For a Global Parachute : Revising Marxian Economics

Professor Richard D. Wolff: This four part course provides a working foundation in the core concepts of Marxian economic theory – necessary and surplus labor, labor power, surplus value, exploitation, capital accumulation, distributions of the surplus, capitalist crises, and the differences between capitalist and other class structures. In addition, these core concepts will be systematically used to understand current social problems (including political and cultural as well as economic problems). The goal is to enable students to apply Marxian economics in their own efforts to analyze society and to strategize politically today.

Palestine / Israel Links

The ruined village Palestinians will never forget

For many Palestinians, Lifta is a symbol of the Nakba, literally the “catastrophe”, of 1948 in which 700,000 people were dispossessed. It embodies their longing for their land, and their bitterness at their continued refugee status. It is, wrote Palestinian author Ghada Karmi in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, “a physical memory of injustice and survival”.

Bob Geldof preaches about Africa to Israel, breaks the boycott and fails to recognise the plight of Palestinians courtesy of apartheid and occupation. Hypocrite.

Can’t handle the truth or anything close to the truth : Israeli Culture Minister storms out of film, calls it too pro-Palestinian
The Israeli police are ramping up arrests and attacks against Palestinian children.

Targeting of children is nothing new in West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh and Bil’in. This afternoon, Israeli police raided the house of 8 year-old Ali Siyam in the Occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

Siyam’s arrest comes days after Israeli soldiers broke the arm of a 9-year-old Palestinian child in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers, in violation of Israeli army rules of conduct, fired a tear gas canister directly at the child from a range of ten meters. Another 14 year old child was injured from a tear gas canister before the demonstration was over.

Israeli forces raid Information Center again, director Siyam summoned and detained
Netanyahu asked Canada PM to thwart G8 support for 1967 borders
British PM removes his name from list of Jewish National Fund patrons – time constraints?

In its last open letter to Cameron, sent two weeks ago, Stop the JNF characterized the JNF’s British Park in Israel as one that was planted “in order to cover over the remains of the Palestinian villages of Ajjur and Zakariyya, destroyed in 1948, and to prevent the original population and their descendants from returning.”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Sarah Colborne said in a statement that Cameron’s decision “reflects the fact that it is now impossible for any serious party leader to lend their public support to racism.” She added: “The Jewish National Fund plays a critical role in facilitating the continued dispossession and suffering of Palestinians.”

Palestinian state: Still gearing up for the UN in September
Nakba: Why did Israeli historians whitewash an artillery attack?
What Opening Rafah Means & Doesn’t Mean
Group of 12 Israeli settlers severely beat elderly Palestinian shepherd – any arrests? unlikely.
Free software campaigner Richard Stallman cancels Israel lectures due to Palestinian pressure
This was the week of Netanyahu’s speech before Congress; if, utterly unlikely as this may be, there is anyone in the world who failed to notice that he was lying, then Wednesday’s official ceremony unveiling the new settlement here in East Jerusalem should be enough to remove the veil.
Police use tasers against J’lem demonstrators : The activists accused police of using excessive violence and of allowing settlers to abuse them after they were detained.
Jewish Settlers Severely Beat Elderly Palestinian Shepherd in Nablus