Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: structuralism
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 07:20:12 -0800 (PST) From: ALI KADRI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Indeed it was harmful because it was ahistorical; it generalised an immediate manifestation of history into a rule of historical development. There is a certain rigidity that belongs more to physics than to social science. This case pertains more to the Latin American Structurlist School than it does to Frank ... From Jo'burg, same shit, different place. There was an explosion of Bad Structuralism from the 1960s in left university circuits (especially where I teach, at Witwatersrand): from Third-Internationalist "Colonialism of a Special Type" to "Articulations of Modes of Production" to Poulantzian "Fractions of Capital" and later Regulation Theory. All tried to explain the apartheid-capitalist conjuncture, but none were particularly convincing (fatal chronological flaws or methodological muddles prevailed). There was never much of a post-structuralist reaction, thank goodness, but the main left scholars retreated into either atheoretical social history during the 1980s or policy-wonking consultancies during the 1990s. Most dropped their faddish radical proclivities in due course. "From the grassroots to the classroots" is how we mock our older ex-neomarxist brothers.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: structuralism
"but the main left scholars retreated into either atheoretical social history during the 1980s or policy-wonking consultancies during the 1990s. Most dropped their faddish radical proclivities in due course. 'From the grassroots to the classroots' is how we mock our older ex-neomarxist brothers. " Sounds all too familiar. Although I found that while as some socialists would say: "The film exudes much of the commercial opportunism which currently dominates the European and American film industry" ( http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/ber1-f22.shtml), I thought that "Enemy at the Gates" had some formal elements when viewed from a film structuralism perspective that are useful in a Benjaminian(sic) context, if only they could be presented in a wider forum particularly on the role of propaganda, base-superstructure social relations, historicism etc. From classroots back to grassroots, perhaps? Ann (of the 1000 fatal chronological flaws or methodological muddles )
Re: Re: Query
London GreenPeace has an article entitled "WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE BODY SHOP?-- a criticism of 'green' consumerism" on their web site at http://www.perc.flora.org/buy-nothing/articles/bodyshop1.html Tim Bousquet --- Stephen E Philion [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I recall that Alex Cockburn wrote a number of very critical articles about the co. in the late 80's or early 90's, in his *Beat the Devil* column. Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Carrol Cox wrote: I vaguely remember some discussion (I think negative) of The Body Shop on this or some other list. The company has or aspires to have a progressive reputation. Does anyone have any information. Carrol = Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to "Tim Bousquet" to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: Re: Rosenfield on Joskow
"Here is a professor in a college, who gets $2,500 a year and has to spend $3,000 to keep from starving to death, who walks up to his classroom in an old pair of shoes and some idiot of a boy drives up and parks a $5,000 automobile outside and comes in and gets plucked. Then because that professor teaches that boy that there is something wrong with the social system, we call him a Bolshevik and throw him out." Some things never change. Speaking of which, I am presently reading a 1971 Institute for the Future report titled "The future of the telephone industry 1970-1985" written by Paul Baran and Andrew Lipinski and wonder if anyone here has some insight on Baran's work in this area at that time. Ann
Lonely are the Brave
When we first saw "Lonely are the Brave" in 1962, my fellow Bard College students and I found it possible to appreciate the film on two levels. It was similar to Sam Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country" and other films meditating on cowboy as beloved anachronism. This cowboy is a symbol confronting all the new forces--the automobile, barbed-wire, etc.--impinging on the last bastion of freedom, the old west. In the opening scene of "Lonely are the Brave," we see Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) stretched out in front of a campfire with his horse by his side. His restful contemplation of the awesome beauty of the New Mexico high country is then interrupted by the raucous sound of a squadron of military jets flying in formation overhead. On another level the film seemed to evoke some of the beat generation literature that many of us had read as high school students. In novels and poems hearkening back to Thoreau's "Walden Pond," the beats rejected civilization and embraced the simpler, freer and more rustic world of the ranch hand, hobo or forest ranger. These were the sorts of characters who cropped up in Kerouac's novels and found particular expression in the life and work of Gary Snyder, the Buddhist poet who saw the Pacific Northwest forests as a sanctuary from the corporate greed and mindlessness of the Eisenhower era. Now--nearly 40 years later--that I have learned the full story behind the making of "Lonely are the Brave," the beat generation associations not only become more meaningful, I also understand the importance of the film to the radical movement since it brought together two disparate strands of the American left: the screenplay was by Dalton Trumbo, one of the greatest blacklisted writers in Hollywood, while the screenplay itself was based on one of Edward Abbey's anarchist/deep ecology masterpieces, "The Brave Cowboy." The driving force behind the movie came from Kirk Douglas, who was one of the first to challenge the blacklist by insisting that Dalton Trumbo write the screenplay for "Spartacus" only 3 years earlier in 1958. Douglas, who often co-starred in mindless beefcake spectacles with Burt Lancaster, was not at all like the characters he played in films. He was the son of a Russian Jewish ragman from the Lower East Side and a product like so many in the entertainment industry of the vast cultural and social forces embodied in the New Deal radicalization. While never a Communist himself, he believed that the blacklist was evil and put his reputation on the line by standing up for Trumbo. (Lancaster was not what he appeared as well. In real life, he was bisexual and something of a radical.) After a couple of years tending sheep, Jack Burns has come to town to break his old friend Paul out of jail. Paul is a scholar about to be transferred to a penitentiary to begin serving a two year for running a modest underground railroad for undocumented workers from Mexico. Since the only way he can free Paul is by becoming a prisoner himself, he goes to town to find a saloon where booze and trouble often go together. He is not disappointed. As soon as he takes a seat in one such establishment to begin enjoying a bottle of whiskey with a beer chaser, a one-armed man hurls an empty bottle at his head. In keeping with a innate sense of fair play, Burns uses one arm to fight the man in a lusty barroom brawl that honors the best traditions of the Western film. After he is arrested, he finds himself in the holding pen with Paul where he lays out his escape plan. With the two hacksaws he has smuggled inside his boots, the two should be able to break out before morning arrives. Paul demurs. He has a wife and a young son. The sentence for jail break in New Mexico is 5 years. He would prefer to serve out his term and return to a normal life. While a jail break might deliver freedom in the short run, it also would sentence him and his family to a life on the run. Although Jack can not persuade him to break out, he himself has no qualms. With the assistance of Paul and other prisoners, he cuts through the bars to the street below. He then returns to Paul's house where he has left his horse. From there, he heads toward the mountains, beyond which Mexico and freedom await. From this point, the main action of the film takes place, pitting the lone resourceful cowboy against a posse made up of local lawmen and a helicopter deployed by the same airforce base whose jets disturbed his peace in the opening scene of the movie. In charge of the whole operation is Sheriff Monty Johnson (Walter Matthau) who seems to harbor a secret desire to see the prisoner escape. This is understandable since Johnson, and most of the audience watching the film, probably felt trapped by American civilization in the early 1960s. This world was described by Gary Snyder in the following terms in the poem "Front Lines": A bulldozer grinding and slobbering Sideslipping and belching The skinned-up bodies of still-live bushes In the
Fwd: Bushonics Speakers Unite
Forwarded Message: Bushonics speakers - strike back! We're mad as hell and we won't be misunderestimated anymore! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Tom McNichol March 19, 2001 Salon.com The day Lisa Shaw's son Tyler came home from school with tears streaming down his cheeks, the 34-year-old Crawford, Texas, homemaker, knew things had gone too far. "All of Tyler's varying and sundry friends was making fun of the way he talked," Shaw says. "I am not a revengeful person, but I couldn't let this behaviorism slip into acceptability. This is not the way America is about." Shaw and her son are two of a surprising number of Americans who speak a form of nonstandard English that linguists have dubbed "Bushonics," in honor of the dialect's most famous speaker, President George W. Bush. The most striking features of Bushonics -- tangled syntax, mispronunciations, run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers and a wanton disregard for subject-verb agreement -- are generally considered to be "bad" or "ungrammatical" by linguists and society at large. But that attitude may be changing. Bushonics speakers, emboldened by the Bush presidency, are beginning to make their voices heard. Lisa Shaw has formed a support group for local speakers of the dialect and is demanding that her son's school offer "a full-blown up apologism." And a growing number of linguists argue that Bushonics isn't a collection of language "mistakes" but rather a well-formed linguistic system, with its own lexical, phonological and syntactic patterns. "These people are greatly misunderestimated," says University of Texas linguistics professor James Bundy, himself a Bushonics speaker. "They're not lacking in intelligence facilities by any stretch of the mind. They just have a differing way of speechifying." It's difficult to say just how many Bushonics speakers there are in America, although professor Bundy claims "their numbers are legionary." Many who speak the dialect are ashamed to utter it in public and will only open up to a group of fellow speakers. One known hotbed of Bushonics is Crawford, the tiny central Texas town near the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Other centers are said to include Austin and Midland, Texas, New Haven, Conn., and Kennebunkport, Maine. Bushonics is widely spoken in corporate boardrooms, and has long been considered a kind of secret language among members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. Bushonics speakers have ascended to top jobs at places like the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services. By far the greatest concentration of Bushonics speakers is found in the U.S. military. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig is only the most well-known Bushonics speaker to serve with distinction in America's armed forces. Among the military's top brass, the dialect is considered to be the unofficial language of the Pentagon. Former President George H.W. Bush spoke a somewhat diluted form of the dialect that bears his family's name, which may have influenced his choice for vice president, Dan Quayle, who spoke an Indiana strain of Bushonics. The impressive list of people who speak the dialect is a frequent topic at Lisa Shaw's weekly gathering of Bushonics speakers. That so many members of their linguistic community have risen to positions of power comes as a comfort to the group, and a source of inspiration. "We feel a good deal less aloneness, my guess is you would want to call it," Shaw says. "It just goes to show the living proof that expectations rise above that which is expected." Some linguists still contend, however, that the term "Bushonics" is being used as a crutch to excuse poor grammar and sloppy logic. "I'm sorry, but these people simply don't know how to talk properly," says Thomas Gayle, a speech professor at Stanford University. Professor Gayle was raised by Bushonic parents, and says he occasionally catches himself lapsing into the dialect. "When it happens, it can be very misconcerting," Gayle says. "I understand Bushonics. I was one. But under full analyzation, it's really just an excuse to stay stupider." It's talk like that that angers many Bushonics speakers, who say they're routinely the victims of prejudice. "The attacks on Bushonics demonstrate a lack of compassion and amount to little more than hate speech," says a prominent Bushonics leader who spoke on the condition that his quote be "cleaned up." Increasingly, members of the Bushonics community are fighting back. Lisa Shaw's Crawford-based group is pressing the local school board to institute bilingual classes, and to eliminate the study of English grammar altogether. "It's an orientation of being fairness-based," Shaw says. A Bushonics group in New England has embarked on an ambitious project to translate key historical documents into the dialect, beginning with the Bill of Rights. (For instance, the Second Amendment
Re: Re: NBR'S JAPAN FORUM Economic Stagnation:Institutional Patterns (fwd)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Well, it seems to me that it's a good thing that there had been little competition innovation is Japan's financial service industry. Japan's economy tanked as soon as it got a little innovative in zaiteku But that's what happens as an economy matures - all these financial surpluses pile up, yearning for increase! Doug
US Treasury secretary on patient capital
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Outspoken-ONeill.html?pagewanted=al l March 24, 2001 Treasury Secretary Ruffles Feathers By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:46 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Asked if he had any words of assurance as millions of investors watched their stock portfolios melt down this past week, the president's chief economic spokesman demurred. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill did not see much benefit in opining on day-to-day market movements. That reticence struck many as unusual. Not only had past secretaries spoken calming words during turbulent times, but Wall Street's volatility is one of the few things about which O'Neill has not made his opinion known recently. During his first two months in office, O'Neill has managed to infuriate market traders, perplex currency and bond investors, irk a powerful Democratic senator, muddle the president's tax message and outrage conservatives with a memo on global warming. To O'Neill's supporters, the blunt-speaking former chief executive of aluminum giant Alcoa, who bears a resemblance to Harry Truman, is bringing a refreshing dose of candor. Others wonder if the miscues are becoming a distraction for the administration's leading salesman on behalf of President Bush's $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut. ``It is always hard for someone who has been a chief executive officer to move into a political position where you have to be more careful about what you say. But he has made more than the usual number of political and financial stumbles,'' said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard Poor's Corp. O'Neill's independent thinking became apparent early. During his Senate confirmation, he rejected the idea that Bush's tax cut should be sold as an antidote for a recession even though the president at the time was promoting it that way. On his first trip to Wall Street as Treasury chief, O'Neill had to placate executives unhappy with his comments in a newspaper interview that Wall Street traders were people who ``sit in front of a flickering green screen'' all day and were ``not the sort of people you would want to help you think about complex questions.'' It was not long before O'Neill saw how powerful they were. They sent the value of the dollar down sharply after O'Neill seemed to suggest in another interview a change in America's strong-dollar policy. O'Neill had to move quickly to clarify those remarks. Similarly, he had to clarify later comments that sent the price of Treasury bonds plunging temporarily because his words were seen as critical of a Treasury program to buy back debt. O'Neill said he was continuing to learn ``things you can't talk about if you are Treasury secretary.'' Market analysts had their own take: The former corporate executive was inexperienced in the ways of Wall Street, and it was showing. ``A Treasury secretary needs to be someone who understands markets and can stand up at the right moment and make statements that people can believe and have confidence in,'' said David Jones, chief economist at Aubrey G. Lanston Co. in New York. ``O'Neill has gotten off on the wrong foot.'' O'Neill's comments on bonds came at a briefing on Bush's budget that also featured a tense exchange in which reporters repeatedly challenged him and other administration officials to disclose what percentage of the tax cut would go to the nation's wealthy. Afterward, O'Neill mused, ``I've got to learn to control my temper.'' But the next day, O'Neill, who often responds to questions with the brusqueness of a business leader used to telling subordinates what to do, found himself in hot water with Democrats at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia lectured O'Neill on the finer points of Senate courtesy after O'Neill had interrupted the questioning of freshman Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. During the exchange with Stabenow, O'Neill said he wondered whether people did not understand the Medicare program or ``whether it's just convenient not to understand.'' It was Republicans' turn to fume after an O'Neill memo to the president urging action on global climate change was leaked to the press, riling conservatives who wanted to know why the Treasury secretary was offering advice on the issue. O'Neill's aides say he was simply writing a confidential memo to Bush on an issue then being debated in the administration. O'Neill has been the subject of critical newspaper editorials and a biting parody in the New Yorker magazine over his decision to hold onto about $100 million in Alcoa stock and stock options. O'Neill argues that his decision was approved by government ethics officers and he will refrain from taking any actions that could affect Alcoa interests. But critics see the decision as an unwanted diversion for a new administration trying to establish its claim of following higher ethical standards than the Clinton administration. Asked about the criticism, O'Neill spokeswoman Michelle Davis said,
Re: Underconsumption
Barkley Rosser says: Japan never had a very high rate of profit. The keiretsu were known for following a maximizing sales and market share strategy rather than a maximizing profit strategy. Doug posted the following last year, however: * Re: Re: Keynesians and Post Keynesians and growth by Doug Henwood 07 March 2000 20:44 UTC Jim Devine wrote: What is the evidence for a falling rate of profit in Japan? The OECD has suspended publishing its estimates of rates of return in their Economic Outlook (for technical reasons relating mainly to the U.S. numbers, I think), but in the June 1998 edition, they report a Japanese avrage profit rate of 15.8% from 1971-81, which drifted lower through the '80s, to 11.7% in 1998. Doug http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2000I/msg01964.html * So, the profit rate did get from low to lower, I think the change is significant. At 10:05 AM -0800 3/22/01, Jim Devine wrote: The way I think of this is that the tendency for the rate of profit it fall is basically a microeconomic theory of how capitalists have to keep on striving to expand or else they'll lose out to their competitors. In many cases, this causes a macroeconomic overaccumulation, which is sometimes -- in a "labor scarce economy" -- expressed as "overaccumulation relative to supply," which looks a lot like Marx's classical theory of the falling rate of profit. Something like this happened in the late 1960s/early 1970s in the US, combined with wage squeezes on profits combined the rise in international competition (cf. Brenner) that prevented the wage hikes from being simply passed onto consumers. I had an unreadable article on this subject published in the EASTERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL a long time ago. Isn't Japan "labor scarce economy" due to its sexism, low birth rate, resistance to immigration, "inflexibility" in the labor market, etc.? Isn't the Japanese "problem" more "overaccumulation relative to supply" than "overaccumulation relative to demand"? Yoshie
Upgrading the Yellow Peril for another Cold War
[You knew this was coming...] http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,462322,00.html US told to make China its No 1 enemy US told to target China Special report: George Bush's America Martin Kettle in Washington Saturday March 24, 2001 The Guardian A historic shift of emphasis in United States military deployment from Europe to Asia, with China supplanting Russia as America's principal foe, is at the heart of the Bush administration's long awaited defence strategy review, according to reports in Washington. Outlines of the potentially epochal rethink of the US's global strategic priorities were given to President George Bush by his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a private meeting at the White House on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported yesterday. "The president was complimentary, he appreciated the policy discussion, and gave the indication that the topics were indeed what he had in mind," a Pentagon official told the paper. More than 50 years after the struggle to deter the Soviet Union in Europe became the centrepiece of US military strategy in the aftermath of the second world war, the Rumsfeld review has concluded that the Pacific Ocean should now become the most important focus of US military deployments, with China now perceived as the principal threat to American global dominance. The review says, in effect, that Washington should abandon the long-standing doctrine that the US military must always be prepared to fight two major world conflicts simultaneously, the reports quote officials as saying. By elevating China to the status of global enemy number one, the review clearly foreshadows an American turn away from Europe, or at least from the levels of US engagement and attention which have existed for the lifetime of most Europeans. Mr Bush ordered the strategy review immediately on taking office. It is the most important of three complementary reviews intended to shape US military priorities in the 21st century. The other two are on nuclear weapons and missile defence options, and on service pay and conditions. The huge distances involved in the Pacific mean that the Pentagon must give additional priority to "long-range power projection", the report says. This means putting fresh resources into airlift capacity to enable the US to move troops, vehicles and weapons many thousands of miles from bases in America to the frontline in Asia at short notice. The report says the threat from hostile missiles is likely to become so serious that the US can no longer afford to risk its largest and most expensive ships, the Nimitz class aircraft carriers, in forward positions. As a result, the navy will be told to stop building big ships and to concentrate on speed and manoeuvrability, including a new generation of smaller carriers, to avoid them becoming targets. The threat from weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, against American military targets means that US allies may begin to question the advisability of allowing Washington to have bases in their countries, the Pentagon suggests. The report says this is another reason why long-range supply capacity needs to be increased. The review does not make recommendations about particular weapons systems, but there is no doubt in Washington that missile defence shields will form a central part of the new strategy. Other key elements of what would be, in effect, a rearming of the US military are likely to include a greater role for long-range bombers and for unmanned aircraft. The F-22 fighter programme is likely to face cutbacks, though there is speculation that it will not be scrapped. The sweep of the review is so comprehensive and its conclusions so radical that the publication of the final report later this year is likely to set off a whole series of turf wars within the US military, as the armed services scrabble for influence and funding in the new era. Washington's decision to turn more of its guns and missiles towards China came as it was confirmed that a senior colonel in the Chinese people's liberation army has defected to the US while visiting as part of a military delegation. The defection, which apparently took place at the end of last year or in January, involved an unnamed officer in the foreign affairs department of the army general staff.
Re: Japan Crisis
Yoshie writes: So, the profit rate [in Japan] did get from low to lower, I think the change is significant. Right. Even if Barkley is right that Japanese companies don't maximize profits, a falling profit rate does lead to a decline in one major source of investment funds. I wrote: The way I think of this is that the tendency for the rate of profit it fall is basically a microeconomic theory of how capitalists have to keep on striving to expand or else they'll lose out to their competitors. In many cases, this causes a macroeconomic overaccumulation, which is sometimes -- in a "labor scarce economy" -- expressed as "overaccumulation relative to supply," which looks a lot like Marx's classical theory of the falling rate of profit. Something like this happened in the late 1960s/early 1970s in the US, combined with wage squeezes on profits combined the rise in international competition (cf. Brenner) that prevented the wage hikes from being simply passed onto consumers. Yoshie writes: Isn't Japan "labor scarce economy" due to its sexism, low birth rate, resistance to immigration, "inflexibility" in the labor market, etc.? it's quite possible, but I'm an ignoramus on the subject of Japan. Isn't the Japanese "problem" more "overaccumulation relative to supply" than "overaccumulation relative to demand"? that may be, but how have wages moved relative to labor productivity trends? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Underconsumption
Yoshie, If Japan is a "labor scarce" economy, then why has the unemployment rate been rising in the past decade? I stand corrected on the profit rate, although the decline reported by Doug does not seem sufficient to explain the very sharp decline in growth rate in Japan, not to mention the collapse of the bubbles. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 4:25 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9424] Re: Underconsumption Barkley Rosser says: Japan never had a very high rate of profit. The keiretsu were known for following a maximizing sales and market share strategy rather than a maximizing profit strategy. Doug posted the following last year, however: * Re: Re: Keynesians and Post Keynesians and growth by Doug Henwood 07 March 2000 20:44 UTC Jim Devine wrote: What is the evidence for a falling rate of profit in Japan? The OECD has suspended publishing its estimates of rates of return in their Economic Outlook (for technical reasons relating mainly to the U.S. numbers, I think), but in the June 1998 edition, they report a Japanese avrage profit rate of 15.8% from 1971-81, which drifted lower through the '80s, to 11.7% in 1998. Doug http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2000I/msg01964.html * So, the profit rate did get from low to lower, I think the change is significant. At 10:05 AM -0800 3/22/01, Jim Devine wrote: The way I think of this is that the tendency for the rate of profit it fall is basically a microeconomic theory of how capitalists have to keep on striving to expand or else they'll lose out to their competitors. In many cases, this causes a macroeconomic overaccumulation, which is sometimes -- in a "labor scarce economy" -- expressed as "overaccumulation relative to supply," which looks a lot like Marx's classical theory of the falling rate of profit. Something like this happened in the late 1960s/early 1970s in the US, combined with wage squeezes on profits combined the rise in international competition (cf. Brenner) that prevented the wage hikes from being simply passed onto consumers. I had an unreadable article on this subject published in the EASTERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL a long time ago. Isn't Japan "labor scarce economy" due to its sexism, low birth rate, resistance to immigration, "inflexibility" in the labor market, etc.? Isn't the Japanese "problem" more "overaccumulation relative to supply" than "overaccumulation relative to demand"? Yoshie
Re: Upgrading the Yellow Peril for another Cold War
This may be. But it certainly has not kept Bush from acting a very "neo-Cold War" way with regard to Russia. The refusal to even set a time to meet with Putin (maybe at the G-8 meeting) has been rightly taken as very insulting, not to mention all the nasty remarks coming out of Rumsfeld, Rice, and others. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Lisa Ian Murray" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "Lbo-Talk@Lists. Panix. Com" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 4:33 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9425] Upgrading the Yellow Peril for another Cold War [You knew this was coming...] http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,462322,00.html US told to make China its No 1 enemy US told to target China Special report: George Bush's America Martin Kettle in Washington Saturday March 24, 2001 The Guardian A historic shift of emphasis in United States military deployment from Europe to Asia, with China supplanting Russia as America's principal foe, is at the heart of the Bush administration's long awaited defence strategy review, according to reports in Washington. Outlines of the potentially epochal rethink of the US's global strategic priorities were given to President George Bush by his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a private meeting at the White House on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported yesterday. "The president was complimentary, he appreciated the policy discussion, and gave the indication that the topics were indeed what he had in mind," a Pentagon official told the paper. More than 50 years after the struggle to deter the Soviet Union in Europe became the centrepiece of US military strategy in the aftermath of the second world war, the Rumsfeld review has concluded that the Pacific Ocean should now become the most important focus of US military deployments, with China now perceived as the principal threat to American global dominance. The review says, in effect, that Washington should abandon the long-standing doctrine that the US military must always be prepared to fight two major world conflicts simultaneously, the reports quote officials as saying. By elevating China to the status of global enemy number one, the review clearly foreshadows an American turn away from Europe, or at least from the levels of US engagement and attention which have existed for the lifetime of most Europeans. Mr Bush ordered the strategy review immediately on taking office. It is the most important of three complementary reviews intended to shape US military priorities in the 21st century. The other two are on nuclear weapons and missile defence options, and on service pay and conditions. The huge distances involved in the Pacific mean that the Pentagon must give additional priority to "long-range power projection", the report says. This means putting fresh resources into airlift capacity to enable the US to move troops, vehicles and weapons many thousands of miles from bases in America to the frontline in Asia at short notice. The report says the threat from hostile missiles is likely to become so serious that the US can no longer afford to risk its largest and most expensive ships, the Nimitz class aircraft carriers, in forward positions. As a result, the navy will be told to stop building big ships and to concentrate on speed and manoeuvrability, including a new generation of smaller carriers, to avoid them becoming targets. The threat from weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, against American military targets means that US allies may begin to question the advisability of allowing Washington to have bases in their countries, the Pentagon suggests. The report says this is another reason why long-range supply capacity needs to be increased. The review does not make recommendations about particular weapons systems, but there is no doubt in Washington that missile defence shields will form a central part of the new strategy. Other key elements of what would be, in effect, a rearming of the US military are likely to include a greater role for long-range bombers and for unmanned aircraft. The F-22 fighter programme is likely to face cutbacks, though there is speculation that it will not be scrapped. The sweep of the review is so comprehensive and its conclusions so radical that the publication of the final report later this year is likely to set off a whole series of turf wars within the US military, as the armed services scrabble for influence and funding in the new era. Washington's decision to turn more of its guns and missiles towards China came as it was confirmed that a senior colonel in the Chinese people's liberation army has defected to the US while visiting as part of a military delegation. The defection, which apparently took place at the end of last year or in January, involved an unnamed officer in the foreign affairs department of the army general
Crisis in Japan (thread II)
Barkley asks Yoshie: If Japan is a "labor scarce" economy, then why has the unemployment rate been rising in the past decade? the test for a labor scarce economy in my book (and it's my "book" that counts, since I'm the one who uses the labor scarce/labor abundant dichotomy) is whether or not wages start rising faster than labor productivity when accumulation speeds up in the boom, so that Marx's volume I story of the "wage squeeze" applies, however temporarily. (It's temporary because capitalists either use labor-saving technical change or recession to end the squeeze.) What happens when accumulation is in a funk -- as in Japan during the last 10 years or so -- is a different issue. The labor-abundant economy would be more like W. Arthur Lewis' "classical" model, in which accumulation leads to rising profit rates in the boom. I see this scenario as fitting the US in the late 1920s and perhaps the late 1990s. BTW, as usual, I'd like to hear alternative terms for "scarcity" and "abundance," since these do not simply reflect "natural" conditions but the institutions of worker organization and the like (including how mobile capital is). I stand corrected on the profit rate, although the decline reported by Doug does not seem sufficient to explain the very sharp decline in growth rate in Japan, not to mention the collapse of the bubbles. the decline in the profit rate could be sufficient simply because there's no simple mechanistic connection between the profit rate and accumulation. That is, even though the profit rate declines (as it may have done after 1998 in the US), accumulation continues to soar, driven by expectations and competitive pressure. It's the over-shooting -- often based on accumulation of debt, along with bubbly financial behavior -- that's the basis for the sharpness of the decline. (Makato Itoh made a similar point years ago.) - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Japan Crisis
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right. Even if Barkley is right that Japanese companies don't maximize profits, a falling profit rate does lead to a decline in one major source of investment funds. I don't think a shortage of investment funds is the problem - esp given the vast pool of savings. There was some evidence that the rate of return on new investment in the 1980s was negative - which would make it rather unattractive, even given the lust for boosting market share. That may be what was pulling the average profit rate down, too. Japan's profit downtrend is the opposite of what prevailed in the U.S. from roughly 1982 to 1996, when the profit rate rose pretty steadily. Profitability in the EU was flattish, so the Japanese downtrend really stands out. No wonder they were so big on foreign investment. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ergonomics, etc.
Brad DeLong wrote: Yet another blessing we have received from Ralph Nader... No, from Al Gore. If as many self-identified Democrats had voted for Gore as self-identified Republicans voted for Bush, W would still be governor of Texas. Doug And Nader was in their pitching, telling self-identified Democrats not to vote for Gore... Brad DeLong No, Nader never told anybody, let alone "self-identified Democrats," "not to vote for Gore."... Shane Mage God! The quality of argument here is *really* low. If you vote for Nader, you don't vote for Gore--unless you're in the vote fraud business... Brad DeLong
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: ergonomics, etc.
And Nader was in their pitching, telling self-identified Democrats not to vote for Gore... Brad DeLong As was 'Dubya; welcome to the world of free speech. Ian Except that Dubya is opposed to ergonomic rules. Nader is supposed to like them--but he likes being a publicity hound more... Brad DeLong
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: ergonomics, etc.
Except that Dubya is opposed to ergonomic rules. Nader is supposed to like them--but he likes being a publicity hound more... Brad DeLong * Apologies, Michael. Brad, grow up. Your Ivy League edumakation is showing. Ian
Japan's Resurgent Far Right Tinkers With History
New York Times 25 March 2001 Japan's Resurgent Far Right Tinkers With History By HOWARD W. FRENCH TOKYO, March 24 - Hironobu Kaneko, a 21-year-old college student, remembers the powerful emotions stirred in him three years ago when he read a best-selling book of cartoons that extolled, rather than denigrated, the history of Japan's former Imperial Army. The thick cartoon book, or manga, is called "On War" and celebrates the old army as a noble Asian liberation force rather than a brutal colonizer. It lauds Japan's civilization as the oldest and most refined. And it dismisses as fictions well-documented atrocities, from the 1937 Nanjing massacre to the sexual enslavement of 200,000 so-called comfort women in World War II. "This cartoon was saying exactly what we were all feeling back then," said Mr. Kaneko, an eager and articulate student who is spending his winter break working as an intern in the Japanese Parliament. "The manga was addressing matters that many Japanese people have simply been avoiding, like we've been putting a lid over something smelly. I just felt it said things that needed to be said." Asked exactly what that message was, he said, "That we should not be so masochistic about our history." Unlike such countries as Austria and France, Japan has not had a prominent political party that has been aggressively nationalistic since World War II. Ultraconservatives from right-wing intellectuals to criminal syndicates have always maintained discreet contacts with the conservative governing party, the Liberal Democrats. For decades after Japan's defeat in the war, the most visible sign of the survival of hard-core nationalists here was just as powerful a reminder of their fringe group status: the black sound trucks, mostly regarded as public nuisances, that blasted imperial hymns and xenophobic speeches on crowded streets. But as attested by the huge sales of the nationalistic manga - drawn and written by a best-selling author, Yoshinori Kobayashi - Japan's far right has been elbowing its way into the mainstream, at a time when the country is increasingly distressed about its political and economic decline. Mr. Kobayashi's latest manga, "On Taiwan," has sold more than 250,000 copies since it was published in November and has created sharp tensions with Japan's neighbors for its depiction of the war. One frame, for example, says that Taiwanese women volunteered to become the sexual servants of Japanese soldiers and that the role even offered the women social advancement. The government has remained silent. But the ambitions of Japan's new right-wing activists go beyond incendiary characterizations of the war, or mere provocation. Although their movement is still somewhat amorphous, its wide-ranging agenda includes returning to the stricter, more conservative values of the past, rewriting the Constitution to allow Japan to make war, and re-arming so that Japan would be prepared to go it alone in a world they depict as full of threats to its survival. "We have become like a timid monkey that cannot even raise the possibility of war," Mr. Kobayashi wrote in "On War," which has sold nearly a million copies. Later, he picked up on the same theme: "Only Japan refuses to recognize its own justness. Is this because its people have turned into mice with electrodes stuck into their head? Remove the electrodes, Japan! There was justice in Japan's war! We must protect our grand fathers' legacy!" Mr. Kobayashi, who is a young-looking 47, has become an omnipresent media star here. He wears his hair in a feathery, parted style reminiscent of Oscar Wilde; he dresses in dark, stylish European suits - no ties - and wears designer glasses. In a lengthy interview, he spoke softly, but in much the same unapologetic vein. "Whenever history is discussed, Nanjing massacre, comfort women and Unit 731 are always raised as if Japanese history consists of only these things," he said. "Everyone focuses only on these points to the extent I feel like bringing forth a counterargument, asking them why." Unit 731 of the Japanese Army experimented with chemical weapons on live prisoners. "These issues have become the fumie for our historical perceptions," Mr. Kobayashi said. Fumie were brass tablets, typically bearing a cross, on which suspected followers of outlawed Christianity were ordered to walk under the assumption that a Christian would refuse to trample a sacred image. "But there are a vast number of historical facts that make up Japan," he went on. "We are just thinking of what to choose out of them in order to explain the present." Akimasa Miyake, a historian at Chiba University, disagrees, and has helped organize seminars for students to address what opponents of Mr. Kobayashi say are misperceptions that the students have picked up from his work. "Since the mid-1990's, revisionism, or some would say nationalism, has been surging in Japan,"
Re: Lonely are the Brave
In the Myth of Sisyphus the suffering begins not with rolling the rock up the hill, but in his thoughts about the fatality of his condition as he freely walks down the hill to pick up his rock. This is the danger of mixing working class conditions with free leisure time. --- Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When we first saw "Lonely are the Brave" in 1962, my fellow Bard College students and I found it possible to appreciate the film on two levels. It was similar to Sam Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country" and other films meditating on cowboy as beloved anachronism. This cowboy is a symbol confronting all the new forces--the automobile, barbed-wire, etc.--impinging on the last bastion of freedom, the old west. In the opening scene of "Lonely are the Brave," we see Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) stretched out in front of a campfire with his horse by his side. His restful contemplation of the awesome beauty of the New Mexico high country is then interrupted by the raucous sound of a squadron of military jets flying in formation overhead. On another level the film seemed to evoke some of the beat generation literature that many of us had read as high school students. In novels and poems hearkening back to Thoreau's "Walden Pond," the beats rejected civilization and embraced the simpler, freer and more rustic world of the ranch hand, hobo or forest ranger. These were the sorts of characters who cropped up in Kerouac's novels and found particular expression in the life and work of Gary Snyder, the Buddhist poet who saw the Pacific Northwest forests as a sanctuary from the corporate greed and mindlessness of the Eisenhower era. Now--nearly 40 years later--that I have learned the full story behind the making of "Lonely are the Brave," the beat generation associations not only become more meaningful, I also understand the importance of the film to the radical movement since it brought together two disparate strands of the American left: the screenplay was by Dalton Trumbo, one of the greatest blacklisted writers in Hollywood, while the screenplay itself was based on one of Edward Abbey's anarchist/deep ecology masterpieces, "The Brave Cowboy." The driving force behind the movie came from Kirk Douglas, who was one of the first to challenge the blacklist by insisting that Dalton Trumbo write the screenplay for "Spartacus" only 3 years earlier in 1958. Douglas, who often co-starred in mindless beefcake spectacles with Burt Lancaster, was not at all like the characters he played in films. He was the son of a Russian Jewish ragman from the Lower East Side and a product like so many in the entertainment industry of the vast cultural and social forces embodied in the New Deal radicalization. While never a Communist himself, he believed that the blacklist was evil and put his reputation on the line by standing up for Trumbo. (Lancaster was not what he appeared as well. In real life, he was bisexual and something of a radical.) After a couple of years tending sheep, Jack Burns has come to town to break his old friend Paul out of jail. Paul is a scholar about to be transferred to a penitentiary to begin serving a two year for running a modest underground railroad for undocumented workers from Mexico. Since the only way he can free Paul is by becoming a prisoner himself, he goes to town to find a saloon where booze and trouble often go together. He is not disappointed. As soon as he takes a seat in one such establishment to begin enjoying a bottle of whiskey with a beer chaser, a one-armed man hurls an empty bottle at his head. In keeping with a innate sense of fair play, Burns uses one arm to fight the man in a lusty barroom brawl that honors the best traditions of the Western film. After he is arrested, he finds himself in the holding pen with Paul where he lays out his escape plan. With the two hacksaws he has smuggled inside his boots, the two should be able to break out before morning arrives. Paul demurs. He has a wife and a young son. The sentence for jail break in New Mexico is 5 years. He would prefer to serve out his term and return to a normal life. While a jail break might deliver freedom in the short run, it also would sentence him and his family to a life on the run. Although Jack can not persuade him to break out, he himself has no qualms. With the assistance of Paul and other prisoners, he cuts through the bars to the street below. He then returns to Paul's house where he has left his horse. From there, he heads toward the mountains, beyond which Mexico and freedom await. From this point, the main action of the film takes place, pitting the lone resourceful cowboy against a posse made up of local lawmen and a helicopter deployed by the same airforce base whose jets disturbed his peace in the opening scene of the movie. In charge of the whole operation is Sheriff
