[Marxism] Venezuela: The challenges of 2011
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://venezuelatranslatingtherevolution.blogspot.com/2011/01/challenges-of-2011.html 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] readings on US support for death squads in Angola, Mozambique in 1980s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades, I recently asked for and received wonderful suggestions for readings on US policy in Central America in the 1980s - thank you. Can anyone recommend books or articles on US support to Savimbi/UNITA in Angola and to the terrorist RENAMO in Mozambique during those years? Thanks again Dennis In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story John Stockwell Replica Books, 1997 - 285 pages Focusing on the Angola paramilitary program of 1975-76 in which he played a leading role, a former CIA officer provides glimpses of the agency's clandestine operations 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] Liberals don't like this color revolution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/nlpblog/fulltext/the_political_economy_of_democracy_promotion/ 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] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NY Times Op-Ed January 14, 2011 The Tucson Witch Hunt By CHARLES M. BLOW Tragedy in Tucson. Six Dead. Democratic congresswoman shot in the head at rally. Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost. The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric. Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right. “I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!” The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity. I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson. But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof. The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents. Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats. Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support. You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand. Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof. • I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chb...@nytimes.com. 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] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == More with the tedious microsurgery on Loughner's social network Let's take a deep breath and a step or two back to see the big picture. Through the last two election cycles, people started carrying firearms to political rallies. Was this even imaginable after the assassinations in the 1960s? My question is how did carrying a gun to an event like this become acceptable. This wasn't the work of a lone schizophrenic. It wasn't the work of disturbed person to plaster these armed knuckleheads across the public communications grid, was it? I mean, the media bosses who made that choice raked in record profits turning their idea of the news into a particularly dramatic kind of reality TV. The political responsibility doesn't fall on the mentally ill. ML 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] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Through the last two election cycles, people started carrying firearms to political rallies. Was this even imaginable after the assassinations in the 1960s? My question is how did carrying a gun to an event like this become acceptable. This wasn't the work of a lone schizophrenic. ML Those are questions worth pursuing but on a scale of 1 to 10, they rate about a 3. Later today I plan to write something about what is in store for the USA in the last 2 years of the Obama administration. Just as Dubya took advantage of 9/11 to launch a war against Iraq, Obama will try to use Tucson as a way to forge a government of national unity to press forward with the dismantling of what's left of the safety net. His radio address today should give some inkling of where he is going: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/15/weekly-address-president-obama-we-are-democrats-or-republicans-we-are-am While we cant escape our grief for those weve lost, we carry on now, mindful of those truths. We carry on because we have to. After all, this is still a time of great challenges for us to solve. Weve got to grow jobs faster, and forge a stronger, more competitive economy. Weve got to shore up our budget, and bring down our deficits. Weve got to keep our people safe, and see to it that the American Dream remains vibrant and alive for our children and grandchildren. 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] Gun rights, NRA, and ignorant critics
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Note by Hunter Bear (January 15, 2011] Immediately following the Tucson shootings, the traditional cries came for more gun control from the anti-firearms/anti-Second Amendment groups. The premier one is the Brady gun control organization. founded by Sarah Brady [personally a very decent person] whose husband, Jim, was seriously wounded in the assassination attack on Ronald Reagan early in 1981. [MSNBC joined in -- but seems to have backed off pronto.] The Brady organization, and comparable anti-gun groups, flourished and feathered during the Clinton era -- which saw a full scale witch-hunt against guns and gun owners. The ACLU provided no assistance to gun people. Fortunately, there was the National Rifle Association which grew rapidly during the Clinton period and was eventually able to slow and then stop the attack. In the course of it, a great many efforts came from anti-gun sources -- including Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center -- to demonize gun owners and well established gun rights organizations, especially the quite effective NRA. These calumnies found fertile ground with individuals and groups who knew and know little or nothing about firearms, hunting, self-defense. A great deal of this outright defamation and misrepresentation still remains. And the gun control groups are known, as are many groups, for their shrewd and misleading juggling of statistics. Now, of course, we have the two recent USSC rulings clarifying the Second Amendment as a full member of the Bill of Rights. And, as I've noted before, those comprise a mighty mountain of bulwark protection for firearms rights and gun people. But the anti-gun efforts are obviously continuing and this fight goes on. Last night, Portside ran a piece from the Brady organization entitled On Guns: Tucson Shows Two Visions of America. The two visions are each contained in the Brady piece -- whose views and whose interpretation of the Arizona situation comprise the sole content of the piece. No bona fide alternative view is provided. The focus of the article concerns several gun rights laws recently passed in Arizona. However one feels about those laws, a good many people in Arizona wanted them and they are well within the framework of the Second Amendment. I've posted a good deal of informed material on gun rights, the Second Amendment, and related dimensions -- as well as on my home state of Arizona. I am sure at least two Portside moderators have seen these regularly. I'm surprised that my opinion was not solicited, at least on an off-list basis. My once pretty favorable view of Portside is diminished. [What would the old Wobblies and Mine-Mill organizers I knew so well, and lots of other good people who actually worked -- and work -- as social justice organizers at the actual grassroots, say about this cloistered bleating? What would Bill Haywood say? Read his book. Hell, read mine on the Southern civil rights struggle. Medgar Evers had nine firearms with a .45 automatic in his car; I had a .38 Special revolver and a lever action rifle. And, as I've indicated, I have -- and for good reason -- loaded firearms in our Idaho home, right here and right now.] But first, to be very blunt about it, my personal opinion is that most contemporary American leftists and left liberals and liberals -- as well as some other human species in this country -- know Zero about firearms and their good uses. Some are well aware of that and, in some of those cases, are open to learning more or at least have the good grace not to criticize. But others simply echo the bull-shooting of the Brady group et al. They've never hunted and they've never organized unions in super hostile turf like the Southwest and Dixie where any effective organizer has a firearm within reach. In most instances, they've had no involvement in the grassroots heat of the Civil Rights Movement or comparable crusades whose ethos may well be tactical non-violence -- but where principled individual and home self-defense is certainly needed and justified when, say, one is the target of murderous thugs, especially in a lonely context. They aren't living in a high crime ghetto, barrio, or other low income settings where the local police take 40 minutes to answer a call for help, if indeed they even come. Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old. It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including much on techniques of grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See - Outlaw Trail: The
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Good. You see what I'm raising as an issue, our difference is on the quantitative weight assigned it. The converse of this is the relative weight we accord the danger of an Obama administration drive to use Tucson as a means to concentrate more power. Usually, the government concentration of more power and the suspension of more human rights requires a foreign threat, so I doubt Tucson will be as marketable a justification as 9/11but I'll certainly be glad to consider your argument on it... ML 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] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Usually, the government concentration of more power and the suspension of more human rights requires a foreign threat, so I doubt Tucson will be as marketable a justification as 9/11but I'll certainly be glad to consider your argument on it... ML I didn't say that there will be a crackdown on human rights. I said that there would be an attack on the welfare state fundamentals, including social security and medicare. Obama is a very slick politician. That is why, unlike Paul Krugman, MSNBC and others, he is not stigmatizing the Republican right. Basically he is trying to unite with them against the American people. In order to push ahead with this alliance, he needs to blunt the attacks from the left--like Krugman on occasion, Bob Herbert and any other MSNBC host that has a grain of integrity. Not to speak of people like Bernie Sanders. So this civility and anti-hate speech mood works very much in his favor. Even though nobody could ever accuse Sanders of hate speech, you still have pressure on him and any other liberal Democrat to get behind the president, whatever the scoundrel has up his sleeve. 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] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yeah but, witch-hunt? against whom, the likes of Sarah Palin? maybe I'm missing something here, but this could be interpreted as a salvo against politically correct leftists we see launched against progressives in academia from time to time regarding their New McCarthyism that came up say when Lawrence Summers was forced out of Harvard. Leaving that aside, and even if progressives did get carried away in the heat of the moment, it's hard to view the Tea Party types and their advocates as victims of their political opponents in this context given the volume and weight of malicious crap they spew out on a daily basis: Obama as Hitler, remember that one? I wouldn't wring my hands about these guys too much. If anything liberals and the left have been too timid, a typical response that puts them in the role of a bunch of chumps and losers, further embolding the right wing. I think Trotsky outlined these dynamics in Fascism: What it is and How to Fight it and Their Morals and Ours: instead of moralistic hand wringing the left needs to get tough back with these reactionaries. 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] Tunisia, A Restless Winter Walk, Victor Serge
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == New Post: Tunisia, A Restless Winter Walk, Victor Serge http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/tunisia-a-restless-winter-walk-victor-serge/ 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] Paul Street on Loughner
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/jared_loughner_and_the_paranoid_style/ Jared Loughner and the Paranoid Style First published: 15 January, 2011 by Alex Doherty , Paul Street Paul Street is an independent policy researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker. He is the author of several books, including ‘Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11’ and most recently ‘The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power’. He spoke to NLPs Alex Doherty on the political meaning of the recent killings in Tuscon, Arizona. Q: In the wake of the killings in Tuscon the tea party and their fellow travelers have been attacked for their lack of civility and for constant use of military metaphors regarding their opponents in the Democratic Party. Is civility really the key issue here? A: No, it isn’t. Citizens have no special obligation to be gracious and polite – to show “good manners” on the model of an aristocratic tea party – toward politicians and each other in a democracy. Real civic democracy often involves rugged and passionate conflict. Egos get bruised. Harsh words are exchanged. Unpleasant truths are spoken to and against power, often in justifiably angry tones. On military metaphors, they are nothing new. Factions and parties and activists have spoke of rallying troops, winnings battles, waging wars, targeting opponents, raising campaign (finance) “war chests” and the like – making militarized political analogies and metaphors – since the beginning. (clip) The elite call for civility generally reflects and expresses the “better sort’s” fear of “the rabble’s” “populist rage” – of the non-affluent majority’s legitimate popular anger. And ordinary people get understandably irate and “uncivil” when “representative democracy” translates into too much representation for powerful corporations and financial interests and little if any real democracy for the people. That translation is deeply entrenched in the U.S., where, as the American philosopher John Dewey noted a century ago, “politics is the shadow cast on society by business.” U.S. policy now seems more captive than ever to the closet dictatorship of money. Lots of regular people are reasonably outraged by that. As the left liberal commentator William Greider put in (in a column titled “Obama Asked us to Speak, but is he Listening?”) in the spring of 2009: “People everywhere [have] learned a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn’t. They [have] watched Washington run to rescue the very financial interests that caused the [economic] catastrophe. They [have] learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it.” 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] Tucson and double standards
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == * * *Can You Imagine? Double Standards and Doublethink By June Terpstra, Ph.D. January 14, 2010 **Information Clearing House*http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ * **-- As* Sarah Palin whines about liberals blaming her for the recent Arizona tragedies, thus focusing those tragedies on her rather than the victims and their families, I ask you to imagine pundits and politicians saying what she has said about so called terrorist tragedies. In a recent video Palin says, “After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.” Has the American media, military and government done nothing but blame Islam and Muslims for the last ten years? Since September 11 we listened with shock and then sadness to the irresponsible statements from people like Palin Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, Coulter, and Ingraham apportioning blame to all Muslims. Palin also said, “No-one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent…by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.” Really, does this mean that the oppressed Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghani or the American anti-war advocate can now speak and be heard without being called a terrorist or terrorist supporter? Is she advocating diversity or even, god forbid, multi-culturalism? Palin also has attempted a very controversial doublethink strategy by reintroducing the term, blood libel which historically some used to reference a myth that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in Passover matzo. The Zionists want an apology because, like the term holocaust, they believe it should only be used for their propaganda. However, I would like to introduce that term for all Muslims and those from invaded and occupied lands fighting for their liberation. They have been “blood libeled” with the label of “terrorist”. Doublethink, according to George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eight-Four, means: ... the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ...To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. The media is full of Doublethink stories today about the alienated, perhaps bi-polar, maybe schizophrenic Jared Loughner who would have been arrested if he were Black, Latino or Middle Eastern when he ran that red light before shooting six people in Tucson, AZ. Can you imagine stories about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being a lonely bi-polar guy who could have been saved if someone had just said hello or given him a hug as was suggested at a memorial service in Tucson yesterday about Loughner? The discourse of the media and political establishment’s response to the recent attacks in Arizona is a fascinating study in double standards and double think methodologies. In their coverage of alleged attacker, Jared Loughner’s parents they recount that his, “Mother 'almost passed out right there' while father sat in the road and cried”. Can you imagine hearing this about Mohammed Atta’s parents? No, they are Muslim and do not have any humanity to discuss in US media. We are also being treated to a discussion on the political opportunities President Barack Obama faces in his national memorial service for the dead of the Arizona shooting tragedy. Somehow I missed this media discussion about political opportunism during the ten years of unending September 11 memorials. I would like to turn the double standard around using some of the quotes that William Rivers Pitt reminded me of today in his article, “The Wrath of Fools”. For example, Ann Coulter’s, My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.(Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02) Can you imagine a journalist such as Helen Thomas saying her only regret is Mohammed Atta did not go the White House or the CIA plantation at Langley? After all, a Lebanese-American such as Thomas cannot even call a European occupier a European without being censored. Finally, one of my favorite quotes: Two things made this country great: White men Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation.. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men” (State Rep. Don
[Marxism] Jordanians march against inflation:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Jordanians march against inflation: * Thousands vent anger in Amman and other cities against government's inability to rein in prices and poverty. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2041219337111.htmlhttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104247482779s=109652e=001hvayathXBtwn9JIDAU3Aaa0oppJ7SuEQfxl-myL1qNldIZo3IGLbF7VRv6h-wZ5NUuLACUWQd56Ie-gCSNvl8i8UpCYCdKqtg52rrwZ-rbaognNyr-h6Fp7Z44jsKrqrlGaG2NfZw7BNG_NQinoMBPWjtHv-9YLMTsIKuRgsdOXVLD3WH3sZZKMrb5Qvtor3 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] Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?:
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == *Why does health care in **Cuba** cost 96% less than in the **US**?: * Life expectancy of about 78 years of age in Cuba is equivalent to the US. Yet, in 2005, Cuba was spending US$193 per person on health care, only 4% of the $4540 being spent in the US. Where could the other 96% of US health care dollars be going? http://links.org.au/node/2082http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6babet=1104247482779s=109652e=001hvayathXBtxTboOEZwEhYKW9yZxE7v8Aj-lclLzpLMG_jer5PTYg2p3yblvDxqpDcPJvNr47v-APh0LCO6JpuGWokcKsE8Fmlfg-b3c4g3aUhDTSE7WMMMC2K2_3bdMy 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] Woods on Tunisia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A very good summary with the expected boilerplate about the need for a revolutionary party. http://www.marxist.com/insurrection-tunisia-future-of-arab-revolution.htm 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] a graphic example of what NYC budget cuts mean for subway riders (video)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.salon.com/news/viral_video/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/01/14/rat_on_subwaysource=newsletterutm_source=contactologyutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110 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] Firearms as life insurance [and a number of examples]
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == [This will likely be my final word on gun matters at this point] Speaking as a life-long activist organizer: Thanks for posting that, [oldest son] John [Salter]. [Attached] It's very difficult for people in cloistered settings, even those inclined to be very sympathetic, to really grasp the realities of frequently lethal danger in highly charged atmospheres -- especially where one and one's family are special targets. They can read about these things in their living rooms, see sanguinary events far and away on television sets. But it's impossible to fully and deeply grasp the potentially deadly atmosphere unless one is actually and tangibly on the scene itself. You have to be in a targeted house in Chicago or living on the very edge of the Tougaloo College campus and a very, very short distance from Klan-traveling County Line Road, a house on the edges of a small and isolated fine little Navajo community like Tsaile [with night-time Skinwalkers on the predatory prowl], on an isolated rural road in Mississippi or Eastern North Carolina or the copper district in Arizona -- or quite a number of other places and situations I can personally and experientially cite [as can others in our family] such as right here and right now on the far-up edge of an Idaho town. Or, for other and non-activist people, living in low-income settings where the crime rate is high and police service is negatively discriminatory -- or sluggish and slow -- or non-existent. Those are the times where firearm possession was and is the very best insurance policy. At some points in my organizing career, my only conventional insurance policy was my GI policy [$10,000] -- since I couldn't get a commercial policy for obvious reasons. This is why I'm tired -- not tired of fighting for that will never happen. But damned tired of cloistered anti-gun bleating by people who have never been in those situations -- and never will be. Hunter Bear [for himself and a very large family and for all of the real -- real -- activist social justice organizers and the grassroots people of the fewest alternatives.] From John Salter: What I recall growing up, especially in Chicago, were threatening phone calls, hostile police, lurkers in the yard intent on harm. We weren't allowed to answer the phone or door, which had a huge chain around it. Bars on the windows, etc. It was comforting to see the rifles on the wall, because these rifles, in our father's hands, were the only thing protecting us. There are inner-city women with protection orders against abusive men; in some of these places, especially in the projects, police response time can be too long to prevent violence, if they show up at all. Do any of yuo wish to deny these victimized women the right to protect themselves and their children? The FBI's own numbers show that over 700,000 times a year, gun-owning people prevent themselves and their families from being crime victims. And that inumber is based only on reported incidents. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old. It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including much on techniques of grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See - Outlaw Trail: The Native As Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions Voices: Native American Activism [2009] See - Just What Makes A Damn Good Community Organizer: http://www.hunterbear.org/just_what_makes_a_damn_good_comm.htm And See - Gray Lands And Gray Ghosts: The Time Of Flint: http://hunterbear.org/GRAY%20LANDS%20AND%20GRAY%20GHOSTS.htm 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] query
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm getting considerable advice independently from various quarters that I should consider a literary agent. If anybody has any experience or recommendations on this, I'd appreciate your contacting me offlist at mla...@cinci.rr.com. Thanks. Mark L. 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == But Jared, a curious teenager who at times could be intellectually intimidating, stood out because of his passionate opinions about government and his obsession with dreams. He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the countrys central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government. I think he feels the people should be able to govern themselves, said Ms. Figueroa, his former girlfriend. We didnt need a higher authority. Breanna Castle, 21, another friend from junior and senior high school, agreed. He was all about less government and less America, she said, adding, He thought it was full of conspiracies and that the government censored the Internet and banned certain books from being read by us. Among the books that he would later cite as his favorites: Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. Also: Peter Pan. And there was that fascination with dreams. Ms. Castle acknowledged that in high school, she too developed an interest in analyzing her dreams. But Jareds interest was much deeper. It started off with dream interpretation, but then he delved into the idea of accessing different parts of your mind and trying to control your entire brain at all times, she said. He was troubled that we only use part of our brain, and he thought that he could unlock his entire brain through lucid dreaming. With lucid dreaming, the dreamer supposedly becomes aware that he or she is dreaming and then is able to control those dreams. George Osler IV, the father of one of Jareds former friends, said his son explained the notion to him this way: You can fly. You can experience all kinds of things that you cant experience in reality. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/us/16loughner.html 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] Doug Henwood: Against Civility
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://lbo-news.com/2011/01/15/radio-commentary-january-15-2011/ Against civility The horrendous shootings in Tuscon have certainly inspired a lot of drivel from the commentariat. They were heartbreaking, but please lets not draw stupid conclusions from them. Perhaps most annoying has been the call for a return to civility. Well, no, I dont feel like being civil. I like being rude. The problem with the rudeness in American political discourse is that its often so stupid, not that its so rude. The idea that politics can be civil is a fantasy for elite technocrats and the well-heeled. Im reminded of something that Adolph Reed once said to me, characterizing a mutual acquaintance as the kind of person who thinks that if you could just all the smart people together on Marthas Vineyard, they could solve all our social problems. Obviously they couldnt. Margaret Atwood once wrote that politics is about power: whos got it, who wants it, how it operates; in a word, whos allowed to do what to whom, who gets what from whom, who gets away with it and how. Theres no way that could be rendered civil. The field of politics is constituted by vast differences in interests and preferences. Much of the time, we dont talk about those things directly or explicitly. We talk about them in caricature or euphemism, or take it out on scapegoats. Some of the so-called left, such as it is, is using Obamas speech in Tuscon the other day as an excuse for rediscovering their crush on Obama. On The Nations website, always a rich source for high-mindedness, John Nichols wrote this (Dont Tone It Down, Tone It Up: Make Debate Worthy of Those We Have Lost): It has been said that Obama strives for a post-partisan balance. But this was Obama speaking as a pre-partisan, as an idealist recalling a more innocent America and imagining that some of that innocence might be renewed as shocked and heartbroken citizens seek to heal not just a community but a nation that is too harsh, too cruel, too divided . [F]or a few minutes on Wednesday night, we dared with our president to answer cynicism with idealism, to answer tragedy with hope, to answer division as one nation, indivisible. Really, John, when was this nation ever innocent? When we were trading in slaves and killing Indians? What act of healing will make this nation less divided? The rich and powerful have a lot of money and might and theyre not going to give it up easily. Elsewhere on The Nation website, Ari Berman actually used the phrase better angels to characterize the press rhetorical targets (In Arizona, Obama Appeals to Our Better Angels). (Uh-oh, I said targets.) This reminded me of Alexander Cockburns great characterization of the role of the mainstream pundit: to fire volley after volley of cliché into the densely packed prejudices of his readers. But clearly its not just the mainstream punditso to alternapundits. Its not just that these stock phrases grate on the earstheir use is a symptom that their speaker evading some complexities. 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] U.S. journalists back away from supporting Assange
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == U.S. journalists back away from supporting Assange By NANCY A. YOUSSEF McClatchy Newspapers clip – WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON-Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn't want the world to see. But just three years after a major court confrontation in which many of America's most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks' behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange - even as reporters write scores of stories based on WikiLeaks' trove of leaked State Department cables. Some say he is responsible for what's arguably one of the biggest U.S.national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents. The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him not one of us. The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange's behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he'll be charged with a crime. With a few notable exceptions, it's been left to foreign journalism organizations to offer the loudest calls for the U.S. to recognize WikiLeaks' and Assange's right to publish under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Assange supporters see U.S. journalists' ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now - writing news stories based on leaked government documents. Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington, said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism. full -- http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/09/v-fullstory/2007863/us-journalists-back-away-from.html#ixzz1B8yVEH8M * * 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == To clarify for those not blessed with residency in the American heartland, not liking Dubya doesn't mean anything vis-a-vis the teabaggers. A lot of them think George W. Bush was a closet fancy-pants corporate Republican. A lot of them also distrust the official tale about 9/11, as I've pointed out many times to the truthers on this list. ML 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == To clarify for those not blessed with residency in the American heartland, not liking Dubya doesn't mean anything vis-a-vis the teabaggers. A lot of them think George W. Bush was a closet fancy-pants corporate Republican. A lot of them also distrust the official tale about 9/11, as I've pointed out many times to the truthers on this list. ML You're missing the point, Mark. There is no coherency to Loughner's thinking, as the favorable reference to the Communist Manifesto would indicate, not to speak of lucid dreaming. While my next article will focus mainly on Obama's calculations, I will make the point that Loughner's schizophrenia was manifest FIVE years ago long before Palin was a factor in American politics. The left has the causality all wrong on Loughner. He was not sparked into action because of all the conspiratorial ideology that surrounded him. Instead his madness drove him in that direction, but once he began moving in that direction his understanding of what he read--from Mein Kampf to the CM--was mediated by a short-circuited brain. 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Materialists should not have such a hard time understanding this very basic point. On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: You're missing the point, Mark. There is no coherency to Loughner's thinking, as the favorable reference to the Communist Manifesto would indicate, not to speak of lucid dreaming. While my next article will focus mainly on Obama's calculations, I will make the point that Loughner's schizophrenia was manifest FIVE years ago long before Palin was a factor in American politics. The left has the causality all wrong on Loughner. He was not sparked into action because of all the conspiratorial ideology that surrounded him. Instead his madness drove him in that direction, but once he began moving in that direction his understanding of what he read--from Mein Kampf to the CM--was mediated by a short-circuited brain. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/gregmc59%40gmail.com 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sorry, Greg. I don't see what's obviously materialist about blue-skying about the motives and psyche of someone none of know. We might as well be trying to psychoanalyze Howdy Doody. For my two cents, I'd be flabberghasted if Loughner was actually goaded by his understanding of the _Manifesto_ or _Mein Kampf_. Indeed, I see absolutely no evidence that he ever actually read these things, and a strong indication that he did not read either of them... Otherwise, I doubt he'd have tossed them into the same buffalo chip salad. Most likely, he found them to be verbal irritants he used to shock, impress and get attention from his peers. Everybody's whose taught for any period of time has probably encountered students like this. While I was in grad school, one of my professors in Chicago--a Jewish historian of Germany--had a student who used to argue about the Nazis the way some of the would-be ancestor-worshippers of the Lost Cause talk about the Confederacy as a multicultural grass roots movement against Federal regulation. When the class spent a session on Nazi propaganda films, this guy showed up for class in an SS uniform. A friend of mine who taught English had a student who came up to him several times and told him that he had an irritating voice and that he (the student) was going to shoot him. There are mentally disturbed people out there and who knows what's going to set them off or how they're going to express their being set off The bigger questions about Tucson are those I've posed earlier...but we're probably beating a dead horse here... ML 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] Loughner was a truther who hated George W. Bush
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Most likely, he found them to be verbal irritants he used to shock, impress and get attention from his peers. No, Mark. I was just playing a kind of shock jock game in 1960 when I joined the YAF to scandalize my JFK worshipping classmates in high school. Or Charles Bukowski telling his classmates in 1938 that he admired Hitler. Loughner was somewhere else entirely. He was in an alternate universe as he frequently expressed. 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] Doug Henwood: Against Civility
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == for a take on left-wing incivility 24/7 in the tabloid tradition, one invariably with entertainment value, even though its political bona fides are often suspected by some (e.g. Amy Goodman and Pacifica insurgents as Stalinists and Peter Camejo as ex-trot and Green parasite) notwithstanding its connection with Alexander Cockburn, is Bruce Anderson's Anderson Valley Advertiser available in our local supermarkets: http://www.theava.com http://www.liarunlimited.com/ 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] New Anti-Capitalist Party on Tunisia: 'Ben Ali assassin, Sarkozy accomplice!' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Statement by the *New Anti-Capitalist Party* (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) France, translated by *John Mullen* [This statement was released before the fall of Ben Ali. See Tunisia's intifada topples tyrant: 'Yezzi fock! http://links.org.au/node/2098.] January 11, 2011 -- When Mohamed Bouazizi committed suicide by setting fire to himself after being harassed by the police his act became the spark which is now setting fire to the whole of the miraculous Tunisia of General Ben Ali. Full statement at http://links.org.au/node/2100 * Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Or join the Links Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 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] Woods on Tunisia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A very good summary with the expected boilerplate about the need for a revolutionary party. I agree. This is one of Woods' best pieces, I think. I read Richard Seymour's analysis and again I thought it was very good. Richard linked to Brian Whitaker whose latest post got mired in legal and constitutional questions to such an extent that I began to think he must be Australian. Some of his earlier posts were much better. Juan Cole's piece was also a must read and the Angry Arab, although rather crypitic is a good litmus test of the thinking of the secular Arab Left. I am extremely interested in the timing of these events. We are or were on the cusp of another confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah. The US has been using the Hariri tribunal to prepare for the launch of a civil war situation which will provide an excuse for an Israeli attack. This is probably in strategic terms an attempt to put pressure on Syria and also to remove the Hezbollah rocket threat in the event of an Israeli/US attack on Iran. The problem is that such an eventuality depends on the continued existence of the dictatorial Arab regimes and that same existence is precisely what the Tunisian Revolution has called into question. So it looks like a case of 'bad timing'. While the US has been carefully getting its set of ducks in a row, history looks like it might have taken a giant leap. The best laid schemes of mice and imperialists gang aft agley it would seem. comradely Gary 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] Good guest post by Kevin Ovenden on Lenin's Tomb
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/01/fall-of-ben-ali.html 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] Hobsbawm interviewed about Marx, student riots, the new Left, and the Milibands
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/16/eric-hobsbawm-tristram-hunt-marx 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] Excellent blog from Tunisia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://methalif.blogspot.com/ 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] Good Movements vs. bad movements from a colonized point of view
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == = Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://revolutionaryfesenjan.blogspot.com/2011/01/good-movements-vs-bad-movements-from.html 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] Hobsbawm interviewed about Marx, student riots, the new Left, and the Milibands
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I admit to a prejudice against Hobsbawm based on his writings on Ireland. But this stuff on that crop of right wing vipers, the Milliband brothers, is simply sickening. The great old Irish insult of 'moderate' springs instantly to mind. *Hobsbams: Well, as a father, he [ Ralph] obviously couldn't help but be rather proud. He would certainly be much to the left of both of his sons. I think that Ralph was really identified for most of his life with dismissing the Labour party and the parliamentary route – and hoping that somehow it would be possible that a proper socialist party could come into being... None the less, I think Ralph would certainly have hoped for something much more radical than his sons have so far looked like doing * How could anyone think that there was anything but the deepest shame possible over the kind of politics the Milliband Brothers have pushed and will push? But Hobsbawm is old and has grown into respectability and golden opinions. All while the working class suffer the most brutal attacks. comradely Gary 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] [microsound] Loughner's last close friend said that he ignored TV and talk radio
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You said : I don't believe anyone has gone so far as to describe him as schizophrenic. I haven't heard this either, but he seems a little schizy to me. He is associations are so loose you could drive a truck through them. Have you ever seen his syllogisms? Here are some comments from Loughner's philosophy professor, who says his impression was as someone whose brains were scrambled. . http://www.slate.com/id/2280653/ -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/-Marxism--Loughner%27s-last-close-friend-said-that-he-ignored-TV-and-talk-radio-tp30655933p30676142.html Sent from the Marxism mailing list archive at Nabble.com. 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] The end of the imperialist epoch
Historically, only capitalist countries which have intervened militarily to establish settler colonies or to set up puppet regimes to facilitate the exploitation of these territories by their own corporations and have been characterized as imperialist by Marxists and others. In a message dated 1/14/2011 9:10:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, __shmage@pipeline.com_ (mailto:_shm...@pipeline.com) _ writes: Are you saying that China today is not capitalist? That Han settlement in Tibet is not massively sponsored by the Chinese regime? That the Tibet Autonomous Region does not have a puppet government? That Chinese corporations are not heavily present in Tibet? (and were not even talking about Sinkiang!) Comment Obviously the modern Chinese state is not a SETTLER STATE or seeking to secure or maintain a colony established by settlers. Treating imperialism in this era of political domination of speculative finance as a general imperialism defeats the mean of this tread: the end of the imperialist epoch. Qualifying and quantifying the meaning of imperial-colonialism is part of asking the question end of the imperialist epoch. Lenin's Hobson unraveling of modern imperialism of his era was useful because a real imperialism was examined in its economic and political features. Lenin spoke of monopolies, finance capital (financial-industrial capital); hundreds of millions of slaves of a direct colonial system and the fight amongst direct colonizers for a re-division of an already divided world. This fight for spheres of influence was based in the national productive logic of huge multinational state structures. The history of colonialism - at least in general Marxist terms, has meant more than imperial outreach or a lack of rights of those beings colonized. Imperialism of the epoch we are leaving has meant an end to the direct colonial system; the end of neo colonialism and the imperial colonization based on financial-industrial capital. The post WW II period and into the 1980's saw the rise and fall of the colony and neo colonialism as these political forms of rule expressed financial-industrial capital. Vietnam Liberation and unification in 1976 is a world book mark on an epoch that began with our revolution of 1776. This does not mean no one of earth is oppressed and exploited through world bourgeois production relations. Rather, a specific form of imperialism -colonialism, has been superseded. America inaugurated an epochal wave of colonial revolutions that would span two hundred years. We settled our national liberation struggle against the British Empire - with a Slave Oligarchy intact seeking its distinct anti-colonial interest imperialist interest, and then settled the war against the slave system. American finance capital emerged from the Civil War facing a world with colonial states as direct appendage of imperialist state structures preventing its free flow of finance capital beyond Latin America. The First World Imperialist War shook imperialism - the direct colonial system, to its foundations, with the Soviets breaching the political and economic bourgeois imperialist chain. The political basis for imperialist war in the past century, rather than the economic impetus for war under capitalism, (anarchy of production with war production being a profit center) was the fight for colonies or spheres of influence based on colonial possessions. The fight between imperialist states was not over one huge state colonizing another but over the colonies represented by these massive states. This form of imperialism is very much part of the question end of the imperialist epoch. The Second World Imperialist War sounded the death knell of direct colonialism. The defeat of German fascism was the last gasp of a form of finance capital politically dominated by industrial capital seeking to recreate the direct colonial system. For the German state direct colonialism meant revitalization of economic and social life - the thousand year rule, or in lay person terms French wine, Polish hams and Slavic slave women. American finance capital - emerging 50 years before Lenin's Imperialism, sought to recreate the political world leading the charge to wipe direct colonialism from the face the earth. American financial imperialism sought to defeat its enemies and identified them as direct colonizers of the world. It's slogan was national independence and self determination of nations up to and including the formation of separate states. This battering ram against the direct colonial system explains why Uncle Ho armies entered Hanoi at the close of WW II with CIA in tow playing the Star Spangled Banner. Then of course came the policy change and the Cold War. This era of financial-industrial capital -
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lougher: politics of insanity. if words have no meaning what is government?
There is a general rule about the way society treats criminals: place responsibility for antisocial acts on the individual, thus absolving society from blame. The mismatch between society's attitude toward heroes and criminals rests in society's claim of credit on heroes and rejection of responsibility for criminals. A criminal is one who has betrayed societal values by violating a prescribed code of conduct, who is deranged but not legally insane, a deviant, an anomaly, a manifestation of social disease, a virus against the system, a unit malfunction and a personal malfeasance. Adolf Hitler was labeled a madman to protect German culture and fascism, notwithstanding the curious fact that Hitler rose to power in Germany in a discernible sociocultural context. Even organized warfare must be conducted within the limits of regulated behavior. War crimes and crimes against humanity are not tolerated. Yet market fundamentalism argues for wholesale deregulation to allow economic crimes against humanity. Charles Ponzi was deemed an unprincipled conman to insulate unregulated capitalism itself from being revealed as a systemic Ponzi scheme. Capitalism's bad apples: It's the barrel that's rotten; By Henry C K Liu. This article appeared in AToL on August 1, 2002. _http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html) Comment The politics of insanity: quickie notes. Twenty people were shot, and six of them died, in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, during the attempted assassination of the Democratic Congresswoman. The shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was captured on the spot and reported to be a psychiatrically disabled person with a recent history of fascination with right-wing rhetoric and abstract thinking posing such questions as: if words have no meaning what is government? The answer is simple: an executive committee for the ruling class. This in turn raises the question of the role of the state as an organization of violence. In politics the answer to a political question is by definition partisan, involving class outlook and ideology. Lougher's question is political. He is no lone gunman expressing an aberration in American society, but an individual that choose a division of labor casting him as assassin of a political representative rather than unarmed Mexican immigrants, seeking economic relief in America. Lougher was very political with his ideas and ideology being shaped in a discernible sociocultural context. Whether Lougher is diagnosed as being a psychiatrically disabled person, - whatever that means according to whom, has not prevented pundits and layperson from contextualizing his actions against a backdrop of economic and political crisis. And political and ideological outlook. Everyone speaks of Lougher in the context of Arizona, meaning Arizona expresses and represents something discernable in the national body politic rather than geographic location. Arizona is Senator John McCain and his presidential bid under the banner of Country (White people) First, and focal point of the fascist anti-immigration movement. Every politically aware person in America understands this. What is not understood is the class sociology of a Lougher and the role he cast in political history. Arizona is in the forefront of the fascist anti-immigration movement. The anti-immigration movement is at the center stage of a political environment shaped by the impact of qualitatively new means of production; the transformation of the state; the militarization of the economy and society; the rapid and accelerating implementation of the legal means to suppress individual dissent and seize control of the government; and the changing character of the social struggle. Where in the past the religious right sought to organize and propagandize in a period when globalization had still not widely affected American society, the anti-immigration movement propagandizes an American people devastated by the effects of advanced globalization, increasingly marginalized economically and politically, and bewildered by the world in which they now live. The medium of anti-immigration has become the means by which a section of the American people is being organized and mobilized as a social base to support the further transformation of the government and society necessary to facilitate the penetration of today's form of global capital in the world's societies, and to prepare for and contain its inevitable effects. Lougher was not immune to real time politics and ideological assault by fascists upon the national body politic. If words have no meaning what is government? strikes me as a constitutionalist argument, harkening back to the passionate pleas of the Slave Oligarchy demanding their constitutionally protect
