millions of immigrants from Italy and 
Spain who brought traditions of industrial militancy with them."

http://www.swp.org.uk/SR/260/SR3.HTM

Brad DeLong, an economist who held a post in the Clinton administration 
and who is a ubiquitous figure on leftwing electronic mailing lists, 
wrote the following on Progressive Economists Network (PEN-L):

"As I said quite a while ago, Argentina was a *first* *world* 
country--like Canada, Australia, or New Zealand--up until the 1950s. 
Arguments that development possibilities were constrained by relative 
backwardness may work elsewhere: they don't make *any* sense for Argentina."

http://www.mail-archive.com/pe...@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg46848.html

If views like these are meant to support a kind of Argentine exception 
to the Leninist concept of imperialism or its subsequent elaborations 
such as the Baran-Sweezy theory of monopoly capitalism, they are 
mistaken. They would fail to see Argentina's role in the world 
capitalist system, which--despite favorable moments--has been that of 
victim of imperialism. Comparisons with the USA, Canada, etc. are 
specious, even if in a given year income or other statistics were 
comparable. The *structural* questions are far more important for 
understanding Argentina. Despite the presence of European immigrants, 
industrialization, national independence, the lack of feudal-like 
latifundias, etc., Argentina had much more in common with direct 
colonies in the 19th century like India.

Specifically, one of the main factors that led to Argentine dependency 
was its reliance on British capital and expertise for the construction 
of railways in the 19th century. Just as was the case in India, these 
steam-driven showplaces of modernization did nothing but drain the 
country of capital and force it into a secondary role in the world economy.

If one is a Marx "literalist," there can obviously be a lot of confusion 
about the introduction of railways into Argentina or India, especially 
when Marx wrote:

"I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways 
with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expense the cotton 
and other raw materials for their manufactures. But when you have once 
introduced machinery into locomotion of a country, which possesses iron 
and coals, you are unable to withhold it from its fabrication. You 
cannot maintain a net of railways over immense country without 
introducing all those industrial processes necessary to meet the 
immediate and current wants of railway locomotion, and out of which 
there must grow the application of machinery to those branches of 
industry not immediately connected with railways. The railways system 
will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern 
industry." ("The Future Results of British Rule in India," NY Daily 
Tribune, Aug. 8, 1853)

In contrast to these early hopeful writings, before Marxism had 
developed an understanding of the negative role of imperialism, the 
historical record demonstrates that fo

[Marxism] [Socialist Voice] Debate on Cuba / Danger South of the Border

[Ian Angus]

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SOCIALIST VOICE
Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century
http://www.socialistvoice.ca

November 1, 2010

INTERNATIONAL LEFT DEBATES CUBA’S NEW ECONOMIC MEASURES
by Richard Fidler
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1378
This issue of Socialist Voice draws attention to further commentaries
on the implications of the sweeping economic and social measures
announced by the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) on September 13.
We publish here excerpts from and links to articles by Jorge Martin,
the international secretary of Hands Off Venezuela; Frank Josué Solar
Cabrales, a social sciences professor in Santiago de Cuba; Helen
Yaffe, a scholar in Britain who specializes in Cuba’s revolutionary
history; and Ike Nahem, a leading activist in Cuba solidarity work in
New York City

ECUADOR AND VENEZUELA: DANGER SOUTH OF THE BORDER
by Paul Kellogg
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1375
It is not difficult to see that the events of September 30, in the
Latin American country of Ecuador, amounted to an attempted right-wing
coup d’état. Mass mobilizations in the streets and plazas of Quito
(the capital) and other cities – in conjunction with action by
sections of the armed forces which stayed loyal to the government –
stopped the coup before the day was out. But those few hours
highlighted, again, the deep dangers facing those fighting for
progressive change in Latin America and the Caribbean.

+++

Other recent articles:

MARIÁTEGUI AND THE ‘PROBLEM OF THE INDIAN’
— A CRITICAL APPRECIATION BY LUIS VITALE
Introduced and translated by Richard Fidler
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1344

DID CONSUMERS CAUSE THE BP OIL DISASTER?
by Ian Angus
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1324

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION: CHALLENGES AND CHANGES
by Dave Holmes
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1369



SOCIALIST VOICE
Web: http://www.socialistvoice.ca
Email: socialistvo...@sympatico.ca

Editors: Ian Angus, Roger Annis, John Riddell

Readers are encouraged to forward or distribute Socialist Voice as
widely as possible.
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[Marxism] Marxists, bourgeoisie and railroad unions in Argentina [Re: Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner]

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

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El 01/11/2010 12:35 a.m., Joaquín Bustelo escribió:
>
> PS: I must have missed this, but perhaps Leonardo can explain again
> what's so bad about railroad workers having a union that Cristina must
> be condemned for wearing their cap?

To begin with: I simply skipped the whole thread because as soon as I 
read the "Now is not the time to be a Marxist" subject line I quit 
reading and deleted the postings. I did not see that this sorry idea was 
a rejoinder to my positions. Well, nothing lost probably. The last 
answer by Joaquín has relieved me of any guilt for that decission.

In fact, I believe this is the moment to be more Marxist than ever, only 
that while Marxism is tarnished in Argentina by these mockeries of 
normal human thought, Argentinean Marxists will have a hard time in 
getting attention from the masses. These "Marxists" are always simmering 
at some privileged pots, such as some Faculties of Humanities in certain 
Universities, where they tend to gather like crab louses in a groin.

However -regardless of the repugnant murder of an activist and the 
quasi-murder of still another one- it is quite interesting to see that 
they start boiling up, and crack outside their shelter, again AT THE 
VERY MOMENT WHEN A NEW, YOUNG, GENERATION, enters politics in Argentina, 
thus paving the way for these young people -who have a 
characteristically Arg sense of humor, of ridicule, of sarcasm and of 
irony that usually escapes Arg "Leftists"- NOT to massively join 
socialist positions but fall intno the national-bourgeois cradle of 
political impotence. In their silly "socialist" purism, not only they 
serve the workers badly, they also serve the bourgeois and the oligarch.

This has been a stupid crime against the working class as a whole. No 
matter what Mariano believed, no matter the objective meaning of his 
politics, he tried to bring about a new society to Argentina, a society 
where people were not subject to exploitation by other people and ON 
THIS GROUND we are in agreement -as Hugo Moyano himself, by the way, 
repeats day after day wherever he can find a media outlet for his ideas! 
But the fact that some Unión Ferroviaria thugs are involved in the whole 
situation can serve our education better than just roaring against union 
thugs, etc.

There are three main unions in Arg railroads. You have the "signal 
workers" union, the "locomotive engineers" union, and the "track and 
artworks union". They are the "Señaleros", the "Fraternidad" (Brethren) 
and the "Unión Ferroviaria". Their history is a most interesting way to 
understand what has happened in Barracas when a group of hyper-exploited 
and "tercerizados" workers clashed with a group of Unión Ferroviaria 
affiliates.

Arg railroad labor movement started as a movement of the labor 
aristocracy. In Argentina, railroads were not just a profit-giving 
enterprise. They were the organizing knot that kept the whole 
semicolonial agro-export system together. Workers in the railroad 
industry were a technical and economic aristocracy, which might be 
compared with airplane pilots (the locomotive engineers) and airport 
personnel (the "señaleros") in our world. But their importance was still 
larger, because railroads, unlike planes, were not just passenger 
transport but the essential transport system for any kind of wares.

Britain managed to have the railroad network in Argentina organized as 
an inland extension of the overseas shipping lines, and of course it 
managed to own the strategic kernel of the network: the three or four 
great railroad companies. They were

(a) the Ferrocarril Sur: Buenos Aires City to the South of the Province 
of Buenos Aires and some branches into Northern Patagonia, specialized 
in the transportation of young cattle, wheat and fruit from the Upper 
Rio Negro valley,

(b) the Ferrocarril Central Argentino (Buenos Aires City to the  main 
grain growing areas in Northeastern Buenos Aires province -best land in 
the world-, and the "pampa gringa" -that is the agrarian area of 
settlement of Italian farmers- in Central and Southern Santa Fe, and 
Southeastern Córdoba provinces, with a branch to Tucumán where it tapped 
the local production of sugar,

(c) the Ferrocarril Oeste (mainly organized around the transport of 
young cattle to the winter grasslands (the "invernadas") in Western 
Buenos Aires province and Southern Córdoba, and the tansport of fattened 
cattle back to Buenos Aires and to the meat processing plants by the 
export ports; these "invernadas" were the material basis of existence of 
the wealthiest and most powerful fraction of the agro-export 
Anglo-Argentinean oligarchy),and

(d) the Ferrocarril de Buenos Aires al Pacífico, which had been first 
organized to asphyxiate the Oeste during the 

Re: [Marxism] Massive uptick in Volcanic Activity

[Greg McDonald]

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Looks like you guys may have missed the explanation:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7273066.html

Indonesian volcano unleashes new powerful eruption
By SLAMET RIYADI Associated Press © 2010 The Associated Press
Nov. 1, 2010, 5:13AM

MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia — Indonesia's most volatile volcano — one of
22 that have been increasingly active — spewed searing clouds of gas
and debris for hours Monday in its most powerful eruption in a deadly
week. No new casualties were immediately reported.
The new blast came as Indonesia struggles to respond to a tsunami that
devastated a remote chain of islands. The twin disasters, unfolding
simultaneously on opposite ends of the seismically active country,
have killed nearly 500 people and severely tested the government's
emergency response network. In both events, the military has been
called in to help.
Mount Merapi, one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, has killed 38
since it started a week ago. It has erupted many times in the last two
centuries, often with deadly results. In 1994, 60 people were killed,
while in 1930, more than a dozen villages were incinerated, leaving up
to 1,300 dead.
Almost all villagers living along Mount Merapi's once-fertile slopes —
now blanketed by gray ash — have been evacuated to crowded refugee
camps well away from the base, some screaming and crying as they were
carried away by camouflaged soldiers.
During lulls in activity, some have returned to their homes to check
on livestock and crops, but there were no indications any had been
hurt in Monday's blast, said Waluyo Rahardjo, a National Search and
Rescue Agency official.
The eruption was accompanied by several deafening explosions.
As massive clouds spilled from the glowing cauldron and billowed into
the air — continuing for nearly three hours after the blast — debris
and ash cascaded nearly four miles (six kilometers) down the
southeastern slopes, said Subrandrio, an official charged with
monitoring Merapi's activity.
More than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the west, meanwhile, a C-130
transport plane, six helicopters and four motorized boats were
ferrying aid to the most distant corners of the Mentawai Islands,
where last week's tsunami destroyed hundreds of homes, schools,
churches and mosques.
The tsunami death toll had reached 450 by Monday, said Nelis Zuliastri
from the National Disaster Management Agency, with the number of
missing now less than 100.
A military chopper had evacuated badly injured survivors Sunday who
had languished in an overwhelmed hospital with only paracetamol to
ease their pain, said Ade Edward, a disaster management official.
Among them was a baby girl born in a shelter after the tsunami and a
12-year-old girl with a life-threatening chest wound.
Indonesia, a vast island nation of 235 million people, straddles a
series of fault lines and volcanoes known as the Pacific "Ring of
Fire" and is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The fault line in the earth's surface that caused last week's
7.7-magnitude earthquake and killer wave that followed — and also the
2004 tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries — is the
meeting point of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates that have
been pushing against and under each other for millions of years,
causing huge stresses to build up. It runs the length of the west
coast of Sumatra island,
Both earthquakes and volcanos can be related to movements in the
overlapping plates that form the earth's crust. As plates slide
against or under each other, molten rock from the layer of mantle can
break the surface via a volcano, or create energy released in an
earthquake.
There is some debate as to whether earthquakes can trigger volcanic
eruptions. But with Merapi's eruption 24 hours after that tremor, the
government wasn't taking chances.
It has raised alert levels of 21 other volcanoes — many of which have
shown an increase in activity, rumbling and belching out heavy black
ash — to the second- and third- highest levels in the last two months,
mostly as a precaution, said Syamsul Rizal, a state volcanologist.
Indonesia has several volcanos smoldering at any given time, but
another government volcanologist Gede Swantika said there are normally
only five to 10 on the third-highest alert level, indicating an
increase in seismic and other activity, and none at all at the
second-highest, signifying an eruption is possible within two weeks.
He said monitors noticed more volcanos were exhibiting seismic
activity starting Sept. 2.
"We can say this is quite extraordinary, about 20 at the same time,"
Swantika said. "We have to keep an eye on those mountains. ... But I
cannot say or predict which will erupt. What we can do is monitor
patterns."
Geologist Brent McInnes said as he hadn

[Marxism] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner

[Leonardo Kosloff]

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How do you like this Joaquin? See that break with
neoliberalism? It’s in the background…

http://momento24.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Cristina-Fern%C3%A1ndez-y-Hillary-Clinton.jpg
  

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[Marxism] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner

[Leonardo Kosloff]

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Louis wrote:

“And Inigo is a windbag par excellence.” 

So many ways to embarrass Louis, so little time. But Louis
is a valuable comrade, and this is a valuable list, in its positive AND negative
aspects; Les should kick it up a notch on that “schmuck alert” though :-)

All I will say right now is that one of the friends in the
discussion was most interested in the work of Starosta since the “the question
of revolutionary subjectivity and its relation to the general and scientific
character of labour” has been poorly developed by Marxists, since Marx. 
Although,
I may add, this was one most pervasive question in Henryk Grossman’s thought.
That he works with Marx’s tools daily as his profession, that he used to work
with Ernest Mandel (whom I gather Louis has great respect for) and that he’s
hardly as anti-theory of imperialism as me. And that he’s hardly elitist as
quite a number of “Marxist academics”, like Jerry Levy who did not let Inigo
participate in this ultra-elite ‘Marxist economics’ (would that Marx had been
an economist…) list OPE-L (talk about the aristocracy of labor!), since he was
willing to argue with me.

Let me know when you are ready to discuss the concrete
content in the work of Inigo, instead of throwing petty 
(petty-bourgeois?...Nahh,
let’s not go that far) personalistic remarks.   
  

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[Marxism] Arundhati Roy: They are inciting the mob against me

[Stuart Munckton]

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World renown novelist and global justice activist Arundhati Roy is facing
escalating threats of violence in India because of her support for justice
in Kashmir--the disputed region partitioned between India and Pakistan and
occupied by military forces in the area India controls.

On October 31, members of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which has
links with neo-fascist organizations, gathered outside Roy's home in New
Dehli and chanted slogans for half an hour. The group vandalized property
outside a security gate, and then broke onto the grounds of the home. Roy
was not present at the time of the attack.
Roy, the celebrated author of the novel *The God of Small
Things*and
of several non-fiction books, including
*Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to
Grasshoppers*,
issued this statement after the attack, drawing particular attention to the
apparent collaboration of the Indian media with the mob that carried out the
attack.

full article:
http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/01/inciting-mob-anger-against-me



-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker

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[Marxism] What's new at Links: Haiti, France, US dollar, oil & US politics, Cuba, Chris Hani, Tariq Ali, NZ, Gogol Bordello, Ecuador, Australian Greens debate

[glparramatta]

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What's new at Links: Haiti, France, US dollar, oil & US politics, Cuba, 
Chris Hani, Tariq Ali, NZ, Gogol Bordello, Ecuador, Australian Greens debate

* * *
*For more reliable delivery of new content, please subscribe free to 
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*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


Haiti nine months after the quake: Poor tell West, 'Nothing!
Nothing! We've seen nothing!' 

By *Isabeau Doucet*

October 28, 2010 -- "Nothing! Nothing! We've seen nothing!", chanted the 
crowd of internally displaced people (IDP). They were pursuing former US 
president Bill Clinton from his photo-op in their squalid camp on his 
way to the third Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) meeting 
in downtown Port-au-Prince on October 6, 2010.

* Read more 


Currency wars and the privilege of empire


By *Paul Kellogg*

October 23, 2010 -- In uncertain times, the headline was soothing: 
"Secretary Geithner vows not to devalue dollar".[1] United States 
Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner was saying, in other words, 
that if there were to be "currency wars" -- competitive devaluations by 
major economies in attempts to gain trade advantage with their rivals -- 
the United States would not be to blame. Who, then, would be the 
villain? China, of course.

* Read more 


Turning the tide of oil in US and world politics


By *Dan La Botz*
October 22, 2010 -- The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico represents 
the latest in a series of atrocities committed by petroleum companies 
against the environment and against humanity. Yet, terrible and tragic 
as the BP spill is, it is merely a marginal event in the long and sordid 
history of the oil companies in US and world history. The petroleum 
companies have been at the centre of US politics for a hundred years, 
determining its domestic agenda, its environmental policy and its 
foreign policy. To be a US politician was to be baptised in oil. To be 
an admiral or a general was to be a warrior around the globe for the 
petroleum industry.

* Read more 


Behind the new economic measures in Cuba 

By *Ike Nahem*, Cuba Solidarity New York

October 27, 2010 -- On September 13, 2010 the Confederation of Cuban 
Workers (CTC) -- the mass trade-union organisation that is a central 
component and pillar of the Cuban workers' state and the revolutionary 
government headed by Raul Castro -- issued an announcement which 
codified and specified new measures and significant changes in economic, 
financial and commercial policies that will be implemented in Cuba over 
the coming months and years. These new economic policies have been 
long-debated and broadly discussed inside Cuba from local grassroots 
mass organisations and work places to the highest levels of government 
and state. They come as a surprise to no one in Cuba.

* Read more 


South Africa: What would Chris Hani say today?


*Chris Hani Memorial Lecture* by *Zwelinzima Vavi*, Congress of South 
African Trade Unions (COSATU) general secretary, delivered in 
Queenstown, October 23, 2010

I am extremely honoured by your invitation to deliver the Chris Hani 
memorial lecture here in Queenstown today. It was over fifteen years 
ago, on April 10, 1993, when "Chris" Martin Thembisile Hani was cruelly 
taken from us by an assassin's bullet.

* Read more 


Video: Tariq Ali: The perils of Islamophobi*a*


*Tariq Ali* addresses the British Socialist Workers Party's Marxism 2010 
in July.


New Zealand: Matt McCarten for Mana! It's time for a new left


*For the latest on Matt's campaign, visit http://www.matt4mana 
*

By *Joe Carolan*

* Read more 


Roma punks rise at the right tim/e/ 

By *Stuart Munckton*
October 26, 2010/--- /"My next guests are a gypsy punk rock band that 
have been called the world's most visionary band", US TV show host Jay 
Leno