John Dolva

Hijack away Tom. I'm a student here. I think Paul raises important issues that need to be studied. I won't engage him in a philosophical discussion on thwe JFK forum except insofar as it pertains to an understanding of the assassination. To do this I think it's important to have some understanding as it forms part of analysing motive et.c.. It's interesting that a hegelian dialectician and a dialectical materialist can have so much commonality with regards to focus re the assassination so I don't want to risk damaging that as people seem to have some difficulty maintaining objectivity when clashes occur in the arena of the ego that encompasses thoughts, though I don't think Paul from his writings indicates particularly much inability to pause and give measured responses. I'm not going to qualify that much more. Otherwise, given Sartres role in the world at the time in consideration I think it is important to try to understand him, Ditto likely Simone DeBeauvoir(sp?), even Olaf Palme. Che of course as well as Fidel so there are a number of topics at the moment exploring these things. Anyway anything pertaining to Sartre and the concurrent threads of philosophies of hegelian and marxist dialectics are much welcome. Wonder why such a person as DeGaulle would say that. Was Sartre regarded as a national treasure of some sort? I wonder what Sartre thought of it?

bump

"it would be instructive to know more details" - good point Len. "How many decades would one get if they did this in Cuba? ' - dunno Len, How many? ''difficult'' - impossible? __________-- Cmon Len, is that it?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18576 ------------- I've started looking at Engels and Marxs "The holy Family or Critique of critical Critique", 1844 as republished by the F.L.P.H., Moscow '56. It seems to promise to cover their position on Hegel as it was then. Interesting.

[WORK IN PROGRESS] just some links to start with : http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18465&view=findpost&p=241727 Excerpts from: SARTRE ON CUBA The Existentialist Cowboy Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011) Journalist foiled Ku Klux Klan

Thanks Duncan. That's great. Much grateful.

Duncan, can you isolate the best frame of the white capped cop and up the gamma a bit. I'm still curious to know the person with a hat like that in a long coat walking away from elm southwards(Bell). ID'ing the badge has never been done so far. Maybe this is a way to explore. If you can't that's cool. I'm still getting used to how to do stuff in Linux, but I'll get there. Sorry for the interruption. Carry on gentlemen

You should read some of his older onliners.

What?

Good on you Bernice. You're not alone. I amuse myself by logging the email code. Funny where stuff from one place pops up somewhere unrelated some time later.

Give Ron a break, he's the funniest guy on the forum.

I've always found all this interesting but have no firm opinions on anything. I not though that the service elevator running next to the front staircase interesting for a number of reasons (plus various other exit points seldom mentioned)

John, as for Sartre's SEARCH FOR A METHOD (1957) mainly he was looking for a justification for his 180 degree turn from BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (1950) to his DIALECTICAL REASON (1960). Regarding what the right-wing hoped for, they mostly got the opposite. They wanted a USA without Black Liberation, and instead the USA celebrates Martin Luther King day annually. They wanted the USA to return to Isolationism, instead, the USA is the Global Superpower which replaced the British Empire. (Some of the right wing wanted the world of Dr. Strangelove, instead they have a world where thirty nations have some nuclear capability.) These are the issues that ultimately killed JFK. The right-wing won one prize: the fall of the USSR. But the USSR was going to fall, anyway, because its model was defective. So, in my opinion, the only thing that the right-wing actually accomplished through its excesses was a counteraction of the excesses of the left-wing, which were perhaps more monstrous. Actually, the right wing and its old-world excesses made the pipe dream of extreme socialism look better by comparison - and so arguably delayed the fall of Communism. In the same way, the moderate left-wing could have made huge advances for the working class in the 20th century, except for the extremists, the Marxists, who also insisted on anti-religion, anti-nationalism, anti-marriage, and the radical abolition of all private property as 'rider' bills. This made the right-wing look more sane by comparison, and arguably delayed any resolution. For me, the right-wing in America is a joke. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh - here is biased journalism unashamed of its bias. They resemble quasi-Christian fanatics who stand on street-corners with placards reading, "The End is Coming Soon." It's embarrassing to see them. The left-wing in America is even worse off, in my opinion, because it shriveled like a burnt turkey wing. Its original ideals died due to its century long contagion with the Marxist infection. If there is still hope for our fevered planet, it rests in the fact that the USSR and Marxism became past history. China turned away from Mao and toward Deng Xiaoping who shifted China's economy toward America's economy, and so saved the current USA generation from an all-out Great Depression. (The top employer in the USA today is Wal-Mart, which mainly sells Chinese goods.) The fact that Europe is still struggling with the Euro and the European Union shows good faith that their extreme left and right wingers have been silenced; hopefully forever. On the global front, the USA now faces a world more familiar to the British of 1899, viz. the struggle between Hinduism and Islam that would ultimately lead to the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan and the meteoric resurgence of Islam. (It makes sense that after WW1, WW2, the Cold War and the fall of Communism that the world would only settle back to its previous problems.) To summarize: tempted by the British Middle East crisis, the German/Japanese Axis powers tried to return the world to its original, primitive mission of Slavery under a super-race. That scrambled the 20th century time track until the dust finally settled in 1975, when Nixon ended the Vietnam war, made an economic pact with China, and resigned over his many sins, including Watergate, the Bay of Pigs, and what not. Nixon was the last great quasi-monarchal President. The more predictable Bush regimes have been Parliamentary from the start -- demonstrated by our adventures in Kuwait, Iraq and the Middle East generally, which are still ongoing. I hope we can find some commonalities in all this, John. I enjoy the conversation. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Hey, me too, Paul. Tho it's really in risk of drifting way off topic. However I think, deluded or not, (I say not) understanding these things is essential in understanding the forces at work. Back on the maybe off topic points, OK Sartre was intellectually dishonest and deluded in various ways (not). Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown or something. He wasn't the only one though;. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, Cassius X, maybe the entire SDS membership too and numerable others living in the real world (Not just in the US). So deluded or not there's a commonality I think. What I'm getting at whatever it was/is it was/is a significant force. _ on another matter. This has revived old interests. I got a copy of Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow in English (pub '57) of Capital (unfortunately without Vol 1) Got 2 and 3 (plus a bonus of marx and engels ''THE HOLY FAMILY or CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL CRITIQUE'' (say that quickly).. I wonder what you make of page 161 of Vol 2. I'm serious. I'm looking for answers to some fundamental points you have made. Best to you too. edit typo

Sounds nice, William. Wouldn't it be amazing if what is spent on weapons and stuff like that was spent in such ways. I read one day that even one days war spending could feed the world. But then I'm a dreamer. edit typo

Thomas. The yellow bottle.

I suspect Sartres essay answers many of these concerns. I'm looking for commonalities here. Naturally, generally, the militant right behaves predictably. " As weak as the Rightist worldview was, the Marxist worldview was even weaker." in being weaker ( and destructive ), did the right do the right thing in the final analysis?

Has the scratches on the floor on the overhead photos of the boxes been explained?

Ok. Taking his essay of '57, (which developed into the intro to Critique of Reason, 60), which was actually an attempt to reconcile existentialism and marxism. : ''... (wiki) Sartre then turns to his own experience with Marx. He describes an early attraction to Marx's thought[10] since it did a better job of describing the condition of the proletariat than the "optimistic humanism" that was being taught at university.[11] Despite this affinity toward Marx's works, Sartre claims that his generation's interpretation of Marxism remained tainted by idealism and individualism[11] until World War II broke down the dominant societal structures.[12] Despite this apparent victory of Marxism, existentialism persisted because Marxism stagnated.[13] Marxism became a tool for the security and policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviets halted the organic conflict and debate that develops a philosophy, and turned Marxist materialism into an idealism in which reality was made to conform to the a priori, ideological beliefs of Soviet bureaucrats. Sartre points to the 1956 Hungarian uprising where Soviet leaders assumed that any revolt must be counter-revolutionary and anti-Marxist when, in fact, the Hungarian revolt came directly from the working class.[14] In contrast to this inflexible mode of thinking, Sartre points to Marx's writings on the Revolutions of 1848 and Eighteenth Brumaire in which Marx examined class relations instead of taking them as given.[15][16] Sartre notes that his contemporary Marxists maintained a focus on "analysis" but criticizes this analysis as a superficial study focused on verifying Marxist absolutes ("eternal knowledge") instead of gaining an understanding of historical perspective, as Marx himself did.[17] Sartre turns his criticism on to other methods of investigation. He says that "American Sociology" has too much "theoretic uncertainty" while the once promising psychoanalysis has stagnated. Unlike these methods and the generally dominant idealism, existentialism and Marxism offer a possible means of understanding mankind and the world as a totality.[18] Sartre claims that the class war predicted by Marxism has failed to occur because orthodox Marxism has become too rigid and "Scholastic".[19] Despite its stagnation, Marxism remains the philosophy of this time.[20] Both existentialism and Marxism see the world in dialectical terms where individual facts are meaningless; truth is found not in facts themselves but in their interaction: they only gain significance as part of a totality.[21] György Lukács argued that existentialism and Marxist materialism could not be compatible, Sartre responds with a passage from Engels showing that its the dialectic resulting from economic conditions that drives history just as in Sartre's dialectically driven existentialism. Sartre concludes the chapter by citing Marx from Das Kapital: "The reign of freedom does not begin in fact until the time when the work imposed by necessity and external finality shall cease..."[22] Sartre, following Marx, sees human freedom limited by economic scarcity. For Sartre, Marxism will remain the only possible philosophy until scarcity is overcome[23]; moreover, he sees even conceiving of a successor theory--or what one might look like--as impossible until the scarcity problem is overcome.[24]...) To me the implied organic nature is also dealt with by Trotskys Permanent Revolution as an antidote to the stagnation Sartre discusses. It sounds like an interesting essay. I'd like to read it in all forms. --- I think a recognition of US centricity is good. There's so much there to explore. Naturally a hypothesis must be built on solid foundations in order to be considered a viable theory. There's a lot I agree with and some I don't but until there (to me) appears a shaky foundation to proceed without a serious look I'm happy to run with it afa it goes edit typos + add for fun

Len, how many and who are actual prisoners? Of course Cuba has security concerns. Again : re sympathy, it depends on particular prisoners.

I don't know how much a member of the Marxist intelligensia would be swayed by Smoot. I find this part interesting :'' They didn't care about it a bit - but their ideology of making all these global left-wing movements into the puppets of Corporate Giants turned out to be brilliant -- said Jean-Paul Sartre -- because they actually distrated a significant portion of the intelligensia away from the Marxist paradigm'' I take Sartre seriously so I think this quote from him (if it is, or even if it's a particular persons 'interpretation') needs to be looked at in full context. Obviously the monroe doctrine needs to be considered as well. Anyway, if we choose we could cover lots here that really might not have so much to do with that which we do have in common, namely Walker as pivotal. In this context the clarification about the Bealle fictions. And they certainly served a pupose of providing a palatable world view to people in a part of the world being ripped apart by systemic contradictions. Further on that particular matter. I find that most people react to circumstances most with pressure on the hip pocket nerve. That was not being applied by Cuba. That was being applied by the enormous nation wide economic shifts threatened by centuries old structures that would have to change as the world focused on the equal rights situation of the USofA at a time when TV developed dramatically during the Kennedy administration. How could the USofA possibly excert any moral force in the world when the world was finding out about the mess in the USoAs own back yard? No wonder that Kennedy himself sought to diminish the Oxford days ( The Ghosts Of Mississippi ) of late sep earl;y oct '62, still obfuscated today..

Ok, the facts would be that they necessarily are prisoners. Which means they have been imprisoned, right? Like I said it depends on any particular prisoner. You are asking me loaded questions. Please don't.

Sydney: Congolese community calls for solidarity Thursday, December 22, 2011 Leaders of the Congolese community in Australia, at a meeting organised by the Latin American Social Forum in Sydney, explained the crisis the Democratic Republic of Congo is facing after more than 50 years of exploitation by the Western countries and their local allies, and appealed for solidarity from the international socialist movement. Videos: - Community elder Mbuyi Tshielantende speaks (translated by Fralis Kolanga). - Liliane Lukoki discusses the situation of women in Congo; Fralis Kolanga calls for solidarity. - Patrice Nyembo, president of the Congolese community in Australia, discusses human rights and the importance of solidarity. From GLW issue 906

As an opponent to the death penalty, judicial or ectra judicial I find this development heartening. Thursday, December 8, 2011 Mumia Abu-Jamal. United States: Mumia death penalty push dropped, Desmond Tutu demands his freedom In response to the news that the Philadelphia District Attorny's office has dropped its push to apply the death penalty to Mumia Abu-Jumal, framed for the 1981 murder of a police officer, FreeMumia.com released the statement below. * * * South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal: “Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life -- yet another form of death sentence. "Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released. I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served.” The news that the DA’s Office of Philadelphia is no longer seeking the death penalty for Mumia is no news to supporters of the nearly 30 year Pennsylvania Death Row prisoner. However, because Mumia has for 30 years been subjected to torture on death row and because he is innocent, justice for Mumia will not be served by life imprisonment, but by his release from prison. Mumia’s case is like thousands of other cases in Philadelphia in which the prosecutor, the judge, and the police conspired to obtain a conviction. One of the most important and least known facts of this case is the existence of a fourth person at the crime scene, Kenneth Freeman. Within hours of the shooting, a driver’s license application found in Officer Faulkner’s shirt pocket led the police to Freeman, who was identified as the shooter in a line-up. Yet Freeman’s presence at the scene was concealed, first by Inspector Alfonso Giordano and later, at trial, by Prosecutor Joe McGill. Recently, the US Department of Justice asserted that withholding evidence of innocence by the prosecutor warrants the overturning of a conviction. The police investigation that led to Mumia’s conviction was also riddled with corruption and tampering with evidence. The recently discovered Polokoff photographs that were taken at the crime scene, reveal that officer James Forbes, who testified in court that he had properly handled the guns allegedly retrieved at the crime scene, appears holding the guns with his bare hands. The photos also discredit cabdriver Robert Chobert as a witness; his taxi, contrary to his testimony, is pictured facing away from the fallen officer’s car. This evidence hasn’t been reviewed by any court. Our call to Seth Williams is that he honor DA Lynn Abraham’s 1995 promise to the city of Philadelphia that she would discard any cases where evidence surfaces that even one of the officers involved in an investigation lied in court or in written reports. The D.A. may think that the case can be laid to rest by sending Mumia off to life in prison. But an aroused public, with the Supreme Court ruling the death sentence to be unconstitutional, is ready to challenge anew the entire trial. The same judge, jury, and DA that were involved in the unlawful sentencing process committed equally egregious violations in the conviction. This is not an ending, it is a new beginning for the movement supporting Abu-Jamal’s quest for release. From GLW issue 906

Len, it depends entirely on any particular prisoner. edit typo