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Pat Costello | 1 Aug 01:08
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Eyewitness account fron Honduras


http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/honduras_the_hooded_face_of_dictatorship_01870.html

Honduras: the hooded face of dictatorship

It was a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon in Honduras when I came face to face with the masked gunmen of the
coup regime.

I was travelling in a convoy of sixty cars and buses towards the border with Nicaragua. The convoy included
the first lady of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, and her family. She was hoping to be reunited with her husband,
Manuel Zelaya, the country’s elected president.

Last month, Zelaya was kidnapped by the army and expelled from the country, and that Friday morning he had
vowed to re-enter Honduras at a border crossing where thousands of his supporters had already gathered to
greet and protect him.

Just before midday, the coup leader, Roberto Micheletti, went live on air to announce an immediate curfew.
His aim was to provide legal cover for what his illegal regime had being doing all morning: preventing
ordinary citizens from moving freely about their own country.

We listened to Micheletti’s announcement on Radio Globo, one of only two radio stations still daring to
oppose the coup regime. We had two choices: turn around and drive back to the capital, Tegucigalpa, or
continue towards the border in open defiance of the military. We choose to do the latter.

As we neared what was to be the first of a series of military roadblocks, I witnessed soldiers stopping
public buses and ordering the passengers out onto the roadside. If these citizens were to make it to the
border or to their homes, they would now have to do so on foot.

The army roadblock consisted of a truck parked sideways across the road and a couple of dozen soldiers
together with their shame-faced commanding officer. After half an hour of fruitless negotiations, the
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S. Artesian | 1 Aug 01:38
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Re: Iran: Whose Side Are You On?

Obviously then, the answer to my previous question-- have you actually ever 
read Hegel-- is "no."

Thanks for clearing that up.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Jscotlive <at> aol.com>
To: <sartesian <at> earthlink.net>
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 3:40 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Iran: Whose Side Are You On?

> Sartesian:
>
> For your edification:
>
> 'The great ready-made thought that the word is not to be comprehended as a
> complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes,  in which the
> things apparently stable no less than their mind-images in our  heads, the
> concepts go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being  and 
> passing
> away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidents and of all  temporary
> retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the  end.'
>
> Ludwig Feuerbach And The Outcome Of Classical German Philosophy -
> Dialectical Materialism
>
> FREDERICK ENGELS
> 

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Greg McDonald | 1 Aug 01:38
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Radio America: Honduras might cancel diplomatic visas of US functionaries

I finally find a point of agreement  with the coup regime of Honduras.
Apparently, Micheletti is threatening to reciprocate with some visa
cancellations, namely, that of Llorens at al.

It would be pretty funny to see Honduran troops escorting Llorens to
the airport.

http://www.radioamerica.hn/sitio.cfm?pag=leenoticias&t=Dia&id=14559
31 de julio de 2009 4:21:27 PM GMT-06:00

Honduras podría cancelar Visas diplomáticas a funcionarios de EE.UU

RADIO AMERICA- En un comunicado emitido por la Cancillería de la
República de Honduras se dio a conocer que se podría aplicar
reciprocidad a los diplomáticos estadounidenses acreditados en el
país, en vista que esta nación suspendió las Visas Diplomáticas a
cuatro hondureños.

De acuerdo a Yina Valeriano, encargada de Relaciones públicas de este
ente estatal, los funcionarios a quienes se les suspendieron las Visas
no incurrieron en ningún delito de corrupción, narcotráfico o
terrorismo entre otros.

Valeriano explicó que la medida se puede aplicar a diplomáticos o
cónsules sin ninguna excepción.

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Rachel Ambler | 1 Aug 06:06

post

Hello,

I hope you can help and are willing to help.... I'm working on a final exam and having a little trouble
wrapping my brain around it... I got some good insight from your site, and hope some of your members might
give me some help. Here's my topic...

Consider the totalitarian ideologies - Fascism, Nazism, Communism. How much were they products of
driving forces of industrialization, science, democratization, and Enlightenment thought, and how
much were they departures from those forces?

Thank you!
Rachel 
Midland, TX
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Midhurst14 | 1 Aug 06:12
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Re: post

Equating nazism with Communism is absurd
Read The Communist Manifesto for clarification
George Anthony
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Rachel Ambler | 1 Aug 06:39

Re: post

I agree, and then throw in Fascism!?!? But, hey, I didn't come up with the 
topic. I just have to answer it.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Midhurst14 <at> aol.com>
To: "RamblerMidland" <rambler <at> suddenlink.net>
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 11:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] post

> Equating nazism with Communism is absurd
> Read The Communist Manifesto for clarification
> George Anthony
> ________________________________________________
> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> Send list submissions to: Marxism <at> lists.econ.utah.edu
> Set your options at: 
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/rambler%40suddenlink.net
> 

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Mark Lause | 1 Aug 06:43
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Re: post

Rachel,

I can't guess who'd ask a question like this, which basically asks for
the history of everything in the last two hundred years, but....

You really need to do your own work.  If you'd have done that through
the course, you'd be able to write your own exam.  Remember: what you
don't know yourself, you don't know.  And when you get a county full
of people who don't know, you get President Bush....

Also, while there's nothing wrong with asking advice, you need to know
where to do for it.  Since this is an open email list (that is anyone
can join it), so you can't really tell who you'd be getting advice
from here.

You might do just as well asking someone in the school cafeteria or at
the bus stop.

ML

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Bhaskar Sunkara | 1 Aug 06:51
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Re: post

This is utterly impossible to answer in a reasonable amount of space.

When writing your essay if you substitute the term "Communism" for
"Stalinism" that would be good.
The rise of fascism and nazism occurred after crisis ripped through liberal
"democracy".... they were militant assertions of capitalist class rule that
rolled back much of the gains won by progressive forces in the preceding
decades.  They operated under the auspices of "class collaboration" and with
zealous appeals to nationalism and traditionalism.  In other words those
movement sought to unite their respective country, restore class stability
(labor-capital relation through suppressing class struggle, independent
working class organization, democratic opposition).

That's an extremely simplistic overview, I won't go into any more details
since you should probably do the research yourself and I've been drinking
for several hours.

Now just to be clear--- "Communism" as articulated by Marx is very much so
the opposite of fascism/nazism.  Whereas the latter two were nationalist and
focused on class collaboration and defusing antagonisms between labor and
capital, the former was internationalist and advocating social change
through the class struggle (rejecting nationalism, racism, xenophobia, etc
etc).  It wouldn't be wrong to say that much of the socialist movement was
an attempt to actualize the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution
(liberty, equality, fraternity) by actualizing the promise of democracy by
extending it to the social and economic spheres, whereas the fascism was a
reaction against Enlightenment ideals.

One could argue that Stalinism was pretty nationalist and that its historic
role was to rapidly industrialize Russia at a tremendous human cost.
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Shawn Redden | 1 Aug 07:05
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Re: post

Turn the question on itself, challenging the stupid term "totalitarianism."

Or, since space forbids you from responding comprehensively, 
acknowledge it, take a position, and discuss differences.   The whole 
of Trotsky's "What is National Socialism?" written in the summer of 
1933 may be of use.  The flamethrower writes:

"Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not 
only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives 
alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A 
hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic 
power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the 
radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie 
stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created 
by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible 
reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery! Despair 
has raised them to their feet fascism has given them a banner. 
Everything that should have been eliminated from the national 
organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the 
normal development of society has now come gushing out from the 
throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. 
Such is the physiology of National Socialism."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm

Solidarity,
Shawn

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Michael Smith | 1 Aug 07:24

Re: post

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:06:32 -0500
"Rachel Ambler" <rambler <at> suddenlink.net> wrote:

> Consider the totalitarian ideologies - Fascism, Nazism, Communism. How much were they products of
driving forces of industrialization, science, democratization, and Enlightenment thought, and how
much were they departures from those forces?

Is this the essay question given? If so, I fear your professor 
is an idiot. Let's start with the cockamamie idea that 
"industrialization, science, democratization, and Enlightenment 
thought" are *forces* rather than phenomena. 

And the list of "totalitarian ideologies" is structurally peculiar --
surely Nazism is a special case of Fascism, not a separate phenomenon? 
And then "totalitarian" is a knucklehead concept. What modern developed 
society isn't "totalitarian"? But don't get me started.

What Prof is looking for is an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand 
answer, like a New York Times editorial. Yes the Terrible Three 
"totalitarian ideologies" are inconceivable without science, 
democratization, etc., and yet they betray the deep 
inner moral essence of these "driving forces", whose goal is the 
production of cliches and poorly-read college professors.  

(You may want to leave out the last bit.) 

A quick survivor's guide to academic life: figure out what your 
teacher wants to hear, and then say that. You may feel a little 
soiled at first, but you get used to it, and the damage isn't 
permanent as long as you don't come to *believe* what you're
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