The real goal is the seizure of Saudi oil
The real goal is the seizure of Saudi oil Iraq is no threat. Bush wants war to keep US control of the region Mo Mowlam Thursday September 5, 2002 The Guardian I keep listening to the words coming from the Bush administration about Iraq and I become increasingly alarmed. There seems to be such confusion, but through it all a grim determination that they are, at some point, going to launch a military attack. The response of the British government seems equally confused, but I just hope that the determination to ultimately attack Iraq does not form the bedrock of their policy. It is hard now to see how George Bush can withdraw his bellicose words and also save face, but I hope that that is possible. Otherwise I fear greatly for the Middle East, but also for the rest of the world. What is most chilling is that the hawks in the Bush administration must know the risks involved. They must be aware of the anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East. They must be aware of the fear in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that a war against Iraq could unleash revolutions, disposing of pro-western governments, and replacing them with populist anti-American Islamist fundamentalist regimes. We should all remember the Islamist revolution in Iran. The Shah was backed by the Americans, but he couldn't stand against the will of the people. And it is because I am sure that they fully understand the consequences of their actions, that I am most afraid. I am drawn to the conclusion that they must want to create such mayhem. The many words that are uttered about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, which are never substantiated with any hard evidence, seem to mean very little. Even if Saddam had such weapons, why would he wish to use them? He knows that if he moves to seize the oilfields in neighbouring countries the full might of the western world will be ranged against him. He knows that if he attacks Israel the same fate awaits him. Comparisons with Hitler are silly - Hitler thought he could win; Saddam knows he cannot. Even if he has nuclear weapons he cannot win a war against America. The United States can easily contain him. They do not need to try and force him to irrationality. But that is what Bush seems to want to do. Why is he so determined to take the risk? The key country in the Middle East, as far as the Americans are concerned, is Saudi Arabia: the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, the country that has been prepared to calm the oil markets, producing more when prices are too high and less when there is a glut. The Saudi royal family has been rewarded with best friend status by the west for its cooperation. There has been little concern that the government is undemocratic and breaches human rights, nor that it is in the grip of an extreme form of Islam. With American support it has been believed that the regime can be protected and will do what is necessary to secure a supply of oil to the west at reasonably stable prices. Since September 11, however, it has become increasingly apparent to the US administration that the Saudi regime is vulnerable. Both on the streets and in the leading families, including the royal family, there are increasingly anti-western voices. Osama bin Laden is just one prominent example. The love affair with America is ending. Reports of the removal of billions of dollars of Saudi investment from the United States may be difficult to quantify, but they are true. The possibility of the world's largest oil reserves falling into the hands of an anti-American, militant Islamist government is becoming ever more likely - and this is unacceptable. The Americans know they cannot stop such a revolution. They must therefore hope that they can control the Saudi oil fields, if not the government. And what better way to do that than to have a large military force in the field at the time of such disruption. In the name of saving the west, these vital assets could be seized and controlled. No longer would the US have to depend on a corrupt and unpopular royal family to keep it supplied with cheap oil. If there is chaos in the region, the US armed forces could be seen as a global saviour. Under cover of the war on terrorism, the war to secure oil supplies could be waged. This whole affair has nothing to do with a threat from Iraq - there isn't one. It has nothing to do with the war against terrorism or with morality. Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man, but when we were selling arms to him to keep the Iranians in check he was the same evil man he is today. He was a pawn then and is a pawn now. In the same way he served western interests then, he is now the distraction for the sleight of hand to protect the west's supply of oil. And where does this leave the British government? Are they in on the plan or just part of the smokescreen? The government speaks of morality and the threat posed by weapons of mass
Women's sexual/reproductive rights safeguarded at WSSD
[The WSSD text now explicitly makes the links between women's sexual and reproductive rights and sustainable development] Ottawa, September 4, 2002 -- Katherine McDonald, Executive Director of Action Canada for Population for Population and Development (ACPD), said today, If there is one victory to be claimed at the WSSD, it is that women's sexual and reproductive rights have been safeguarded. ACPD, a small Canadian NGO, mobilized non-governmental organizations around the world to protect women's rights, and our efforts have been successful. The WSSD text now explicitly makes the links between women's sexual and reproductive rights and sustainable development. In Johannesburg, women's rights to safe motherhood, including contraception, reproductive health services, and safe abortion, [and protection against forced and/or coerced acts e.g. circumcision, c.] were saved during the final hour of intense negotiations. The document, as of Monday, did not balance reference to national laws, and cultural and religious values with assurances of basic human rights for all, without discrimination on any basis. Up until the last minute, we did not know whether we could win, said McDonald. The battle for inclusion of longstanding UN agreements protecting women's rights intensified during the May preparatory meeting in Bali (PrepCom IV). Opposition from the United States, the Vatican and some Islamic nations led to the move to exclude human rights language which would guarantee women's sexual and reproductive rights. Following the Bali meeting, ACPD issued an Action Alert to its national and international colleagues, and wrote to Prime Minister Chrétien expressing grave concern, urging Canada to take the lead to protect women's rights. Canada took up the challenge, and led the fight to ensure that human rights language was inserted in the document. After weeks of negotiations, victory was achieved on this last remaining contentious issue. This one victory in Johannesburg represents one step in a long battle to ensure that women throughout the world enjoy basic human rights, said McDonald. Women should have the right to have a safe pregnancy and delivery, to choose when and if to have children, and to choose their sexual partners without pressure or discrimination. ACPD congratulates Canada for taking a leadership role in direct opposition to the Bush administration, who have systematically bowed to the wishes of the conservative right. ACPD mobilizes public support for international population and development issues. It focuses on the inter-relationships between population growth and structure, the environment, over-consumption, poverty, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equity and equality, human rights, migration, and economic and other development issues. ### Source: Johanne Fillion, tel: (613) 562-0880 ext. 228, cell. (613) 852-8392 NOTE: For further information, please visit ACPD's WSSD section at http://www.acpd.ca. Suki Beavers Senior Advisor, Human Rights Action Canada for Population and Development Suite 300, 260 rue Dalhousie St. Ottawa. Ontario, Canada, K1N 7E4
Summit conclusions at a glance
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2230670.stm Summit conclusions at a glance Water and sanitation: Governments agreed to halve the number of people lacking clean drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. The deal was welcomed by development charities as an important step towards preventing millions of deaths from preventable diseases. Around the world, about 1.1 billion people lack access to adequate drinking water, according to the United Nations. It is estimated that half the people in 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa will not have access to drinkable water by 2025. Bringing proper sanitation would significantly reduce diseases such as cholera. Energy: Governments agreed to take action to help the poor gain access to affordable energy but failed to agree on specific targets to boost the share of global energy produced from renewable green sources such as solar or wind power. The European Union wanted targets but the United States and some other oil-producing countries opposed them. The summit's action plan calls on countries to substantially increase the global share of renewable energy. Environmental groups accused the EU of capitulating to American demands. A spokesman for Greenpeace said the agreement was worse than we could have imagined. The summit also saw wrangling over the meaning of the term renewable, with some countries arguing that nuclear power and lucrative hydro-electric schemes should be included under this banner. Several smaller proposals on energy were agreed: - Promotion of energy-efficient technologies - Removal of lead from petrol - Reduction in the practice of flaring and venting of gas during crude oil production - Improving the competitiveness of clean energy sources by creating a level playing field in the market. Global warming: The Kyoto treaty on global warming got a new lease of life at the summit when Russia announced that it would ratify the treaty. Russia's backing means that enough big producers of greenhouse gases have signed up to bring the treaty into effect. The treaty received a massive blow when the US said it would not ratify it. Natural resources and biodiversity: Governments agreed to cut significantly by 2010 the rate at which rare animals and plants are becoming extinct. The plan does not set specific targets and the wording does not inhibit countries from pursuing development projects. The Worldwide Fund for Nature said the plan will not provide significant movement forwards... in some cases it actually constitutes a step backwards. Trade: Negotiators ironed out a row over the wording of a key paragraph which gave precedence to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over environmental regulations. The text was revised to say that nations will continue to enhance the mutual supportiveness of trade, environment and development, omitting a clause which added while ensuring WTO consistency. It also states the willingness of rich countries to reach an agreement by 1 January 2005 within the WTO for substantial improvements in market access for food exports from developing countries. Human rights and governance: The summit plan emphasises the need to fight corruption and promote democracy and the rule of law. But it does not make aid conditional on good governance. Health: The plan recognises that access to healthcare should be consistent with basic human rights and cultural and religious values - a point that had been hotly debated. The wording was aimed at fighting practices such as female circumcision or genital mutilation, which takes place largely in African countries. Activists said the US, the Vatican and some developing countries had tried to oppose it - if enforced, it would allow women to opt for abortions in countries where they are outlawed.
Peacefully, Nigerian Women Win Changes From Big Oil
Peacefully, Nigerian Women Win Changes From Big Oil by Michael Peel LAGOS, NIGERIA - The town museum in Calabar, southern Nigeria, contains a striking section on a 1929 Niger Delta protest known as the women's war. The conflict, which stemmed from opposition to British colonial rule, escalated after villagers in the Owerri province clashed with a mission teacher carrying out a tax assessment. Local women sent folded fresh palm leaves to neighboring communities as a signal to begin attacks against buildings symbolizing the imperial presence. Hundreds of Ijaw women protest inside a fuel station in Abiteye, Nigeria in this photo taken on Tuesday, July 16, 2002. The Ijaw women took over the flow station soon after the Itsekeris had taken over the ChevronTexaco oil terminal in Escravos, to ensure that their tribe got a better deal from Chevron and did not have to lag behind the Itsekeris. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) The white men should return to their own country, says a piece of contemporary propaganda quoted at the museum, so that the land in the area may remain as it was many years before the advent of the white man. More than 70 years later, the women of the oil-rich delta are stirring once more. On Thursday, hundreds of women blocked the gates of ChevronTexaco and Shell offices in the southern port of Warri. For several hours, workers at the two locations were kept from entering or leaving the facilities. By Friday, the protest had ended peacefully. This protest was the latest in a month of all-women demonstrations that began July 8 with a 10-day siege of ChevronTexaco's offices in Escravos. Observers say that protests by women are becoming the most effective tool to force social improvements by US multinational oil companies doing business in Africa. The Escravos women, who ranged in age between 30 to 90, used a potent tactic: they threatened to take their clothes off. Public nudity would have embarrassed the expatriates among the terminal's more than 1,000 workers and caused a deeper sense of shame for many Nigerian employees. By the time the women bare their chests and go around, people are really in trouble, says Bolanle Awe, one of the founders of the Women's Research and Documentation Centre at Nigeria's University of Ibadan. It's a curse on whoever the ruler is. The tactics and determination of the Escravos women helped persuade Chevron to send senior executives to negotiate concessions. The company agreed to employ more local people, invest in electricity supply and other infrastructure projects, and assist the villagers in setting up poultry and fish farms to supply the terminal's cafeteria. The social gains apparently secured by the Escravos women contrast with the frequent violent and fruitless clashes that have taken place between young men and the police and army. They knew if the women went the authorities wouldn't use force, says one person familiar with the local villages. That's what they were betting on. The protests often reflect widespread frustration among delta people at the disconnect between the wealth springing from their land and the lack of local development. Nigeria, one of the world's top 10 oil producers, has earned some $250 billion in oil revenues over the past four decades. The squandering of the money because of governmental corruption, together with the pollution and disruption often caused by the oil companies, has nurtured a deep sense of popular bitterness. The protests echo a tradition of female dissent in the delta that stretches well beyond the anti-imperial demonstrations of the late 1920s. The trend has spawned at least one book Nigerian Women Mobilized (University of California, Berkeley, 1982) an account of women's political activity in southern Nigeria from 1900 to 1965. The author, Nina Emma Mba, said protest has occurred on both individual and collective levels, within and across communal boundaries, and has involved both peaceful and violent methods. Generally their political activity has in- cluded only women, she wrote. [It] has been informed by a shared consciousness of being a disadvantaged sex with special interests. The activism of southern Nigerian women may have further roots in religious and commercial practices. Graham Furniss, professor of African languages and literature at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, notes that the south of the country has a greater focus on market trading by women and a lower concentration of Muslims than the north. In an Islamic society, the role of women tends to be quite different, particularly in a public arena such as markets, Professor Furniss says. It's not that they aren't organized and don't have views but they wouldn't necessarily have the public presence that's necessary for concerted, open political action. The flurry of female radicalism is far removed from the coordinated, Internet-assisted campaigns against multinationals in industrialized countries. The villages around the
July Coverage: Nigerian Women challenge Big Oil
[The following is some coverage of the sequence of events in July leading up to the Nigerian women's triumph over Big Oil] Itsekiri Women Invade Chevron's Oil Terminal By Mike Oduniyi This Day 7/10/02 Another crisis has hit the oil sector, as about 150 Itsekiri women, stormed the Escravos Tank Farm in Delta State, halting activities at the crude oil terminal operated by ChevronTexaco. A press statement issued yesterday by the company said the women, who invaded the crude oil storage and export facility on Monday, were from the Ugborodo communities adjoining the tank farm. It was the second major crisis to hit the American oil firm in about two weeks, following a major fire that rocked a drilling facility in one of its oil fields at Okpuekeba, where three people died and scores of others were injured. The statement said that the women barricaded key installations in the tank farm, disrupting operational activities there. The oil terminal handles the production and exports of over 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day (bpd). A spokesman for Chevron, Mr. Wole Agunbiade, said yesterday that although oil production and exports were unaffected yet, the protesters had among others barricaded the airport in Escravos, built by Chevron to ease the movements of operational staff, as well as the company's offices. The women, according to Agunbiade, were demanding that Chevron included Ugborodo communities in its community relations programmes, provide jobs for the youth in the communities, and provide social amenities. The company is trying to get people from the Presidency, the Delta State Government, the NNPC and the DPR to intervene, he said. Chevron had also contacted relevant leadership groups in Ugborodo communities and the Warri Kingdom to facilitate a peaceful resolution of the protest, he added. Multinational oil companies responsible for the production of about 90 percent of Nigeria's crude oil daily output of nearly 2.0 million barrels have often come under attacks by oil producing communities, demanding a greater share of fortunes from oil exploration in their areas. Siege on Chevron: Officials Seek Truce with Women This Day, 7/11/02 Oil executives yesterday met with the leaders of a group of Itsekiri women who have hijacked one of the country's largest oil terminals demanding jobs for their sons. Some 150 women from Ugborodo communities in Delta State barricaded facilities at the Chevron Nigeria terminal in Escravos on Monday, when they seized control of a boat and stormed the island on which the oil facility sits. Hundreds of workers, both Nigerians and expatriates, have been unable to leave the terminal since, an engineer in the plant told AFP by telephone. The women are complaining that their children have not been given employment, the staff who asked not to be identified said. They are not armed or violent. Most of them are women over 45 and there is no way we would lay a finger on them, he added. Chevron spokesman Wole Agunbiade, however, in an official response, said that company managers were meeting with representatives of the women to discuss their demands. We are hopeful that we will be able to resolve the situation, he said, explaining that the meeting was ongoing. Talks were being held in the palace of the Olu of Warri, a traditional ruler, the Chevron engineer said. Agunbiade said that more than 700 workers were trapped in the plant by the occupation of its airfield and dock, and that work was severely disrupted. Site staff estimated that around 2,000 employees were stuck. Chevron Nigeria is a subsidiary of US oil giant ChevronTexaco and Nigeria's third largest oil producer. It runs Escravos jointly with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. The firm's production is estimated at around 500,000 barrels per day, with 450,000 normally passing through the besieged terminal, but officials would not confirm this. The women arrived at the terminal, which is on an island in a swamp 300 kilometres (190 miles) east of Lagos, early on Monday after seizing a boat used to ferry in casual workers. The Chevron engineer said that local youths helped the protesters take control of the boat, but that only women were involved in the protest on site. The women split into three groups of around 50 and occupied the landing strip, dock and tank farm area, blockading administrative facilities and sealing the main gate, he said. Oil is still arriving at the tank farm by pipeline from the rigs, but many of them have had to cut their production quotas as none is being taken away, he said. Staff have been unable to leave or arrive for their changeovers since Monday, when a boat carrying a fresh two-week shift was turned back from the dock, he added. Agunbiade could not confirm whether tankers were able to collect oil from the terminal, but said that Chevron expected to meet its oil export commitments this month. Poverty Spurs Nigeria Oil Standoff by
NBA today, IMF tomorrow!
NY Times, Sept. 5, 2002 ARGENTINA 87, UNITED STATES 80 10-Year Winning Streak Ends for U.S. Basketball By MIKE WISE INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 4 Down by 20 points before halftime, dumbfounded by a former Temple University point guard in need of work, 12 N.B.A. players and their tortured coach were shockingly outplayed by a team from another continent tonight. A bunch of ambidextrous, unfazed players from Argentina thumbed their noses at the American stars, took the game to the United States and won, 87-80, in the world basketball championships. It was the first loss by N.B.A. players in international competition a streak going back 10 years and 58 games and it came before 5,623 fans at Conseco Fieldhouse, which seats 18,345. In the heartland of hoops, with even Reggie Miller unable to bail his team out, the Argentines delivered, picking the Americans' pride and panache clean at midcourt. It's an embarrassment, said point guard Andre Miller, who scored 14 points. It's obviously an embarrassment. We're supposed to be the so-called superstars, representing the U.S.A., and we didn't even lead the whole game. Indeed, this was not the product of some foreign 3-point binge, some fortuitous bounce at the buzzer, or an officiating travesty, à la Munich 1972. Argentina never trailed, led by 52-32 a minute before halftime, and took 14 fewer 3-pointers than did the United States. Argentina outmuscled, outpassed and outshot a United States team that looked more poorly constructed as the game wore on. Without a dominant presence down low and with spotty perimeter shooters, the United States team is big on athletes but short on height and balance. A brave new basketball universe was always rumored to be out there, ever since Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and the Dream Team took their skills and their lore to Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 and gave the rest of the world something to emulate. But never had reality set in so hard, the notion that someone on another continent could actually beat, let alone rout, N.B.A. players. The symbolic importance is, it's a great game, United States Coach George Karl said. It's a game the world has fallen in love with. In this time of feeling poorly and awful, there's a part of me that's a celebration of basketball. It's a game that a lot of countries love and we must accept the challenge to compete stronger and better. At the end, Emanuel Ginobili, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard drafted by the San Antonio Spurs whom most of the world has yet to hear about, went hard to the basket for layups against Ben Wallace, the N.B.A's defensive player of the year, sneaking in left-handed shots off the glass. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/05/sports/othersports/05HOOP.html Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Post-Autism in the Micro
I have been reading the exchange. I was most impressed by the essay that triggered the debate. The Deirdre McCloskey piece in the current issue seems to me to be defensive and missing the point. I think I could pass the test he poses at the end -- I did have the Stigler book as my undergraduate text, and loved it at the time. I don't think it has much, if anything, to do with economics. Why doesn't McCloskey mention Theoretical Welfare Economics by J. de V. Graaff, which, as sophisticated as any she does mention concludes that the Just Price -- to stay in the 1300s that McCloskey cites as an example -- is more useful to us that marginal cost. The current Galbraith piece is appealing, but professors need a more concrete road map at this point -- his level of abstraction sets the stage, but what to actually do? No, there is NOTHING worth keeping in Microeconomics. But having studied it, from Stigler to de V. Graaff and on to Marris, etc., I admit that it is hard to get over. I think I'm there, but it is like quitting cigarettes -- still nudging. (I never smoked. I should have said quitting drinking. Not that I've quit.) Gene Coyle Ben Day wrote: Anyone else following the post-autism debate over the role of microeconomics and game theory in economics curricula? What do folks think of this? The latest Post-Autistic Review has short pieces by McCloskey and Galbraith - Solow and and Blanchard had taken shots at the Post-Autistic petition a ways back in Le Monde. -Ben http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue15.htm -- Yes, There is Something Worth Keeping in Microeconomics Deirdre McCloskey (University of Illinois at Chicago / Erasmus University Rotterdam) Bernard Guerrien is severe on Messrs. [and no Mesdames, I note] Varian, Schotter, Kreps, Mas-Collel, Whinston, and Green, and I think he's quite right to be so. The usual idea of microeconomics is, as Guerrien avers, formalism useful only for the generation of articles in the American Economic Review and worse. It's scandalous that game theory and GE and overlapping generations and other mere existence theorems are taught as tools. As we say in American English (with thanks to Yiddish): tools, schmools. No physicist would consider such stuff scientific. She would want tools that can measure. The problem comes partly from a terminological confusion. Theorist has come to mean in economics guys trained in Mathematics-Department math. (I note again that this Hilbert/Bourbaki style has nothing, nada, rien to do with the sort of math that physicists and engineers actually use to investigate the world; go have a look at The Physical Review and you'll see what I mean.) Since the theorists so defined can't do anything else (like give a substantive course in economic history or in urban economics), they get assigned to first-year graduate courses. It's their comparative advantage, considering that the department has made the mistake of hiring them in the first place. The result has been a catastrophe for economic education. Most economists arrive on the job without knowing how to think like economists. In fact they've been specifically and elaborately trained by the theorists not to think like economists, but to think like Hilbert/Bourbaki mathematicians, though of course to a childishly simple standard. (By the way, a distinguished committee of the American Economic Association was some years ago on the edge of doing something about the catastrophe; Bob Lucas vetoed the proposal, since he wants economics to carry on being unscientific.) So I agree. I highly recommend a pamphlet just published at the University of Chicago Press, The Secret Sins of Economics, which shows how thoroughly I agree. My disagreement with Guerrien is merely this: if microeconomics were properly taught it would be obvious that it does indeed have numerous scientific uses. Not the Whinston and Green stuff, on the whole. Most of that is useless, unless you think use means not good for grasping the world in a quantitative way (called science) but good for generating publishable articles. Yet there is tons of really useful stuff in, say, (the lamentable George) Stigler, The Theory of Price, or in Steve Landsburg's or David [sic] Friedman's similar books; or (if I may) in a wonderful but neglected book published last in 1985, The Applied Theory of Price. (It's available free in its entirety, diagrams and all, on the web site www.uic.edu/~deirdre2; David Friedman's is available free on his web site, too.) If graduate courses taught micro theory in this sense-namely, ideas about how to show this or that effect in an economy, quantitatively-economists would be good scientists instead of bad philosophers. Some of the economists, admittedly, survive the first-year courses and go on to
Study of CEO ripoffs
http://www.ufenet.org/press/2002/EE2002.pdf Very interesting study. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sharia law in Nigeria
[link to send an open letter to the President of Nigeria http://www.mertonai.org/amina/OpenLetter.htm] Subject: GENNET: Sharia law in Nigeria To: GENNET [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Victor Hart20 Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 12:51 AM Colleagues, The fundamentalist movement for the introduction of Sharia law in Nigeria has picked up pace. On Monday a woman in Nigeria was condemned to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock. Please click on the link below, and sign the open letter to the President of Nigeria appealing to him to stop this. It won't take a moment. The link below takes you straight to Amnesty International. In harmony, Victor http://www.mertonai.org/amina/OpenLetter.htm -- End of forwarded message - ** GENNET subscription/unsubscription information and usage guidelines are available at http://www.geocities.com/~anntothill/gennet/ GENNET is hosted by the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Natal. **
Re: Study of CEO ripoffs
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 9:42 AM Subject: [PEN-L:30053] Study of CEO ripoffs http://www.ufenet.org/press/2002/EE2002.pdf Very interesting study. -- == The folks over at the Brookings Institute have made a first pass at the forgone GDP due to Enronomics: http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/Views/Papers/Graham/20020722Graham.pdf
Labour Text
I have just finished a draft of a 1st level labour economics text for use in my own course here at the U of Manitoba and also for the Masters in Personnel Management course I teach at the University of Ljubljana. The title of the book is _Labour Economics and the Labour Market: Alternative Approaches_. A table of contents and the first chapter are available on my web page: http://www.umanitoba.ca/colleges/uc/faculty/phillips.html If anyone is interested, I would welcome any feedback (particularly on my diagrammatic representation of the relationship between the models -- see the links in the text). The text does not have a chapter on the radical model for which I plead the Egyptian Mummy excuse -- strapped for time. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30058] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Jones writes:Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. could you name someone who wants to _silence_ Shiva? as opposed to simply disagreeing with her opinions and thus being willing to criticize them? (BTW, is it some government that wants to silence her? people on the left don't have the power to do so.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Mark Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 1:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30058] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 05/09/2002 19:29, Louis Proyect wrote: Robert Biel's The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/South Relations (Zed Books, 2000) is everything that Hardt-Negri's Empire is not. This is a wonderful book by Biel and, prompted by my mentor Lou Proyect, I just spent a day at the British Library going thru it. Great, especially, on the importance to capitalist accumulation and to the wealth enjoyed by the big swinging dicks of Wall St and their fashionable-parlor-socialist acolytes and alleged critics, is the unsung and unpaid domestic drudgery of Third World Women. As Biel points out, the same people who argue in favour of the maquiladoras and the entrenchment of wage-slavery in the peripheries, as somehow enlightening alternatives to such domestic drudgery, are in their own persons and in their engrossment of the labour of others, beneficiaries of that domestic drudgery, for without the immiseration and cruel exploitation of unseen masses of women, part-peasant, part-proletarian, hag-ridden by patriarchy and ultimately at the service of Wall St and its mouthpieces, imperialism could not continue to exploit the South at all. These silent, invisible women, hundreds of millions of them, are a condition of existence of late capitalism, of US imperialism in its exterminist phase of final decay. Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. Biel provides a rebuttal to their craven politics in terms which even economists can understand. However despite its strong points, so well summarised by Lou that you don't need to buy the it, there are one or two, no, make that four, thing wrong with Biel's book. First, his approach to the USSR (his Maoist inflection doesn't permit him to comprehend either the scale of the human catastrophe ongoing in eastern Europe, or the implications, positive and negative, of the disappearance of the USSR for global relations of production and for US hegemony). 2nd his approach to the nature of contemporary imperialism (he's a semi-kautskyite who believes in ultra-imperialism. Now. while it is true that there exists a baleful solidarity of the thieving North against the abused South, the idea that the USA is merely one imperial power among others, a primum inter pares, is absurd. The US is the heart of the global cancer of capitalism, the primary tumour). 3rd Biel's approach to the ongoing and apocalyptic eco-crisis, which combines man-made climate change, mass extinction and poisoning of the ecosphere is far too weak (He kind of mentions it, but it is hardly central to his thinking; but, to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in eco-catastrophe, but eco-catastrophe is sure interested in you). 4th Biel's political conclusions are tepid, insipid and utopian; and here I diosagree with Lou's more upbeat judgment. I'm glad of Lou's review and despite my overall negativity, this is a good book. Especially good factually (but an archive search of marxmail or the A-List will bring up a lot better and more recent stuff, for free. Where do Zed get off charging $25 for a slim paperback?) Mark Jones
RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30058] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Jones writes:These silent, invisible women, hundreds of millions of them, are a condition of existence of late capitalism, of US imperialism in its exterminist phase of final decay. what makes you think that US imperialism is in its phase of final decay? It's horrible -- maybe even exterminist -- and having some severe economic problems, but it's not going to go away until there's some sort of powerful movement aiming to replace it. BTW, EP Thompson used the word exterminist to refer to the vicious circle of the Cold War rivalry between US and Soviet imperialisms (though I don't think he described the USSR as imperialist). You must be describing a different type of exterminism. Very destructive military adventures by imperialist powers against smaller countries (here, Iraq) have happened before. What makes the current one exterminist? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Mark Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 1:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30058] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 05/09/2002 19:29, Louis Proyect wrote: Robert Biel's The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/South Relations (Zed Books, 2000) is everything that Hardt-Negri's Empire is not. This is a wonderful book by Biel and, prompted by my mentor Lou Proyect, I just spent a day at the British Library going thru it. Great, especially, on the importance to capitalist accumulation and to the wealth enjoyed by the big swinging dicks of Wall St and their fashionable-parlor-socialist acolytes and alleged critics, is the unsung and unpaid domestic drudgery of Third World Women. As Biel points out, the same people who argue in favour of the maquiladoras and the entrenchment of wage-slavery in the peripheries, as somehow enlightening alternatives to such domestic drudgery, are in their own persons and in their engrossment of the labour of others, beneficiaries of that domestic drudgery, for without the immiseration and cruel exploitation of unseen masses of women, part-peasant, part-proletarian, hag-ridden by patriarchy and ultimately at the service of Wall St and its mouthpieces, imperialism could not continue to exploit the South at all. These silent, invisible women, hundreds of millions of them, are a condition of existence of late capitalism, of US imperialism in its exterminist phase of final decay. Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. Biel provides a rebuttal to their craven politics in terms which even economists can understand. However despite its strong points, so well summarised by Lou that you don't need to buy the it, there are one or two, no, make that four, thing wrong with Biel's book. First, his approach to the USSR (his Maoist inflection doesn't permit him to comprehend either the scale of the human catastrophe ongoing in eastern Europe, or the implications, positive and negative, of the disappearance of the USSR for global relations of production and for US hegemony). 2nd his approach to the nature of contemporary imperialism (he's a semi-kautskyite who believes in ultra-imperialism. Now. while it is true that there exists a baleful solidarity of the thieving North against the abused South, the idea that the USA is merely one imperial power among others, a primum inter pares, is absurd. The US is the heart of the global cancer of capitalism, the primary tumour). 3rd Biel's approach to the ongoing and apocalyptic eco-crisis, which combines man-made climate change, mass extinction and poisoning of the ecosphere is far too weak (He kind of mentions it, but it is hardly central to his thinking; but, to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in eco-catastrophe, but eco-catastrophe is sure interested in you). 4th Biel's political conclusions are tepid, insipid and utopian; and here I diosagree with Lou's more upbeat judgment. I'm glad of Lou's review and despite my overall negativity, this is a good book. Especially good factually (but an archive search of marxmail or the A-List will bring up a lot better and more recent stuff, for free. Where do Zed get off charging $25 for a slim paperback?) Mark Jones
Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Devine, James wrote: Mark Jones writes:Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. could you name someone who wants to _silence_ Shiva? as opposed to simply disagreeing with her opinions and thus being willing to criticize them? (BTW, is it some government that wants to silence her? people on the left don't have the power to do so.) I think I know whom Mark is referring to. There is a graduate student in Sweden named Bo Husqvarnaquistholm who is closely aligned with Bjorn Lomborg, the self-described skeptical environmentalist who favors global warming, genetically modified food and keeping the beef fat on Mcdonald's french fries. Husqvarnaquistholm is working on a dissertation as I understand it which implicitly defends the need to reintroduce DDT. He argues that if Great Britain survived without condors, so can the rest of the world. Husqvarnaquistholm is not only completely wrapped up in this ideology, he is also a bit manic it seems. Well, when Shiva showed up at his college last year to speak on GM crops, he attacked her with a chainsaw. As I understand it, she survived with minor cuts and scratches. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
RE: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30061] Re: RE: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a graduate student in Sweden named Bo Husqvarnaquistholm who is closely aligned with Bjorn Lomborg, the self-described skeptical environmentalist who favors global warming heck, if I lived in Sweden, maybe I'd favor global warming too. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 2:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30061] Re: RE: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Devine, James wrote: Mark Jones writes:Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. could you name someone who wants to _silence_ Shiva? as opposed to simply disagreeing with her opinions and thus being willing to criticize them? (BTW, is it some government that wants to silence her? people on the left don't have the power to do so.) I think I know whom Mark is referring to. There is a graduate student in Sweden named Bo Husqvarnaquistholm who is closely aligned with Bjorn Lomborg, the self-described skeptical environmentalist who favors global warming, genetically modified food and keeping the beef fat on Mcdonald's french fries. Husqvarnaquistholm is working on a dissertation as I understand it which implicitly defends the need to reintroduce DDT. He argues that if Great Britain survived without condors, so can the rest of the world. Husqvarnaquistholm is not only completely wrapped up in this ideology, he is also a bit manic it seems. Well, when Shiva showed up at his college last year to speak on GM crops, he attacked her with a chainsaw. As I understand it, she survived with minor cuts and scratches. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Smear Campaign Against Economist
M. Shahid Alam is a friend. He sent me this and I asked if I could forward it. I think that it is sad, but in line with the McKinney campaign. I am writing this note to keep you posted on a smear campaign that has been initiated against me for my support of the academic boycott of Israel. A couple of days back, Jerusalem Post published a malicious report on my essay on the boycott after it had been published in Al-Ahram; this was first published several weeks back in CP. While it made no mention of the title or the contents of my article, the JP accused me of advocating Palestinian terror against Israel. This was a cue for others in US to jump in. I received several e-mails, so did Northeastern. The next morning Boston Herald published a similarly malicious report: Prof Shocks Northeastern with Defense of Suicide Bombers. I had a call from Jewish Advocate and Bloomberg News too, but I haven't seen what they have written. This is clearly a smear campaign, and the intent is to harm me. My University issued a statement which, unfortunately, seems to accept the accusations; though, in a letter to me the same spokeswoman states just the opposite. I have mobilized some emails to Boston Herald; I wouldn't trouble about JP for now, though they started the campaign. What else should I do? I am wondering if it would be appropriate for someone to write a report on this smear campaign: the malicious attempt to punish me for making the moral case against Israel. Is there someone who might do it. I have all the resources that could be used for writing such a report. If you know of someone who could do this I would be happy to make this information available. Thanks for publishing my poems. Several people have written to express their appreciation of political poetry. Thanks for listening, Shahid M. Shahid Alam Professor of Economics Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115 617-373-2849 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Devine, James wrote: Mark Jones writes:Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. could you name someone who wants to _silence_ Shiva? as opposed to simply disagreeing with her opinions and thus being willing to criticize them? Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. How does someone get nominated as the authentic voice of the oppressed anyway? Doug
Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
This Husqvarnaquistholm sounds like a dangerous fellow. I understand he's also for clear-cutting old growth forests. Just one point of clarification, though. Did he actually say condors or condoms? If it was condoms, did he mean Ireland, not Great Britain? He argues that if Great Britain survived without condors, so can the rest of the world.
RE: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30064] Re: RE: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Jones wrote:Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. me: could you name someone who wants to _silence_ Shiva? as opposed to simply disagreeing with her opinions and thus being willing to criticize them? Doug: Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. How does someone get nominated as the authentic voice of the oppressed anyway? don't they have a ceremony every year in Hollywood, where they decide who's the best voice of the third world and stuff like that? didn't Shiva get yanked from the stage because her acceptance speech was too long? something about thanking each woman in India by name? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30065] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] didn't St. Pat chase the condoms out of Ireland? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Tom Walker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 3:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30065] Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This Husqvarnaquistholm sounds like a dangerous fellow. I understand he's also for clear-cutting old growth forests. Just one point of clarification, though. Did he actually say condors or condoms? If it was condoms, did he mean Ireland, not Great Britain? He argues that if Great Britain survived without condors, so can the rest of the world.
Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Doug Henwood wrote: Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. can you back up this statement? perhaps starting with a more quanititative description of what you mean by almost no. what counts as almost no? is it 0? 10? 100? 1% of the indian population? say it is 1% of the indian population. could you provide some sources for such a number? could you also provide a hint on what number would constitute significant followers in india? --ravi
RE: Smear Campaign Against Economist
I was going to jump all over this until I read the column. He's going to have a rough time with the 'smear' line. His column says: Of necessity, dispossession is implemented by force, and it follows that resistance to the coloniser must also be violent. (which I agree with, by the way) and: Abandoned, isolated, beleaguered and unarmed, a few Palestinian men and women have responded to this massive force by weaponising their own deaths through suicide bombings, provoking still greater violence against themselves. (There is no negative comment on the suicide bombings in the column. At the very least this is not smart politics for someone resident in the U.S.) He has a right to say all of this, but he's going to have a hard time denying that his column was supportive or at least apologetic for what in the U.S. is understood simply as Palestinian terrorism. Here's the column: http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/601/op12.htm If I was him I'd invoke academic freedom and try to mitigate the likely negative inferences of the latter statement. mbs M. Shahid Alam is a friend. He sent me this and I asked if I could forward it. I think that it is sad, but in line with the McKinney campaign. I am writing this note to keep you posted on a smear campaign that has been initiated against me for my support of the academic boycott of Israel. A couple of days back, Jerusalem Post published a malicious report on my essay on the boycott after it had been published in Al-Ahram; this was first published several weeks back in CP. While it made no mention of the title or the contents of my article, the JP accused me of advocating Palestinian terror against Israel. This was a cue for others in US to jump in. I received several e-mails, so did Northeastern. The next morning Boston Herald published a similarly malicious report: Prof Shocks Northeastern with Defense of Suicide Bombers. I had a call from Jewish Advocate and Bloomberg News too, but I haven't seen what they have written. This is clearly a smear campaign, and the intent is to harm me. My University issued a statement which, unfortunately, seems to accept the accusations; though, in a letter to me the same spokeswoman states just the opposite. I have mobilized some emails to Boston Herald; I wouldn't trouble about JP for now, though they started the campaign. What else should I do? I am wondering if it would be appropriate for someone to write a report on this smear campaign: the malicious attempt to punish me for making the moral case against Israel. Is there someone who might do it. I have all the resources that could be used for writing such a report. If you know of someone who could do this I would be happy to make this information available. Thanks for publishing my poems. Several people have written to express their appreciation of political poetry. Thanks for listening, Shahid M. Shahid Alam Professor of Economics Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115 617-373-2849 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Robert Biel's The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/South Relations (Zed Books, 2000) is everything that Hardt-Negri's Empire is not. Starting with the premise that there *is* such a thing as imperialism--as opposed to some nebulous concept of Empire--Biel supplies the kind of data to support his argument that is ostentatiously missing from Hardt-Negri. And he ends with an embrace of local, precapitalist initiatives that are disdained by Hardt-Negri, who favor a kind of homogenizing and benign globalization that appears to critics as a leftwing version of Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree. For those Marxists rooted in grass-roots activism, it might come as a surprise that some of their academic brethren either deny the phenomenon of imperialism or--worse--welcome its existence through a kind of neo-Kautskyist self-deception. The late Bill Warren was the most notable example. Starting out with an undialectical appreciation of the Communist Manifesto, they assume that because Marx wrote, The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society, it is necessary to stand with the bourgeoisie against every local initiative that would impede this process. Between the multinational corporation seeking to modernize agriculture in Mexico in order to step up the export of flowers or lettuce, for example, and the Mayan peasant seeking to preserve traditional corn-based subsistence farming, they might choose the former. Although widely regarded nowadays as being overstated, Warren's ideas still reverberate in the academy. As late as 1995, you can still read such nonsense in the Fall 1995 Science and Society special issue on Lenin as John Willoughby's Evaluating the Leninist theory of imperialism. From this we discover that the third world suffers not from capitalist penetration, but just the opposite: Lenin's original argument appeared to link exploitation to stagnation--the implication being that a country could only develop by breaking out completely of capital accumulation circuits. Samir Amin has drawn precisely this conclusion, but an examination of the data suggest that those 'Third World' countries most enmeshed in capital circuits are also the most dynamic. It is a common joke in development circles that most poor nations would love to be exploited by an infusion of capital from the North. More seriously, most of those countries that have either purposefully isolated themselves from the world economy or been isolated by imperial action have suffered disastrously. Space does not permit an elaboration of this point. Nevertheless, radical economists are increasingly realizing that it is not true that global capital accumulation must coerce the Third World into a position of permanent economic backwardness. On the level of the abstract theory of capital expansion and exploitation, it is not possible to argue for the inevitable necessity of the North-South divide. (Jim Blaut had a reply to Willoughby in the 1997 SS that can be read at: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/imperialism.htm) With little apparent interest in staying current with academic fashion, Robert Biel openly describes himself as in the dependency theory tradition. This school emerged in the 1950s as a result of trying to apply Baran and Sweezy's views on monopoly capital to the 3rd world. Andre Gunder Frank's phrase the development of underdevelopment captured this approach succinctly. Most of the dependency theorists, including Frank, have long since mutated into world systems theorists. This is a very high level, almost Olympian, understanding of world history that posits rise and falls of hegemonic powers in almost a Viconian sense. Attempts to get off the merry-go-round of history, such as the Cuban revolution, are derided as exercises in futility. For Biel, world capitalism can only have one set of winners: The conditions for the form of development which entrenches poverty are international. The dependency perspective (which is a radical critique of mainstream development theory) highlights these conditions by introducing a dangerous idea: it is not just that there is one group of countries in the world which happens to be poor. The two are organically linked; that is to say, one part is poor *because* the other is rich. The relationship is partly historical--for colonialism and the slave trade helped to build up capitalism, and this provided the conditions for later forms of dependency--but the link between development and underdevelopment is also a process that continues today. As Amin pointed out, in what is perhaps the most single idea of dependency theory, the tendency to pauperization--the acute poverty that is both the basis and product of capital accumulation, and thus of 'growth'--was transplanted to the
Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
At 05/09/2002 19:29, Louis Proyect wrote: Robert Biel's The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradictions in North/South Relations (Zed Books, 2000) is everything that Hardt-Negri's Empire is not. This is a wonderful book by Biel and, prompted by my mentor Lou Proyect, I just spent a day at the British Library going thru it. Great, especially, on the importance to capitalist accumulation and to the wealth enjoyed by the big swinging dicks of Wall St and their fashionable-parlor-socialist acolytes and alleged critics, is the unsung and unpaid domestic drudgery of Third World Women. As Biel points out, the same people who argue in favour of the maquiladoras and the entrenchment of wage-slavery in the peripheries, as somehow enlightening alternatives to such domestic drudgery, are in their own persons and in their engrossment of the labour of others, beneficiaries of that domestic drudgery, for without the immiseration and cruel exploitation of unseen masses of women, part-peasant, part-proletarian, hag-ridden by patriarchy and ultimately at the service of Wall St and its mouthpieces, imperialism could not continue to exploit the South at all. These silent, invisible women, hundreds of millions of them, are a condition of existence of late capitalism, of US imperialism in its exterminist phase of final decay. Those who want to silence such authentic voices of the oppressed women of the South as Vandana Shiva are its servants. Biel provides a rebuttal to their craven politics in terms which even economists can understand. However despite its strong points, so well summarised by Lou that you don't need to buy the it, there are one or two, no, make that four, thing wrong with Biel's book. First, his approach to the USSR (his Maoist inflection doesn't permit him to comprehend either the scale of the human catastrophe ongoing in eastern Europe, or the implications, positive and negative, of the disappearance of the USSR for global relations of production and for US hegemony). 2nd his approach to the nature of contemporary imperialism (he's a semi-kautskyite who believes in ultra-imperialism. Now. while it is true that there exists a baleful solidarity of the thieving North against the abused South, the idea that the USA is merely one imperial power among others, a primum inter pares, is absurd. The US is the heart of the global cancer of capitalism, the primary tumour). 3rd Biel's approach to the ongoing and apocalyptic eco-crisis, which combines man-made climate change, mass extinction and poisoning of the ecosphere is far too weak (He kind of mentions it, but it is hardly central to his thinking; but, to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in eco-catastrophe, but eco-catastrophe is sure interested in you). 4th Biel's political conclusions are tepid, insipid and utopian; and here I diosagree with Lou's more upbeat judgment. I'm glad of Lou's review and despite my overall negativity, this is a good book. Especially good factually (but an archive search of marxmail or the A-List will bring up a lot better and more recent stuff, for free. Where do Zed get off charging $25 for a slim paperback?) Mark Jones
Re: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
It is and has been perfectly legal and accepted, for a long time, to use condoms in Ireland. You just have to chainsaw the tip off before donning. Tom Walker wrote: This Husqvarnaquistholm sounds like a dangerous fellow. I understand he's also for clear-cutting old growth forests. Just one point of clarification, though. Did he actually say condors or condoms? If it was condoms, did he mean Ireland, not Great Britain? He argues that if Great Britain survived without condors, so can the rest of the world.
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
ravi wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. can you back up this statement? perhaps starting with a more quanititative description of what you mean by almost no. what counts as almost no? is it 0? 10? 100? 1% of the indian population? say it is 1% of the indian population. could you provide some sources for such a number? could you also provide a hint on what number would constitute significant followers in india? It seems to me that westerners arguing either way as to whether X represents or does not represent India rather resembles Trotsky trying to run the Spanish Civil War from Mexico. The Indian people are going to work it out for themselves -- it seems to me what marxists in the west have to do is work at building an anti-imperialist movement here. Taking sides on Shiva hardly seems to contribute very usefully to that task. It may even be negative. I wonder if Support Shiva makes a good slogan for mobilizing yankees against the Iraq invasion. Carrol
Re: tip (was Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk)
Eugene Coyle wrote, It is and has been perfectly legal and accepted, for a long time, to use condoms in Ireland. You just have to chainsaw the tip off before donning. Jaysus friggin' Christ, Gene, you wouldn't be needing a condom if you did that! Unless it was for a tourniquet. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
war games
Wake-up call If the US and Iraq do go to war, there can only be one winner, can't there? Maybe not. This summer, in a huge rehearsal of just such a conflict - and with retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper playing Saddam - the US lost. Julian Borger asks the former marine how he did it Friday September 6, 2002 The Guardian At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and $250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator. What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's defence establishment and raised questions over the US military's readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper. In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt. What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and refloated the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US victory. If the Pentagon thought it could keep its mishap quiet, it underestimated Van Riper. A classic marine - straight-talking and fearless, with a purple heart from Vietnam to prove it - his retirement means he no longer has to put up with the bureaucratic niceties of the defence department. So he blew the whistle. His driving concern, he tells the Guardian, is that when the real fighting starts, American troops will be sent into battle with a set of half-baked tactics that have not been put to the test. Nothing was learned from this, he says. A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future. The exercise, he says, was rigged almost from the outset. Millennium Challenge was the biggest war game of all time. It had been planned for two years and involved integrated operations by the army, navy, air force and marines. The exercises were part real, with 13,000 troops spread across the United States, supported by actual planes and warships; and part virtual, generated by sophisticated computer models. It was the same technique used in Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator. The soldiers in the foreground were real, the legions behind entirely digital. The game was theoretically set in 2007 and pitted Blue forces (the US) against a country called Red. Red was a militarily powerful Middle Eastern nation on the Persian Gulf that was home to a crazed but cunning megalomaniac (Van Riper). Arguably, when the exercises were first planned back in 2000, Red could have been Iran. But by July this year, when the game kicked off, it is unlikely that anyone involved had any doubts as to which country beginning with I Blue was up against. The game was described as free play. In other words, there were two sides trying to win, Van Riper says. Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran clearly takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, so I decided I would attack first. Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been
Bjorn Again Simon
I don't think I was resubscribed to Enviroethics (or pen-l) when I posted my review of Lomborg's Julian Simon regurgitation to the TWS and ECOLOG listservers. As published in Conservation Biology a few months ago (under the title Julian Simon Redux): Lomborg, B. (2001) The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. xxiii + 515pp., figs, index. Paperback: Price US$27.95. ISBN 0-521-01068-3. Bjorn Lomborg tells us The Skeptical Environmentalist was inspired by the late Julian Simon. It shows, and it is a dubious distinction. Julian Simon's capstone, Ultimate Resource 2 (Simon 1996) was so fallacious and shoddily documented that I devoted a full chapter to refuting it in Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train (Czech 2000a). The best to be said for The Skeptical Environmentalist is that it contains a lot of statistical information about the environment, most of which is documented better than Ultimate Resource 2. Lomborg also did a fairly convincing job of revealing statistical liberties taken by some environmental organizations and authors, probably enough to keep them on their toes in future endeavors. On the other hand, one wonders how many pages could be filled with liberties taken by anti-environmentalists in pursuit of profit. Lomborg documented virtually none of these, suggesting perhaps the taking of a different kind of liberty. Numerous others have identified problems with Lomborg's statistical analyses (http://www.urban75.com/Action/news138.html). I appreciate these largely empirical efforts, for they free me to focus on glaring theoretical shortcomings. Lomborg prefaced, I am not myself an expert as regards environmental problems (xx), yet proceeded to interpret his copious time-series data with the self assurance of Ross Perot interpreting the macroeconomic implications of housing starts. Lomborg's thesis is identical to Simon's self-christened grand theory, which simplistically states that, as limits to economic growth are approached, human ingenuity prevails and we find a way to increase economic carrying capacity. Therefore, why worry about limits? Such a thesis is circular at best and hypocritical at worst. The kind of ingenuity that helps us protect the environment (and therefore the economy) is largely motivated by worries about carrying capacity! Lomborg must sense the weakness of this thesis, for in his conclusion he quibbles that worry is not the same as productive concern. Lomborg covers most of the major environmental issues: forests, energy, minerals, water, pollution, global warming, etc. Conservation biologists will find it interesting that one of the shortest and weakest chapters is on biodiversity. For example, Lomborg refers to the theory of island biogeography as appealingly intuitive, yet discredits the application of the theory to larger land masses. His rationale? If islands get smaller, there is nowhere to escape. If, on the other hand, one tract of rainforest is cut down, many animals and plants can go on living in the surrounding areas. For a statistician who clearly prides himself in his grasp of logic, such a logical last resort is but one more indication of Lomborg's bias. Lomborg disregards the trophic structure of the human economy, the foundation of which is agriculture and the extractive sectors (logging, mining, ranching, etc.), upon which are perched the manufacturing and services sectors. He thinks the entire economic enterprise can expand without concomitant liquidation of natural capital (timber, minerals, grasses, etc.), in violation of the thermodynamic underpinnings of trophic theory. He seems oblivious to the fact that, due to the tremendous breadth of the human niche, the human economy grows at the competitive exclusion of wildlife in the aggregate. The absence of ecological savvy explains his poor performance with the biodiversity chapter and strongly suggests that conservation biologists have a unique role to play in refuting the ecologically ignorant implications of neoclassical economic growth theory (Czech 2000b). Lomborgs disregard of trophic levels helps to explain his cure-all prescription of generating more money to throw at more problems. He fails to recognize that agricultural surplus is what frees the hands for the division of labor, thus making money a meaningful concept (Czech 2000a). Its as if he thinks money grows on trees whether you chop them down or not. Lomborg appears equally as naive about the political economy of environmental protection. Nowhere does he acknowledge the iron triangle of corporations, politicians beholden to corporations, and neoclassical economists (whose research is funded largely by the corporations, and who advise the politicians) that girds the economic policy arena. This oversight is bound to produce skepticism, even cynicism among conservation biologists, because this iron triangle is virtually all
RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30071] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wonder if Support Shiva makes a good slogan for mobilizing yankees against the Iraq invasion. how about Support Vishnu? JD
Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
how about Support Vishnu? JD Nah! Not good. Support Vishne is much better. Vishne means sour cherry in my language. Therefore, Support Vishne is ecologically more correct. Moreover, Coca Cola's attempts to take over the vishne juice business back home is a serious problem for my poor vishne juice producers. To hell with Coke, long live independent Vishne! Sabri
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
ravi wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. can you back up this statement? I've heard it from people in the antiglobo movement, and from Ulhas Joglekar on either this list or lbo-talk. Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no followers in India. How does someone get nominated as the authentic voice of the oppressed anyway? Hey comrades, she has lots of grassroots South Africa fans after excellent hits on big water, food and energy companies over the past couple of weeks. She pummelled the World Bank Africa water master on a tv chat show Ben Cashdan ran, which aired yesterday. And she was front-line in the march on 24 August when the police lobbed 8 stun grenades at us, badly injuring one internationalist.
