RE: [Futurework] FW: Mike Davis: The Perfect Fire
Title: Message I think Mike Davis' general point though is that whether or not there is a specific human agent involved, the pre-conditions for these kinds of disasters are in place waiting for some sort of spark--a bolt of lightning, a frayed electrical wire, a piece of glass in the wrong place, an inattentive driver with a cigarette or an idiot on a motorcycle with a gas can and a lighter... In the end the specific agent doesn't matter it's the pre-conditions that have to be dealt with... hmmm remind anyone of anything... MG -Original Message-From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 2:05 AMTo: Michael GursteinCc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: Mike Davis: The Perfect FireMike,Mike Davis is being disingenuous. Where he writes:Now the San Bernardinos are an inferno, along with tens of thousandacres of chaparral-covered hillsides in neighboring counties. As alwaysduring Halloween fire seasons, there is hysteria about arson. Invisiblehands may have purposely ignited several of the current firestorms.Indeed, in Santa Ana weather like this, one maniac on a motorcycle witha cigarette lighter can burn down half the world.It is not being hysterical to point out that it is now the case that whenever a fire is reported in tinder-dry forests near habitations, then several more separate ones will occur in the next day or two. This has now happened in Sydney (twice in the last seven years), France, Spain, England -- and now California. The word "may" should have been deleted from the above paragraph. This is now a permanent feature of an over-stressed society.Keith HudsonAt 20:55 03/11/2003 -0500, you wrote: -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED][mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of gary satanovskySent: Monday, October 27, 2003 3:47 PMTo: Triumph of Content ListSubject: Mike Davis: The Perfect FireThe Perfect FireBy Mike Davis Sunday morning in San Diego. The sun is an eerie orange orb, like theeye of a hideous jack-o-lantern. The fire on the flank of Otay Mountain,which straddles the Mexican border, generates a huge whitish-greymushroom plume. It is a rather sublime sight, like Vesuvius in eruption.Meanwhile the black sky rains ash from incinerated national forests anddream homes. It may be the fire of the century in Southern California. By brunch onSunday eight separate fires were raging out of control, and the twolargest had merged into a single forty-mile-long red wall. Themegalopolis's emergency resources have been stretched to the breakingpoint and California's National Guard reinforcements are 10,000 milesaway in Iraq. Panic is creeping into the on-the-spot television reportsfrom scores of chaotic fire scenes. Fourteen deaths have already been reported in San Bernardino and SanDiego counties, and nearly 1000 homes have been destroyed. More than100,000 suburbanites have been evacuated, triple as many as during thegreat Arizona fire of 2002 or the Canberra (Australia) holocaust lastJanuary. Tens of thousands of others have their cars packed with familypets and mementos. We're all waiting to flee. There is no containment,and infernal fire weather is predicted to last through Tuesday. It is, of course, the right time of the year for the end of the world. Just before Halloween, the pressure differential between the ColoradoPlateau and Southern California begins to generate the infamous SantaAna winds. A spark in their path becomes a blowtorch. Exactly a decade ago, between Oct. 26 and Nov. 7, firestorms fanned bySanta Anas destroyed more than a thousand homes in Pasadena, Malibu, andLaguna Beach. In the last century, nearly half the great SouthernCalifornia fires have occurred in October. This time climate, ecology, and stupid urbanization have conspired tocreate the ingredients for one of the most perfect firestorms inhistory. Experts have seen it coming for months. First of all, there is an extraordinary supply of perfectly cured,tinder-dry fuel. The weather year, 2001-02, was the driest in thehistory of Southern California. Here in San Diego we had only 3 inchesof rain. (The average is about 11 inches). Then last winter it rainedjust hard enough to sprout dense thickets of new underbrush (a.k.a. firestarter), all of which have now been desiccated for months. Meanwhile in the local mountains, an epic drought, which may be an_expression_ of global warming, opened the way to a bark beetleinfestation which has already killed or is killing 90% of SouthernCalifornia's pine forests. Last month, scientists grimly told members ofCongress at a special hearing at Lake Arrowhead that "it is too late tosave the San Bernardino National Forest." Arrowhead and
[Futurework] FW: Mike Davis: The Perfect Fire
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of gary satanovsky Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 3:47 PM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: Mike Davis: The Perfect Fire The Perfect Fire By Mike Davis Sunday morning in San Diego. The sun is an eerie orange orb, like the eye of a hideous jack-o-lantern. The fire on the flank of Otay Mountain, which straddles the Mexican border, generates a huge whitish-grey mushroom plume. It is a rather sublime sight, like Vesuvius in eruption. Meanwhile the black sky rains ash from incinerated national forests and dream homes. It may be the fire of the century in Southern California. By brunch on Sunday eight separate fires were raging out of control, and the two largest had merged into a single forty-mile-long red wall. The megalopolis's emergency resources have been stretched to the breaking point and California's National Guard reinforcements are 10,000 miles away in Iraq. Panic is creeping into the on-the-spot television reports from scores of chaotic fire scenes. Fourteen deaths have already been reported in San Bernardino and San Diego counties, and nearly 1000 homes have been destroyed. More than 100,000 suburbanites have been evacuated, triple as many as during the great Arizona fire of 2002 or the Canberra (Australia) holocaust last January. Tens of thousands of others have their cars packed with family pets and mementos. We're all waiting to flee. There is no containment, and infernal fire weather is predicted to last through Tuesday. It is, of course, the right time of the year for the end of the world. Just before Halloween, the pressure differential between the Colorado Plateau and Southern California begins to generate the infamous Santa Ana winds. A spark in their path becomes a blowtorch. Exactly a decade ago, between Oct. 26 and Nov. 7, firestorms fanned by Santa Anas destroyed more than a thousand homes in Pasadena, Malibu, and Laguna Beach. In the last century, nearly half the great Southern California fires have occurred in October. This time climate, ecology, and stupid urbanization have conspired to create the ingredients for one of the most perfect firestorms in history. Experts have seen it coming for months. First of all, there is an extraordinary supply of perfectly cured, tinder-dry fuel. The weather year, 2001-02, was the driest in the history of Southern California. Here in San Diego we had only 3 inches of rain. (The average is about 11 inches). Then last winter it rained just hard enough to sprout dense thickets of new underbrush (a.k.a. fire starter), all of which have now been desiccated for months. Meanwhile in the local mountains, an epic drought, which may be an expression of global warming, opened the way to a bark beetle infestation which has already killed or is killing 90% of Southern California's pine forests. Last month, scientists grimly told members of Congress at a special hearing at Lake Arrowhead that it is too late to save the San Bernardino National Forest. Arrowhead and other famous mountain resorts, they predicted, would soon look like any treeless suburb of Los Angeles. These dead forests represent an almost apocalyptic hazard to more than 100,000 mountain and foothill residents, many of whom depend on a single, narrow road for their fire escape. Earlier this year, San Bernardino county officials, despairing of the ability to evacuate all their mountain hamlets by highway, proposed a bizarre last-ditch plan to huddle residents on boats in the middle of Arrowhead and Big Bear lakes. Now the San Bernardinos are an inferno, along with tens of thousand acres of chaparral-covered hillsides in neighboring counties. As always during Halloween fire seasons, there is hysteria about arson. Invisible hands may have purposely ignited several of the current firestorms. Indeed, in Santa Ana weather like this, one maniac on a motorcycle with a cigarette lighter can burn down half the world. This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us. Moreover, many fire scientists dismiss ignition -- whether natural, accidental, or deliberate -- as a relatively trivial factor in their equations. They study wildfire as an inevitable result of the accumulation of fuel mass. Given fuel, fire happens. The best preventive measure, of course, is to return to the native-Californian practice of regular, small-scale burning of old brush and chaparral. This is now textbook policy, but the suburbanization of the fire terrain makes it almost impossible to implement it on any adequate scale. Homeowners despise the temporary pollution of controlled burns and local officials fear the legal consequences of escaped fires. As a result, huge plantations of old, highly flammable brush accumulate along the peripheries and in the interstices of new, sprawled-out suburbs. Since the devastating 1993 fires, tens of thousands of new homes have
[Futurework] FW: [prep-l] adbuster looking for support
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Soenke Zehle Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 3:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [prep-l] adbuster looking for support [via CRIS] To coincide with the UN's upcoming World Summit on the Information Society, Adbusters is setting in motion an ambitious new campaign. Although time is short, we're hoping D.C. Indy Media would be interested in getting involved or simply endorsing the efforts. Please, have a read through the (short) overview attached and let us know what you think. To be clear, it's not financing or a huge time commitment we're looking for, only your support, partnership and solidarity. Thanks for your time. Hope to speak with you soon, Background The UN's World Summit on the Information Society to begin later this year in Geneva, Switzerland, promises ? among other things ? to address the issue of media democracy. Its greater mission is to develop a 'vision of the future' in which all have fair and equal access to society's communication networks. Adbusters applauds these sentiments but fears delegates will not go far enough to reverse the current order; particularly, in the areas of media concentration and corporate control over the communication spectrum. So, we're aiming to shake things up. Exposing how serious these issues have become is the purpose of our latest campaign, Testing Media Carta. Of course, we'll be bringing results to the summit, personally. The Details It begins with an attempt to purchase airtime from major television networks around the world ? in American, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, South Africa and Australia. The goal: to have our 30 second 'advocacy' spots (un-commercials as they are often called) played during standard advertising-breaks. During the evening news, video-shows, and sitcoms, alongside the slick marketing of multinationals, we're aiming to broadcast the need for major social change. It's unlikely all of the spots will be aired. In fact, it's a safe bet that most will be rejected outright. Networks and/or national regulators have in the past routinely refused to sell us airtime, citing our 'controversial' or 'issue oriented' content as justification. It's contrary to free-speech. It's also the norm, because we've given unaccountable institutions control of our communication networks. This campaign is about media democracy: the right of every human being to communicate in any medium, to seek, receive and impart information, regardless of frontiers. Where Do You Fit In? The spots are hard hitting and address a wide range of issues from corporate power to consumer culture, to environmental sustainability to the WTO. They are messages meant to challenge our current, destructive course and stimulate debate about alternative futures. If D.C. Indy Media is interested in having its name/logo appear at the end of any of the television spots ? as a supporter/partner/etc.. ? we would be pleased to included it. You will soon be able to preview the spots online; we expect to have them posted by the end of the week. Quicktime and RealPlayer format will be available. -- http://demandmedia.net/ Collaborative Video Blog ___ prep-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.emdash.org/mailman/listinfo/prep-l ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] RE: Misleader.org: Tracking Bush's False Statements
Title: Message A public service announcement. M -Original Message-From: Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 8:01 PMTo: Curtiss PriestSubject: Misleader.org: Tracking Bush's False Statements Misleader.org: Sign up for a short daily email chronicling the President's untrue statements at by clicking here. View the New York Times ad launching Misleader.org Dear MoveOn member, The President says things that are misleading or just plain wrong every day, but most of these statements are never challenged. That's why we're launching Misleader.org, a new website and free daily email service for journalists and the general public to track George Bush's false statements. You can sign up right now at:http://www.misleader.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED] The daily dispatches will take a "Just the Facts, Ma'am" approach -- no rhetoric, just a couple of paragraphs we'll email each morning on what the President said and why it was misleading or untrue. It's our hope that by doing some of the research for the press corps, we can ensure better coverage of President Bush's lies. If you know someone who could use this kind of information, please point him or her to the site. To launch the site, we've taken out a full page ad in the New York Times titled "Mis-State of the Union." The ad reveals how the President mislead the nation in his State of the Union speech -- not just on Iraq, but on the economy, the environment, and other important issues. You can check the ad out at:http://www.misleader.org/pdf/nyt_ad.pdf Here are a few juicy tidbits from our New York Times ad: ON TAX CUTS:George Bush: "The tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes...Americans will keep, this year, an average of almost $1,000 more of their own money."The Truth: Nearly half of all taxpayers get less than $100. And 31% of all taxpayers get nothing at all. ON JOBS:George Bush: "Our first goal is...an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job."The Truth: Bush is the first President since Hoover to preside over an economy that has lost jobs, not created them - more than 2.9 million since 2001. ON THE ENVIRONMENT:George Bush: "[My] Clear Skies legislation...mandates a 70% cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years."The Truth: The Bush plan will allow more than 100,000 additional premature deaths by 2020 than alternative legislation developed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The plan does not regulate carbon emissions and allows far more sulfur and mercury emissions. ON EDUCATION:George Bush: "[W]e achieved historic education reform - which must now be carried out in every school and in every classroom."The Truth: Bush cut $8 billion from the promised funds for education. If you'd like to receive a daily email with content like this, you can sign up right now at:http://www.misleader.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED] When Bush was running for President, he said, "I believe everyone should be held responsible for their own personal behavior." We agree. The President has repeatedly mislead the country. Now it's time for Americans and the press to hold him responsible. Sincerely,--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Noah, Peter, Wes, and ZackThe MoveOn TeamSeptember 15th, 2003 Subscription ManagementThis is a message from MoveOn.org. To remove yourself (Curtiss Priest) from this list, please visit our subscription management page at:http://moveon.org/s?i=1668-3263028-9Q72ytJtoxsF9czgfzc2hQ
RE: [Futurework] EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air
Probably not, we were about a mile and a half from ground 0 and we got the bad air only on those days/nights when the wind was blowing North East but there were nights when we had to close the windows because the air was so bad! And all the time we were getting reassurances in the press and on television that the air had been tested and retested and was fine... But of course we had friends living in the area and what about the thousands on thousands who were involved in cleaning the site and volunteering to help those who were doing the clean-up M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 9:41 PM To: Michael Gurstein; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air Mike, Did this effect you? Ray - Original Message - From: Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2003 12:46 AM Subject: [Futurework] EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air A lot of people are going to feel very very betrayed. MG EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air 2 hours, 37 minutes ago Add U.S. Government - AP to My Yahoo! By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry. President Bush (news - web sites)'s senior environmental adviser on Friday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security. The White House convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley. When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement, the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin. In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels - well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments. The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that all statements to the media should be cleared first by the National Security Council, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says. Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones. For example, the inspector general found, EPA was convinced to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete. James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed the EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly. He said the EPA did an incredible job with the World Trade Center cleanup. The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities. That included the NSC - this was a major terrorist incident, Connaughton said. In the back and forth during that very intense period of time, he added, we were making decisions about where the information should be released, what the best way to communicate the information was, so that people could respond responsibly and so that people had a good relative sense of potential risk. Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs. For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts, he said. Marianne L. Horinko, EPA's acting administrator, said the White House's role was mainly to help the EPA sift through an enormous amount of information. We put out
RE: [Futurework] Responding to a Very Real Security Threat
Hi Bill, No, I think we collectively are in the process of putting a lot more than that at risk (and much much more quickly)... (See below). The virus also closed down Air Canada (the reservation system and thus most of the flight network as well as banks, government departments, the local in (BC Canada) telephone company and others too numerous (and embarrassed) to mention... Evidently, the technology infrastructure of the world is coming to rely on the kindness (and competence and diligence) of a very large multitude of all too human, strangers... MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of William B Ward Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 5:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Responding to a Very Real Security Threat Michael, Not at all. I use only Microsoft platforms and always disable Microsoft Outlook and the Microsoft address book although I realize that this does not solve all problems. The problem is very similar to that of wiping out our biodiversity. We are losing our ability to mutate. Bill - Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 17:30:16 -0400 From: Richard Jay Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Fwd: (Microsoft) Computer virus shuts down CSXT rail system part of Amtrak To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Spam-Status: No, hits=2.7 required=7.5 tests=DOUBLE_CAPSWORD,MSG_ID_ADDED_BY_MTA_2 version=2.31 X-Spam-Level: ** X-Spam-Filtered-At: eList eXpress http://www.elistx.com/ Computer Virus Blamed in Temporary Shutdown of CSX Rail System Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch Publication date: 2003-08-21 Arrival time: 2003-08-20 Aug. 21--A computer virus was blamed for an early-morning shutdown of CSX Corp.'s 23,000-mile-long rail system yesterday. The emergency measure, which caused long delays for rail travelers, drew the attention of federal rail and security authorities. The virus damaged telecommunications systems that transmit data to CSX's signals, forcing the nation's third-largest railroad to grind to a halt about 1:15 a.m. Amtrak immediately halted 10 trains, including some heading to Richmond. Virginia Railway Express trains also were canceled in the morning. Passenger service was restored after about five hours, but was still running behind schedule late yesterday. CSX spokesman David Hall said the railroad was consulting with a number of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, seeking their counsel and advice. No train mishaps were reported on the CSX system, which stretches from Florida to Canada. Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, We are working with CSX to address any vulnerabilities they may have to the recent Internet worm. CSX's computer specialists managed to erect a firewall to protect train dispatching and signal systems. Normal operations were expected today. The virus has been contained, and we're in the process of doing a thorough inspection of every device that could possibly harbor the virus, Hall said. But some intermittent slowdowns in CSX's information technology system remained. CSX officials blamed a strain of the Blaster worm for the woes. Asked whether the latest difficulties reveal a vulnerability to computer hackers, CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said, We're confronting the same thing that a number of major companies are confronting. CSX is the only major freight carrier to report virus-related operating problems, according to Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration. Flatau, whose agency oversees rail safety, said it was satisfied with the rail company's response to its computer problems based on the information we have received to date. The agency intends to follow up with CSX to determine if additional safeguards are necessary. The shutdown left many morning commuters stuck at Virginia Railway Express stations in Fredericksburg and Manassas. Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel said 10 trains were halted as far south as Florence, S.C., and north to Pittsburgh. An inbound train from Washington arrived in Richmond more than eight hours late, according to Amtrak district manager Michael Jerew. It's terrible, terrible, he said in his office at Staples Mill Station. Most people were so tired they wanted to get off the train and go home. Those passengers probably are entitled to travel vouchers for the value of their tickets, Jerew said. After arriving fours hours late, Ronald Cromedy, of Charleston, S.C., said he was supposed to catch a connecting train to Newport News. Instead, the warehouse manager called for a company car. If I get on a train, I might never get through, he said. CSX did not notify the VRE about its problems until shortly before passengers arrived for 5 a.m. trains, according to commuter rail spokesman Mark Roeber. He wondered why the railroad took so long to notify the regional rail service. CSX's Sullivan replied that the railroad had
[Futurework] FW: In Frayed Networks, Common Threads By SETH SCHIESEL
Title: Message An interesting take on the issue of "Network Vulnerabilities" (and thanks Ray... I've been around but just "monitoning" until something interesting passed me by...) MG -Original Message-From: Paul Nielson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 8:43 AMTo: Michael GursteinSubject: In Frayed Networks, Common Threads By SETH SCHIESEL New York Times August 21, 2003 WHEN the United States entered World War I in 1917, its railroad system had just undergone three decades of torrid expansion after the adoption of a standard track width. While the expansion was unquestionably a boon, it also created the potential for new logistical problems. "All of a sudden there was a demand to rush all of this war matériel and troops to the East Coast and there was a complete meltdown of the system,'' said Bill Withuhn, transportation curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "All of the ports on the East Coast were totally clogged up because they could not get the railroad cars unloaded. There is a famous story of one troop train that sat on a siding in Ohio for four days because the system was overloaded. The effect of this was colossal, and the parallel is immediate and is an exact duplicate in some ways to the blackout." Like the World War I railroad meltdown, last week's blackout was vast precisely because of the interconnectedness that the network was meant to exploit and foster. The 1917 crisis, which prompted the federal government essentially to take over the railroad system, found another digital echo last week in the unleashing of the malicious Internet worm known as MSBlast. While most computer viruses and worms have required users to click on an infected file, the MSBlast program was perhaps the first to come to widespread attention that could infect computers without users' doing anything at all. In a way impossible on more primitive networks and computers, MSBlast exploited the most modern systems to create chaos. Taken together, the blackout and the worm underscore a far-reaching challenge in managing modern technological societies: the difficulty of reaping the benefits of networks - railroad networks, airline networks, telephone networks, power networks and computer networks, among others - while minimizing their vulnerabilities. "All of these events demonstrate that network effects, which are generally good in most situations, can go the other way,'' said Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer at Counterpane Internet Security in Cupertino, Calif., and author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World'' (Copernicus Books, 2003). "Networks are meant to connect disparate systems, but as they become larger, now you can have power outages that affect half the country, Internet outages, and broader sorts of problems.'' As Darryl Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute, a unit of George Washington University, puts it: "The plus of a network is that everything is connected. The minus of a network is that everything is connected.'' The airline industry has discovered just that. Before passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the government generally controlled route assignments and the carriers' resulting schedules. With deregulation, many airlines consolidated operations geographically and adopted hub-and-spoke route systems in which travelers often pass through a carrier's hub airport to board a connecting flight. Deregulation and the increasing prevalence of hub-and-spoke systems are often credited for their efficiency, and even for extending the airline network itself. The costs of that network expansion, however, are evident to almost anyone who flies: the risk of huge delays. "The whole advantage of a network is that you can now go to anywhere in the world with one or two connections,'' Mr. Jenkins said. "The problem is that any time you have a glitch anywhere in the network it effects the entire system. If there is a thunderstorm in Chicago, all the flights in New York are held up.'' "You now don't have any small delays,'' he added. "You either have no delays or you have massive delays.'' Part of the reason, he said, is that until recently airlines tried to schedule their flights for profitability without due regard for the physical limitations of airports. "The Airline Deregulation Act didn't talk about constraints," he said. "It talked about freedoms.'' By the summer of 2000, Mr. Jenkins said, the extent of the delays had become intolerable, and the difficulties prompted airlines to consult more often with the agencies that run airports. "It's only in the last couple of years that the government that runs the infrastructure and the airlines are actually working together,'' he said. "You can make a very good network as long as you stay within the constraints, but before, everyone ignored the constraints, and that's where the problems
[Futurework] EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air
A lot of people are going to feel very very betrayed. MG EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air 2 hours, 37 minutes ago Add U.S. Government - AP to My Yahoo! By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry. President Bush (news - web sites)'s senior environmental adviser on Friday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security. The White House convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley. When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement, the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin. In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels - well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments. The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that all statements to the media should be cleared first by the National Security Council, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says. Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones. For example, the inspector general found, EPA was convinced to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete. James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed the EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly. He said the EPA did an incredible job with the World Trade Center cleanup. The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities. That included the NSC - this was a major terrorist incident, Connaughton said. In the back and forth during that very intense period of time, he added, we were making decisions about where the information should be released, what the best way to communicate the information was, so that people could respond responsibly and so that people had a good relative sense of potential risk. Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs. For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts, he said. Marianne L. Horinko, EPA's acting administrator, said the White House's role was mainly to help the EPA sift through an enormous amount of information. We put out the best information we had, based on just the best data that we had available at the time, said Horinko, who headed the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, which oversaw the World Trade Center environmental monitoring and cleanup. And it was using our best professional judgment; it was not as a result of pressure from the White House, she said. The White House's role was basically to say, 'Look, we've got data coming in from everywhere. What benchmarks are we going to use, how are we going to communicate this data? We can't have this Tower of Babel on the data.' The EPA inspector general recommended that EPA adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are supported by data and analysis. Other recommendations include developing better procedures for indoor air cleanups and asbestos handling in large-scale disasters. ___ On the Net: ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] Shock Headline: PRODUCTIVITY PARADOX RESOLVED
In case anyone is interested, the economists have now discovered what everyone else in the world knew a very long time ago, IT/ICTs are truly transforming our economies. (aka THE PRODUCTIVITY PARADOX HAS BEEN RESOLVED) --and at Harvard (where else)--if I recall right, they invented it, so of course, they should get the prize(s) for resolving it, that's only fair... http://cip.umd.edu/brynjolfsson.ppt and http://cip.umd.edu/jorgenson.ppt M ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Last One In Turning the Lights Out
One of my MBA students is chief of operations at a partially 'lights out' factory in New Jersey. Evidently it works very well with some of the hesitations and advantages indicated in the article below. What I gathered from him was that his company (making light fixtures) either had to move up the technology curve or they would be very quickly out of business from lower cost competitors coming from all directions, including Canada BTW. What they did was to move their staff up the skill curve, getting them more involved in design and quality management including retraining and hiring more skilled staff and then betting the company on shifting production to a 'lights out' operation. The strategy worked for a while, but most recently they were finding that their low cost/low wage competitors were also becoming technology/skill intensive to retain their competitive advantage; and he was having to shift strategy again, this time towards very design intensive special orders, almost craft production. Mike Gurstein WORKING WITHOUT WORKERS IN LIGHTS OUT FACTORIES Vernon, Conn. -- IT'S THE STUFF of fairy tales: Every morning workers at a plastics plant here owned by ABA-PGT arrive to find boxes filled with gears that were made overnight as they slept. Of course, elves have nothing to do with it. Fourteen giant injection-molding machines worked in the dark, forming gears used in such things as lawn sprinklers and computer printers, and dropping them into boxes waiting on conveyor belts. Workers at the closely held company come in, collect the finished parts and prepare them for delivery. Something similar happens at closely held Evans Findings Co. in East Providence, R.I., where metal-stamping machines that make parts, such as the tiny cutting devices mounted on dental-floss containers, run without people for one shift each day. There, the company's goal is do as much as possible with no labor. Faced with the need to raise productivity to survive, especially against low-cost competitors, in such nations as China, more companies are pushing toward so-called lights-out manufacturing. Once a science-fiction dream, the phenomenon is emerging in plants and factories throughout the U.S. as machines become more reliable in making flawless parts on their own. New computer technologies also have broadened possibilities by linking plant equipment to the Internet where supervisors can check operations at any time and from any place; even do repairs from a distance. Air Products Chemicals Inc., an industrial-gas maker in Allentown, Pa., calls its lights-out system, unattended operation with remote access. The company no longer needs full-time operators at its many small plants that produce gases fed directly into larger, neighboring factories, such as steel mills. Instead, the company's machines send a signal to alert operators miles away when a motor overheats or a valve sticks. Safety systems automatically shut the plant down if a problem poses imminent danger. An operator working from home and assigned to monitor several plants scattered in his region first will try to fix the problem from a computer at home by sending signals through a telephone line to restart processes, just as the operator would from inside the plant's control room. If that fails, the operator then drives to the site to fix the problem. We can leverage one individual over a large geography this way, says David Fritz, general manager of North American product supply. Air Products' gas plants never had large payrolls -- at most, a few people on each shift. But in this industry, Mr. Fritz says, savings from operating with fewer people are crucial to be competitive. Many early efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to develop completely automated factories were a bust. Samuel Pierson, ABA-PGT's president, first tried building a lights-out operation in 1974 by partitioning off part of his factory with two machines running unattended. But he soon decided the technology wasn't ready. Machines couldn't continue for hours making parts precise enough to sell. Then in 1993, while attending a plastic-equipment show in Chicago, he saw a new generation of injection molding machines capable of producing consistently good parts. However, rather than create a lights-out section in his existing operation, he built a separate factory entirely dedicated to it. Mr. Pierson says he didn't want people fiddling with the machines. People develop a lot of ways to keep things going, rather than fixing the underlying problem that broke down the process to begin with, he says. It is better to come in the next morning, find a broken down machine and figure out the root cause. Increasingly companies are adopting lights out with a gradual approach. For instance, a portion of a plant may run unattended, with the rest of the facility staffed. Or a factory may staff one shift, then run the next shift with just machines. At Evans Findings, only machines have worked the second shift from 3
FW: [news] More cost-effective to purchase bandwidth rather than computers
The future revisited... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-news;canarie.ca]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: October 10, 2002 9:22 AM Subject: [news] More cost-effective to purchase bandwidth rather than computers For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 3 Optical Internet program web site at http://www.canet3.net/news/news.html --- [Thanks to Dave Macneil for this pointer - BSA] From ACM technews. originaly Computerworld The No. 1 prediction made by ...[Gartner]... is that it will become more cost- effective to add new bandwidth rather than purchase new computers: The annual doubling of optical bandwidth capabilities will lead to more data service centralization and more computing resource sharing between companies following an application service provider model. IT Advances to Drive Lots of Job Cuts, Gartner Predicts Computerworld Online (10/07/02); Hoffman, Thomas Gartner released a top 10 list of IT forecasts at its Symposium/ITxpo 2002 conference on Monday, and among them was a prediction that continued technology advances will lead to millions of layoffs starting within the next two years. Such advances include IT systems that automate manual operations, a development that will substantially lower the labor load of business, according to Gartner research director Carl Claunch. The No. 1 prediction made by Claunch on behalf of his company is that it will become more cost-effective to add new bandwidth rather than purchase new computers: The annual doubling of optical bandwidth capabilities will lead to more data service centralization and more computing resource sharing between companies following an application service provider model. He also predicted that decentralized IT operations will resurface by 2004, while most application decisions will be made by business units rather than IT. Other trends Gartner expects include mainstream penetration of business activity monitoring within five years, and the continued upholding of Moore's Law through 2010. By 2007, banks will be the chief suppliers of presence services, while many segments of the IT market will experience vendor consolidation--in fact, Claunch believes that 50 percent of current software vendors will be out of business by 2004. Finally, Gartner expects most major new systems to be either inter-enterprise or cross-enterprise, giving companies a macroeconomic shot in the arm. This will have a clear and recognized effect on productivity, Claunch declared. http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801,74951 ,00.html - To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CANARIE-NEWS list please send e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the e-mail: subscribe news end - These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the CANARIE board or management. - Bill St. Arnaud Senior Director Network Projects CANARIE Inc www.canarie.ca/~bstarn
FW: Teleworking - E-Government Bulletin debate live!
-Original Message-From: Tamara Fletcher [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: September 30, 2002 7:26 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Teleworking - E-Government Bulletin debate live! To all readers of E-Government Bulletin:- Click, Debate, Connect - Fit for Work- Online debate goes live!Our online debate on flexible working in the public sector, in association with Public Policy Forum and BT, is now live at:http://www.clickdebateconnect.com/ppfThe debate is aimed at producing policy recommendations for government on boosting teleworking in the public sector.Participation is free, and we will analyse and report on the results in due course.We look forward to seeing as many readers as possible there on day one!Please remember to register yourself, the first time you log in - call us on01273 267173 if you have any problems or queries. Best regards,Tamara Fletcher,Debate Organiser
RE: [solaris]Re: FW: good articles on the public information commons
I am particularly attracted to Bollier's argument http://www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm that when there are suitable incentive structures established (communal rewards such as prestige, mutual support, residual benefits from the process of sharing and so on) then a 'Comedy of the Commons' begins to develop where the range of the Commons (and the participation) increases--he is thinking specifically of Open Source software, but also applies the argument to broader sustainable resource sharing. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: August 4, 2002 5:04 PM To: Michael Gurstein; Solaris@mail. sarai. net; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca Subject: [solaris]Re: FW: good articles on the public information commons Mike, Hardin did a good job of emphasizing the commons. However, tragedy only intervenes when we don't accept the common ownership - which implies common management, or we allow some to grab the commons for themselves. The English village commons worked very well. If one of the villagers brought in extra geese - more than was deemed proper - the other villagers would have a word with him. That's all. At least until the Enclosures Acts. First an Act for each common - then a General Enclosures Act to prove the efficiency of the assembly line. Thus were the commons grabbed - legally, and with everything aboveboard just like Enron. The importance of managing the commons has particular relevance to handling wild animals, such as elephants and whales, and saving from harm such resources as fishing grounds. These are common resources - commons. When we start recognizing our equal ownership rights to such commons and set up a management process, the commons will become a triumph rather than a tragedy. Harry - Michael wrote: Further to our recent discussions on the commons. The Bollier piece that I referred to is chapters 3, 4 and 7 Reclaiming... http://www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm MG -Original Message- From: Ian! D. Allen [NCFreeNet] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: July 18, 2002 12:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: good articles on the public information commons http://www.publicknowledge.org/resources/conference-archives.php * Saving the Information Commons by David Bollier and Tim Watts (83 pages) The result is a strangely bifurcated media universe. On the one hand, there is television, which is doing far less to serve the public interest than a generation ago despite the proliferation of channels. Broadcast news programs may be far more plentiful than twenty years ago, for example, but even veteran journalists question whether the market-driven flood of tabloid fare and sensationalism is serving the public or its own profession well. * Why the Public Domain Matters by David Bollier (30 pages) This is unfortunate. Because of our conceptual blinders about the public domain, copyright maximalists have been able to extend the scope of copyright protection through many means: longer terms of copyright protection, new technologies that eliminate the public's fair use rights, attacks on the first-sale doctrine which otherwise lets users share or re-sell purchased copies of works and court rulings that give narrow interpretations to traditional copyright doctrines. * Trouble on the Endless Frontier by Seth Shulman (30 pages) An oft-cited example from a previous, revered generation of scientists illustrates the virtual sea change that has occurred in our notions about ownership and proprietary claims in high-tech research. In 1954, when Jonas Salk developed a polio vaccine, he never for a moment considered the idea of pursuing individual ownership rights to the discovery. Nor did Salk imagine the idea of licensing the vaccine in an effort to personally control the direction of future research in the field. In fact, Salk's funder, the March of Dimes, prohibited patenting or the receipt of royalties on the results of its research projects. When Edward R. Murrow, the renowned television commentator of the day, asked, Who will control the new pharmaceutical? Salk replied that, naturally, the discovery belonged to the public. There is no patent, he said. Could you patent the sun? This story bears repeating for the contrast it offers to the contemporary research environment. In the 1990s, for example [...] ** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 ***
The Comedy of the Commons
There has been a recent discussion on issues concerning the Commons on the e-list Solaris that I co-host which is concerned with critical perspectives on ICT and Development. I think this discussion might be of interest on Futurework as well hence my forwarding this thread and I would be interested to have the perspective of the folks here on this thread and particularly if they took a look at Bollier's paper. Best, MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: August 1, 2002 11:46 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Roberto Verzola; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [solaris]agriculture, industrial and information sectors Hi Tom, You might want to take a closer look. Bollier talks at considerable length about the Open Source issue (he even has interesting things to say contrasting Open Source and GNU). His major innovation (to my mind at least) is precisely in this area where he begins to think through what a non-tragedy (he calls it the comedy) of the Commons would look like including handling issues like incentives and market discipline. It isn't complete but it does, I think, take the discussion beyond your point which is does it work anywhere outside Graduate Student coffee rooms. M -Original Message- From: tom abeles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: August 1, 2002 7:29 AM To: Michael Gurstein Cc: Roberto Verzola; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [solaris]agriculture, industrial and information sectors Hi Mike Bollier's piece and other materials are relevant to another aspect of the commons. These are the same that Hardin was concerned about in his Tragedy of the Commons article, natural resources that are in common ownership by the community at large, how they are accessed, maintained and used over the long term. There is a difference between everyone being able to go to a coal mine that is owned in common and chopping out a piece of fuel and my creating a piece of code that is open to the public whether or not they contribute to its improvement or just use it. In fact this is one of the economic problems that some theorists are trying to address. Suck oil out of the ground and get a depletion allowance from the government because your business now has less oil. On the other hand, the community gets no depletion allowance to cover the time when the well runs dry and the community has no more tax base and no jobs. Bollier addresses this aspect which is a separate issue; and while making an eloquent statement, still leaves even his question unanswered. thoughts? tom abeles Michael Gurstein wrote: Hi Tom, I think that Roberto has sketched in the beginnings of a response to your very useful questioning of the broader significance of Open Source and particularly how might/could an Open Source economy work. I would also strongly suggest you and anyone else interested take a look at David Bollier's long essay Public Assets, Private Profits: Reclaiming the American Commons which he did for the New America Foundation and which can be found at www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm where he deals quite directly with the challenges that you raise. Best, MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of tom abeles Sent: July 25, 2002 7:38 PM To: Michael Gurstein Cc: Roberto Verzola; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [solaris]agriculture, industrial and information sectors Hi Mike I said nothing about ownership or proprietary control of this material nor have I argued against open source materials. I have just asked a very simple question as to how do I get fed and clothed and sheltered in an open source network and what happens when not all who access or support the commons have equal opportunity to benefit. I am just asking how the economy works when one can not eat bits and bytes. gnutel and its derivatives such as Napster are nice- but eventually someone must pay for the servers and their support and the pipes that carry it. Universities found this out when their fiber arteries were clogged with students downloading mp3 and one couldn't access the libraries. Some musicians have no problem with napster because they get exposure and more sales or some they would never have had- leverage that is good, they cover this as marketing costs. but if no sales, no eat- but then maybe they shouldn't have been in music in the first place-- the commons is a harsh mistress. What happens when Microsoft can access the open source hacks for its X-Box and with several million in petty cash go into the market place and swamp the hackers writing code- open source? We are working with a software company that lets its workers write their own code for their own ideas as long as they don't impact negatively on the client base. A piece of code that they get may help a client and may launch their employee on a new career- but they are willing
FW: [solaris]agriculture, industrial and information sectors
And the second. M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Roberto Verzola Sent: July 24, 2002 11:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [solaris]agriculture, industrial and information sectors My apologies if this piece comparing the agriculture, industrial and information sectors is too long. I am posting it because some wanted to see the piece. If you don't, just skip this message. Value-systems and the nature of goods by Roberto Verzola [This is the main text of a paper presented at the 11th Annual Conference of the Philippine International Forum, held in Cebu City on February 22-24, 1994. PIF is an organization of expatriates, many of them church-related, who work with Philippine non-government organizations. ] As some of you may know, I am an electrical engineer by training and a computer consultant by profession. I was also a social activist in the university, and I have remained so ever since. In the past few years, Ive been involved in studying social issues relating to information technology and exploring the possibility that information technologies can be used for democratization and popular empowerment. Over the past 12 years or so, I have been working with computers practically on a daily basis. And when one works with computersespecially with computer software and dataone is working with practically pure information. It is in the course of my work with computers that Ive gained a few insights about the nature of information. We know, for instance, that information is not matter. As the scientist would say, it has no mass and it doesnt occupy physical space. It is intangible. In the past decades, scientists have been able to precisely define information. I will not go into this precise definition now, but let me just say that it is related to the concept of uncertainty: information is that which resolves or reduces uncertainty. What is very interesting to me is the fact that since information is non-material, it is very easy to reproduce. Sharing information with somebody else already reproduces information. Talking before you right now reproduces information many-fold. Broadcasting information over the radio or television can reproduce information thousandseven millionsof times over. Every time I copy a diskette, this quality of information reveals itself before me. Whether it is a conversation, a public performance, an electronic broadcast, or the copying of tapes and diskettes, it is clear that once information is generated, the cost of reproducing it eventually becomes negligible. Let me present this nature of information in a different way. When I let a friend copy a computer program, I do not lose possession of the program. I still have my own copy. Sharing ones worldly belongings is difficult for many to do because to give away material goods is to lose possession of these goods. But sharing knowledge and information is the most natural thing to do, because we dont lose them when we share them. Thus, it is most natural that computer users share programs among themselves. Sharing information freely comes naturally. How can one be so selfish as to deny a copy of a computer program from a friend if one wont lose the program by sharing it? However, now comes the Business Software Association (BSA) and the government of the United States, asserting that copying computer programs is stealing, that for every copy we share, we are actually stealing hundreds of dollars from American corporations. This is quite a clash of values, isnt it? Before I jump ahead of my story, let me state at this time the first major observation that came out of my twelve years of work with computers and information technology: it takes very little to share information, and people share information freely. This is true of knowledge and information we hold in our minds. It is true of music, poems, and songs. It is true of computer programs and computer data. It is also true of genetic information as contained in seeds, plants and animals. But this problem with the BSA and the U.S. government remains: they want to stop us from sharing freely. Instead, they want us to acknowledge the ownership claims that some have staked on information. These ownership claims are in the form of exclusive usage and copying rights, or intellectual property rights (IPR) -- their intellectual property rights. For those who might think the U.S. value system is the more natural system, let me tell you another story. This one comes from the Bible: When it was evening, his disciples came to him and said, We are in a lonely place and it is now late. You should send these people away so they can go to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat. But Jesus replied, They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat. They answered, We have nothing here but five loaves and two fishes. Jesus said to them, Bring them here to me. Then he had everyone sit
FW: toc NYTimes.com Article: Whistling Past the Global Graveyard
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Brant Sent: July 13, 2002 11:56 PM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: toc NYTimes.com Article: Whistling Past the Global Graveyard --- The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/weekinreview/14FREN.html?ex=1027616484ei= 1en=35b11b55dd4a05af --- Whistling Past the Global Graveyard July 14, 2002 By HOWARD W. FRENCH TOKYO THE details may change each year, but when the 14th International AIDS Conference got underway last week in Barcelona, the flood of alarming statistics about the progression of the disease around the world was entirely familiar. Soon, average life expectancy will dip below 40 years in 10 African countries. Twenty-five million children will be orphaned worldwide by the disease by the end of the decade. In Russia, H.I.V. infection has increased 15-fold in three years. In China, 17 percent of the population has yet to hear of AIDS, even as the disease takes off there in earnest. Sometime soon, AIDS will have killed more people than all the wars of the 20th century. Yet, in a paradoxical way, the most pessimistic data coming out of the conference may come from the few bright spots, including the United States and a few other rich countries. People in the United States and Western Europe, where annual treatments may average $35,000 per patient, have begun to think of AIDS as a survivable condition. Each year, moreover, new data seem to feed a growing conviction in the wealthiest countries that the epidemic has been blunted in their own backyards. In Japan, the world's second-largest economy and a lavish spender on scientific research, there has never been an AIDS epidemic. Search as one might, it was nearly impossible last week to find more than a brief mention of the Barcelona conference in newspapers. AIDS has always created a chasm between rich and poor. More than ever before, though, the pandemic is carving up the world into islands of affluence, medical prowess and good governance, and vast regions of poverty, imploding institutions and despair. Perhaps the most glaring symbol of this divide is the tepid Western response to the United Nations' plea for $10 billion a year to fight AIDS. Many experts call this the minimum amount needed to blunt the epidemic and care for the sick and dying. But the world's rich nations, lacking the same sense of urgency that drove them to action in response to Al Qaeda, or in the gulf war, are now offering less than one-third of this sum. Strong moral objections have long been raised to the West's seeming indifference to the plight of many African societies. And yet the growing magnitude of the AIDS crisis has tested the illusion of invulnerability, prompting a search for more pragmatic solutions. The world stood by when AIDS was spreading in Africa, said Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations AIDS program. We can't do the same thing now that it is spreading in Eastern Europe, at the doorsteps of the E.U. Beyond the universe of AIDS experts, however, many people involved in international affairs say appeals to realism like this do not go far enough. For them, the central lesson of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is that in today's globalized world there is no such thing as lasting insulation from other people's crises. When entire societies are allowed to collapse and human miseries are permitted to fester, sooner or later those who had the means to help do something about it but didn't will have a steep bill to pay. TODAY, some people will say, `Why should we care?' said Joseph S. Nye Jr., dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and author of The Paradox of American Power (Oxford University, 2002). Well, in the mid-1990's, many people said pretty much the same thing about Afghanistan: `It is in terrible shape, but what does it matter to us?' On Sept. 11 we found out what it matters to us. If the challenge from AIDS was limited primarily to Africa, a continent perennially shunted to the periphery of the world's concerns, some might still maintain that wealthy nations need do little more than apply the kinds of Band-Aids and moral salves that are being employed there now. According to yet another statistic issued in Barcelona, although 28.5 million of the world's 40 million people infected with H.I.V. live in Africa, only about 30,000 Africans are receiving treatment with anti-retroviral drugs. Year by year, however, it is becoming clearer that Africa is hardly alone. In Russia, the rate of infection is growing as fast as anywhere. China and India each acknowledge millions of recent cases, and yet both are thought to be vastly underreporting the crisis. In Indonesia, the disease has been spreading like wildfire. In the future, the main hotspots highlighted in any
FW: toc--Stocks' Slide Playing Havoc With Older Americans' Dreams (K Zernike NYTimes)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Beniger Sent: July 14, 2002 5:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: toc--Stocks' Slide Playing Havoc With Older Americans' Dreams (K Zernike NYTimes) --- Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company --- www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/business/14INVE.html July 14, 2002 STOCKS' SLIDE IS PLAYING HAVOC WITH OLDER AMERICANS' DREAMS By KATE ZERNIKE As the owners of an Atlanta advertising agency that billed $40 million a year, Jim and Jan Pringle were featured in a cover article in Inc. magazine asking, What's the best time to retire? In January 2000, with the Dow well above 10,000, they were confident they had picked the right time. They took more than $2 million they had made from selling their company and bought stocks. Their broker encouraged them to take a month in Europe; instead they moved to South Carolina, where they began building a dream house on the beach. The Pringles have since lost about 75 percent of their investment. Far from taking any trips to Europe, they have done what they vowed never to do: mortgaged their house and gone back to work. I thought I would at least be able to take a break and think about what to do with the second half of my life, Mr. Pringle, 63, said. But I didn't have a lot of options when the market went south. To many Americans, the sustained slide in the stock market -- particularly last week's nose dive -- has been something to fret about, a darkening cloud. But to many people at or near retirement age, it has been a colossal jolt. People in this age group -- 55 to 64 -- have had almost twice as much money invested in stocks over the last few years as the average American. But if that money took them higher during the boom years, raising their expectations for living easy and dying rich, they have since fallen farther. Unlike younger investors, older ones do not have room to ride out their losses, particularly those who, while swimming in capital gains, ignored the basic principle of shifting from stocks to less volatile investments as retirement drew near. Perhaps as a result, federal statistics show, the same age group has been entering the work force at a higher rate than any other in the last two years -- or simply not leaving. In interviews last week from Hawaii to New England, older investors told stories of losing the entire value of their portfolios, of canceling travel plans and scaling back expectations. They used to stand mesmerized outside storefront stock tickers, or glued to CNBC at home. Now, they are looking the other way. For these investors, what they thought would be comfortable retirement years are now shrouded in anxiety, disappointment and, in some cases, shame. One 68-year-old man pleaded for anonymity as he told how he and his wife had sold their home in Manhattan and their beach house in the mid-1990's, planning to retire on the income of about $1 million he invested in the market. As tech stocks rose, so did his portfolio. He hung on despite losing $4.5 million over two years. But last year, with some of his stocks reduced to pennies, and fearing that he would be sitting in the street, he and his wife took jobs at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. The market was going up so rapidly, it was easy to live off the appreciated value of your assets, he said. It was to some extent delusional, thinking this thing would turn around and come back, but it takes a while to come to grips with it. It hadn't happened in my lifetime, that kind of demise. I was born during the Depression, but I wasn't old enough to understand it. Jacobo Black, 67, a retired real estate agent in Miami, said that he and his wife, Sophie, had canceled plans for a trans-Atlantic cruise this year. He could have used the distraction from thinking about the market. I feel so vulnerable, Mr. Black said. Here I was with thousands of dollars in savings and here I am losing it like water running through my fingers. Gena Lovett, walking along Laguna Beach in California with a group of friends who, like her, are in their late 50's, said that she and her husband, John, 57, would not be able to contribute as much to their grandchildren's education. Our retirement is one-half of what it was a year ago, she said. And because John works for G.E., we have mostly G.E. stock. I suppose we should have diversified, but G.E. stock was supposed to be wonderful. John's simply not looking at retirement. We simply told our kids that we're spending their inheritance. The oldest retirees, those over 70, tend to have pensions and so rely less on the stock market, economists say. Those approaching retirement are far more likely to have
FW: : A college freshman's perspective on the telecom industry
-Original Message- From: Dan Updegrove [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 09:52:13 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: A college freshman's perspective on the telecom industry Dave - At a recent conference, heard this anecdote: If you bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. If you bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for a nickel deposit, you would have $79. Cheers, Dan Updegrove VP for Information Technology Phone (512) 232-9610 The University of Texas at Austin Fax (512) 232-9607 FAC 248 (Mail code: G9800) [EMAIL PROTECTED] P.O. Box 7407 http://wnt.utexas.edu/~danu/ Austin, TX 78713-7407 For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
FW: America the Arrogant
Nothing new, but the compilation is useful and the author is interesting... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of radtimes Sent: July 9, 2002 4:14 PM To: Recipient list suppressed Subject: America the Arrogant America the Arrogant Why Don't We Listen Anymore? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31285-2002Jul6.html By Clyde Prestowitz Sunday, July 7, 2002; Page B01 The way things are going, it will soon be the United States against the world. That comment, by a top political leader in Kuala Lumpur, was just one of hundreds of expressions of a new and disturbing alienation from America that I heard during a recent swing through 14 Asian, European and Latin American capitals. What a contrast to the supportive attitudes abroad immediately after Sept. 11. Then, the sometimes anti-American French journal Le Monde captured the world's sentiment with a headline proclaiming: We are all Americans. Ten months later, sympathy for the victims of the terror attacks remains. But the American image is increasingly perceived as ugly, and support abroad for U.S. policies is plummeting -- in response to such U.S. actions as the threat last week to withdraw its peacekeepers from Bosnia unless Americans are exempted from jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court. Of course, anti-Americanism is not new, but what I found disturbing after 35 years of visiting these cities was that foreign leaders who have been longtime friends of the United States are the ones voicing dismay. While most foreign observers express affinity for Americans as people, they show increasing resentment of the United States as a nation and frequently remark with regard to Sept. 11 that now America knows what it feels like. They show a sense of satisfaction that, for once, America understands what it's like to be vulnerable. And they hope our tragedy might instill some humility and blunt American arrogance on issues such as energy conservation, global warming and global poverty. Many people abroad are now convinced that the United States aims to control their destiny and that, despite its talk of democracy, human rights and free trade, the United States really thinks only of its own narrow interests. In Seoul, American hostility toward North Korea is seen to be undermining President Kim Dae Jung's efforts to engage the North. Several top South Korean leaders emphasized to me that Washington either doesn't understand or doesn't care that South Korea cannot afford to take over a collapsing North Korea. How can we make Washington understand that we need a long transition and that we must prevent, not precipitate, a sudden collapse of the North? asked a key Korean negotiator. Others in Asia see the United States, prodded by constituencies at home that are obsessed with China's military, as too narrowly focused in its approach to Beijing and inattentive to sentiments in the region. In China there is widespread disappointment and resentment over the recent U.S. designation of China as a strategic competitor rather than a strategic partner as well as over the president's declaration that America will do whatever it takes to defend Taiwan. Both are seen as needlessly hostile. We want to sell to America, not attack it, said one official in Shanghai. As for Taiwan, no one I met in Asia believed there is any danger of invasion. Indeed, they said, it is the Taiwanese who are invading mainland China, where they are the biggest investors and the biggest group of non-mainland residents; nearly 500,000 of them live in Shanghai alone. The only circumstance most observers can imagine that could provoke an attack would be a declaration of independence by Taiwan, something that, ironically, recent U.S. policies are seen to be encouraging. In six weeks of traveling, I was struck by how often I heard the criticism that while the United States speaks of principles, it often undermines its moral suasion by acting cynically in pursuit of its national interests. Recently, for example, the White House welcomed Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir. Only a few years ago, Washington was lambasting Mahathir both for the imposition of capital market controls during the financial crisis of l997 and for human rights abuses in the jailing of his deputy prime minister on charges of engaging in homosexual acts. Today the former deputy prime minister remains in jail and the capital markets remain somewhat restricted, but Mahathir is a favorite in Washington because he is tough on terror. For some, the former U.S. stance confirms Washington's penchant for meddling in the affairs of others while the current stance proves the insincerity of its proclaimed devotion to human rights and free trade. U.S. trade policies have reinforced the perception of U.S. arrogance and double standards. Generations of U.S. trade negotiators have pounded on Japan, the European Union and others to reduce agricultural
FW: tocMagical Conversation (Revisiting Education)
I must confess to not having followed the recent discussion on teaching/education as closely as I might have (having been too actively engaged in the practice of teaching/education). I think this below rather sums up my own perspective. I have the rather strong sense that the requirements for teaching--which increases as one goes up the student's age/proficiency ladder--is changing rather signficantly as a result of ICT's/media... The change is less of a replacement of the need for one set of skills by another, and more of a need for teaching/learning an additional and perhaps more complex/conceptual set of skills in addition to other basic skills (3R's for example). Living and working in an information/technology saturated environment doesn't mean that one doesn't need to know how to read or write or do computation but it means that one must know those things as well as knowing how to manage/construct/deconstruct information and knowledge at a conceptual level. Apart from the relatively few folks who actually work with the design and development of technology those of the rest of us (and here I include the 60-70% of the population in most developed countries who spend at least part of their working and/or non-working time interacting with ICT's in one form or another) need to be able to know how information/knowledge functions at a conceptual level in order to make sense of what we are doing with ICT's and to have any measure of control over them and how they are structuring our relationship with others and with the physical world. I would suggest that this need for understanding at the conceptual level is growing fairly rapidly and is one of the reasons for the widespread dissatisfaction with education both from those who think the evolution towards this direction isn't going fast enough and from those who think it is going too fast or is being done at the expense of other things. I also think that a lot of this development is happening fairly spontaneously among young people with their vernacular use of technologies--video and computer games, Instant Messaging, media saturation--and in a lot of instances, it is the adults who need to catch up or get out of the way (or ideally, help young people to systematize and make sense of what they know intuitively). Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: July 8, 2002 9:57 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: tocMagical Conversation By Bernard Percy and Marina Leight - June 2002 I RECENTLY HAD A MAGICAL CONVERSATION with a very special friend, Ilene Rosenthal. We were discussing what defines a great teacher. This inspired my thoughts on who the great teachers are. They have high standards and expectations that they won't compromise. They dare to dream of truly making a difference in their students' lives. They're the restless individuals, innovative thinkers. They don't want to adapt or conform to the world around them, when that world has limited expectations of what a teacher can do or achieve. They challenge students to think differently, innovatively, and not merely adjust to their environment. They're comfortable in a space with motion, action and innovative thinking. They help students find their true purposes; develop their unique, special talents; and ensure they develop certainty in their ability to overcome obstacles and achieve their dreams. They create space for students to find and develop belief in their own potential. They create special, positive moments where a student has a realization or experience that positively affects his or her life, forever. They seek the real barriers that prevent students from learning, i.e., helping students learn the skills, gain the knowledge, and develop their abilities to be problem solvers. They never see the child only as a statistic or number, but as worthy of the recognition of his or her own individuality. They strive to put and keep the joy in learning. They're willing to find the magic residing in each child. They're dream makers, not dream breakers. Technology in the hands of a great teacher becomes a powerful tool to individualize and customize each student's educational program, one that aligns with their true potential, interests, needs and uniqueness. It's a tool that can help students rejoice in what they can and do accomplish. June Issue, Converge Magazine http://www.convergemag.com/magazine/story.phtml?id=30311959 Bonnie Bracey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. Martin Luther King Jr.
RE: Dependency and Serfdom
Hmmm... MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Mike Gurstein (Keith Hudson) Sent: July 8, 2002 10:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Dependency and Serfdom There is nothing wrong with a Corporate Greed (welfare state) if fraudsters could be excluded and claimants could be assessed by local people who know the true situation. But, with no regulatory (a centralised bureaucratic) control, vast amounts of fraud can take place. I know several people who've been misclaiming for years. However, the biggest fault of the Neo-Liberal (welfare) state is that it creates an ever-widening state of Corporate Fraud and inequality of opportunity (dependency) which undermines democracy (demeans the individual) and saps any form of effective citizenship (enterprise). One Conservative (UK), Liberal (Can.), RepubloCrat (US) (Labour) Party politician who has been studying the whole matter of Corporate Greed (welfare) for many years and was, in the early years of the 1965 (1997) Conservative (UK), Liberal (Can.), RepubloCrat (US) Labour Government, the Minister for Welfare Reform (but sacked fairly quickly for suggesting real reform), is ??? (Frank Field). Yesterday ??? (Frank Field) predicted that the government's attempts to reform the system of Corporate Accounting (National Health Service (NHS)) will fail, that its programme of corporate financing of political parties (family tax credit programme) which guarantee that no effective control measures will be put in place (thus guaranteeing a sort of basic wage for all) will encourage further fraud and produce an unprecedented degree of continuing fraud and income inequality (welfare dependency). Mike Gurstein I follow with an excerpt from today's FT, written by Nicholas Timmins, public policy editor: The new range of tax credits, used to top up low wages and support children, means the current means-tested strategy with cover 40% of the population, up from a third under the Tories, Mr Field said in a pamphlet published by Civitas, the free market social think tank. Once the pensioner credit is introduced, this proportion will surge above the 50 per cent mark. Because the credit is withdrawn as earnings rise, there is no way by which those most dependent on tax credits will be able by their own efforts to free themselves from this welfare dependency. Worse still, the standard of living this dependency offers will ensure a working of the system on an unimaginable scale. It will also, because of the huge sums involved, open up a totally new gold mine for fraudsters. From now one, the government, not individuals by their own efforts, witll decide the living standards of the vast majority of working families with children. To rip ourt the mainspring of a free society -- the drive to improve one's lot and that of one's family -- cannot but harbinger ill for our country. The government's attempts to reform the NHS will be seen as the last throw of the politics of central control, he said. KH -- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [CPI-UA] FW: TELECOM SECTOR MAY FIND PAST IS ITS FUTURE
Hi Bram, I didn't know of this approach to pre-regulatory assessment, but it seems to me to a be very reasonable, with of course, the caveat being how the market share analysis is carried out. Has there been any move to look at the Microsoft quasi-monopoly on Operating Systems within this context and if not, are you aware of why this hasn't happened. Best, MG -Original Message- From: Bram Dov Abramson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: July 8, 2002 1:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; canfutures; Cpi-Ua@Vancouvercommunity. Net; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca Subject: Re: [CPI-UA] FW: TELECOM SECTOR MAY FIND PAST IS ITS FUTURE The European Commission's approach is to have imbued the term Significant Market Power with a specific regulatory meaning. As I understand it, any firm with SMP in certain markets within a given sector -- telecom, in this example -- is to be regulated. If so, then a constant process of reexamining market definitions and conduct market share sizing analysis therefore becomes a basic regulatory function, and that function -- in essence, measuring the state of competition -- becomes permanent rather than subject to [condition x]. For example, where the regulator forebears from regulating a given sector, it continue to monitor the state of competitor in that sector, in order to know beforehand if ever forebearance should cease to be appropriate in its judgement. That's a very broad-brush description, and it leaves many details open ... as indeed it should. But it sounds like you're advocating something similar? cheers Bram
RE: Smoke and Mirrors Economics
The common denominator of all this stuff and the historical point of departure seems to be the stockmarket. All of these are organized around creating illusory "revenues/profits" for stock market analysts. These things seem to coincide with the rise of mass-market stock "investing"for example, self-directed retirement programs and widespread participation in company stock programs. What this does, I think, is to significantly broaden the market base for individual stocks and allow for the incredible self-enrichment of the CEO's. It also, probably puts some sort of floor on the market or at least makes the descent much more gradual--the folks who are selling need somewhere to put their money after all and there don't seem to be many viable alternatives sufficient to support long-term "retirement" returns. The mass market "investment" also, of course, mutes any political opposition to thisstuff (on the way up)--the natural constitutency of the Democrats (left Liberals/NDP) is as involved in this as the traditional Republican (Right Liberal/Tory) "investors". I suspect there is a great deal of "let's hold on and maybe it will all go away" on the part of very many of the new "investors". But what happens when all of this stuff starts to bite--a depressed market for a year or longer means more and more people need to realize their losses and this of course, has significant ripple effect through the real economy... At that point,of course, certain malordorour things might be starting to hit a lot of fans with, who knows what sort of political impacts... Mike Gurstein -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Karen Watters ColeSent: June 28, 2002 12:00 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Cc: Alan Stein; Alex Sherker; Ben Roz Sleigh; Darcy Dunn; David Anthony; Gene Curlin; Jane Harrell; Joan H.; Ray HarrellSubject: FW: Smoke and Mirrors Economics The rabble rouser makes some good summaries for the average reader, asks a lot of questions, points fingers and makes another case for further reforms to campaign finances laws. But he doesnt ask the question: Why isnt Cheney being investigated for Halliburton? Ive got a déjà vu Spiro Agnew feeling. Could Cheney will have health problems before 2003? Bushs sudden interest in promoting business ethics (so funny considering his Hardin Oil - SEC troubles) is shallow and Rovesque. Is it time for a revival of classical economics? Or just a good born-again moment? Karen Watters Cole Flavors of Fraud By PAUL KRUGMAN (NYT) June 28, 2002 o you're the manager of an ice cream parlor. It's not very profitable, so how can you get rich? Each of the big business scandals uncovered so far suggests a different strategy for executive self-dealing. First there's the Enron strategy. You sign contracts to provide customers with an ice cream cone a day for the next 30 years. You deliberately underestimate the cost of providing each cone; then you book all the projected profits on those future ice cream sales as part of this year's bottom line. Suddenly you appear to have a highly profitable business, and you can sell shares in your store at inflated prices. Then there's the Dynegy strategy. Ice cream sales aren't profitable, but you convince investors that they will be profitable in the future. Then you enter into a quiet agreement with another ice cream parlor down the street: each of you will buy hundreds of cones from the other every day. Or rather, pretend to buy no need to go to the trouble of actually moving all those cones back and forth. The result is that you appear to be a big player in a coming business, and can sell shares at inflated prices. Or there's the Adelphia strategy. You sign contracts with customers, and get investors to focus on the volume of contracts rather than their profitability. This time you don't engage in imaginary trades, you simply invent lots of imaginary customers. With your subscriber base growing so rapidly, analysts give you high marks, and you can sell shares at inflated prices. Finally, there's the WorldCom strategy. Here you don't create imaginary sales; you make real costs disappear, by pretending that operating expenses cream, sugar, chocolate syrup are part of the purchase price of a new refrigerator. So your unprofitable business seems, on paper, to be a highly profitable business that borrows money only to finance its purchases of new equipment. And you can sell shares at inflated prices. Oh, I almost forgot: How do you enrich yourself personally? The easiest way is to give yourself lots of stock options, so that you benefit from those inflated prices. But you can also use Enron-style special-purpose entities, Adelphia-style personal loans and so on
FW: toc--German Leader Hopes Soccer Will Lift His Standing in Polls (S Erlanger NYTimes)
Interesting discussion of some new strategies re: German unemployment... Does anyone know anything more about these especially the use of Government Manpower offices as employers of last resort? MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Beniger Sent: June 29, 2002 12:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: toc--German Leader Hopes Soccer Will Lift His Standing in Polls (S Erlanger NYTimes) --- Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company --- www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/international/europe/29GERM.html June 29, 2002 GERMAN LEADER HOPES SOCCER WILL LIFT HIS STANDING IN POLLS By STEVEN ERLANGER BERLIN, June 28 -- Although the German election is still nearly three months away, there is anxiety in the camp of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, whose Social Democrats continue to trail their conservative opponents, led by Edmund Stoiber, in the polls. Mr. Schröder, renowned as a good campaigner with sure populist instincts, has seized on Germany's unexpectedly good showing in the World Cup soccer championships to try to associate himself with the team's grit and success. John V. Lindsay did much the same with the Miracle Mets in 1969, riding New Yorkers' euphoria about the Mets' winning the World Series that year to a surprising re-election as mayor. Mr. Schröder hitched a ride for himself to Japan today, after the Group of 8 summit meeting in Canada, on the official plane of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, to see the Germans play Brazil in the final match on Sunday in Yokohama. The German government has also chartered a plane to take senior leaders and politicians to the championship match. Not to be outdone, Mr. Stoiber is going, too, and then returning to Germany with the team. That brought some sniffs from one of Mr. Schröder's spokesmen, Bela Anda, who said, The chancellor firmly believes that the team has earned the right to celebrate on its own and that politicians should keep their distance. Mr. Stoiber, the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union, emphasized that he was traveling at his own expense. The newspaper Handelsblatt had the inevitable cartoon showing the two candidates, in German soccer uniforms, racing from an airplane. The candidates are bound to overshadow President Johannes Rau, Germany's official representative, who had been scheduled to attend because Germany will be the host of the next World Cup, in 2006. But the soccer pitch is not the only current battleground. Mr. Schröder is trying to take the initiative on more substantive issues, too, in a campaign that so far centers on unemployment and economic competence -- areas where Mr. Stoiber, however stiff, is thought to have the advantage. Mr. Schröder has sought to counter the stain of having four million people unemployed by embracing an official commission on labor-market reform -- and ensuring that its findings were publicized even before their scheduled publication in mid-August. The commission is run by Peter Hartz, personnel director of Volkswagen, a company on whose board Mr. Schröder used to sit. As leaked and then discussed by Mr. Hartz in interviews, the proposals are advertised as being able to cut unemployment by half in three years and the cost of unemployment benefits by two-thirds. The central idea is to use the government's regional employment offices as employers, functioning as agencies for temporary workers. Anyone who remains unemployed after looking for a job for six months would work for the employment office, subject to assignment for short-term labor, or lose benefits. The commission also wants to simplify the payment of unemployment benefits and reduce them for the long-term unemployed, proposals that have generated some protest. Mr. Schröder praised the proposals in general, saying, This is a great chance to bring movement to the German labor market without a risk to social cohesion. But he was careful not to endorse the whole report, saying he opposed cutting unemployment benefits. He needs the support of labor unions, which have been striking for pay increases beyond inflation levels. This is clearly a public relations campaign coming out of the chancellor's office to try to regain the initiative on labor issues, said Peter Lösche, a political scientist at Göttingen University. Schröder is trying to go on the offensive and show voters that he has a concept to reduce unemployment. But the mood in the chancellor's office, Mr. Lösche said, is graying and pessimistic, and I think they've made a number of mistakes. The worst, he said, was to misjudge Mr. Stoiber. They ridiculously thought he would go to the right instead of doing the sensible thing, moving to the
FW: toc Tweaking Numbers to Meet Goals Comes Back to HauntExecutives (The NY Times)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Brant Sent: June 29, 2002 12:46 PM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: toc Tweaking Numbers to Meet Goals Comes Back to HauntExecutives (The NY Times) - The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/business/29ACCO.html?ex=1026366825ei=1en =7908208c7ae84158 -- Tweaking Numbers to Meet Goals Comes Back to Haunt Executives June 29, 2002 By ALEX BERENSON On Wall Street, it is called backing in. Each quarter, analysts at securities firms forecast the profit per share of the companies they cover. Companies whose profit falls short of the consensus estimate can be severely punished, their stocks falling 10 percent or more in a day. So some companies do whatever they have to to make sure they do not miss that estimate. Instead of first figuring out their sales and subtracting expenses to calculate the profit, they work backward. They start with the profit that investors are expecting and manipulate their sales and expenses to make sure the numbers come out right. During the last decade's boom, as executive pay was increasingly based on how the company's stock performed, backing in became both more widespread and more aggressive. Just how much so is only now becoming clear. Just yesterday, Xerox said it was reclassifying $6.4 billion in revenue from the late 1990's. That announcement followed WorldCom's report Tuesday that it had hidden $4 billion in expenses in 2001 and this year. Since the collapse of Enron prompted investors to scrutinize corporate accounting more carefully, scores of public companies have admitted overstating earnings. For years, Wall Street has known that companies manage their earnings. Academic studies have found that actual earnings do not fall randomly around the consensus estimate. Instead, they tend to come in at or just above the forecast. Some companies, like General Electric, almost always seem to beat estimates by a penny or two a share, no matter what the economic climate. Did Microsoft manage earnings? Does G.E. manage earnings? said Jon Brorson, who oversees $65 billion in stock investments for the Northern Trust Company in Chicago. Sure, we all know that. If G.E. needs to make a penny this quarter, they'll take it out of next quarter. That fact in and of itself is not particularly surprising or disturbing, Mr. Brorson and other money managers say. Managements try to give investors what they want, and companies whose earnings are predictable are prized on Wall Street, which does not like unhappy surprises. But the current wave of financial fraud is very different, professional investors say. Analysts and investors always assumed that earnings management happened on the margins, as companies pushed earnings higher or lower by a penny or two a share to mask the normal volatility of their businesses. Now it seems that many companies took advantage of loopholes in accounting rules to make their reported profits seem much bigger than the cash they were really generating. Others went further, committing outright fraud. The difference between earnings management and the multibillion-dollar gimmicks acknowledged by WorldCom and Xerox this week is like the difference between speeding and murder, Mr. Brorson said. But the slope from earnings management to earnings manipulation to fraud is a slippery one, and during the boom the incentives to cheat became ever more compelling. As companies like Cisco Systems and Microsoft reported year after year of booming sales and profits, investors began to believe that the surest route to riches was to buy stocks of companies with rising sales and profits, whatever their price. A company that became a favorite of these new investors could have an extraordinarily quick rise in its stock. As stock option packages became more lucrative, top executives could make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars after only a year or two of good performance. Unfortunately, many of those new investors were highly fickle, and companies that disappointed them by missing earnings targets could see their shares plunge. As for executives at companies that had not shared in the boom, they became eager to win a share of investors' largess by showing that they, too, were running fast-growing businesses. So more and more companies took advantage of loopholes in the accounting rules. That task was made easier because many investors, even professionals, do not understand how much flexibility companies have to alter their results under standard accounting rules. One hedge fund manager recently compiled a list of 20 tactics that can be used to make sales or profits seem better than they are. The list is far from comprehensive, but it offers a glimpse of the many ways companies can manipulate. They can
FW: the biggest case of corporate fraud in U.S. history.
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Farber Sent: June 25, 2002 9:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: IP: the biggest case of corporate fraud in U.S. history. WorldCom: $3.7B Illegally Documented By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:40 p.m. ET JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- WorldCom Inc. said Tuesday it had documented more than $3.7 billion in expenses after an internal investigation uncovered what appears to be the biggest case of corporate fraud in U.S. history. More than $3 billion in 2001 and $797 million for the first quarter of 2002 was illegally documented as capital expenditures, the company said. As a result, the company said it will restate its earnings for all of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002. ``Our senior management team is shocked by these discoveries,'' John Sidgmore, who was appointed WorldCom CEO on April 29, said. ``We are committed to operating WorldCom in accordance with the highest ethical standards.'' WorldCom said it has notified its auditors, KPMG LLP, and has asked it to conduct a comprehensive audit of the company's financial statements for 2001 and 2002. In a report on its Web site Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal said WorldCom's chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, who is also a director, has been dismissed from the company. ``I want to assure our customers and employees that the company remains viable and committed to a long-term future,'' Sidgmore said. ``I have made a commitment to driving fundamental change at WorldCom, and this matter will not deter the new management team from fulfilling our plans.'' The news could be a body blow to WorldCom, which is reeling from a low stock price, a crumbling telecoms market and an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Shares of Clinton-based WorldCom dropped sharply in after hours trading, falling 57 cents to 26 cents a share, down 68 percent from its closing price of 83 cents. Shares of WorldCom this year traded as high as $15 in January but have free fallen since over concerns about the company's $32 billion in debt, slowing revenues and the SEC investigation. In March, the SEC requested documents detailing pretax charges associated with domestic and international wholesale accounts that were no longer deemed collectible. The SEC investigation also focused on disputed customer bills and sales commissions, loans by WorldCom to officers and directors, customer service contracts and organizational charts and personnel records for former employees. Drawing scrutiny and investor displeasure were the $408 million in loans WorldCom gave to former chief executive Bernie Ebbers, who resigned in April. Bond ratings agencies Moody's Investors Service, Standard Poor's and Fitch all cut their long-term credit ratings on WorldCom's debt several times this year. Shares of WorldCom on Monday closed down 25 percent after Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman, long seen as a WorldCom supporter, downgraded his outlook on the company. For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
RE: More on Tenochtitlan
Hmm Sounds to me like a near perfect description of how the IMF operates or likes to see itself operating (a la Argentina), especially the still beating heart on the funeral pyre (of Neo-Lib economics... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: June 25, 2002 3:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Ray Evans Harrell Subject: More on Tenochtitlan The Aztecs were also good surgeons: In the center of the Aztec imperial city of Tenochtitlan, the priests performed their daily sacrifices. They marched the victim up the steep stairway to the top of the pyramid, where four preists grabbed his limbs and spread him out on his back on a large stone altar. One of the fearsome and blood-splattered priests raised an obsidian knife above his head, then plunged it into the heaving chest of the victim. Quickly, yet delicately, he slit open the chest and thrust his probing fingers between the ribs in search of the victim's heart. The priest pulled out th still-pulsing heart and tossed it onto a flaming brazier -- an offering to Hutzilopshtli. The sacrifice could be performed in as little as twenty seconds; yet the heart continued throbbing on the burning brazier for several minutes. [The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society by Frances F Berdan, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982] Keith Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: More on Tenochtitlan
Outsourcing, more likely... Companies tear off their limbs while they are still fully operative, toss them onto the fire of competitive destruction (read core competencies blah, blah) and watch (for the most part) as the flame is fed and the life dribbles away... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: June 25, 2002 9:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: More on Tenochtitlan Radical downsizing. -Original Message- From: Michael Gurstein [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 8:46 AM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Ray Evans Harrell Subject: RE: More on Tenochtitlan Hmm Sounds to me like a near perfect description of how the IMF operates or likes to see itself operating (a la Argentina), especially the still beating heart on the funeral pyre (of Neo-Lib economics... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: June 25, 2002 3:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Ray Evans Harrell Subject: More on Tenochtitlan The Aztecs were also good surgeons: In the center of the Aztec imperial city of Tenochtitlan, the priests performed their daily sacrifices. They marched the victim up the steep stairway to the top of the pyramid, where four preists grabbed his limbs and spread him out on his back on a large stone altar. One of the fearsome and blood-splattered priests raised an obsidian knife above his head, then plunged it into the heaving chest of the victim. Quickly, yet delicately, he slit open the chest and thrust his probing fingers between the ribs in search of the victim's heart. The priest pulled out th still-pulsing heart and tossed it onto a flaming brazier -- an offering to Hutzilopshtli. The sacrifice could be performed in as little as twenty seconds; yet the heart continued throbbing on the burning brazier for several minutes. [The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society by Frances F Berdan, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982] Keith Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: toc The Imperial Chief Executive Is Suddenly in the Cross Hairs(The NY Times)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Brant Sent: June 24, 2002 3:19 PM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: toc The Imperial Chief Executive Is Suddenly in the Cross Hairs(The NY Times) From the article below: To respond, chief executives have begun a delicate two-step intended to answer their critics and still defeat efforts at systemic changeBut few are willing to sacrifice even a sliver of the many privileges and huge pay packages they were awarded in recent years People now say public officials in Washington are more honest and ethical than business leaders, a switch from earlier years, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press The No. 1 criteria in every C.E.O. search we do today is integrity, said Gerard R. Roche, the senior chairman of Heidrick Struggles, a top executive-search company. That used to be assumed. No one had to mention it. Not anymore. NOT from the article below: We have met the enemy and he is us. - Pogo -- The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/24/business/24CEOS.html?ex=1025945307ei=1en =85d5cec244220393 --- The Imperial Chief Executive Is Suddenly in the Cross Hairs June 24, 2002 By DAVID LEONHARDT Stephen M. Case, a hero of the 1990's for having built America Online into a multimedia giant, sat on the stage at his company's annual meeting last month, listening to investors mock him for overseeing multibillion-dollar losses. Jeffrey R. Immelt, following in the footsteps of the lionized John F. Welch Jr. at General Electric, has tried to soothe rebellious shareholders by releasing more information than Mr. Welch ever did, but G.E.'s stock has still fallen more sharply than most others this year. Meanwhile, Charles R. Schwab, hoping to capitalize on Wall Street's new unpopularity, has appeared in a television advertisement proclaiming his brokerage firm a different kind of company. Across the business landscape, the imperial chief executive, hailed not long ago as the savior of entire companies and the driving force behind the turnaround of the American economy, is suddenly under siege. With two prominent executives being indicted in the last month, accounting problems continuing to emerge and the stock market stuck near its lowest level in three years, executives are facing their most significant challenge in a decade or more. To respond, chief executives have begun a delicate two-step intended to answer their critics and still defeat efforts at systemic change. While proclaiming their own companies to be fully healthy and the recent disclosures about problems at Enron, Tyco International, Rite Aid, Imclone Systems and elsewhere to be a series of exceptions, many executives have become more solicitous of their investors, more open about their financial dealings and more responsive to detailed questions from board members. But few are willing to sacrifice even a sliver of the many privileges and huge pay packages they were awarded in recent years. We C.E.O.'s have to do gut checks, said William D. Zollars, the chief executive of the Yellow Corporation, one of the nation's biggest trucking companies, who has been attending meetings with investors that he once would have skipped. We have to make sure we're playing it down the middle of the fairway, not close to the lines. For much of the booming 1990's, the nation's chief executives could make the case - and they often did - that they embodied all that was right with America. They received personal credit for nearly every improvement at their companies, accumulating enormous wealth and prestige in the process. Some, like Mr. Welch, who received a larger book advance than the pope, became international celebrities, thanks to fawning magazine covers and idolatrous management tomes. Today's far different atmosphere has helped contribute to a decline in major stock market indexes even as the economy has apparently emerged from recession, a chain of events that had not occurred since the 1920's. The actions of just a few chief executives have hurt the images of everyone else. It's the same thing as when a couple of policemen are found corrupt, said Jean-Pierre Garnier, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, the drug company, echoing the frustration of his peers. The whole police department suffers. To others, however, the individual problems that have become apparent since Enron collapsed last December suggest that many of the usual checks on chief executives' power disappeared during the giddiness of the 90's economic boom. Now some investors, who tended to give executives free rein when stock prices were rising, are trying to force changes. Delivering a Lecture: A Corporate Chief Is Taken to Task Ten days ago, William H. Miller III, one of the market's most
FW: [CPI-UA]: Is the Internet economy dead? / By DAVID AKIN (or alive: Tech CEOs high on future ( Deloitte Touche Fast500 survey)
-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Paul NielsonSent: May 21, 2002 5:55 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [CPI-UA]: Is the Internet economy dead? / By DAVID AKIN (or alive: Tech CEOs high on future ( Deloitte Touche Fast500 survey) POSTED AT 1:44 AMEDTGlobe and Mail Monday, May 20 When the first cracks appeared in the Internet economy this would have been some time toward the end of 2000 the founders of those companies that failed were dismissed as impossible dreamers with business plans that never stood a chance. The Internet itself, the actual layer of wires and software upon which content moved around, was considered a sure bet. But selling pet food through a Web site? We hardly missed Pets.com, Petopia.com Inc., and their relatives because the real money was in electronic marketplaces, big pipes, and oodles of bandwidth everywhere. "As part of an overall on-line business, we will end up buying pet food on-line," said Duncan Stewart, a partner at Tera Capital Corp. of Toronto, and the manager of several technology mutual funds. "But a pet food-only Web site? No, no. That was ridiculous." But then the cracks deepened. The second round of Internet economy accidents were businesses that sounded as if they made sense. Businesses like Ariba Inc., Commerce One Inc., Onvia.com Inc. and Sapient Corp. These businesses weren't shipping bulky bags of pet food to fickle consumers but were making money setting up networks for buy-and-sell transactions, taking a small cut of those transactions. "These guys make money when they sleep," investors told themselves. "How can you miss with this?" But these market makers, whether business-to-consumer or business-to-business plays, did indeed miss. Their stock price crashed. Many were sold. It turns out that consumers actually liked the old-fashioned way of doing things: of looking the seller in the eye as you haggled over terms; of kicking the tires; of squeezing the Charmin. And now those cracks seem to be beyond repair. The very foundation of the Internet economy the infrastructure and telecom players who were going to benefit from the frenzy to do everything and anything on-line is threatened. The latest fissure, of course, came last week when Teleglobe Inc. of Montreal, filed for bankruptcy protection after BCE Inc. with its deep pockets and seemingly irrepressive enthusiasm for convergence finally succumbed to the reality that the future would be very different than had been predicted in 1999. "The whole industry is in trouble because they've relied on the soothsayers and what the soothsayers thought about the industry's growth, and it was just not right," said Eamon Hoey, senior partner at Hoey Associates Telecommunications Consulting Services Inc. of Toronto. Teleglobe had planned to build a vast global network of fibre-optic backbones to carry an exploding volume of Internet traffic between continents and countries. A lot of companies had the same idea and either built their own fibre-optic highways or spent billions for long-term leases of someone else's strand of glass. It was all to their ruin. Global Crossing Ltd., 360networks Inc., Williams Communications Group Inc. and dozens more lost billions by betting on this flawed vision. Giant Web-hosting firms like Exodus Communications Inc. and PSINet Inc. have already gone on to a better place. So the Internet economy is dead, right? "I would say it's dead as a doornail from the standpoint of what the layperson thinks of as the Internet economy," said Evan Chrapko, chief executive officer of Edmonton-based Time Industrial Inc. "What's quite alive and very much at play is the traditional companies taking advantage of all of that stuff that's been left behind, thanks to the build-out." Mr. Chrapko was an entrepreneurial star during the Internet economy's golden years. He was CEO and co-founder of DocSpace Co. Inc., a Toronto-based software company that was sold early in 2000 for $568-million. For the last few years, Mr. Chrapko and some of the other former DocSpace executives have been building Time Industrial. Time Industrial sells systems to help industrial construction firms reduce the costs of tracking, accounting for, and reporting their labour costs. His company's biggest customers are mostly huge companies working on refineries and rigs in U.S. and Canadian oil fields. And while the company relies heavily on new Internet and computing technology for the complex task of
FW: NITF ICT Forum: News: DRC cellular / SNO
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Charles Lewis Sent: May 27, 2002 4:16 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: NITF ICT Forum: News: DRC cellular / SNO Mobile operators' rumble in the jungle [News24] http://www.news24.com/News24/Finance/Features/0,4186,2-8-133_1185680,00.html Kinshasa - When Africa's biggest mobile operator Vodacom offered US$5 of free airtime to new clients in the Democratic Republic of Congo it sparked a mini-riot. Security guards were called in to break up shoving matches between hundreds of people in the lobby of a flashy Kinshasa hotel, where Vodacom booths had been set up ahead of the launch earlier this month. And when Celtel, currently Congo's leading provider, cut its rates by 20% in anticipation of Vodacom's launch, traffic shot up and clogged the company's networks for days. Demand for mobiles is huge in the war-torn central African country and Vodacom Congo will become the eighth network provider. Most arrived in the past 18 months. The former Zaire was the first African country to have mobile phones with the launch of a small, costly network in the mid-1980s, but only about 150 000 of Congo's 55 million people currently use them. Congo's state-run fixed network, numbering around 20 000 landlines according to the most recent estimates, is unreliable. Users complain of regular interruptions to services and say numbers can be arbitrarily assigned to new users, making mobiles a more popular option. Executives like Henry Stephan, Vodacom Congo's chief operating officer, are betting on a surge of new users. We expect the number of mobile phone users to jump to about 600 000 in the next five years and then reach one million within a decade, Stephan told Reuters. Others estimate the market could reach three million users. Vodacom plans to spend $370 million in the first year of operations - the largest non-mining investment in Congo's history according to a report on the country's telecoms by BMI-TechKnowledge, an African IT and telecoms research house. Africa-wide explosion The rapid growth in Congo reflects an Africa-wide explosion in mobile use, with user numbers rocketing from two million in 1998 to more than 30 million by the end of 2001, according to the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union. The organisation predicts 100 million Africans will own cellphones by 2005 and says the number of mobile users has already outpaced that of fixed-line phones. Africa has had mobiles since the 1980s, but they only really took off in the mid-1990s with the arrival of pre-paid billing. Pre-paid cards allow companies to collect money in places where steady incomes, fixed addresses, credit checks, reliable banking and postal systems don't exist. Under the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was ousted in 1997, mobiles were the preserve of an elite of barely 20 000 in the former Zaire who paid up to $3 per minute for local calls. We've tried to make phones more accessible to the masses, says Vic Subramanian, marketing manager for Celtel, which serves two thirds of Congo's users. Industry analysts say that not only can better communications encourage business and drive economic growth, but they also lead to greater democratic freedom in countries like Congo that have known decades of dictatorship. There is a correlation between mobile communications and the spread of democracy, said Dobek Pater, a senior analyst with BMI-TechKnowledge. Tough environment Democracy still looks some way off in Congo. The big challenge for the Congolese is bringing the vast mineral-rich territory back together after four years of war that have seen it carved up into fiefdoms ruled by rebel factions and an unelected government. Recent peace talks fuelled hopes that the former Belgian colony might turn the corner, but after eight weeks they broke up without an overall agreement and some analysts warned of a possible return to all-out war. With the war and the constant government hassles it's a high risk market and a difficult environment to work in. How do you explain to your head office that you have to give 100 free phones to government ministers and their assistants and friends? said one telecoms official who asked not to be identified. Vodacom is half owned by South Africa's Telkom. Britain's Vodafone owns 31.5% of Vodacom, South African group VenFin holds 13.5% and the investment holding company Hosken Consolidated Investments the remaining 5%. It began its operations in the three major markets in Congo - the capital Kinshasa, the diamond-mining city of Mbuji-Mayi and Lubumbashi, capital of the mineral-rich southeastern province of Katanga. It has plans to roll out into new markets over the coming year, including rebel-held areas like Goma in the east. If we can get it so that people in Goma can talk to people in Kinshasa it will only help bring the country together, said Vodacom's Stephan. This country has such
FW: toc--The World's Game (Soccer) Is Not Just a Game (S Kuper NYTimes)
This is a truly fascinating account...
A long but very worthwhile read IMHO.
M
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Beniger
Sent: May 25, 2002 5:40 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: toc--The World's Game (Soccer) Is Not Just a Game (S Kuper
NYTimes)
---
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
---
www.nytimes.com/2002/05/24/magazine/26SOCCER.html
May 24, 2002
THE WORLD'S GAME IS NOT JUST A GAME
By SIMON KUPER
In early 1994, Osama bin Laden spent three months in London, where he
visited supporters and bankers and went to watch the famous soccer club
Arsenal four times. Before returning to Sudan just a step ahead of being
extradited to Saudi Arabia, he bought his sons gifts from the club's
souvenir shop. His affection for the game did not stop him from getting
involved in a plot to massacre the American and British teams at the 1998
World Cup in France; still, bin Laden told friends he had never seen
passion like that of soccer fans.
This seems to have been a common view inside Al Qaeda. On the videotape
the Department of Defense released in December of bin Laden reminiscing
with a foreign sheik about the Sept. 11 attacks, soccer crops up twice.
The first time, bin Laden recalls a follower telling him a year earlier:
''I saw in a dream, we were playing a soccer game against the Americans.
When our team showed up in the field, they were all pilots!'' In the
dream, Al Qaeda won the game.
On the same videotape, another Qaeda member recounts watching a
television broadcast of the World Trade Center attacks. ''The scene was
showing an Egyptian family sitting in their living room. They exploded
with joy. Do you know when there is a soccer game and your team wins? It
was the same expression of joy.''
Bin Laden and his henchmen had hit on a truth about soccer. The sport,
which in the U.S. is chiefly a placid entertainment for children, arouses
in the rest of the world collective passions that are matched by nothing
short of war. And unlike any other sport -- indeed, unlike almost any
cultural phenomenon -- soccer is distinguished by its political
malleability. It is used by dictators and revolutionaries, a symbol of
oligarchy and anarchy. It gets presidents elected or thrown out, and it
defines the way people think, for good or ill, about their countries.
The World Cup, which begins on Friday in Japan and in South Korea, will
be watched by billions. The spread of satellite dishes has taken the
world's best teams to the farthest-flung places. People in Shenyang or
Khartoum, who have no idea that Manchester is a town in England, now
support Manchester United. A statue of the team's star, David Beckham,
adorns a Buddhist temple in Bangkok. Osama bin Laden, if he is alive,
will presumably be among those billions sitting in front of the
television, and all of them, with the exception of most Americans, will
appreciate the roiling political context in which the game is so often
played.
Leaders everywhere attach themselves to soccer. In 1986 Silvio
Berlusconi, then an Italian media mogul, took over his favorite club, AC
Milan, which was struggling to surmount a 1979 bribery scandal. By 1989
Milan was rich, organized and champion of Europe. Berlusconi then founded
the political party Forza Italia (named after a soccer chant), called his
candidates the Azzurri (''the Blues,'' nickname of the national team) and
in 1994 got himself elected prime minister. The far-right Austrian
politician Jorg Haider has buffed up his image as a regular guy by
presiding over the FC K* rnten soccer club; Brazilian politicians
habitually campaign in shirts of favorite clubs; and in British local
elections this month the town of Hartlepool, given its first chance to
elect a mayor, rejected the ruling Labour Party candidate in favor of the
local soccer team's mascot, a man in a monkey suit.
But perhaps the best place to observe the interplay of soccer and
politics today is Argentina, whose national team has won two World Cups
and is the joint favorite with France to win this one, and whose economy
is plunged into a depression deeper than that of the U.S. in the 1930's.
On a gray English day last November, a mustachioed Argentine
multimillionaire named Mauricio Macri visited Oxford University. Like
Berlusconi in Italy, Macri took over a struggling soccer club -- Boca
Juniors from Buenos Aires, which became for a time the best in Latin
America. Now, seven years later, Macri has decided to enter politics, and
over a lunch of soggy chops, he explained that he would first try for
governor of Buenos Aires, and after that, who knew?
A month after this conversation, the Argentine peso collapsed. The
country's middle
FW: [bytesforall_readers] Linking a diverse country: mailing-lists in India
-Original Message- From: Frederick Noronha [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: May 1, 2002 11:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [bytesforall_readers] Linking a diverse country: mailing-lists in India LINKING A DIVERSE COUNTRY: MAILING LISTS IN INDIA By Frederick Noronha [EMAIL PROTECTED] They're less glamourous than web-sites, at first glance don't seem as obviously useful as e-mail, and definitely not as luring as chat. Yet, the simple but priceless tool of mailing-lists, which comes from an earlier Internet era, has an important role to play in a vast and diverse country like India. This is clearly shown from experiences from the field. From pointers to locate texts in Sanskrit, to developmental information use to India, expats chatting and fighting via the Net, news from a range of sources, and even GNU/Linux techies sharing vital information ... all this and more is making itself available on India-related mailing lists. Mailing-lists are indeed a treasure trove of information, and vitally useful for a country like India. Inexpensive to operate, a well-run list can bring in immense results. Setting up a list is easy, but keeping it going is difficult. Says Jeanu J Mathews, based in the US: Internet-based mailing lists have all the standard conveniences that anything based on the Internet has. But above and beyond that (some like the) SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association, run by Prof Sreenath Sreenivasan of Columbia University) is an excellent networking vehicle and the members, though often close-minded in their outlooks, are very helpful to aspiring journalists such as myself. I am very greatful for the same. Mailing-lists are seldom advertised. You probably won't find a directory for them. But the good ones get noticed fast. These grow in popularity through word-of-mouth. Today, there are 'families' of mailing-lists like the Indnet.org network which offers lists guiding you about emigration law, economic news, plain discussion, headline-news about India, library science, an employment bulletin, and even a matrimonial digest. Some have upto 5000+ members. First the basics. A mailing list -- or discussion list -- comprises a group of people that read each others emails. Subscribers to a mailing list send messages to one central email address. A special software program then distributes this message among dozens or hundreds of the list's subscribers. This means certain advantages. It's like having a meeting which goes on forever without tiring you (hopefully). Besides, your meeting allows everyone to talk whenever convenient to you, without cutting into someone else's time. You intervene when you please, and at your own convenience. Most interestingly, once set up, all this cost very little money. (Free list-hosting sites offer certain services, though these are showing signs of being curtailed.) If lists can be so useful, why has India overlooked the potential of the humble mailing list? One reason could be that when the Net first opened up in India in mid-1997, the allpowerful and fashionable web-site was already making waves. Mailing-lists were in the news internationally perhaps in the early and mid-nineties. We in India too went along with the 'fad' of the times, rather than exploring the potential of this appropriate tool. Perhaps it also took time to understand what mailing lists were all about. Then too, you need time, perserverence and patience to build up a mailing list. As one would guess, there's little money in this tool -- though its potential to build community, share information, link up people and even mobilise action sometimes is immense. In the 'nineties, the IndiaLink network of NGOs set up a handful of interesting lists, like the IL-environment. This linked green campaigners across the country, from the humble concerned citizens to persons like union minister Maneka Gandhi and wildlife campaigner from Mumbai Bittu Sehgal. But lists tend to be unpredictable, and these fell into disuse. Social campaigners have been quick to realise the potential of software. Harsh Kapoor based in France runs an interesting mailing list that seeks to campaign against the increased communal polarisation of a civilization known as India. Kapoor's SACW is an informal, independent an non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996. In the past couple of years, many across India have realised the potential of unglamourous mailing lists, if necessary using free list-sites. Like yahoogroups.com. Search this site, and you could get a few hundred lists with the word India prominently listed in them. But this is not enough. Says New York-based UNDP policy analyst Vikas Nath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Somehow South Asia has not picked up on mailing lists inspite of having good connectivity in comparison to other regions. I guess, the problem is with find good lead organisations to start mailing lists. Looking at India: most of
The demise of on-line learning institutions
A very interesting but Times/superficial account of the demise of on-line learning institutions. I was a participant/witness to the Canadian version of On-LineU.com (the late and only infrequently lamented Technical University of British Columbia/TechBC). There is, IMHO the nub of a very good and useful idea in On-Line learning and even On-Line Universities. Some things lend themselves directly to that format (many technical areas for example); it provides access to quality materials to those who might otherwise have difficulty in obtaining these; it can, under some circumstances, democratize a variety of needlessly restrictive training/accreditation processes; among others. There are however a number of unresolved issues that, apart from the bubble/speculative/DotCom nature of the initial investments directly inhibit the success of these ventures including--the lack of a useful pedagogy for on-line learning (as for example the relative role and appropriate application of real-time/synchronous interaction vs. asynchronous interaction); the funding model for course development (all the way from the UK Open U.'s $million courses, to P.U.'s slapping the syllabus on the web with a web conference or elist attachment); the funding model for course delivery (the rule of thumb is that on-line courses represent 1.5 to 3 times the amount of instructor time and attention, something which supporting institutions were completely unwilling to recognize); the business model for course sale (all the way from attempting to charge a premium for on-line courses !?!, to giving them away for free; and accreditation (most U.'s that went on-line were really just attempting to peddle their off-line degree granting accreditation into a new market--not surprisingly, that business model very quickly ran into major snags as per those in the article). Once the smoke clears and the Captain Ahab academic entrepreneurs move onto the next big thing, there will probably emerge a very valuable and ultimately extremely large on-line teaching sector which when the pedagogy (and technology) is worked out, will IMHO give a lot of marginal f2f U. and college programs some direct and useful competition. Mike Gurstein http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/circuits/02DIST.html THE NEW YORK TIMES May 2, 2002 Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U. By KATIE HAFNER GO to Fathom.com and you will encounter a veritable trove of online courses about Shakespeare. You can enroll in Modern Film Adaptations of Shakespeare, offered by the American Film Institute, or Shakespeare and Management, taught by a member of the Columbia Business School faculty. The site is by no means confined to courses on Shakespeare. You can also treat yourself to a seminar called Bioacoustics: Cetaceans and Seeing Sounds, taught by a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Or if yours is a more public-policy-minded intellect, you can sign up for Capital Punishment in the United States, a seminar with experts from Cambridge University Press, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. What's more, all are free. That part was not always the plan. Fathom, a start-up financed by Columbia, was founded two years ago with the goal of making a profit by offering online courses over the Internet. But after spending more than $25 million on the venture, Columbia has found decidedly little interest among prospective students in paying for the semester-length courses. Now Fathom is taking a new approach, one that its chief executive likens to giving away free samples to entice customers. Call it the Morning After phenomenon. In the last few years, prestigious universities rushed to start profit-seeking spinoffs, independent divisions that were going to develop online courses. The idea, fueled by the belief that students need not be physically present to receive a high-quality education, went beyond the mere introduction of online tools into traditional classes. The notion was that there were prospective students out there, far beyond the university's walls, for whom distance education was the answer. Whether they were 18-year-olds seeking college degrees or 50-year-olds longing to sound smart at cocktail parties, students would flock to the Web by the tens of thousands, paying tuitions comparable to those charged in the bricks-and-mortarboard world - or so the thinking went. University presidents got dollars in their eyes and figured the way the university was going to ride the dot-com wave was through distance learning, said Lev S. Gonick, vice president for information services and chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They got swept up. American universities have spent at least $100 million on Web-based course offerings, according to Eduventures, an education research firm in Boston. Now the groves of academe are littered with the detritus of failed e-learning start-ups as those same universities struggle
FW: The brutal fact of US inequality
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of radtimes Sent: April 28, 2002 4:30 PM To: Recipient list suppressed Subject: The brutal fact of US inequality The brutal fact of US inequality http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,706484,00.html Log cabin to White House? Not any more The State We're In, Will Hutton's explosive analysis of the British economy, caused a storm and became an instant bestseller seven years ago. Now, in The World We're In, he turns his attention to the global picture. In this exclusive extract he argues that the US can no longer lay claim to being the land of opportunity Sunday April 28, 2002 The Observer America is the most unequal society in the industrialised West. The richest 20 per cent of Americans earn nine times more than the poorest 20 per cent, a scale of inequality half as great again as in Japan, Germany and France. At the very top of American society, incomes and wealth have reached stupendous proportions. The country boasts some three million millionaires, and the richest 1 per cent of the population hold 38 per cent of its wealth, a concentration more marked than in any comparable country. This inequality is the most brutal fact of American life. Nor is it excused by more mobility and opportunity than other societies, America's great conceit. The reality is that US society is polarising and its social arteries hardening. The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyles of rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval - and a standing offence to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and happiness. The chief means by which contemporary Western societies offer their citizens a chance to reach reasonable living standards and move up the social and economic hierarchy is education. At first sight, the US does well. In the schooling system, its fourth-grade students (the fourth year of primary school) do better than their international counterparts, and 37 per cent of its 18- to 21-year-olds go through higher education, one of the highest proportions in the industrialised West. Moreover, the US's university standards, especially in the top 50, are on average the best in the world. Salaries are high and the research record excellent. But take a closer look, using more stringent criteria. As a system that offers every American a chance for educational achievement and the acquisition of formal academic or vocational qualifications - the key instrument for social mobility - the US structure fails. By twelfth grade (the year after GCSE), American students are falling behind their international peers, especially in mathematics and science. And while in Germany, for example, 80 per cent of school-leavers go on to receive either vocational training or a degree and all except 1 per cent receive formal post-secondary education or training, in the US 46 per cent of school-leavers gain no certificate or degree - and an extraordinary 31 per cent have never received formal training or education after leaving school. The message is stark. Those Americans who do not get to college are pushed into the labour market with a poverty of skills, educational and vocational training. Those who do get to college are overwhelmingly students from the higher socio-economic backgrounds, just as they always have been; a study in 1965 found that two-thirds of the explanation for educational achievement was accounted for by family income; a study 30 years later found exactly the same figure. As inequality grows, the grip of the wealthy on educational advantage becomes ever more evident, for the cost of going to university over the last 25 years has exploded. The average cost of tuition fees and room and board has risen fourfold since 1977 to an average of $10,315 (£7,264) today; the overall average masks a stark contrast between the average cost of study at private universities at $17,613 (£12,403) and public universities at $7,013 (£4,938). Yet as costs have risen, federal and state support to help fund students' costs has both declined, and been refocused on the middle class. In 1965, the Pell grant, the largest federal programme for poor students, covered 85 per cent of the cost of four years at a public university; in 2000, it covered just 39 per cent of the bill. Meanwhile, the Hope Scholarship, introduced by President Clinton, provides up to $3,000 of tax credits to fund university education but it goes mainly to families earning between $30,000 and $90,000 (£21,126 to £63,380) whose children would have gone to college anyway. States have cut their support on average by 32 per cent since 1979. The result of this vicious scissor movement - rising costs cutting against falling state and federal support - is a calamitous drop in the chances of a poor student acquiring a university degree, and this in an environment where there are
FW: toc--Jobless at 20 million, China confronts grim job situation (ChinaDaily)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Beniger Sent: April 28, 2002 10:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: toc--Jobless at 20 million, China confronts grim job situation (ChinaDaily) --- Copyright 2002 China Daily chinadaily.com.cn --- http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/news/2002-04-29/67793.html 04/29/2002 Jobless to hit 20 million, China confronts grim job situation In the coming four years, China is likely to experience the most serious unemployment pressures it has ever faced, with the country expecting to see the jobless numbers rise to more than 20 million, a top labour official warned Sunday. Wang Dongjin, vice-minister of labour and social security, said an excessive labour supply coupled with pressures caused by obsolete job skills has resulted in a grim employment situation in China. The country is facing a serious oversupply of labour, with the number of people coming into the labour market reaching an unprecedented peak, Wang said. China may see an annual average of 12 million to 13 million new workers entering the labour market over the next few years, in addition to 5 million workers laid off by State-owned enterprises and 6.8 million registered jobless people by the end of last year. There are also about 150 million surplus rural labourers who are flooding into cities looking for jobs. But it is estimated that only 8 million jobs can be generated annually over this period, even with the country's current economic growth rate (of about 7 per cent), Wang said. He warned that it is a pressing and urgent task to tackle the worsening situation, as it could well undermine social stability. The vice-minister's warning came yesterday at a seminar entitled Proposals for Improving Employment and Re-employment. Over 100 labour experts and scholars as well as government officials attended the one-day event, organized by the ministry's Institute for Labour Studies. Wang said that to make the employment situation much worse, the present unemployment problem mainly results from the fact that the unemployed come from areas of low job skills. Most of the laid-off and jobless people are low-skilled and/or middle-aged workers with relatively poor education who were employed in traditional sectors such as coal, textile and machinery industries, in which the technology has changed. It is very hard for these people to get jobs in new industries requiring high education and skills, according to Wang. He stressed that this employment problem resulting from technological change may be aggravated in the short term although the country's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) may help increase job opportunities in the long term. An increasing number of surplus rural labourers are to be expected from the farming sector as a result of China's entry into the WTO and the worsening world economic environment since the September 11 incidents in the United States, adding to already high employment pressure, Wang said. Wang Yingcai, a senior inspector with the Department of Training and Employment under the ministry, disclosed that the State Council, China's cabinet, is planning to hold a national conference this year to hammer out new policies and ways to generate jobs. The decision was made by Premier Zhu Rongji at a March 9 State Council meeting and the specific date has yet to be decided, he said. Wang Yingcai said his ministry has sent out eight inspection and research teams nationwide to make preparations for the conference. The inspector called for greater efforts from academic circles to help the government tackle the rising challenge, which he forecast will continue for a very long time in the country. http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/news/2002-04-29/67793.html --- Copyright 2002 China Daily chinadaily.com.cn --- ***
RE: Reality of money (was RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?)
Actually I was just reacting to your use of the term real money... I'm sure there have been transactions/exchanges since time immemorial, I would be surprised if it wasn't found to be primate behaviour and not exclusively human. Abstracting from those exchanges to understand them as involving exchanges of value and not simply goods probably followed along in due time, and likely was more or less contemporary with similar processes around language (and may even have been associated). But few even now I would guess would say there was much catness (i.e. reality) about the word cat, beyond the social convention of all of us agreeing to call a particular set of observable experiencable characteristics a cat. MG -Original Message- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: April 21, 2002 9:58 AM To: Michael Gurstein Subject: RE: Reality of money (was RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?) At 08:18 21/04/02 -0400, you wrote: Hmmm Rocks are real, we can stub our toes on them; coins are real, we can choke on them, or throw them at dogs urinating on our lawns (forgive me Bishop Berkeley). Money, like other forms of totem worship is a social convention. MG ... Money has been real for at least 5,000 years, and very probably longer, ever since man traded beyond the confines of his local community. Except for natural disasters like droughts or famines, different forms of money have held their value for very long periods of time (except when government intervenes). If, as it now turns out, you want to reinterpret all known history and all known cultures as having been prey to a social convention and not an economic necessity, then so be it. KH __ Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow _ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _
FW: [extreme] on heterogeneous societies
I knew I saw something about this... M -Original Message- From: Tom Ritchford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: April 13, 2002 12:05 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [extreme] on heterogeneous societies http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/04/rauch.htm modelling societies, mathematically. lots of really interesting ideas in this one.
RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?)
Real money? M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: April 20, 2002 3:46 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?) The discussion about computers is interesting, but what is not realised is that one of the present-day uses of computers is going to be our downfall. At present, the use of computers in the field of finance is producing a world which is as unreal as the computer games that my grandchildren play. Computers have allowed a world of finance to be created in which 49/50ths of all the money in the world is really only created within computers, and doesn't exist at all. When the chips are down -- and it cannot be long delayed -- we will discover that a great deal of it has vanished. And can never be recreated while the present financial regime exists. It will vanish in the developed countries of America, Europe and East Asia in exactly the same way as most of the money in Japan has already vanished. That is, almost all the Japanese banks, as well as their government, as well as most of their major corporations, as well as many ordinary Japanese, are broke. They are more than broke. They all have debts that can never be repaid with the insufficient quantity of real money that's available. Their banks have assets that have only a fraction of the value that they are supposed to have. Japan has been treading water -- indeed, sinking -- for the past 10 years. The rest of the world is not far away from following suit. The amount of money that is being circulated around the world every year is about 50 times the value of goods that are created. Ergo: most of it isn't real money at all. It consists of future options, packaged debts, fictionalised collateral, promises, sophisticated algorithms, hopes and fears dressed up as expert strategies, and what-have-you. One thing is for certain -- it isn't money. The use of computers has allowed the creation of credit which has now ballooned so greatly that it only has a flimsy contact with the everyday world of work and value creation. The world of the Italian Renaissance in which private banks could create credit was pretty risky, but at the end of the day only individual bankers and their own customers suffered. The world of fiat money of the last century in which governments could create credit at will was much riskier, but at the end of the day only the populations of individual countries suffered. The world of computer-created credit which has come into existence in the last decade or two is the riskiest game of all so far. It has now captured all the investment banks of the world and at the end of the day the whole world will suffer. The Finance Ministers of the developed countries are meeting today in America wearing their IMF/World Bank hats. You can bet your life that they will be talking about this unreal (and growing) situation. You can bet your life that they know that all the central banks of the world added together can do nothing to prevent it. But you won't hear about this interesting discussion from the press releases. They won't want to frighten the horses. That's enough from me this morning. My teapot is empty, and I have to walk my dog. Keith Hudson __ Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow _ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _
RE: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?
The Tamagouchi are/were those pocket electronic pets which required attention/feeding/etc. If they didn't get this they died... Sort of robotic pets with a range of pet like behaviours/responses built in... They were a big fad first among Japanese and then NAm pre-teen/early teens for a while. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Lawrence DeBivort Sent: April 20, 2002 12:03 AM To: Michael Gurstein; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost? Greetings, Mike, I am a great fan of Sims programs, but found The Sims pretty weak, in terms of the variety of goals or 'values' that one could program into them. The focus was on material acquisition, and as long as they stayed alive, promotion. i think these weaknesses reflected not any lack of verve on the part of the programmers, but the complexity and dioversity of real life, and the difficulty of capturing that in a model. What is Tamgouchi? Do you recommend taking a look at it? Lawry (Think Tamagouchi and the Sims as primitive examples)...
RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?)
I think I should have written real money? Isn't all money simply a set of conventions wrapped around beliefs in the form of tokens. Credit simply takes that to one further stage of abstraction, and e-money credit only dematerializes this further. We can tie values down and link them to real exchanges and then abstract that up, but talking about real in these terms seems to me to be about as empty and pointless (and fairly dripping with ideological assumptions) as talking about the real nature of humankind. Whoops sorry, that's another discussion. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: April 20, 2002 12:45 PM To: Michael Gurstein Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?) At 10:41 20/04/02 -0400, you wrote: Real money? M No, of course it isn't. Most of the money that's bouncing backwards and forwards around the world, and a very great deal of the money in the accounts of large companies is no more real than the debit balance on your monthly credit card statement. It's yet to be earned. But it's this that has been sustaining the financial world for the last two decades ever since the creation of credit escaped from the central banks. The problem is that it is growing all the time at a far faster rate than real economic growth. Several times faster. Sometime soon the reality curve will cross the credit curve, and then the governments' and banks' coffers will be empty and the economies of the western world will grind to a halt. Just like Japan today. And the central banks will not know what to do. Except, of course, to start all over again with a world currency that's tied down with bands of iron to real economic growth and not cloud-cuckoo land. But that will take at least 10, or 15, or 20 years for politicians to accept -- I guess. K -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: April 20, 2002 3:46 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Computers: our downfall (wasRe: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?) The discussion about computers is interesting, but what is not realised is that one of the present-day uses of computers is going to be our downfall. At present, the use of computers in the field of finance is producing a world which is as unreal as the computer games that my grandchildren play. Computers have allowed a world of finance to be created in which 49/50ths of all the money in the world is really only created within computers, and doesn't exist at all. When the chips are down -- and it cannot be long delayed -- we will discover that a great deal of it has vanished. And can never be recreated while the present financial regime exists. It will vanish in the developed countries of America, Europe and East Asia in exactly the same way as most of the money in Japan has already vanished. That is, almost all the Japanese banks, as well as their government, as well as most of their major corporations, as well as many ordinary Japanese, are broke. They are more than broke. They all have debts that can never be repaid with the insufficient quantity of real money that's available. Their banks have assets that have only a fraction of the value that they are supposed to have. Japan has been treading water -- indeed, sinking -- for the past 10 years. The rest of the world is not far away from following suit. The amount of money that is being circulated around the world every year is about 50 times the value of goods that are created. Ergo: most of it isn't real money at all. It consists of future options, packaged debts, fictionalised collateral, promises, sophisticated algorithms, hopes and fears dressed up as expert strategies, and what-have-you. One thing is for certain -- it isn't money. The use of computers has allowed the creation of credit which has now ballooned so greatly that it only has a flimsy contact with the everyday world of work and value creation. The world of the Italian Renaissance in which private banks could create credit was pretty risky, but at the end of the day only individual bankers and their own customers suffered. The world of fiat money of the last century in which governments could create credit at will was much riskier, but at the end of the day only the populations of individual countries suffered. The world of computer-created credit which has come into existence in the last decade or two is the riskiest game of all so far. It has now captured all the investment banks of the world and at the end of the day the whole world will suffer. The Finance Ministers of the developed countries are meeting today in America wearing their IMF/World Bank hats. You can bet your life that they will be talking about this unreal (and growing) situation. You can bet your life that they know that all the central banks of the world added
RE: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?
I haven't been tracking it very closely, but there is an emerging field of Information Systems studies which is looking at what is being called Artificial Life. In this there is the designing of artificial organisms which live only within computers. They have a variety of the characteristics of real organisms including the capacity to reproduce and so on. It seems that the most recent development in the field is that the organisms are given some of the social characteristics of humans and they are left to see how they organize themselves into communities/societies. (Think Tamagouchi and the Sims as primitive examples)... MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: April 19, 2002 4:03 PM To: Selma Singer; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost? Selma Singer: I find the whole idea of using technological tools to help devise better social structure, very, very exciting. As long as the techology is seen as a TOOL for human purposes, that is. Why would it not be possible to feed a computer the kinds of outcomes one would want to see and what characteristics the behavior would exhibit and have the computer HELP us think about that. I'm not saying the computer would necessarily be able to devise those structures but it very well may be able to help us in our thinking about the strategies we would need to employ, especially in getting from where we are now to where we might want to be. Computers can be helpful but are limited. The are most helpful where cause and effect linkages are known, or even known with considerable imprecission. For example, economists use them to predict the effects of changes in interest rates, the IPCC has used them to predict the consequences of climate change, and environmental scientists can use them to determine the changes in streamflow characterisics and other variables in the case of an impeded waterway. So some specific cause/effect relationships can be modelled and predicted, using computers. However, I don't think you can go beyond that and use computers to predict change in society as a whole or to somehow model positive social change. It's just too complicated, recursive and uncertain, and there is often little agreement on the positives and negatives of change. I'm afraid we'll just have to lurch on with a little support from the microchip, but not very much. Ed Weick
FW: The British Columbia Aboriginal Rights Referendum
This below is the set of questions put out by Elections BC, a non-partisan Office of the Legislature of the Government of British Columbia as a referendum on the principles to guide the province's approach to treaty negotiations with Canada and First Nations in British Columbia. My opinions on the issue of Aboriginal Rights and Treaties are complex and beside the point, however, the complete lack of neutrality in this appalling piece of rubbish is an embarrassment to any professional social scientist (not to speak of anyone who believes in the democratic process!). Concerned citizens in British Columbia are boycotting the referendum or planning to spoil their ballots. I think it would not be untoward for professional social scientists world wide to look to their organizations to pass resolutions disavowing the contempt for democracy and for professional methods of opinion gathering indicated by this effort and condemning the Government of British Columbia for besmirching its democratic traditions in this way. Letters to the Premier and the local newspaper as below might also be useful as indicating that such a complete lack of professionalism and ad herence to the spirit of democracy shames BC before the entire world. Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. NYC and Vancouver BC - - Whereas the Government of British Columbia is committed to negotiating workable, affordable treaty settlements that will provide certainty, finality and equality: Do you agree that the Provincial Government should adopt the following principles to guide its participation in treaty negotiations? 1. Private property should not be expropriated for treaty settlements. Y N 2. The terms and conditions of leases and licenses should be respected; fair compensation for unavoidable disruption of commercial interests should be ensured.Y N 3. Hunting, fishing and recreational opportunities on Crown land should be ensured for all British Columbians. Y N 4. Parks and protected areas should be maintained for the use and benefit of all British Columbians. Y N 5. Province-wide standards of resource management and environmental protection should continue to apply. Y N 6. Aboriginal self-government should have the characteristics of local government, with powers delegated from Canada and British Columbia. Y N 7. Treaties should include mechanisms for harmonizing land use planning between Aboriginal governments and neighbouring local governments. 8. The existing tax exemptions for Aboriginal people should be phased out. Y N (Mark your choice for each statement by marking a X in the Yes or No box beside question 1 to 8.) -- -- Those who wish to comment on the above might want to send emails to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tel. 1-800-661-8683) with copies to: The Premier: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Vancouver Sun (newspaper) letters to the editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.elections.bc.ca/referendum/referendum_main.html http://www.treatyreferendum.ca/principl.htm
RE: Three views of human nature + New question for economists and capitalists
This sounds to me like a very old-fashioned employer/work environment/analysis... The current employer strategy is to attempt to break down work activities in such a way as to contract with the employee to provide certain specified outputs with appropriate levels of quality etc.etc. For this the employer undertakes to pay the employee/contractor (the current buzz term in a lot of areas seems to be Associate--drawn from Walmart) a certain fixed amount. The employer/contractee doesn't care how the contract was fulfilled whether it was in your case done in 2 hours with 6 hours of futzing or in 10 hours of straight work time... MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Brad McCormick, Ed.D. Sent: March 30, 2002 7:17 AM To: Thomas Lunde Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Three views of human nature + New question for economists and capitalists Suppose a worker produces X value at Y cost if the employee does not misuse his or her workstation for personal purposes. Now suppose the same worker produces X+X' value at Y+Y' cost, where Y' is less than X', if the worker mis-uses the workstation for personal purposes during the workday. Which alternative is preferable: The purity of the process of extraction of surplus value (no employee rogue redirection of the means of production), or the maximization of surplus value (where part of the price of achieving this maximum profit is that the employee steal some resources from his or her employer? This is not a hypothetical question. A quality assurance programmer's work, e.g., can be so frustrating and oppressive that the worker really gets more work done in an 8 hour day if the worker spends (say...) 2 hours doing personal things on the Internet (e.g., looking at porn...) and 6 hours doing work tasks, than if the worker does 8 hours of work tasks and 0 time doing personal things. What do you think? \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) ![%THINK;[SGML+APL]] Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Visit my website == http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
FW: Public Accountability
This looks like a great idea, endorsed by some excellent folks. M -Original Message- From: Henry McCandless [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: March 20, 2002 8:06 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Public Accountability Michael Gurstein, I am writing to draw your attention to a published Guide for citizens who are concerned about public accountability in areas of responsibility such as social justice, health, education, information or any other major public-interest area. Garth Graham, consultant in community online, gave me your email address as someone who might be interested in the Guide. The title is A Citizen¹s Guide to Public Accountability: Changing the Relationship Between Citizens and Authorities, authored by Henry E. McCandless and co-published by Trafford Publishing and the Citizens¹ Circle for Accountability (CCA), both of Victoria, BC. The Foreword is by Dr. Ursula Franklin. Wherever citizens can identify important responsibilities that affect the public in important ways (responsibility being the obligation to act), there co-exists the obligation by those with the responsibilities to answer to the public for the discharge of their responsibilities. In other words, they are to explain publicly what they intend, for whom, and why; the performance standards they intend for themselves; what they actually did and what their outcomes were, as the authority sees them; and how they applied the learning to be gained. The Citizen¹s Guide explains what public accountability means and how to exact from authorities the public answering that citizens need but which the authorities don¹t or won¹t provide. A citizen¹s guide is needed because present legislation in all jurisdictions is weak to non-existent in requiring adequate answering from authorities. The Guide sets out general principles of public accountability and a set of reasonable standards for public answering by authorities. These principles and standards are also laid out on the CCA¹s web site, at www.accountabilitycircle.org. In terms of help to citizens, the CCA has several convenors representing accountability expertise in various disciplines. The web site gives a general introduction to public accountability, sets out what citizens are entitled to in public answering, and explains citizen audit as a last-resort strategy when authorities won¹t answer and elected representatives won¹t make them answer. The CCA web site also launches the Journal of Public Accountability as a forum for the exchange of ideas on accountability and as a means of raising and dealing with important accountability issues emerging after September 2001, the cut-off for the text of the published Guide. I hope this is useful to you, and that you might forward this note to interested others. sincerely, Henry McCandless
FW: [ffdngocaucus] NYTimes.com Article: Missing James Tobin
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: March 12, 2002 1:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ffdngocaucus] NYTimes.com Article: Missing James Tobin This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tobin's death will create more public debate on the Currency Transaction Tax idea, not all of it positive. Note Paul Krugman's assessment of Tobin's reaction to debate on his idea from today's New York Times... Someone from the CTT group may want to respond to the Times on this point. Peter O'Driscoll Center of Concern [EMAIL PROTECTED] / advertisement ---\ Presenting the reloadable Starbucks Card. The Starbucks Card is reloadable from $5 - $500. Fill it up. Use it. Use it. Then, fill it up again. https://www.starbucks.com/shop/reload.asp?ci=672 \--/ Missing James Tobin March 12, 2002 By PAUL KRUGMAN James Tobin - Yale professor, Nobel laureate and adviser to John F. Kennedy - died yesterday. He was a great economist and a remarkably good man; his passing seems to me to symbolize the passing of an era, one in which economic debate was both nicer and a lot more honest than it is today. Mr. Tobin was one of those economic theorists whose influence reaches so far that many people who have never heard of him are nonetheless his disciples. He was also, however, a public figure, for a time the most prominent advocate of an ideology we might call free-market Keynesianism - a belief that markets are fine things, but that they work best if the government stands ready to limit their excesses. In a way, Mr. Tobin was the original New Democrat; it's ironic that some of his essentially moderate ideas have lately been hijacked by extremists right and left. Mr. Tobin was one of the economists who brought the Keynesian revolution to America. Before that revolution, there seemed to be no middle ground in economics between laissez- faire fatalism and heavy-handed government intervention - and with laissez-faire policies widely blamed for the Great Depression, it was hard to see how free-market economics could survive. John Maynard Keynes changed all that: with judicious use of monetary and fiscal policy, he suggested, a free-market system could avoid future depressions. What did James Tobin add? Basically, he took the crude, mechanistic Keynesianism prevalent in the 1940's and transformed it into a far more sophisticated doctrine, one that focused on the tradeoffs investors make as they balance risk, return and liquidity. In the 1960's Mr. Tobin's sophisticated Keynesianism made him the best-known intellectual opponent of Milton Friedman, then the advocate of a rival (and rather naïve) doctrine known as monetarism. For what it's worth, Mr. Friedman's insistence that changes in the money supply explain all of the economy's ups and downs has not stood the test of time; Mr. Tobin's focus on asset prices as the driving force behind economic fluctuations has never looked better. (Mr. Friedman is himself a great economist - but his reputation now rests on other work.) But Mr. Tobin is probably best known today for two policy ideas, both of which have been hijacked - his own word - by people whose political views he did not share. First, Mr. Tobin was the intellectual force behind the Kennedy tax cut, which started the boom of the 1960's. The irony is that nowadays that tax cut is usually praised by hard-line conservatives, who regard such cuts as an elixir for whatever ails you. Mr. Tobin did not agree. In fact I was on a panel with him just last week, where he argued strongly that the current situation called for more domestic spending, not more tax cuts. Second, back in 1972 Mr. Tobin proposed that governments levy a small tax on foreign exchange transactions, as a way to discourage destabilizing speculation. He thought of this tax as a way to help promote free trade, by assuring countries that they could open their markets without exposing themselves to disruptive movements of hot money. Again, irony: the Tobin tax has become a favorite of hard-line opponents of free trade, especially the French group Attac. As Mr. Tobin declared, the loudest applause is coming from the wrong side. Why do I feel that Mr. Tobin's passing marks the end of an era? Consider that Kennedy Council of Economic Advisers, the most remarkable collection of economic talent to serve the U.S. government since Alexander Hamilton pondered alone. Mr. Tobin, incredibly, was only one of three future Nobelists then working at the council. Would such a group be possible today? I doubt it. When Mr. Tobin went to Washington, top economists weren't subject to strict political litmus tests - and it would never have occurred to them that the job description included saying things that were manifestly untrue. Need I say more? Yesterday I spoke with
RE: (Long) Beyond the Digital Divide: Enabling the Community withInformation and Communications Technologies
Thomas, you don't ask easy ones do you... I've been thinking a lot about this question for a number of years and there is an on-going discussion around these issues on the Community Informatics list [EMAIL PROTECTED] that I host... I don't think the issue is binary (either/or) in any direction--either community/no-community; nor physical community/virtual community. Rather I think, that each of us lives in multiple communities of greater or lesser levels of intensity/integration. I also think though, that some people live much more actively in their physical communities than in virtual communities (poorer people, older people, people in rural villages, people in less developed countries) while some people live more or less totally in virtual communities or communities of interest/practice (upscale urban dwellers and the like for example). Also, I think we turn naturally to our physical communities (including our families) when we have them, for certain things and particularly in times of need or times of crisis. Community based strategies supportive of technology use/application in this regard then are primarily of interest to those more involved with their physical communities and similarly responses (or non-responses) to the Digital Divide issues reasonably are directed towards enabling access through physical communities, the assumption being that the more mobile and those with few ties to a physical community will already have the resources to provide themselves with technology access. Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Thomas Lunde Sent: March 9, 2002 1:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: (Long) Beyond the Digital Divide: Enabling the Community withInformation and Communications Technologies Hi Michael: In the spirit of communication that you are requesting and totally acknowledging that this is not an area I have thought much on, let me babble for a moment. Communities historically were limited by foot distance, horse distance and when the mail and telegrapgh came along they did not extend communities. However, the party line telephone that I grew up with on the praries did bring communities together. We eavesdropped, we knew each others rings and we had people as operators who dispensed information and sometimes gossip. Communities were enlarged. Radio and TV did not help communities, nor did the dial phone, the touch phone, or the cell phone. What the phone technolgy gives us access to know is our community of personal interest - which may or may not have a community component. the Internet does the same thing. FW is a community I belong to that discusses things of personal interest to me. So, the problem is not that I don't have a community, but that I don't have a community based on a shared physical local. Now even in the small mountian community I live in, it is very hard to see the community. True, there is a General Store that we all use and over time I get on nodding acquaintences with a number of people but little or no indepth involvement - as in knowing your family, what you do for a living, what your character is, are you a trader, a loaner, a churchman and all those other nuiances that made a distinct community. It's even worse in most cities. So, perhaps I might ask you the question, 'Are communities as obsolete as blacksmith shops? and have we moved to a more sophisticated type of communtity based on interest rather than local? Anyway, those are my thoughts. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde on 2/24/02 10:06 AM, Michael Gurstein at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: WARNING: THIS IS LONG I thought there might be an interest in this talk that I've been giving in various forms around the US for the last couple of months (School of Planning at UCLA, Kennedy School at Harvard, UN Conference on the Aged). I'm interested in comments or disputes as it is a (research/policy) theme that I and I would hope others will likely be pursuing in other formats over the next while. All the best, MG -- Beyond the Digital Divide: Enabling the Community with Information and Communications Technologies Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. (Visiting) Professor: School of Management New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ive been asked to speak today about Community Networking and Information and Communications technologies and at the same time Im thinking about one of the classes that Im teaching on the Digital Firm. Recently in my class we had a discussion on one of the most digital of contemporary digital firmsa pharmaceutical firm that has put its vast resources behind becoming the most digitally enabled pharmaceutical firm in the world and it has done so. It is now possible in the US to order a prescription via a web-site and to have that prescription instantaneously and robotically
FW: [ffdngocaucus] Dakar, Senegal Greens Conference begins March 6th - program
Since Georgism (?) seems to be a continuing theme on this list, this may be of interest... M -Original Message- From: Alanna Hartzok [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: March 3, 2002 12:16 PM To: TOES; Financing for Development Subject: [ffdngocaucus] Dakar, Senegal Greens Conference begins March 6th - program Hello TOES and FfD Friends, Thought some of you might be interested to know about this. Annie Goeke and I take off for Senegal March 5th and return March 19. We were asked to organize Democracy, Earth Rights and Ecotaxes educational seminar which theme relates directly to the worldwide discussions on Financing for Development. The first portion of this email describes the *economics for sustainable development* component of the conference (with speakers bios included), and below that is the complete schedule for the African Confederation of Green Parties conference. Both these items are attached as well. Blessings all, Alanna Hartzok, Director Earth Rights Institute United Nations NGO Representative Box 328, Scotland, PA 17254 USA Phone: 717-264-0957 Fax: 717-264-5036 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.earthrights.net *** Democracy, Earth Rights and Ecotaxes A Georgist Seminar in Dakar, Senegal preceding the Confederation of African Green Parties meeting. Thursday, March 7 3:00 p.m.- 5:45 p.m. GREEN POLITICS AND THE ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - Anne Goeke (USA) DEMOCRACY, EARTH RIGHTS AND TAXATION POLICY -Alanna Hartzok (USA) TOWARDS A NEW POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE FOR AFRICA - Sunny Akuopha (Mali) THE CHALLENGES OF DEMOCRACY AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - Gordon Abiama (Nigeria) 6:00 - 8:00 PM Discussion on the theme of Democracy and Earth Rights and Tax Policy. Questions and responses to the speakers. Time for participants to describe the situation in their own countries. Friday, 8th March 7:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC FINANCE POLICY - Dr. Papa Meissa Dieng (Senegal) FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT AND DEBT CANCELLATION - David Ugolor (Nigeria) CONNECTING THE WEALTH GAP PROBLEM WITH LAND TENURE, TAXATION, AND MONETARY POLICY AS FRAMEWORK FOR THE ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOMENT - Panel Discussion: Sunny Akuopha, Gordon Abiama, Papa Meissa Dieng, David Ugolor, Alanna Hartzok Friday, 8th March 11:00 am - 1:00 pm BRAINSTORMING AND STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR HOW WE CAN BUILD AN ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN OUR OWN COUNTRIES AND AS A GREEN MOVEMENT - an open mike session for all conference participant Democracy, Earth Rights and Ecotaxes Nations throughout the world are defining resource control - access to oil, timber, minerals and water - as essential to their national security. Currently, worldwide ownership of land and natural resources is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals or corporations. Without an ethical basis for sharing these resources, their control is most often determined by military power. Democracy must now be extended to include the democratic equal right of all to the land and resources of the earth. Policies based on this right can be put in place from the local to the global levels. Practical models are already in place. We can build on what works. The emerging Green or Ecotax movement provides guidelines for financing development based on the threefold bottom line: (1) social and economic justice (2) environmental protection and restoration and (3) strong and sustainable economy. This seminar will be devoted to the several aspects of the theme: Democracy, Earth Rights, and Ecotaxes. TOWARDS A NEW POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE FOR AFRICA - Sunny Akuopha (Mali) An overview of past and present problems in Africa concerning land rights and democracy, outlines a new form of government finance based on shifting taxes away from the labor of workers and onto land and resource rents and royalties and describes the importance of this reform for a new political, social and economic structure for African countries. THE CHALLENGES OF DEMOCRACY AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - Gordon Abiama (Nigeria) An exploration of the wealth distribution problem in Africa, reasons for the gross resource mismanagement by African leaders, impediments against enthroning equity in our democratic mandates. how to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor and possible strategies towards achieving this goal. A particular focus will be the Alaska Permanent Fund as a model of oil and mineral resource royalty distritribution that could be replicated in Africa. FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT AND DEBT CANCELLATION - David Ugolor (Nigeria) The Africa Debt Campaign and the UN Financing for Development proceedings. Linking with other initiatives like the Africa Social Forum, G-8 Summit In Canada and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
RE: Even nationalised circuses! (Re: Loss of the middle class)
Hi Ray, I have it from an uncontrovertible source (an Air Canada in-flight mag of about 5 years ago) that it started from an employment support program grant given to a group of Quebec street performers (buskers). I understand that at some point the principle met someone from the Russian Circus and that was the beginning of their professionalization. But I would guess there are people on the list who know much more about this than I. M -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: February 25, 2002 5:35 PM To: Michael Gurstein; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca Subject: Re: Even nationalised circuses! (Re: Loss of the middle class) Hi Mike, I would never cross a Canadian on this. I was told at the audition that the two people who started the troupe were Russian. Is that incorrect? There also were a lot of Russian and Ukranian performers auditioning at the time.And a very large percentage of the Big Apple Circus performers came from the old Soviet System as well. Although there was goodly number from Mexico, and the contortionists are trained in the State System in China.It seemed indicative of what China is doing to exist in this world. If I see one more goose stepping military tape from China and North Korea again I will vomit.It reminds me of the fat Russian women propaganda tape they used to show before the Soviet System changed.Now I go to parties with the most beautiful women you could imagine with some wearing costumes that show that they were not raised with the kind of guilt that we in the West are accustomed to. All that aside, Montreal and Canada deserves credit for supporting and nurturing such a wonderful world class troupe.We let Martha Graham's company die here when she was trying to get some kind of national designation for this major American contribution to world dance. It has been heartbreaking to see Graham's body of work as well as the educational system slowly disappear. Well some Capitalist had a bargain on the school and built a new building on the site. The Muse Tree in the garden was cut down. In the end the world will forget him and remember that we didn't care. The Canadians are way ahead of us on so much of this.Only in NYCity is America represented well with Lincoln Center and the cultural jewels.NY has so many museums that a mayor not long ago, let two major ones leave the city.Of course one was the Heye Foundation Museum of the American Indian.It went to Washington and became the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian. Oh yes, the middle class.Well, that article is old news for all but the politicians.It was beginning to change in the decade of the 1990s but it never quite got there.The middle class is docile and frightened. It will take a lot more before they become radicalized enough to do anything about it. But when they do, remember the anger at 9/11. There is a latent streak of violence in America that I don't believe most people understand.It is not smart to poke a sleaping Jaguar. Ray - Original Message - From: Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ray Evans Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 4:46 PM Subject: RE: Even nationalised circuses! (Re: Loss of the middle class) A minor correction...in fact but not in theory...Le Cirque began, I believe, with some grant funds from the Canadian Government to a group of Quebecois street performers. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: February 25, 2002 4:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Even nationalised circuses! (Re: Loss of the middle class) Keith Although at the opposite ends of the political spectrum in name until recently, both Argentina and Soviet Russia had the distinction of having nationalised circuses! Yes that is the reason you have the Cirque du Soleil. They were trained in the state system of the old Soviet Union. They know an empty field when they see one and they have the skills to develop and that is what the difference is.The East trained people and the West consumed.Now there is a problem for the West. They don't know how to do and they will not have the money to consume so we will find that the Cold War is still on and they won it by declaring defeat and taking over our own systems. Brilliant! (with a cynical snear) Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: (Long) Beyond the Digital Divide: Enabling the Community with Information and Communications Technologies
WARNING: THIS IS LONG I thought there might be an interest in this talk that I've been giving in various forms around the US for the last couple of months (School of Planning at UCLA, Kennedy School at Harvard, UN Conference on the Aged). I'm interested in comments or disputes as it is a (research/policy) theme that I and I would hope others will likely be pursuing in other formats over the next while. All the best, MG -- Beyond the Digital Divide: Enabling the Community with Information and Communications Technologies Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. (Visiting) Professor: School of Management New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ive been asked to speak today about Community Networking and Information and Communications technologies and at the same time Im thinking about one of the classes that Im teaching on the Digital Firm. Recently in my class we had a discussion on one of the most digital of contemporary digital firmsa pharmaceutical firm that has put its vast resources behind becoming the most digitally enabled pharmaceutical firm in the world and it has done so. It is now possible in the US to order a prescription via a web-site and to have that prescription instantaneously and robotically dispensed and mailed thousands of miles away without any direct human intervention. This firm is dispensing 8000 prescriptions an hour as compared to the average 8000 prescriptions a week for a more typical pharmacy. The discussion around this firm reminded me of my uncle who had a small independent pharmacy in a small city on the Canadian prairies. He would have filled perhaps 8000 prescriptions a month. But more than filling prescriptions, in the days before Medicare, he was the only medical person most in that farming community ever saw. He dispensed medicines certainly, but he also prescribed for a lot of the minor aches and pains, and probably most important, he provided comfort and re-assurance to otherwise fearful people without the resources to seek out and pay for medical expertise. My guess, is that if my uncle were alive today, his very small pharmacy would not have been able to survive. There might now be in that small town, one or perhaps two pharmacies in the malls run by corporate interests, and his would have been one of those thousands of small pharmacies that would have been put out of business as uncompetitive by the mega-digital-on-line ICT enabled pharmacy I mentioned earlier. And with him would have gone the comfort and ministering to the minor complaints and his contribution to the life and well-being and caring of that small community. With his going and the going of his equivalents in the schools, the lawyers offices, the hospitals, the insurance offices and so onunable to compete with the digitally enabled enterpriseswould be going a lot of the caring in those small communities and particularly for those less mobile, less able to jump in the car and travel the 40 miles to the next pharmacy and for those more dependent on the local community for their social and often physical well-being. The word seems to be coming down from Washington these days to be fairly quickly followed one would expect by the word from Ottawa and Brussels and even from in this (UN) building that its time to declare victory in the war on the Digital Divide and find new targets for our public policy discussions and interventions. The folks who are saying this are looking at statistics in this country the US, that are showing that well over half of all households have access to the Net, that the proportion of minorities and low income people who have access to the Net is increasing overall and that the cost of Net access including the cost of the computer to enable the access seems to have come down to a level affordable by most. Parallel developments are I suspect happening in many other parts of the world. Also there is in the US numbers that are showing a rising numbers of minority and lower income populations using the Net have relieved some of the early anxiety that existing social inequalities would be aggravated in this new and rapidly expanding sphere. Meanwhile the DotCom debacle has diluted efforts to extend the seemingly magical wealth creating capability of Internet-enabled commerce to social as well as business goals. Public authorities are being urged to relax and let the market continue what appears to be the inexorable drive to more or less universal Internet access (with all those wanting access having access). Thus there is no need for funding for development of local technology projects or for what is called in the US, Community Technology Centres and which in other countries would be called Telecentres, Telekiosks, Telepublicos and so on. In light of this, the broad public discussion and policy commitment in support of the public use of Information and Communications
FW: [ffdngocaucus] fwd German Ministry for Development supports a Tobin Tax
-Original Message- From: Robert Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: February 21, 2002 11:25 AM To: Small FfD NGO Caucus Subject: [ffdngocaucus] fwd German Ministry for Development supports a Tobin Tax From: Peter Waldow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: World Economy, Ecology and Development www.weedbonn.org Study of German Ministry for Development: Tobin Tax is feasible Globalisation Critics Score Success Bonn, 20/2/2002 This success is very encouraging, says Peter Wahl, expert on Finance Markets of the German NGO WEED (World Economy, Ecology and Development) and of ATTAC Germany. The study refutes the main objections raised against a Tobin Tax and shows the feasibility of such a tax. Now it is not any longer if but how to introduce it. German Development Minister Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul introduced the study, written by Paul B. Spahn, a Finance Economist formerly working for the IMF, yesterday at a conference in Berlin. The study suggests - beyond the Tobin Tax - that transition-, emerging and development countries as well as industrialized countries outside the big currency zones should be enabled to raise an additional tax. Such an automatical adaption of the tax will prevent speculative bubbles and attacks The study also points out that it is not necessary for all countries to participate in order to introduce a Tobin Tax. It can be imposed by single OECD counries or - even better - within a group of countries, for example in the EU, Spahn explains. The international movement against corporate driven globalization will gain enormous momentum from the findings of the study, says Wahl Now it is important that the EU will take the first steps. We call on the German Government to take the initiative. Especially the German-French Working Group installed by Schroeder and Jospin should take the opportunity and push the Tax in the Euro zone. A detailed comment of the study will be published by WEED in the next days. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/ACHqaB/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
FW: Selection Effects versus Treatment Effects
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bill Caughey Sent: February 17, 2002 11:56 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Selection Effects versus Treatment Effects TOCFolks, A week from tomorrow, Monday the 25th. I'm going to start a self contained special day class (SDC) special education class with a dozen 9th and 10th grade students. The students in the class are being hand picked because they cannot even function in our lower classes and need more specialized instruction and a lower student to teacher ration. Some of these kids are barely reading, and at least one does not know the alphabet in either English or his native language, Spanish. I have always been fascinated by the idea of the selection effect versus the treatment effect and wonder if it might work in an environment like this. What if I tell the children that they have been hand picked to test an idea about education where the the education itself is more important than the abilities of the students. What if we immediately begin to work at a higher level and gently push/pull the children along at that same higher rate? What if we can convince them that they can do normal or advanced work is long is it is presented better? What would/will happen? I don't know either, I don't have a clue, but what I do know is that the expectations for this class are so very low that no one's going to pay any attention to what we do as long is I don't have classroom management problems that require help from the office. In other words when I close the classroom door I'm pretty much on my own unless I have severe disciplen problems. These kids are those who out of sight is out of mind is the order of the day. I'm going to try and see what happens if I gently raise the bar while simultaneously raising expectations as well. I have no idea whatsoever how to really do this, and no idea what the outcomes will be, but the idea of just following the status quo really bothers me. Any comments, suggestions, warnings, caveats, resources and/or prayers would be greatly appreciated, as I know we'll need all of' the help you can provide. Blessings, -b- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/magazine/17WWLN.html?page wanted=print February 17, 2002 Nothing Personal By BRUCE HEADLAM Can anybody get into Harvard? If you're one of the thousands of students who have just completed the grueling college admissions process and are awaiting the results from selective universities, the answer is no, of course. But if you have been to the movies in the past few months, you might think anyone could. In ''Legally Blonde,'' Reese Witherspoon plays a ditzy sorority girl who lands at Harvard Law School thanks to a video resume with generous footage of her in a bikini; in ''How High,'' Method Man and Redman play two small-time pot dealers who light up Cambridge; and in ''Orange County,'' a West Coast variation on the theme, a Stanford reject shows up on campus to plead his case. In their own ways, the films provoke a much more interesting question: can anybody succeed at Harvard? In other words, what if what it takes to get into an elite college and what it takes to prosper there are two entirely separate things? The only way to truly test the admissions process would be to accept enough homecoming queens and homeboys to make a meaningful comparison. And not many schools are willing to take that risk. But it has happened. In 1979, the University of Texas Medical School selected 150 first-year students from a pool of 800 interviewees. The State Legislature then mandated that the class size be increased by 50 students, who had to be pulled from the bottom of the original pool. The initially rejected students came in with inferior marks, poorer test scores and lower personal evaluations. Yet at every measurable step during their medical education, from term marks to residency, their performance as a group was indistinguishable not just from the rest of their peers but also from the top 50 students in the class. What the Texas case illustrates is the distinction between what social psychologists call selection effects and treatment effects. It wasn't the students' qualifications (the selection effect) that determined performance; it was the four years spent in the classroom (the treatment effect) that was transcendent. In other words, the
RE: Being treated with contempt
I don't know about standards in the hard sciences and math but I think the issue of standards overall is quite misplaced. Standards at least as presented below or by the back to the basics crew refers to a highly individualized approach to knowledge and learning. In fact, most current approaches and particularly those that are linked into broad concerns for national innovation and productivity are recognizing that knowledge and learning are highly contextual and even more so when they are looked at in relation to their application rather than their inculcation. Nobody (well almost nobody) learns alone (just as nobody works alone or innovates alone) and those who do are generally understood to suffer the consequences. Knowledge is in its essence collaborative (the creation/re-creation of meaning) so to attempt to impose highly individualized standards as operationalized in formal tests makes about as much sense as attempting to hold back the dikes of plagiarism now that we have a Google (whoops that's another but overlapping set of Canutes)... Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: February 13, 2002 7:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Being treated with contempt It is a paradox that the developed countries, with increasing needs for doctors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians and suchlike, are increasingly less able to supply them in sufficient numbers as the years go by. That's why several countries, particularly America and England (but also France and Germany, and perhaps Canada for all I know), are having to import increasing numbers of these valuable specialists from abroad, usually from less developed countries -- which, of course, become even more deprived of the skilled human resources they badly need for themselves. At the same time, governments in developed countries are pretending that they themselves are increasing the supply of specialists from their own education systems. To help persuade more schoolchildren to move away from arts and general subjects, exam boards in those countries have been steadily reducing the difficulty of the science examinations needed for university entrance. A corollary of this is that examination results have seemed to have improved steadily over the years -- attributed to higher quality teaching. Anybody like me who dares to say that the standards have, in fact, declined enormously over their lifetimes are jumped on from a great height by teaching unions, politicians, exam boards and others who are professionally involved in the business. Indeed (as will be seen below), the educational professionals say we are to be treated with contempt There's a huge amount of spin involved here. I reckon that for every critical article that appears in a newspaper then at least four or five times more exposure is given to presentations which suggest that all is going swimmingly. This reassuring news is all too readily accepted by large numbers of school teachers, children and their parents. Of course, the grounds for saying that standards are improving are never tested scientifically. However, in his own modest way, one university physics lecturer has done so in this country and some FWers might be interested in an article of his which appeared in today's Daily Telegraph: FIGURES THAT JUST DON'T ADD UP David Milstead As a lecturer in physics, I know there is no such thing as a paradox -- only apparent paradoxes that can always be explained by a careful examination of the whole problem. Applying this philosophy, we tackled an educational paradox within our department. How is it that incoming undergraduates have better qualifications but seem to know less than in previous years? A[dvanced]-level pass rates in physics and maths have risen almost continuously for more than a decade. Teachers' unions and the Government attribute this to improved teaching and more assiduous pupils. Reports from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (CQA), the quango that monitors school examinations, deny any dumbing down. Such reassurances sit uneasily with the support maths courses that now feature in most physics and engineering degrees. Degrees have also had to be extended to four years to cope with ill-prepared students and maintain academic standards. We investigated whether a less demanding physics A-level could be responsible for any of this. The QCA check standards of examinations by asking professionals to make judgements on question difficulty. We chose a much less subjective approach and set our undergraduates special tests. We also analysed the changing mathematical content of the questions. The usual smikescreen put up by the CQA is to complain that syllabus changes make a comparison over time difficult. Developments have taken place in physics in recent years that are now rightly in the A-level syllabus. However, these are largely peripheral, and the bulk of the subject
RE: Anger in politics
Hi Ray Wars seem to me to be very seldom about "anger" and normally about Statecraft i.e.National Interest. In fact, most effectiveStates look to manage and use (popular) anger as one ofits resources forthe conduct of Statecraft. So unless, I'm misunderstanding yourquestion or your reading of my original rathersimple (simplistic?)observation the answer isNo,"anger" follows one track inthe public sphere, while "war" follow a different track. M -Original Message-From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: February 7, 2002 1:03 AMTo: Michael Gurstein; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. CaSubject: Re: Anger in politics Hi Mike, Is this an argument for wars? Ray - Original Message - From: Michael Gurstein To: Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 10:25 PM Subject: FW: Anger in politics Hi Gail, A brief reply to a very provocative note... At the bottom, I have the feeling that all politics is about "interests"--corporate, community, collective, personal--however you want to slice or dice it. When "interests" are threatened no matter by whom or to what end, people get angry so the issue is not the anger but the interests. I also have the feeling that some of the edges of the grand conflicts of our time, which were mitigated by the broad sweep of social democracy/social welfarism and the rising post WWII tide, have now begun for a variety of reasons (being explored by FW for example) to shift back to their more normal state of being raw and occasionally bloody. The anger is a symptom of folks who are hurting and who feel rather let down that the social consensus which used to prevail and which they were more or less comfortable with, no longer holds and so we have the kind of thing quoted by Ed and the responses to Harris in Ontario. MG -Original Message-From: G. Stewart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: February 6, 2002 9:39 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Anger in politics Ed, Mike, Keith, Having already a sufficient number of lines in the water on FW I don't want to add another or would be sending you this question on-list. (If, in response, you have a comment you'd like to put on-list, please don't hesitate. It's not a private question.) Edwrote: "what his government is doing is driven by a punitive and destructive ideology" (re Gordon Campbell in B.C.)and I had recently had occasion to note on FW the "anger" with which the Harris government in Ontario had come into office and behaved. The issue of "anger" in politics is coming to seem to me the source of more problems than ideology per se. Our political processes seem to legitimate and perhaps even foster anger -- the release of distaste, dislike and disrespect rather than the surge of empathy, compassion or thoughtfulness. The larger ties-that-bind seem to get lost. I find it increasingly frightening, likely to invite the growth of serious civil discontent and especially unfortunatein an age when so many issues concern the "commons." Does it point, doyou think,toa need to strengthening the integrative processes and temper the partisan or are such antipathetic emotions healthy, maybe even essential outlets, in a body politic? Democracies use the adversarial system deliberately and to good effect (e.g., parliaments and courts, the "balancing of powers" in the US, etc.) butby taking for granted thatit is legitimate forleaders to govern"punitively and destructively"itsometimes seems to mewe risk corroding the foundations of democratic politics that lie in fellow-feeling. Such leaders lose their capacity to represent "all the people" thus threatening the legitimacy of government itself. B.C. seems to me to verge on this from time to time. Were it a country and not "merely" a province, safe within the arms of a larger federation, I suspect it might be in difficulty in a system of government that requires the consent of the governed to make it work. Perhapsall this is soself-evident as not to be worth mentioning but sometimes the necessary foundations of a situation becomeweakened through being taken so for granted they are not articulated? Your wisdom on this, gentlemen? Regards, Gail Gail Stewart[EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: toc Barbie Loves Math (Maureen Dowd - The NY Times)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Brant Sent: February 6, 2002 1:44 AM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: toc Barbie Loves Math (Maureen Dowd - The NY Times) Maureen Dowd's really on to something, when she says - Some men suggest that women, with their vast experience with male blarney, are experts at calling guys on it. At Enron, it was men who came up with complex scams showing there was no limit to the question How much is enough? And it was women who raised the simple question, Why? - Steve Brant - The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/06/opinion/06DOWD.html?ex=1013977208ei=1en= 6f3f0b1198a0a1bb -- Barbie Loves Math February 6, 2002 By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON Hollywood is trying to figure out how to turn Enron into a TV movie. How do they take all the stuff about the contingent nature of existing restricted forward contracts and share-settled costless collar arrangements, jettison it like the math in A Beautiful Mind, and juice it up? Enron is such a mind-numbing black hole, even for financial analysts, that if you tried to explain all the perfidious permutations, you'd never come out the other end. A movie executive asked Lowell Bergman, the former 60 Minutes producer who is now an investigative reporter for The Times and Frontline, for the most cinematic way to frame the story. (Mr. Bergman had the ultimate Hollywood experience of being played by Al Pacino in another corporate greed-and-corruption saga, The Insider.) It's about the women up against the men, he replied. Before you know it, Enron will be Erined, as in Brockovich. Texas good ol' girl, fast-talking, salt-of-the-earth whistle-blower Sherron Watkins will be Renee Zellweger in a Shoshanna Lonstein bustier. The adorable and intrepid Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, the first journalist to sound an alarm about Enron's accounting practices, will be look-alike Alicia Silverstone. And Loretta Lynch, the tough California utilities czarina and Yale-trained litigator who questioned a year ago what Enron did that was of any value to consumers, will be look- nothing-alike Angelina Jolie, sporting power plant tattoos. From the beginning of the California energy meltdown, women were not afraid to point a finger at the seventh-largest corporation in the U.S. and say `You can't do this,' Mr. Bergman told me. And the electric cowboys at Enron, where the culture had a take-no-prisoners, get-rid-of- any-regulation, macho perspective on the marketplace, was aggressive when it came to shutting them up. As a Texas writer says: This was Jeff Skilling's club and there weren't a lot of women in his club. At first, the slicked-back Gordon Gekko C.E.O. and his arrogant coterie in the Houston skyscraper - where men were wont to mess around and leave wives for secretaries - dismissed female critics. Some privately trashed Ms. Lynch as an idiot and coveted Ms. McLean, calling her a looker who doesn't know anything. But when they realized the women were on to them, the company that intimidated competitors, suppliers and utilities tried to oust Ms. Lynch from her job and discredit Ms. McLean and kill her article. When Ms. Watkins confronted Kenneth Lay with her fears last August, he knew the cat was spilling out of the beans, as Carmen Miranda used to say. Within two months he had to 'fess up to $600 million in spurious profits. (In Houston's testosterone-fueled energy circles, many men watched Linda Lay crying on TV and muttered that in Texas, there is nothing lower than sending your wife out to fight your battle.) As a feminine fillip, there's Maureen Castaneda, a former Enron executive who revealed the shredding shindigs there. Ms. Castaneda realized something was wrong when she took some shreds home to use as packing material and saw they were marked with the galactic names Chewco and Jedi, which turned out to be quasi-legal partnerships. Only 10 years after Mattel put out Teen Talk Barbie whining Math class is tough, we have women unearthing the Rosetta stone of this indecipherable scandal. What does this gender schism mean? That men care more about inflating their assets? That women are more caring about colleagues getting shafted? It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them, come out of the night like a missile and destroy a man, as Alan Simpson said during the Hill-Thomas hearings. There has been speculation that women are more likely to be whistleblowers - or tattletales when they are little - because they are less likely to be members of the club. Some men suggest that women, with their vast experience with male blarney, are experts at calling guys on it. At Enron, it was men who came up with complex scams showing there was no limit to the question How much is enough? And it was
RE: British Columbia (was Re: Economics)
As always, eternal verities, except for dog walks and pots of tea, rather disappear the closer you get to them. Campbell didn't so much win the BC election (the Liberals lost the previous BC election largely because of fear and loathing for Campbell personally) rather, the NDP (mild Social Democrats) imploded after 8 years, with a completely discredited Premier (under charges for corruption), an exhausted and demoralized set of MLA's, and a party which had completely run out of ideas and energy. Keith's dog running for AB-NDP (Anything But the NDP) would have won in a similar landslide. What's interesting of course, is that a similar implosion destroyed the previous right wing Government (complete with Premier under charges for corruption) 8 years hence. The lurches from right to left to right are a (sad) characteristic of BC politics and are a source of appalled amazement to many (most) BC taxpayers, and in the current instance are causing very serious concern in all political camps in the Province. (Campbell's approval rating is currently roughly half what it was six months ago at the time of the election.) Certainly BC isn't doing all that well economically at the moment, but what is happening there has a lot more to do with ideology (and some are arguing, Campbell's personal socio-pathologies) than with a reasoned response to specific circumstances--which I take it was Ed's earlier point. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: February 6, 2002 3:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: British Columbia (was Re: Economics) Hi Ed, I read the item in The Economist that you refer to below and the decisions of Gordon Campbell and the Liberals in British Columbia do indeed seem drastic. However, in this fast-changing world, impelled as it is with accelerating innovations and their economic consequences, remedial actions by governments in trouble need to be swift also. This is particularly necessary when a new government is elected with (in your words) a huge majority, (in The Economist's words) a landslide victory. Medium-term solutions, much beloved and publicised by our own dear ex-Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, will no longer do -- as Greenspan has acknowledged in his decisions in the last 15 months or so. Lack of quick decisions (that is, with quick results), as evidenced in Japan and Argentina, carry the danger of not only accelerating the problem but also of bringing about deep demoralisation of the electorate. Middle-class Argentinians are already taking to the streets and I don't think it won't be long before the Japanese will, too. What puzzles me is why your comments should have been triggered by the quote of Keynes to Hayek (below). When Keynes was saying that some politicians want planning in order to serve the devil, he was agreeing with Hayek's apprehensions that the Labour Party in England might bring in a sufficient level of planning which would then bring about the sort of totalitarian society that was taking place in Stalin's Soviet Russia. I don't understand why this should have triggered your characterisation of Gordon Campbell's cut, slash and burn policies as not planning. They sound like de-planning to me, or perhaps de-over-planning. Keith (Keynes writing to Hayek) I should...conclude rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say we almost certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe enough if those carrying it out are rightly oriented in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue.This is in fact already true of some of them. But the curse is that there is also an important section who could be said to want planning not in order to enjoy its fruits, but because morally they hold ideas exactly the opposite of yours and wish to serve not God but the devil. (EW) To that I would say Amen! We have a situation in one of our provinces, British Columbia, in which a new government, imbued with neo-liberal righteousness, took power with a huge majority last year. With nothing one could identify as planning, they have proceeded to cut, slash and burn. Naturally, they want to balance the budget immediately, despite initiating a huge tax cut. To accomplish this, they have cut services to the poor and elderly, proceeded to lay off 11,000 public servants, torn up contracts with teachers and health administrators, decimated their courts, jails and highway maintenance systems, and generally behaved like madmen with axes in their hands and blindfolds over their eyes. Their mantra: Gumint is bad; free enterpise is good. (See page 33 of the Feb 2 Economist for more on this.)
FW: FCC to Auction Definite, Indefinite Articles
More from the inimitable Bruce Sterling... The future according to the later Hayek and early Keynes (or do I have that back to front... M -Original Message- From: futurefeedforward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: February 5, 2002 2:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FCC to Auction Definite, Indefinite Articles FCC to Auction Definite, Indefinite Articles WASHINGTON--In a bid to foster innovation and encourage the efficient use of public resources, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday plans to auction exclusive rights to the use of the English definite and indefinite articles. For a number of years the Commission has been studying the possibility of enhancing the value of English through selective privatization of some of its features, explains FCC Chairwoman Glenda Friedboot. The auction we propose today is the first Commission initiative implementing the lessons of that research. It is also a test initiative, designed to gauge the effectiveness of a broader privatization policy. The auction will affect use of the English words a, and, and the, as well as any derivatives or functional equivalents, and will bestow upon the highest bidder the exclusive right to license use of the words in all digital media. It's important the people understand that the auction applies only to digital media, and not to conventional print or face-to-face conversation, explains Chairwoman Friedboot. Partly that's because of technical limitations. The licensing we hope to foster depends upon computer-driven and enforced rights management schemes that aren't currently feasible offline. But we also recognized the importance of protecting the historic practice of free, unlicensed use of many parts of speech in daily conversation. An FCC report issued alongside the auction announcement describes a state of stagnation in the area of language technologies. The committee was unable to discover a single recent innovation in the use or function of many grammatical mechanisms, noted the report. The committee went on to note that distribution of rights in and to many of these mechanisms would likely provide sufficient incentive, in the form of licensing revenues, to spur investment and drive innovation in an important but otherwise static intellectual asset. The bidding system proposed by the Commission includes the sale of rights to the articles on a regional basis, with winning bidders acquiring the right to license use of the articles in all digital formats within a bounded geographic area. Local control of media assets has always been an important value here at the Commission, explains Chairwoman Friedboot. So we require that all bidding entities be majority owned by members of the geographic regions they serve. Critics of the plan acknowledge its potential to raise billions of dollars for the public coffers, but point to the risks of privatizing key public resources. This auction is simply a corporate giveaway, exclaims Robert Desk, executive director of the Commons Defense Force (CDF). The local ownership rules are a joke, and easily circumvented through a series of shells and dummy corporations. We've dug down in the list or preliminary bidders, and what we've found behind the mask of local ownership is, almost universally, big media companies like AOL, KT, and NPR. This plan is just going to extend already excessive private control over public discourse. A number of planned legal challenges to the FCC auction, including one joined by the CDF, argue that the sale infringes important free speech rights by privatizing words. We've looked carefully at the [free speech] issue and designed the auction accordingly, responds Chairwoman Friedboot. The auction does not actually sell rights to the words 'a', 'an', and 'the'. The plan offers only the rights to the definite and indefinite articles as grammatical functions. People will still be free to use the words, as long as they are not used as articles. By the same token, people will not be permitted to make unlicensed substitutions for the articles. Assigning rights in the grammar is key to driving substantial innovation in language. We don't want to simply encourage cosmetic changes in the look and sound of words. Though a number of potential bidders were pre-qualified during a plan feasibility study, the period of bidder qualification begins officially today and is scheduled to run through the end of the year. You have received this story as a subscriber to futurefeedforward. For more stories, visit our archive at http://futurefeedforward.com/archive2.mv For a history of the future, visit our timeline at http://futurefeedforward.com/timeline2.mv To unscubscribe, visit http://futurefeedforward.com/e_list.mv
FW: Anger in politics
Hi Gail, A brief reply to a very provocative note... At the bottom, I have the feeling that all politics is about "interests"--corporate, community, collective, personal--however you want to slice or dice it. When "interests" are threatened no matter by whom or to what end, people get angry so the issue is not the anger but the interests. I also have the feeling that some of the edges of the grand conflicts of our time, which were mitigated by the broad sweep of social democracy/social welfarism and the rising post WWII tide, have now begun for a variety of reasons (being explored by FW for example) to shift back to their more normal state of being raw and occasionally bloody. The anger is a symptom of folks who are hurting and who feel rather let down that the social consensus which used to prevail and which they were more or less comfortable with, no longer holds and so we have the kind of thing quoted by Ed and the responses to Harris in Ontario. MG -Original Message-From: G. Stewart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: February 6, 2002 9:39 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Anger in politics Ed, Mike, Keith, Having already a sufficient number of lines in the water on FW I don't want to add another or would be sending you this question on-list. (If, in response, you have a comment you'd like to put on-list, please don't hesitate. It's not a private question.) Edwrote: "what his government is doing is driven by a punitive and destructive ideology" (re Gordon Campbell in B.C.)and I had recently had occasion to note on FW the "anger" with which the Harris government in Ontario had come into office and behaved. The issue of "anger" in politics is coming to seem to me the source of more problems than ideology per se. Our political processes seem to legitimate and perhaps even foster anger -- the release of distaste, dislike and disrespect rather than the surge of empathy, compassion or thoughtfulness. The larger ties-that-bind seem to get lost. I find it increasingly frightening, likely to invite the growth of serious civil discontent and especially unfortunatein an age when so many issues concern the "commons." Does it point, doyou think,toa need to strengthening the integrative processes and temper the partisan or are such antipathetic emotions healthy, maybe even essential outlets, in a body politic? Democracies use the adversarial system deliberately and to good effect (e.g., parliaments and courts, the "balancing of powers" in the US, etc.) butby taking for granted thatit is legitimate forleaders to govern"punitively and destructively"itsometimes seems to mewe risk corroding the foundations of democratic politics that lie in fellow-feeling. Such leaders lose their capacity to represent "all the people" thus threatening the legitimacy of government itself. B.C. seems to me to verge on this from time to time. Were it a country and not "merely" a province, safe within the arms of a larger federation, I suspect it might be in difficulty in a system of government that requires the consent of the governed to make it work. Perhapsall this is soself-evident as not to be worth mentioning but sometimes the necessary foundations of a situation becomeweakened through being taken so for granted they are not articulated? Your wisdom on this, gentlemen? Regards, Gail Gail Stewart[EMAIL PROTECTED]
FW: workology
Title: workology -Original Message-From: Eric Lilius [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: February 4, 2002 11:01 AM About your host Email us your work stories cbc.ca Workology on CBC Radio One is back! Starting January 7, 2002 from 10-11 am coast to coast. Then join us every Monday until February 25. Same Workology time, same cutting-edge Workology radio. And...for all you 9to5-ers Workology will be repeated in the evening from 8-9 pm Workology is about the secret world of work - the how, where and why we scratch out a living. On this budding radio show we hit the streets, and go behind closed doors to find out what the boss is really thinking, what the temp is plotting...and what it takes to make us happy at our jobs. Workology is a smart, funny, and often subversive look at what we do for money. We want to hear your stories, thoughts and tips for survival. Drop us a line at [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Workology is hosted by Jane Farrow (employee #11758). It is produced by Nick Purdon (from his new office 2G103). Both Jane and Nick are bossed around by executive producer Ira Basen, (who can say 'no' with the best of them). Sign up for our super deluxe Workology (tm) email list. All you have to do is send an email here...and type "subscribe" somewhere in the body of the message. If you have any problems email me and i'll help you out. The Next Available Operator: In many parts of the country, call centre jobs are just about the only game in town. But what's it like to be on the other end of that phone call? Workology goes inside the call centre. Also call centre consultant Berta Banks tests Nick and Jane to see if they have what it takes to be the "next available operator". Click here for Berta's website. The Clockwatcher: Lisa Ayuso attends a conference for Administrative Professionals. In the old days they called them secretaries. Lisa reports on some of the helpful tips she learned there. Here's Lisa's brand new website. Plus...hugs and handshakes in the office Listen to the show | Download the show Out the Door - Producer Nick Purdon investigates the art and science of firing. Its hard on the person being fired, but it can be rough on the person doing the deed as well. Learn some tips from the pros. Ask Jane - the first of a new feature where listeners ask Jane to help solve their workplace problems. Today, what to do when the boss favours one employee over all the others. Workplace Confessional - find out what drove an otherwise sane and competent employee to start shredding cheques from customers and mixing them into her cat's kitty litter. Listen to the show | Download the show Inside the fire hall - a Toronto firefighter gives us a rare glimpse of what that job is really like, and the toll it can take on the people who do it. The Office Fridge: Jane goes inside the office fridge and asks "who's in charge here?" The Clockwatcher - Lisa Ayuso, our disgruntled Clockwatcher, presents a seminar entiltled: "Tall Tales, White Lies: The Art of Office Fabrication. Downsize Diary - part one of a diary written by a Montreal woman who recently lost her job. Listen to the show | Download the show The fight for the ears of the office. One of the biggest ratings wars in radio history is happening right now as stations battle for the for the at-work radio listener. Workology has the story covered from the frontlines to the decision-makers. Managing your image. It is a startling statistic. Ninety percent of men suffer from TPS (tight pant syndrome). Could this affliction, coupled with a creased jacket and sweat-stained shirts, be what is holding you back from the corner office? You won't want to miss Jane's interview with image consultant Catherine Bell.Catherine's website is here. Solitaire sabotage: Listen to Jenny Farkas' heroic story. She erases the solitaire program from her lazy boss' computer and is transformed into an office folk hero. Listen to the show | Download the show Warning: Wokology can be dangerous to your job! Gival Shuster from Calgary has a story about how our segment called: "how do you know its time to go?" propelled her to quit her job. Listen to Workology...but listen carefully. Workplace sinners, please come forward. You know who you are. Ye who have sinned against your company, who have transgressed against your boss. Now is the moment to come together, and seek absolution. Whether you 'borrowed' office supplies or sent a personal letter through the company mail... unburden yourself. This week we open the door to the Workplace confessional. Step inside sinners...send us your story. On a more
RE: Gifting (was Re: Fw: conference)
As I recall, Levinas' intellectual antecedent wasn't Adam Smith the Political Economist, rather it was Georg Simmel the Sociologist who linked the Gift into structures of social exchange involving subtle patterns of culture and psychology rather than the monotonic structures of (as for example Chicago School interpreted) trade. To short circuit the likely response a bit--certainly all trade is interpretable as exchange but most for example, Anthropology research, is built on the premise that not all exchange is simply trade. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: February 3, 2002 10:51 AM To: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; G. Stewart Subject: Gifting (was Re: Fw: conference) Hi Brad, You cited the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas: . . . the ultimate reason for production is not the satisfaction of needs, but to have something to offer as a gift to welcome the other (as opposed to being reduced to receiving the other empty handed). and then you wrote: (BMcC) Obviously this is not economics, but it may help us *situate* economics in the encompassing world of our factual and potential life. But Levinas was absolutely dead right! Gifting *is* economics. It's otherwise called trade. Keith __ Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow _ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _
RE: Economics as a science (was Re: Double-stranded Economics)
Harry, My point really wasn't about "gender sensitivity" but rather that, as the Feminist scholars have forced us to recognize (and as various other folks--notably Ray, have already pointed out)--words have meanings in contexts and that if we evoke a word we also evoke the context both in ourselves as the scribe, and in the reader -- and they need not (in fact are unlikely) to be the same. Formal Philosophy ( of the Linguistic Analysis school) made mince meat of the Germans (Hegel,Schopenhouer, etc.etc.) byat the base, pointing out that the attempt to evoke syllogistic or mathematical logic using highly contextualized language, just wasn't on. Hence, I would guess, the flight ofEconomics into evermore rarified(and disembodied) invocations of pure Math and the departure ofEconomics teaching from Economics reality as presented by Ed and Arthur. Its not quite "Words mean what I say that they mean" but rather that "Words means what wehave accepted that they mean" where "we" is understood in "our" multitudes, rather than in "their" pseudo scientific singularity. Mike Gurstein -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harry PollardSent: February 1, 2002 3:23 PMTo: Michael Gurstein; Keith HudsonCc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: RE: Economics as a science (was Re: Double-stranded Economics)Mike,I said originally:"Man's desires are unlimited.""Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion."(Gender sensitive people can change "Man" to "People".)So, change it to people.No problem.Incidentally, Man and Mankind used to mean people before the feminists decided to try witchcraft (or warlockcraft). Harry__-Michael wrote: Hmmm...Let's take a wee look at the first two of those first premises as posited byKeith...1. Man's desires are unlimited;2. Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion;Does that also and necessarily include, "scientifically" of course,:1. Woman's desires are unlimited;2. Women seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion;(or do we suddenly find ourselves in some nasty messy confusions of meaning,structured misunderstanding, nuance, "he said/she said... etc.etc. which Ibelieve is partially the point being made by the Post-Autistic Economists.MG ** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 ***
RE: Basket case
I don't think I've ever said that I was particularly proud of the Canadian Health system, I personally have no responsibility for it except for having paid my taxes over the years, rather what I did say was that its relative success, efficiency and universal accessibility is generally a source of considerable pride to Canadians and a major perceived differentiator of Canada from the US. I should also say that as a relatively healthy consumer I find it infinitely more accessible (and user friendly) than the comparable US system. The issues of staffing shortfalls, lengthening queues for service and so on etc., are a direct effect of the close proximity and more or less seamless transfer of certification for Canadian health professionals into the US where salary levels are anywhere from 70 - 200% higher. My larger point was that you were using the UK NHS as a dire example of the failure of government to provide effective services, and my larger point was that while this may a useful example for the UK, it is by no means generalizable either for health services of for Government's role in service delivery in general, outside of the UK. Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: January 30, 2002 3:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Basket case I know that some of you (at least Mike Gurstein), are proud of your health service in Canada. And, because I know nothing about it, I've never made a single comment about your health service in the several years I've been writing on FW. All I've done is to agree with Harry's recent comment that, because of the dire shortage of nurses, doctors and other health professionals in Canada that Sally drew our attention to, it seems to have some similarities with the National Helath Service in England. I only write about the NHS over here because it's an excellent, though sad, example, of what happens when a public service is led from the top by non-medical government officials and politicians who've appropriated the power and responsibility all the way down the line. The NHS is such a basket case that Tony Blair has given a hostage to fortune by saying that he wants to be judged at the next General Election by his success at reforming the hospitals. The rumours that are emanating from the press about the reforms that are coming do indeed suggest revolutionary changes. Even allowing hospitals to manage themselves! But it is doubtful that almost 50 years of arrogant and detailed control from London can be repaired all that quickly. (In the meantime, 25,000 patients needing operations are going to be sent to Greece [that is, besides France, Germany, etc] -- according to some press reports. If this is being seriously negotiated, this shows just how disastrous the NHS has been in this country and how desperate Blair is to reduce the waiting lists before the next Election.) Keith Hudson __ Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow _ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _
RE: Economics as a science (was Re: Double-stranded Economics)
Hmmm... Let's take a wee look at the first two of those first premises as posited by Keith... 1. Man's desires are unlimited; 2. Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion; Does that also and necessarily include, scientifically of course,: 1. Woman's desires are unlimited; 2. Women seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion; (or do we suddenly find ourselves in some nasty messy confusions of meaning, structured misunderstanding, nuance, he said/she said... etc.etc. which I believe is partially the point being made by the Post-Autistic Economists. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: February 1, 2002 4:21 AM To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Economics as a science (was Re: Double-stranded Economics) Hi Harry and Arthur, For the time being, let me take just one strand from your (HP's) latest mail and attempt to show how economics can be used as a science. This will never make the whole story at all times as we (HP and KH) both agree -- human nature is also involved -- but the overall structure over the longer term ought to be scientifically analysable *and* predictions made with a high degree of confidence: I will attempt to prove that the composition of world trade will be largely predictable over the long term (that is, subject to temporary wayward swings of, what Greenspan calls irrational exuberance) . - My five basic premisses are as follows -- the first two contributed by you (with which I obviously agree). I think these premisses are reasonable but I'm not going to attempt to justify these here: 1. Man's desires are unlimited; 2. Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion; 3. Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage holds; 4. As world-wide competitiveness increases, all national currencies (or a single world currency in due course) will increasingly represent the economic (that is, energy) efficiency of operations of supply of goods and services in any country, region, city, whatever; 5. As world-wide competitiveness increases, then the pattern of spending of all customers on staple goods and services will become increasingly similar. Proof: Let the world consists of two countries only -- X and Y. Let X and Y have similar standards of living and similar patterns of consumer spending at a given instant. Let each country produce goods and services A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H. Let the efficiency of production of country X is in the order: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H; and that the efficiency of production of country Y is E,F,G,H,A,B,C,D. Then, clearly, the standard of living of both countries can be maximised when country X makes and exports A,B,C,D only to country Y, and country Y makes and exports E,F,G,H only to country X. This can now be generalised to all goods and services and to all countries, regions, cities and, indeed individual producers and consumers. Therefore: Given enough computing power, then the overall pattern of world trade can be predicted. -- Now the above can't account for new discoveries and innovative goods and services. But, given that important new ones come along now and again, then, as soon as they become incorporated in one statistically valid region (that is, one with enough consumers to give a sensible sample), then a reformulation of future world trade can be arrived at. -- This has some important consequences: 1. Maximising world trade is desirable for all; 2. However, the shunting of production or service operations around the world (say, on the basis of the cost of labour only) by individual corporations with a narrow range of products is not desirable, nor stable, over the long term. This is the valid core of the argument of the anti-globalisation protesters and if they were to confine themselves to this point only then I would agree wholeheartedly with them. 3. Ideally, each country, region, city, of individual (any entity with aspirations) should not copy the staple operations of others but should maximise those operations which are unique to it/he/she (or to which it/he/she is especially benefited by location, climate, etc.). Very good examples of the dangers of not doing this are those of the 'copycat countries' of Asia which tried to replicate the production of consumer goods of other more established countries. They may succeed very well for a while with temporary increases in efficiency, particularly if they have a large domestic market, but unless they can show clear efficiency advantages over the longer term then they're in trouble as regards exports. Today, for example, Japan is not able to invest profitably at the present time because its present production mix is too similar to America's and doesn't seem to be developing anything which gives it a clear comparative advantage. The lesson is that all entities should specialise in what they are already particularly good at, or
FW: [CI]: Design Principles for ICTs
This might be of some interest on Futurework as well... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: January 25, 2002 8:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [CI]: Design Principles for ICTs My work in Cape Breton Island sounds somewhat similar to Don's except being perhaps somewhat more experimental. The job was to see if ICT's could be used to help to recreate an economic base for communities whose previous economic base (coal, steel, fishing) has disappeared. I won't go into the details on this, I've written quite a lot about it in various places, but one idea from that work might be of interest. As we worked to develop locally sustainable, employment creating ICT applications, an opportunity emerged to develop and manage the support (remote training, help desk, administration) for the broader regional/provincial/national Internet Access program being developed by the Canadian Government. All the conditions were there--we had a very large pool of fairly skilled (and trainable) currently unemployed people, we had the technical infrastructure, we had a post-secondary institution eager to provide technical and administrative back-up, we had access to a quite large pool of start-up funding (from funds assigned to support training/living support for the formerly employed folks). What we lacked was the opportunity--the contract to undertake the job. Without that initial contract everything we did was just a dress rehearsal, but with that contract (this was 1996), I could see some real long term opportunities for doing this commercially in the longer term. But we couldn't get that first contract. And the reason that we couldn't get that first contract is interesting... The default position for the allocation of these contracts was that they went through nornmal channels--and of course, the normal channels for start-up, technical contracts was that they would go to the usual suppliers, and the usual suppliers were those who had already done that kind of thing--almost without exception, firms that were already established in conventional (metropolitan) locations and linked into existing firms with good contracting lobbying skills etc.etc. Our challenge, which we never managed to overcome was to shift the default--open up the bidding /expectations to unconventional sources/locations like ours. The current default perspective is one that supports centralized management, concentration of work in metropolitan regions, the use of conventional approaches to work design/organizational structuring. But of course, we know that the technology now and increasingly allows for dramatically different ways of structuring work/organization/jobs. Some of that is starting to creep in--in the US, 9.11 has resulted in some rethinking of how work could be restructured using technology so as to avoid the need for metropolitan/high rise office concentration. But mind sets/conceptual defaults run deep and strong and they don't change easily--so that I think Don, is the on-going challenge for the kind of work you are (and we were) trying to accomplish. Mike Gurstein Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. (Visiting) Professor: School of Management New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Don Cameron Sent: January 24, 2002 3:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [CI]: Design Principles for ICTs Hello Horace, You wrote: I agree that, short term, new uses of ICTs have both real and potential bad effects as well as providing positive opportunities, I disagree that there are inherent threats (snip). Perhaps our differing perspectives are really nothing more than a matter of scope. I certainly agree that in the global sphere of humanity your points are sound. ICT is positive development tool and as such has benefited millions (if not billions) of people around the world - and yes, the same can be said for many other technological developments. However my perspective is not (currently) global. I am working for the development of several small communities, where your summation is demonstrably false - a matter of perspective. Humanity may benefit from freeway's born of the automotive industry, however the thousands of small towns by-passed and subsequently dying may not see it this way. Similarly those towns who grew from rail, and subsequently lost rail services as a result of cost restructuring might not agree about the inherent benefits of rail to humanity. Threats exist whether we wish to acknowledge them or not. It is the degree by which we address and manage threats that determines long-term benefits and gains. I have been involved in quite a number of community ICT developments, and without exception those that have proved sustainable are those that grew from a base of awareness. What do we want to do? What are the opportunities? What are the threats
RE: Class-ridden society (was RE: The Health Care Workplace in Crisis)
Hi Keith, Based on my experience living in England for several years in the 1970's quite close to the belly of that beast (in Cambridge) what you are saying seems consistent with what I saw... But as a consequence, I think it rather awkward for you to attempt to generalize from the clearly somewhat skewed experience in the UK with bureaucratic management/social democracy to other jurisdictions or toward universal conclusions. Also, certainly there is on the part of Canadians a degree of envy at the US financial success and a degree of animosity at the overweening attitudes of the US and its indifference to the impact of its often short-sighted and imperious behaviour on its Northern neighbour. But our Canadian traditions of the use of the State for supporting and promoting the public good are one's of which we have been very proud, and in the case of health care we use as a major source of differentiating ourselves from the US. MG -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: January 25, 2002 8:03 AM To: Michael Gurstein Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Class-ridden society (was RE: The Health Care Workplace in Crisis) Hi Mike, At 07:35 24/01/02 -0500, you wrote: It sounds to me Keith, that these problems in the UK Health Sector have much less to do with any structures of management whether State supported or not, but rather that somehow this sector has managed to maintain rather traditional British systems (to use the Sociological terms) of status based privilege. These were rife throughout British society when I last lived there in the 1970's and which (to her credit) Dame Margaret managed to sweep away from many parts of British society. When I last had any direct observation, all of that was very specific to Merrie Olde and was based on historical factors which completely by-passed most of the rest of the World. Yes, England is still a class-ridden society. Please excuse the following disquisition (albeit as brief as I can make it) -- my apologies if I'm trying to teach my sociological grandmother to suck eggs. The NHS as from 1947 was really a continuation of the sort of highly centralised civil service control that started at around 1870/90 when there was a new species of thousands of middle-class scions of those nouveau-riche industrialists and merchants who came into existence during the earlier part of the century. The brightest of these trooped into Oxford and Cambridge U's, joined the pre-existing aristocracy and turned their backs on the lowly origins of their family wealth. The importance of this wave of talented and sizeable group can hardly be overestimated. Historians are only just realising the full impact of this new class (mainly in the arts, politics and the professions). There was already a highly demarcated, but effete, landed aristocracy and this new group simply implanted themselves into this -- with the existing deferentialist society staying in place all around them. Thus in their own new meritocratic ways, the new Oxbridge class continued to extract advantage from the country at large -- this time by manipulation rather than the exercise of brute power. So this is really the tradition of the civil service in this country -- aided and abetted by the fact that England was sufficiently small (geographically) for the new sort of power to be exercised directly from the clublands of London and able to drain away the powers of the industrial cities of the north.* And the civil service has had considerable power ever since, able to influence governments of whatever persuasion, able to consolidate itself at every turn, whatever new policies were brought in. Also, two World Wars greatly helped. It's only been in the two or three decades that the power of the civil service has begun to wane because the very brightest of the Oxbridge brigade were no longer automatically entering the civil service, the arts or the professions but also going into the new sorts of multinationals taking over from traditional manufacturing. (*The local authorities of which, incidentally, made the greatest strides in health improvement, long before a powerful civil service came on the scene.) So you have nothing like this in Canada. The similarities (shortages of doctors, nurses and other health professionals) thus appear to be coincidental -- as you suggest below: (MG) The problems with the Canadian Health Care System are certainly not that--we don't have much centralized management; no NHS for example, rather, I think the problems lie deeper in the general malaise of the Canadian economy/dollar which has fallen dramatically against the US$ over the last ten years or so, while so many of our health inputs are either priced in US$ (technology) or have to compete for resources (people) with folks/institutions waving US$ salaries. I don't know enough about Canada to comment on this, save to say that from over the water we generally
FW: [ffdngocaucus] FW: FfD and ...flying cows...
-Original Message- From: Carol Barton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: January 24, 2002 10:18 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FFD Women's Caucus Subject: [ffdngocaucus] FW: FfD and ...flying cows... -Original Message- [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 11:44 AM David Ransom, co-editor of the New Internationalist, reports from behind the scenes at the UN Raising Voices for Financing for Development meeting, and the FfD prepcom. A rather satirical (and frightening) description of an event that has failed, he highlights, to attract the public attention it should have. Heres a slightly edited and shorter version of his piece (comments, satirical or not, are welcomed): Every cow in Europe could be flown around the world, First Class, for the money spent on agricultural subsidies by the European Union. I didn't know this, nor that there's a UN conference on 'Financing for Development' coming up in Monterrey, Mexico, this March. It seems I am not alone. So the UN has invited a small band of us to their headquarters here in New York City to raise awareness and, they hope, our voices too. ( ) And so a couple of thousand diplomats swarm around a conference room inside the UN. We've been invited to witness a preparatory committee 'PrepCom' for the Monterrey conference. People greet each other with the limp handshakes of international diplomacy. I lean languidly against a blank wall, trying not to look too conspicuous. Officials sit in the alphabetical order of their country. New Zealand (no, not 'A' for Aotearoa) and Nicaragua, just in front of me, must have got to know each other pretty well over the years. A buzz and then a hush marks the arrival of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General himself. He, and two bulky security guards with restless eyes, cast some special significance over the proceedings. He reminds delegates of the importance of their task. For the first time in its history, the UN is staging a major conference on global finance. As a rule this is the closely guarded preserve of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and now the World Trade Organization (WTO). But 'development' falls within UN territory. And the UN has adopted a set of Millennium Development Goals (see panel). Without the finance, therell be no ball to score these goals with. Hence UN interest in Financing for Development, and the international conference in Mexico, which starts on 18 March. Styled a critical global collaboration, the conference wont be restricted to the usual UN officials, diplomats and politicians. The IMF, World Bank the Bretton Woods institutions and WTO are participating too. For those of us who believe that they should always have been accountable to the UN as was originally intended this looks like a breakthrough. There is, however, an equal and opposite danger that the UN will be eaten for breakfast by the Bretton Woods institutions. The lethal mix of free-market nostrums, free-trade propaganda, 'structural adjustment' and privatization they dispense goes by the name of the Washington Consensus. This is, in reality, the transnational corporate agenda in drag. Transnational corporations have tightened their grip on every international institution, especially those that have anything at all to do with money. Until recently the UN itself was something of an exception. But now the Secretary-General has agreed a 'Compact' with major global corporations. This will allow them, among other things, to use the UN logo. In future, distressed citizens of the world won't know for certain whether it's the UN or Nike riding to the rescue. Kofi Annan announces to the meeting the appointment of two 'Special Envoys on Financing for Development'. One is Trevor Manuel, the respectable Finance Minister of South Africa. The other is the former Managing Director of the IMF, Michel Camdessus. My jaw drops in disbelief as I hear his name. More than anyone else, he is associated with the devastation wrought by debt and 'structural adjustment' around the world, particularly in the South. Is the Secretary-General unaware that on the city streets of the South the name of Camdessus is mud? I've been ploughing through the paperwork. In earlier drafts of the Monterrey 'outcome' document I've seen some reference to 'innovative sources of finance', such as a 'Tobin' tax on currency speculation, or a global carbon tax. These would raise serious money, probably sufficient to fund the Development Goals and the UN as well, while requiring an entirely new, global system of taxation. In the latest 'draft outcome' document they have disappeared without trace or, to be more precise, into a 'study requested by the Secretary-General'. When Kofi Annan leaves the meeting, contributions from the floor come predominantly from Scandinavia. They focus on a proposal to double official development assistance, or foreign aid. This would doubtless be a very good thing. But
RE: The Health Care Workplace in Crisis
It sounds to me Keith, that these problems in the UK Health Sector have much less to do with any structures of management whether State supported or not, but rather that somehow this sector has managed to maintain rather traditional British systems (to use the Sociological terms) of status based privilege. These were rife throughout British society when I last lived there in the 1970's and which (to her credit) Dame Margaret managed to sweep away from many parts of British society. When I last had any direct observation, all of that was very specific to Merrie Olde and was based on historical factors which completely by-passed most of the rest of the World. The problems with the Canadian Health Care System are certainly not that--we don't have much centralized management; no NHS for example, rather, I think the problems lie deeper in the general malaise of the Canadian economy/dollar which has fallen dramatically against the US$ over the last ten years or so, while so many of our health inputs are either priced in US$ (technology) or have to compete for resources (people) with folks/institutions waving US$ salaries. Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: January 24, 2002 7:13 AM To: S. Lerner Cc: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Health Care Workplace in Crisis I'm extracting just two sentences from Sally's posting of The Health Care Workplace in Crisis - What to Do ?: Recent surveys show health professionals [in Canada] are the least likely of all occupations to describe their work environment as healthy. Their job satisfaction is also below the national average. and The Canadian Nurses Association predicts a shortage of 60,000 nurses in Canada by 2011. That's 25% of the current nursing labour force. The College of Family Physicians of Canada sees a shortfall of 6,000 family physicians by the same date. Technologists, therapists, audiologists and speech pathologists will also be in short supply. Harry commented that the situation seems similar to that of the National Health Service in England. Yes, indeed, very similar. There's been a fascinating development over here since my last posting! Since last week, when we starting exporting patients for operations that the NHS can't do for years, English people have been discovering from TV just how superb the private hospitals are in France and Germany. At the same time, French doctors have been discovering from their TV just how much salary English NHS doctors have been receiving. The average family doctor has an income of £71,000 p.a. (US$ 100,000 p.a.). The average French state doctor has an income less than half of that. So they're going on strike! In England, it's obviously not been low rates of pay (for doctors) that's the problem. (Hospital surgeons get even more -- altogether, with large additional merit payments, making upwards of US$ 500,000 p.a. in many, if not most, cases.) It's the way they have been treated by the top-down highly-centralised system managed by the non-medical mandarins of the Ministry of Health ever since 1947. This is why the whole system is demoralised, dirty, and in disarray. This is why a quarter of trainee-doctors drop out before they have finished (very expensive) training, and why a further quarter drop out within two years of qualifying after sampling life in hospitals and general practice. This is why almost half the nurses in the NHS are now recruited from Asian countries like the Philippines. In a matter as important as health, I really don't care in practice whether a public health service is owned by private interests, or the State. (In France and Germany it's a dual system.) That's not the important point. The important one is that all junior staff (including doctors below consultancy level) and patients are treated as unimportant and have almost no say in choice of treatment, conditions and management. That's why a revolution is now taking place in our NHS -- although, as is the case with all revolutions, no-one knows yet how it's going to turn out. Keith Hudson __ Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say. John D. Barrow _ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _
FW: On the Enron Debacle
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Brant Sent: January 19, 2002 10:42 AM To: Triumph of Content List Subject: FW: On the Enron Debacle This is from the discussion list for students of management guru W. Edwards Deming...an interesting perspective that basically comes from looking at the question What's the purpose of a business? (ie. to make money or to provide a product of service that customers want?) Steve Brant - Steven G. Brant, Business Futurist Founder and Principal Trimtab Management Systems 315 West 33rd Street, Suite 11B New York, NY 10001 212-947-5705; 212-947-5706 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.trimtab.com It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever that there is so much untruth being delivered to a bewildered world. - Gandhi -- From: Jonathan Siegel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 05:18:44 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: On the Enron Debacle Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Resent-Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 08:56:41 -0500 (EST) One of the remarkable things about the current Enron bankruptcy is that it helps illustrate the extreme limits of what can happen when a measurement is substituted for a purpose. The goal of Enron managers was to increase the perceived value of their stock price by growing accrued book revenues, and they did this, for a time, very well. Their method was to turn their small utility company into a de facto trading company, functioning as a kind of brokerage while remaining legally a utility. Their secret weapon was the fact that while a brokerage is only allowed to report its commission, a small percentage of a trade, as its revenue, a legal utility is permitted to report the entire selling price of a commodity on its top line, and to report the buying price as an expense. The consequence was that Enron, while doing far less actual business than many brokers, was able to report far higher revenue than any. And simply by keeping a network of buying and selling going on, continuously churning trades back and forth in cooperation with various entities, they were able to report ever increasing amounts of revenue quarter after quarter, ending up with a top line that permitted them, on the basis of these revenues, to claim themselves the seventh largest company in the United States. What is astonishing about Enron is that its business model was largely open and public for many years. Their auditors reported the basis of their revenue claims in every quarterly report. Independently of whether or not some of their transactions were illegitimate, the simple fact is that it ought to have been a fairly simple matter for an analyst, reading their accounting methods, either figure out how to compare their real business to an ordinary brokerage, or at least to know what questions to ask to be able to make such a comparison. Their business was not only much less than their stock price or debt load reflected, it was obviously so. But because Enron had a new accounting method, analysts believed this meant it had a new business process. And given the ever-increasing reported revenues, the Enron's new business model was presumed to be unquestioningly effective. Perhaps we, as a society, have become so accustomed to associating the act of running a business with the act of making money - or rather, the act of booking revenue in accordance with the arts of accountancy -- that corporate analysts appear not to have had an institutional framework capable of distinguishing between an accounting trick and a business process, between a revenue stream and the production of value. And this is not the first time for this particular failure. For example, the shares of Priceline.com and other online travel agencies, who had used a similar accounting gimmick, plummeted when they were required to report only their commission as revenue, despite the fact that this accounting change meant no meaningful difference in their actual business. Presumably, under the Enron model, the ideal business would be some sort of virtual or computer casino that operates at even money connected to an equally virtual network of affiliated computer gamblers. Such a business would be able to churn money in and out endlessly, and would be able to generate an infinite revenue stream with no actual operations, assets, products, customers, or profits to inhibit its growth. Enron came very close to meeting this ideal. Unfortunately; it had a small actual business buried in its operations, which had real stakeholders and creditors. This imperfection was in no small part the source of its trouble. Perhaps future businesses will avoid this mistake. I cannot help but suspect that the ideal described in the preceding paragraph represents a kind of classic, a pure model, a kind of holy grail
FW: Enron and the Gramms By BOB HERBERT ( Who's left to look out for the small fry?
-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: January 17, 2002 7:13 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Enron and the Gramms By BOB HERBERT ( Who's left to look out for the small fry?January 17, 2002 Enron and the Gramms By BOB HERBERT http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/17HERB.htmlE-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] hen Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron's tune. Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron. Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993. In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors. According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, "Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001." As a board member, Ms. Gramm has served on Enron's audit committee, but her eyesight wasn't any better than that of the folks at Arthur Andersen. The one thing Enron did not pay big bucks for was vigilance. There's a lot more you can say about the Gramms and Enron, and not much of it good. But Phil and Wendy Gramm are just convenient symptoms of the problem that has contributed so mightily to the Enron debacle and other major scandals of our time, from the savings and loan disaster to the Firestone tires fiasco. That problem is the obsession with deregulation that has had such a hold on the Republican Party and corporate America. An article in yesterday's Times noted the extensive links between Enron and the powerful Texas congressman Tom DeLay. Mr. DeLay became unhappy when Enron wooed a Democrat — a senior treasury official in the Clinton administration — to run its Washington office. "Still," the article said, "whatever the tensions last year, Mr. DeLay and Enron had a natural alliance. In his days in the Texas Capitol, Mr. DeLay was called Dereg by some because of his support of business. And in Congress he has been a longtime proponent of energy deregulation, an issue dear to Enron." Enron exploited the deregulation mania to the max, and the result has been economic ruin for thousands upon thousands of hard-working families. As Public Citizen put it, "Enron developed mutually beneficial relationships with federal regulators and lawmakers to support policies that significantly curtailed government oversight of [its] operations." The kind of madness that went on at Enron could only have flourished in the dark. Arthur Andersen was supposed to have been looking at the books, but the vast shadows cast by the ideology of deregulation allowed that company to escape effective scrutiny as well. So you have revolving-door abuses and pernicious financial arrangements between companies like Enron and auditors like Andersen that are similar to those between private companies and government agencies. Who's left to look out for the small fry? If the deregulation zealots had their way, we'd be left with tainted food, unsafe cars, bridges collapsing into rivers, children's pajamas bursting into flames and a host of corporations far more rapacious and unscrupulous than they are now. Enron manipulated the energy markets and cooked its own books in ways that would not have been possible if its operations had had a reasonable degree of transparency. But Enron operated in what has been widely characterized as a "black hole" that left competitors and others asking such basic questions as how the company made its money. How long will it take? How many decades and how many scandals have to come and go before we catch on? We're human. We're self-interested. And when left to our own devices, some of us will do the wrong thing. Some perspective is needed. Unchecked deregulation is an express route to chaos and tragedy. Where the public interest is involved, a certain amount of oversight — effective oversight — is essential. To Bacon: Not, knowledge is power'. The power of knowledge is its resource-fullness to learning.A student is a success when they change information into learning resources.
RE: FW: LA Times: Argentine Crisis May Prompt the IMF to Change Ways
You are right, Harry, I should have written the 'free market' Neo-Liberal folks... M -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harry Pollard Sent: January 6, 2002 5:20 PM To: Michael Gurstein; Futurework@Scribe. Uwaterloo. Ca Subject: Re: FW: LA Times: Argentine Crisis May Prompt the IMF to Change Ways Michael wrote: The free market Neo-Liberal folks have done their stuff for the last ten years and what we see is the result. Which means of course their were no economic crashes before the free market Neo-Liberal folks. However, one of the important factors of freeing economies is that governments must be responsible. Unfortunately, they usually aren't. They take the money lent to smooth the changes and then play fast and loose. (I've already reported on the $60 million given to Nigeria that has simply disappeared. (I suggest a check of the Swiss banks.) When governments get money, they waste it, and/or divert it to favored individuals. Eventually, the chickens come home to roost. Then they have nothing to show for the investment - but they still owe for the goodies they were given. So, they do the obvious - they ask for more. It seems that everybody talks about money, but no-one understands what it is. Normally money is said to have two functions. It's a measure of value: and it's a medium of exchange. (Forget store of value - it doesn't apply.) Problem is that something which is a measure of value may make a poor medium of exchange. Conversely, an excellent medium of exchange may be an awful measure of value. Probably the best media of exchange are checks and credit card slips - instant media produced and destroyed as they are needed. At Christmas, for example, the amount of media may double, or triple. This is not inflationary unless that's what you mean when you use that word. (Incidentally, inflation isn't an economic word at all, though it's now used to cloud men's minds.) Yet, bits of paper that are so useful as purchasing media, make an awful measure of value. A country's money is a good guide to its economic health. If people don't want (say) Argentinean money at its market price, it means that traders think its a bad buy at the asking price. So, Argentina will have to lower its price.In the free market the price would drop it anyway and trade would continue. That's he advantage of free convertibility - letting the market show how badly - or how well - the economy is doing. Unfortunately, when the money is weak, instead of repairing the economy that makes it weak, they insist the money is really strong and adjust it to show 'strong'. It's like warming the room by holding a match under the thermometer, then pointing to the high temperature it shows. Thus did Boros make his well-publicized 2 billion pound killing. Not so well advertised is that he lost 2 billion a year or so later. Britain was forced by the European snake to maintain the pound at a value much higher than it was really worth. The economic consequences were getting dangerous, so Blair got out from the snake and devalued the pound. Whereupon Boros made his killing, shrugging his shoulders and saying - what else could Britain do? When governments try to play with the money, disaster looms, which was the problem in Argentina. Back when people didn't know what their peso would buy tomorrow - inflation was 5000% - President Carlos Menem decided to peg the peso to the dollar - 1 to 1. Michael, what part of the preceding paragraph seems like the free market to you? It's certainly what neo-liberals do (not liberals) but are you suggesting free market means massive state intervention? By golly, you are re-writing the dictionary! The peso wasn't worth a dollar except by government fiat. The result was that companies folded, nearly 20 percent became unemployed. Argentina became one of the most expensive places to do business and the middle class found what poverty was like. This on one side, with 5000% inflation on the other. Now they will unpeg the peso and set a new rate. Is this a good example of the free market? The idiots will probably devalue the peso by 30% (you'll know by the time you read this) pressed by such problems as a shortage of medicines, and zooming prices on staples like bread. This because businesses are covering themselves against the coming devaluation. However, never loath to do everything wrong, they are likely to allow people to pay dollar debts with pesos at a one-to-one parity. This means that people who lent a dollar to someone will get 70 cents back. I suppose this also is a good example of the free market, Mike. Actually, this is plain old Gresham. His Law stated that bad money would drive out good. You would keep the good money under the mattress, while you paid your debts with the bad. So, most of the loans were made in dollars - but the workers were paid in pesos. It seems evident that the people didn't trust the government's peg of one
FW: toc--America the Polarized (P Krugman NYTimes)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Beniger Sent: January 4, 2002 11:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: toc--America the Polarized (P Krugman NYTimes) --- Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company --- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/04/opinion/04KRUG.html January 4, 2002 AMERICA THE POLARIZED By PAUL KRUGMAN When Congress returns to Washington, the battles will resume -- and each party will accuse the other of partisanship. Why can't they just get along? Because fundamental issues are at stake, and the parties are as far apart on those issues as they have ever been. A recent article in Slate led me to Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, political scientists who use data on Congressional voting to create maps of politicians' ideological positions. They find that a representative's votes can be predicted quite accurately by his position in two dimensions, one corresponding to race issues, the other a left vs. right economic scale reflecting issues such as marginal tax rates and the generosity of benefits to the poor. And they also find -- not too surprisingly -- that the center did not hold. Ralph Nader may sneer at Republicrats, but Democrats and Republicans have diverged sharply since the 1980's, and are now further apart on economic issues than they have been since the early 20th century. Whose position changed? Tom Daschle doesn't seem markedly more liberal than, say, the late Tip O'Neill. On the other hand, Tom DeLay, who will soon be House majority leader, is clearly to the right of previous Republican leaders. In short, casual observation suggests that American politics has become polarized because Republicans have shifted to the right, and Democrats haven't followed them. And sure enough, the Poole-Rosenthal numbers that show a divergence between the parties also show that this divergence reflects a Republican move toward more conservative economic policies, while Democrats have more or less stayed put. As people like James Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee have found, it has become very hard to be what we used to call a moderate Republican. But why did the Republicans move to the right? It could be a matter of sheer intellectual conviction. Republicans have realized that low taxes and small government are good for everyone, and Democrats just don't get it. But ideas tend to take root when the soil has been fertilized by social and economic trends. Dr. Poole suggests that the most likely source of political polarization is economic polarization: the sharply widening inequality of income and wealth. I know from experience that even mentioning income distribution leads to angry accusations of class warfare, but anyway here's what the (truly) nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently found: Adjusting for inflation, the income of families in the middle of the U.S. income distribution rose from $41,400 in 1979 to $45,100 in 1997, a 9 percent increase. Meanwhile the income of families in the top 1 percent rose from $420,200 to $1.016 million, a 140 percent increase. Or to put it another way, the income of families in the top 1 percent was 10 times that of typical families in 1979, and 23 times and rising in 1997. It would be surprising indeed if this tectonic shift in the economic landscape weren't reflected in politics. You might have expected the concentration of income at the top to provoke populist demands to soak the rich. But as I've said, both casual observation and the Poole-Rosenthal numbers tell us that the Democrats haven't moved left, the Republicans have moved right. Indeed, the Republicans have moved so far to the right that ordinary voters have trouble taking it in; as I pointed out in an earlier column, focus groups literally refused to believe accurate descriptions of the stimulus bill that House Republican leaders passed on a party-line vote back in October. Why has the response to rising inequality been a drive to reduce taxes on the rich? Good question. It's not a simple matter of rich people voting themselves a better deal: there just aren't enough of them. To understand political trends in the United States we probably need to think about campaign finance, lobbying, and the general power of money to shape political debate. In any case, the moral of this story is that the political struggles in Washington right now are not petty squabbles. The right is on the offensive; the left -- occupying the position formerly known as the center -- wants to hold the line. Many commentators still delude themselves with the comforting notion that all this partisanship is a temporary aberration. Sorry, guys: this is the way it's going to be, for the foreseeable future.
FW: Argentina down and out
I realize that the process might not have moved far enough as yet in Argentina, but I wonder whether the quite extensive network of Telecentres or public Internet access sites, is playing or could play a role in the developments there. I believe that one of the implicit objectives of Telecentres could/should be to act as a focal point for local (technology/information/strategic) innovation in communities where other possible sources of inspiration or resources for innovation are lacking. In a context where those at the top (at the centre) seem bereft of ideas and where there appears little capacity for the development of innovative responses to local circumstances, then the Internet, could/should offer opportunities for those away from the top/centre to identify their own paths and to link with others--regionally, nationally, globally to support and enable those strategies. Of course, such an approach argues most strongly for a bottom-up rather than top-down strategy for Telecentre development since without engaged and informed local leadership such local capacity for innovation (I call these Community Innovation Systems) will not develop or will not be sufficiently focussed to create any sort of effective local critical mass. A close link between this community access and a local university or college is a key element in developing a Community Innovation System, particularly if the university or college has a strong committment to working and making its resources available to its local community. In thinking about this approach I am, of course, reflecting on my own experience working on Cape Breton Island, a peripheral Canadian region. If anyone is interested, I've discussed some of this work in a couple of recent papers (one in Keeble and Loader's new book on Community Informatics)-- I could email Word versions, and I've got multiple copies of a book on our experiences (with a modest contribution for shipping and handling). Another and more extended discussion is currently in book proofs. Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: Horace Mitchell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: January 2, 2002 1:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Globalcn2000] FW: Argentina down and out Many thanks to Michael Gurstein for re-posting that eloquent piece from Alberto Manguel. I'm sure that all my fellow-Europeans join in sadness for what has been happening in Argentina and in prayers for the future. The worst aspect is the way most observers (inside and outside Argentina) seem to offer no real hope for the kind of substantial change that is needed to work out from today's mess. What is most puzzling - at this distance - is how, in an inherently wealthy country, with a mainly European, mainly educated population and a large middle class, plus a democratic process, the voters of Argentina have continued to elect governments that have continued the process of decline? Alberto Manguel avers that: Every society is an invention, an imaginary construct based on the agreement between individuals who have decided to live together under common laws. and that Argentina is now a society that no longer believes in its own integrity. Here in the UK some would say that under Thatcher we moved too far towards a get-rich-quick social mentality with too much emphasis on individual gain and insufficient emphasis on societal responsibility. Eventually Thatcher was removed from power by her own colleagues who felt she was going over the top. We then had some of the kind of weak governments that the British quite like because they don't do much harm, but after a while we replaced them with a government that many think is again treading the path of too much dominance by one individual, as well as some quite remarkably (by UK standards) illiberal internal affairs policies, which they are getting away with because they have an exceptionally large parliamentary majority. Most people probably think that if and when this lot look like going too far we will replace them in their turn. Is this confidence misplaced? Is there a risk that the people could permanently lose control of the politicians in the UK (or France or Germany or . . . ) in the way that seems to have happened in Argentina? If not, what is the safety factor that prevents this? If we can identify the underlying difference maybe that goes some way to understanding what needs to change in Argentina? Best wishes to all, with prayers and hopes for a better future for the people of Argentina. Horace Mitchell Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Need new boots for winter? Looking for a perfect gift for your shoe loving friends? Zappos.com is the perfect fit for all your shoe needs! http://us.click.yahoo.com/ltdUpD/QrSDAA/ySSFAA/r_KplB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http
FW: LA Times: Argentine Crisis May Prompt the IMF to Change Ways
George (below) and Keith make it all sound so easy and antiseptic, but of course, there are people and history involved. Argentina is only some 15 years from the Generals, and the Mothers of the Disappeared are still haunting the Plaza de Mayo--the social chaos and sorting out will almost certainly be done within a context where those forces are allowed some sort of re-emergence. What was striking to me as I visited for a short time, was how developed everything looked--rather more like the South of Spain than any part of the Developing World that I've visited in the last few years and so all this is happening in a country where the resemblance to Canada is more than passing. One is immediately called to the question, could it happen here, and if not, why not? What is also so striking is the absence of useful alternatives--something which is particularly destabilizing since the status quo is not an option. The free market Neo-Liberal folks have done their stuff for the last ten years and what we see is the result. Of course, the problem was the political culture of corruption and so on, but surely the folks in the IMF have some cultural anthropologists/political analysts (even people who read Time Magazine regularly) on staff. That hasn't changed--as I recall in fact, one of the arguments for marketizing everything is so as to eliminate corruption by moving all transactions into the open market. But what is of equal interest is the apparent lack of any useful ideas from the critics of Neo-Liberalism--okay guys and gals post-Seattle/post-Genoa/post-Quebec City--we have a real life system break-down precisely as is implicit in some of the more intelligent anti-WTO critiques. So now what? Does Argentina go it alone, cutting its ties with the international money lenders, developing a monetary script that only has value internally? Hmmm, that might have worked in the early 19th century but apart from selling steaks and home grown vegetables, my guess is that not much economic activity will survive for very long in the absence of spare parts, product replacements, international telephone connections (or would those be kept in dollars as per most of Africa) and the normal ebb and flow of international inter-penetrations. Supply chains for most advanced products are now mostly internationalized (which means in practice the design/development/financial control rests with the hub and the sourcing assembly is globally distributed on a least cost supplier basis). Not many Toshiba's, GM's, or Nokia's based in Argentina at last reckoning. Does Argentina re-nationalize--hmmm, what does it renationalize? Probably a good idea to start with the roads, but without foreign capital and with only one road system that might break down really quick and any benefits that might accrue from making the roads re-accessible to the population would be too long term to matter much before things degenerate into barbarism. But then what? There are those pesky supply chains again. Quite honestly, I don't have any answers, and so I'm personally fascinated to watch this play out and hoping that my friends and the people in Argentina don't have to live through an immense suffering to help the rest of us figure out where it is possible to go from here. Mike Gurstein -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: December 30, 2001 7:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: LA Times: Argentine Crisis May Prompt the IMF to Change Ways Argentina problems. Mr Gurst's posting of an article and comment Without the dollar/peso link that makes debts denominated in dollars, the usual course would be to arrange a restructuring of debts - some portion forgiveness, some redefined as to amount or term, and some extended in time. But not only the link to which Mr Gurst refers but also the general concept of sovereign immunity - that the IMF cannot do more than privately suggest what may be the right course to follow in budget and economic policy - is standing in the way - - - of what? If the IMF says 'NO' the country goes down the tubes with, perhaps, political upheaval; if the IMF says publicly 'You should not do THAT', then there maybe political upheaval, particularly if there is an election on the immediate horizon and the internal cognoscenti and outside world will take their money and run, leading, again, to upheaval. These options, however well disguised, seem to me to be the ones available so long as the IMF is constituted as currently. Owned by all countries and using a collegial vote with few abstentions, all countries have an interest in NOT rocking the boat - the vote, here - because they may become needful in the future. The institution does NOT work like a normal lender, everybody, in due course, will get some jam if they need it. But the proper approach is, in my mind, 'jam yesterday; jam tomorrow, but no jam today' (see! We all can learn from the classics!). On
Travels with Neo-liberalism (was Argentina down and out)
Coincidentally, I'm just back from ten days in Argentina--I/we attended an international conference in Buenos Aires and took a few vacation days visiting BA and the North of Argentina. A few very casual observations... The local economy is/was seriously out of whack... prices in Pesos which are freely converted into dollars (on occasion one would receive dollars as change from payments in pesos with a 1=1 conversion, are on whole at least as expensive as New York City except for beef and things which might be discountable in a recessionary economy. However, the quality of what one receives in return for these payments is nowhere near the quality one receives in NYC as for example hotels, meals, and anything else that the tourist encounters. Argentina following some economic snake oil salesman or other has concessioned out its highways to the private sector. The highways in fact are superb especially since, the pricing on them is probably such as to almost eliminate inter-city traffic! We had the highways, except for a few miles on either side of BA, almost to ourselves! In other places such as Europe, where there are a lot of toll roads, it is still possible to move inter-city on non-toll roads. In very large parts of Argentina which is a very large country (rather like Canada in many physical respects), there are almost no alternative roads. One suspects that the IMF or whoever guided Argentina in its road privatization failed to look at the social and the subsequent socio-economic consequences of effectively eliminating most non-premium status inter-city movement whether by truck or private automobile! Some serious institutional erosion... Part of the privatization appears to be a privatization of the police. On a trip to the North of Argentina we passed through what must have been at least 7 and possibly 9 police (or army) checkpoints. Even immediately post 9.11 NYC never had more than 3 when getting into our out of the City. Each of these checkpoints involved slowing and sometimes stopping. For the first time visitor this meant stopping and conversing with the gendarme in broken Spanish. The first time I did this it was just after dark and we were heading to a motel for the evening. I stopped at the barrier and was about to ask for directions, having identified myself as a tourist, when I was summoned to the guard post itself evidently because I didn't have my seat belt properly fastened (along with 85% of other Argentine drivers from my experience). Having established that I was a tourist, the Captain was called over who with a very grave face indicated what a serious offense this was and pulled out a calculator and punched the numbers 250 which he made sure I understood was in dollars. We stared at each other for a time and I evidently grimaced and failed to reach for my wallet. I began to indicate that I felt that this was rather excessive for a first time offense and we continued to stare at each other for several minutes. Recognizing that I was clearly not about to finance the next trip to the capital for he and his family, he shrugged and called in the Sergeant. He repeated the ritual with the calculator only this time he punched in 100, again indicating that this was in dollars but that he would take pesos (or presumably pounds, euros or travellers cheques--there was no Visa sign on the door). Again he stared and I stared and again after several minutes he shrugged, left the room and I was now rejoined by the original constable who had captured me from the front seat of my car. I offered him a crisp $20 US bill, we shook hands, he gave me my documents and I was on my way. From then on, approaching a check point, I never lowered the window and simply nodded to the gendarme and was allowed to pass without incident. Grab it while you can... At another stop, my wife and I went into a dusty little town for gas and beside it in a tiny two table cafe we ordered a coffee. The proprietor was an elderly man, clearly a retiree/pensioner of some sort--perhaps a civil se rvant or teacher--by his clothes and demeanour. The coffee was brought along with several day old pastries which we were encouraged to sample. When the time came to leave, the propietor after consulting with his wife proudly presented us with a bill for $10. When I politely pointed out to him the ridiculousness of this, he lowered the bill to $7 and was adamant. Adventure tours for the rich... Argentina has just finished spending what must be in the range of a $billion on a National Park around the quite remote Iquazu Falls. These falls are near to the point where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet and are roughly 1000 miles from Buenos Aires, slightly less from Sao Paolo and several hundred miles from Ascuncion, the capital of Paraguay. The Park facilites which have just opened are superb--equivalent to or better than anything I have seen in any North American national park--including perhaps 15 miles of a
(Revised) RE: Travels with Neo-liberalism (was Argentina down and out)
(This went out unedited and with a factual mistake... apologies... Coincidentally, I'm just back from ten days in Argentina--I/we attended an international conference in Buenos Aires and took a few vacation days visiting BA and the North of Argentina. A few very casual observations... The local economy is/was seriously out of whack... prices in Pesos which are freely converted into dollars (on occasion one would receive dollars as change from payments in pesos with a 1=1 conversion), are on the whole at least as expensive as New York City except for beef and things which might be discountable in a recessionary economy. However, the quality of what one receives in return for these payments is nowhere near the quality one receives in NYC as for example for hotels, meals, and anything else that the tourist encounters. Argentina following some economic snake oil salesman or other has concessioned out its highways to the private sector. The highways in fact, are superb especially since the tolls they seem to be sufficiently expensive as to almost eliminate inter-city traffic! We had the highways, except for a few miles on either side of BA, almost to ourselves! In other places, such as Europe, where there are a lot of toll roads, it is still possible to move inter-city on non-toll roads. In very large parts of Argentina which is a very large country (rather like Canada in many physical respects), there are almost no alternative roads--one pays the tolls or one doesn't travel. One suspects that the IMF or whoever guided Argentina in its road privatization failed to look at the social and the subsequent socio-economic consequences of effectively eliminating most non-premium status inter-city movement whether by truck or private automobile! Some serious institutional erosion... Part of the privatization appears to be a privatization of the police. On a trip to the North of Argentina we passed through what must have been at least 7 and possibly 9 police (or army) checkpoints. Even immediately post 9.11, NYC never had more than 3 when getting into our out of the City. Each of these checkpoints involved slowing and sometimes stopping. For the first time visitor this meant stopping and conversing with the gendarme in broken Spanish. The first time I did this it was just after dark and we were heading to a motel for the evening. I stopped at the barrier and was about to ask for directions, having identified myself as a tourist, when I was summoned to the guard post itself, evidently because I didn't have my seat belt properly fastened (along with 85% of other Argentine drivers from my experience). Having established that I was a tourist, the Captain was called over who with a very grave face indicated what a serious offense this was, pulled out a calculator and punched in the numbers 250 which he made sure I understood was in dollars. We stared at each other for a time and I evidently grimaced and failed to reach for my wallet. I began to indicate that I felt that this was rather excessive for a first time offense and we continued to stare at each other for several minutes. Recognizing that I was clearly not about to finance the next trip to the capital for he and his family, he shrugged and called in the Sergeant. The Sergeant repeated the ritual with the calculator only this time he punched in 100, again indicating that this was in dollars but that he would take pesos (or presumably pounds, euros or travellers cheques--there was no Visa sign on the door). Again he stared and I stared and again after several minutes he shrugged, left the room and I was now rejoined by the original constable who had captured me from the front seat of my car. I offered him a crisp $20 US bill, we shook hands, he gave me my documents and I was on my way. From then on, approaching a check point, I never lowered the window and simply nodded to the gendarme and was allowed to pass without incident. Grab it while you can... At another stop, my wife and I went into a dusty little town for gas and beside it in a tiny two table cafe we ordered a coffee. The proprietor was an elderly man, clearly a retiree/pensioner of some sort--perhaps a civil servant or teacher--by his clothes and demeanour. The coffee was brought along with several day old pastries which we were encouraged to sample. When the time came to leave, the propietor after consulting with his wife proudly presented us with a bill for $10. When I politely pointed out to him the ridiculousness of this, he lowered the bill to $7 and was adamant. Adventure tours for the rich... Argentina has just finished spending what must be in the range of a $Billion on a National Park around the quite remote Iquazu Falls. These falls are near to the point where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet and are roughly 1000 miles from Buenos Aires, slightly less from Sao Paolo and several hundred miles from Ascuncion, the capital of Paraguay. The Park facilites which have
Fw: Crisis Challenges Conservatism
If a neo-conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, then a Keynesian is a conservative who has gone to war! MG - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 3:26 PM Subject: Crisis Challenges Conservatism Crisis Challenges Conservatism By James Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Orlando, Florida) The terrorist danger to our nation quickly changed conventional perceptions, turning our comfortable lives and opinions upside down. Therefore it's not unlikely that after the attacks on the United States' chief symbols of economic and military power that values would be questioned and reexamined. What is ironic is that the present crisis calls into question many of the conservative values touted since the Reagan Revolution--and by a conservative Bush administration. In the midst of a new war on terror, a conservative Bush administration and conservative Republicans in the House and Senate have performed about-faces on many conservative issues, their actions fostering a new respect for the ability of government to create the secure environment freedom needs to succeed and their words honoring the virtues of public service in a way that's rare for conservatives. Though there are concerns, particularly with civil rights, liberals can take heart that in a time of crisis, conservatives and liberals alike are fighting for more government oversight of the nation's economy and security, not less. Government and Privatization After the terrorist attacks, the nation sees a greater role for government in general, and the federal government in particular to play in securing our public life. To combat the threat of future attacks, we'll need more government involvement, not less--more government to increase security on our borders, more government to shadow and identify terrorists abroad and at home, more government to track terrorist finances, more government to guard public health against chemical and biological attacks, and more government to increase security around the vulnerable targets of our society--aircraft, water reservoirs, refineries, pipelines, nuclear power plants, transportation hubs, public buildings, stadiums, major economic and military targets. The Bush administration, despite its conservative roots, has quickly moved to supply that government oversight. It created the cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, activated reserves to defend the borders and the air overhead in Operation Noble Eagle, sent bills to Congress to restrict civil rights, particularly those of legal aliens, and created an executive order that forces foreign banks doing business in the US to open their files to scrutiny, turn over intelligence on members' accounts, and freeze terrorist assets. September 11 has shown the privatization of airport security to be a disaster. Somehow minimum wage workers from private security companies operating equipment they barely understood didn't work out as well as airport security in the rest of the world, where foreign government agencies provide trained airport and airline security. For years US airlines fought security enhancements like air marshals, better detection machines, and solid cockpit doors because they were more expensive than meeting minimal requirements. Now these airlines face bankruptcy because the traveling public has no confidence in their cheap security. Government's Role in the Economy September 11 also marked a change in the free market economic thinking that marked the Clinton Years, giving way to a liberal, Keynesian approach, with the Bush administration supporting and propping up the key elements of the economy. Government has taken up the role of economic cheerleader with President Bush and his cabinet urging Americans to return to work and to support US companies by buying their stock and urging Americans to travel by air. There's now an unusual blend of patriotism and traditional market self-interest with President Bush urging stockholders not to abandon American companies. This "Buy American" confluence of patriotism and free market economics would have been ridiculed by most free market ideologues before September 11. Not now. The Keynesian approach offers support for the airline industry, the insurance industry, the financial industry. A $15 billion revenue bill to bail out the airlines have already been passed, despite the airlines' own mistakes in fighting rational security measures. The insurance and financial industries, also hit hard by terrorism, are meeting with the president and asking for additional assistance. Likely they will get something, too. In addition, a $40 billion bill to rebuild New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon and pay for Noble Eagle was
Re: FWk: Internet videophone
The issues in video-conferencing, linking to virtual organizations are not I think, about one to one communications... The work from the '60's and '70's, pretty much established that video didn't add very much to the communications capabilities or the ordinary telephone (and now ordinary telephone supplemented by email, chat and so on). Rather, the advance if it is to be made would be in the area of multi-party communications and particularly multi-party multi-point communications. This has been either enormously expensive or very aesthetically unappealing (CU-See-Me/Net Meeting). These types of meetings which are the base for much of the on-going collaborative, negotiative (?), inter-organizational communicative work of companies and other enterprises are where a lot of the costs are and where much of the resistance has been. The NYT has an article this morning (written by Hal Varian one of the leading economists tracking technology) talking about whether video-conferencing might or might not have reached critical mass/tipping point/sufficient network externalities to in fact become normal behaviour rather than experimental. What normalization would mean is that rather than organizations turning to their travel agents to organize meetings, they would turn to their telecoms folks. The stocks of firms providing video-conferencing technologies are currently up 30% on the NYSE. We shall see, Mike Gurstein - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: pete [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 3:53 AM Subject: Re: FWk: Internet videophone Hi Pete, Firstly, my apologies for not replying to your message concerning technical matters of HDTV, screen resolutions and so on. I was busy at the time, and most of these were above my head anyway. Videoconferencing: You say that Michael didn't answer my original question as to why people think that videoconferencing is tedious. I rather think that he circled around an answer when he wrote: (MG) The latest buzz is about the use of Broadband with multiple cameras and thus multiple perspectives being available (but of course, then you need a video producer to manage your meetings!) or the re-creation in (virtual) three dimensions of the folks sitting around the table as holograms/avatars able to interact with each other in real-time--holodecks anyone--this is available now in experimental form BTW... This tends to support my original suggestion that videoconferencing -- so far -- can't replicate the real situation where people are sitting near one another and can observe others' behaviour pretty accurately and also -- very importantly I think -- direct their gaze in a natural way when speaking preferentially to one or other of the group. We, and our immediate primate forebears, have been living in small groups for, what?, two million years or so, and we must have evolved all sorts of subtle instinctive behaviours to maximise communication. And, in fact, to observe that a communication to another has been successfully received and understood. I think this could have become instinctive even before the evolution of speech. Last night on BBC Newsnight I was observing a blind government minister, Blunket, talking to others. For most of the time while he was speaking he looked straight ahead of him but at the tale-end of a statement he always flicked his gaze to look directly at the person to whom his remarks were directed. This looked very much like instinctive behaviour to me. I remember reading about a fascinating research project some years ago whereby deaf people were asked to rate the sincerity of statements made by a politician (Reagan, if I remember exactly) on the TV screen. This was highly subjective, of course, but apparently the instances they cited coincided with those made by a control group with normal hearing -- and with a few more besides! The whole matter of 'micro facial movements' (to use Ray Harrell's recent phrase) and other subtle non-verbal behaviour is interesting and, probably, extremely important in a group situation. For example, we are all probably aware that when a (male) speaker's hand rises quickly to his head (usually to be quickly deflected to scratching his nose or neck) then it's a sign of insincerity or dishonesty -- a sign of disguised antipathy to what he's heard or actual lying if he himself is speaking. We register all these things instinctively, I think, when talking to others. To revert briefly to mobile videophones, I think that the defects of videoconferencing will not be so evident in such 1:1 situations. There'll be a certain amount of artificiality but not so great as to prevent it being popular, particularly among teenagers -- as text and voicemail is now. I have to report, however, that the DoCoMo mobilephone, which was launched at the beginning of this week, is not due to have
Re: Distance-working/Low-rise buildings
Keith: - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 10:58 AM Subject: Re: Distance-working/Low-rise buildings I've been wrong before--anyone remember video-phones? These were really jerky and crummy and it wasn't surprising that they didn't take off. They were jerky and crummy but the same arguments about saving travel money were trotted out... but they never took off... The reason wasn't I think, the technical ones--but rather the social benefits/perks that come from travel. Telework or telecommuting is something different... It hasn't taken off partly for the reasons that Brad mentions--the boss wanting to see bums in seats, but mostly because telework requires a rather significant re-organization in how work is structured so as to allow for the absence of f2f access for information sharing, performance review/monitoring, document distribution and so on. Telecommuting should probably be seen as a form of outsourcing, but intra-company with all the needs for re-adjustment of processes and expectations that go with that and with the high likelihood of failure that went with a lot of corporate outsourcing. This is interesting! What is the set-up. Is this is where someone is speaking 1:1, or 1:group, or 1 of any in group:1 of any in group? (This shows my ignorance of videoconferencing.) If you have time I'd like to know exactly what is tedious about it -- if it's possible to describe. Are there too many time lapses? Is it lack of decent camera angles? Is it the artificiality of the situation? I'd be fascinated to know, if you can put your finger on it. My guess (and this is a pure guess) is that might be to do with direction of gaze (the lack of, at present) -- that is, the subtleties of it that go on naturally when one is talking in a real group situation. Perhaps, at the end of the day, really satisfying videoconferencing can only take place when each person can actually see the rest of the group before him on the screen as though in a real room and can direct his gaze accordingly when speaking. This, of course, would need massive software/processing power and thus could be many years off. But today we have the launch in Tokyo of the world's first 3G mobilephone -- from NTT DoCoMo -- to be called 'Foma'. Videophoning is one of its uses and it'll be interesting to see whether this might be the 'killer ap' that telecomm firms that have invested so much in 3G licences are so desperate for. However, most European 3G firms, including Vodaphone, think that the technology is not good enough yet, so Foma might not take off. We'll have to see. As for why my students found video-conferencing boring--I suspect that it has to do with the lack of what Ray calls the multi-chromatic elements of communication--the subtleties of facial expression, eye and body movements, the play of light in a room and the interplay between the characters sitting around the table. What is being video-conferenced it seems are talking heads and that with relatively limited production values, a degree of technical jitter and the normal droning on of corporate communications (a couple of these are insurance companies!). What is interesting though is that it has now become routine in these companies, to the point where it is boring (but then so are most f2f meetings). The latest buzz is about the use of Broadband with multiple cameras and thus multiple perspectives being available (but of course, then you need a video producer to manage your meetings!) or the re-creation in (virtual) three dimensions of the folks sitting around the table as holograms/avatars able to interact with each other in real-time--holodecks anyone--this is available now in experimental form BTW... Mike Gurstein Keith
Re: A hypothetical exam essay question
I very much agree with Arthur that a major shift is going on. What is interesting though is that it isn't clear what shape that shift is/will take... The shoot first, ask questions later reaction which seemed to be the first one out of DC seems to have settled into something rather more restrained and deliberate and perhaps most important, reflecting some understanding that there is a world "out there"... The fact that the US now recognizes a broad based and non-specific vulnerability to that world is another part of the puzzle. That this is taking place in the midst of a global economic downturn is a further element and the evident need for "State/Keynesian" intervention is causing perturbations in the US economic ideological clerisy. That the attack is coming from the religious right with the need to distinguish between the "fascist" Islamists and the moderate (could we even say "liberal") Muslims is causing further perturbations. Where this is taking the US (and thus much of the rest of the World) isn't yet clear, but there seems to be something (still small but not insignificant) of a ground swell for "bombing them with butter"... MG - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2001 8:47 PM Subject: RE: A hypothetical exam essay question IMHO, Sept. 11 marks the beginning of the 21st century. Like the Titanic or WW1 marked the real beginning of the 20th century. Just as with a kaleidoscope the landscape has shifted. Will it shift back. Unlikley. It will shift. but not back. "Can't step in the same stream twice and all that" Or maybe, can't step in the same paradigm twice. arthur -Original Message-From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2001 6:44 AMTo: Ed Weick; G. Stewart; [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: A hypothetical exam essay question Apologies to the list. It's not really silly. It just seemed that way when I was in a cantankerous mood last night. Its an interesting discussion. When people say that "the world changed on Sept. 11", what they are really saying is that the social and emotional (for want of better terms) parameters which govern rational choices such as responding to cheaper tickets have shifted. Uncertainty has moved in. Choice has become less rational. What is interesting, certainly from an airline perspective, is how long the shift might hold and what the airlines and the government can do to minimize its impact. Will the President flying on Air Force One and Bill Clinton taking several trips across the country bring passengers back? Personally, I rather doubt it. Ed Weick - Original Message - From: Ed Weick To: G. Stewart ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 10:38 PM Subject: Re: A hypothetical exam essay question I repeat, this is all a bit silly. As Arthur and I both pointed out, the demand for air transport has been rendered totally inelastic by the events of September 11th. No matter how cheap the fares, people are now reluctant to fly. It's about making a dramatic, emotional gesture.Nothing is as reassuring to perceptions of American economic might as seeing those big silver birds up there, whether there are people in them or not. If there is an economic component to it, it's probably more about the thousands of people who will lose, or have lost, their jobs because people won't fly. Save the airlines and save a pretty hefty chunk of the economy. Ed Weick - Original Message - From: G. Stewart To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 8:15 PM Subject: Re: A hypothetical exam essay question A further contribution, from a friend: "All of your questions (except the last one) imply a transfer of resources towards flying. Why subsidize flyers? If we're going to tax and transfer there are a lot of competing candidates!(as your last question implies - counter-terrorism is one possible direction.)Of course, it might be argued that flying is somehow essential and therefore 'something' must be done to preserve the industry but Landsberg would argue that nothing isthe answer. If it is argued that Landsberg is wrong, that private resources just cannot reallocate themselves fast enough to keep planes in the air and that it is somehow critical that planes be kept in the air then I would prefer
Fw: [toeslist] Higher Wages and More Time Off Will Become Possibilities Only If We Demand Them
- Original Message - From: Michael Givel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 12:43 AM Subject: [toeslist] Higher Wages and More Time Off Will Become Possibilities Only If We Demand Them Published on Saturday, September 1, 2001 Higher Wages and More Time Off Will Become Possibilities Only If We Demand Them by Rick Mercier IN THE 1880s, when a 40-hour work week seemed as likely as space travel, a French social commentator named Paul Lafargue described a strange delusion that possessed the working classes. This delusion, Lafargue wrote in an incendiary essay called The Right to Be Lazy, is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual. The Frenchman's contemporaries were probably less enamored of work than he believed. After all, it was during Lafargue's time that workers in the West started building a movement that would eventually lead to a dramatic reduction of work time as well as an odd new concept known as the weekend. For about the first two-thirds of the 20th century, declining work time was the trend in the United States. But then something happened and, in the last three decades of the century, work time started increasing-especially for the typical family. Today, the average two-income family with children works the equivalent of 83 weeks a year, an increase of 15 weeks since 1969. The jump in family work time over this period, as the Economic Policy Institute noted in its State of Working America 2000-01, is the same as adding a quarter-time worker to the typical household. Families' overall work burden grew most significantly in the 1980s, when real hourly wages for men and for some groups of women fell sharply. Consequently, increases in annual income for most families during this decade (as well as the first half of the 1990s) were the result of more work rather than higher hourly wages, according to EPI. All the work hours we're piling up have earned us a dubious honor. The International Labor Organization has found that U.S. workers now put in more hours on the job than their counterparts in any other industrialized nation. In fact, Americans on average now spend nearly 80 more hours per year at work than the Japanese, who for years have been portrayed in our media as fanatical worker bees. The ILO, in a 1999 report, concluded that the U.S. pattern of increasing annual hours worked per person runs contrary to a world-wide trend in industrialized countries that has seen hours at work remaining steady or declining in recent years. According to ILO data, the Japanese saw a 10 percent decline in annual work hours between 1980 and 1997, while the French, who now work the equivalent of nearly eight fewer weeks per year than Americans, experienced a 9 percent decrease in annual work time during the same period. American workers, meanwhile, were increasingly victimized by the time bandit, logging 4 percent more total annual work hours in 1996 than they did in 1980, the ILO found. Some Americans are feeling the time crunch more than others. African-American families, for example, work more hours than families in other racial or ethnic groups, according to EPI. An average middle-income African-American family with children needs 489 more annual work hours (or over 12 more weeks) than the average white family to maintain middle- income status. Hispanic families also are working harder to keep up with the (non-Hispanic white) Joneses, toiling 228 hours more per year than whites to enjoy the middle-class life. All this work is getting to many Americans, research shows. The Families and Work Institute found in a study earlier this year that nearly three in 10 Americans reported feeling over-worked often or very often. The study also revealed that one-quarter of employees do not use up all of their vacation time because of the demands of their jobs-a stunning finding considering that Americans have the least annual vacation entitlement in the industrialized world. It's hard to discern any good reason for all the work we're doing. U.S. Workers toil longer than their overseas counterparts despite being the most productive workers in the world, according to the ILO. In terms of value added per hour worked, U.S. Workers beat Japanese workers-our closest competitors in the productivity race-by nearly $9. And, on average, a U.S. worker creates $10,000 more in added value annually than a Japanese worker. As the productivity comparisons show, we're not working more because we're a bunch of slugs incapable of competing in the global marketplace. So what gives? Our predecessors, who consistently fought for better wages and less work, would be appalled to see how our productivity has soared in recent years, but our wages haven't kept pace and our time at work has increased. Maybe we should learn from
Fw: U$ working week too long !! (fwd)
- Original Message - From: MichaelP [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 1:23 AM Subject: U$ working week too long !! (fwd) The Guardian (London) Monday September 3, 2001 Michael Ellison in New York US workers suffer labour pains The United States is closed today for all but the most important business - such as shopping - while it marks the official end of summer with a day of rest for the men and women who work the longest hours in the industrialised world. Average Americans now spend so much time at work that they are putting in another week a year compared with 10 years ago, says a new study published to coincide with the Labour Day holiday weekend. In 1990 Mr and Ms America worked 1,942 hours a year each; now they toil for 1,978 hours, says the report by the International Labour Organisation. The increase in the number of hours worked within the US runs counter to the trend in other industrialised nations where we are seeing declining hours worked, said Lawrence Jeff Johnson, the economist who headed the team that drew up Key Indicators of the Labour Market 2001-2002. Each Australian, Canadian, Japanese and Mexican worker devotes about 100 hours a year - or 2.5 weeks - fewer to their job, it says. Britons and Brazilians work 250 fewer hours (roughly six weeks) and Germans do 500 fewer hours, or about 12 weeks. Of countries categorised as developing or in transition, only South Koreans (500 more hours) and Czechs (an extra 100 hours) put in more time than Americans. I think it's a lot to do with the American psyche, said Mr Johnson, who lives in Switzerland. Americans define themselves by their work. When you meet the average European it takes a while for them to tell you what they do for a living. They talk more about their families. Americans tell you immediately what they do. Part of the apparent appetite for toil is explained by the increasingly blurred line between work and free time. I played golf recently for the first time in a year, said Mr Johnson, who describes himself as a workaholic. My friend's phone rang three times with work calls. The line between time at work and time not at work is blurred. Years ago we used to clock on and clock off but we don't do that any more. But mobile phones and computers are not unique to the US. Nor is ambition, though it might find its strongest expression there. America has labour flexibility and Americans have a tendency to move quickly from job to job, said Mr Johnson. We want to progress, to move on to the next level. To do that they're putting in more hours. Americans typically get vacations of only two or three weeks a year, though there are 10 public holidays. Many fall on Mondays, allowing for long weekends. But long working weeks do not equate with wealth. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it, said Holly Sklar, author of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies that Work for all of us. But as we celebrate Labour Day, hardworking Americans paid the minimum wage have to choose between eating or heating, healthcare or childcare. At $5.15 an hour [the minimum wage], they earn just $10,712 a year. That's a third less than in 1968, when the minimum wage was about $8, adjusting for inflation. A couple with two kids would have to work a combined 3.3 full-time minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. Mr Johnson suggested that the US could learn much from Ireland, where the productivity of people with jobs had increased even though each employee now spent 1,520 hours a year working, down from 1,728 hours in 1990. The education and training is something to look at. Labour Day is a time for reflection for Americans, to see we're doing some things very well but we can learn from others. We're all striving for balance, we want to do it at a cost that's not too great to society. Nobody on their deathbed has ever said 'I wish I'd spent one more hour on that job'. == *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Feel free to distribute widely but PLEASE acknowledge the original source. ***
Fw: [toeslist] Call It Wealth Care, The Doctors Who Cater to Super-Rich
- Original Message - From: Michael Givel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 12:31 PM Subject: [toeslist] Call It Wealth Care, The Doctors Who Cater to Super-Rich Published on Friday, August 31, 2001 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune Call It Wealth Care, The Doctors Who Cater to Super-Rich by Mark DePaolis It always gives me a warm, tingly feeling when I hear about doctors stepping in to help people in need. With most people worried about the poor and uninsured portion of the population, it would be easy to overlook another needy group: the rich. Most of these people have plenty of insurance and good access to health care, but not good enough. These are people who can afford the best of everything. Yet when they get sick they have to sit in doctor's offices and waiting rooms as if they weren't any better than anyone else, even though they could easily buy the entire building if they wanted to. Luckily, several groups of doctors have sprung into action and started a new system of health care to address this growing need. It's the Wealth Care system, and it works like this: Patients sign up for the practice and pay a yearly fee, as much as $20,000. In return, they then have a doctor at their beck and call. They can pick up the phone, any hour of the day or night, and get a doctor to help them with their problems. Most of the time, they don't even have to leave home -- the doctor comes to them. They can access this service as often as they want during the year. As you can imagine, it is a tremendous relief for millionaires to know that a physician will rush over with a medical bag whenever they get a sniffle. With doctors standing by in case of a bad hangnail, they won't worry so much about missing their twice-weekly manicure when their seaweed-wrap deep tissue massage runs long. And although these clinics provide mostly primary care, if a patient needs to see a specialist the doctor will make the call and arrange the visit. One doctor even accompanies the patient to see the specialist. Who knows? For the right money, he might even put on the gown and step in for the patient during parts of the exam. There are a lot of people willing to pay for this kind of special service. Wealth Care clinics have sprung up in Seattle and Florida, where some politicians are trying to outlaw the practice. New offices are planned for Denver, Portland and Chicago, and eventually wherever millionaires get sick. The doctors say they are much happier. Many of them got tired of the aggravation that comes with modern medical practice. Over the last 10 years they have been seeing more patients and making less money. Now, instead of caring for a population of 3,000 or 4,000 patients who need their help, they only need to see a handful of millionaires. They might only see one or two people a day, letting them spend more time -- maybe too much time -- with their patients. They also make a lot more money, sometimes so much that they could even afford to become their own patients. Some European countries have a two-tiered system of health care, with private insurance for the people with enough money, and socialized medicine to take care of everyone else. This is fine as far as it goes -- at least poor, sick people have somewhere to turn -- but this system does nothing to address the terrible burden of inconvenience that faces our wealthiest people every day. Here in this country, where 40 million people have no health care at all, it's good to know there are doctors working hard to make sure the people at the top get plenty of special attention, even if it means turning caring, competent physicians into fawning lapdogs for rich people. Imagine how proud I feel. Mark DePaolis is a writer and physician who practices in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. © Copyright 2001 Star Tribune ### Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- FREE COLLEGE MONEY CLICK HERE to search 600,000 scholarships! http://us.click.yahoo.com/47cccB/4m7CAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Fw: [Parker-L] [PBD 8-22-01] A Funeral for Sysco
Futurework past... M - Original Message - From: Parker Donham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 4:13 AM Subject: [Parker-L] [PBD 8-22-01] A Funeral for Sysco 23 August 2001 Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham A faded billboard just inside the Sydney Steel Plant records the days since the last lost-time accident struck each of the defunct mill's departments. When counting stopped sometime last year, Shops and Services had the best record with 255 accident-free days. Just below the tally board, large letters spell out the words: Caring for yourself. Caring for your buddy. Caring for Sysco. The accident-free record at the steelmaking shop, where the multi-million-dollar electric arc furnace lies cold and still, is obscured by a plastic poster taped over top: TRANS-CANADA LIQUIDATIONS -- An Asset Management Group. All day Monday, redundant steelworkers shuffled past for one more day of caring about Sysco. They trudged along a slag-cobbled roadway toward a decrepit wood frame building lately converted to auction central. In vacant lots to either side, wild yarrow flowers and purple asters fluttered in the breeze. Here and there, mountain ash saplings fought to reclaim ground nature had ceded a century ago to steelmaking. Clusters of ripening berries caused their young branches to droop. Former steelworkers were everywhere: in the crisp black uniforms of the private security firm hired to keep watch over the sale; among the clutch of protesters at the plant gate, passing out leaflets decrying John Hamm's forsaken promise of retraining for the plant's dispossessed; filing into the auction office to remit $5 for the two-volume catalogue of items for sale. Old friends greeted each other with that mixture of pleasure and sorrow that usually reserved for funeral reunions. Toronto-based Trans-Canada Liquidations, a crisply professional crew in navy blue jerseys bearing an understated corporate logo, had divided the flotsam and jetsam into eight clusters, each with its own building or section of the yard. Office equipment -- a sorry collection ratty metal desks, dented file cabinets, and dated computers, each bearing a yellow TCL lot tag -- filled the auction headquarters. One laid-off steelworker hoped to pick up a computer for his daughter, but the smart money said he'd do better in the I Bargain Hunter. N If anyone ever cared about Sysco, you wouldn't know it from the derelict vehicles scattered about the yard. Beside the Electrical Shop stood a quintet of 22-ton Euclid, Terex, and Scott dump trucks, encrusted in soot and rust. A would-be buyer tried to start them up, but the only one with a battery didn't even flicker when the key was turned. A 3/4-ton Chevy cube van minus its left-rear wheel tilted helplessly toward the missing running gear. Next in line, lot 3304, a blue, one-ton Chevy flatbed of undetermined vintage, lay beaten and bruised. A prankster had supplied the missing letter to its dented Nova Scotia licence plate: FUC 849. A back hoe in seemingly reasonable shape was rumoured to have a seized engine, but who knew for sure? Stepping into the Machine Shop, auction area three, was like entering an industrial museum. Lathes, huge and ancient, stood bolted to the concrete floor. The largest of these, lot 342, a direct-current-powered Stamets, capable of turning a cylinder of hard steel 15 feet long and 56 inches in diameter, would sell the next day for $550. Isn't this a sin, said Bob Bartlett of Leitches Creek, who spent 34 years winding armatures in the Electrical Shop. With his friend Joe Elsworth, a veteran of the Devco Railway, Bartlett surveyed a massive, 70-inch boring mill manufactured by the King Machine Tool Company. The name was permanently cast into its elegant antique frame. That goes back to the days of Forman Waye, said Elsworth, invoking the name of a legendary union leader and working class politician from the 1930s and '40s. At back of the Machine Shop, spanners, box-end wrenches, and sockets -- most far too big to interest home hobbyists -- lay alongside grease guns, oil cans, pry bars, and drifts. At the Steel Fabrication Shop, a sea of arc welders filled half the floor. Fifty mammoth electric motors gathered dust in the Electrical Shop. Vices. Anvils. Boxes of half-moon keys that keep gears fixed to spinning shafts. Micrometers. Strain gauges. Jacks capable of lifting houses. Foul weather gear. In the Warehouse, shelf upon shelf of equipment never deployed: coils of shiny new wire, cable, and chain; brooms; shovels; wheel barrows; step ladders; bolts; bearings; electric motor fields; pumps; seals; couplings. You know what this is worth! cried auctioneer Norman Jacobs as he came upon lot 328, a massive Wadkin wood planer. The machine's 550-volt power requirement would render it useless to most buyers. A
Fw: [toeslist] Americans: Vacation Starved?
- Original Message - From: Michael Givel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 9:53 PM Subject: [toeslist] Americans: Vacation Starved? Thursday, August 9, 2001 Americans: Vacation Starved? President Bush is on a month-long vacation, but many people in this country get scant time off. The following analysts are available for interviews about how Americans would benefit from more vacation time: DEBORAH FIGART, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.swt.org Co-editor of the recent book Working Time, Figart is professor of economics at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. She said today: It's great that the president of the United States can recoup his energy with long vacations. Now he should encourage policies so that other hard-working Americans can also have time for rest, family and other activities. An International Labor Organization study earlier this year found that the U.S. has overtaken Japan with the highest average annual hours worked -- just under 2,000 hours per year. The typical vacation in Europe is four to six weeks. In the United States, you're lucky if you get two weeks. France has a 35-hour work week by law, and limited overtime beyond that. Part of the problem is that U.S. managers are encouraged to overwork people because of the fixed costs associated with each employee: healthcare insurance, unemployment insurance, etc. Low-income people work overtime so they can pay their bills. Many people who work the most are among the one-third of Americans who are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, so-called 'white collar' workers. Technology could be part of the solution, but it has often meant that people spend time at home writing work-related emails. While men generally are more overworked than women, that changes if you count unpaid work. JOE ROBINSON, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director of the Work to Live campaign and author of a forthcoming book by the same name, Robinson said today: We're the most vacation-starved country in the industrialized world. By far. Small business employees, the majority of us, get an average of eight days off while Europeans and Australians receive four to six weeks paid leave. In total hours, we now work two months longer every year than Germans. Two weeks longer than the Japanese. GABE SINCLAIR, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.fourhourday.org Author of the new utopian novel The Four Hour Day, Sinclair works as an expert machinist. He said today: Two percent of Americans now grow all of our food and then some. Another 30 million or so do all the mining, manufacturing and construction. If this minority can produce our modern cornucopia, then the four-hour workday is within easy reach. Instead, we remain thoroughly addicted to consumerism, to violence, and to class hierarchy. DAVID STRAUSS, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.afop.org Executive director of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, Strauss said today: Farm workers -- like a lot of other workers -- do not get the opportunity for paid vacation time. If the weather is bad, or they are between crops they have to work on, they do not get a dime. The typical farm worker has no vacation benefits, no health benefits, and works for at or near minimum wage. For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Small business owners... Tell us what you think! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vO1FAB/txzCAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Fw: toc-- It's Payback Time, commentary from Yahoo
- Original Message - From: Bill Caughey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 12:39 PM Subject: toc-- It's Payback Time, commentary from Yahoo Worth reading if for no other reason that Rall was able to work in these lines: Only in America would executive arrogance push a $186,000-a-year employee into Bolshevism. God bless America! -bill- Thursday August 02 08:12 PM EDT http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/uctr/20010802/cm/it_s_payback_time_1.html IT'S PAYBACK TIME By Ted Rall Recession, Bad Bosses and the Art of Sabotage DAYTON, Ohio -- The weak will never inherit the Earth, but they just might blow it up on the way out. As hundreds of thousands of Americans find themselves downsized, right-sized, laid off and plain old fired during this latest economic meltdown, some of them are getting even. I have been loyal to the company in good times and bad times for over 30 years, read an anonymous note to the president of a New Jersey-based chemical company. I was expecting a member of top management to come down from his ivory tower to face us with the layoff announcement, rather than sending the kitchen supervisor with guards to escort us off the premises like criminals. You will pay for your senseless behavior. Pay they did: The downsized/right-sized/laid-off/fired ex-information management systems manager deleted his former employer's inventory and personnel files from the comfort of his newly unaffordable home, causing estimated damages of up to $20 million. The sabotage was so extensive that the company had to cancel its IPO. I don't recall at any time in history, and I've been in this for 30 years, where the degree of destruction was quite as high, employment attorney Linn Hinds, whose corporate clients are closing factories and sending their erstwhile workers to the fiscal hereafter, tells The New York Times. Only in America would executive arrogance push a $186,000-a-year employee into Bolshevism. God bless America! It's been too long coming, but American corporations are finally beginning to get what they deserve for treating their workers like equipment. Whether they're hacking into data files or stealing their own impromptu severance packages -- according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 6 percent of gross corporate revenues are stolen by disgruntled workers -- ex-employees are striking back at companies that force them to work unpaid overtime, without benefits, in cramped cubicles, until their overcompensated bosses let them go with little or no severance. Like the Diggers and Luddites before them, these heroic figures understand that government is no longer in the business of protecting workers from rapacious bosses. In a world where CEOs aren't stoned to death for collecting raises at the same time they're letting the people who do the real work go, justice is something you get for yourself. Not everyone who gets laid off has a legitimate grudge. If a business isn't doing well, if its executives set dignified examples by slashing or eliminating their own pay, if they give workers several months notice of problems so they can begin looking for new jobs, and if they issue generous -- certainly not worth less than six months' pay -- severance checks, the unlucky unemployed should say their farewells, forget their passwords and move on quietly. You're not getting even, after all, unless you've been done wrong. But companies that rely on such Gestapo tactics as security guards and curt notices of dismissal, those who cut you a two-week check or none at all, and particularly those whose senior executives continue to collect seven-figure paychecks for their services as failed managers, deserve anything they get. In that situation, not only is there nothing unethical about deleting a few vital files or diverting petty cash, it is an affront to decency for you not to do so. Corporate America has been violating labor laws and basic rules of civility as long as it has because countless millions of broken-hearted workers have let themselves get tossed out with the morning's trash by incompetent thugs who lined their pockets with the fruits of their suffering. The more that victims of corporate greedheads hit them in their bottom lines, the more civilized the next round of layoffs will be. It may be a free market out there, but laissez-faire is a French phrase for anarchy. (Dismissed workers') main concern, asserts labor lawyer Jonathan Alpert, is figuring out how to get their lives together, not masterminding some sort of retaliation. Let's work on that. (Ted Rall, author of the new graphic novel 2024 and cartoon collection Search and Destroy, is based in New York.)
Fw: [toeslist] how to put reductionist global warming in political-economic context
- Original Message - From: Trent Schroyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 4:13 AM Subject: [toeslist] how to put reductionist global warming in political-economic context from the June-August issue of Annals of the Association of American Geographers: The construction of global warming Climate warming, whatever one concludes about its effect on the earth, is insufficiently understood as a concept that has been constructed by scientists, politicians and others, argues David Demerrit, a lecturer in geography at King's College London, in an exchange with Stephen H. Schneider, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. Many observers consider the phenomenon's construction -- as a global-scale environmental problem caused by the universal physical properties of greenhouse gases -- to be reductionist, Mr. Demerrit writes. Yet this reductionist formulation serves a variety of political purposes, including obscuring the role of rich nations in producing the vast majority of the greenhouse gases. Mr. Demerrit says his objective is to unmask the ways that scientific judgments have both reinforced and been reinforced by certain political considerations about managing global warming. Scientific uncertainty, he suggests, is emphasized in a way that reinforces dependence on experts. He is skeptical of efforts to increase public technical knowledge of the phenomenon, and instead urges efforts to increase public understanding of and therefore trust in the social process through which the facts are scientifically determined. In response, Mr. Schneider agrees that the conclusion that science is at least partially socially constructed, even if still news to some scientists, is clearly established. He bluntly states, however, that if scholars in the social studies of science are to be heard by more scientists, they will have to be careful to back up all social theoretical assertions with large numbers of broadly representative empirical examples. Mr. Schneider also questions Mr. Demerrit's claim that scientists are motivated by politics to conceive of climate warming as a global problem rather than one created primarily by rich nations: Most scientists are woefully unaware of the social context of the implications of their work and are too naive to be politically conspiratorial. He says: What needs to be done is to go beyond platitudes about values embedded in science and to show explicitly, via many detailed and representative empirical examples, precisely how those social factors affected the outcome, and how it might have been otherwise if the process were differently constructed. The exchange is available online to subscribers of the journal at http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/anna _ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Small business owners... Tell us what you think! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vO1FAB/txzCAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Fw: Library a closed book for some British schools
Score one for Keith! M - Original Message - From: radman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 11:35 AM Subject: Library a closed book for some British schools Library a closed book for some British schools -- Eleven British secondary schools have refused the gift of a £3,000 library of classic books written over the past three millennia because they are too difficult for their pupils. And Herodotus is boring. (07/13/01) http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,520391,00.html
Fw: [Parker-L] [PBD 7-15-01] Maybe seals caused the arsenic
I offer this as a global response to Keith Hudson's commentary on private accountability (bankrupt steel mills taken over by governments who then become liable for their environmental clean-up), wait and see attitudes to public environmental disasters, and completely spurious approach to handling scientific information of broader policy interest, among others... MG - Original Message - From: Parker Donham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2001 5:27 AM Subject: [Parker-L] [PBD 7-15-01] Maybe seals caused the arsenic 15 July 2001 Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham Let's not be hasty. Just because the Sydney Steel coke ovens dumped more than 700,000 tonnes of arsenic-laden sludge into Sydney Harbour over the last 100 years, there's no scientific proof this played any part in the unsafe levels of arsenic showing up in area children. Just because the steel plant and the coke ovens showered adjacent neighbourhoods with additional thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals every year for a century is no reason to think this has anything whatever to do with Sydney residents having the highest cancer rates in Canada. Just because toxic slag from the steel plant was used as fill for residential construction in surrounding neighbourhoods for decades is no cause for leaping to wild conclusions about possible ill-effects on public health. Just because federal and provincial health inspectors have checked residents for only two of the twenty-odd notorious carcinogens Sysco spewed into the air and groundwater for the last 100 years, and just because their tests come up positive only if exposure occurred within the last 72 hours, is no reason to suspect public health and safety are not uppermost in their minds. Just because inspectors didn't bother to test soil samples in Sydney's middle-class North End, far closer to the tar ponds than Whitney Pier, is no reason to think they were trying to confine the problem to the poor, marginalized neighbourhoods of the Pier. Just because the Nova Scotia Department of the Environment let Sobey's and its affiliate, Empire Theatres, build a supermarket and a theatre complex on filled-in sections of the tar ponds estuary doesn't mean they weren't being vigilant. People have been quick to ridicule Health Minister Jamie Muir for insisting dangerous levels of arsenic found in five Sydney children may have absolutely nothing to do with the tar ponds. Muir is a minister of the Crown. He has certain responsibilities. He can't go running off half-cocked the first time some radical environmentalist dreams up a cockamamie theory that the worst industrial waste site in Canada -- with 35 times more pollution than the Love Canal -- is harming the people living in its midst. Oh, sure. Bring out the pregnant mothers. Parade the tainted toddlers before the cameras. Go for the cheap shot. Tug on the heartstrings. As Muir was quite right to point out, some of the poisoned babies live more than a kilometre from the tar ponds. A kilometre! That's a thousand metres away -- almost a three-minute walk! Muir's government was elected on a solemn promise not to spend any money in Cape Breton. He can't start writing cheques, moving people hither and yon, the first time someone has a beef about yellow cancer-causing goo seeping into their basements from a civil service steel mill. What's he supposed to do? Move everyone in the whole Cape Breton Regional Municipality into Point Pleasant Park? Who's going to pay for that? Not those good-for-nothing steelworkers or coal miners, that's for sure. This province is practically bankrupt. The worst thing Muir could do would be to act precipitously and move families before he has all the facts about what's poisoning their babies. At this point, the popular notion that the coke ovens and the tar ponds are affecting public health is nothing more than a theory. Documents obtained under the Access to Inanity Act show Muir's department is actively exploring several other possibilities: -- B The Bruno Marcocchio-Mafia Connection N -- Investigators suspect Bruno Marcocchio may only be posing as a mild-mannered environmentalist truly concerned about pollution. He may actually be fronting for a Sicilian drug cartel anxious to gain control of the Sysco piers, whose heavy lift cranes would be ideal for importing tonnes of drugs into North America. RCMP labs are checking to see whether baby food in Sydney supermarkets was salted with arsenic to sow panic. -- B The Seal Theory N -- Federal authorities banned lobster fishing in Sydney Harbour 25 years ago. (They may be slow to protect babies, but when lobsters are threatened, bureaucrats act decisively.) Cod eat lobster larvae. Seals eat tonnes upon tonnes of cod, and they are known to defecate right in the water. Arsenic and other pollutants could be working their way up the food chain in
Re: The balderdash thread
Keith, - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 11:49 PM Subject: The balderdash thread Hi Michael, At 14:55 10/07/01 -0700, you wrote: (MG) Utter bunk! I think the argument might rather be that they are being scrutinized more (actually I doubt even that unless you count for something the timid fino-porno peeking under the market skirts of CNBC and the like ) because they are less truly accountable--they are bigger, have more hacks and flacks maintaining deniable perimeters, are smarter at managing media/academic/politico reality, and more utterly unaccountable because we now have a new religion where morality and greed have not simply become compatible they are actually screwing noisily and messily in whatever public happens to be left over from the retreat from the public good that passes for the modern polis. Despite what you've written above, it is a fact of modern life that the corporation is investigated, exposed and pressured as never before. They are certainly becoming more democratically accountable in a wider rather than a narrower (vote-on-a-ballot paper every few years) sense. You my friend are making the rather more elemental mistake of forgetting that before we were consumers and I mean in an ontological rather than a temporal sense we were participants/beneficiaries/trust fund babies of the public good--culture, education, decent health care, public order--in short everything that makes civilized life possible and for which we are either stewards or barbarians (at least Ian Angell doesn't call a spade a turnip) On the contrary, you are making the mistake of categorising people as one thing or the other. I am not mixing up consumers/stakeholders with citizens. Modern life has already done that. Each of us is a voter, a consumer, a shareholder, a capitalist, a wage-slave, a (potential) pensioner, an investor, a speculator, and so on. The fact that citizens are voting less than ever before (about 50% in our recent General election*) means that he regards his democratic rights (in the narrow sense) as less important than his other roles. So? My dog has fleas and my teenage daughter made a rude remark to me the other day... I guess I could have put the one down and found what the market of the other one was, but better judgement and the non-market ties of loyalty and love kept me from doing so. *The turnout was less than any other election in the UK for a century. The % turnout in the Election after WWI was less but only because 1½ million soldiers (out of a much smaller electorate) were not allowed to vote. Keith H MG
Re: Down with meritocracy
As I recall the original Rise of the Meritocracy book--and its been 25 years or so since I read it--(it did leave an impression)--it wasn't meant to be a Sociological treatise. Rather it was more in the style of an extended critical and somewhat ironic essay from what would now be characterized as an 'Old Labour' perspective. Michael Young and others (Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggarth, Peter Willmott) were exploring the values of traditional English working class culture (solidarity) as the basis for a critique of US style individualism/liberalism. I think that Tony Eagleton is the current exemplar of this stream. As I recall, Michael Young's major work was in Social Anthropology and specifically exploring from a favorable (and romantic) anthropological perspective traditional working communities in the urban UK of the 1950's. Young wasn't arguing for a Meritocracy, rather he was arguing against it from a Left Labour position. Mike Gurstein - Original Message - From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 12:50 PM Subject: Re: Down with meritocracy At 03:36 PM 07/05/01 +0100, Keith Hudson wrote: In using meritocracy in its wider meaning (not the meaning that Michael Young says the system imposes), then we really do need more meritocracy not less. Meritocracy is such a perfect word for satire precisely because it can seem to mean both one thing and its opposite(s). The narrow definition would be Young's equation of IQ + effort = merit. The wider meaning could be the Chelsea Manifesto's inclusion of qualities other than intelligence and education -- their kindliness and their courage, their imagination and sensitivity, their sympathy and generosity . . . Or it could signify the next step after the initial, *inevitable*, blasphemous commutation of the formula. First intelligence and effort themselves become retroactively defined by meret (a much needed word I have backformed from meretricious). Eventually other qualities can be explicitly recognized and valued as part of the definition -- flexibility, cheerfulness, eagerness, ruthlessness, unquestioning conformity, cynicism, even unadulterated lust and greed. Isn't that the implication of go for it -- the smug notion that the single-minded pursuit of personal gain is itself a virtue? And why stop there when literally getting away with murder can also be meretocratically redeemed by remuneration (perhaps in stock options)? Although one could historically identify impulses in its direction, there has never been and never will be a meritocracy in the narrow sense of the equation. Like chastity, meritocracy is most genuine when it is discreet. Too much talk about meritocracy takes us into the bordello advertising its virgins. On the other hand, pursuing the wider meaning as laid out in the Chelsea Manifesto cuts through to the superfluity of evaluating and rewarding people on whatever supposed merit. Will we administer kindliness and sensitivity tests in school? To ask the question is to uncover its absurdity. Saying we need more meritocracy is, in effect, like saying we need more hypocrisy. We have enough of that already, thank you. What we need is not more meritocracy but more democracy and more equality. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Accountability
Hmm... I'm wondering where the accountability is for the senior execs who covered up the Ford/Bridgestone efforts for a half dozen years, hundreds of lives and thousands of injuries; or the accountability of the tobacco execs.; or PGE (Erin Brockovitch); or the wonderful folks who brought Minimata disease to Japan; or John Roth of Nortel who rather casually it seems destroyed the pension hopes of half the Canadian population while making sure that his own stock options were secure... I've had my own irritations with Canadian (and other) public servants over the years, but I'm trying to think of the numbers of the execs. from any of those companies I mention above whose behaviour was as commendable as the senior Ontario public servants who either resigned or put their careers on the line in opposing 'E Colli' Harris' dissection of the commendable traditions of Ontario public enterprise. Mike Gurstein - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 11:33 PM Subject: Accountability I've been desperately trying to get back to answering postings by Ed Weick, Tom Walker and others of the past week or so but have been too busy. But there is one point I'll make separately here before pushing off to hospital for my daily X-ray session. This is about the accountability of those responsible for important services. Very briefly, here's the background. In the UK we have four severe crises -- the railways, foot-and-mouth disease, the National Health service, and State Education. All of them are either caused or exacerbated by incompetent management. The first is a (recently) privatised service, and the others are State run, each with large civil service departments. I won't go into details of any of these crises, save to say that public/consumer opinion is worked up about all these to a degree which I haven't observed before in the last 50 years of taking an interest in these matters. Every day in the papers, radio and TV there is intense discussion of the deficiencies in each case. The big difference is in accountability. In the case of the railways, journalists and commentators regularly grill the managers of Railtrack (the master system which supplies the track and signalling to the other regional operational companies) on matters of safety and bad timetabling. That is, it is those who are operationally responsible who are questioned. And they are questioned rigorously, sometimes mercilessly. In the case of the others, it is Ministers, Junior Ministers, and other Government spin doctors who are questioned. These people, of course, are not operationally responsible. To a lesser or greater degree they are constitutionally responsible but they have no clear idea of what the real management issues are. They are at least one remove from the system.* The people who really run these systems -- the senior civil servants -- are never questioned. They refuse to to speak publicly. In fact, refusal is too strong a term for this practice because it is never disputed. Quite simply, this has been the policy of the senior civil servants for over 100 years ever since the formation of the civil service as a unified power bloc. (Middle and junior administrative ranks don't dare give their opinions in public, of course, because they have had to sign secrecy documents when appointed and can easily be dismissed.) That's all. I will attempt to discuss this matter in a little more detail in replying to Ed Weick's message of 28 June (Re: Shorter Reply . . . ) later today. Keith Hudson P.S. *Here's a little story that illustrates this. Twenty years ago, when my home town, Coventry, faced an employment/industrial crisis (which subsequently deepened and didn't start to lift for another 15 years) I put forward some ideas for a Coventry Investment Fund to the Council. I was actually invited to speak to the small, but important, policy-making committee of the Council. Although I received the support of Coventry's Chief Economist who also attended, I didn't get anywhere in persuading the Councillors to initiate such a Fund. (My proposal envisaged a Fund similar to the Boston Investment Fund, and would have involved the University of Warwick also.) (The latter actually started the first Science Park in the country seome years later, very similar to part of what I was proposing. But I had no direct inputs to this, so I don;t take any credit. It was more likely to have been an idea that was in the minds of many others besides myself.) However, one of Coventry's MPs, himself a past member of the Council, had also attended, and suggested that I should speak to senior civil servants at the Department of Industry. As he was Junior Minister at the Department, this was an opportunity I couldn't resist, so he fixed up an appointment and a few weeks later I travelled to London and turned up at the House of
Fw: [toeslist] ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit
- Original Message - From: Michael Givel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 7:48 AM Subject: [toeslist] ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit Subject: ILO Press Release 01-19: Decent Work Agenda Monday 11 June 2001 For immediate release ILO/01/19 ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit Calls on organization and international community to integrate decent work agenda GENEVA (ILO News) * We need to make decent work a reality in our countries and embed this goal in the global economy, said the International Labour Office (ILO) Director-General Mr. Juan Somavia in a plenary address to the 89th International Labour Conference, which is meeting in Geneva. For the last two decades, governments and international financial institutions have focussed on bringing down budget deficits: I think it is now time to focus with the same energy on bringing down the decent work deficit, Mr. Somavia insisted. He called upon tripartite delegates from the Organization's 175 member States to act as the catalysts to create an expanding global consciousness for decent work. To meet the challenge, the Director-General said that the ILO needs to project a clear and coherent message of what it is about today. Highlighting the need to increase awareness of social issues at the national and international level, he told the assembled delegates: To move forward we need to confront the widespread perception that we who address social issues are playing in the minor league of the global economy, while the hard ball actors in the world of commerce and finance occupy a superior sphere of policy. He said that perception is and should be subverted by the reaction of people all over the world and their perception of the failure to deal credibly with their social concerns and priorities in the age of globalization. Fundamental principles and rights at work and employment must be part of the agenda. Insisting that what is decent is built on universal rights and principles, but reflects the circumstances in each country, Mr. Somavia pointed out, in that sense, there is a floor but there is no ceiling. The threshold of decent work evolves as the possibilities and priorities of societies evolve. The decent work framework can be mapped onto a practical policy agenda, adapted to the concerns and circumstances of different countries by implementing such policies into the development agenda as: * Promoting enterprise and employment alongside policies to defend basic rights at work; * Strengthening the social partners and reinforcing their dialogue around the decent work goals; * Formulating policies to extend the reach of social protection systems and promote gender equality. He highlighted the need for a common approach in the international system, which encompasses our decent work goals and avoids situations in which member States receive different and contradictory advice from different international organizations, amounting to policy schizophrenia. Underscoring that it was essential that the international system stops acting as if it were a series of unconnected islands, and begins to put together the type of integrated responses required by the interrelated challenges of the global economy. He promised that these issues will be taken up in next week's meeting of the ILO Governing Body's Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization. He stressed recent efforts to raise the Organization's profile and exert more influence, adding We must have the will to make a difference to the path of globalization. We must contribute to fair rules of the game and level playing field for both people and countries. Encouraging the ILO's tripartite constituency to agree that it should take on a significant role in tracing social road maps for the global economy, he encouraged it to forge a strong tripartite alliance that is open to the world. He concluded that the goals of the ILO Constitution go far beyond the Organization's immediate areas of influence: Employment and security depend on wider economic policies * so dialogue and cooperation with Finance, Trade and other Ministries at the national level, and with multilateral organizations internationally, is absolutely essential. Stuart M. Basefsky * Information Specialist * CORNELL UNIVERSITY * New York State School of* Industrial Labor Relations* 420 Ives Hall * Ithaca, NY 14853-3901 * * Telephone: (607) 255-2703 * Facsimile: (607) 255-9641 * E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fw: [toeslist] ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit
- Original Message - From: Michael Givel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 7:48 AM Subject: [toeslist] ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit Subject: ILO Press Release 01-19: Decent Work Agenda Monday 11 June 2001 For immediate release ILO/01/19 ILO Director-General targets decent work deficit Calls on organization and international community to integrate decent work agenda GENEVA (ILO News) * We need to make decent work a reality in our countries and embed this goal in the global economy, said the International Labour Office (ILO) Director-General Mr. Juan Somavia in a plenary address to the 89th International Labour Conference, which is meeting in Geneva. For the last two decades, governments and international financial institutions have focussed on bringing down budget deficits: I think it is now time to focus with the same energy on bringing down the decent work deficit, Mr. Somavia insisted. He called upon tripartite delegates from the Organization's 175 member States to act as the catalysts to create an expanding global consciousness for decent work. To meet the challenge, the Director-General said that the ILO needs to project a clear and coherent message of what it is about today. Highlighting the need to increase awareness of social issues at the national and international level, he told the assembled delegates: To move forward we need to confront the widespread perception that we who address social issues are playing in the minor league of the global economy, while the hard ball actors in the world of commerce and finance occupy a superior sphere of policy. He said that perception is and should be subverted by the reaction of people all over the world and their perception of the failure to deal credibly with their social concerns and priorities in the age of globalization. Fundamental principles and rights at work and employment must be part of the agenda. Insisting that what is decent is built on universal rights and principles, but reflects the circumstances in each country, Mr. Somavia pointed out, in that sense, there is a floor but there is no ceiling. The threshold of decent work evolves as the possibilities and priorities of societies evolve. The decent work framework can be mapped onto a practical policy agenda, adapted to the concerns and circumstances of different countries by implementing such policies into the development agenda as: * Promoting enterprise and employment alongside policies to defend basic rights at work; * Strengthening the social partners and reinforcing their dialogue around the decent work goals; * Formulating policies to extend the reach of social protection systems and promote gender equality. He highlighted the need for a common approach in the international system, which encompasses our decent work goals and avoids situations in which member States receive different and contradictory advice from different international organizations, amounting to policy schizophrenia. Underscoring that it was essential that the international system stops acting as if it were a series of unconnected islands, and begins to put together the type of integrated responses required by the interrelated challenges of the global economy. He promised that these issues will be taken up in next week's meeting of the ILO Governing Body's Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization. He stressed recent efforts to raise the Organization's profile and exert more influence, adding We must have the will to make a difference to the path of globalization. We must contribute to fair rules of the game and level playing field for both people and countries. Encouraging the ILO's tripartite constituency to agree that it should take on a significant role in tracing social road maps for the global economy, he encouraged it to forge a strong tripartite alliance that is open to the world. He concluded that the goals of the ILO Constitution go far beyond the Organization's immediate areas of influence: Employment and security depend on wider economic policies * so dialogue and cooperation with Finance, Trade and other Ministries at the national level, and with multilateral organizations internationally, is absolutely essential. Stuart M. Basefsky * Information Specialist * CORNELL UNIVERSITY * New York State School of* Industrial Labor Relations* 420 Ives Hall * Ithaca, NY 14853-3901 * * Telephone: (607) 255-2703 * Facsimile: (607) 255-9641 * E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fw: Kuttner on Ireland
Apart from all the carping about the amount of subsidy and so on that Ireland received, the interesting thing is that it seems to have worked. In Canada, billions have been poured into lagging regions (Atlantic Canada for one) with almost nothing to show for it except a bit of over-development in a couple of cities and massive depopulation and increasing enmiseration everywhere else. If anything, Ireland started out in worse shape than for example, Cape Breton or Newfoundland in the 1960's and through some very judicious investments, tax regimes, procurement policies and a bit of luck were able to achieve some sort of sustainable take-off in the sectors that matter. As I understand it, they started off with some smart and dedicated folks, a plan, the legislative capacity to implement the plan (initially on a fairly small regional basis) and some sort of mechanism to keep the politicians from making another set of self-serving featherbeds out of the whole operation. Just compare that to the fiasco in Canada that has been the history of regional development over the last 50 years or so and the most recent and heart breaking travesties of the various funding programs meant to help transition the region into some sort of alternative economy where the fishing, mining etc.etc. economies had collapsed. One only has to compare the sense of optimism and hope beaming out of Ireland with the economic despair and hopelessness which is the unfortunate lot of most Atlantic Canadians apart from the politically favoured few. I guess for me, the amount of the subsidy doesn't matter that much... if, as in this case it was put to some intelligent and effective use other than further enriching the powerful and the politically connected and their friends. If anyone is interested in pursuing this a bit further, Collective Press of Vancouver has just published my book, Burying Coal: An Experiment in Research Using Information and Communications Technology for Local Economic Development. From the back cover "Burying Coal is a chronicle of the C\CEN project spanning a two year period. It is also a commentary on the dilemmas and difficulties of development with a particular focus on skilled, technical-job-development regions such as Cape Breton. In this Burying Coal has lessons of broader interest to other regions experiencing economic decline. The insightful narrative provides lessons for the direction of public policy in support of regional development and social opportunity in Knowledge-Based and Technologically-Enabled Society." Price $20 CDN + shipping. For ordering instructions email [EMAIL PROTECTED] regs MG - Original Message - From: Christoph Reuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2000 5:23 PM Subject: Re: Fw: Kuttner on Ireland BusinessWeek Online wrote: A libertarian can assert that government just got out of the way over the past three decades and let the free market rip; the miracle followed. ^^^ This is quite an exaggeration (unless "rip"="rest in peace"), considering that Ireland is by far the largest net recipient of EU state subsidies (per capita; except tiny Lux.): Luxembourg 1660 $/capita [in 1997] Ireland 770 Greece 404 Portugal 262 Belgium 170 Spain140 Denmark 19 Finland0.3 It can almost be called "basic income" ;-) Chris
Fw: Kuttner on Ireland
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JULY 10, 2000 ISSUE ECONOMIC VIEWPOINT Ireland's Miracle: The Market Didn't Do It Alone ROBERT KUTTNER The Celtic Tiger, as Ireland now likes to call itself, is currently the economic champion of the European Union. Three decades ago, it was a sleepy, impoverished, protectionist country with little prospect for growth. Today, thanks to a six-year growth rate averaging 7% per annum, Irish unemployment has dropped from 16% to 4% in a decade. Ireland, whose longtime prime export was its sons, is experiencing net inward immigration. Its per-capita income now surpasses Britain's and by 2002 will exceed the EU average. Almost overnight, Ireland has become a First World nation--albeit with Third World roads and a retro cuisine which, despite improvements, is still too reliant on potatoes and cabbage. The Irish economic metamorphosis was recently debated at a conference in Galway sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. The foundation's Freedom Project explores the connections among laissez-faire economics, political liberty, economic growth, and other social goods such as civility, culture, and equality. Ireland offers a wonderful Rorschach test. A libertarian can assert that government just got out of the way over the past three decades and let the free market rip; the miracle followed. A mixed-economy type can credit farsighted public-development policies. Here are the facts; you be the judge. Prior to the 1960s, the Irish Republic, which wrested its independence from Britain only in 1922, was turned inward. Nationalists emphasized the reclamation of Irish heritage and sheltered the economy. Not unlike the early American patriots, Prime Minister Eamon De Valera believed that limiting British economic influence would allow both national culture and domestic industry to flourish. A TURN OUTWARD. But these policies produced economic stagnation rather than growth. In the 1960s, a new government shifted the emphasis to a massive investment in Ireland's young workforce and a turning outward. Three major policy initiatives ensued. First, beginning in 1968, the government sponsored a commitment to a world-class education system, beginning with universal secondary schooling, then community colleges and improved technical training. Today, Ireland ranks second among advanced countries in the share of national income devoted to public education. Second, Ireland began welcoming foreign capital investment. It cut tariffs, offered corporations the most generous tax concessions in Europe, and joined the European Union and monetary system. Third, it pursued policies of social partnership with its trade unions, rewarding wage restraint. It took a quarter-century for these strategies to bear fruit. As recently as the late 1980s, Ireland was still stuck in an economic rut. But with the 1990s came a stunning virtuous circle. Ireland's well-educated workforce today offers multinational businesses perhaps Europe's best ratio of skills to wages. Coupled with its tax concessions and its English language, these attractions drew such U.S. technology companies as Intel, Dell Computer, Microsoft, Digital Equipment, and a slew of biotech and chemical outfits. SOFTWARE ACE. Ireland has become a leading base for exports to Europe. According to Edward Walsh, former chancellor of the University of Limerick, 60% of packaged software sold on the Continent is made in Ireland. Membership in the EU and its monetary system cut Ireland loose from Britain's pound and restrictive monetary policies. Membership also brought EU regional economic-development funds, which peaked at a remarkable 6% of Irish gross domestic product. All over Ireland, you see infrastructure improvements financed under the banner of the EU's royal blue, star-studded flag. With European Monetary Union and macroeconomic convergence, Irish interest rates dropped to near-German levels, providing yet another shot in the arm. So what did the trick, laissez-faire economics or creative statecraft? Clearly, economic opening, foreign capital, and tax breaks helped. Score one for laissez-faire. But so did massive investment in education and public infrastructure. Score one for social outlay. The multiple benefits of EU membership also support both sides of the argument. On the one hand, the EU is a free-trade area. On the other, it tends to a more interventionist style of governance than anything commended by American libertarians. To be sure, Ireland's very low corporate taxes gave it an artificial competitive advantage in attracting foreign capital--but by definition, not every nation can win this game. My conclusion: Free markets surely invite economic dynamism--but markets also rest on a foundation of social investment and inventive governance. Long-suffering Ireland's new problems are
Fw: nettime Gamblers in the casino capitalism
- Original Message - From: Felix Stalder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 7:56 AM Subject: nettime Gamblers in the casino capitalism [[From an email exchange between David Mandl, Dough Henwood, Ted Byfield, David Hudson and myself in preparation of the Tulipomania conference http://www.balie.nl/tulipomania/. Felix]] The following is an excerpt from Herb Greenberg's column on TheStreet.com yesterday. I've seen several letters like this on that site alone in the past few days. Not to make light of this poor guy's suffering, but I was wondering when we'd start seeing stories like this. I'm sure there are many more. Sad. - Which brings us to some guy named Martin, who posted: "I'm writing with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes. I have worked hard all of my life, always trying to do the right thing for my family, friends and the world in general. I have never taken advantage of another person in any way. I have scrimped and saved over the years as I did not have the luxury of a company pension or retirement plan. When I became aware of CYBR and the EHC, I did voluminous amounts of research and only after I was totally convinced, I started buying. I admit that I probably got caught up in all of the good repartee being bantered about the boards and violated some of my own basic rules of investing, but I really believed and in fact, still do. "I have literally lost everything I have worked for my entire lifetime. A woman whose husband bought into CYBR on my recommendation called me this morning in tears as she thinks her husband is going to kill himself, as he did what I have done. We are both 62 years old and cannot recover from this. I called their son and told him to get over there. This is one of the most decent human beings you could ever hope to know. His life is ruined now. They are both sick and have less chance than I do of recovering from this. ... "I did make a giant mistake by buying on margin. I have had to liquidate shares several times for margin calls and thought that the nightmare was finally over. Then this week happened. I am now so far in the hole that even if I liquidate totally, I still owe! Now that's incredible and shows the dangers of margin. I have until tomorrow and I don't know what to do, other than hope for a miracle." --][-- The following is an excerpt from Herb Greenberg's column on TheStreet.com yesterday. I've seen several letters like this on that site alone in the past few days. Not to make light of this poor guy's suffering, but I was wondering when we'd start seeing stories like this. I'm sure there are many more. Sad. It is sad, but you've got to wonder what people were thinking when they bought these turkeys. Well one thing they were thinking is: 30% annual returns! The Next Microsoft! Sure there were, are, and always will be a lot of carnival barkers hawking crappy stocks, but the buyers are often not wholly innocent, except maybe in retrospect. My friend Gregg Wirth, who used to cover stock scams for TheStreet.com, interviewed lots of people who fell for pump dump schemes. He asked them why they bought the financial equivalent of vaporware. They repeatedly said, "Because the broker said they were going to triple!" Sorry to be so hard-hearted, but at least some people should know better. --][-- Totally agree, Doug, and I think most people on this list are aware of my "fuck 'em all" attitude to New Economy greedbags. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to this Big Correction. And I agree that lots of people who were drooling over 300%-returns-at-any-cost will now try to rewrite history and portray themselves as wittle innocents. But, I don't know, I think there are SOME number of people who were basically trying to jump on the bandwagon and not be left behind, just thinking that hunting for the Big Hot Stock is what you need to do to make money nowadays (true, to a certain degree--a bank CD ain't gonna cut it anymore). The problem is figuring out who they were. Not easy. I'll tell you one thing: I have zero tolerance for people who sue their brokers, claiming that they hadn't been told about the risks. There've been a bunch of these, and I bet there'll be many more now. I'm sure most of these people are full of shit, and I have about as much sympathy for them as I have for the people who sue lumber yards for not warning them not to eat sawdust. --][-- But, I don't know, I think there are SOME number of people who were basically trying to jump on the bandwagon and not be left behind, just thinking that hunting for the Big Hot Stock is what you need to do to make money nowadays (true, to a certain degree--a bank CD ain't gonna cut it anymore). Here's where I reveal my bleeding heart a bit and say, yes, I sympathize with *some* of these people. My father, in
