3264. Earliest Evidence for Cannabis Use Discovered in Ancient Tombs

By Michele Donahue, National Geographic, June 12, 2019

2,500-year-old burials at Jirzankal Cemetery in western China feature wooden braziers that burned cannabis plants containing an unusually high level of the psychoactive chemical THC. Photo:
Wu Xinhua.

The earliest direct evidence for human consumption of cannabis as a drug has been discovered in a 2,500-year-old cemetery in Central Asia, according to a research paper published today in in the journal Science Advances.

While cannabis plants and seeds have been identified at other archaeological sites from the same general region and time period—including a cannabis ‘burial shroud’ discovered in 2016—it’s been unclear in each context whether the versatile plant was used for psychoactive reasons or for other ritual purposes.

An international team of researchers analyzed the interiors and contents of 10 wooden bowls excavated from burials at Jirzankal Cemetery, a site on the Pamir Plateau in what is now far-western China. The bowls contained small stones that had been exposed to high heat, and archaeologists identified them as braziers for burning incense or other plant matter.

When chemical analysis of the braziers revealed that nine of the ten once contained cannabis, the researchers compared the chemical signature of the samples against those of cannabis plants discovered 1,000 miles to the east at Jiayi Cemetery, in burials dating from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.

They saw that the Jirzankal cannabis had something the Jiayi hemp did not: Molecular remnants of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the chemical responsible for cannabis’ psychoactive effects. The strain of cannabis found at Jiayi does not contain THC, and would have been primarily been used as a source of fiber for clothing and rope, as well as nutrient-rich oilseed.

The Jirzankal cannabis features higher levels of mind-altering compounds than have yet been found at any ancient site, suggesting that people could have been intentionally cultivating certain strains of cannabis for a potent high, or selecting wild plants known to produce that effect.

Cannabis is known for its “plasticity,” or ability for new generations of plants to express different characteristics from earlier generations depending on exposure to environmental factors such as sunlight, temperature, and altitude. Wild strains of cannabis growing at higher altitudes, for instance, can have a higher THC content.

While the researchers are unable to determine the actual origin of the cannabis used in the Jirzankal burials, they suggest that Jirzankal’s elevation some 10,000 feet on the Pamir Plateau may have put people in close proximity to wild strains with higher THC content—or that the cemetery could have been sited at that elevation for ease of access to desirable strains.
 
According to Spengler, this new study demonstrates that already 2,500 years ago, humans were potentially targeting specific plants for their chemical production

Robert Spengler, director of paleoethnobotany laboratories at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and study co-author, says that the constant stream of people moving across the Pamir Plateau—an important crossroads connecting Central Asia and China with southwest Asia—could have resulted in the hybridization of local cannabis strains with those from other areas. While hybridization is another factor known to increase psychoactive cannabis strains’ THC potency, the question of whether it was intentional, or just by happy accident, is also still unclear.

“It’s a wonderful example of how closely intertwined humans are and have been with the biotic world around them, and that they impose evolutionary pressures on the plants around them,” he says.

The discovery at Jirzankal also provides the first direct evidence that humans inhaled combusted cannabis plants in order to obtain its psychoactive effects. No evidence of smoking pipes or similar apparatus has been found in Asia before contact with the New World in the modern era, but the inhalation of cannabis smoke from a heat source is described by the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, who described in his Histories how the Scythians, a nomadic tribe living on the Caspian Steppe, purified themselves with cannabis smoke after burying their dead: “The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and, crawling in under the mats, throw it on the red-hot stones, where it smolders and sends forth such fumes that no Greek vapor-bath could surpass it. The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapor-bath."

Herodotus also notes that the cannabis plant “grows both of itself and having been sown,” which University of North Carolina classics expert Emily Baragwanath says is usually interpreted as meaning the plant was cultivated—lending credence to the researcher’s ideas about purposeful cannabis hybridization.

"People have been skeptical of Herodotus’ ethnographies of foreign peoples," she adds, "but as archaeology looks closer, it keeps finding affinities between the real world and what’s in the Histories."

Mark Merlin, an ethnobotanist and cannabis historian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says the wide diversity in cannabis around the world today is a testament to how long people have been involved with the plant and harnessed its many uses. “It’s a real indication of how long humans have been manipulating cannabis,” he says.

3263. Thomas L. Friedman on Climate Change Mitigation as Capitalist Rivalry

By Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, June 11, 2019

Just when you think you’ve seen and heard it all from Donald Trump, he sinks to a new low that leaves you speechless and wondering: Is he crazy, is he evil, is he maniacally committed to unwinding every good thing Barack Obama did, or is he just plain stupid?

I mean, what president would try to weaken emission standards so American-made cars could pollute more, so our kids could breathe dirtier air in the age of climate change, when clean energy systems are becoming the next great global industry and China is focused on dominating it?

Seriously, who does that?

But that’s the initiative Trump has embarked upon of late — an industrial policy to revive all the dirty industries of the past and to undermine the clean industries of the future.

It is a policy initiative that is not only perverse on its face, but that utterly fails to connect so many dots that are right now harming our national security, economy, weather and competition with China.

Think of the dots Trump refuses to connect:

Dot No. 1: Get the term “global warming” out of your head. What’s actually happening is better described as “global weirding.” The warming of the atmosphere makes the weather weird. First, the hots get hotter. This then leads to greater evaporation, which means there’s more water vapor in clouds for precipitation. So the wets get wetter and the floods get wider. But the droughts in dry areas also get drier.

Some of the colds can even get colder, as when a weakened polar vortex, which normally keeps cold air trapped in the Arctic, allows more frigid polar air to push southward into the U.S. At the same time, the hurricanes that are fueled by warmer ocean temperatures get more violent.

That’s why you’re seeing weird weather extremes in all directions. So, The Washington Post reported that in Montana: “On March 3, the low temperature tanked to a bone-chilling minus-32 in Great Falls. Combined with a high of minus-8, the day finished a whopping 50 degrees below normal.” At the time, the city was in its longest stretch below freezing on record.

But then The Post reported that on May 11 in a town “near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit” — in May! Near the Arctic! And this happened at the same time that “the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history.”

Now let’s go to Dot No. 2: On May 30, the National Weather Service declared that in the continental U.S. “there’s never been a wetter 12 months than the period that recently ended” — since it began keeping records 124 years ago, CNN reported. But this global weirding not only devastated Midwestern farmers, requiring huge insurance payouts, it also hammered the U.S. military.

The Air Force had to request $4.9 billion to repair just two weather-ravaged bases. As NPR reported, “about one-third of Offutt Air Force Base, in eastern Nebraska, was underwater earlier this month as flooding hit large swaths of the Midwest. And Tyndall Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle was hit hard by Hurricane Michael in October.”

The then-Air Force secretary, Heather Wilson, declared “that 61 projects — consisting largely of operations and maintenance — at air bases in 18 states would not happen if the supplemental disaster funding does not come through.”

Dot No. 3: So on June 6, Trump signed a $19.1 billion disaster relief bill, boasting: “Just signed Disaster Aid Bill to help Americans who have been hit by recent catastrophic storms. So important for our GREAT American farmers and ranchers.”

Dot No. 4: THE VERY SAME DAY, this newspaper reported, “The world’s largest automakers warned President Trump on Thursday that one of his most sweeping deregulatory efforts — his plan to weaken tailpipe pollution standards — threatens to cut their profits and produce ‘untenable’ instability in a crucial manufacturing sector.

“In a letter signed by 17 companies including Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Volvo, the automakers asked Mr. Trump to go back to the negotiating table on the planned rollback of one of President Barack Obama’s signature policies to fight climate change.”

The story explained that Trump’s new rule “would all but eliminate the Obama-era auto pollution regulations, essentially freezing mileage standards at about 37 miles per gallon for cars, down from a target of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.” And because California and 13 other states are committed to fulfilling Obama’s or other higher standards, and will go to court to make sure they can, it will split the U.S. auto market into two — a huge problem for the car companies.

Personally, I have no sympathy for the automakers. They brought this on themselves. They, and those in Congress who coddle them, have a long history of assisted suicide.

They got the G.O.P. to more or less freeze the 1980s mileage improvement standards that grew out of the 1970s oil crisis, claiming it would be too expensive for them to keep improving. And what did we get? More pollution in America and therefore more childhood asthma and other health costs, and a bankrupt auto industry that had to be bailed out in 2008 in part because the Japanese out-innovated it in the 1980s and 1990s by holding to higher mileage standards and creating more fuel-efficient fleets.

And now these same foolish and selfish Detroit auto executives, in combination with Trump’s coal-lobby-led Environmental Protection Agency, want to rerun the same play. The companies just wanted Trump to not get as crazy in rolling back standards as he did.

As any industrial designer will tell you, smart, steadily rising environmental standards spur innovation and inspire companies to race to the top and become global market leaders. Obama’s emission standards spurred the U.S. auto industry to catch up, and now Trump wants the companies to slow down their innovation and pollute more, in order to drive up their short-term profits. It’s like burning your furniture to heat your house.

As University of Oregon Law Professor Greg Dotson, a former senior energy congressional staffer, pointed out in an essay on theconversation.com titled “Why E.P.A.’s U-turn on Auto Efficiency Rules Gives China the Upper Hand”: “Reversing course on the E.P.A.’s tailpipe standards threatens to yield this competitive advantage to other nations … China’s recently adopted goals for plug-in vehicles overtake California’s program by requiring an aggressive deployment of plug-in vehicles beginning in 2019 with a target of seven million new plug-in cars sold per year by 2025. The Chinese government is even openly discussing the appropriate date to discontinue sales of internal combustion engine vehicles within China.”

Yup, let’s make China great again!

If you want to know what a real president would be doing, just look at Michael Bloomberg’s “Beyond Carbon” initiative, which has committed $500 million for the biggest coordinated campaign ever to promote clean energy.

Nine new governors were elected in 2018 on platforms to power their states by 100 percent clean energy, as California has already committed itself to. Some are small, like New Mexico, and may need technical assistance for their plans. “Beyond Carbon” is designed to support such states. It also offers aid to utilities, cities and businesses that need help or staffing to adopt innovative programs to clean their air and water and to lower carbon emissions, particularly by shutting down coal power plants and replacing them with clean energy.

Alas, when you actually connect all of the dots they draw a line pointing straight backward:

Trump is trying to lower auto emission/mileage standards that were making our car companies more competitive against efficient Chinese and Japanese automakers — and making our air cleaner — while Trump is signing multibillion-dollar bailouts for farmers and Air Force bases ravaged by extreme weather that has been amplified by climate change that is amplified by carbon pollution, while Trump is having his bureaucrats hide evidence of climate change and while Trump is forcing Americans to pay billions in tariffs on Chinese imports to protect against, among other things, future competition from Chinese electric vehicles that have zero emissions and zero oil consumption.

This is not strategic. This is not winning. This is not patriotic. It’s just foolish, destructive and cynical.

3262. Interview With the Organizer of The Trotsky Conference in Cuba

By Rob Lyons, Socialist Action, June 7, 2019

Trotsky with his wife Natalia Ivanovna Sedova in Mexico, 1938. 

From the 6^th to the 8^th of May, the first International Academic Conference examining the life and ideas of the great Ukrainian revolutionary and leader of the Russian revolution Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, now universally known as Leon Trotsky, was held in Havana, Cuba. The Conference was organized by the Juan Marinelo Cultural Center in conjunction with the Cuban Institute of Philosophy, and was hosted by the Casa Benito Juarez in Old Havana.

Sponsoring organizations included the Trotsky House and Museum in Mexico City, the Editions Carlos Marx, of Mexico, and the Center for the Study and Investigation of the thoughts of Leon Trotsky, Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What was surprising about the site of the conference was the hitherto blatant animosity of sections of the the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party towards Trotskyism and the Cuban Trotskyists. The opening statements of the conference organizers included an apology to the Cuban Trotskyists unjustifiable jailed by the government in the late 1960’s.

The changing attitudes towards Trotsky and his ideas are expressed most clearly in the personal testimony of the political evolution of the sparkplug behind the conference, Frank Garcia Fernandez (FG) a teacher and graduate student in sociology, whose doctoral thesis is on Trotskyism in Cuba.

The interview was conducted by Rob Lyons (RL) Socialist Action’s international solidarity coordinator, based in Costa Rica, and an attendee at the conference.

*****

RL: Let me say first of all that the Conference has caused much commentary in sections of the revolutionary left, especially in the Americas, given the Cuban government’s antipathy towards Trotsky and Trotskyism. What motivated you and your co-organizers to swim against this stream? A related question is, of course, in your opinion is there a greater openness to discuss the ideas of Trotsky among the Cuban political vanguard and the Party membership?

FG: First of all, thank you very much for interviewing me and I send a revolutionary greeting to all the comrades who are reading this article.

When I first read Trotsky’s name I was 10 years old. It was in a book—not published in Cuba—about flags and shields of the world. I liked them a lot as a child and even today I collect flags. Each country represented brought a brief historical review. The Soviet Union, at the time of publication of the book, still existed, and in its chapter read: Lenin and Trotsky led the October Revolution.

From a young age my uncle had trained me in Marxism; all my family is revolutionary: former members of the July 26 Movement; but the communist was him: a brave militant of the old PSP[1] whom I respected and admired a lot. As you will understand, he had no fondness for Trotsky. Since I was a child I had read a lot of Soviet children’s literature about the October Revolution and, of course, there was no mention of Trotsky, I asked my uncle who that man mentioned in the book’s flags was. A traitor, he told me. And I did not question it: my uncle had been tortured almost to death in 1958 by the Batista police for the simple fact of spreading communist literature.

After that I continued to admire Stalin: he had defeated fascism and, although in Cuba there was not a good deal of talk about him, neither did he speak badly. However, one could read Soviet literature with titles such as The Bolshevik Party Struggle Against Trotskyism. My admiration for Stalin – deepened by my uncle who only criticized him for the cult of personality – mixed with my rejection of Gorbachev and his clique who, in addition to destroying the Soviet Union directed criticism against Stalin, made him identify Trotskyism with the perestroika and, my reaction was that I felt Stalinist. So I continued until my arrival at the University of Havana. There I became friends with Latin American students who were members of the youths of their respective communist parties, who also did not have good judgment about Trotsky, although many did not admire Stalin either. Subsequently, thanks to a Colombian friend – Álvaro Jácome Boada – I discovered the figure of the revolutionary priest Camilo Torres, and later Paulo Freire and Popular Education.

Already in my personal bookstore I had a book by Trotsky: The Revolution Betrayed. This was thanks to the fact that in February of 1998 I met those who are now my friends: the members of the American SWP that came and go, all the febreros, to participate with the Pathfinder publishing house in the International Book Fair of Havana. As in 1998 I was a Stalinist—I had a picture of Stalin in my room—I did not read The Betrayed Revolution until 2012, when I had theoretically completely dismantled Stalinism. The Pathfinder followed me giving away books by Trotsky and James P. Cannon—In defense of Marxism, History of American Trotskyism, etc.—and my interest in Trotsky grew.

By that time, I read a book by the Cuban historian Ana Cairo, which mentioned that on Sept. 12, 1933, a party whose name was the Bolshevik Leninist Party (PBL) and that was Trotskyist had been founded in Cuba. In another book, this time by Cuban researcher Julio César Guanche, he was still talking about Juan Ramón Breá and Sandalio Junco, both founders of the PBL. Both Cairo and Guanche insisted that almost nothing was known about this part of the story and they called for continuing the research that Rafael Soler had begun in 1997 on the PBL. I entered the Juan Marinello Cuban Cultural Research Institute in October of 2012 and began a long investigation on this subject that I have not finished yet.

In November 2016 I decided to teach a postgraduate course on the life and work of Leon Trotsky at the Central University of Las Villas, in Santa Clara. Although I was born and live in Havana, I have very good relations with that city. The course was received with an excellent reception especially by the university students. I had realized that Trotsky was a very necessary and absent piece of Marxism in Cuba and it was an idea that I confirmed while teaching those classes.

So I suggested the idea to my colleague and friend Fernando Martínez Heredia[2] to call from the Cuban Institute of Cultural Research Juan Marinello to an international event about the forgotten Bolshevik, but he suggested that to do it in November of 2017: He wanted to take advantage of the centenary date of the October Revolution. Unfortunately for all, Martínez Heredia passed away in June of 2017. I continued with my research for the master’s thesis that dealt with the history of Cuban Trotskyism. When I finished the master’s degree, in April 2018, and after taking a short break, I decided to prepare this event that just concluded on May 8, 2019, just as a tribute to the centenary of the Communist International, the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and the memory of Antonio Guiteras[3] and Sandalio Junco, both murdered that same May 8 but in different years.

As you see, this event is fruit, I believe, more than a historical circumstance, it is the product of a personal theoretical-ideological evolution. It is true that in the 80s of the last century this event would have been impossible in Cuba, it is true that Cuban intellectuals such as Martínez Heredia, Desiderio Navarro, Jorge Fornet, opened a path towards critical Marxism through the Marxist critique that at some point it had closed. It is also true that thanks to Commander Fidel Cuban society has a broad knowledge of Marxism, a strong cultural preparation that makes Trotsky not fall into a vacuum now, and it is true that for all this there is in Cuba a positive predisposition towards all heretical Marxism, critical and unorthodox, but I also believe that, without a sense of protagonism, the event arose from a very personal motivation and I know that it took many people by surprise who would never have expected this to happen.

But it is also my opinion that after the event itself, even more with the publication of the book that will collect the memories, we will see a before and after between the Cuban university researchers and students: the image of Trotsky will be desacralized and demystified. The idea of ​​bringing Trotsky to Cuba and the studies that exist around him will have been achieved. Mainly thanks to the Cuban working class, who is the one I first thanked when the event was inaugurated, because it was the workers who made this socialist revolution. Among them, that old PSP member who was my uncle.

RL: For me, the highlight of the conference was the sheer breadth of the topics that made it to the agenda, and the overall quality of the research behind them, in most cases. 

Unfortunately, because the agenda was so crowded, the conference participants were limited in their ability to discuss these ideas and new research in detail. Could you explain some of the obstacles that were presented in organizing the conference, as well as what institutional and political support you received? I know that it was a monumental task to achieve this successful event.

FG: For the event to have been better it must have had four days. The tables would have had extensive debates, which is, along with the translations and the time that was lost due to the translations, the main weak point of the event. But those of us who live in Cuba know that the economic crisis we are facing today, largely because of the imperialist blockade, did not allow us to hold an event that lasted four days. I did not even suggest it to the officials who worked with me, Rodrigo Espina, Elena Socarras, Georgina Alfonso, Miguel Hernandez, Wilder Pérez Varona, Yohanka León: thank you very much.

Three days were a feat. That was the main reason, the economic one, for which the Juan Marinello Institute had to seek support at the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Philosophy was the main organizing institution because in fact the subject had much more to do with its lines of research than with the Marinello’s Institute. Finally, the event came out winning. Along with Casa Benito Juárez were three Cuban institutions that were initially involved, then four, if we count the Young Filmmakers Exhibition, the institution that generously provided the room where the documentary about Trotsky The World’s Most Dangerous Man was screened. If it had not been for these good wills, we would not have had an event.

And it is true that there were misunderstandings. The main one was the negative predisposition of certain officials towards Trotsky. And it is that when the Soviet Union fell in Cuba we all knew that Stalin was the abominable character that we know today, but nobody here took away the stigma of a traitor that existed on Trotsky. If we add to this that some Trotskyist groups have been extremely critical of the Revolution, I say that often caused by a mixture of dogmatism and lack of knowledge about the Cuban reality, if we add the first and second factor, we will see that the reaction of some people was normal. And it is feared by some people that some of those groups that I mentioned came to try to create Trotskyist political organizations in Cuba. Something that has no chance because nobody in Cuba is interested in doing it. But the event, due to its strict academic factor and because those who came showed great respect for the country where they were, prevented certain unfounded suspicions from happening.

RL: At one of the pre-conference meetings where we discussed the organizing of the future conferences like this, I argued that it was the power of the Cuban revolution which was able to act as the magnetism, as Celia Hart once said, that was able to gather such a fractious group of strong willed individuals in one room. I think it is a testament to the power of the ideals of the revolution, upheld like people like yourselves and your partners, that can motivate more such gatherings. What are your plans and ideas for future academic gatherings of this type? Do you think there can be momentum built by those interested militants and academics, outside and inside Cuba, to hold a similar conference? How can our readers help in meeting the challenges of a second event?

FG: On Wednesday, May 1, in Department 301 Aguiar Street, in Old Havana, where the Brazilian researchers invited to the Daniel Perseguim event, his partner Karina Quintanilha Ferreira and Edson Oliveira, were staying five days before the start of the event, the first coordination meeting was held for the preparation of the 2nd Leon Trotski International Academic Event. The following Sunday, May 5, the birthday of Karl Marx, we had the second meeting and it happened in El Vedado, in the department of the American researcher Alex Steiner. This was an idea that emerged, at the same time and separately, from the Brazilians researchers Daniel Perseguim -as already mentioned-, Morgana Romao and Marcio Lueira. Apparently, according to my friend Daniel Perseguim, who seems to be at the head of a valuable group of Brazilian academics who promote the idea, as he has informed me, the event should be in October 2020 in Sao Paulo. The first steps are being taken to obtain the necessary financing. This time, although there will be no magnetism that generates Cuba and its revolution, this time it seems that there will be no problem in having a greater number of public and exhibitors who want to participate. This is perhaps one of the greatest ideas that could have emerged at the event. I never thought it was something that was going to happen. When he told me for the first time, I thought it was a good wish, but nothing more. Then he set the date and time. It was the complete afternoon of Workers’ Day, something very symbolic, where they were—in addition to those I have already mentioned—Bryan Palmer, Paul Le Blanc, Clara Figueiredo—all these guests at the event—the Brazilian architect and photographer Gabriel Kogan and the Cubans students Lisbeth Moya González and Eduardo Expósito. In Cuba I was forced to establish a quota: 40 Cubans and 40 foreigners. We could not receive more despite having registered 192 requests only as public. I tried to prioritize those who brought research: that was the reason why there were tables of 4 or 5 exhibitors: the idea was that knowledge would reach the Cuban public. The room, who were present could testify, was only for 80 capacities.

Now the best way they can help the second edition is done is to achieve funds that certain institutions grant for events like these and as soon as the official announcement is launched, everyone could help us a lot in the dissemination. For that, for the information, the mail encuentrotrotsky@gmail.com is available and also I offer mine frankcuba1959@gmail.com In August of the 2020, taking advantage of the commemorations that will be made in the Trotsky House Museum in Mexico, we will have a coordinating meeting to international level. Before, they will be done via Skype or Hangout.

RL: North American imperialism has increased its pressure on Cuba, and has become more bellicose in its claim to rule over its “patio”, another revival of the Monroe Doctrine. Since the revolution and the establishment of the Fair Play for Cuba Committees, Trotskyists have played a major role in building solidarity with the revolution and have consistently been in the forefront of its defense. I think the pronouncements of a long list of the conference participants testify to that fact. Do you see a political role for future conferences in helping to re-ignite the solidarity movement? What modalities between the complexity of organizing this conference, the need for solidarity and the political dynamics at play within Cuba need to be analyzed and reinforced, in your opinion?

FG: The last day of the event in the afternoon, when everything seemed to end, the Canadian comrade Rob Lyon raised his left fist and began to sing ‘La Internacional’. For a moment it seemed that no one would follow the idea, but immediately Juan León Ferrara, the last Cuban Trotskyist, continued it and then we all followed. In the lively room, the International was heard singing in Iranian, Indian, Turkish, German, English, Spanish, Russian, French, Portuguese: we lived for a few minutes the feelings that a member of the COMINTERN could feel. That was the best example that the best solidarity networks can come out of that event. It is beautiful to see how, above theoretical and political differences, this can happen. As long as violence does not mediate between differences, we will all win. It is pure dialectic.

From there, a support network has to emerge for young Cubans who are interested in Marxism and, although they have a good bibliography in Cuba, they want and need more. We Cubans do not need to have Trotskyist parties in our country, we do not need anything at all. Trotsky was an excellent theorist and an excellent revolutionary, but no bigger than Gramsci could be in theory or Fidel leading a revolution. He, like the ones I just mentioned, are part of the system of ideas we have called: Marxism. And that we do need, more and more new Marxist theory.

I was ashamed because I did not know who Helmut Dahmer was, Robert Brenner, I did not know about September Group, John Elster, Erik Olin Wright, Gerard Allan Cohen. Now, thanks to the arrival of Brenner, and although I could not sit down with him to speak for a moment, only words crossed in the corridors, and it hurt me very much how the presence of that great intellectual was wasted – as happened with Helmut Dahmer-, Now, thanks to Brenner, we have discovered titles such as Mercaderes and Revolucion, An Introduction to Marx, Classes, The Theory of Karl Marx’s History: A Defense. They were books that we did not even know existed, we had barely heard of analytical Marxism.

Thanks to the event we have re-established contacts with the necessary Eric Toussaint and Michael Löwy, we are building links with Tariq Ali, we are trying to contact Slavoj Zizek; Thanks to the event Alex Callinicos, that great absent theoretician in Cuba, Callinicos has contacted us personally, thanks to researcher Héctor Puente Sierra, invited to the event.
The event managed to awaken among the Cuban students present a great interest for Trotsky and the new Marxist theory. In Havana there is the student of journalism Lisbeth Moya González, in Santa Clara, with a much more favorable situation to spread the work of Trotsky, are the compañeras Verde Gil and Ana Isabel, besides the excellent young comrade, student of philology, Yunier Mena Benavides who was an excellent speaker. They want new books. I ask that you look them up on Facebook and send them literature that is not in digital format. They have created a study group called the Cuban Communist Forum. It is not a political group: it is a circle of study on Marxist theory, because they want to read theoreticians like Daniel Bensaïd, Pierre Broué, Nikos Poulantzas and all the others that I mentioned. Marx and Lenin are not enough, much less with Hegel and Feuerbach. That is the main call I make for the solidarity network to be established: send books.

RL : I know from the reaction of the participants that, with the exception of some of the technical problems, that the conference was a success from an academic and, quite frankly, a political viewpoint. Now that the stress and excitement has worn off a little bit, what is your analysis? Did you and your co-organizers achieve what you had hoped for? What message would you like to send regarding some of the post-conference commentaries and questions?

FG: I think so, that to a large extent we achieved what was thought. But the Cuban public failed, it was a disclosure error, a lack of time to advertise correctly.. I am consoled that at least the students who were present were activated with the spark of the event. Now in Santa Clara, they ask me every week to take copies of The Revolution Betrayed. We still have some copies of the ones brought by the comrades of Karl Marx Socialist Studies Center.

It was also achieved that we bring many books to academic institutions as is a very valuable text by Trotsky named Latin American Writings published by the Center for Studies, Research and Publications Leon Trotsky, or Trotsky in the mirror of history, perhaps the best knower of the old Bolshevik in Latin America, Gabriel García. And the idea of ​​the 2nd was born. International Academic Event Leon Trotsky, something unexpected. So far I have only received congratulations, but I know there were many mistakes, many incoordination’s: those who suffered them I apologize. Hopefully the next one will be better. I hope those who came have understood Cuba. Always remember that the best way to help is to protect ourselves from all incomprehension. Silvio Rodríguez already said in a beautiful song: “A friend is the one who protects you.”

*****

[1] PSP (Popular Socialist Party): acronym adopted by the communist party founded in 1925 ascribed to the Communist International. Not to be confused with the current Communist Party of Cuba founded in 1965 as a result of the merger of the July 26 Movement, the March 13 Revolutionary Directorate and the aforementioned Popular Socialist Party.
[2] Cuban intellectual He founded and directed the journal Critical Thinking of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Havana during the decade of the sixties. From there he spread the theory of a revolutionary Marxism opposed to Soviet manuals. In this magazine he published, among others, Michael Löwy and Ernest Mandel. It gave direct support to the national liberation movements of Latin America. In the decade of the nineties he founded the Antonio Gramsci Chair. From 2011 until his death in June 2017, he directed the Juan Marinello Cuban Cultural Research Institute.
[3] Historical Cuban revolutionary socialist leader of the decade of the thirties of the last century. He fought against the dictatorship of General Machado, overthrowing him and forming part of the government that would be established in September 1933. He served as prime minister, being the president the reformist Ramón Grau San Martín. Overthrown by the head of the army in a coup d’etat, he passed to the political opposition returning to the armed route. He fell in combat, accompanied by the Venezuelan internationalist fighter Carlos Aponte in 1938, on May 8.

3261. Poetry: When the Dark Clouds

By Jamie K. Reaser,  "Truth and Beauty," 2019

Photo: Jamie K. Reaser

When the Dark Clouds

When the dark clouds lay thick
before you and the wind has
lifted your hair and taken it
someplace wild, do nothing.
Be no one known.
What has happened is moving
on to new horizons. What remains
are the desires withstood and
all the unfinishedness that will
see you through to the next day. 

© 2019/Jamie K. Reaser
From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)
Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

3260. Southeast Asia Says It’s Sick of the West’s Trash

By Mike Ives, The New York Times, June 7, 2019

In Malaysia, the campaign against imported waste has been led by Yeo Bee Yin, the environment minister, center.CreditMohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TELOK GONG, Malaysia — Black sedans with government plates raced through a town near Malaysia’s main seaport, flashing blue sirens as they approached rogue trash dumps.

The raid, in the town of Telok Gong this week, was among the latest efforts by officials to shut down unlicensed dumps holding plastic scrap imported from the United States and other rich countries.

“Everybody knows those dumps are illegal,” said Modh Faiz Tamsir, a butcher hawking fly-covered beef in a parking lot on Telok Gong’s main drag. “We don’t like them.”

After China, once the world’s primary dumping ground, abruptly imposed restrictions on “foreign garbage” in late 2017, countries across Southeast Asia began taking in the West’s plastic waste.

Within months, Malaysia, which has a sizable ethnic Chinese population, had replaced China as the world’s largest importer of plastic scrap. But this country, and others across the region, soon saw the waste as an environmental nightmare, and a heavy backlash has begun. With public support, some advocacy groups have urged officials to permanently ban the import of plastic waste.

But at a time when the world is awash in such plastic, some experts worry that this backlash could block the flow of raw material to Southeast Asia’s aboveboard recyclers and manufacturers — and raise the chances that plastic scrap will end up in rivers, oceans, dumps and illegal burn sites.

By imposing blanket bans on imported waste, “you’re potentially risking damaging the good recyclers’ business,” said Kakuko Nagatani-Yoshida, the United Nations Environment Program’s coordinator on chemicals and waste in the Asia-Pacific region.

China’s abrupt waste restrictions of 2017 were a response to years of pollution there by low-end recycling. They caused anxiety across a vast supply chain that includes waste companies and municipal recyclers in the United States and other developed economies.

“The exporter countries’ pants were on fire,” said Yuyun Ismawati, a co-founder of the Indonesian environmental group BaliFokus. “They realized they had underestimated China’s seriousness.”

Around the same time, unlicensed trash dumps, many of them owned by mainland Chinese investors, began appearing in the back alleys of Telok Gong and other towns near Southeast Asian ports.

“They just popped out of nowhere two years ago,” said Soh Ah Boon, the Malaysian owner of a junkyard about 15 miles by car from Telok Gong that collects material from local sources.

By March 2018, the peak of the surge, Malaysia was importing about 139,000 tons of plastic waste per month, up from about 22,000 tons per month a year earlier, according to official trade data analyzed by Khor Yu Leng, an economist in Singapore who studies Southeast Asian commodities. The United States was the largest source, followed by Japan, Britain and Germany, she said.

As plastic imports rose across Southeast Asia, pollution became more noticeable — typically in the form of trash-clogged rivers or smoke from ragtag incineration sites, according to environmental groups.

Local opposition grew, too.

“Who would like it when someone comes to your neighborhood and tears the place up?” Mr. Soh said at his junkyard between drags of a cigarette.

In response, Southeast Asian governments issued waste-import restrictions of various shapes, sizes and durations. Thailand imposed an indefinite ban on electronic waste last summer, for example, while Vietnam stopped issuing waste-import licenses and vowed to stop importing scrap plastic by 2025.

In the Philippines last week, officials returned a shipment of waste that had been mistakenly sent there from Canada several years ago, and vowed to send another back to Hong Kong.

“Load that up on a ship and I will advise Canada that your garbage is on the way,” President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said of the Canadian shipment in early May. “Prepare a grand reception. Eat it if you want to.”

In Malaysia, the campaign against imported waste has been led by Yeo Bee Yin, the 36-year-old environment minister. On a trip last week to Port Klang, down the road from Telok Gong, she said the government would soon return 10 of about 60 containers with waste from the United States and elsewhere that had been smuggled into illegal processing facilities.

Ms. Yeo’s campaign may be a way to score public relations points against countries, including the United States, that have criticized Malaysia for its high rates of deforestation and other severe environmental problems, said Helena Varkkey, an expert on pollution in Southeast Asia at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.
“This is a ‘Here’s a taste of your own medicine,’” she said. Ms. Yeo’s office could not be reached for comment.t

But whatever the motivation, one danger may be that legal recyclers across Southeast Asia will now miss a chance to both scale up their business and help mitigate environmental problems, including the scourge of plastics in the oceans.

Some plastic waste, if properly sorted and classified, is already being used in the region as a raw material for high-end manufacturing and as a replacement for fossil fuels in cement kilns, among other uses. And because municipal waste sorting here is virtually nonexistent, importing plastic scrap is often the only way for recycling companies to achieve economies of scale.

But the current waste crackdowns have not clearly distinguished between truly hazardous garbage and other types of plastic that can be safely recycled again and again, said Douglas Woodring, the founder of the Ocean Recovery Alliance, a nonprofit based in California and Hong Kong that works on plastic pollution.

“You’re categorizing these as a dangerous substance, which they are not if you process them the right way,” he said. “They’re just like any other commodity — like copper, steel, metal, wood and paper.”

Some recyclers are already feeling the effects. Officials in the Philippines, for example, declined to issue import permits last month for a shipment of plastic-waste-based fuel that is produced in Australia and used in the production of cement, customs paperwork shows.

In a report explaining the decision, a Philippine customs official noted that the import request had been rejected partly because of “past and present controversies on the importation of waste.” He also said the shipment had emitted a “pungent smell inherent to municipal waste” upon inspection at a Philippine port.

Pavel Cech, the Malaysian-based managing director of ResourceCo Asia, the Southeast Asian branch of an Australian company that produces the fuel, said that between 100 and 150 shipping containers of it would not reach cement kilns in Malaysia and the Philippines this month because of customs disputes. He said the cement companies that use the fuel in their kilns would now burn coal instead.

Mr. Cech said he was pleading his case to officials but did not expect the region’s governments to clarify their plastic scrap policies anytime soon.

“Throughout Southeast Asia,” he said, “politics and populism prevails over a technocratic approach.”

3259. Why Have the Revered Crocodiles of This Island Nation Suddenly Started Killing People?

By Mathew Abbot, The New York Times, June 6, 2019

To extract DNA, the researchers must penetrate a croc’s leathery hide using a needle attached to a 12-foot long aluminum rod, which is known as a biopsy pole.  Photo: Matthew Abbott for The New York Times.

LOSPALOS, East Timor — The two scientists, crammed in the back of a sweltering car, had come a long way hoping to encounter what most people try to avoid: man-eating crocodiles.

Yusuke Fukuda and Sam Banks, biologists from Australia, traveled in March to East Timor, one of the world’s least developed countries, to investigate what has become a deadly national mystery: Why are so many Timorese being killed by crocodiles?

Crocodile attacks here have increased 20-fold in the past decade, numbering at least one death a month in a country of 1.2 million people.

“We became concerned after many people were taken by crocodiles in East Timor,” said Mr. Fukuda, a Ph.D. candidate at Australian National University in Darwin, adding that it had taken years of bureaucratic wrangling between the researchers and the governments in both Australia and East Timor to be permitted to conduct research.

The people of East Timor, also know as Timor-Leste, have for centuries revered and even worshiped crocodiles.

The country’s origin myth is about the crocodile Lafaek Diak, who out of friendship for a human boy sacrificed itself to become the child’s home — the island of Timor, with each scaly bump on its back turning into a mountain.

Timorese call crocodiles “abo,” the Tetum-language word for grandparent, and killing them is culturally taboo as well as illegal.

The animals are so admired here that victims of attacks are often too ashamed to report them, which is why many believe the actual number of attacks is higher than the official statistics suggests.

The Timorese most at risk from crocodiles are those living on the banks of the countless riverways of this island, or along its coast. Using the rivers — whether to collect water, fish for food, bathe or do laundry — is a part of their daily life.

Researchers have found that nearly 83 percent of those attacked in East Timor in the past 11 years were subsistence fishing, using small canoes or wading in the water.

Many locals do not believe that native crocodiles are behind the increase in attacks; they blame migrants, or murderous “troublemakers,” who they say play by a different set of rules than the local “grandfathers.”

Demetrio Carvalho, East Timor’s secretary of state, summed up the theory. “The people believe that these crocs are our ancestors, and ancestors don’t go attacking people,” he said. “Our grandparents don’t kill us.”

Enter the Australian researchers. After a bumpy eight-hour journey along the roads of East Timor’s northern coast, the men arrived in the isolated town of Lospalos, home to some of the biggest and most dangerous crocodiles in the country.

Their goal was to test the locals’ theory by trying to determine whether the killer crocs were saltwater crocodiles from Australia, one of that country’s most feared and dangerous animals.

After poaching was banned in Australia in the 1970s, saltwater crocodile populations exploded. The animals have recently been found in areas that were previously considered unsuitable or too remote.

East Timor is about 280 miles from the animals’ regular range in northern Australia, a lengthy but manageable swim for a powerful animal that can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh more than 2,000 pounds.

“After several days swimming, these crocs would be very hungry and dangerous to come across,” said Mr. Fukuda, the researcher.

To test the migration theory, Mr. Fukuda and Professor Banks planned to collect DNA samples from a number of crocodiles.

But taking a DNA sample from a crocodile is a far riskier proposition than your typical home heredity kit.

For obvious reasons, swabbing the inside of a crocodile’s cheek is not an option. Instead, the scientists must penetrate a croc’s leathery hide using a needle attached to a 12-foot long aluminum rod, which is known as a biopsy pole.

To do that successfully often requires wading into the water — at night.
To help find and stick the crocodiles, the researchers enlisted the help of several locals, including Vitorino De Araujo.

Mr. De Araujo, 37, works as a firefighter, but is known in town as the person to call when there has been a crocodile attack or if a member of the community has disappeared near the water. He will enter the swamp and retrieve what is left of a body.

He is seen as a spiritual leader in the community with an almost supernatural relationship to the animals: a crocodile whisperer.

As the sun set on the first night the scientists arrived in Lospalos, the team headed into the swamp.

Through the darkness, they spotted two glistening dots reflecting the light of their headlamps and floating just above the surface of the water — crocodile eyes. Based on the distance between the croc’s eyes, Professor Banks estimated its total length: 12 feet, a big one.

Mr. De Araujo grabbed the biopsy pole, and took off, bare foot into the dark swamp. After minutes of silence, he lunged at something and let out a shriek. He had landed his first jab.

Moments later, he waded out of the water to show the group his result. The needle was bent, but contained a tiny, three-millimeter sample.

For the next six days, the team searched for animals to test. They lanced wild crocodiles, but also retrieved samples from crocs that were being held as pets, mascots or lucky charms. They ended up with 17 good samples.

Mr. Fukuda planned to take the samples back to Australia for testing but he first had to get back on Timor’s ragged coastal roads and head to Dili, the capital.

He was halfway there, when his driver stopped for a crowd gathered by the edge of the ocean.
A police officer beckoned the scientist to show him a set of items that had washed up on the beach — goggles, a spear gun and a torn pair of swim trunks.

They belonged to Agostinu da Cunya, a 17-year-old who went spearfishing the evening before with his brother while their father waited for them on the shore.

The boy, his family said, had been attacked by a crocodile. He was never seen again.

3258. ‘Food Doesn’t Grow Here Anymore. That’s Why I Would Send My Son North.’

By Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, June 5, 2019

Ana Jorge Jorge holding a nephew. She sees no future for her only surviving son in their Guatemalan village. photo: Daniele Volpe for The New York Times.

NENTÓN, Guatemala — To understand why President Trump’s new sanctions and other flailing to end Central American immigration aren’t working, step into the dark, melancholy hovel of Ana Jorge Jorge.

She lives in Guatemala’s western highlands in the hillside village of Canquintic, near the town of Nentón, and she’s a widow because of the American dream.

Her husband, Mateo Gómez Tadeo, borrowed thousands of dollars and migrated north to the United States several years ago after his crops here failed. He found work in Alabama cutting flowers but then caught an infection and died, leaving hungry children back home and a huge debt hanging over the family.

Two of their sons, aged 7 and 14, soon died as well, apparently of malnutrition-related illnesses. Jorge Jorge pulled another son, Juan, out of school in the second grade so that he could work in the fields and help pay off the debt. If it isn’t paid, lenders will seize the family land.

“We all suffer now,” Jorge Jorge told me grimly. “I have to struggle daily.”

If any family understands the risks of traveling to the United States, it’s this one. Yet Juan, now 11, is talking about trying to make his own way north. And Jorge Jorge, while terrified at the prospect of losing him, approves.

“I say, ‘Go,’” she said bleakly. “‘There’s nothing here, so go.’”

I’m on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student on a reporting trip, and we’ve come to Guatemala to report on migration. My student winner, Mia Armstrong of Arizona State University, and I have heard from innumerable Guatemalans that the most fundamental driver of emigration is desperation — and, to an extent that most Americans don’t appreciate, this desperation often reflects drought and severe weather linked to climate change.

“Food doesn’t grow here anymore,” Jorge Jorge said. “That’s why I would send my son north.”
There are other factors as well, and the despair also reflects a marginalization of Mayan communities that goes back hundreds of years, presided over in the capital by an incompetent kleptocracy. But climate change is aggravating the desperation.

“The weather has changed, clearly,” said Flori Micaela Jorge Santizo, a 19-year-old woman whose husband has abandoned the fields to find work in Mexico. She noted that drought and unprecedented winds have destroyed successive corn crops, leaving the family destitute, adding, “And because I had no money, my children died.”

Both her children, Isamara and Vidalia, died as infants in the last couple of years, Vidalia just six months ago.

So the paradox is that American carbon emissions are partly responsible for wretchedness in Guatemala that drives emigration, yet when those desperate Guatemalans arrive at the U.S. border they are treated as invaders.

Yes, of course: It’s time to note the standard caveat that it’s impossible to link any particular drought or hurricane to long-term climate change. But that feels like a hollow excuse when you’re facing a young mom who has lost both of her children because of impoverishment from drought.

“The great majority of these kids will migrate,” Luis Armando Jiménez, principal of a rural middle school, told me as he pointed to his students in the courtyard. “There is not enough rain, so their only option is to migrate.”
As they see their own crops wither, families watch luckier households build new homes or buy motorcycles because of money sent back by a relative working in the U.S. Some of these new homes have U.S. flags painted on them.

Guatemalans understand the peril — in Jorge Jorge’s village, six people have died recently while traveling to the U.S. But the risk is preferable to remaining in a desiccating land that seems without a future.

There’s some evidence that aid programs can help farmers adjust to climate change and reduce the desire to emigrate. But Trump is choosing the worst combination of responses: cutting those aid programs while denying climate change.

“My husband is in the U.S. because there is nothing here,” Rosa Mendoza Raymundo, 35, of the village of Tierra Blanca told me. “It’s a sadness that our community has no water. That’s why people are leaving.”

She said her husband, Pascual, also took their daughter, Susanna, 17, because the trafficker offered a 30 percent discount if he brought a minor — to take advantage of the American practice of releasing a parent with a child. Now Pascual is cleaning houses in Kansas City, Mo., and Susanna is attending school there (she had dropped out in the third grade in the village).

Mendoza Raymundo pointed to her 4-year-old, Pedro, and offered with resignation, “If we make enough money, we’ll send him to the U.S. as well.”

Across some scorched corn and tomato fields, Julio Mateo Mateo, 42, explained why two of his sons had left for the United States: “They said, ‘There’s no rain. There’s nothing for us here.’” One son, Edvin, is now in Seattle, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and sending money home. The other son, Domingo, was caught in March and is expected to be deported.

A third son, now 14, will be the next to try his luck. Remaining as crops fail and children suffer is not an option.
“There’s no rain, and no way to grow crops,” Mateo Mateo said. “One can’t live here.”