H-Net Review [H-War]: Hurl-Eamon on Brown and Barry and Begiato, 'Martial Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century'

Andrew Stewart

#2348

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Date: Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 8:30 AM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Hurl-Eamon on Brown and Barry and Begiato, 'Martial Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century'
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Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, Joanne Begiato, eds. Martial
Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long
Nineteenth Century. Cultural History of Modern War Series.
Manchester Manchester University Press, 2019. 288 pp. $120.00
(cloth), ISBN 978-1-5261-3562-9.

Reviewed by Jennine Hurl-Eamon (Trent University)
Published on H-War (October, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

This book came out of the 2015 conference "Military Masculinities in
the Long Nineteenth Century" held at the University of Hull to honor
the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. Eleven of the participants
revised their work into chapters dealing with a wide variety of
topics relating to martial masculinities. Like many editors in such
circumstances, Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, and Joanne Begiato
faced the challenge of bringing together disparate parts into a
coherent whole. They have organized the chapters so that the first
five are considered as analyses of "experiencing" martial
masculinities and the second six as "imagining" them. Most
importantly, Begiato and Brown have contextualized the essays with a
masterful introduction. It situates this collection within an already
rich and growing historiography of military masculinities in this
period and extracts the collection's key contributions. For this
book, the long nineteenth century has been periodized as 1789-1914.
As Brown and Begiato compellingly argue, this was a "vital
transitional period" for Britain because it preceded "the advent of
mass military participation ... but ... nevertheless saw the rise of
mass society, culture, and consumption, as well as a transformation
in the relations between the military, the state and the public at
large" (p. 3).

The collection consists of a series of snapshots of various
manifestations of, reactions to, and attempts to communicate this
distinctive vein of maleness. It has been unearthed in soldiers' own
memoirs and letters, and novels, paintings, poems, and advertising
campaigns about them. The cast of characters ranges from Lord
Uxbridge, the officer who lost his leg at Waterloo, to St. John
Rivers, the fictional clergyman in _Jane Eyre _(1847). Given the
circumstances behind its creation, the collection is understandably
more pointillist than comprehensive in its approach. However, the
editors are to be commended for framing the body of the book within
introductory and concluding chapters that aggregate the individual
findings into a coherent whole.

The dichotomy of "experiencing" and "imagining" is an apt connective
tissue for these essays, but other collective insights emerge when
the book is read against the grain. Begiato and Brown have broken
these into four categories: the intersectionality of military and
civilian worlds, the highly varied and shifting nature of martial
masculinities, the significance of the physical body to warriors'
maleness, and the intrusion of domesticity on martial culture (and
vice versa). _Martial Masculinities_ highlights the paradox and
contradiction that many faced in defining or pursuing warrior
manliness. Julia Banister, along with Brown and Begiato, shows that
war wounds could be both a badge of honor and a source of shame, just
as veterans were simultaneously admired and pitied. Even war and
peace could not be entirely separated. Among others, Barbara
Leonardi, Lorenzo Servitje, Elly McCausland, and Helen Goodman point
out how martial-themed literature emerged in times when British
forces were least involved in active conflicts. Louise Carter, Helen
Metcalfe, and Susan Walton reveal that military loyalties never
superseded family ties.

By demonstrating the multivalent and contingent nature of martial
masculinities, this collection leaves the door open for many other
avenues of inquiry. Future investigation might consider, for example,
how ideals of manliness differed between the commissioned and
so-called other ranks. Most of the essays here focus, explicitly or
otherwise, on officers. This is understandable, given that this group
was more likely to write letters and memoirs and to be subject matter
for the books and periodicals emerging in such profusion in this
period. Nonetheless, these materials might be read alongside other
sources to determine the degree to which enlisted men adopted those
gender traits or displayed others. Similarly, attention to variation
between and within regiments would also likely prove fruitful.
Leonardi's focus on the Highland warrior model is a start in this
direction. There can be little doubt that distinct forms of
masculinity were fostered by, and associated with, soldiers with
light infantry training. As I note in my book on military marriage
(_Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: The
Girl I Left Behind Me_ [2014]), guardsmen's unique status in the army
also came with its own brand of manliness, which would be interesting
to explore further. The collection has highlighted the generational
side of masculinity as well. Brown, Begiato, Walton, McCausland, and
Goodman suggest that boys and girls internalized ideals of martial
manliness from their elders. They demonstrate that age can be brought
alongside gender as a useful category of historical analysis. My
current research delves into how boy privates and drummers struggled
to earn manhood in the army.

In a superbly written epilogue, Isaac Land offers a final synthesis
of the chapters while presenting his own original research on
cross-dressing women in uniform. Martial masculinities staked a claim
over particular forms of virtue, vigor, and valor, he concludes.
Accounts of female soldiers and sailors constitute "the ultimate test
of how stoutly defended these (putatively) gender-specific virtues
and accomplishments were" (p. 258). Ultimately, _Martial
Masculinities_ reminds us of the need to look beneath the homogenous
surface presented by uniformed, drilled troops in the age of horse
and musket. Moreover, it makes it clear that the influence of
military gender ideals went far beyond those who donned a uniform.

Citation: Jennine Hurl-Eamon. Review of Brown, Michael; Barry, Anna
Maria; Begiato, Joanne, eds., _Martial Masculinities: Experiencing
and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century_. H-War,
H-Net Reviews. October, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54862

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

--

Best regards,

Andrew Stewart

H-Net Review [H-War]: Bath on Brown, 'Eisenhower's Nuclear Calculus in Europe: The Politics of IRBM Deployment in NATO Nations'

Andrew Stewart

#2347

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...>
Date: Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 8:30 AM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Bath on Brown, 'Eisenhower's Nuclear Calculus in Europe: The Politics of IRBM Deployment in NATO Nations'
To: <h-review@...>
Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp@...>

Gates M. Brown. Eisenhower's Nuclear Calculus in Europe: The
Politics of IRBM Deployment in NATO Nations. Jefferson McFarland,
2018. 277 pp. $45.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4766-6950-2.

Reviewed by David W. Bath (Rogers State University)
Published on H-War (October, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

The early Cold War was a time of profound metamorphosis for the
United States. The country's power and influence had never been
greater. However, the costs of poor decisions had never been greater
either. Nuclear diplomacy--the influencing of nations through the
control of nuclear weapons--had just begun. This paradigm required
leaders of great insight and a strong understanding of foreign
relations. Yet US presidents also dealt with the impact of their
decisions on the domestic audience.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower began his presidency in 1953, he was only
the second president to face the escalating Cold War with the Soviet
Union. Thus, Eisenhower spent his presidency trying to attain two
separate and conflicting goals: preventing the fearsome threat of a
potential nuclear World War III through military dominance while
reducing the associated costs to the greatest extent possible. To
accomplish both tasks, Eisenhower chose to increase the United
States' reliance on nuclear weapons through his New Look defense
policy.

He emphasized the development of the intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) to replace the nuclear bomber as he believed the new
capability would make the bomber obsolete. However, he was forced by
domestic politics to create an intermediate range ballistic missile
(IRBM) as well, in the hope that the smaller missiles could be
operational before the more capable ICBMs. To allow the shorter-range
IRBMs to reach key targets in the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower
administration was compelled to create basing agreements with NATO
allies. These agreements--and their impact on US relations with the
United Kingdom and France--are the focus of Gates Brown's book,
_Eisenhower's Nuclear Calculus in Europe._

In his monograph, Brown argues that Eisenhower reshaped NATO into a
two-tiered alliance, with the United Kingdom and the United States at
the top because of their control of nuclear weapons while the other
members were relegated to inferior positions because they lacked the
new weapon. An assistant professor of military history at the Army
Command and General Staff College, Brown revised his dissertation,
"Miscommunication and Misunderstanding: Eisenhower, IRBMs, and
Nuclear Weapons in the NATO Alliance," to create the book.

Brown uses the first several chapters to review Eisenhower's creation
of the New Look and the arguments against his emphasis on massive
retaliation, primarily focusing on the army's arguments against the
policy. He then provides a quick overview of the development of
IRBMs. Because each service feared obsolescence if they did not
obtain a nuclear weapon, this process engendered fierce infighting
between the services. Brown again focuses on the army perspective of
the strong clash between the army and air force, even taking on the
argument that IRBMs had to be created because ICBMs could not be
prepared quickly enough--an argument that the air force never
accepted and one that was proven wrong in October 1959, when the ICBM
was declared operational.

He then moves into the meat of the manuscript: Eisenhower's
relationship with the United States' NATO allies and the deployment
of the IRBMs to NATO nations. Brown notes that the original plan for
the IRBMs was for them to be given to Great Britain to help assuage
the rift that had developed over the Suez Canal and "to reassure the
U.S. public of its safety in the missile age" (p. 116). Soon after,
the administration decided to provide IRBMs to NATO, who would
control their use in Europe so that the non-nuclear states could
focus their efforts on developing a consolidated military defense.
The European nations would provide military personnel who would
provide a bulwark to stop any Soviet attack while NATO, under control
of a US general, prepared for a nuclear response. Brown contends,
however, that because Great Britain was already a nuclear power with
its own nuclear assets, Eisenhower's unique agreement with Great
Britain ignored NATO, instead requiring a coordinated decision
between the leaders of the two countries to authorize any nuclear
attack from British soil. In addition, in order to gain British
cooperation for a nuclear test ban treaty, the Eisenhower
administration agreed to provide "technical cooperation in the field
of guided missiles as well as atomic weapons research" (p. 134).
Finally, the Eisenhower administration considered selling IRBMs to
Great Britain outright, which Brown argues "gave the British an
independent guided missile with no U.S. control over their use" (p.
140).

Brown uses NATO responses to the proposed British agreements to
reveal the concerns of the other European nations over the exclusive
relationship between the United States and Great Britain. A NATO memo
stated that the giving of special concessions to Great Britain was
causing tensions in the alliance, as it revealed a two-tiered
organization. The memo also maintained that the British agreement
"encouraged the French to demand some similar concessions" and
"removed much of the enthusiasm for the [NATO] stockpile idea" (p.
142). Brown then uses De Gaulle's response to show that the NATO
concerns, while made for the command's purposes, were correct. He
reveals that the French originally accepted the idea of NATO IRBMs on
French soil, but after De Gaulle took over, he refused to accept an
inferior position to the British, eventually removing France from the
military portion of NATO. This area could have been greatly expanded,
using responses from each country impacted, to reveal the true impact
of the IRBMs on the NATO alliance.

The French response leads to Brown's apparent conclusion: IRBMs "had
a dramatic impact on the relationship between France, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. These weapons, although militarily
important, were significant because of their impact on the NATO
alliance." This reveals, he notes, "how peacetime military
deployments have second and third order effects outside of the
intended policy end state" (p. 168). This argument could have been
greatly strengthened if Brown had used French documents to reveal how
the use of IRBMs altered its relationship with NATO. While the
Eisenhower administration's differentiation between Great Britain and
France undoubtably had an impact on relations with the French, it is
difficult to judge the significance of this action without using
French sources to reveal their motives. Since he also speaks to the
impact of the IRBMs on the NATO alliance, it would have been
extremely helpful to have additional sources from NATO or NATO
countries to reveal the impact of the IRBMS on the alliance as a
whole.

Brown's topic--the politics of IRBM deployment in NATO nations--is a
fascinating one, valuable both to students of the Cold War
specifically and students of US international relations more broadly.
However, the manuscript tries to cover too many topics at once and
only skims the surface of the placement of IRBMs in Europe. Had the
author focused on the agreements to place IRBMs in Europe and the
impact of these decisions on each country in NATO rather than
reviewing the value of Eisenhower's New Look policy and the creation
of IRBMs as well, the book could have provided much more detail on
the topic described in the subtitle. Sadly, only about fifty pages
are devoted to the topic and there is little mention of any European
nation but Great Britain and France.

Brown was not well served by his publisher, who apparently did not
require peer review and allowed numerous spelling and grammatical
errors, including a sentence that fails to conclude and the
inconsistent spelling of Wernher von Braun (pp. 57, 66, 108), a key
leader in the army's development of IRBMs. However, the book opens an
interesting topic of study: the politics behind the deployment of
IRBMs to NATO countries--specifically the United Kingdom--and the
impact of the decision on the state of the alliance.

Citation: David W. Bath. Review of Brown, Gates M., _Eisenhower's
Nuclear Calculus in Europe: The Politics of IRBM Deployment in NATO
Nations_. H-War, H-Net Reviews. October, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54477

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

--

Best regards,

Andrew Stewart

The revolutionary struggle against slavery | Red Flag

Louis Proyect

#2346

https://redflag.org.au/node/7396

How Biologist Jacques Monod Exposed the Soviet Union - The Atlantic

Louis Proyect

#2345

Monod refuted Lysenko.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/10/jacques-monod-trofim-lysenko-chance/616619/

Re: Why Degrowth Is the Worst Idea on the Planet

Louis Proyect

#2344

On 10/8/20 1:24 AM, Biibi R wrote:

"The ecomodernist argument is that that is in fact clear. Unlike the degrowth argument, it's supported by a great deal of evidence.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-why-degrowth-is-the-worst-idea-on-the-planet/

Aren't you aware that this is Marxmail? If you want to refute degrowth arguments, it should be within the purview of Marxism. Please don't waste the list's time with stuff from Andrew McAfee, a firm believer in the capitalist system, or any other such schmuck.

Re: Why America’s economic war on China is failing | Vijay Prashad and John Ross | MR Online

RKOB

#2343

For those who are not familiar with the name: John Ross was a leader of British section of Mandel's "Fourth International" in the 1970s and 80s. When they split he was affiliated with "Socialist Action" for a long time. Today he is a professor in the service of the Chinese state.

Am 07.10.2020 um 22:11 schrieb Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo:

https://mronline.org/2020/10/07/why-americas-economic-war-on-china-is-failing/

Why America’s economic war on China is failing

Posted Oct 07, 2020 by Vijay Prashad and John Ross
Financialization , Health , Political Economy, State Repression , War China , United States Commentary , News coronavirus, COVID-19 , Economic War , Featured ,Globetrotter , Independent Media Institute ,pandemic , Trade War

U.S. President Donald Trump—supported by most of the U.S. establishment—deepened the U.S. government’s assault on the Chinese economy. The “trade war” seemed to play well with Trump’s political base, who somehow hoped that an economic attack on China would miraculously create economic prosperity for them. In 2018, Trump slapped tariffs on more than $200 billion worth of various Chinese goods. Then, Trump’s administration went after Chinese high-tech firms such as Huawei, ZTE, ByteDance (the owners of TikTok), and WeChat.

None of this has worked very well. Trump faces negative legal judgments about his “trade war,” and the U.S. economy slips into negative territory. It is not just Trump. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are committed to a policy that will not cause China to surrender to U.S. ambitions. Whether or not the U.S. can backtrack from this policy orientation and begin a dialogue with China remains to be seen; doing so would be, of course, desirable.

Legal Setbacks

Legal challenges in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California went against the Trump administration. This is a setback for the policy orientation of the U.S. government.

After Trump announced the tariffs against a wide range of Chinese imports, the Chinese government formally took up the matter through the WTO’s dispute mechanism. After considerable study, the WTO came back with a verdict. On September 15, 2020, a three-person WTO panel foundthat the U.S. had violated the provisions of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the treaty that established the WTO. This was a serious defeat for the United States; the Trump administration has 60 days to file an appeal.

The United States government does not like to lose. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer released a statement condemning the ruling. “This panel report,” Lighthizer said, “confirms what the Trump administration has been saying for four years: The WTO is completely inadequate to stop China’s harmful technology practices.” The U.S. has paralyzed the WTO’s ability to hand down a final binding verdict, as the WTO’s appeals court is currently no longer functioning because of Washington’s refusal to accept new members for it.

In 1994, the U.S. pushed for the creation of the WTO, wrote many of its rules, and brought China into the WTO in 2001. Because the U.S. felt in command of the world, the WTO worked to advance its interests; now that China’s economy has grown in strength, the U.S. finds the rules of the WTO to be burdensome. Free trade is only useful to governments such as the U.S. when it is beneficial to its companies; the principle of free trade is otherwise easily rejected.

Even within the U.S., there is doubt about Trump’s policies. A judge signed an injunction to halt Trump’s attempt to prevent U.S. residents from using WeChat as a means to communicate with people in China. Pressure on TikTok may also dissipate after the U.S. elections.

Economic Divergence

A senior analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says that the economic impact of the “chaotic” lockdown in the U.S. will create major disruptions for at least a generation. It is unlikely, he says, that the U.S. will be able to “recover easily.” When asked about China’s recovery, he said that so far things look much better. But any persistent reliance of China upon the U.S. market will have a negative impact on China’s growth.

China has essentially broken the chain of the COVID-19 infection, although the authorities remain vigilant for new outbreaks; in the U.S., it is hard to talk about a second wave since the first wave has not yet crested.

What this has meant is that as early as the second quarter of 2020, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose to 3.2 percent above the level a year previously; meanwhile, the GDP of the U.S. fell by 9 percent below last year’s level. China is already on the way to recovery, while the U.S. does not even know if the infection has peaked or not.

The U.S. and China publish somewhat different measures of industrial output, but the contrast is so striking that it leaves no doubt as to the relative trends. China publishes data for total value added by industrial enterprises, which in August 2020 was 5.6 percent higher than a year previously, whereas in contrast the U.S. industrial output for August 2020 was 7.7 percent lower than a year earlier. China’s level of industrial production was higher than a year previously, whereas the U.S.’s was far below it.

As a result of China’s much more dynamic economic recovery, China’s trade is recovering much more rapidly than that of the United States. This is clear for imports—which for other countries are their exports. In July, the last month for which there is data for both the U.S. and China, China’s imports had almost regained pre-pandemic levels—being only about 1 percent lower than a year previously. In contrast, U.S. imports were still about 11 percent below a year previously.

The result of these trends is that China will be the center of world economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession—while the U.S. will contribute almost nothing to it.

The latest global projections of the IMF indicate that in 2020-2021, China will account for the absolute majority, 51 percent, of world growth, and the U.S. for only 3 percent—and the latest IMF predictions for the U.S. indicates that this may be an exaggeration of its growth. Most of the other contributors to world growth according to the IMF analysis will be Asian economies who have strong trading relations with China—South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

To analyze the global situation, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis has a very dramatic impact on the pattern of development of the world economy as divided between developing and advanced economies. The data in the IMF’s projections show that by 2021 GDP in the advanced economies will still be 3.6 percent below its level in 2019 while in the developing economies it will be 2.7 percent above 2019. This is a major distribution of world economic growth in favor of developing economies and against advanced ones.

The April IMF estimates indicate that in 2020-2021 more than 95 percent of world economic growth will take place in developing economies—the data in the April IMF World Economic Outlook database means it projects that 51 percent of world growth will take place in China and 44 percent in other developing economies. Less than 5 percent of world economic growth will take place in advanced economies.

By attempting to reorient world trade away from China and to the United States, the U.S. is therefore attempting to lock other countries into subordination to its own very low growth instead of the much more rapidly growing economy of China. This is evidently strongly damaging for other countries’ economies.

About Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World(LeftWord, 2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet and BirGün.

About John Ross
John Ross is a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He was formerly director of economic policy for the mayor of London.

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Virenfrei. www.avast.com

Why Degrowth Is the Worst Idea on the Planet

Biibi R <becausetheworldisrou@...>

#2342

"The ecomodernist argument is that that is in fact clear. Unlike the degrowth argument, it's supported by a great deal of evidence.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-why-degrowth-is-the-worst-idea-on-the-planet/

Trump has ties to drugmaker Regeneron, and its stock is surging - CNN

Louis Proyect

#2341

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/05/investing/trump-regeneron/index.html

SPIEGEL Interview with China's Deputy Minister of the Environment: "The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon" - DER SPIEGEL

Louis Proyect

#2340

(From 2005. But how much has changed?)

SPIEGEL: Still, each year China is strengthening its reputation as an economic Wunderland.

Pan: This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China.

SPIEGEL: How great are the effects of this environmental degradation on the economy?

Pan: It's massive. Because air and water are polluted, we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product. And that doesn't include the costs for health. Then there's the human suffering: In Bejing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment. Lung cancer has emerged as the No. 1 cause of death.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-china-s-deputy-minister-of-the-environment-the-chinese-miracle-will-end-soon-a-345694.html

Re: FRATELLI TUTTI: "The Genius and Limits of Fratelli Tutti"-The Catholic Women’s Council

John A Imani

#2339

(JAI: The below (in Italics) is a heavily redacted (by me as shown by...) proclamation issued by The Catholic Women’s Council. The full statement is at https://www.futurechurchnews.org/article/missing-women-loyalty-oaths-and-prophets-for-today.

(Some readers may wonder why I, an anarcho-Marxian agnostic, have posted these here. As to the first posting I sent it on because of the humaneness of the wording and the asserted intent of the encyclical, ‘The Brotherhood of Men’. In this second post, the limits of the papal letter is critiqued by some of those most affected. There are billions who ‘believe’, billions that I believe that we, as communists, must have a way of speaking with, any way but down to them.

(I will not argue with any who vehemently object to anything touching on the nature of religion. To me, it is a private affair aimed at giving meaning to one's existence. As I am unable of providing proof or disproof of what is asserted, the nature of a god and therefrom the meaning of our existences, to my way of thinking, so long as one’s belief does not impose a hierarchical stricture aimed at lessening the worth of the Other, I can voice no objection. Some, whose religion is no religion, will see it differently.)

The Genius and Limits of Fratelli Tutti

And although it is true that in important ways, we are heading down the same tragic path with the exclusionary title and male-only authorship of Pope Francis' newly released encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti”, the document itself is challenging, inspiring, and forceful Catholic Social Teaching -- a must-read for every Catholic layperson, bishop, and priest who cares about our common future.

The Genius

First and foremost, in a world where nationalist ideologies and xenophobic policies are gaining a greater hold in societies, Francis leaves no doubt that ending war and the death penalty are preeminent tasks for those who call themselves Christian.

Working to reverse the Church's previous "just war" rationale, Francis writes, "We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a “just war”. Never again war![242]...

He also ends all doubt about where the Church stands on the death penalty. "The death penalty is inadmissible and Catholics should work to abolish it." (263)...

Francis shows how the use of capital punishment by the state spills over into other state crimes. As Catholics in the United States witness the extrajudicial executions of our black sisters and brothers in our streets by police officers, the pope's words will both challenge us and inspire us to use every muscle we have to bring racial and reparative justice to our communities and to our country...(15)

How many of us have witnessed or experienced this phenomenon? How many of us have personally employed these tools? And ultimately, how has any part of this sad dynamic helped create the kin-dom?

Francis mirrors our own hopes, "God willing, after all this [pandemic], we will think no longer in terms of "them" and "those", but only "us". (35)

The Limits

While Pope Francis offers us a compelling and challenging vision for our common life together in Fratelli tutti, as the title exposes, there is a gaping blindness in connecting the treatment of women in the Church and their treatment in the world.

In paragraph 23, Francis writes, "the organization of societies worldwide is still far from reflecting clearly that women possess the same dignity and identical rights as men. We say one thing with words, but our decisions and reality tell another story."

To that, Catholic women and their allies say to those with institutional authority, "Heal thyself."...

How much more effective would our efforts to end slavery, especially the sex trade, be if the Church had the wisdom to understand its complicity in the multitude of sins and crimes against women? How much more effective would our efforts to end the sex trade be if the Church modeled true and co-equal partnership between women and men, lay and ordained in governance, ministries, liturgies, and in the way we tell the stories of our faith? Francis does not use any women theologians in the sources for this work. And while he rightly garners wisdom from Saint Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, and Blessed Charles de Foucauld, besides the reference to Mary, Francis does not cite a wise woman of faith as a model for this encyclical...

AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE FRANCIS REGARDING THE TITLE OF THE FORTHCOMING ENCYCLICAL, ‘FRATELLI TUTTI’

Dear Pope Francis,

...a growing number of Catholics are expressing concern over your choice of title for the encyclical. We have listed links to a number of sources below. We understand that the title comes from a quotation from Saint Francis, and we know that you intend it to include all humankind. Nevertheless, the masculine noun will alienate many, at a time when women in many different languages and cultures are resistant to being told that the masculine is intended generically...

We remain your sisters in Christ, and we hold you in our prayers.

‍The Catholic Women’s Council‍

Re: Bandiera Rosa - Avanti Popolo

fkalosar101@...

#2338

The paradox of "whiteness" and the source of its coercive power is that so many fall through the net of its contradictory definition. One speaks of "WASPS" but anyone with the common admixture of German, Scottish, and/or Irish (either Protestant or Papist) is not a WASP because not provably "anglo-saxon" whatever that may mean. Unless your name is Wigglesworth or the like, you are not really a WASP. And the vast mob of "Scotch-Irish" (by no means confined to Appalachia) are commonly admixed, even in places like Virginia, with the genes of what non-German people in places like Ohio used to refer to as "slab-footed Kraut farmers."

These boring, B-flat West European mongrels are as "white" as it is possible to be, but they are not and never will be what the British ruling class might call "quite the thing." If they aren't hillbillies they have no tangible ethnicity or as it were sex appeal at all. They are by nature mediocre, not very bright, and on the whole neither much of one thing nor of another.

These are the "white people" who love Trump--self-reproaching, self-condemned nobodies. The racist mobs claim to "love white people" but the truth is--despite the glamour images of whiteness that float above us and beyond the reach of anybody who isn't a "beautiful Kennedy"--and how white are the Irish anyway?--that nobody can love white people as such without hating some other group, or all other groups.

Whiteness and its contradictions betoken the inevitable failure of liberal democracy and therefore of capitalism--it stands for the failure of "the human" and "human nature" to come into existence: in short, for the actual non-existence of the human race. That race is something that will only come to be, IMO, if "humanity" can surpass and transcend the extinction currently inherent in the condition of human beings, which stems from the continuation of evolution by other means in human history. I don't believe that there is any ready exit from the traps of civilization and technology--no spiritual community or return to nature outside of history. There is no choice IMO but to get through it, bullshit jobs, technology, vast infrastructure, and all. If that isn't possible "humanity" is doomed, though on what actual time scale is nobody knows.

Getting to Freedom City | Boston Review

Louis Proyect

#2337

As a culture of protest took hold in 1960s LA, communities of color also prioritized a radical tradition of care, emphasizing mutual aid, community control, and the transformative power of art and politics.

ROBIN D. G. KELLEY

http://bostonreview.net/race/robin-d-g-kelley-getting-freedom-city

Yuri Dmitriev: Historian of Stalin’s Gulag, Victim of Putin’s Repression | by Olivier Rolin | The New York Review of Books

Louis Proyect

#2336

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/07/yuri-dmitriev-historian-of-stalins-gulag-victim-of-putins-repression/

The Final Message of a Dying Campaign

Louis Proyect

#2335

Alex Shephard/New Republic/October 7, 2020

The Final Message of a Dying Campaign

With his poll numbers collapsing, Donald Trump keeps adopting dumber and more destructive political messages.

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

With a month to go before the November election, Donald Trump has returned to the Covid-19 message he, his administration, and his allies pushed in the early spring. “Don’t let it dominate you,” Trump said in a video released Monday evening, shortly after he left Walter Reed Medical Center, where he had been treated for several days for Covid-19. “Don’t be afraid. You’re gonna beat it!” Channeling Evita, he waved, maskless, from a White House balcony, posturing that he had beaten the virus despite the fact that he was both very contagious and apparently very symptomatic.

The following day, he suggested that Covid-19 was no different from the flu, tweeting: “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

The difference between this message and the one he pushed in February—that Covid-19 was overhyped, a “hoax” being built up to damage the economy—is not so much substance as context. What we have experienced over the last seven months is not comparable in any way to flu season. Over 200,000 Americans have died. The economy has tanked, shedding tens of millions of jobs. The White House itself is the center of a massive Covid-19 outbreak that has infected the president, the first lady, several senators, and many other administration and Republican Party officials. Far from a beacon of resilience, the president has become a symbol of just how deeply the country has been affected by the pandemic. In public appearances since contracting the virus, he appears hoarse, shaky, and frightened; reports of his hospitalization include at least two concerning drops in oxygen level and a cocktail of drugs that indicate pneumonia.

For the last four years, Trump’s supporters and detractors have retconned his 2016 victory, arguing that, having won an improbable election, the president must be a political genius. In this school of thought, Trump’s psychotic tweets and staggering incompetence are rendered into perverse strengths: We are playing checkers; he is playing chess. This narrative deserved to die an agonizing death years ago and should now be cast aside forever. Trailing in the polls with only 30 days left before the 2020 election, the president has embraced a reelection strategy that is, even for him, profoundly stupid.

When Trump was initially diagnosed with Covid-19, there was some speculation that this could actually be good for him. The president’s haphazard pandemic response has received abysmal marks: Here was an opportunity to change the narrative. There could, some added, be a “rally round the bedside” effect, similar to what happened following U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s hospitalization for Covid-19 in the spring. “This moment is an opportunity for Trump to hit reset on his tone-deaf message on COVID that we are always on the cusp of seeing the definitive end of the virus,” wrote the editors of The National Review. “His lack of realism during the pandemic is one reason his ratings on handling it are so low.” Get the message right, this line of thinking goes, and Trump can save his campaign.

This argument assumed that Trump could adopt humility and use his physical weakness as a political strength—that he could even admit fault, recognizing his own failures and the importance of frontline workers and first responders. Voters didn’t think Trump was taking Covid-19 seriously; here was an opportunity to show them just how seriously he was taking the virus.

The president has—characteristically—taken the opposite path. Despite the fact that he is still obviously ill, he and his allies are insisting that he is not just fine but better than ever. Trump has said that he feels better than he has in “20 years” and speculated that he is “immune” to the virus. The message is not just that an unhealthy, out-of-his-depth president is an American ubermensch but that, by not dying, he has shown the country the way to beat the virus: change absolutely nothing and go about business as usual with a casual disdain for basic safety protocols.

The last week of Trump’s campaign has been a greatest hits of his worst political instincts. At last week’s debate, he failed to condemn the Proud Boys, a right-wing gang with ties to white nationalist groups. The moment echoed his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of Charlottesville in 2017. On Tuesday, moreover, he announced that he was breaking off talks about a potential stimulus package until after the presidential election. The move tanked the stock market and further damaged his reelection chances. The author of The Art of the Deal was also making a basic and catastrophic negotiation error, accepting the blame for both the stock market collapse and the lack of stimulus.

All of this is occurring in the midst of a polling collapse. Trump is now trailing with every age group of voters and is underwater with senior citizens—a voting block that helped him immensely in 2016. He is trailing by increasingly large margins in every swing state and appears to be pulling away in Florida and Pennsylvania. A landslide defeat grows more likely by the hour; everything the president has done to try to stem the tide has only made things worse.

Some are understandably pointing to 2016 as a reason to continue to take Trump’s chances seriously. Anything can happen in the next 30 days—although, over the last nine days, the president saw the contents of his tax returns revealed by The New York Times, had the worst debate performance in American history, and contracted Covid-19. But Biden’s lead has been more stable than Clinton’s was four years ago. And he has another ace up his sleeve: Donald Trump can’t d

Nasrin | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

Louis Proyect

#2334

Currently available as Virtual Cinema from the Boston GlobeDocs Film Festival until October 12^th, “Nasrin” is a wake-up call to the left and to human rights activists that Iran is still a hell-hole seven years after Ahmadinejad’s ouster. (Just click Select a Showing and rent both “Nasrin and another documentary for $10 ) Nasrin Sotoudeh, a female lawyer and woman’s rights activist, was sentenced to 38 years, plus 148 lashes, in March 2019. That sentence was meted out because she was a leader of the movement to end the forced wearing of the hijab as well as her willingness to defend people the clerical dictatorship deemed “against Islam”.

Among the people she defended was Shirin Ebadi, a female lawyer and woman’s rights activist as well who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. For defending Ebadi and other dissidents, Nasrin was herself charged with nebulous crimes like spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security in 2010. Found guilty, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Ebadi pays tribute to her lawyer in article aptly titled “The Riskiest Job in Iran”.

full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/10/07/nasrin/

Why America’s economic war on China is failing | Vijay Prashad and John Ross | MR Online

Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo

#2333

https://mronline.org/2020/10/07/why-americas-economic-war-on-china-is-failing/

Why America’s economic war on China is failing

Posted Oct 07, 2020 by Vijay Prashad and John Ross

Financialization , Health , Political Economy, State Repression , War China , United States Commentary , News coronavirus, COVID-19 , Economic War , Featured ,Globetrotter , Independent Media Institute ,pandemic , Trade War

U.S. President Donald Trump—supported by most of the U.S. establishment—deepened the U.S. government’s assault on the Chinese economy. The “trade war” seemed to play well with Trump’s political base, who somehow hoped that an economic attack on China would miraculously create economic prosperity for them. In 2018, Trump slapped tariffs on more than $200 billion worth of various Chinese goods. Then, Trump’s administration went after Chinese high-tech firms such as Huawei, ZTE, ByteDance (the owners of TikTok), and WeChat.

None of this has worked very well. Trump faces negative legal judgments about his “trade war,” and the U.S. economy slips into negative territory. It is not just Trump. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are committed to a policy that will not cause China to surrender to U.S. ambitions. Whether or not the U.S. can backtrack from this policy orientation and begin a dialogue with China remains to be seen; doing so would be, of course, desirable.

Legal Setbacks

Legal challenges in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California went against the Trump administration. This is a setback for the policy orientation of the U.S. government.

After Trump announced the tariffs against a wide range of Chinese imports, the Chinese government formally took up the matter through the WTO’s dispute mechanism. After considerable study, the WTO came back with a verdict. On September 15, 2020, a three-person WTO panel foundthat the U.S. had violated the provisions of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the treaty that established the WTO. This was a serious defeat for the United States; the Trump administration has 60 days to file an appeal.

The United States government does not like to lose. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer released a statement condemning the ruling. “This panel report,” Lighthizer said, “confirms what the Trump administration has been saying for four years: The WTO is completely inadequate to stop China’s harmful technology practices.” The U.S. has paralyzed the WTO’s ability to hand down a final binding verdict, as the WTO’s appeals court is currently no longer functioning because of Washington’s refusal to accept new members for it.

In 1994, the U.S. pushed for the creation of the WTO, wrote many of its rules, and brought China into the WTO in 2001. Because the U.S. felt in command of the world, the WTO worked to advance its interests; now that China’s economy has grown in strength, the U.S. finds the rules of the WTO to be burdensome. Free trade is only useful to governments such as the U.S. when it is beneficial to its companies; the principle of free trade is otherwise easily rejected.

Even within the U.S., there is doubt about Trump’s policies. A judge signed an injunction to halt Trump’s attempt to prevent U.S. residents from using WeChat as a means to communicate with people in China. Pressure on TikTok may also dissipate after the U.S. elections.

Economic Divergence

A senior analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says that the economic impact of the “chaotic” lockdown in the U.S. will create major disruptions for at least a generation. It is unlikely, he says, that the U.S. will be able to “recover easily.” When asked about China’s recovery, he said that so far things look much better. But any persistent reliance of China upon the U.S. market will have a negative impact on China’s growth.

China has essentially broken the chain of the COVID-19 infection, although the authorities remain vigilant for new outbreaks; in the U.S., it is hard to talk about a second wave since the first wave has not yet crested.

What this has meant is that as early as the second quarter of 2020, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose to 3.2 percent above the level a year previously; meanwhile, the GDP of the U.S. fell by 9 percent below last year’s level. China is already on the way to recovery, while the U.S. does not even know if the infection has peaked or not.

The U.S. and China publish somewhat different measures of industrial output, but the contrast is so striking that it leaves no doubt as to the relative trends. China publishes data for total value added by industrial enterprises, which in August 2020 was 5.6 percent higher than a year previously, whereas in contrast the U.S. industrial output for August 2020 was 7.7 percent lower than a year earlier. China’s level of industrial production was higher than a year previously, whereas the U.S.’s was far below it.

As a result of China’s much more dynamic economic recovery, China’s trade is recovering much more rapidly than that of the United States. This is clear for imports—which for other countries are their exports. In July, the last month for which there is data for both the U.S. and China, China’s imports had almost regained pre-pandemic levels—being only about 1 percent lower than a year previously. In contrast, U.S. imports were still about 11 percent below a year previously.

The result of these trends is that China will be the center of world economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession—while the U.S. will contribute almost nothing to it.

The latest global projections of the IMF indicate that in 2020-2021, China will account for the absolute majority, 51 percent, of world growth, and the U.S. for only 3 percent—and the latest IMF predictions for the U.S. indicates that this may be an exaggeration of its growth. Most of the other contributors to world growth according to the IMF analysis will be Asian economies who have strong trading relations with China—South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

To analyze the global situation, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis has a very dramatic impact on the pattern of development of the world economy as divided between developing and advanced economies. The data in the IMF’s projections show that by 2021 GDP in the advanced economies will still be 3.6 percent below its level in 2019 while in the developing economies it will be 2.7 percent above 2019. This is a major distribution of world economic growth in favor of developing economies and against advanced ones.

The April IMF estimates indicate that in 2020-2021 more than 95 percent of world economic growth will take place in developing economies—the data in the April IMF World Economic Outlook database means it projects that 51 percent of world growth will take place in China and 44 percent in other developing economies. Less than 5 percent of world economic growth will take place in advanced economies.

By attempting to reorient world trade away from China and to the United States, the U.S. is therefore attempting to lock other countries into subordination to its own very low growth instead of the much more rapidly growing economy of China. This is evidently strongly damaging for other countries’ economies.

Gustave Courbet: The Stone Breakers | Michal Boncza | The Morning Star

Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo

#2332

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/c/gustave-courbet-stone-breakers

Gustave Courbet: The Stone Breakers

Painting which announced the advent of realism in European art

Michal Boncza

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

THROUGHOUT 1848, Europe was in convulsions as widespread revolutionary unrest ushered in what became known as “The Spring of Nations” and, in February that year, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published The Communist Manifesto.

The political ferment was as wide-reaching as it was spontaneous, with unstable alliances of social strata and classes with disparate political aims that could not endure. Nevertheless, it ushered in the final transformation of an archaic and unproductive feudal serfdom into the “modern” and “efficient” capitalist labour market. But the whip was to stay, albeit wielded by a different hand.

An independent-minded, self-proclaimed republican who supported the poor and oppressed and continuously irked the ruling elites, Gustave Courbet possessed the kind of spirit needed for such a time.

In 1849, with the Spring of Nations still a fresh memory, Courbet painted The Stone Breakers and with it announced the advent of realism. Courbet had seen the two men depicted breaking stones at the road side near his home town of Ornans and, moved by their plight, recalled: “It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there, I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.”

The imposingly large canvas (165 x 257 cm) is imbued with dignity and resignation. Courbet portrays these humble, downtrodden workers in worn-out clothes who have “nothing to lose but their chains.” Their plight is as strikingly evident as it is political. The ruthless exploitation of cheap rural labour to build and maintain a local road is a clear denunciation of class oppression.

Significantly, Courbet paints the two at eye-level and with the dark hill cutting off an escape route for the viewer, the impact is augmented spectacularly.

The monochromatic palette and the attention to detail is uniform throughout, with the clothes, anatomy, the tools and every stone given the same value. At the same time, the brush work is not pedantic or inventorising. It has an assured fluency and ruggedness but also economy in each stroke.

“Their tools are scattered on the ground: a hod, a stretcher, a hoe, a rustic pot in which they carry their midday soup, and a piece of black bread in a scrip. All this takes place in full sunlight, by a ditch alongside a road... I have made none of it up,” he wrote to a friend, visibly affected.

Critics were outraged by The Stone Breakers at the Paris Salon of 1850 and even his friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire, disapproved. Yet, three years later, Eugene Delacroix wrote in The Journal: “I went to see the paintings by Courbet. I was astonished by the vigour and the relief of his vast picture; but what a painting! What a subject!”

Although as an avowed pacifist Courbet did not take up arms in 1848, when the socialist Paris Commune was formed in March 1871, he shared its political goals and joined it.

Courbet was elected to the Commune’s council, was put in charge of education and was a prominent actor in the disassembling of the Vendome column, a symbol of Napoleon III’s oppression.

He successfully argued it was “devoid of all artistic value,” promoted militarism and had no place in a republic. He had anticipated by 150 years the present questioning of the role of public statues and monuments.

In 1855, Courbet nailed his colours to the mast in the pamphlet Realist Manifesto. He didn’t give a monkey’s for “art for art’s sake,” his interest was “to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearances of my epoch according to my own appreciation of it... to create living art, that is my goal.”

Years later, Emile Zola memorably wrote: “After those remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no-one would now dare to say that the present day is unworthy of being painted.”

After the Commune’s defeat in 1871, he was jailed for six months and fined £2,000 for his troubles. He left for Switzerland as soon as he was freed and in May 1877 was ordered to pay for the restoration of the Vendome column. Courbet died on December 31, 1877, aged 58 — a day before the first instalment was due.

He wanted to be remembered as belonging to no regime “except the regime of liberty.”

Re: FRATELLI TUTTI

Jerry Monaco

#2331

I should have said before I was being ironic with my reference to the Communist Manifesto. And to the rationalism of Julius Caesar.

I do think there are conservative anti-Capitalist enclaves in the Catholic Church. Along with practices in the church itself...

Allow me my humor with my original statement.

I was pointing out that a careful look at the Church would reveal many anachronistic institutions that have survived through 1200 years.

Show quoted text

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020, 12:09 PM Ken Hiebert <knhiebert@...> wrote:

This discussion was started when John A Imani forwarded an encyclical letter, FRATELLI TUTTI.

Jerry Monaco responded with this message.
The Papacy, the Last Bastion of Anti-Capitalist Feudal Socialism. And yet our current Pontifex Maximus is as much a rationalist as Gaius Julius Caesar when he occupied the office in the bygone Res Publica. That is saying something given the times.

Jerry, over the course of the discussion, you have characterized various factions within the Catholic Church, among them " ancient power structures” and "leftwing Catholic insurgents.” In your opinion, which of these factions are motivated by adherence to Anti-Capitalist Feudal Socialism?

ken h

Connecting Past and Present through Archival Research on Russia

Richard Modiano

#2330

"Despite all indications to the contrary, many of the most important Russian archives are open and are worth investigating.

The goal of this project is to illuminate archival sources and disseminate information about collections that are available (in-person and online) for the use of students and young experts in the field. Research based on original source materials is of paramount importance to moving the field of Russian studies forward."

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/special-exhibit/russia-programs/2020-10-07/bridge-connecting-past-present-through-archival-research-russia

Re: FRATELLI TUTTI

Ken Hiebert

#2329

This discussion was started when John A Imani forwarded an encyclical letter, FRATELLI TUTTI.

Jerry Monaco responded with this message.

The Papacy, the Last Bastion of Anti-Capitalist Feudal Socialism. And yet our current Pontifex Maximus is as much a rationalist as Gaius Julius Caesar when he occupied the office in the bygone Res Publica. That is saying something given the times.

Jerry, over the course of the discussion, you have characterized various factions within the Catholic Church, among them " ancient power structures” and "leftwing Catholic insurgents.” In your opinion, which of these factions are motivated by adherence to Anti-Capitalist Feudal Socialism?

ken h