[PEN-L:6900] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Geez you can give value for 2k, Doug! Right on the button, for mine, on both counts - in Oz as it is in US. As far as dangers go, this is pretty far down on the list in 1999. And any U.S. radical has to take a critique of petit bourgeois (no quotes for me, thank you) influence seriously - e.g. the localist, individually self-reliant, small-business fantasies that permeate populist and green politics specificially and American ideology in general. I like the rejection of bourgeois respectability. The Beats played this role in America. And the Beats were a major inspiration for what Tom Frank the Baffler Boys call the commofidication of dissent, too - lifestyle rebels with a deeply reactionary streak.
[PEN-L:6945] Asian irrational euphoria?
Tuesday May 18 1999 SCMP Camdessus urges caution DAVID SAUNDERS Recent rallies on Asia's financial markets are premature and smack of "irrational euphoria", according to the International Monetary Fund's managing director Michel Camdessus. Speaking in Hong Kong, Mr Camdessus warned that while the new-found optimism across the region was understandable as economies started the process of recovery, much work needed to be done in terms of financial restructuring. The recovery on stock markets, while appropriate after almost two years of turmoil, was happening a little too rapidly, he said. "People were talking about a deep recession in the making for Asia . . . Now we are possibly at a turning point, or even possibly after the turning point," Mr Camdessus said. "But I am a little bit concerned that after instances of excessive pessimism, we are now in a phase . . . of a degree of irrational euphoria. So we must be careful in our judgment." However, during a speech beforehand, at the Pacific Basin Economic Council's international general meeting, Mr Camdessus noted considerable progress had been made towards improving the international financial system. "We are at the point now where - let me be a little impertinent - central banks no longer compete for a reputation for secrecy but for one of transparency," he said. He called for full liberalisation of capital movements in a "prudent and well sequenced fashion". He said that while the ultimate goal of financial institutions and all governments should be for trade liberalisation and greater regulatory transparency, he acknowledged there was sometimes a case to argue for capital controls to be imposed on a temporary basis. "Generally, consensus is emerging that capital controls do not deal effectively with fundamental economic imbalances, but may only be useful in certain circumstances," he said, adding they were in fact accounted for within the IMF's own articles of agreement. "[But] controls may have a place when there is the risk of a crisis, but only to allow a breathing space for other fundamental measures to take effect." Such controls were generally more effective when imposed on capital inflows rather than outflows, such as those erected by the Malaysian Government in September. Any future work on financial reforms needed to include social consideration, he said. The financial crisis had exposed the inadequacy of social welfare systems across Asia, where people had traditionally relied on family-based support. Mr Camdessus also said stronger nations had to do more to integrate developing states, which were not benefiting from the global economy. "Too little is being done by industrial countries to facilitate this integration, for instance by opening their markets or by extending official development assistance," he said. Mr Camdessus said all financial institutions, including the IMF itself, had to ensure that they evolved in line with the changing global economy and that all countries were given an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. Asked for his observations on the Hong Kong economy, Mr Camdessus said the IMF believed it had reached a turning point, although unemployment remained high. He said the SAR Government was right to defend the peg and retain it even though it had undergone immense pressure.
[PEN-L:6946] Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
I don't read this as denying the agency of the Serbs in ethnic cleansing. Consider the following. A known pedophile is taken to a picnic by Clinton and left alone with a number of children. The pedophile assaults several children. Surely, there is a sense in which Clinton caused the assaults. The tendencies of the pedophile will not result in the attacks unless the opportunity for doing so is present. Hence given the circumstances Clinton leaving the pedophile alone with the children is a sufficient condition (or cause) for the assaults. This is quite consistent with the pedophile being the agent, and does not deny that agency. In the same way, Paul first notes that before the bombing there was no ethnic cleansing etc. The bombing provided the conditions for the cleansing since it gave Milosevic the freedom to cleanse, and also to decimate the KLA at the same time. The bombing was a sufficient condition or cause of ethnic cleansing etc. This is not inconsistent with and does not deny that the Serbs are the agents. Cheers, Ken Hanly Brad De Long wrote: Barkley, I have some difficulty with your whole discussion and comparison of the situation in Turkey and Kosovo. The reason is fairly straightforward. First, there was no genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced removal, denial of language rights, etc. etc. in Kosovo prior to the bombing. ... [O]n a proportional basis, the Albanians were forcing out the Serbs, not the opposite. (i.e. NATO should have been bombing Tirana, not Beograd.)... It is we, members of NATO, that have caused the ethnic cleansing by our bombing Paul Phillips Why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing? And why this attempt to make every Muslim in the region bar responsbility for the terrorist deeds of the KLA? Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:6947] Re: Kurds and Kosovars
I don't understand why you think that Milosevic has been victorious. Damage to Serbia's infrastructure including Kosovo is untold billions. Eventually he will have to settle for some type of de facto occupation of Kosovo by the UN and/or NATO. Albanians will move back to Kosovo under the protection of this force. What is to prevent the UN protectorate eventually opting for independence? Plus, Milosevic's freedom of action will be severely restrained by the need to get funds from the IMF and the World Bank to rebuild Serbia. THe best he can hope for is some deal that guarantees he will not be tried as a war criminal. Maybe he can arrange a baby Doc trip to a Mediterranean Island hideaway with his family or a nice comfortable retirement in South Africa. Cheers, Ken Hanly J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Louis, You are correct that it is as "hard as shooting fish in a barrel" to figure out what is really going on with this situation in Yugoslavia. I confess to playing the "kick Milosevic" role because the others who might play it have all left pen-l. I understand from lbo-talk that Chris Burford feels that he must "censor" his messages to your list because you do not allow any anti-Milosevic diatribes on the grounds that they are "objectivly pro- imperialist." Tsk tsk. I have already laid out several longer and shorter term factors that have led to where we are now, ranging from longer term imperialist plotting against Yugoslavia (presumably your fave, which if that is all there is to it does make Milosevic a "heroic anti-imperialist socialist" whoopee!!). But obviously I don't think that is all there is to it, and the old boy is responsible for a bunch of it, even if his evil is not also the sole source of all the troubles. Paul Phillips is certainly right that there was a problem in 1989 with Albanians violating rights of Serbs. Unfortunately Milosevic's reaction overdid it and triggered a lot of bad stuff throughout the old Yugoslavia that might not have happened otherwise. Serb rights will be defended now because there will be few Albanians left in Kosmet soon, and despite a likely future ongoing campaign by the UCK/KLA, it is likely to stay that way. There will be no ground invasion and the bombing obviously is doing nothing to help the Albanians one bit, quite the contrary. BTW, just so I don't repeat stuff that you know (like the latest reported estimates of refugee numbers), yesterday's Washington Post had several related and interesting articles on war-related decisionmaking in Washington (I'm sure you can find them quickly). Anyway, they depict Madeleine Albright as the grand strategist of the war and the main force behind it, the leader of the so-called "Munichite" faction in the Clinton administration that has been pushing for a more militarily aggressive stance in the region since 1993, against the "Vietnamite" faction, initially led by Colin Powell. The Munichite faction finally got control of policy in the Balkans in 1995 and deluded itself that bombing could achieve demanded goals without ground forces. Apparently the day-to-day manager of tactics is National Security Adviser Sandy Berger who is more cautious than Albright and is the main reason that there will be no ground invasion. Albright is apparently sympathetic to the British support for one, but realizes that she is alone on that one in the administration. If one wants to pinpoint a more specific anti-imperialist issue, it really does have to do with NATO itself and its new aggressiveness, which is what has the Russians, and to a lesser extent the Chinese as well, angry (although I think for the Chinese it is US behavior that is the issue, not NATO's). NATO was supposed to be a defensive alliance. Albright has pushed it into outright aggression. it is unclear what the economic motive here is, although several theories have been pushed on these lists. But again, the skepticism of the US right wing is a warning that they are all pretty weak, at least from the US perspective if not necessarily from the European one. As near as I can see, the one clear positive of Milosevic's victory (which has happened but has not yet been accepted by NATO) is the black eye it gives to such an aggressive stance by NATO. Otherwise, the outcome is pretty dismal, as near as I can see it, and I do not wish to see those on this list deluding themselves about its nature. Barkley Rosser
[PEN-L:6951] Re: Re: Petit Cache
G'day Tom, I once read a piece by Simmel called something like 'How is society possible?', and remember being very impressed - there wouldn't happen to be a cyber-site for the below piece, would there? I think I'm going through a dead-white-guys thing just now and the below is quite irresistable. Cheers, Rob. Speaking of Weber and Lukacs, how about Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money? Lukacs was a student both of Weber and Simmel and it was those two who "tinged the spectacles" through which Lukacs first saw "Marx, the sociologist". Simmel's Philosophy of Money should be required reading for economists not least because, according to Simmel, "Not a single line of these investigations is meant to be a statement about economics." "- so the fact that two people exchange their products is by no means simply an economic fact. Such a fact - that is, one whose content would be exhausted in the image that economics presents of it - does not exist." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6954] Tijuana maquiladora strike
TIJUANA POLICE DEFY COURT PROTECTION OF MAQUILADORA STRIKE By David Bacon TIJUANA, BAJA CALIFORNIA (5/16/99) -- For two weeks, Tijuana has teetered on the brink of official lawlessness, as city and state police continue to defy Baja California's legal system. Raul Ramirez, member of the Baja California Academy of Human Rights, warned last week that "the state is in danger of violating the Constitution and the Federal Labor Law as it succumbs to the temptation to use force." Police and state authorities are accused of attempting to suppress a strike at the Han Young maquiladora, as the conflict which has rocked labor relations on the border here for two years flares up yet again. On April 6, the First Collegial Court of the Fifteenth District, the highest judicial authority in Baja California Norte, issued a ruling which shocked the state's political establishment. The court held that Tijuana authorities had violated the law last June in suppressing a strike at Han Young, the first strike by an independent union in the history of the maquiladoras. "The justice system of the republic protects [the independent union] against acts of the authorities [in declaring the strike illegal]," the court said. The opinion, granting the strike legal status, was signed by all three sitting judges. Gerardo Medel Torres, the new chief of the local labor board, which last year called the strike "nonexistent," has also publicly conceded that it is legal. Following the court's ruling, on May 3 the independent October 6 Union for Industry and Commerce once again tied red and black strike flags across the gate into the Han Young factory, bringing production to a halt. In a legal strike in Mexico, when strike flags are put up, the struck establishment must be closed and remain so until the dispute is resolved. Instead of respecting the high court decision, however, city and state police have continued trying to bring strikebreakers into the facility to resume work, even after the union obtained further court orders protecting its strike. On May 5, a patriotic holiday in Mexico, two attorneys arrived at the struck factory accompanied by ten trucks of Tijuana municipal police. The attorneys refused to identify themselves publicly, but police commandant Armando Rascon later identified them as Marcantonio Mejia and Jesus Ibarra Estrada, lawyers for the state employers' association, COPARMEX. The two demanded that police take down the strike banners, and permit 20 workers, assembled a short distance away, to enter. At first Rascon announced he would comply. When asked if this action wouldn't violate the state court's decision, he declared "that doesn't matter." Rascon said he had no idea whether the attorneys had a valid court order telling him to break the strike. "My orders come from the state," he said. After television crews from local stations arrived and began filming the action, and representatives of the federal Labor Department and the local opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution began taking notes, Rascon made an aboutface and told the strikebreakers to go home. Six days later, however, over 100 members of Tijuana's Special Forces police detachment, joined by state Judicial Police, did tear down the strike flags, and escorted 70 people into the plant. Production, however, didn't resume since, according to the union, few of the new workers knew how to operate the factory's welding equipment. The next day, Enrique Hernandez, general secretary of the October 6 union, tied the strike flags once more across the closed factory gates. "I don't care how many times they take the flags down," he declared. "We will just put them up again." Police action hasn't been confined to the streets in front of the plant. Silvestre Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Sanchez, and other members of the strike committee say that state Judicial Police have come to their homes, telling their families that they intend to arrest them. Rodriguez has been a Han Young employee since 1993, and Sanchez since 1995. Arrest orders were sworn out against Hernandez and union attorney Jose Peñaflor last December, accusing them of holding the plant's owner hostage in the factory for an hour during last year's strike. Both men deny the charge, saying it was a pretext used to detain them. "They want to use these charges to keep us under constant threat of arrest," Peñaflor says, "hoping it will stop the union." New charges have been made against Hernandez, Reyes, and Sanchez, accusing them of illegally depriving the company of the use of its factory. The union has obtained injunctions blocking all of the arrests. Even after the court prohibition, however, city police last Friday issued new arrest warrants against Hernandez. The Baja California courts seem reluctant to enforce their own decisions. Pedro Fernandez
[PEN-L:6955] Re: Re: Re: Petit Cache
There is indeed a cyber site for Simmel's article. I have it on my web site. See the url for the History of Economic Thought Archive in my signiture. Rod G'day Tom, I once read a piece by Simmel called something like 'How is society possible?', and remember being very impressed - there wouldn't happen to be a cyber-site for the below piece, would there? I think I'm going through a dead-white-guys thing just now and the below is quite irresistable. Cheers, Rob. Speaking of Weber and Lukacs, how about Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money? Lukacs was a student both of Weber and Simmel and it was those two who "tinged the spectacles" through which Lukacs first saw "Marx, the sociologist". Simmel's Philosophy of Money should be required reading for economists not least because, according to Simmel, "Not a single line of these investigations is meant to be a statement about economics." "- so the fact that two people exchange their products is by no means simply an economic fact. Such a fact - that is, one whose content would be exhausted in the image that economics presents of it - does not exist." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:6956] Re: Re: Asian irrational euphoria?
Hi, Rob, You are probably right that Camdessus is just covering his rear. The IMF is intellectually bankrupt. Its traditional function as a monetary ambaulancehas been destroyed by events of the past two years. Having been criticised heavily for failing to notice the Asian financial crises until after it broke out in July, 1997 and failing to realize its seriousness even after it broke out, and having dispense harmful prescriptions, Camdessus is finally learning to talk like Greenspan: there is nothing wrong with being "exuberance as long as you realize its exuberance." The IMF, realizing that real reform in Asia and in international institutions cannot be realistically achieved, is aping American policy of defying classical economic theory with a policy of free market manipulation. Instead of economic fundamentals leading the financial and foreign exchange sectors, it's new approach is to create artificial financial momentum to lead economic recovery. Camdessus hopes the new approach will work if no one is rude enough to ask embarassing questions for 18 months, until the economies can be lifted from financial euphoria. The key words are now low interest rates, high liquidity and fantastic p/e ratios based on future potentials while discounting current difficulties. If it works for America, why not Asia. Afterall, it worked in Asia until "confifdence" vanished overnight, spooked by the fixed exchange regime to which both Summers and Camdessus are both now opposed. There is only one problem: the American bubble miracle may burst before Asia can benefit from its doctrinal spillover. If NY can hold for another 10-18 months, Asia can probably recovery for another cycle. But that is a big IF. One thing is true: with every cycle, a huge amount of wealth is transferred from the indigenous population to the globalists. Henry C.K. Liu Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Henry, Might the 'irrational euphoria' discerned by Camdessus not be a bit of hedging - y'know, money trickling out of Wall St in anticipation of hikes and such? Mebbe Asia's stock markets are slowly taking on the countenance of relative safety for money that can still not find options as 'attractive' in the sphere of new production. Out of an anticipated fire into the frying pan sorta thing. Nonsense? Cheers, Rob. Tuesday May 18 1999 SCMP Camdessus urges caution DAVID SAUNDERS Recent rallies on Asia's financial markets are premature and smack of "irrational euphoria", according to the International Monetary Fund's managing director Michel Camdessus. Speaking in Hong Kong, Mr Camdessus warned that while the new-found optimism across the region was understandable as economies started the process of recovery, much work needed to be done in terms of financial restructuring. The recovery on stock markets, while appropriate after almost two years of turmoil, was happening a little too rapidly, he said. "People were talking about a deep recession in the making for Asia . . . Now we are possibly at a turning point, or even possibly after the turning point," Mr Camdessus said. "But I am a little bit concerned that after instances of excessive pessimism, we are now in a phase . . . of a degree of irrational euphoria. So we must be careful in our judgment." However, during a speech beforehand, at the Pacific Basin Economic Council's international general meeting, Mr Camdessus noted considerable progress had been made towards improving the international financial system. "We are at the point now where - let me be a little impertinent - central banks no longer compete for a reputation for secrecy but for one of transparency," he said. He called for full liberalisation of capital movements in a "prudent and well sequenced fashion". He said that while the ultimate goal of financial institutions and all governments should be for trade liberalisation and greater regulatory transparency, he acknowledged there was sometimes a case to argue for capital controls to be imposed on a temporary basis. "Generally, consensus is emerging that capital controls do not deal effectively with fundamental economic imbalances, but may only be useful in certain circumstances," he said, adding they
[PEN-L:6958] Re: Re: Asian irrational euphoria?
Hi, Rob, You are probably right that Camdessus is just covering his rear. The IMF is intellectually bankrupt. Its traditional function as a cross border monetary ambulance has been heavily damaged by events of the past two years. Having been criticized heavily for failing to detect the Asian financial crises until after the first one broke out in July, 1997 and failing to realize its seriousness even after it broke out, and having dispensed harmful prescriptions that exacerbated the crises, Camdessus is finally learning to talk like Greenspan: there is nothing wrong with being "exuberance as long as you realize its exuberance." The IMF, realizing that real reform in Asia and in international institutions cannot be realistically achieved, is aping American policy of defying classical economic theory with a policy of free market manipulation. Instead of economic fundamentals leading the financial and foreign exchange sectors, it's new approach is to create artificial financial momentum to lead economic recovery. Camdessus hopes the new approach will work if no one is rude enough to ask embarrassing questions for 18 months, until the damaged economies can be lifted from financial euphoria. The key words now are: low interest rates, high liquidity, price stability that resists both deflationa and inflation, and fantastic p/e ratios based on future potentials while discounting current difficulties. If it works for America, why not Asia. After all, it worked in Asia until "confidence" vanished overnight, spooked by the fixed exchange regime to which both Summers and Camdessus are both now opposed. There is only one problem: the American bubble miracle may burst before Asia can benefit from its doctrinal spill over. If NY can hold for another 10-18 months, Asia can probably recovery for another cycle. But that is a big IF. One thing is true: with every cycle of boom and bust, a huge amount of wealth is transferred from the indigenous population to the globalists. Henry C.K. Liu Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Henry, Might the 'irrational euphoria' discerned by Camdessus not be a bit of hedging - y'know, money trickling out of Wall St in anticipation of hikes and such? Mebbe Asia's stock markets are slowly taking on the countenance of relative safety for money that can still not find options as 'attractive' in the sphere of new production. Out of an anticipated fire into the frying pan sorta thing. Nonsense? Cheers, Rob. Tuesday May 18 1999 SCMP Camdessus urges caution DAVID SAUNDERS Recent rallies on Asia's financial markets are premature and smack of "irrational euphoria", according to the International Monetary Fund's managing director Michel Camdessus. Speaking in Hong Kong, Mr Camdessus warned that while the new-found optimism across the region was understandable as economies started the process of recovery, much work needed to be done in terms of financial restructuring. The recovery on stock markets, while appropriate after almost two years of turmoil, was happening a little too rapidly, he said. "People were talking about a deep recession in the making for Asia . . . Now we are possibly at a turning point, or even possibly after the turning point," Mr Camdessus said. "But I am a little bit concerned that after instances of excessive pessimism, we are now in a phase . . . of a degree of irrational euphoria. So we must be careful in our judgment." However, during a speech beforehand, at the Pacific Basin Economic Council's international general meeting, Mr Camdessus noted considerable progress had been made towards improving the international financial system. "We are at the point now where - let me be a little impertinent - central banks no longer compete for a reputation for secrecy but for one of transparency," he said. He called for full liberalisation of capital movements in a "prudent and well sequenced fashion". He said that while the ultimate goal of financial institutions and all governments should be for trade liberalisation and greater regulatory transparency, he acknowledged there was sometimes a case to argue for capital controls to be imposed on a temporary basis. "Generally, consensus is emerging that capital controls do not deal effectively with
[PEN-L:6957] Re: Doug Orr on the improtance of Program
Michael Perelman wrote: Doug Orr made an excellent point. I have always found that giving people the opportunity to actually do something encourages their activism -- even if it is a matter of having people collect and organize clippings -- IF and only if other people acknowledge the importance of such work. My first job on graduating was just such a position - collecting and organizing clippings. It was acknowledged as important - indeed, encouraged - and as a result it gave me a clearer focus as to my own academic future. Doug's posting takes the discussion back to where I would have liked it to meander. The complaint that, compared to the feminists, the left has no coherent, overarching positive program that can be readily translated into practice is similar to that often cited as the reason for the decline of institutionalism. I would argue that if radical and other hetero approaches are to survive at all then there must be greater pluralism and cooperation among the heterodox. Conservatives like F. A. Hayek and Leo Strauss have also bemoaned the elevation of technique at the expense of theory and analysis. While their contributions are hardly the first port of call for subscribers to this list, there is clearly a sizeable number of folks concerned with the decline of scholarship resulting from excessive technocracy. There are a number of avenues which could be explored with the aim of changing the present environment toward a more pluralistically inclined one: 1.) Academic standards, citizenship, and the idea of the liberal education in general. Conservatives bemoan the decline of the first two, although it hasn't occurred to them that the all-conquering market is primarily responsible for this. Radicals ought to engage more seriously conservatives in dialogue about such matters, with a view to attacking marketization and the neoliberal hegemony. 2.) Student employability. A common refrain among employers here is the lack of analytical skills possessed by graduates. Despite all the efforts to render higher education more entrepreneurial and businesslike, employers continue to make this sort of complaint. Heterodox analysis is far better equipped to offer students the opportunity to develop analytical skills, and to make sense of an evolving world. I like C. Wright Mills's clarification of the liberal education as liberating. Conventional economics is not about education, but about the training of future, similarly narrow, economists. Galbraith once pithily remarked that "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." The way the discipline is presently going it will be the only form of employment for economists. 3.) Other social science disciplines. Related to the above two items is the desirability of greater cross-disciplinary collaboration in research and teaching. Part of what makes us heterodox is our refusal to countenance the notion of the "economic" as a distinct, narrowly defined phenomenon, as in the Simmel quote recently shared. These are not placed in any order of importance, or with any promise of coherence. But it would be a useful exercise to have some kind of constructive debate as to how we might get ourselves out of this impasse. Michael Michael Keaney Department of Economics Glasgow Caledonian University 70 Cowcaddens Road Glasgow G4 0BA Scotland, U.K.
[PEN-L:6963] Kosovo/a
Ken wrote: In the same way, Paul first notes that before the bombing there was no ethnic cleansing etc. The bombing provided the conditions for the cleansing since it gave Milosevic the freedom to cleanse, and also to decimate the KLA at the same time. The bombing was a sufficient condition or cause of ethnic cleansing etc. This is not inconsistent with and does not deny that the Serbs are the agents. Old Aristotle (a well-known dead white male, who apologized for slavery but still had a thing or two to say) distinguished between different kinds of causation: "efficient causes" are the triggers of an event. The "material cause" refers to the existence of raw material which allows the event to occur. The "formal cause" refers to the structure of the object being triggered which allows the event to occur. The "final cause" is the goal or driving force behind the process. The US/NATO (a) pulling-out of OSCE and other human-rights observers from Kosova/o combined with (b) the start of strategic bombing of Serbia, Kosovo/a, and Montenegro [!] were the efficient causes or triggers of the "ethnic cleansing." The material and formal causes of the cleansing -- the keg of dynamite -- were the rampant ethnic hostility in Serbia, involving not only Serbian violence against ethnic Albanian Kosovars but also the latter's violence against the ethnic Serbs (see various news stories posted to pen-l), i.e., involving both Serbian counterinsurgency and KLA insurgency. The final cause isn't exactly Aristotelian with a capital "A," since it's not like this mess can be explained teleologically, as happening because it serves some Greater Cause, or like the acorn being driven to become an oak. But there were conscious and to-be-held-responsible actors who, pursuing their goals, lit the fuse, triggering the keg of dynamite: Clinton, Albright, Blair, etc. thought they could attain their "reasons of state," asserting the US/NATO as the presumptive world state [*], imposing their standards of human rights [**] via strategic bombing. Milosevic and his colleagues aimed to maintain order, promote ethnic Serbian fortunes, promote their own political fortunes, etc. The KLA leadership hoped to benefit by hooking their sled to the US/NATO star. [*] Max Weber defined the "state" as an organization that successfully monopolizes the legal use of force in the given territory. This is what US/NATO is trying to become on a world scale, something the UN has never been (since the UN has no armed forces). (Weber's original definition has the word "legitimate" replacing "legal," but that has the potential of sneaking a value judgement that the monopolization is good into the definition.) [**] Note that the US/NATO standards of "human rights" ignore the right not to starve, the right to a job, etc., things that show up in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (cf. in English, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm ). Under the latter (especially articles 23 and following), the US/NATO would be attacking countries that impose poverty and unemployment on their people as part of IMF/World Bank-type structural adjustment programs. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
[PEN-L:6964] FW: this guys for real
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 7:00 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Fwd: this guys for real In a message dated 5/18/99 5:20:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: Fwd: this guys for real Date: 5/18/99 5:20:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC:[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Forwarded Message --- From: Matthew McDaniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: this guys for real Julian: I got this off a list of mine today. What this guy is saying is true about what the missions here in Northern Thailand are doing as well. Matthew * Hello list, I am new to the list. I joined in hopes that maybe I could help right some of the wrongs that I have done. I officially left the Mormon Church aka LDS Church (officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) six years ago after having been most faithful in that organization my entire 47 year life span. I am just glad that I finally woke up before it was too late. I fulfilled a two year mission to Guatemala and El Salvador in the early 1970's where I taught the local indigenous people that they were descended from the jews of Jerusalem around 600 B.C. when a prophet there was commanded by God to sail to the Americas and populate that hemisphere. I also taught them that after those people arrived a few of them turned against Jehovah and that God cursed them with a dark skin, but that if their descendants repented in the last days, their skin would become white and delight some. This story is the foundation for the Book of Mormon, which mormons call scripture. I later became a professional social worker and spent about 3 years of my time on and off helping run a Native American Placement program within the LDS Church that took children from 8 to 18 years of age from off of the reservations in the South West of the United States and placed them in LDS homes in Utah for education and church training. I deeply regret being so naive, misinformed and stupid for having bought into this heinous behavior, but at the time I felt I was doing God's work. I remember feeling sickened and nauseated while watching the movie, "The Emerald Forest" which depicts catholic fathers decimating an indigenous tribe with all their bull shit. The mormons still preach this racists doctrine and place thousands of copies of the Book of Mormon each year. Unfortunately, the mormon are growing very rapidly in Mexico, Central and South America among the native people there. If you do not know this, I am posting here to warn you that this insidious practice continues and is gaining momentum. I currently can not stomach being associated with or involved with any organized religions. Steven aka Cricket -- Matthew McDaniel The Akha Heritage Foundation 386/3 Sailom Joi Rd Maesai, Chiangrai, 57130 Thailand Mobile Phone Number: Sometimes hard to reach while in Mountains. 66-01-881-9288 US Address: Donations by check or money order may be sent to: The Akha Heritage Foundation 1586 Ewald Ave SE Salem OR 97302 USA Donations by direct banking can be transfered to: Wells Fargo Bank Akha Heritage Foundation Acc. # 0081-889693 Keizer Branch # 1842 04 4990 N. River Road. Keizer, Oregon, 97303 USA ABA # 121000248 Web Site: http://www.akha.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Forwarded Message --- Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 16:12:50 + From: Matthew McDaniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: this guys for real Julian: I got this off a list of mine today. What this guy is saying is true about what the missions here in Northern Thailand are doing as well. Matthew * Hello list, I am new to the list. I joined in hopes that maybe I could help right some of the wrongs that I have done. I officially left the Mormon Church aka LDS Church (officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) six years ago after having been most faithful in that organization my entire 47 year life span. I am just glad that I finally woke up before it was too late. I fulfilled a two year mission to Guatemala and El Salvador in the early 1970's where I taught the local indigenous people that they were descended from the jews of Jerusalem around 600 B.C. when a prophet there was commanded by God to sail to the Americas and populate that hemisphere. I also taught them that after those people arrived a few of them turned against Jehovah and that God cursed them with a dark skin, but that if their descendants repented in the last
[PEN-L:6965] Re: FW: this guys for real
For anyone interested in the scamming of indigenous peoples by missionaries, strongly recommend They Will Be Done. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6966] Re: Re: Re: petit bourgeois
As a followup to Doug's remarks on the potential "dangerousness" of economics, I note that many of the key cases in academia in the early twentieth century that led to the institution of tenure involved professors of economics who were fired due to allegedly espousing socialist ideas, much to the discomfiture of wealthy individuals with power over the academic institutions in question. One of the most famous of these, with which Peter Dorman is certainly aware, involved the founder of the American Economic Association (in its origins a heterodox institution, hah!), Robert T. Ely, an institutionalist labor economist who supported a lot of things like workmens' compensation and who even wrote a sympathetic book entitled _Socialism and Social Reform_. In 1892 there was an effort to fire Ely from the University of Wisconsin at Madison because of his ideas. This was eventually blocked by the oversight body, the Board of Regents, who in doing so issued a statement that has since been viewed as the central ideal of the university, (not sure I can quote this exactly, but...) "whatever the limitations that may be placed upon the pursuit of knowledge, at the University of Wisconsin we shall not do anything that will limit that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth shall be known" (or something like that). Anyway, "sifting and winnowing" is now as sacred a phrase at the UW as "Go Big Red!" and "have another beer and brat, cheeseheads!" and a plaque with the famous quote (which I have mangled somewhat, except for the "sifting and winnowing" part (which went over well at a heavily ag oriented school)) was placed and still remains on the front of Bascom Hall in the center of the old campus, right where lots of the demos used to take place. BTW, it was the 1950s when the institutionalist infuence in the AEA was finally expunged by the mainstream neoclassicals in a major power struggle. I leave it to you all to put the ideology of that one together Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 7:22 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6928] Re: Re: petit bourgeois Peter Dorman wrote: Moreover, there is no simple correspondence between what people believe and their class background. This sort of ideology critique is mechanical and procrustean. Ideas are much too mediated for that framework to apply. (Why am I reminded of sociobiology all of a sudden?) I don't know, why are you? Does it have anything to do with the alleged similarities between Judith Butler and Robert Lucas? Of course there is no simple correspondence between what people believe and their class background. On the other hand, there is *some* nontrivial relation between ideas and class positions, between ideology and real social institutions and practices. To tie it to the issue that started all this, changing class relations have something to do with the decline of radical economics and the hegemony of neoclassical economics, no? The bourgeoisie is in no mood to tolerate critics these days, and they don't have to, what with the working class its back and the USSR a memory. As no less than H.L. Mencken put it: "[Economics] hits the employers of the professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors." Not to be mechanical or procrustean or anything. Doug
[PEN-L:6968] cluster bombs
While cluster bombs are not specifically banned under
international conventions, landmines are. However the US together
with Turkey refuse to sign on to the convention. However, the
indicscriminate use of weapons is forbidden as well as the use of
indiscriminate weapons.
The failure rate of the bomblets in cluster bombs is roughly 5
(conservatively) to 30 percent.
When the bomblet fails it is in effect a landmine and an
indiscriminte weapon Several Albanian children have already been
blown up. For some reason the bomblets are brightly coloured and
about the size and shape of soda cans in one instance and
baseballs in a different type. This makes them attractive to
children.
The bombs are relatively cheap because no safety devices that
would automatically defuse duds are
engineered into the bombs.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
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NATO's Use of Cluster Munitions in Yugoslavia/b/fontbr
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td(May 11, 1999) -- The U.S. Defense Department at the end of April announced a move
toward the use of more "area weapons" in Operation Allied Force. At the same time,
there are reports of NATO's growing shortage of precision-guided weapons. These
factors suggest NATO may increasingly rely on unguided ("dumb") weapons, including
so-called cluster bombs.
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a href="http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/may/arms51199.htm" NATO Use of Cluster Bombs
Must Stop /abrHRW Press Release, May 11, 1999 BRBR
a href="http://www.hrw.org/hrw/campaigns/kosovo98/index.htm" Kosovo: Focus on Human
Rights/aBR
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p
Both the U.S. and Britain have acknowledged using cluster bombs in Yugoslavia already.
U.S. F-15E and F-16 aircraft have dropped CBU-87 cluster bombs, and British Harrier
GR7s began dropping RBL755 cluster bombs on April 6. The CBU-87 and RBL755 weapons
have been used against airfields, communications and early-warning sites, vehicle
concentrations on roads, Yugoslav Army command posts, troop compounds and
concentrations, artillery, and armor units. There have been reports of cluster bombs
being used at Batanica airbase near Belgrade and Podgorica airfield in Montenegro, as
well as in the following areas in Kosovo: an "agricultural school" on the outskirts of
Pristina, near Belacevac, Djakovica, Doganovic, Lukare, Mt. Cicavica (northwest of
Pristina), Mt. Pastrik (near Prizren), and Stari Trg (near Kosovska Mitrovica).P
Though probably no more than a few hundred air-delivered cluster bombs have been used
to date in Yugoslavia, there reportedly already have been civilian casualties. A NATO
airstrike on the airfield in Nis last week
[PEN-L:6969] Re: Re: Doug Orr on the improtance of Program
Jim Devine wrote: I like C. Wright Mills's clarification of the liberal education as liberating. what is that statement? It's taken from "The Sociological Imagination" (OUP 1959, p.186). I can't place it exactly in context as yet, but I'm fairly sure that it's around or about the section where he speaks of everyone being their own theorist, methodologist, etc. A fine tonic for our times. Michael Michael Keaney Department of Economics Glasgow Caledonian University 70 Cowcaddens Road Glasgow G4 0BA Scotland, U.K.
[PEN-L:6972] Re: Re: Kurds and Kosovars
Michael, Part of what is really frustrating about all this is the general wrongness of everybody involved. Those who have noted that what was happening before the bombing started are exactly correct. Likewise, the bombing in no way justifies what has been done since there by S.M. and his underlings. This is not equivalent to the execution cases you cite. At least in those cases, the came preceded the punishment. Not so in Yugoslavia. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 9:27 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6933] Re: Kurds and Kosovars Why do it then? We are all exposed to the CNN stuff, as Lou P. has already noted. What good does that do? Nobody here is ready to make S.M. a hero. If he were President of the U.S., he might even possibly be as bad as Clinton. Governor Davis just executed Manny Babbit. His excuse was that Manny Babbit killed a woman. The governor justified the execution because Manny Babbit killed the woman. Babbit did not deny it. He only said that he did not remember it. Here was a guy that has a family filled with mental illness. He suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child and was not expected to live. Then he fought in Viet Nam. He came home whacked out. The police found him wandering about and took him to a mental institution drugged him up for a few days and released him You can repeat that he killed a woman. Nobody defends that act, but the death penalty is wrong. Just repeating the crime gets you no where. We are bombing to flex NATOs muscles and then call it morality. Clinton murdered Rickey Ray Rector to get elected and called it justice. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Louis, You are correct that it is as "hard as shooting fish in a barrel" to figure out what is really going on with this situation in Yugoslavia. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6974] Re: Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Paul, Well, for starters I certainly don't support teaching people that "Serbs are monsters," although I might not oppose teaching that about S.M., who is, as far as I am concerned. One difference between what happened in the US and what is happening in Kosmet is that in the former we are talking about a small minority of the population being cleansed (no, I don't support it), and they were not expelled from the country; although being sent to concentration camps is very far from benign treatment. In Kosmet we have a small minority (around 10%, right?) that is expelling the vast majority, not just internally displacing them (that too). Also, one can dismiss it as imperialist propaganda, but the reports that S.M. did indeed have a plan for what is going is far from incredible, even if it is also far from being definitely proven. The very rapidity and apparently systematic nature of how it has been carried out suggests that there was prior planning of this. However, I also have no doubt that even if there was such a plan, it would not have been initiated with the rapidity and violence that it has been if there had been no bombing. NATO is certainly partially culpable in this, but far from totally culpable. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 9:41 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6935] Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars What is wrong with the logic of of the proposition that: a: there was no ethnic cleansing; b: NATO declares that unless Yugoslavia allows itself to be occupied and Kosovo be declared independent, it will be bombed regardless of how it treats its minority; and c: Yugoslavia decides that the only way it can protect its territory from foreign invasion is to 'clear the region of possible enemy troups and collaborators' (like the US and Canada did in the second world war by clearing the west coast (i.e. ethnic cleansing) of Japanese). I disagreed with the expulsion of the Japanese as much as I dislike the expulsion of the Albanians. But from a military standpoint I understand it and, in the case of Yugoslavia, the military argument is much stronger than the one for the internment of the Japanese by the US and Canada in WW2. Brad seems to be in denial -- it is NATO that initiated the ethnic cleansing, not the Serbs There would be no -- repeat no -- ethnic cleansing if NATO had not tried to cleanse Kosovo of the Serbs through its bombing campaign. And now we, in Canada, are beginning to get the backlash of the Serb/Milosevic demonization campaign -- Serb kids in Canadian schools being taught by their teachers that the Serbs are evil ethnic oppressors -- reminiscent of the 1930s in Germany. Don't talk to me about the attempt to make every Muslim responsible for the terrorist acts of the KLA when you are attempting to make every Serb and Yugoslav responsible for the terrorist acts of NATO and the military response to those terrorist acts. It is we, members of NATO, that have caused the ethnic cleansing by our bombing Paul Phillips Why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing? And why this attempt to make every Muslim in the region bar responsbility for the terrorist deeds of the KLA? Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:6975] Re: petit/petty bourgoisie
The latter observation is true and is still true, the observation also holding for neighborhoods of cities such as Paris as well. Most of these identifications go way back, all the way back to the French Revolution in fact. Fernand Braudel provides some interesting observations about family structure in different parts of France and its relationship to political views, but I don't think that fully explains it. BTW, an easy way to figure out the political orientation of a particular village, city, or arrondissement is to look at the names of the streets, which reflect the local viewpoints. Thus in Malakoff, next to where I used to live, there is a Stade Lenine (Lenin Stadium). It is about two blocks from INSEE/ CREST where several of the leading French economists hang out, including Edmond Malinvaud and Jean-Michel Grandmont. Malakoff also has a Place Youri Gagarine. Stalingrad is also a fave name for Communist-ruled localities, which Malakoff is, mais oui. Socialist localities are likely to have nineteenth century revolutionary figures, but not Communards, or progressive nineteenth century intellectuals or scientists. Gaullist localities will have a major street named after him, surprise surprise. Strongly reactionary places are likely to have Jeanne d'Arc (now admired by some on the left, see modern feminists and the current miniseries on US TV) or Chateaubriand, or Foch, or other military leaders, although Petain is a no-no, even in the most reactionary. BTW, in ultra-conservative Nantes in the heart of the Vendee, there is still an enormous column with Louis XVI on top. Die-hard royalists still gather around on the date of his execution. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 9:53 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6941] petit/petty bourgoisie I am not an expert on the idea of the petit bourgoisie, but I don't think that Marx dismissed it out of hand, but considered it to be politically unstable, like the populists who could be progressive or reactionary. In effect, the petit bourgoisie were part worker/part capitalism and so could go either way. Again, I did not think that Marx dismissed them, but considered them to be untrustworthy. French friends have told me that you would find virtually indistinguishable villages -- some that would be communist, some fascist. Nobody could explain the difference. Doug Henwood wrote: And any U.S. radical has to take a critique of petit bourgeois (no quotes for me, thank you) influence seriously - e.g. the localist, individually self-reliant, small-business fantasies that permeate populist and green politics specificially and American ideology in general. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6978] Re: Re: Kurds and Kosovars
Ken, Why should he settle? As long as NATO bombs he is unremovable by his own people. He can last as long as he wants. Who cares how much damage and suffering his people experience? (his view) The economy was already a mess, so now there will be an excuse for why it is a mess. As for NATO, well, the opinion polls in most countries (the US now as well) are gradually, and in some cases dramatically, turning against support for the war. They'll probably continue to do so. Milosevic is victorious on the ground. The UCK/KLA has been reduced to a few pathetic pockets, although they will now be very strong in the camps in Albania. But he is creating a cordon sanitaire through expulsions in Metohija that will make it more difficult for them to operate out of those bases, and their artillery attacks on those bases is putting pressure for them to be pulled back from the border. NATO will not send in a ground invasion for a variety of well known reasons, which is the only thing that could undo his victory on the ground. So, all he has to do is wait it out until world pressure and public opinion in the NATO countries wearies of the various tragedies and absurdities and NATO sues for peace, presumably getting the Russians to come up with some suitable face-saving fig leaf for the inevitable humiliation. How can Milosevic lose? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 12:54 AM Subject: [PEN-L:6947] Re: Kurds and Kosovars I don't understand why you think that Milosevic has been victorious. Damage to Serbia's infrastructure including Kosovo is untold billions. Eventually he will have to settle for some type of de facto occupation of Kosovo by the UN and/or NATO. Albanians will move back to Kosovo under the protection of this force. What is to prevent the UN protectorate eventually opting for independence? Plus, Milosevic's freedom of action will be severely restrained by the need to get funds from the IMF and the World Bank to rebuild Serbia. THe best he can hope for is some deal that guarantees he will not be tried as a war criminal. Maybe he can arrange a baby Doc trip to a Mediterranean Island hideaway with his family or a nice comfortable retirement in South Africa. Cheers, Ken Hanly J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Louis, You are correct that it is as "hard as shooting fish in a barrel" to figure out what is really going on with this situation in Yugoslavia. I confess to playing the "kick Milosevic" role because the others who might play it have all left pen-l. I understand from lbo-talk that Chris Burford feels that he must "censor" his messages to your list because you do not allow any anti-Milosevic diatribes on the grounds that they are "objectivly pro- imperialist." Tsk tsk. I have already laid out several longer and shorter term factors that have led to where we are now, ranging from longer term imperialist plotting against Yugoslavia (presumably your fave, which if that is all there is to it does make Milosevic a "heroic anti-imperialist socialist" whoopee!!). But obviously I don't think that is all there is to it, and the old boy is responsible for a bunch of it, even if his evil is not also the sole source of all the troubles. Paul Phillips is certainly right that there was a problem in 1989 with Albanians violating rights of Serbs. Unfortunately Milosevic's reaction overdid it and triggered a lot of bad stuff throughout the old Yugoslavia that might not have happened otherwise. Serb rights will be defended now because there will be few Albanians left in Kosmet soon, and despite a likely future ongoing campaign by the UCK/KLA, it is likely to stay that way. There will be no ground invasion and the bombing obviously is doing nothing to help the Albanians one bit, quite the contrary. BTW, just so I don't repeat stuff that you know (like the latest reported estimates of refugee numbers), yesterday's Washington Post had several related and interesting articles on war-related decisionmaking in Washington (I'm sure you can find them quickly). Anyway, they depict Madeleine Albright as the grand strategist of the war and the main force behind it, the leader of the so-called "Munichite" faction in the Clinton administration that has been pushing for a more militarily aggressive stance in the region since 1993, against the "Vietnamite" faction, initially led by Colin Powell. The Munichite faction finally got control of policy in the Balkans in 1995 and deluded itself that bombing could achieve demanded goals without ground forces. Apparently the day-to-day manager of tactics is National Security Adviser Sandy Berger who is more cautious than Albright and is the main reason that there will be no ground invasion. Albright is apparently sympathetic to the British support for one, but realizes that she
[PEN-L:6977] Re: Kosovo/a
Jim Devine wrote: [**] Note that the US/NATO standards of "human rights" ignore the right not to starve, the right to a job, etc., things that show up in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (cf. in English, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm ). Under the latter (especially articles 23 and following), the US/NATO would be attacking countries that impose poverty and unemployment on their people as part of IMF/World Bank-type structural adjustment programs. Or, to reduce the likelyhood of collateral damage, perhaps Madelaine Albright could just pistol-whip Larry Summers on the Jerry Springer show. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6981] Re: Re: Re: Kurds and Kosovars
I meant "the crime preceded the punshment," sorry. Barkley -Original Message- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 12:58 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6972] Re: Re: Kurds and Kosovars Michael, Part of what is really frustrating about all this is the general wrongness of everybody involved. Those who have noted that what was happening before the bombing started are exactly correct. Likewise, the bombing in no way justifies what has been done since there by S.M. and his underlings. This is not equivalent to the execution cases you cite. At least in those cases, the came preceded the punishment. Not so in Yugoslavia. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 9:27 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6933] Re: Kurds and Kosovars Why do it then? We are all exposed to the CNN stuff, as Lou P. has already noted. What good does that do? Nobody here is ready to make S.M. a hero. If he were President of the U.S., he might even possibly be as bad as Clinton. Governor Davis just executed Manny Babbit. His excuse was that Manny Babbit killed a woman. The governor justified the execution because Manny Babbit killed the woman. Babbit did not deny it. He only said that he did not remember it. Here was a guy that has a family filled with mental illness. He suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child and was not expected to live. Then he fought in Viet Nam. He came home whacked out. The police found him wandering about and took him to a mental institution drugged him up for a few days and released him You can repeat that he killed a woman. Nobody defends that act, but the death penalty is wrong. Just repeating the crime gets you no where. We are bombing to flex NATOs muscles and then call it morality. Clinton murdered Rickey Ray Rector to get elected and called it justice. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Louis, You are correct that it is as "hard as shooting fish in a barrel" to figure out what is really going on with this situation in Yugoslavia. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6982] Re: Re: Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
I realize that it appears that I called for a victory for the Albanians of some sort, if not necessarily the UCK/KLA whom I've already said I don't support. That is not what I intended. I only said that refugees would not return unless there was such a victory. I have given up on the refugees returning, unlike the NATO diplomats. The sooner they do too, the better, unfortunately. I am not applauding this outcome. I am staring it in the face and saying, "there it is, tough." The hard part will be coming up with that fig leaf to get NATO to stop bombing. Probably it will include some commitment to the refugees being returned. Well, that was promised in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but, hah!, it has not happened. I've said before the UN is the obvious entity to be an international overseer, with the OSCE a possible second choice. But I don't think that even rule by either of them will lead to a return of the refugees in significant numbers without an Albanian "victory." Again, this is not a call for such a victory. BTW, with regard to those happy Albanians lolling about in the northeast, let me note that we have already discussed how there has been much less "cleansing" in the north by the Serbs. This is, of course, one of the reasons that partition is not a likely option (I have just sent a letter about partition to the Washington Post after another dingbat went on about it and how the "monuments so precious to the Serbs" are allegedly in the northeast of Kosovo-Metohiha. Gag!!). Barkley Rosser PS: I have no more to say about the Kurds and the Kosovars per se. -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 1:03 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6973] Re: Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars Barkley writes: ... after the revocation of autonomy in 1990 the Serbs clearly began to discriminate against the Albanians in a variety of ways, including notably in admissions to the main university. It is unfortunate that neither group there has seemed willing on the ground to treat the other in a decent and fair fashion when they have been in charge. This does suggest the need for some outside force to be in charge. However, unless that coincides with a clear supremacy and victory for the Albanians, I do not think that many, if any, of the refugees will return. ... It's "unfortunate that _neither_ group" (my emphasis) so we need "a clear supremacy and victory for the [Kosovar ethnic] Albanians." That doesn't follow. If _both_ groups were and are involved, refusing "to treat the other in a decent and fair fashion when they have been in charge," then victory for the Albanians seems way off the mark. They simply launch a pogrom against ethnic Serbs (if they haven't already done so), with US/NATO backing, given the way some of our leaders and THE NEW REPUBLIC are bruiting about "collective responsibility" of the Serbs. By the way, what "outside force" should be "in charge"? The US and NATO are hardly outside forces at this point. They are players in the bloody game, seemingly the most powerful and thus the most responsible ones. Barkley continues: ... And of course, it remains the case that the Turks have done nothing to the Kurds that is comparable to what the Serbs have done to the Albanians in the last two months, not even close, which was my original point in this thread. Why are people so resistant to admitting this? I don't think people are "resistant to admitting this," Barkley. Rather, they see the Serb-against-Kosovar stuff as only one part of the puzzle. They're blaming the US/NATO for _setting off_ the chain of events of the last two months. They also see situation as more complicated than a simple Serb-against-ethnic Albanian Kosovar pogrom, bringing in issues of the KLA insurgency and the Serbian government's counterinsurgency, which along with US/NATO's strategic bombing encouraged the disgusting situation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
[PEN-L:6983] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Louis, Gosh, I just said I wasn't going to say more on this, but... Ummm, but in Guatemala it was a minority of the population that was suppressing a majority of the population, just as in Kosovo-Metohija, whereas in Turkey it is the majority that is suppressing the minority, as in Nicaragua. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 2:19 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6979] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars And of course, it remains the case that the Turks have done nothing to the Kurds that is comparable to what the Serbs have done to the Albanians in the last two months, not even close, which was my original point in this thread. Why are people so resistant to admitting this? Barkley Rosser Because it is similar to the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Also, you are approaching the whole question from a "human rights" angle, where the rest of us are trying to understand things from the standpoint of political economy and history. By analogy, one can say that Central American governments repressed indigenous peoples in the 1980s, from Guatemala to Nicaragua. For argument's sake, let's say that Rios-Montt was not quite as brutal as he was and that the number of displaced and murdered Mayans approximated the same number of Nicaraguan Miskitus. Would this lead to the conclusion that the conflicts were identical and the governments were equally culpable. What I've been reading about Kosovo in the 1980s, long before the termination of autonomy, is that the problems in Nicaragua and socialist Yugoslavia were of the same nature. Rising expectations of a traditionally disenfranchised people led to massive unrest. Imperialism intervened to take advantage of ethnic strife and provoke a counter-revolution. Turkey is a much different story. Turkey is Guatemala. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6984] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Louis, Gosh, I just said I wasn't going to say more on this, but... Ummm, but in Guatemala it was a minority of the population that was suppressing a majority of the population, just as in Kosovo-Metohija, whereas in Turkey it is the majority that is suppressing the minority, as in Nicaragua. Barkley Rosser No, Barkley, you don't get it. You have shifted the axis of the discussion once again away from political economy and history. Majority/minority is irrelevant to what was happening in Guatemala. The real issue was naked racism toward a marginalized people. In Nicaragua and Yugoslavia, there was a genuine atmosphere of tolerance and good-will, just as there was in Nicaragua. Kosovars were not brutalized in the decade preceding the suspension of autonomy. They received preferential treatment. They enjoyed a higher degree of investment in infrastructure and capital projects; their schools were expanded at an impressive rate; they enjoyed full autonomy. The Turks did not provide such treatment for the Kurds. If they did, it is likely that there would be no "Kurdish question". In fact, the guerrilla leader who was just kidnapped by the Turks demanded autonomy, not secession. All these things are obvious to anybody who has taken even a superficial glance at Kosovo in the period of 1975-1985. Why you want to sweep these facts under the rug is beyond me. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6986] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Louis, Which would suggest that the revocation of autonomy by Milosevic is a legitimate action for them to be upset about. They were upset before revocation. They were upset after it. They were upset by social and economic differences between Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia. Nothing could have been done to mollify them, once the spark of secessionism set in. It is true that there was preferential treatment of the Albanians in Kosmet from 1974-1990, the period of autonomy. But I would not say that there was ever particularly an "atmosphere of tolerance and good will" between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosmet. Yes, the Albanians seemed unwilling to treat Serbs, Montenegrins and other minorities decently. Although I thought there was no need for me to point that out. The preferential treatment was imposed from above by Tito. Certainly there was a reasonably progressive attitude coming from him, and one that was pretty aware of the subtleties and difficulties of the situation in the region. I am preparing a longer article on this, but Tito's role is troubling, as one might suspect. During WWII, the fascist rulers of Kosovo expelled 100,000 Serbs but Tito refused to allow them re-entry once he took power. Certainly what happened in Guatamala was naked racism. But the Kurds are the same race as the Turks, last time I checked. Barkley, the Kurds speak a different language. The brutality revolves around forced assimilation linguistically. BTW, the Kurds are getting repressed by all the nations in the neighborhood, irrespective of their ideology, nominally socialist as in Syria and Iraq, nominally Islamic capitalist as in Iran, or just plain Kemalist state capitalist as in Turkey. Historical and politically economic enough for you? Barkley Rosser Sheer obfuscation. Kurds face discrimination everywhere they turn, especially working-class Kurds. Their traditional clothing, their language, their names mark them as outcasts. They suffer economically the way that American blacks do. That is why Kurdish nationalism is progressive, by the way. It has the same class dynamic as Irish and black nationalism. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6987] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Louis, Well, Tito's reluctance to let the Serbs back in was a not-unreasonable decision in light of the fact that he was going against promises that he had made to let Kosmet remain a part of Albania, as it was during the period of fascist rule, and which was probably supported by a majority of the residents at that time (U oh, more of the "majority" stuff. When am I going to grow up and get over my human rights fixation?). BTW, it is my understanding that during the period of Serbian domination between WW I and WW II, Serbs moved in and forced Albanians out. Again, neither group has treated the other very well when it has been in charge. It is not all a matter of "naughty Albanians, virtuous Serbs." Yet another and deeper historical/political-economic question has to do with where the strident and oppressive Turkish nationalism came from. Of course the Turks ran multinational empires for centuries, even before the Ottomans if one counts the Seljuks and Mamelukes. During extended periods, although hardly great progressives, the Ottomans treated their minorities better than many other concurrent empires, especially the European Christian ones. For all the moaning and groaning of the Serbs about Turkish oppression, the Jews and Christians were both treated not too badly under the Ottomans, especially in their glory days as in the 1500s with Suleiman the Magnificent. Later on the Ottomans became more reactionary and repressive. Things got nasty in the late nineteenth century as their failure to industrialize caught up with them and they began to lose territory to the European Christians and then faced revolts in the early twentieth century from their Muslim Arab underlings. Their defeat and loss of territory in the Balkans in 1878 especially triggered nationalist movements among the Turks, especially the "Young Turk" movement out of which Kemal Attaturk came, that emphasized secular Turkish nationalism rather than the multinational Muslim imperialism of the Sultan Caliph. This exploded in 1905, arguably itself an anti-European-imperialist movement, but resulted in new secular oppression, such as the demand that Arabs wear fezzes that triggered the Arab nationalist revolt. The emphasis on pan-Turanism and developing links with the Turkic Central Asians developed at that time and has been revived at the current time. Ugh, I got to stop. Got to get some work done today, :-). Barkley Rosser, (Obfuscator Extraordinaire!) -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 3:28 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6986] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars Louis, Which would suggest that the revocation of autonomy by Milosevic is a legitimate action for them to be upset about. They were upset before revocation. They were upset after it. They were upset by social and economic differences between Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia. Nothing could have been done to mollify them, once the spark of secessionism set in. It is true that there was preferential treatment of the Albanians in Kosmet from 1974-1990, the period of autonomy. But I would not say that there was ever particularly an "atmosphere of tolerance and good will" between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosmet. Yes, the Albanians seemed unwilling to treat Serbs, Montenegrins and other minorities decently. Although I thought there was no need for me to point that out. The preferential treatment was imposed from above by Tito. Certainly there was a reasonably progressive attitude coming from him, and one that was pretty aware of the subtleties and difficulties of the situation in the region. I am preparing a longer article on this, but Tito's role is troubling, as one might suspect. During WWII, the fascist rulers of Kosovo expelled 100,000 Serbs but Tito refused to allow them re-entry once he took power. Certainly what happened in Guatamala was naked racism. But the Kurds are the same race as the Turks, last time I checked. Barkley, the Kurds speak a different language. The brutality revolves around forced assimilation linguistically. BTW, the Kurds are getting repressed by all the nations in the neighborhood, irrespective of their ideology, nominally socialist as in Syria and Iraq, nominally Islamic capitalist as in Iran, or just plain Kemalist state capitalist as in Turkey. Historical and politically economic enough for you? Barkley Rosser Sheer obfuscation. Kurds face discrimination everywhere they turn, especially working-class Kurds. Their traditional clothing, their language, their names mark them as outcasts. They suffer economically the way that American blacks do. That is why Kurdish nationalism is progressive, by the way. It has the same class dynamic as Irish and black nationalism. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6990] Re: Re: Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Barkley, A couple of points. I don't believe that Milosevic ever had any intention of cleansing Kosovo of Albanians. I believe that is all NATO propaganda. Indeed, when some of the opposition to him proposed expelling Albanians and Croats from Serbia, Milosevic opposed it. Besides which, could he really think he could do it without precipitating UN sanctioned war and occupation of Yugoslavia. Nah, this is just a pipe dream invented by NATO to justify its criminal ways. You still evidently believe this invasion was motivated by humanitarian concerns which virtually everyone has demonstrated is a crock. The second point I would make: Assume you are leader of Yugoslavia (or Serbia) and you were fighting against a terrorist insurgency who are trying to expell the resident Serbs and destroy the country and who use the local population as a source of supplies and as a human shield against attempts to quell the insurgency. Now along comes NATO and says: you must a. stop trying to suppress the insurgency; b. agree to break up the country; c. allow us to take over your economy and occupy you (and you will pay the cost of the occupation) or we will bomb you into submission until you agree to those conditions and we occupy the country. Now we all know that the conditions were set at a level that guaranteed that Yugoslavia could not and would not agree meaning that NATO all along planned an invasion first by air, then followed by occupation when the Serbs threw in the towel. What would you do. I would hunker down and prepare to defend my territory. How would I do that? I would clear a corde sanitaire between the potential aggressor by land and my main base of population -- that is I would scorch the earth between Albania and Serbia which would make it possible to make any invaders pay dearly for land gains. I would also remove all the population from my defensive positions that could potentially aid or act as human shields for the aggressor. Can you think of any alternative since NATO refused to consider the alternative offered by the Yugoslav parliament of a UN force and autonomy for Kosovo within the Yugoslav federation? In other words, what else could the Yugoslavs do that would be militarily defensible? What would you have done? You, yourself, point out that there has been little or no cleansing in the North which, itself, should be sufficient evidence that the Yugoslav strategy is defensive and not offensive. Finally, a small footnote on the question of Yugoslav economic aid for Kosovo and its relatively poor economic performance. First, given the figures I posted earlier, there was little *relative* decline in economic performance in Kosovo over the post-war period. Tito, by the way, held to the motto "a rising tide lifts all boats" and so made less effort to specifically help Kosovo and the south generally (Montenegro and Macedonia, Bosnia and even souther Serbia). The fault line in economic development falls more or less along the line of the longest standing Ottoman/European line of influence, a point made to me (documented by figures) by a Beograd economist who was, incidently, a strong political opponent of Milosevic. After Tito died, increased efforts were made to funnel funds into Kosovo and the other poorer republics and provinces through the "Fund for the more rapid development of the slower development republics and provinces" (or some such equally awkward and long name. I have their annual reports somewhere here but it is not important.)Indeed, by 1989, this was one of the last federal economic functions, financed by customs duties and republic taxes payable to the federation and very minimal at that. In fact the Fund was a thorn in the side of the Slovenians and Croations who basically refused to pay any more money to those backward and unthankful "neighbours to the south". Indeed, the sentiment in Slovenia and Croatia was to let Kosovo go -- good riddance to bad rubbish. Serbia was the defender of Kosovo, but it was one of the issues that ultimately triggered the breakup. Why did Kosovo remain so backward? Three factors come immediately to mind. Their education system did not favour technical and scientific/vocational education. As one university professor complained to me, "how can you get economic development when 80 % of the university students are studying Albanian language, literature and history?" Secondly, was the birth rate which was high even by third world standards. Third, was the treatment of women. In the rural areas women were still placed behind 8 foot walls so that they were not visible to men. The story I was told was of one women who was elected head of her workers council. The next day she resigned after showing up at work black and blue. When asked why, she said when her husband had heard she had been elected to the workers' council, he beat her demanding
[PEN-L:6991] US/NATO Perception Management
Pen-l, A commentary on US/NATO Perception Management from the World Socialist Web Site. Seth Sandronsky WSWS : News Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis Further doubt cast on US claims of genocide in Kosovo By Martin McLaughlin 18 May 1999 There are growing questions about the claims by US and NATO officials, accepted uncritically in the media for more than a month, that Yugoslav forces have carried out genocide against the Albanian population of Kosovo. These claims have been intensified in the wake of recent bombing atrocities such as the destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the killing of as many as 100 Albanian Kosovars by NATO bombs in the village of Korisa. In an effort to excuse their own crimes, US and British officials in particular have repeatedly compared the actions of Serbian forces to the Nazi Holocaust. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech in Aachen, German May 13, called the bombing campaign a just war against the most evil form of genocide since my father's generation defeated the Nazis." Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Kosovar Albanian refugees in Macedonia, said their suffering reminded her of Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice, both of which concern the Nazi mass murder of the Jews. US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, speaking on a television interview program Sunday, dismissed Yugoslav criticism of the bombing of Korisa, in which 100 Kosovar Albanians were killed, declaring: For the Serbs to lament publicly about the deaths of these refugees is almost tantamount to Adolf Eichmann complaining about allied forces bombing the crematoriums. And finally President Clinton himself, in a speech May 13 to an audience of veterans in Washington DC. Clinton admitted that the whole premise of the NATO propaganda campaign against the Milosevic regime was false, that ethnic cleansing is not the same as the ethnic extermination of the Holocaust. But then he reiterated the claim that There are thousands of people that have been killed, systematically, by the Serb forces. There are a hundred thousand people who are still missing." None of these sweeping assertions was accompanied by any evidence, such as aerial photographs and other documentation which could be provided by the massive electronic and satellite surveillance which the US intelligence services maintain over Kosovo. Instead, the US-NATO claims were undermined by a dispatch published May 17 from an eyewitness on the ground, Canadian journalist Paul Watson, the correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Kosovo. While the Clinton administration claims that 100,000 Albanian men have disappeared and are likely dead, murdered by the Yugoslav military and Serbian nationalists, Watson found many young Albanian men, displaced but otherwise unmolested, at the village of Svetjle in northern Kosovo. Svetjle is one of the Kosovo Albanian villages that, according to NATO, has been depopulated by Serb forces who committed genocide. While NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said that Serbian killings of Albanians had been so widespread that you don't see males in their 30s to 60s, Watson had no difficulty seeing them. When he arrived at Svetjle for a second visit in a week, hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on grass on a spring day. So many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces are a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here. "By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs. Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo. Watson visited the village without a police or military escort or any official Serbian monitor, and he spoke to Albanian refugees who themselves said they had not had any conflicts with the police since they were allowed to return to the area around their village. For the month that we've been here, the police have come only to sell cigarettes, one Albanian said, but there hasn't been any harassment. While the American media continues to give publicity to increasingly unbelievable estimates that more than 90 percent of the Kosovo Albanian population has been driven from their homes, Watson describes a population that went into hiding during the first two weeks of the NATO bombing, but is now emerging.. He writes: Thousands of other ethnic Albanians oming out of hiding in forests and in the mountains, hungry and frightened and either going back home or waiting for police permission to do so. While Serbian police seize the identity documents of Kosovo Albanians crossing the border into Albania or
[PEN-L:6992] Post Modernism
Further doubt cast on US claims of genocide in Kosovo By Martin McLaughlin 18 May 1999 Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Kosovar Albanian refugees in Macedonia, said their suffering reminded her of Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice, both of which concern the Nazi mass murder of the Jews. Pop culture definition of suffering: sitting through a boring movie. Pop culture definition of genocide: sitting through two boring movies. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6993] Re: Post Modernism
Financial Times (London) May 3, 1999, Monday USA EDITION 2 The Milosevic legacy: PERSONAL VIEW DOMINIQUE MOISI: The Serbian president cannot win the war against an alliance of Nato and Hollywood. And in defeat he may become a reluctant founding father of a reconstructed Europe "The world must be made safe for democracy . . . the right is more precious than peace." President Woodrow Wilson's words to the US Congress in April 1917 sound more modern than ever. A month into the military operations against Serbia, one thing is clear: Nato may not have won the battle on the ground, but Slobodan Milosevic has already lost the war of images. The Yugoslav president is fighting not only Nato but Hollywood, from Stephen Spielberg to Roberto Benigni. The millions of western viewers who have seen Schindler's List or Life is Beautiful cannot bear to watch, live and direct on CNN, images of suffering in the Balkans. An American friend of mine with a senior job at the state department in Washington summarised for me the feelings of most Americans: "My folks in California may not place Kosovo on a map, but in Europe in 1999 they do not want to see people forced into sealed trains." Historical memories refreshed by the power of cinema and reinforced by lingering guilt have created strong public support for the pursuit of the war in spite of the unfortunately unavoidable numerous "collateral damages" taking place. We may not know what we are doing, but we are doing it together. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac may disagree on tactics but increasingly they use the same words to define the conflict: "The struggle between democracy and barbarism." The west is united by common values and emotions, which transcend traditional concerns over sovereignty in the case of France or a reluctance to use force in the case of Germany. This consensus is strong and is likely to last. But there are limits to it. The same images that mobilise opinion constrain the way we conduct the war. Mikhail Gorbachev's warning in 1989 to Erich Honecker, the East German president, on the eve of the fall of the Berlin wall - "He who comes late is punished by history" - could well apply to Mr Milosevic. Shrewd and brutal tactician though he may be, he is a figure from the past moving from defeat to defeat. Compared with the Soviet Union under Stalin, Mr Milosevic's Serbia is a minor threat: but it is nevertheless a great evil and a real challenge, one that is difficult to explain to non-westerners. They are quick to denounce what they perceive as selective moral outrage. What was the west doing when massacres were taking place in Cambodia or central Africa? Is the life of a European, even if he is a Moslem, more precious than that of an Asian or an African? Yet selective emotions are preferable to universal indifference or cynicism. The war in Kosovo is not only a metaphor for the 20th century, an accelerated summary of our history; it constitutes for the US, for Nato and above all for Europe, a defining moment. What price is the US willing to pay to maintain its status as the sole international superpower? Can an alliance such as Nato, with its global ambitions, afford to fail to solve regional problems? For Europe, the challenge is even more fundamental: the war in Kosovo is transforming our perception of ourselves and our vision of our future - and not only in geographic terms. Europe hoped the birth of the euro would slowly give it a sense of identity, but Kosovo may prove more important. Bereft of the Soviet threat, unable to respond as one to the challenge of American hegemony, could Europe find in the Balkans what it is looking for: an emotional rallying point, a test of its democratic ideals? Impoverished, chaotic Albania has become more part of Europe than many of its more developed, modern or democratic neighbours. Suddenly, Brussels' economic criteria seem temporarily irrelevant. A Europe of values is emerging. Emotion and politics on a grand scale, forces discarded as superfluous, if not dangerous, by our politicians and bureaucrats, once again dominate the agenda. To be European has taken on a new, yet familiar, meaning: namely, the refusal to tolerate ethnic cleansing on our continent. The Serbs have total control over the lives of thousands of Kosovars and, acting on the dark impulses of their romantic nationalism, they have abused their rights. But we should see them as victims -of their own delusion, of the Milosevic regime and of their past. Europe will end up with the Serbia it deserves, much as in 1945 it defeated, then had to find a way to reintegrate, Germany. After the second world war, the US led the physical and moral reconstruction of Europe, and as we enter the 21st century Washington continues to play a decisive and positive role. But the European Union, a junior partner in the war for military reasons, will have to take the lead in the diplomatic, moral and economic
[PEN-L:6994] Re: FW: this guys for real
Regarding: I officially left the Mormon Church aka LDS Church (officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) six years ago after having been most faithful in that organization my entire 47 year life span. I am just glad that I finally woke up before it was too late. The other day we were up in Tunari National Foerest, overlooking Cochabamba. I syped a new construction; a massive thing rising on the northern edge of the city. Back down in the city we went to investigate. Turns out the Mormons are building their Operations HQ for South America in Cochabamba, an enormous compound, made up of cathedral, "barracks", offices. I've counted at least 5 mormon churches here in cochabamba, and I've seen scores of young missionaires marhcing about in pairs. Local call them huevos -- testicles -- becuase they are pale, have stubby hair, and always hang around in pairs. More details: - The Banco Boliviano Ameicano just went under; since structural adjustment in 1985 began there has been on average one bank failure every ten months. I keep my rolls of bills under the mattress. - The ex-leftist MIR (Left Revolutionary Movement) party here, part of a coalition government with former dictator Hugo Banzer, has decided NOT to forward documentation of Banzer's human rights violations to Baltazar Garcon in Spain. Had a change of heart I guess - The workers of a local factory/putting out system -- Artesanias Fischer -- that makes hand knit alpaca wool sweaters for US and European markets went on strike yesterday. The 40 women are sick and tired of the shit (pregnancy tests, harassment, etc.) The owner is Jerry Fischer, gringo ex-pat. His legal counsel in the US Consul in Cochabamba, one William Scarborough; in exasperated conversation with the workers he threatened to denounce them to the US abassador. Well, a busy week. Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6996] Re: Bombing of Yugoslavia Awakens Anti-U.S.Feeling Around World
At 02:16 PM 18/05/99 -0400, you wrote: Bombing of Yugoslavia Awakens Anti-U.S. Feeling Around World Yup. I might have mentioned we did a couple of teach ins with unions and students on Yugo here. People are on it: they take as their point of departure that if the US is doing it, it's propably unjustifiable, imperialistic, etc. Media opinion makers are all against NATO, US and the war, with a couple of exceptions, one being a crazy right wing Jesuit with a daily column, who keeps insisting "something had to be done", "to make an omlette ...", etc. But as the WP guy said further down in the article, no one really cares what Latin Americans think. Well, maybe a Brazilian central banker, a mexican drug lord/politician, and that faithful anti-Castroite, Menem ... but Bolivia? Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:7000] (Fwd) NATO GROUND TROOPS NEEDED - PENTAGON REPORT
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:38:58 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:NATO GROUND TROOPS NEEDED - PENTAGON REPORT Reuters May 17, 1999 PENTAGON REPORT: NATO GROUND TROOPS NEEDED There is a growing sense in the military that time is running out. Washington Pentagon chiefs have warned the Clinton administration that it cannot achieve its aims in Yugoslavia without the use of ground troops, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday. The Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to Defense Secretary William Cohen a few weeks ago saying "that only ground troops would guarantee fulfillment of the administration's political objectives," said the report in the current issue, which goes on sale Monday. The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the report. NATO, which launched an air campaign against Yugoslavia on March 24, is seeking to oust Serb troops from Kosovo and secure the return of ethnic Albanians to the Serbian province. Newsweek reported that "there are some in the Pentagon who see the letter as just a classic case of the brass covering its collective backside." "But there is a growing sense in the military that time is running out," the report added. Pentagon sources estimate that there are 600,000 people living out in the open in Kosovo, and 200,000 under shelter but displaced from their homes, according to Newsweek. "A ground war would have to commence by the beginning of August, and the forces required must start assembling by the beginning of June," the magazine said, apparently citing the same Pentagon sources. In London, British officials said Sunday there was no truth to reports of a split between Britain and the United States over the conduct of NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia. "It is a work of fiction," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said of a Sunday Times newspaper report that Blair felt "a deep sense of frustration" with President Clinton after failing to persuade him to commit ground troops to Kosovo.
[PEN-L:7002] (Fwd) NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR
While a lot of this is imperialist shit, it is worth reading. (The National Post is Canada's most right-wing jingoistic rag.) --- Forwarded Message Follows --- Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:39:42 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR The National PostTuesday, May 18, 1999 NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR By Graham N. Green The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is about to lose the war against Yugoslavia. Unless the alliance immediately changes its tactics and demonstrates clearly its determination to win, Operation Allied Force will go down in history as one of the most colossal military and political failures of the 20th century. As the world's most powerful military alliance with the best trained personnel using the most sophisticated weapons ever developed, it should have been no contest between NATO and the Yugoslav armed forces. But being the most powerful has not made NATO the strongest side in this war. A strong alliance needs strong leadership, and NATO has shown clearly these past two months how weak and cowardly its leaders really are. While much of the criticism for this leadership failure has been directed at U.S. President Bill Clinton, other alliance leaders, including Prime Minister Jean Chretien, must share the blame. Blame for spouting principled rhetoric while being afraid to commit all the military assets needed to uphold that rhetoric. Blame for allowing their original principles to be weakened by Moscow and Beijing, even though those concessions make it less likely the Kosovo refugees will ever go home again. And blame for pursuing an exclusively air campaign when all NATO's top military officers have made it clear air strikes alone will not reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. NATO's political leaders are also to blame for allowing this war to be fought in the name of the alliance when all its major decisions are made in Washington, not Brussels. This was highlighted in a private exchange between Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and Mr. Clinton before the air strikes began. D'Alema reportedly asked what the United States would do if Yugoslavia refused to back down in the face of NATO bombing, to which Sandy Berger, the national security advisor, responded: "We will continue the bombing." And so we have. In nearly two months of bombing, NATO aircraft have flown more than 6,000 strikes on more than 500 target areas, destroying oil refineries and storage facilities, most of the bridges over the Danube River, two-thirds of Yugoslavia's fleet of MiG 29 fighter jets, more than 40 other aircraft, 450 pieces of Serbian equipment such as tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers, and the main studios of Serbian radio and television. Despite this, Serbia remains defiant, seemingly prepared to hunker down and take the punishment while continuing its ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and waiting for NATO solidarity to collapse. More than 700,000 ethnic Albanians have been forced into exile while the bombs keep falling. NATO's response? More bombing. Never mind that the Pentagon's chief spokesman has admitted that nobody ever believed air power would be able to stop the depopulation of Kosovo. And never mind that the exclusive reliance on smart bombs dropped from five kilometres above their targets has resulted in several high-profile "mistakes" -- including the destruction of the Chinese embassy -- killing hundreds of innocent civilians and weakening public support in some NATO countries for continuing the war. According to the "Berger Doctrine," you just keep on bombing. And bombing. With no end in sight and with China threatening unspecified retaliation for the destruction of its embassy, NATO leaders are still afraid to commit ground troops to the war. Instead, the alliance has turned to Russia and Finland to try to broker a peace agreement with Belgrade, even though a negotiated settlement will mean even more compromises to NATO's original objectives. But further compromises, particularly on the crucial issue of a credible international security force to guarantee the safety of returning refugees, will mean that almost none of the refugees will ever go home again. Let us be clear about this. The sell-out of the Kosovar Albanian refugees has begun and it is all because alliance leaders have not shown the courage of their convictions to do what is necessary, right, and just to win this war. NATO may be the most powerful military alliance in the world, but it is increasingly revealing itself to be weak and cowardly in the face of a tyrant whose ethnic intolerance has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced persons in three Balkan wars this decade. Unless NATO leaders summon up the courage to do whatever it takes to defeat Serbia's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, we can
[PEN-L:7003] (Fwd) POLL: MOST AMERICANS WANT NEGOTIATIONS
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:39:19 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:POLL: MOST AMERICANS WANT NEGOTIATIONS The Washington Post Tuesday, May 18, 1999; Page A18 POLL: MOST AMERICANS WANT NEGOTIATIONS First significant decline in support for military action in Yugoslavia since crisis began; German polls show public there has turned against war. By Richard Morin, Staff Writer Public support for the air war in Yugoslavia is softening and a majority of Americans believe the United States and its NATO allies should negotiate a settlement with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end the fighting, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. But the country remains divided over exactly what concessions the United States should grant Milosevic in exchange for peace in the Balkans. Half the public agrees that NATO should not stop the bombing until the Serbs allow a NATO-led peacekeeping force into Kosovo but nearly as many say this NATO peace requirement should be open to negotiation. In other ways, the latest Post-ABC News poll suggests that the war for public opinion on Kosovo has entered a new, complicated and more risky phase for President Clinton and the NATO allies. Only about half the country says NATO should continue to bomb Yugoslavia. Nearly as many say the United States and its allies should suspend the air attacks as a way to encourage Serbian forces to leave Kosovo an option that has been repeatedly and forcefully rejected by Clinton and NATO commanders. Since the bombing of the Chinese embassy and air strikes that have killed civilians, the proportion of Americans who say the allies are "not being careful enough to avoid civilian casualties" has increased from 19 percent to 32 percent. The poll also found that in public perception of his handling of the Kosovo crisis, Clinton has suffered somewhat in recent weeks. Barely half of those those interviewed 53 percent say they approve of the way he is handling the situation in Kosovo, down from 56 percent three weeks ago and 60 percent during the first week in April. The proportion of Americans opposed to Clinton's management of the crisis has increased from 36 percent to 41 percent in three weeks. A total of 761 randomly selected Americans were interviewed Sunday for this Post-ABC News poll. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 4 percentage points. The survey suggests that war fatigue has set in after seven weeks of bombing strikes by the United States and its western allies. While the erosion in support remains modest and perhaps only temporary, it signals the first significant decline in public support for military action in Yugoslavia since the crisis began. American support for the war, however, remains strong compared to that of several key NATO members. In Germany, polls show the public has turned against the war effort and in Italy, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema is under increasing political pressure to work for a political solution to the Kosovo crisis. The percentage of Americans who back the air campaign has dropped from 65 percent in late April to 59 percent in the latest survey. Opposition grew from 30 percent to 38 percent during the same period. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed say NATO should negotiate with Serbia on terms to end the conflict, while 38 percent say the allies should require Serbia to accept existing NATO requirements for peace a view expressed by equally large proportions of Republicans, Democrats and independents. Six in 10 say Milosevic should be required to remove most of his troops from Kosovo a key NATO peace condition while nearly four in 10 said troop withdrawals should be up for negotiation. Fifty-four percent say the return of all refugees to Kosovo should not be open to negotiations, while 42 percent say it should. But 55 percent say a settlement allowing Kosovo limited self-rule should not be a requirement for peace. The survey revealed that the American public is backing away from sending combat troops into Kosovo. Barely half of those interviewed 52 percent say they favor sending in soldiers if the air campaign fails to produce peace, down from 56 percent in a Post-ABC News poll conducted three weeks ago. At the same time, the proportion who oppose the use of ground troops increased from 40 percent to 46 percent, with most of the jump in opposition coming from independents. Among these voters, opposition to bombing increased by more than 10 percentage points. For the first time in Post-ABC News surveys, a clear majority of Americans 56 percent say they would oppose sending ground troops into Kosovo if it meant that the United States would suffer "some" casualties. Clinton has acknowledged that Americans may
[PEN-L:7004] Re: Dollarization
Max, There has been a move by the ultra-right in Canada to move to a common currency between the US and Canada -- perhaps also Mexico. The argument they make is that this would stabilize Canada 'loonie' (though they fail to mention that had we done so ten years ago the Canadian economy would have been in the tank for a decade due to an overvalued currency). It is interesting, however, to hear the real reason when one gets to ask the real reason for such a system -- it is to prevent the Canadian government (with all its socialist bents) from implementing non- market determined policy. In short it is the Canadian Quisling policy. Interestingly enough, its major proponent is the Fraser Institute (the radical right 'think tank' (sic)) and members of the Reform party. Outside of the lunatic right, however, it hasn't had much of an audience here. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Max Sawicky) To: "Pen-L" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:6998] Dollarization Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 22:54:19 -0700 There have now been two op-eds in the Washington Post about the spectre of 'dollarization,' which means the adoption of the U.S. dollar by Latin/South American countries as their regular currency. Supposedly it's been talked up by the imminent Secy. Summers, among others. Argentina was mentioned as a likely, willing candidate. (Quebec?) I'm a little surprized nobody has mentioned this here. Maybe it's too improbable. It certainly boggles my mind. It seems like a pretty tangible expansion of the U.S. economic order, narrowly construed in terms of a trade block (vis-a-vis the EU and the evolving Japanese co-prosperity sphere). It likens the Fed to the Bundesbank, though if some national working class below the equator goes on strike, nobody in Washington will give a shit. War is a sideshow, albeit a bloody one. It allows us to go through old and familiar motions. But finance is where the action is, IMO. mbs
[PEN-L:7005] Progress in Economics
Some time ago, we were discussing Peter Dorman's friend, Kip Viscusi. Here is anothe gem. "The Social Costs of Punitive Damages Against Corporations in Environmental and Safety Tort" BY: W. KIP VISCUSI Harvard Law School Paper ID: Harvard Law School, John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business Working Paper No. 237 Date: July 1998 Contact: W. KIP VISCUSI Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Postal: Harvard Law School 302 Hauser Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Phone: (617)496-0019 Fax: (617)495-3010 Paper Requests: Contact Nancy Knapp, John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, Hauser 506, Cambridge, MA 02138. Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone:(617)496-1670. Fax:(617) 496-2256. ABSTRACT: Legal scholars and judges have long expressed concerns over the unpredictability and arbitrariness of punitive damages awards. Proposed remedies, such as restricting punitive damages to narrowly defined circumstances, have not yet met with success. This paper addresses the threshold issue of whether, on balance, punitive damages have benefits in excess of their costs. There is no evidence of a significant deterrent effect based on an original empirical analysis of a wide range of risk measures for the states with and without punitive damages. These measures included accident rates, chemical spills, medical malpractice injuries, insurance performance, and other outcomes that should be affected by punitive damages, but which are not. Punitive damages can and do cause substantial economic harm through their random infliction of economic penalties. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:7009] Re: Re: Re: Re: petit bourgeois
It's even better than that. Ely was canned specifically for announcing to a class the date and time of a lecture by Emma Goldman! (She tells the story in LIVING MY LIFE.) "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: As a followup to Doug's remarks on the potential "dangerousness" of economics, I note that many of the key cases in academia in the early twentieth century that led to the institution of tenure involved professors of economics who were fired due to allegedly espousing socialist ideas, much to the discomfiture of wealthy individuals with power over the academic institutions in question. One of the most famous of these, with which Peter Dorman is certainly aware, involved the founder of the American Economic Association (in its origins a heterodox institution, hah!), Robert T. Ely, an institutionalist labor economist who supported a lot of things like workmens' compensation and who even wrote a sympathetic book entitled _Socialism and Social Reform_. In 1892 there was an effort to fire Ely from the University of Wisconsin at Madison because of his ideas. This was eventually blocked by the oversight body, the Board of Regents, who in doing so issued a statement that has since been viewed as the central ideal of the university, (not sure I can quote this exactly, but...) "whatever the limitations that may be placed upon the pursuit of knowledge, at the University of Wisconsin we shall not do anything that will limit that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth shall be known" (or something like that). Anyway, "sifting and winnowing" is now as sacred a phrase at the UW as "Go Big Red!" and "have another beer and brat, cheeseheads!" and a plaque with the famous quote (which I have mangled somewhat, except for the "sifting and winnowing" part (which went over well at a heavily ag oriented school)) was placed and still remains on the front of Bascom Hall in the center of the old campus, right where lots of the demos used to take place. BTW, it was the 1950s when the institutionalist infuence in the AEA was finally expunged by the mainstream neoclassicals in a major power struggle. I leave it to you all to put the ideology of that one together Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 7:22 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6928] Re: Re: petit bourgeois Peter Dorman wrote: Moreover, there is no simple correspondence between what people believe and their class background. This sort of ideology critique is mechanical and procrustean. Ideas are much too mediated for that framework to apply. (Why am I reminded of sociobiology all of a sudden?) I don't know, why are you? Does it have anything to do with the alleged similarities between Judith Butler and Robert Lucas? Of course there is no simple correspondence between what people believe and their class background. On the other hand, there is *some* nontrivial relation between ideas and class positions, between ideology and real social institutions and practices. To tie it to the issue that started all this, changing class relations have something to do with the decline of radical economics and the hegemony of neoclassical economics, no? The bourgeoisie is in no mood to tolerate critics these days, and they don't have to, what with the working class its back and the USSR a memory. As no less than H.L. Mencken put it: "[Economics] hits the employers of the professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors." Not to be mechanical or procrustean or anything. Doug Peter
[PEN-L:7007] Re: Progress in Economics
Perhaps looking ahead to the time when economists themselves might face punitive damages for malpractice? Michael Perelman wrote: Some time ago, we were discussing Peter Dorman's friend, Kip Viscusi. Here is anothe gem. "The Social Costs of Punitive Damages Against Corporations in Environmental and Safety Tort" BY: W. KIP VISCUSI Harvard Law School Paper ID: Harvard Law School, John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business Working Paper No. 237 Date: July 1998 regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:7006] Re: Dollarization
Paul Phillips wrote: There has been a move by the ultra-right in Canada to move to a common currency between the US and Canada -- Outside of the lunatic right, however, it hasn't had much of an audience here. Which probably means it will be fast-tracked through parliament by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Crapulinski. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:7001] (Fwd) A PUZZLE IN ONE YUGOSLAV VILLAGE
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:39:32 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:A PUZZLE IN ONE YUGOSLAV VILLAGE The International Herald TribuneParis, Tuesday, May 18, 1999 A PUZZLE IN ONE YUGOSLAV VILLAGE ''As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and security forces are not committing any kind of genocide'' spokesman for Kosovo Democratic Initiative, ethnic Albanian political party opposed to KLA By Paul Watson Los Angeles Times Service SVETLJE, Yugoslavia - Something strange is going on in this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO accuses the Serbs of committing genocide. About 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day. The presence of so many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces poses a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here. By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs. Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo. ''We wanted to stay here where we were born,'' Skender Velia, 39, said through a translator. ''Those who wanted to go through Macedonia and on to Europe have already left. We did not want to follow.'' Mr. Velia, his wife, Hajiri, their three children and his mother, Farita, 56, were among as many as 100,000 Kosovo Albanians who fled the nearby northern city of Podujevo in the early days of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's air war, which began March 24. Some said the Serbs had driven them from their homes, while others said they had simply been scared and left on their own. They all moved from one village to another, trying to escape fighting between Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas and Serbian security forces. A foreign journalist spent two hours in Svetlje during the weekend, his second visit in less than a week, without a police or military escort or a Serbian official to monitor what was seen or said. Just as NATO accuses Yugoslav forces of using ethnic Albanian refugees as human shields, the Serbs say Kosovo Liberation Army fighters hide among ethnic Albanian civilians to carry out ''terrorist attacks.'' Mr. Velia and other ethnic Albanians interviewed in Svetlje said they had not had any problems with the Serbian police since being allowed to come back. ''For the month that we've been here, the police have come only to sell cigarettes, but there hasn't been any harassment,'' Mr. Velia said. Kosovo Albanians continue to flee Yugoslavia, often with detailed accounts of atrocities by Serbian security forces or paramilitaries. Yet thousands of other ethnic Albanians are coming out of hiding in forests and in the mountains, hungry and frightened, and either going back home or waiting for police permission to do so. While the Serbian police seize the identity documents of Kosovo Albanians crossing the border into Albania or Macedonia, government officials in Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, issue new identity cards to ethnic Albanians still here. The Kosovo Democratic Initiative, an ethnic Albanian political party opposed to the Kosovo Liberation Army's fight for independence, is distributing aid, offering membership cards and gathering names of Serbs accused of committing atrocities. ''As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,'' Fatmir Seholi, the party's spokesman, said Sunday. ''But in a war, even innocent people die. In every war, there are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of people who wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.'' His father, Malic Seholi, was killed Jan. 9, 1997, apparently for being too cooperative with Serbian authorities. The Kosovo Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the slaying, Mr. Seholi said. Asked whether he thought NATO's bombing was helping or hurting, Mr. Velia shifted at the wooden desk where he was sitting in one of the school's classrooms. ''My blood is the same as yours,'' he said. ''I just want the situation stabilized. People are not very interested in what is going on with big political discussions here and there. They are just interested in going home.'' Despite the mass exodus, several hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians remain in the province, many of them still hiding without proper food, medicine or shelter. After
[PEN-L:6998] Dollarization
There have now been two op-eds in the Washington Post about the spectre of 'dollarization,' which means the adoption of the U.S. dollar by Latin/South American countries as their regular currency. Supposedly it's been talked up by the imminent Secy. Summers, among others. Argentina was mentioned as a likely, willing candidate. (Quebec?) I'm a little surprized nobody has mentioned this here. Maybe it's too improbable. It certainly boggles my mind. It seems like a pretty tangible expansion of the U.S. economic order, narrowly construed in terms of a trade block (vis-a-vis the EU and the evolving Japanese co-prosperity sphere). It likens the Fed to the Bundesbank, though if some national working class below the equator goes on strike, nobody in Washington will give a shit. War is a sideshow, albeit a bloody one. It allows us to go through old and familiar motions. But finance is where the action is, IMO. mbs
[PEN-L:6997] Encyclopaedia of Radical Political Economy
Encyclopaedia of Radical Political Economy (ERPE) Selected excerpts. Prof. N.I. Lobachevsky and Takei Crapulinski (eds) Politics Democrat Party. Main source of U.S. military agression since 1850. (See also Robert Dole.) Republican Party. Lesser of two evils. (See also Pat Buchanan and objective anti-imperialism.) German Social Democratic Party. Neo-nazi formation. British Labor Party. Even worse. Yeltsin, Boris. Progressive Russian nationalist. (See also Laurent Kabila.) War and Peace Use of force by NATO. Moral outrage and harbinger of barbarism. Ethnic cleansing. When practiced by neo-socialist regimes and formations, a complex problem of political economy. Bombing of Chinese embassy by NATO. Two deaths provoked mass demonstrations throughout Peoples Republic of China. Bombing of Belgrade and ethnic cleansing in Kosova. Thousands of deaths provoked mass indifference in Peoples Republic of China. Kosovar victims of Serb regime, news reports. Tendentious reiteration of NATO policy. Casualties of NATO bombing, news reports. Key to anti-imperialist consciousness. Socialism Yugoslavia. Federation of Balkan nationalities. After World War II, supported by Western imperialism as bulwark against Soviet Union. Market-oriented economic system, thoroughly penetrated by Western capital. Underwent rapid socialist transformation in March of 1999. (See also Peoples Republic of China.) Blocks strategic imperialist invasion route to East. (N.B., W. Churchill: "Serbia is a dagger pointed at the heart of Macedonia.") Peoples Republic of China. Disinterested protector of Tibet, Sinkiang (sp?), Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Kampuchea. Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Used military force to violate national sovereignty of Democratic Kampuchea. Armed Struggle Kosova Liberation Army. Terrorist organization implicated in international drug traffic. FARC. Guerilla liberation force; defender of Colombian peasants implicated in international drug traffic. Shining Path. Not as bad as Pol Pot. House Committee on Intelligence, Republican majority. Source of malicious and inaccurate information about left-wing liberation forces throughout the world, but reliable source of information on Kosova Liberation Army. Ecology Gray whale. Endangered species, except when hunted by indigenous peoples. Prone to suicidal tendencies. Tornado. Extreme weather disturbance originating in NATO policy. Possible complicity of Tony Blair. Global warming. Crisis that will become acute after everyone reading this is dead. (See also Social Security; crisis of capitalism.) Economics Crash. Syns. 'bubble bursting,' 'The day the shit came down.' Decline of Dow Jones Index of 1.5%. (See also Mark Jones.) Crisis of capitalism. Occurs approximately every ten days. (See also crash; millenarianism.) Mark Jones. Wagered case of lagavullin that Dow would break 3,000 on or before September 15, 1999. Military Keynesianism. Military spending increase. Or decrease. Lump of Labor. Forgotten technical problem in economics. Old Foggey. [Hist.] affectionate reference to lectures of either Prof. J. Devine or M. Perelman (disputed by historians).
[PEN-L:6995] Re: Re: FW: this guys for real
At 09:11 AM 18/05/99 -0700, you wrote: For anyone interested in the scamming of indigenous peoples by missionaries, strongly recommend They Will Be Done. Anybody got any good, concise dirt on the Mormons? Or a website for recovering ones? Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6989] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1999 RELEASED TODAY: In February 1999, there were 878 mass layoff actions by employers as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 80,134. Both the number of layoff events and the number of initial claimants for unemployment insurance were slightly lower in February 1999 than in February 1998. ... A few hours after starting a fee-based search engine for federal government Internet sites and documents, the Commerce Department put the project off to review whether it conflicts with the administration's policy on unrestricted access to government information. Commerce officials said the administration wanted to review the joint venture by the National Technical Information Service and Northern Light Technology Inc. from all policy angles, not just that of NTIS, which is a for-profit agency. The announcement that the project was being delayed came several hours after NTIS and Northern Light officials held a news briefing to demonstrate the search engine at the National Press Club and after newspaper articles about the project had appeared. ... (New York Times, page C6). Federal Reserve policymakers meet today to decide whether economic growth is so strong that an increase in short-term interest rates is needed to cool it down before it causes the nation's low inflation rate to pick up. Almost universally, financial analysts are betting that the officials, led by Chairman Alan Greenspan, will not raise rates even though booming consumer spending has been spurring growth well in excess of what Fed forecasters had expected. The analysts are badly split, however, over whether inflation worries will cause the policymaking group, the Federal Open Market Committee, to decide to send a signal to financial markets and the public that it is leaning in the direction of raising rates at a later date. Those expecting such a signal became more convinced on Friday when BLS reported consumer prices jumped 0.7 last month, the largest monthly increase in 5 years. But that jump was an anomaly, other analysts stressed. ... (Washington Post, page E1)_Fueling fears of an eventual rate rise was Friday's report that consumer prices rose 2.3 percent in the 12 months ended in April, the first time since October 1987 that prices rose more than 2 percent year to year. ... (New York Times, page C12)_Until now, a pleasurable combination of stronger-than-expected economic growth and weaker-than-expected inflation has made it easy for the hold-steady crowd at the Federal Reserve. Suddenly, the Fed's worrywart contingent has something to talk about. Last week's government report of an uptick in consumer price inflation and new signs of vitality in factory output are likely to make today's meeting of the Fed's policysetting Open Market Committee a lot more interesting than the past couple of sessions. The issues the Fed confronts are clear: The resolution is not. Will inflation accelerate unless the Fed raises interest rates soon to slow the economy, or is the economy about to slow on its own? Is the global economy coming back, or about to suffer a relapse? Are productivity growth and global competition increasing so much that the U.S. can safely expand rapidly for a few more quarters? ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Employees in the United States and Canada should expect salary increases to continue hovering around 4 percent, according to a preliminary sample from the American Compensation Association's 1999-2000 Total Salary Increase Budget Survey. Estimates for 1999 U.S. salaries were grouped by employee category. Survey respondents estimated that pay increases would be 4 percent for nonexempt hourly workers, 4.1 percent for nonexempt salaried employees, 4.2 percent for exempt-salaried employees, and 4.5 percent for officer/executives. The results are based on a random e-mail survey of 2,000 ACA members in the United States and 800 in Canada. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-5). More employers motivate the rank and file with stock options, according to the "Work Week" feature of The Wall Street Journal (page A1). ... In a survey of 350 companies' 1998 proxy statements, William M. Mercer, a New York benefits consultant, found 35 percent with stock options for most employees, more than double the 1993 total. ... Three-quarters of full-time employees are offered retirement programs by their employers, according to results from a survey conducted for the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America by Bruskin/Goldring Research. The survey found that 70.4 percent of employees age 18 and older, and 75.7 percent of those employed full time, are provided a retirement program as part of their benefits package. ... Bruskin/Goldring surveyed 1,000 households, which were telephoned randomly, in the United States for the study
[PEN-L:6988] A useful website
http://www.antiwar.com/ Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6985] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Louis, Which would suggest that the revocation of autonomy by Milosevic is a legitimate action for them to be upset about. It is true that there was preferential treatment of the Albanians in Kosmet from 1974-1990, the period of autonomy. But I would not say that there was ever particularly an "atmosphere of tolerance and good will" between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosmet. The preferential treatment was imposed from above by Tito. Certainly there was a reasonably progressive attitude coming from him, and one that was pretty aware of the subtleties and difficulties of the situation in the region. It remains a matter for open debate and discussion as to why all that preferential treatment did not result in a better economic performance in Kosovo-Metohija. I have on more than one occasion expressed my sadness and mystification about this outcome, which remains a deep underlying aspect of the current situation, speaking of political economy and history. Certainly what happened in Guatamala was naked racism. But the Kurds are the same race as the Turks, last time I checked. It is certainly unwarranted cultural repression in Turkey. But what has it do with political economy? The Turks have a nasty history of trying to dominate other ethnic groups and doing so violently. Their physical, not merely cultural, genocide of the Armenians in 1915 is more clear even than their repression of the Kurds. BTW, the Kurds are getting repressed by all the nations in the neighborhood, irrespective of their ideology, nominally socialist as in Syria and Iraq, nominally Islamic capitalist as in Iran, or just plain Kemalist state capitalist as in Turkey. Historical and politically economic enough for you, Uncle Lou? Barkley Rosser Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 2:58 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6984] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars Louis, Gosh, I just said I wasn't going to say more on this, but... Ummm, but in Guatemala it was a minority of the population that was suppressing a majority of the population, just as in Kosovo-Metohija, whereas in Turkey it is the majority that is suppressing the minority, as in Nicaragua. Barkley Rosser No, Barkley, you don't get it. You have shifted the axis of the discussion once again away from political economy and history. Majority/minority is irrelevant to what was happening in Guatemala. The real issue was naked racism toward a marginalized people. In Nicaragua and Yugoslavia, there was a genuine atmosphere of tolerance and good-will, just as there was in Nicaragua. Kosovars were not brutalized in the decade preceding the suspension of autonomy. They received preferential treatment. They enjoyed a higher degree of investment in infrastructure and capital projects; their schools were expanded at an impressive rate; they enjoyed full autonomy. The Turks did not provide such treatment for the Kurds. If they did, it is likely that there would be no "Kurdish question". In fact, the guerrilla leader who was just kidnapped by the Turks demanded autonomy, not secession. All these things are obvious to anybody who has taken even a superficial glance at Kosovo in the period of 1975-1985. Why you want to sweep these facts under the rug is beyond me. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6980] Bombing of Yugoslavia Awakens Anti-U.S. Feeling Around World
Bombing of Yugoslavia Awakens Anti-U.S. Feeling Around World By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, May 18, 1999; Page A01 BUENOS AIRESIt's thousands of miles from Belgrade, and there's not a Serb in sight. But Gonzalo Etcheberry is passing a wall on a busy street here spray-painted with the words, "Yankee, out of the Balkans." He didn't write the slogan, but he couldn't agree more. "Your bombs in Yugoslavia are from the side of America that I can't stand," said Etcheberry, a 21-year-old medical student wearing a black Pearl Jam T-shirt. "I hate it when the U.S. plays judge and God." Such feelings are common in Argentina -- and in many other parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the NATO air offensive against Serb-controlled Yugoslavia concludes its eighth week and such blunders as the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and airstrikes on Kosovo refugees grab headlines worldwide, NATO warplanes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind -- damage to its international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant power, is bearing the brunt of public anger. Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll last week showed that 64 percent of the populace opposes the NATO air campaign. More respondents had a negative opinion of NATO than of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with little direct interest in the conflict, opposition to the bombing is surfacing in statements by elected officials, in newspaper editorials, opinion polls, public protests, Internet banter and street graffiti. Increasingly, there is little subtlety to the NATO-bashing. "NATO is blindly bombing Yugoslavia," Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in a fiery political speech last week. "There is a dance of destruction going on there. Thousands of people rendered homeless. And the United Nations is a mute witness to all this. Is NATO's work to prevent war or to fuel one?" In the view of analysts here and elsewhere, the anti-NATO backlash shows that Washington's portrayal of the conflict as a humanitarian mission is being superseded by lingering anti-Western feelings in countries with bad memories of U.S. intervention and European colonialism. While the plight of the Kosovo refugees has evoked widespread sympathy, with many countries offering financial and logistical support to the relief effort, there is also growing criticism outside NATO that the allies were too quick to abandon diplomacy for war. The mistaken bombings of civilians and of the Chinese Embassy have intensified those feelings, foreign policy analysts say. "Milosevic has been able to successfully evoke the powerful message that he is defending his homeland and that he's the underdog facing Yankee might," said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University. "And that is striking a chord internationally." Even in some countries that have shown support for the allies, doubts are surfacing. In Japan, for instance, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy -- coupled with vivid television images of scattered civilian corpses after other NATO misfires -- seems to have cooled any enthusiasm for Japanese participation in the Kosovo conflict. "Why do we have to get involved in this issue? It's not our issue at all," said Taro Kono, a member of parliament from Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's Liberal Democratic Party. "The United States and NATO have unilaterally decided that the Serbs are the bad guys. I'm not sure it's so easy to tell who's right and who's wrong." Opposition appears to be growing fastest in the developing world. Since the end of the Cold War, many developing nations grudgingly have come to accept the United States as an economic model and leader. At the same time, many analysts say, the war
[PEN-L:6979] Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
And of course, it remains the case that the Turks have done nothing to the Kurds that is comparable to what the Serbs have done to the Albanians in the last two months, not even close, which was my original point in this thread. Why are people so resistant to admitting this? Barkley Rosser Because it is similar to the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Also, you are approaching the whole question from a "human rights" angle, where the rest of us are trying to understand things from the standpoint of political economy and history. By analogy, one can say that Central American governments repressed indigenous peoples in the 1980s, from Guatemala to Nicaragua. For argument's sake, let's say that Rios-Montt was not quite as brutal as he was and that the number of displaced and murdered Mayans approximated the same number of Nicaraguan Miskitus. Would this lead to the conclusion that the conflicts were identical and the governments were equally culpable. What I've been reading about Kosovo in the 1980s, long before the termination of autonomy, is that the problems in Nicaragua and socialist Yugoslavia were of the same nature. Rising expectations of a traditionally disenfranchised people led to massive unrest. Imperialism intervened to take advantage of ethnic strife and provoke a counter-revolution. Turkey is a much different story. Turkey is Guatemala. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:6976] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Barkley Rosser wrote: Tom, This interesting post simply does not address the question. On strictly grammatical grounds, I'd have to agree. Brad's question was about a "strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing". It was a leading question and couldn't be answered without either accepting or challenging its fused premises that: 1. Paul Phillips' message was "strange and pathetic"; 2. that Paul attempted to "deny the agency" of the Yugoslav government in the events in Kosovo and 3. that what is occuring in Kosovo is unambiguously "ethnic cleansing" as opposed to, say, a military-strategic response to the bombing campaign. Given its highly rhetorical charge, one might suspect that Brad's question was rhetorical. That is, he wasn't really so much asking a question as using the question form to make a series of claims that were themselves questionable. Perhaps the only appropriate way to address such a rhetorical question is with another rhetorical question: why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who issued the ultimatum and recklessly escalated the hostilities? When confronted with the false dilemma of either pedantically challenging the premises of a leading question or joining in a communicatively sterile rhetorical tennis match, one can always take a third -- unoffered -- route: to digress interestingly. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6971] Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
Tom, This interesting post simply does not address the question. Of course the discussion on pen-l has become a bit odd (Nathan Newman's not here is he?) because there is nobody left on this list, if there ever was, who defends the Rambouillet Accords. I certainly don't and never did, although parts of it look not unreasonable. But its totality and how it was handled was a complete disaster, certainly reflecting at least imperial pretensions and arrogance, if not necessarily a full blown historical materialist imperialist plot as some here would like to think. Nobody is disputing the events prior to late March. It is what has happened since that is at issue. I oppose the bombing and am no fan of the UCK/KLA. But I do not see that either the bombing or the pre-March activities of the UCK/KLA justify in any way shape or form what the Serbs have done in Kosovo-Metohija since then. Not even close. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 8:10 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6930] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars Brad DeLong asked: Why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing? And why this attempt to make every Muslim in the region bar responsbility for the terrorist deeds of the KLA? Here's a long answer, if you don't mind concrete details. The Democrat May 1999 FAILURE OF DIPLOMACY Returning human rights monitor with the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) offers a view from the ground in Kosovo by Rollie Keith Canada is currently participating in the NATO coalition air bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ostensibly to force compliance with the terms of the Rambouillet and subsequent Paris "Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo". The justification for this aggressive action was to force Yugoslavian compliance and acceptance to the so-called "agreement" and to end the alleged humanitarian and human rights abuses being perpetrated on the ethnic majority Kosovar Albanian residents of the Serbian province of Kosovo. The bombardment then is rationalized on the basis of the UN Declaration of Human Rights taking precedence over the UN Charter that states the inviolability of national sovereignty. While I am concerned with human rights abuse, I also believe many nations, if not all, would clearly be vulnerable to this criticism; therefore, we require a better mechanism to counter national human rights violations than bombing. What, however, was the situation within Kosovo before March 20, and are we now being misled with biased media information? Is this aggressive war really justified to counter alleged humanitarian violations, or are there problematical premises being applied to justify the hostilities? Either way, diplomacy has failed and the ongoing air bombardment has greatly exacerbated an internal humanitarian problem into a disaster. There were no international refugees over the last five months of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) presence within Kosovo and Internal Displaced Persons only numbered a few thousand in the weeks before the air bombardment commenced. As an OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) monitor during February and March of this year, I was assigned as the Director of the Kosovo Polje Field Office, just west of the provincial capital of Pristina. The role of the 1380 monitors of the KVM, from some 38 of the OSCE's 55 nations, including 64 Canadians, was authorized under UN Security Council Resolution 1199 to monitor and verify cease-fire compliance, or non-compliance, investigate cease-fire violations and unwarranted road blocks, assist humanitarian agencies in facilitating the resettlement of displaced persons and assist in democratization measures eventually leading to elections. The agreement which was the basis of the KVM (I refer to it as the "Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement") was signed on October 16, 1998, ending the previous eight months of internal conflict. Given its international composition, the KVM was organized and deployed quite slowly and was not fully operational on a partial basis until early in 1999. By the time I arrived, vehicles and other resources along with the majority of international monitors were arriving, but the cease- fire situation was deteriorating with an increasing incidence of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) provocative attacks on the Yugoslavian security forces. In response the security forces of the Ministry of Internal Security police supported by the army were establishing random roadblocks that resulted in some harassment of movement of the majority Albanian Kosovars. The general situation was, though, that the bulk of the population had settled down after the previous year's hostilities, but the KLA was building its strength and was attempting to reorganize in preparation for a military solution,
[PEN-L:6970] Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
BTW, I grant to Paul Phillips and others that the Turks have repressed the Kurds in a way that the Serbs have not done to the Albanians, namely this effort to suppress their language and culture. OTOH, after the revocation of autonomy in 1990 the Serbs clearly began to discriminate against the Albanians in a variety of ways, including notably in admissions to the main university. It is unfortunate that neither group there has seemed willing on the ground to treat the other in a decent and fair fashion when they have been in charge. This does suggest the need for some outside force to be in charge. However, unless that coincides with a clear supremacy and victory for the Albanians, I do not think that many, if any, of the refugees will return. That is what Bosnia- Herzegovina shows us. Refugees don't go home even with international peacekeepers around. And of course, it remains the case that the Turks have done nothing to the Kurds that is comparable to what the Serbs have done to the Albanians in the last two months, not even close, which was my original point in this thread. Why are people so resistant to admitting this? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 7:34 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6929] Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars Barkley, I have some difficulty with your whole discussion and comparison of the situation in Turkey and Kosovo. The reason is fairly straightforward. First, there was no genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced removal, denial of language rights, etc. etc. in Kosovo prior to the bombing. ... [O]n a proportional basis, the Albanians were forcing out the Serbs, not the opposite. (i.e. NATO should have been bombing Tirana, not Beograd.)... It is we, members of NATO, that have caused the ethnic cleansing by our bombing Paul Phillips Why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing? And why this attempt to make every Muslim in the region bar responsbility for the terrorist deeds of the KLA? Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:6967] Re: Doug Orr on the improtance of Program
Michael Keaney wrote: ... Conservatives like F. A. Hayek and Leo Strauss have also bemoaned the elevation of technique at the expense of theory and analysis. While their contributions are hardly the first port of call for subscribers to this list, there is clearly a sizeable number of folks concerned with the decline of scholarship resulting from excessive technocracy. ... I must say that one reason I survive is because Catholic (Jesuit) colleges like the one that employs me have a greater tolerance of those who emphasize scholarship over technique, the big picture over the little, etc. I like C. Wright Mills's clarification of the liberal education as liberating. what is that statement? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
[PEN-L:6962] Re: Re: Re: Re: petit bourgeois
Peter Dorman wrote: Seriously, the point is about the parallel attempts of sociobiology and at least some forms of marxism to connect the endpoints of material and intellectual life without working through all the mediations. (And even then, of course, the account of "material life" is highly selective.) Given that the more militant among us have taken me to task for spending too much time on those mediations over the last couple of years, it's odd to find myself defending the idea of a relation between social position and thought. But here I am, doing so. Let's not become sophisticated in our revulsion from "vulgar Marxism" that we reject any connection between ideas and material life. Anyway, it isn't changing class relations but the vitality of the left that is decisive for viable dissent in economics. We agree that these are not the same, right? How can you measure "the vitality of the left" without taking the measure of class relations? It's kind of dispiriting for a radical political writer, to take another in my series of nonrandom examples, to feel like he's talking only to himself and a few friends. Doug
[PEN-L:6961] Rod Hay's valuable work
Rod mentioned that he has Simmel on his web site, but he does not mention that he has virtually every classic economics text of importance linked there. Marx, Smith, Ricardo .. and many more esoteric sources. Check it out. He has performed an invaluable service to anybody with interests in this area. http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:6953] Re: Asian irrational euphoria?
G'day Henry, Might the 'irrational euphoria' discerned by Camdessus not be a bit of hedging - y'know, money trickling out of Wall St in anticipation of hikes and such? Mebbe Asia's stock markets are slowly taking on the countenance of relative safety for money that can still not find options as 'attractive' in the sphere of new production. Out of an anticipated fire into the frying pan sorta thing. Nonsense? Cheers, Rob. Tuesday May 18 1999 SCMP Camdessus urges caution DAVID SAUNDERS Recent rallies on Asia's financial markets are premature and smack of "irrational euphoria", according to the International Monetary Fund's managing director Michel Camdessus. Speaking in Hong Kong, Mr Camdessus warned that while the new-found optimism across the region was understandable as economies started the process of recovery, much work needed to be done in terms of financial restructuring. The recovery on stock markets, while appropriate after almost two years of turmoil, was happening a little too rapidly, he said. "People were talking about a deep recession in the making for Asia . . . Now we are possibly at a turning point, or even possibly after the turning point," Mr Camdessus said. "But I am a little bit concerned that after instances of excessive pessimism, we are now in a phase . . . of a degree of irrational euphoria. So we must be careful in our judgment." However, during a speech beforehand, at the Pacific Basin Economic Council's international general meeting, Mr Camdessus noted considerable progress had been made towards improving the international financial system. "We are at the point now where - let me be a little impertinent - central banks no longer compete for a reputation for secrecy but for one of transparency," he said. He called for full liberalisation of capital movements in a "prudent and well sequenced fashion". He said that while the ultimate goal of financial institutions and all governments should be for trade liberalisation and greater regulatory transparency, he acknowledged there was sometimes a case to argue for capital controls to be imposed on a temporary basis. "Generally, consensus is emerging that capital controls do not deal effectively with fundamental economic imbalances, but may only be useful in certain circumstances," he said, adding they were in fact accounted for within the IMF's own articles of agreement. "[But] controls may have a place when there is the risk of a crisis, but only to allow a breathing space for other fundamental measures to take effect." Such controls were generally more effective when imposed on capital inflows rather than outflows, such as those erected by the Malaysian Government in September. Any future work on financial reforms needed to include social consideration, he said. The financial crisis had exposed the inadequacy of social welfare systems across Asia, where people had traditionally relied on family-based support. Mr Camdessus also said stronger nations had to do more to integrate developing states, which were not benefiting from the global economy. "Too little is being done by industrial countries to facilitate this integration, for instance by opening their markets or by extending official development assistance," he said. Mr Camdessus said all financial institutions, including the IMF itself, had to ensure that they evolved in line with the changing global economy and that all countries were given an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. Asked for his observations on the Hong Kong economy, Mr Camdessus said the IMF believed it had reached a turning point, although unemployment remained high. He said the SAR Government was right to defend the peg and retain it even though it had
[PEN-L:6952] Re: Re: Re: Rosser on Kurds/Kosovars
In reply to Ken and Brad ... As at 23 March, it was, I think, importantly true that the KLA was not Albanian Kosovo and the Kosovar Serb militias were not mainstream Serbia. I dunno if anyone saw that Drenica Valley doco, but all the killing of Albanians in that seemed locals upon locals (with hierarchy sanction, no doubt, but mostly without the knowledge of the mainstream, who were fondly imagining a little counter-insurgency at worst). One thing that's been occurring to me about the gutless bombing from 15 000 feet (not that I'd be bombing from any lower meself - but then, I wouldn't be bombing), is that NATO is taking a self-legitimating role very much like the 'entrepreneur' of today. 'I take the risks; I take the profits,' proclaims today's capitalist - albeit through the mouths of Economics 101 lecturers everywhere - and so says NATO. But to bomb as they do is to transfer that risk to innocents (Albanian Kosovars demonstrably included) just as the capitalist transfers the risk to his workers (it is they who are sacked if the risk doesn't pay off). If they bombed at tree-top level, they'd not be slaughtering (a doubt of which I'm prepared to grant the benefit) columns and dormitories of refugees. To bomb as they do effectively passes 99% of the risk on to those in whose name they do this. Proof positive of bad faith, for mine (NATO bombers and Economics lecturers both) ... Waddya reckon? Rob. I don't read this as denying the agency of the Serbs in ethnic cleansing. Consider the following. A known pedophile is taken to a picnic by Clinton and left alone with a number of children. The pedophile assaults several children. Surely, there is a sense in which Clinton caused the assaults. The tendencies of the pedophile will not result in the attacks unless the opportunity for doing so is present. Hence given the circumstances Clinton leaving the pedophile alone with the children is a sufficient condition (or cause) for the assaults. This is quite consistent with the pedophile being the agent, and does not deny that agency. In the same way, Paul first notes that before the bombing there was no ethnic cleansing etc. The bombing provided the conditions for the cleansing since it gave Milosevic the freedom to cleanse, and also to decimate the KLA at the same time. The bombing was a sufficient condition or cause of ethnic cleansing etc. This is not inconsistent with and does not deny that the Serbs are the agents. Cheers, Ken Hanly Brad De Long wrote: Barkley, I have some difficulty with your whole discussion and comparison of the situation in Turkey and Kosovo. The reason is fairly straightforward. First, there was no genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced removal, denial of language rights, etc. etc. in Kosovo prior to the bombing. ... [O]n a proportional basis, the Albanians were forcing out the Serbs, not the opposite. (i.e. NATO should have been bombing Tirana, not Beograd.)... It is we, members of NATO, that have caused the ethnic cleansing by our bombing Paul Phillips Why this strange and pathetic attempt to deny the agency of those who are undertaking the ethnic cleansing? And why this attempt to make every Muslim in the region bar responsbility for the terrorist deeds of the KLA? Brad DeLong
Re: [PEN-L:6924] Crapulinski?
Hi all, As the participants in right-wing talk-radio say "first time caller, long time listener"--last eight or so months, anyhow. I just want to say I have found this list an invaluable tool in assessing NATO's ongoing bloodletting and the Asian Financial Crisis (remember that?!) , and have enjoyed listening to the talk on all the other incidental topics that have come up. Being too young to have witnessed, let alone participate in any of the sectarian battles of the left, which seem to me to be responsible, if only in part, for our collective incapability of seizing the momen or the popular imagination, I've been able to glean a little history from the list as well. As for myself, I'm an undergraduate in both Speech-Communication and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (sounds like 4 majors, but its only two) when I have the dough... I'm also a great fan of the Eighteenth Brumaire, and since my copy was handy... Quoting from footnote 13 of the New World Paperbacks edition by International Publishers (I have to see if my copy has that touchy mistranslation of petit/petty): Crapulinski--the hero of Heine's poem, _Zwei Ritter_(Two Knights)_, a spendthrift Polish nobleman; the name Crapulinski comes from the French word _crapule_--intemperence, gluttony, drunkenness, and also--loafer, scoundrel. Here Marx refers to Louis Bonaparte--26 Rg (Randy) Religion: the world's oldest comedy.
