headers
Aaron Kreider | 1 May 2005 01:06
Favicon

Re: newspapers, blogs, etc

I think there is a place for newspapers, and particularly books and 
magazines which are key to giving the historical background which is 
missing in the corporate media.  

I do "online activism" full-time, so if anyone has ideas along those 
lines I can provide helpful feedback, and might even be able to 
implement some of them.

David Walters wrote:
> The person in question would have to google
>"socialism" or "activism"; wade through millions of potential sites; 
>then fine the site you think they ought check out.

Ok so I don't rank anywhere for "socialism", but my website is #3 in 
Google for "activism." =)

I think there is a huge potential for publicizing radical views 
through the internet.

I've been focussing on the "information sharing" side of things. 
Blogs are just the start. They are going to take off in popularity 
and you will start to have people aggregating the blogs with similar 
themes on to one site, or ways for users to do it themselves.

I'm especially interested in going beyond blogging.  I'm interested 
in sharing information about events (conferences, protests, 
trainings, speakers), grassroots campaigns, groups and networks, 
resources (both training materials and issue/ideology oriented ones), 
trainers/speakers, etc.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Louis Proyect | 1 May 2005 02:27
Picon
Favicon
Gravatar

Jim Craven on some of the responses to Stan Goff

Jake wrote:

I am an ISO member and MFSO member who has a brother currently serving in
Iraq. I am usually very impressed with Joaquin Bustelo's methodical and well
explained criticisms but take issue with an aspect of his defense of Stan
Goff.

He states below:

"Now here is what Stan actually said: "When you come to these kinds of
meetings, comrades, do not come in with a recruiting agenda, and do not come
in with your papers.  It is opportunistic and presumptuous, but more than
that, it is plain bad organizing.

"You should stop that.  The typical first-timer is a 27-year-old Army wife
who is scared out of her wits that her husband will be killed or maimed for
what she is just figuring out is a pack of lies.  She feels she is taking a
huge risk just talking to others who oppose the war.  We re-affirm
her...yes, this is a bad war, and you should not be facing these fears.
That's a first contact.  Not, here's the Socialist Worker, and we want to
overthrow the government... which is what she hears based on her own
socialization in anticommunist America."

So, contrary to what Sustar and Smith say, Stan does not accuse the ISO of
"using the sales pitch 'We want to overthrow the government.'" He accuses
them of not UNDERSTANDING that THIS is how their pitches come across to the
typical military family member, of not understanding that this "is what she
hears based on her own socialization in anticommunist America."

-----
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Doug Smiley | 1 May 2005 02:55
Picon
Favicon

American Economy Losing Steam

The global locomotive loses steam
Apr 29th 2005

>From The Economist 

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3930626

For several years, America—and particularly the
American consumer—has been powering global economic
growth. Now, however, the locomotive seems to be
losing momentum. Estimated GDP growth for the first
quarter was a disappointing 3.1%, and other indicators
look decidedly soft.

--
Doug
http://indydoug.blogspot.com

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism <at> lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Jake Skyy | 1 May 2005 03:52
Picon
Favicon

RE: response to Jim Craven about the ISO, Stan Goff, and Military Families

I'd like to take a moment to reply to Kim Craven's response to my
contribution on the debate concerning the ISO, Stan Goff and MFSO.
-Justin A.

>From Jim Craven:

a) First of all, what this person calls Stan's "self-serving projections"
may well be--and likely are--some concrete lessons gained from considerable
experience in organizing among GIs and their families--experience going far
beyond selling a few papers to a few of the diverse MFSO members;

My response:

No one is questioning Stan Goff's credentials. 'Self-serving' referred to 
Joaquin's
"flexible" re-interpretation of Stans earlier statements. This is about a 
debate
about politics and movements. I do more than sell papers.  Although It seems 
that movement-building is a moot point in relation to your repeated 
reference to "sectarian rags"
and sects and etc...etc... this doesnt take on any of the concrete questions 
being
debated.

>From Jim Craven:

b) Merely selling a few sectarian rags (from whatever sect) hardly
constitutes real organizing or even substantive organizing or political
work; indeed there are some sects among the nominal "left" who do little
more than that while measuring their "progress" with sales figures;
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Shane Mage | 1 May 2005 04:18
Picon

Re: Kelpers want to remain British

Nestor wrote:
>
>"That's quite reasonable, nobody is preventing them from being
>British. 
>
>And it is precisely to further enhance this condition that we suggest
>them to abandon Argentinean territory and to live on British
territory...While they  remain on Argentinean territory, where they 
were born, they will be  Argentineans, like it or not:  this is the 
law of the legitimate sovereign of the land..."

Why shouldn't they have the option of dual citizenship?

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism <at> lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Ralph Johansen | 1 May 2005 04:55
Favicon

PROFILE: Iraq's hostage cabinet By Pepe Escobar - Asia Times Apr 30, 2005

<But for the moment, even more alarmingly, the acting minister is none 
other than the unsinkable convicted fraudster, former Pentagon darling 
and purported Iranian agent Ahmad Chalabi. "For the moment" could last a 
lifetime: Chalabi - who has been oiling his connections with leading 
Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for a long time - will 
undoubtedly waste no time filling the Oil Ministry with his Iraqi 
National Congress cronies. Not a few in Baghdad firmly believe that the 
Green Zone may have had a perverse hand on his appointment.>
<But the moment the majority of Sunni Arab public opinion equates 
illegal occupation to the Shi'ites, Kurds and the political process, 
civil war is inevitable. There's nothing this hostage cabinet can do 
about it. We're not there yet, but it's getting closer by the minute.>

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD30Ak01.html

Apr 30, 2005

THE ROVING EYE

Iraq's hostage cabinet

By Pepe Escobar

"We fasted for three months; then we broke our fast with an onion." - 
Iraqi proverb

After fasting - or watching non-stop squabbling - for almost three 
months since the January 30 elections, Iraqis finally got their onion: a 
new cabinet no one likes (except the Kurds). Shi'ite  Prime Minister 
Ibrahim Jaafari didn't get what he wanted. No wonder: the
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
JoaquĂ­n Bustelo | 1 May 2005 07:18

RE: Re: the ISO's unfortunate response to Stan Goff

Responding to Fred Feldman: 

Leaving aside whether Fred's characterization of the Marx's 1848-49
newspaper is accurate ("organized around exclusively democratic themes and
did not advocate socialism"), the reason I keep pointing to this example is
not to urge everyone to copycat it but to highlight the approach, which was
rooted in integrating yourself into the actual movement, and not presenting
a face that would alienate you from it. 

How to *apply* that concept is much more complicated. This is not some huge
revolutionary upsurge we're dealing with, for one thing; the stage we are at
is largely one of the primitive accumulation and training of cadre. That
puts a relatively higher premium on a socialist presence and face, much more
1846-7 than 1848-9. 

But on that, it should be noted that at the same time that they founded the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx, Engels and their friends also arranged for
the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" to be widely reproduced and
distributed,, including, if memory serves, within the NRZ. And the paper
took up not just "democratic" questions strictly speaking but also economic
and social ones. So it is not a question of abandoning one thing or the
other, but of understanding what is subordinate, and I would add in what
specific context. 

In the kind of situation that Stan Goff talked about, a small meeting where
new people would be attending for the first time, I think in that kind of
milieu it is probably a mistake to try to sell a socialist newspaper. 

That is a very different thing from a demonstration or a big public rally.
In the case of Fayetteville, there a number of restrictions that were
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Walter Lippmann | 1 May 2005 07:50
Picon
Favicon
Gravatar

Vietnam and Cuba - Thirty Years Since Liberation

VIETNAM AND CUBA - THIRTY YEARS SINCE LIBERATION
by Walter Lippmann, CubaNews

This morning while slowly waking up, I listened to another of
the National Public Radio reports we've been getting this week
about what they like to refer to as "the fall of Saigon". When
I tried to remember exactly what I'd been doing on that special
day thirty years ago, I found it impossible. I had no idea what
I'd done that day. Of course I was still employed in the field
of social work here in Los Angeles. 

But there was one thing I did remember, and have remembered ever
since that day. It was the televised images of the United States
helicopters flying out of Vietnam and the mobs of collaborators
with Washington's occupation army who were being abandoned by 
their employers. That scene has been re-broadcast over and over
in the subsequent years. Israel abandoned its collaborators in
south Lebanon when it pulled out some years later. 

Some day a similar scene is likely to play out in Iraq, too as
we've seen the powers that be in the United States have never
learned the simple truth that people don't like liberators who
come bearing bayonets.

Thirty years ago today I thought back over the previous decade
of anti-war struggle. Having been a participant in each of the
major mobilization since the first one, which had been called
by the Students for a Democratic Society in April 1965, it was
a very special moment. We'd worked hard and mobilized over and
over during that decade. The Vietnamese people, lead by their
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 May 2005 13:12
Picon
Favicon

Re: Scientific Marketing (re: newspapers are a problem. . . )

Bonnie says:
>I hadn't thought of using corporate advertising techniques. I'll 
>just take my next multi-million dollar bonus I get for working in 
>the antiwar movement and put it into a good Madison Avenue-style 
>advertising campaign.

We don't have a multi-million-dollar media, so we don't need a 
multi-million-dollar advertising campaign.  We do, however, need good 
social movement studies (a genre of sociology) that empirically study 
processes and results of social movement tactics and studies, 
including how socialist organizations use their publications and how 
their publications are made use of by people who come into contact 
with them.  Otherwise, to use Joaquin's words, selling and giving 
away publications indeed ought to be regarded as "a dead-tree 
fetish."  What's fetish?  A superstitious belief in magical powers of 
an object (such as a newspaper), unsupported by any evidence about 
its true properties.

Rick says:
>(proud subscriber of Worker's Vanguard, for twenty years).

Well, there can be an outlier in data set for any statistical study.  :->
--

-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 May 2005 14:47
Picon
Favicon

What Do Socialists Actually Read?

The problem with "newspapers" of US socialist organizations is that 
they are not the publications that interest socialists (excepting 
outliers).  The organizations that put out their "newspapers" believe 
that they are necessary "mass organs," appropriate for potential 
recruits, i.e. non-socialist activists.  But writings about socialism 
that don't even interest socialists naturally do not engage 
non-socialists either.

What do US socialists actually read for their own purposes, to 
inform, educate, and entertain themselves?

A.  Real newspapers, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, 
the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, 
The (UK) Guardian, etc. (and real newspapers on the left, like The 
Akahata in Japan and Il Manifesto and La Repubblica in Italy, if they 
can read foreign languages) and wire dispatches from Reuters, 
Associated Press, Agence France Presse, etc.  (For busy socialists 
who don't have time to read real newspapers and wire dispatches every 
day, the indefatigable WSWS.org may serve as a kind of newspaper 
clipping service.)  Socialists (mainly students, teachers, 
librarians, and researchers) who have remote access to LexisNexis and 
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service should consider themselves 
fortunate and share what they have with others.

B.  Broad left publications, such as CounterPunch and Le Monde 
Diplomatique.  (Less often read but probably still on the menu once 
in a while are broad liberal publications like AlterNet, Common 
Dreams, The Progressive, In These Times, and The Nation.)

C.  Socialist and other leftist publications that publish theoretical
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 4 comments |

Gmane