I've been told to start posting soon, so here goes.

[Cactus]

So something related to learning, what are some good sources for news? I currently use RT, Revolution News, Democracy Now, and Real News 24.

[Cumulus]

RT is highly critical of western democracies, and often exposes the cracks in the system. You must remember, however, who is behind it, and be aware of their agenda. The Guardian has proven itself unafraid to confront "the man". I don't think you should seek out highly opinionated news sources, though I understand that everyone has a bias. Instead, you should be critical of what you read, and make sure to read multiple viewpoints - including the right - no matter how cringe-worthy they may be.

[motion denied]

Lately I've been favouring conventional media and big bourgeois newspapers tbh

[Sinister Intents]

Just watch Fox News, it's hilarious and informative! It gives you everything you need to know, so that you know drugs are bad, mkay?

I can think of good Facebook pages you could go to if you'd like.

[Cumulus]

The news might be biased, but most of it isn't outright lies. You need a critical mind, not tailored news.

[Antiochus]

I use Wikipedia for most news. You know, news that matters (i.e wars, economic downturns etc...). Most of it is presented fairly objectively and usually with multiple viewpoints. Furthermore the info actually tends to work out.

For example no one was (or even is...) writing about the civil war in Libya but Wikipedia has an excellent page on it that is fairly up to date.

RT is a turd of a "news" source. Yes, they are critical of the West. So was Der Stumer. If you do watch it, do so at your own peril and be critical of it.

[Cumulus]

I agree. Wikipedia and Wikinews are about as objective as it gets. The only people who might disagree with it are right-wingers and tankies.

[MarxistWorld]

Cactus: The Russia Today News channel, (Channel 280 in Dish Network, rt.com) is an anti-socialism news source. I believe that the favorite political ideology of The Russia Today News is libertarianism. Most of their economics shows are very libertarian, and most of their economists like Max Keiser, Erin Ade, Peter Lavelle, Peter Shiff, and others are in favor of small business libertarianism, they defend the free market a lot. And then there are even those who are members of the Democratic Party, who are FDR Democrats (Thom Hartmann), as opposed to Dick Cheney Rockefeller Democratic Party politicians (Hillary Clinton), but nevertheless Thom Hartmann from RT is in favor of reformed capitalism.

And the other sources like commondreams.org, alternet.org, democracynow.org of Amy Goodman, counterpunch.org, Link TV, thinkprogress.org, salon.com, truthdig.com are all in favor of capitalism with welfare services (Social-democracy)

So I think that the most authentic marxists and radical leftists sources of news are wsws.org, venezuelanalysis.com, marxist.com, socialistaction.org, marxist.com, socialistworker.org, socialistalternative.org, workers.org, anarchistnews.org/, infoshop.org and some others




So something related to learning, what are some good sources for news? I currently use RT, Revolution News, Democracy Now, and Real News 24.

[#FF0000]

Most of those are terrible news sources, though

[RedWorker]

I like the WSWS (http://www.wsws.org/).

[Comrade Jacob]

Maoist Rebel News.





lol

[Asero]

I used to watch The Young Turks, but after I became a Communist, their overt liberalism gradually began to disgust me. I don't bother watching anymore, but I am still subscribed to their interview channel.

Vice News, and the Vice documentaries. They're hipster as fuck, and their documentaries tend to be just as melodramatic, but eh.

Al Jazeera is also a good news source. The only problem with Al Jazeera (besides not being Communist :P) is that it's funded by Qatar's monarchy.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The "WS"WS is the pretend-central organ of the Socialist Equality Party, the political hobby of David North, the anti-union CEO of Grand River Printing and Imaging, the former American viceroy of the political gangster Gerry Healy and the heir to Tim Wohlforth, last seen calling for the US to bomb Serbs during the civil war in Yugoslavia. The SEP (formerly the just as tragically misnamed "Workers' League") has not moved an inch from the stinking marsh of Healyism, from the statement of their founder Wohlforth that "the working class hates fags, hippies, and womens' libbers, and so do we", blocking with white segregationists to oppose busing, participating in the slander of Hansen, trying to gain control of the SWP through the American courts (when the SWP threw one of their provocators out) etc.

Stay away from SEP and from Healyism kids.

[MarxistWorld]

xhar: Thanks a lot for your explanation about wsws. I really thought that WSWS was an authentic source of communist news and that the Socialist Equality Party was a great political party for ultra-leftists who advocate worker's states. I think you are right about WSWS and their party SEP. They also seem to me too elitist. Their website is pretty good, I wonder where do they get their money, their economic resources to maintain such a modern website like wsws.org.



The "WS"WS is the pretend-central organ of the Socialist Equality Party, the political hobby of David North, the anti-union CEO of Grand River Printing and Imaging, the former American viceroy of the political gangster Gerry Healy and the heir to Tim Wohlforth, last seen calling for the US to bomb Serbs during the civil war in Yugoslavia. The SEP (formerly the just as tragically misnamed "Workers' League") has not moved an inch from the stinking marsh of Healyism, from the statement of their founder Wohlforth that "the working class hates fags, hippies, and womens' libbers, and so do we", blocking with white segregationists to oppose busing, participating in the slander of Hansen, trying to gain control of the SWP through the American courts (when the SWP threw one of their provocators out) etc.

Stay away from SEP and from Healyism kids.

[RedWorker]

Any examples of inaccurate or problematic statements in the WSWS?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Try "Security and the Fourth International" (even Timmy Wohlforth ended up protesting against that - after he was deposed, of course), anything to do with the Gelfand case and so on - there are really hundreds of examples.

[RedWorker]

Try "Security and the Fourth International

That's not a WSWS article. But what is inaccurate or problematic there?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yes, the article in the WSWS is called "Stalin's spy in the Fourth International". There are other articles based on the same fantasy, with increasingly desperate titles like "David North defends 'Security and the Fourth International'". The problem is that it's all a big lie cooked up by Tim and Gerry. An international inquiry, back when the SEP was called the WL, rejected every allegation of the document - an inquiry led by people who were far from friends of the SWP. That the Northists continue to peddle the same line is just sad - and it shows how trustworthy they are.

[RedWorker]

I'm not interested in these sectarian fights. I don't follow the political line of the ICFI, nor am I a Trotskyist. I simply use that Web site for news. So what I want to know is if there is anything like:


the working class hates fags, hippies, and womens' libbers, and so do we

or if any of their current statements is informed by this. Or more details about the key people behind it being "anti-union CEOs"?


blocking with white segregationists to oppose busing

The SEP has done this? Details?

[Counterculturalist]

Virtually all of the above mentioned sites are worth perusing; just make sure you know who is behind them and what sort of bias ensues as a result of their chosen ideology. And that includes mainstream sources, since advertisers exert just as much pressure to conform to a specific ideology as anything else.

Others that I like include Truthout, Znet, Truth-dig and Greenwald's Intercept, although, familiarly, they are mostly social-democratic. And I guess sites like those are more worth reading for perspectives on the news rather than for discovering new info.

The SEP maintains a great site, but as far as I can tell, they are against union activity, civil rights activism, and feminism.

[RedWorker]

The SEP maintains a great site, but as far as I can tell, they are against union activity

I have seen them criticizing unions. But only to the same extent that the rest of the left does, criticizing the sold-out mainstream ones.


civil rights activism, and feminism.

Explain.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm not interested in these sectarian fights. I don't follow the political line of the ICFI, nor am I a Trotskyist. I simply use that Web site for news. So what I want to know is if there is anything like:

[]

or if any of their current statements is informed by this. Or more details about the key people behind it being "anti-union CEOs"?

The exact sentence is what Tim Wohlforth told the Buffalo Marxist Collective. The SEP haven't printed it, but their long rants on "identity politics", on the "selfish outlook" of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners group etc. are evidence enough. As for how the material perquisites of David Green-North affect the SEP line, their position on unions is well-known (that unions are no longer workers' organisations), as is their entanglement with the trade-union bureaucracy (particularly in the notorious AFL-CIO operations in the Soviet Union).

And to dismiss the "Security..." campaign as a "sectarian fight" shows a serious lack of thought. No one likes Hansen. Hell, Hansen's own allies in the USEC didn't like Hansen, and most of the USEC adopted a line that was completely contrary to that of Hansen - including in Portugal, where the SWP and the rest of the USEC found themselves on different sides of the barricades. The closest you are going to get to praise for Hansen - outside his own minuscule FIT group - is the Spartacists' description of the man as "an honest revisionist". But it's not about Hansen, who really was a revisionist, a Pabloite and worse. It's about not making these serious accusations, accusations that could potentially ruin someone's life, with no evidence, and with clear malice (Hansen threw Wohlforth, Mazelis and others who formed the predecessor to the SEP out of the SWP - after Wohlforth had engineered the expulsion of the Spartacist group).


The SEP has done this? Details?

On busing, see the Bulletin, September 13 1974, "The issue of forced busing is being used to whip up racism to divide the working class." And Bulletin (the predecessor of the WSWS), September 11 1992 (September must be Black History Month for the SEP), "Radicals Defend Segregated Schools".

[Counterculturalist]

Explain.

Sure. Basically SEP/WSWS takes an old-fashioned conservative stance on the issues of trade unionism, racism and sexism.

The SEP's line is that any focus on racial or sexual discrimination distracts from class-consciousness and is as such inherently divisive to the working class. Sometimes they even go so far as to suggest that the ruling class intentionally whips up hysteria about exaggerated racism and sexism for precisely that reason. As Davis Walsh puts it, the so-called "pseudo-left" propounds "support for gay marriage, opposition to the 'rape culture' and an obsession with race. All of this is meant to divert attention from the crimes of the White House and the relentless attacks on the working class in the US. The hysteria over supposedly widespread rape in the US and elsewhere is part of the effort to bamboozle some people and intimidate others." (see https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/07/roll-a07.html)

WSWS has consistently denied that race is an important issue in the recent spate of police killings in the U.S. and dismissed movements like Black Lives Matter as an attempt by the ruling class to obfuscate class concerns. Here's an example: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/26/race-a26.html
And, further, most of their articles about the Ferguson situation included a few dismissals of what they characterized as "race-baiting" on the part of the "pseudo-left."

As for unions, their position seems to be that the problems with some modern trade unions invalidates the idea of unions altogether, or that there is "an essential conflict between socialism and trade unionism" in North's words. See this lengthy article for a detailed exposition of their position on the matter: https://www.wsws.org/exhibits/unions/unions.htm. Basically a mass socialist party is needed, instead of unions.

Now, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't read WSWS. There is a lot of good stuff on that site. Even within the articles I've linked here, there is some interesting and astute analysis. I would, however, hesitate to associate with SEP or offer them support based on their constant dismissal of the concerns of women and people of color.

And look, I have also spoken out against unchecked identity politics without any accompanying class analysis, but WSWS/SEP's position seems to be that unions are no longer necessary, and that racism and sexism are a thing of the past, and any vestigial traces of them will be automatically eliminated when the revolution comes.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Sure. Basically SEP/WSWS takes an old-fashioned conservative stance on the issues of trade unionism, racism and sexism.

That's the thing, though, most of these things are really innovations by Healy, Wohlforth, North and partly by Mazelis and Phillips. The old SWP, for example, wasn't great on race (particularly after Breitman's position, essentially endorsing black nationalism, won), but it certainly never opposed busing - this "discovery" was left to the Workers' League, who was then courting the AFL-CIO. The "discovery" that trade unions are actually a thing of evil was "made" by North in the nineties, after the anti-communist unity of various groups gathered around the AFL-CIO evaporated, and it became clear to Dave he wasn't going to get the labour party he always agitated for.


As for unions, their position seems to be that the problems with some modern trade unions invalidates the idea of unions altogether, or that there is "an essential conflict between socialism and trade unionism" in North's words. See this lengthy article for a detailed exposition of their position on the matter: https://www.wsws.org/exhibits/unions/unions.htm. Basically a mass socialist party is needed, instead of unions.

Trotskyists generally distinguish between the mass membership of the unions - who are workers, having at least a kind of trade-union consciousness, organising on account of their shared interest - and the bureaucratic leadership of the unions, the "labour lieutenants of the bourgeoisie", whose material interest is to derail and weaken the class struggle everywhere. The perspective of the revolutionary Fourth International was to fight for rank-and-file militancy against the union leadership.

Many of the ostensibly Trotskyists currents had another perspective, however. The then-Workers' League, seeing that their bosses in the British SLL were having a good time existing as a sort of benign tumour within the Labour Party, decided that what America needed was a labour party - not a revolutionary workers' party, but a reformist labour party based on the trade unions, which really meant the trade union bureaucracy. This didn't work, of course, as the role played by the Labour Party in the UK is played in the US by the Democratic Party, so North reacted like many a jilted suitor and declared that he never liked the trade unions anyway. In fact he would completely write them out of socialist theory.


Now, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't read WSWS. There is a lot of good stuff on that site.

I don't think anyone is saying that people shouldn't read the "WS"WS. In fact it's good to read a broad range of literature, even if some of it is completely bonkers - I personally have a weird weak spot for some of the Maoist hardman posturing. It's just that people should realise that the "WS"WS is not some neutral news site, and is in fact linked to a deeply problematic organisation.


Even within the articles I've linked here, there is some interesting and astute analysis. I would, however, hesitate to associate with SEP or offer them support based on their constant dismissal of the concerns of women and people of color.

The problems are deeper than that, actually. The SEP are part of a long tradition of Healyite political gangsterism, and have completely discredited themselves by trying to destroy the SWP using the bourgeois courts.

Oh and they also supported a pig strike, go SEP.


And look, I have also spoken out against unchecked identity politics without any accompanying class analysis, but WSWS/SEP's position seems to be that unions are no longer necessary, and that racism and sexism are a thing of the past, and any vestigial traces of them will be automatically eliminated when the revolution comes.

I'm pretty much opposed to what is generally called identity politics - privilege theory etc. The thing is, the SEP don't really think that racism is a thing of the past. It just doesn't bother them. They're obsessed with keeping their "socialism" pure of any "taint" of race issues, sexuality etc. - in other words, they don't understand what socialism is, because they don't understand what capitalism is (despite their founder having learned from one of the best analysts of American capitalism, the late Dick Fraser), their perspective is essentially the same as that of the leadership of the unions they so despise.

[Cactus]

Maoist Rebel News.





lol
I actually think he has good content, I don't understand why tainting him as a joke and disregarding all his material is ubiquitous among the revleft.


I used to watch The Young Turks, but after I became a Communist, their overt liberalism gradually began to disgust me. I don't bother watching anymore, but I am still subscribed to their interview channel.

Vice News, and the Vice documentaries. They're hipster as fuck, and their documentaries tend to be just as melodramatic, but eh.

Al Jazeera is also a good news source. The only problem with Al Jazeera (besides not being Communist :P) is that it's funded by Qatar's monarchy.
I'm still into The Young Turks, purely for the entertainment however. They hold a colonel of truth on certain things but I guess they go too small too often, and like a lot of news, delineate communism as being just as corrupt as Corporatism.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I actually think he has good content, I don't understand why tainting him as a joke and disregarding all his material is ubiquitous among the revleft.

Because he doesn't have good content.That fact that you think so reflects poorly on you, however.


I'm still into The Young Turks, purely for the entertainment however. They hold a colonel of truth on certain things but I guess they go too small too often, and like a lot of news, delineate communism as being just as corrupt as Corporatism.

ugh. Have you seen their shit on the riots? Non-stop peaceful protests blah blah we r against this violence blah blah. Typical fucking liberal scum.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I actually think he has good content, I don't understand why tainting him as a joke and disregarding all his material is ubiquitous among the revleft.

He cosplays while making the same tired Third-Worldist points that people far more clever than he is have already made, and failed to substantiate. Either is bad on its own; the combination is hilarious.


I'm still into The Young Turks, purely for the entertainment however. They hold a colonel of truth on certain things but I guess they go too small too often, and like a lot of news, delineate communism as being just as corrupt as Corporatism.

Oh dear. Would you mind telling us what you consider to be "Corporatism", and why you talk about "Corporatism" instead of capitalism?

[mushroompizza]

I just check yahoo routinely its pretty unbiased. For biased I got to socialistworld and for humor I watch fox news.

[John Nada]

I just check yahoo routinely its pretty unbiased. For biased I got to socialistworld and for humor I watch fox news.Not all news sources are equally credible, true. Some more than others. But I'm telling you there is no such thing as unbiased. Sometimes you have to read between the lines.

[Cactus]

Oh dear. Would you mind telling us what you consider to be "Corporatism", and why you talk about "Corporatism" instead of capitalism?
Coporatism is where corporations control society, and since liberals support capitalism and percieve it as being dissimilar to corporatism, it seemed the appropriate term to use.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

(1) Corporatism doesn't actually mean that. Corporatism means state-enforced class collaboration through "vertical" institutions like the old Spanish Sindicato Vertical. A good modern example is "social dialogue" in Europe.

(2) Corporations don't control society, that's nonsensical. Business corporations are merely another form of private enterprise - socialists are opposed to all private enterprise, from Yoyodyne to the local Ma and Pa shop.

[Cactus]

Well what I mean is that corporations wield to much influence over governments, I'm sure you agree with that. This has nothing to do with the original point I was making though.