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The Serbia-Kosovo Treaty: a Servile Acquiescence to US Imperialism | Lefteast
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The Fight for Socialism in the Philippines - COSMONAUT
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Re: Black, Native American and Fighting for Recognition in Indian Country
The subject of the article was the old indian Territory (present Oklahoma) and I was clear that the nature of slavery even there was difficult to generalize.
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Re: Covid-19 and the dual nature of science
The writer makes an important point. But I think there are underlying questions that in a way are even more serious. For example regarding Covid 19, the main point is how scientists have been discouraged from investigating and publicizing the underlying reasons for the rise of zoonotic diseases. Or look at cancer research: The overwhelming majority of the money going into this is for research into genetic factors and drug treatment. Scientists agree that environmental factors are the main cause of cancer, yet there is scarce little money going into researching that aspect. On a related issue, from what I can tell, there is a lot of research into genetics. However, on the more complex and more fluid issue of the endocrine system at least we hear little discussion. (Incidentally, I think Theo Colborn's work - including her book "Our Stolen Future" - are hugely important in this regard.) Again, the development and functioning of the endocrine system is more directly related to the environment. Overall, though, I think the writer makes an important point.
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Re: Black, Native American and Fighting for Recognition in Indian Country
Roger Kulp
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Re: Critique of David Graeber's role in Occupy Wall Street
Roger Kulp
In response to Dwayne Goodman,
Ackerman nailed it when he said
"But electing individual progressives does little to change the broad dynamics of American politics or American capitalism. In fact, it can create a kind of placebo effect: sustaining the illusion of forward motion while obscuring the fact that neither party is structurally built to reflect working-class interests."
If we put Bernie aside,Ackerman's article does not ilicit much hope of changing the Democrats from within.I'm not in the DSA.I'm still not clear if this is a majority DSA group,or if dissenting opinions regarding the DSA are allowed here.This article uses the Sanders campaign as an example of attempts to co-opt the Democratic Party,and move it to the left.From what we have seen,this has not worked out.There cannot be more of an example of that,than Sanders himself,and how his campaiagns have been sabatoged by the Democratic Party establishment.First,in 2016,by the Clinton campaign,then in 2020,by Obama's one man actions,to get multiple candidates to drop out,in order to boost Biden,and squash Sanders.Then there is Our Revolution.Sanders has had four years to build this into either a larger movement,or a force to be reckoned with,within the Democratic Party.We can see where that went.The fact that former Sanders capaign chair,Nina Turner,is now behind the Movement for A People's Party,and has said some not very complimentary things about Biden,speaks volumes.See her comments to the Atlantic,in July,2020,for starters.Bruce Dixon,at Black Agenda Report,and others,at Dissent,Counterpunch,etc,had Sanders pegged from the start,as a "sheepdog" to keep the left within the Democratic Party,with lots of enticing promises and rhetoric,but with no real policy change.Sanders is an old man,he will likely retire at the end of this term,so the DNC has been grooming AOC to take over this job.
I was intently following politics,in the 1990s,and I must admit,I had never heard of Tony Mazzocchi,and the Labor Party,before this 2015 Jacobin article.A coalition of labor unions is a much needed,and admirable goal,but frankly I don't see how you are going to get union leadership.to pull away from the Democratic Party.From the looks of it,it looks as if the LP never ran a single candidate,not even on a municipal level.Were they ever able to get on the ballot in a single state?The 2015 article says in 2000,the Green Party adopted most of the LP's program,and Mazzocchi was among those who nominated Nader.I wonder if they should have put all that effort into building the Green Party instead,and making the Greens more of a working class party.
Notice what Dudzic said,in 2015,about reforming the Democrats.
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Re: JBS Haldane and Trotsky on energy sources
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The COVID-19 pandemic and the dual nature of science | Frank Rosenthal | Science for the People via MR Online
Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo
https://mronline.org/2020/09/12/the-covid-19-pandemic-and-the-dual-nature-of-science/
The COVID-19 pandemic and the dual nature of scienceIt is clear that science is important in combating COVID-19. We need to know how the virus spreads and what types of precautions are most effective. We need to estimate the number of cases to plan for caring for the sick. We need to know the molecular structure of the virus in order to devise tests for it, and we need to develop vaccines. None of these things can be done without careful observations, experiments, evidence gathering, and the use of deductive and inductive logic: the building blocks of science. At the same time, the pandemic reveals the political nature of science. COVID-19 has exposed how science is controlled, framed, and exploited in ways that run counter to the interests of people and public health.
Over two decades ago, Professor Richard Levins, one of the founders of Science for the People, described this phenomenon as the “dual nature” of science.(1) On one hand, scientific investigations discover truths about material reality that are independent of ideology or politics. On the other, the practice of science is a human endeavor, deeply embedded in a social and political system that determines what subjects are investigated, why they are investigated, who investigates them, and how they are used. Beyond that, the dominant ideology of the political system influences how the results of scientific investigations are framed, conceptualized, and communicated. Because of this, we cannot view science as objective with respect to public policy. Political influence on science in the United States has seriously weakened the response to the pandemic in several ways: - The health and medical research program of the United States is primarily oriented to drug development and chronic disease diagnosis and treatment–areas that are favored by profit-seeking enterprises.(2) Despite a multitude of warnings about the vulnerability of the United States to pandemics, before the emergence of COVID-19, pandemic research was not a major priority in U.S. health and medical research.(3) And within the limited scientific preparation that was done, in the past decade it seems that scant attention was paid to research on how social determinants of health such as race, poverty, or socioeconomic status would affect the control and consequences of a future pandemic. For example, the 2017 updated “Pandemic Influenza Plan” released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refers to an established “scientific preparedness infrastructure that informs sound public health practices,” but makes no mention of social determinants in the research areas it outlines, or indeed in the entire document.(4) This apparent lack of emphasis on social determinants in U.S. pandemic research continued in the early stages of the current pandemic, when few published papers discussed these determinants.(5) Much of the relevant data for analyzing these factors has not been collected. For example, as of April 15, 2020, 78 percent of the COVID data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not disaggregate race or ethnicity–key factors in understanding the spread and effects of the pandemic.(6)
- There have been blatant attempts to hide or selectively present scientific facts, dissolve scientific panels, and suppress or threaten individual scientists whose views contradict the status quo. In 2018, the Trump administration disbanded the pandemic preparedness unit of the National Security Council.(7)Early in the pandemic, scientists and public health officials were told that they must get the approval of Vice President Mike Pence on whatever they communicated to the public.(8) More recently, Dr. Rick Bright was removed from his position as director of a lead federal agency addressing the pandemic because he was outspoken in correcting false information about COVID-19 stated by President Trump.(9) In each of these cases, the government acted to keep essential public health information from its citizens.
- Facts about the pandemic are framed to serve political interests. The virus is characterized as a foreign invader and referred to as the “Chinese Virus” in order to promote xenophobia, drawing attention away from the monumental failures of the U.S. government in handling the pandemic and justifying attacks on the World Health Organization.(10),(11) The role of individual behavior in controlling the pandemic is emphasized, while less attention is given to policies and regulations that would create safer workplaces. This framing often takes place at press conferences at which government leaders “spin” the facts to promote their agendas and sideline the voices of scientists, public health experts, and activists from marginalized populations.(12)
Pandemic Denial and Pseudoscience in the PandemicCompounding the neglect, obstruction, and distortion of scientific investigation related to the pandemic is the denial of scientific facts, similar to what has occurred with climate change.(13) There are conspiracy theories about the origin of the pandemic, claims that public health measures are dangerous and should be ignored, and advocacy for unproven “cures.”(14) These “theories,” promoted by reactionary forces up to and including the president of the United States,(15) confuse and divide people and weaken our ability to unite people in demanding a viable public health program to address the pandemic. Summary and ConclusionScience is an essential tool in controlling the spread and effects of the COVID pandemic. But the effectiveness of this tool is blunted by the political shaping of science and the promotion of pseudoscience. We should heed Levins’ message about the dual nature of science. While combating the ways in which science is molded to serve the political interests of those in power, we must affirm and defend the validity of the scientific information that is critical to controlling the pandemic.
Frank Rosenthal received his PhD in experimental physics, started an alternative radio news service, and taught high school science. Then, after doing a postdoc in environmental medicine at New York University, he spent 35 years doing research and teaching in environmental and occupational health sciences before retiring from Purdue University. He was one of the original members of Science for the People in the early 1970s and helped to relaunch the organization in 2015. He can be reached at fsrosenthal@.... Editors:Søren Hough (Lead Editor)
Matt Moss (Co-Editor)
Nafis Hasan (Technical Editor)
Rachel Mendelson (Copy Editor)
Søren Hough & Matt Moss (SftP Online Editors) References:- Richard Levins, “Ten Propositions on Science and Antiscience”, Social Text, no. 46/47, Science Wars (Spring–Summer, 1996): 101-11, doi: 10.2307/466847
- David B Resnick, ”Setting Biomedical Research Priorities in the 21st Century”, Virtual Mentor, no. 5 (July, 2003): 211-214, doi: 10.1001/virtualmentor.2003.5.7.msoc1-0307
- Uri Friedman, “We Were Warned”, The Atlantic, March 18, 2020, www.theatlantic.com
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Pandemic Influenza Plan 2017”, www.cdc.gov
- Saman Khalatbari-Soltani, Robert G. Cumming, Cyrelle Delpierre and Michelle Kelly-Irving, “Importance of collecting data on socioeconomic determinants from the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak onwards”, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, no. 74 (May,2020): 620-623, doi: 10.1136/jech-2020-214297.
- Gregorio A. Millet, Austin T. Jones, David Benkesr, Stefan Baral, Lana Mercer, Chris Beyrer, Brian Honemmann et al., “Assessing differential impacts of COVID-19 on black communities”, Annals of Epidemiology, no. 47 (July 2020): 37-44, doi.org
- Lena H. Sun, “Top White House official in charge of pandemic response exits abruptly”, The Washington Post, May 10, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com
- Michaek D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging from Health Officials“, New York Times, February 27, 2020, www.nytimes.com
- Laurel Wamsley, “Rick Bright, Top Vaccine Scientist Files Whistleblower Complaint”, NPR, May 5, 2020, www.npr.org
- Brian Bennett, “Why President Trump Wants to Frame COVID-19 as a ‘Foreign Virus’”, Time, March 12, 2020, time.com
- Anne Gearan, “Trump Announces Cutoff of New Funding Over World Health Organization Pandemic Response”, Washington Post, April 14, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com Zachary B. Wolf, “Trump’s coronavirus briefings matter whether or not he tells the truth”, CNN Politics, March 30, 2020, www.cnn.com
- Dana Nucitelli, “Coronavirus doubters follow climate denial playbook”, Yale Climate Connections, April 14, 2020, www.yaleclimateconnections.org
- Jon Alsop, “The many coronavirus conspiracy theories:, Columbia Journalism Review, May 15, 2020, www.cjr.org
- “Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment”, BBC News, April 24, 2020, www.bbc.com
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
I absolutely support a model "That Prioritises the Protection of Sex Workers". The very fact that it is necessary to have such a policy shows that sex work is different from other work.
"Women working in prostitution experience higher levels of violence against them than women working in other fields.[1] In 2004 the homicide rate for female sex workers in the United States was estimated to be 204 per 100,000, although this figure mixes illegal work with legal work. This figure is considerably higher than that for the next riskiest occupations in the United States during a similar period (4 per 100,000 for female liquor store workers and 29 per 100,000 for male taxicab drivers). The prevalence of violence against prostitutes varies by location. A study of female prostitutes in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada over the age of 14 who used illicit drugs other than marijuana found that 57% of prostitutes experienced some form of gender-based violence over an 18-month period.[4
]
" (Wikipedia)
Andrew says "In the Global South where sex workers are afforded a level of civil liberties . . ." What is actually meant by that? To continue the section in Wikipedia, "A study of 1,000 female (both cisgender and transgender) sex-workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia found 93% of women surveyed had been the victim of rape in the past year.[5] Prostitutes in the "Global South" are amongst the most horrifically treated of all. $100 for a lapdance might be tempting for a woman in a desperately poor country like Cambodia (I'll take your word that a lapdancer in Cambodia gets a hundred bucks for that) but that's a statement on the distortions of global capitalism, not the normality of sex work. One lapdance a month equaling the average wage for the same period says more about what's wrong with capitalism than what's right with prostitution.
Of course the criminally unjust nature of work under capitalism drives some women to prostitution. But please, I am not a Victorian moralist for not buying the line that the Happy Hooker is anything but a caricature completely unrepresentative of reality for many many women and girls around the world trapped in prostitution by addiction and violence.
What other occupation has its own advocacy group hosting advice on exiting the profession on its website?
A walk down certain streets in my home city makes it pretty clear that the industry has not been revolutionised in the way Andrew describes. There are plenty of vulnerable young women out at night. When I was taxi driving a few years back, the women I'd be driving home after they'd finished for the night didn't strike me as " fully-functional self-operated business" owners. And that was in an environment of legalisation, with specific provision in the law for "Soobs", "Suburban Owner Operated Brothels".
Comradely,
John
-- "All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." Sarah Moore Grimke, abolitionist (1792-1873)
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Re: JBS Haldane and Trotsky on energy sources
Louis, fascinating about the documentary. Again, not quite related (or at all, actually) to nuclear energy. Here is my take on this, at least from your introduction. Indeed, plutonium is a by product of the fission in the reactor. While the majority of energy is fissioned from U235 (about 4% of what is the "fuel" in those fuel rods)...plutonium comes from the decay of the other 96%, U238. Indeed, much of the plutonium by end of a 6 year of life in the reactor, is actually fuel itself and some/a lot of it is burned up. At any rate, none of it is used to make nuclear weapons. I think India may of used this process in the 1960s to make one of it's nuclear bombs. Why?
Because it is waaay to expensive to separate out the Plutonium from the high level waste/spent nuclear fuel from a commercial reactor. What Rocky Flats did, what Hanford did, and what H-bomb makers do to this day is to use special "R&D reactors", smaller than commercial reactors, and in many ways simpler and cheaper to build, to bombard U238 with neutrons until it decays into P239 ("P" for "plutonium"). That is how the N. Koreans did it, how Israel does it, how the U.S., China and Russia do it. It is completely separate and distinct from commercial nuclear energy and the high level waste from, day, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, never sees a gov't R&D reactor to make weapons grade plutonium.
The Hiroshima bomb was a U235 bomb. The larger more deadly Nagasaki bomb was made from P239. That plutonium was made under the Polo Fields in the secret lab at the University of Chicago (now Fermi Lab). It was called a "pile" and you may of seen the term used in the past. This remain today how P239 WMD is made. It is, unfortunately, "easy" to make relative to enriching U235 to fissionable levels (.7% in natural uranium to ~4 for reactors, and over 90% for bombs). Every nuclear weapon in the world was made this way that uses P239. None of it, zero, was made from nuclear reactor waste. The good news is that the way to get rid of it, just as we got rid of much of the old USSRs bomb grade U235, is to recycle it into fuel and burn it all up in reactors. That would be good way to get rid of this destructive isotope.
Lastly, as a footnote, when you see "Department of Energy" involved in anything related to nuclear, it is always, to my knowledge, involved in military/WMD. A special military sub-division of the DofE. If it's NRC, it's civilian.
David
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
I have reported for several years now on sex worker advocacy and organizing.
Several misconceptions that demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding:
1-The internet revolutionized the system, eliminating the abusive pimp almost entirely. Instead, sex workers were able to operate their own fully-functional self-operated businesses via the internet bulletin board and advertising system. Nobody in their right mind desires to see abusive and exploitative mafia practices either perpetuated and continue. In fact, the whole "sex trafficking" narrative has become effectively weaponized in the past 10 years as a replacement for the flow of drug arrests now that decriminalization has become a viable project with major successes in several states. (And yes, sex trafficking does exist, it is serious, but conflating consensual sex with sexual violence only helps violent perpetrators, NOT the survivors. If you flood the police blotter with a bunch of vice arrests for consensual sex, distracting from genuine harm, that's a mess.)
2-If one accepts the idea of people not just consenting but wanting to be sex workers, who are you to intrude on their selection of that job?
3-It's not like we're seriously engaging with the actual landscape of labor that most sex workers exist in. In the Global South where sex workers are afforded a level of civil liberties, let's consider the options. a-Be a sex worker, ehich can include everything from full-service prostitution to erotic dancing to pornography produced at home on a webcam; or b-Work for pennies an hour in dangerous jobs that have next to no workplace safety standards. Would you rather do lap dances for $100 each or make $5 a day in a plant stripping precious metals from e-waste using highly toxic chemicals without any rubber gloves? This sort of neo-Victorian hectoring becomes infuriating because it denies the fact that many sex workers will be and are treated terribly -regardless- of what industry they work in.
4-Can someone explain to me the tremendous difference between exchanging fungible currency for sex and exchanging jewelry, dinner and a movie, or anything else of value for sex over either a single one night stand or the length of a marriage contract? I am completely baffled by this failure of Marxists to comprehend the only variation being the use of Marx's universal commodity, the money commodity, rather than a meal at a French restaurant.
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Re: JBS Haldane and Trotsky on energy sources
On 9/12/20 9:41 PM, David Walters
wrote:
The Fernald
Feed Materials Production Center was not nor has it do
much with commercial/civilian nuclear ENERGY. It was entirely a
nuclear weapons program. Facts and context matter not just any
misdeed proceeding or following the term "nuclear". The Center was
no different, really, than Rocky Flats or Hanford nuclear reserves
where all sorts of horrors of WMD were researched and created. The
only real mixed use on I'm aware of is at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory and the one in Los Alamos. Louis, my only word of
advice here is to try to have a discussion
without starting it off to throw mud. It only gets us both dirty.
David, plutonium is produced as a byproduct of
producing nuclear power. It is recycled into nuclear weapons.
The capitalist class sees the two processes as interconnected.
For those of you haven't drunk the nuclear industry PR kool-aid,
I strongly recommend keeping an eye out for this. It is no
longer available at the Metrograph but I will post an
announcement if it shows up on OVID or some other VOD:
Dark Circle
This is a digital restoration of a 1982 documentary that
must be seen. It is about the danger that plutonium poses to those
that living close to it in places like Rocky Flats, Colorado or to
nuclear power plants like Diablo Canyon in California. I had no
idea before seeing the film that nuclear weapons are based on
plutonium, which is only available as a byproduct of the uranium
used to produce nuclear power. This “waste” is then used by
Rockwell in Rocky Flats to manufacture H-Bombs. If there’s any
better reason to close down every nuclear power plant in the
world, I can’t think of it.
The film interviews a man who worked at Rockwell and was
in the final stages of brain cancer. Within the 10-mile radius of
the plant, the cancer rate was 16 percent higher than normal. For
those working inside the plant, the rate was five times higher. It
affected not only the workers but the people living nearby who
were exposed to the soil and water that had minute quantities of
plutonium. We meet the father of an 11-year old girl who after
skinning her knee playing near their house had to have a leg
amputated within a year after developing cancer. Her father, a
building contractor who made his living building homes in Rocky
Flats, denounced the nuclear arms industry as a whole. After his
daughter was cremated, he sent the ashes to a lab that discovered
plutonium.
The back-story of “Dark Circle” indicates how committed
American capitalism is to this suicidal arms race. PBS was
supposed to broadcast it in 1985, but changed its mind a year
later. Barry Chase, the PBS vice-president for news and public
affairs, said, “It’s an advocacy film and it does not provide any
opportunity for any viewer who is coming to the subject for the
first time to draw any conclusion other than those which the
producers hold.” I thought that was what PBS was supposed to
broadcast, wasn’t it? Four years later, PBS reversed its decision
and aired the documentary.
The film has an exclusive one week digital engagement at
the Metrograph from August 21-27. Subscriptions to its VOD
screenings are available in a $5/month or in a $50/annual
Metrograph Digital Membership. Metrograph is great and I encourage
you to sign up.
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Re: JBS Haldane and Trotsky on energy sources
Yes, my "intervention" on these questions are almost identical to Phillips and Huber...I like to think I educated them on the processes involved in energy and its importance to our species. So, yeah, indeed, and I'm quite proud of it. Leigh and Parenti just had a debate over nuclear energy last week on the Jacobin channel on YouTube.
The Fernald Feed Materials Production Center was not nor has it do much with commercial/civilian nuclear ENERGY. It was entirely a nuclear weapons program. Facts and context matter not just any misdeed proceeding or following the term "nuclear". The Center was no different, really, than Rocky Flats or Hanford nuclear reserves where all sorts of horrors of WMD were researched and created. The only real mixed use on I'm aware of is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the one in Los Alamos. Louis, my only word of advice here is to try to have a discussion without starting it off to throw mud. It only gets us both dirty.
Andrew, what you write is more urban legend than fact. One can "geologically dispose" of High Level Waste (HLW). As of now it just sits, quite safely in the stainless steel lined concrete. If you took it all, it wouldn't fill up a COSTCO store. Has to do with density, again. At any rate, like others, I'm opposed to burying it 3000 feet underground because it would be a huge waste. We close the fuel cycle (uranium --> reactor fuel --> fast reactor fuel) as the Chinese and Russians are doing right now and all that valuable HLW becomes feed stock for that next generation of reactors...why the hell would anyone want to bury the stuff? At the point when the cycle is complete one is left with a lot less HLW and it is dangerous for only a 100 years. Much easier to manage than it is now.
No human society under socialism is ever going to be able to function without fission energy replacing all forms of transportation fuel and generation. Not unless the 17th Century level of technology is believed to be so grand...
David Walters
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Re: The Novel and the Secret Police | Boston Review
Shit, Jeffrey St. Clair is indisposed currently. He wrote his thesis on GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and is basically a Pynchon nut.
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Re: JBS Haldane and Trotsky on energy sources
Unfortunately for all of us, there is no "good" way of disposing of nuclear waste, even under socialism or pure communism. It is fundamentally an unsustainable project because the waste is impossible to safely dispose of forever, from what I gather. Renewables are likewise not truly sustainable. The unfortunate reality is that we have built a worldwide social system whose living standards are probably not sustainable, even with a decentralized renewable power grid that utilizes things like hydro-electric generated by internal plumbing, something like a million little turbines lining all the sewage disposal pipes of a major metropolitan city. It may be that we would need to do a substantial roll-back on non-essential services, with electricity reserved for things like medical care and those who engage in things like pleasure reading using candles again. Though it is much to my chagrin to share their stuff, Max Blumenthal had a very interesting column on this recently:
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
"The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work..." could, for those on the left, extend to ALL work!"
Except that most on the Left actually realise that work is necessary for survival. "Anti-work" activism is ultimately about other people doing the work so that the "Anti-work" activist doesn't have to.
Marxism is not about not working. It's about wresting control from capital so that the work is democratically controlled and the product of that work is distributed rationally to meet need. To get back to the original post, I can easily grasp where much (but not all) existing work would fit into that model in a socialist society. I confess, I'm not sure where sex work - (mostly) women "choosing" to have sex with strangers, the nature of such sex being determined by the "client", to put food on the table - would fit in.
Comradely, John
On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 11:36 AM C. Horgan < chorgan@...> wrote: If I understand this, the reaction that people on the left have to friends or relatives joining the army would lead us to try to stop them from doing it. Wage-earning soldiers sound like mercenaries.
"The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work..." could, for those on the left, extend to ALL work!
On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 07:13 PM, D Derwin wrote:
The visceral positive reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones joining the army and engaging in death and pain work suggests that the left position on war and militarism, and on the need to ultimately organise wage-earning soldiers, is not intuitive but desirable.
On Sat 12 Sep 2020 at 9:49 p.m., rosalux < rosalux@...> wrote:
“The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work suggests that the left position of sex work being work is neither intuitive nor desirable. Nonetheless, the contemporary left has joined hands with liberal feminists, capitalists, pimps, and bourgeois academics in insisting that sex work is wage labor like any other.”
https://www.thebellows.org/the-folly-of-sex-work-advocacy/
-- "All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." Sarah Moore Grimke, abolitionist (1792-1873)
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What is Fascism, by George Orwell
The indiscriminate use of the term "fascism" existed even in Orwell's time.
https://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
If I understand this, the reaction that people on the left have to friends or relatives joining the army would lead us to try to stop them from doing it. Wage-earning soldiers sound like mercenaries.
"The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work..." could, for those on the left, extend to ALL work!
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 07:13 PM, D Derwin wrote:
The visceral positive reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones joining the army and engaging in death and pain work suggests that the left position on war and militarism, and on the need to ultimately organise wage-earning soldiers, is not intuitive but desirable.
On Sat 12 Sep 2020 at 9:49 p.m., rosalux < rosalux@...> wrote:
“The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work suggests that the left position of sex work being work is neither intuitive nor desirable. Nonetheless, the contemporary left has joined hands with liberal feminists, capitalists, pimps, and bourgeois academics in insisting that sex work is wage labor like any other.”
https://www.thebellows.org/the-folly-of-sex-work-advocacy/
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Re: The Folly of Sex Work Advocacy
The visceral positive reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones joining the army and engaging in death and pain work suggests that the left position on war and militarism, and on the need to ultimately organise wage-earning soldiers, is not intuitive but desirable.
On Sat 12 Sep 2020 at 9:49 p.m., rosalux < rosalux@...> wrote: “The visceral negative reaction that many have to the idea of themselves or their loved ones engaging in sex work suggests that the left position of sex work being work is neither intuitive nor desirable. Nonetheless, the contemporary left has joined hands with liberal feminists, capitalists, pimps, and bourgeois academics in insisting that sex work is wage labor like any other.”
https://www.thebellows.org/the-folly-of-sex-work-advocacy/
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