RE: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
Charles, What is happening in Japan? I just saw that NIKKEI went below 9000. Sabri
Multi-nationals against War!!!
Fowarded from the PGA list. Sabri Forwarded message Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 01:39:34 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Business Week opposes war! Business Week magazine, in its issue of October 14,2002 contains an unusual article entitled A FOREIGN POLICY HARMFUL TO BUSINESS The article is by Jeffery E. Garten who served on the staff of Kissinger and Cyrus Vance and was an officer in the Special Forces. He was Undersecretary of Commerce in the first Clinton administration. I quote sections: In the Bush's administraton's disdain for the hard work of cultivating allies until the U.S. is pressed to he wall; in its radically new doctrine that the U.S. has the right to preemptively attack others in the name of self-defense when it alone determines there is enough of a threat; in the way it has given short shrift to international trade, finance, development, environmental policiesAmerican has militarized its foreign policy at the expense of a large number of other goals When you look at the political landscape, however, who is it that can and forcefully raise this issue?Don't look for our Congress, rarely known for its global viewpoint, let alone for taking principled stands that could cost votesOnly one group has the experience, the knowledge, the perspective, and the clear self-interest to provide some countervailing influence to the dangerous ways that Washington is throwing around American military power--and that is the nations's top business leaders. So far I havn't seen any CEOs at anti-war demonstratons. But imagine their picket signs: Multi-nationals against War!!! Earl Gilman Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Sell a Home for Top $ http://us.click.yahoo.com/RrPZMC/jTmEAA/MVfIAA/xYTolB/TM - ~- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
--- Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Charles, What is happening in Japan? I just saw that NIKKEI went below 9000. Sabri As of 16:19 JST, the news puts it at: #26481;#35388;#32066;#20516;#12289;#65304;#65302;#65304;#65304;#20870; 8688 yen. That's as low as it has been in almost 20 years. Clearly the 15 year trend line has been found and now lost on the downside. This means more trouble for banks and insurance. But takeover artists are popping corks. Meanwhile, the Koizumi reform cabinet flounders, trying to decide whether or not to surpass their spending and funding caps and come up with some sort of supplementary budget to pump more money into the sagging economy. CJannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda
[some people think that even to mention energy crises is just 'fatalism' but that's not what the Bush regime thinks. They know the oil is running out, and this is key to everything they say and do. Mark] Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda October 7 2002 The White House decided that diplomacy was not an option in the Middle East, writes Ritt Goldstein. As the United States prepares for war with Iraq, a report commissioned early in George Bush's presidency has surfaced, showing that the US knew it was running out of oil and foreshadowing the possible need for military intervention to secure supplies. The report forecasts an end to cheap and plentiful fuel, with the energy industry facing the beginning of capacity limitations. Prepared by the influential Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, it urged the Bush Administration to admit these agonising truths to the American people. Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, written early last year, was a policy document used to shape the new administration's energy policy. It applauded the creation of Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy task force to address the creation of specific energy plans, and suggested it consider including representation from the Department of Defence. Saying there is no alternative and there is no time to waste, the document projects periods of exploding US energy prices, economic recession and social unrest unless answers are found. It suggests that a minimum three to five years is needed to find a solution, and says a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy is called for, with access to oil repeatedly cited as a security imperative. The involvement of the Council of Foreign Relations in the report's preparation adds weight to its findings. The council ranks as one of the most influential groups in US political circles, with members including Mr Cheney and the former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker. The report also explodes the myth that the US is insulated from Middle East oil supply problems because it receives the bulk of its oil from less volatile sources outside the Persian Gulf. It says Middle East pricing and supply trends will affect energy costs around the globe regardless. It details an alternative basis for the US war on terrorism, as well as the apparent basis for much of the Bush Administration's present foreign policy, its so-called oil agenda. The Administration has been actively pursuing oil issues with Venezuela, Colombia, West Africa, the Caspian and Indonesia. And amid the pressure of UN resolutions and Israeli-Palestinian tension, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, recently visited West Africa. Among the immediate steps it urged was an inquiry into whether US policy could be changed to speed the availability of oil from the Caspian Basin region, supporting longstanding accusations that energy issues shadowed the US agenda in Afghanistan. The French authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie have argued that US oil interests had persuaded the Bush Administration to block terrorism investigations and negotiate with the Taliban, a report by the Inter Press Service (IPS) last November said. It has been said repeatedly that the US objective is the construction of trans-Afghan pipelines allowing access to Caspian oil and gas. According to the authors and an article in Le Monde Diplomatique in January, US attempts to bribe and threaten the Taliban had preceded the September 11 attacks. Notably, the IPS article quoted the French authors as saying that, faced with the Taliban's refusal to co-operate, the rationale of energy security changed into a military one, reflecting what the report advocated as a valid option. Providing a footnote to the question of US military threats, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, has sued Mr Cheney to obtain details of his energy task force meetings. Environmental groups have speculated that the suit is being fought to hide the level of involvement the collapsed US energy giant Enron had in the task force. On the looming oil crisis, the report reluctantly blames deregulation of the energy markets, a lack of a comprehensive US energy policy and the avoidance of oil conservation measures. It also suggests diplomatic alternatives - but policy since the September 11 attacks appears in keeping only with the military intervention option. Ideas such as defusing the Arab-Israeli conflict, an easing of Iraqi sanctions and reducing the restrictions on oil investments inside Iraq are at odds with the policies the Administration is pursuing. While the US now presses for regime change in Iraq, more than 18 months ago the report repeatedly emphasised its importance as an oil producer and the need to expand Iraqi production as soon as possible to meet projected oil shortages - shortages it said
FW: [A-List] US imperialism: Iraq and oil
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Keaney Sent: 07 October 2002 09:45 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [A-List] US imperialism: Iraq and oil Sunday Herald - 06 October 2002 Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis By Neil Mackay President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary. Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on 'energy security' from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Snr. The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: 'The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments. 'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.' Baker who delivered the recommendations to Cheney, the former chief executive of Texas oil firm Halliburton, was advised by Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former chief executive of Enron, the US energy giant which went bankrupt after carrying out massive accountancy fraud. The other advisers to Baker were: Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. Another name linked to the document is Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute. President Bush also has strong connections to the US oil industry and once owned the oil company Spectrum 7. The Baker report highlights massive shortages in world oil supplies which now leave the US facing 'unprecedented energy price volatility' and has led to recurring electricity black-outs in areas such as California. The report refers to the impact of fuel shortages on voters. It recommends a 'new and viable US energy policy central to America's domestic economy and to [the] nation's security and foreign policy'. Iraq, the report says, 'turns its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so', adding that there is a 'possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time' in order to damage prices. The report also says that Cheney should integrate energy and security to stop 'manipulations of markets by any state', and suggests that Cheney's Energy Policy Group includes 'representation from the Department of Defence'. 'Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,' the report says, 'US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position.' www.rice.edu/projects/baker/
Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Best, Sabri Don't kid yourself. I am sure that there are still some left-Keynsians out there who believe that the Asian tigers are back on track now. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: FW: [A-List] US imperialism: Iraq and oil
In a message dated 10/7/02 2:33:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The Baker report highlights massive shortages in world oil supplies which now leave the US facing 'unprecedented energy price volatility' and has led to recurring electricity black-outs in areas such as California. The report refers to the impact of fuel shortages on voters. It recommends a 'new and viable US energy policy central to America's domestic economy and to [the] nation's security and foreign policy'. Iraq, the report says, 'turns its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so', adding that there is a 'possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time' in order to damage prices. The report also says that Cheney should integrate energy and security to stop 'manipulations of markets by any state', and suggests that Cheney's Energy Policy Group includes 'representation from the Department of Defence'. 'Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,' the report says, 'US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position. Here is the essence of the small - tiny, divergence amongst those who ponder the meaning of the above. Iraq destabilizes prices in the world oil market. Ain't no shortage of oil on the world market. This is combined with the perceived need of the Bush administration to carry out the long term policy of USNA imperialism to modernize the superstructure - the political superstructure, of the Middle East - in general. Iran scared the profits out of the USNA imperialist. "That" kind of bourgeois revolution is unacceptable to my imperialist. Keeping Iraqi oil off the market is strategic in the sense of the immediate future, which spans from 24-50 months. Powell been opening up Africa. Putin is positioning. Latin American - in terms of oil, is in the game as is Mexico. Saddam is an entry point that can be "proven" to a reactionary sector of the American peoples. Shortage versus glut is somewhat scholastic, but hey. Let's see what happens in the contest of our individual wills making a difference. We can proceed from a different standpoint - pardon, vantage point or point of view, and come up with the same conclusion. Melvin P.
KaZaA on trial
NY Times, Oct. 7, 2002 Music Industry in Global Fight on Web Copies By AMY HARMON Having vanquished the music swapping service Napster in court, the entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing its major successor, KaZaA: geography. Sharman Networks, the distributor of the program, is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from Australia. Its computer servers are in Denmark and the source code for its software was last seen in Estonia. KaZaA's original developers, who still control the underlying technology, are thought to be living in the Netherlands although entertainment lawyers seeking to have them charged with violating United States copyright law have been unable to find them. What KaZaA has in the United States are users millions of them downloading copyrighted music, television shows and movies 24 hours a day. How effective are United States laws against a company that enters the country only virtually? The answer is about to unfold in a Los Angeles courtroom. A group of recording and motion picture companies has asked a federal judge to find the custodians of KaZaA liable for contributing to copyright infringement and financially benefiting from it. If the group wins, it plans to demand an immediate injunction. Sharman would then have to stop distributing KaZaA or alter the program to block copyrighted material, which it says is not possible because of how its technology works. Sharman asked the court last week to dismiss the case, asserting that because the company has no assets or significant business dealings in the United States, the court has no jurisdiction over it. Moreover, the company said, because the Internet does not recognize territorial boundaries, anything Sharman does with KaZaA at the behest of a judge in Los Angeles would affect 60 million users in over 150 countries. Arguments are scheduled for Nov. 18. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/technology/07SWAP.html Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Denis Dutton's website goes belly up
I usually check in on Denis Dutton's Arts and Letters Daily website each morning at: http://www.aldaily.com/ to find links to online articles in places like the Chronicles of Higher Education, New Republic, Spiked-Online, etc. Except for some nominal representation of the left like an occasional Terry Eagleton piece, the website was one of the most determined disseminators of an eclectic ideology mixing Scientistic skepticism, a Frank Furedi kind of libertarianism and a rather stuffy belief in high culture of the sort found in Hilton Kramer's New Criterion. Dutton, a New Zealand professor hailing originally from the USA, first attracted attention for handing out Bad Writing awards each year to people like Judith Butler. At the time, I was a big fan of Alan Sokal and greeted these awards with great relish just as I reacted to Alan's spoof in Social Text. Subsequently I learned that not every swipe at postmodernism is a sign that you are on the side of the angels. The animosity directed against postmodernist relativism can often drift into a kind of reactionary belief in Absolute Values such as the supremacy of the capitalist system, the right to smoke cigarettes in restaurants and to take bribes from multinational corporations to publish apologia for the right to plunder the 3rd world in the name of progress. Today I learned that Arts and Letters went belly-up: The magazine Lingua Franca and its parent company University Business LLC filed for bankruptcy earlier this year (Trustee, Robert L. Geltzer, of Tendler, Biggins Geltzer, 1556 Third Avenue, Suite 505, New York, NY 101128). We understand that the assets of University Business, including this Website, are to be auctioned in New York City on October 24, 2002. For further information, we suggest contacting the Trustee. Since the filing, Arts Letters Daily has been kept afloat by the goodwill of its editors, Tran Huu Dung and Denis Dutton, and it is now time for them to move on. They will continue to supply content on other similar sites with which they are associated: SciTech Daily Review; Denis Duttons Philosophy Literature site; Business Daily Review. Human Nature Review has fine science reporting, Arts Journal is our favorite for arts news, and Google News is invaluable for newspapers and magazines. --- This is an interesting sign of the cultural drift of late capitalism mixed with the dot.com saga. Dutton launched his website during the height of the dot.com mania. The Guardian (London), August 31, 1999 What's the great idea?; Dreamed up by academic Denis Dutton (right), a new website for intellectuals has even Bill Gates waving a large cheque. David Cohen logs on The website Arts Letters Daily (www.cyber editions. com/aldaily/) sounded like a sure-fire commercial loser when it first went online last September. It had no brand recognition, contained no material original to the site, had no registered list of users, and was aimed at the kind of egghead ad agencies usually don't fall over themselves to entice. Worse, almost, was the fact the venture represented no more than a spare-time occupation for the American-born academic, Denis Dutton, a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Dutton is better known abroad as editor of the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature, published by John Hopkins University Press, and for his cheeky annual awards for the world's worst academic writing. 'It was simply an experiment when I started,' he recalls, noting that the initial cost for this bare-bones venture came to just pounds 110. 'But the instant I got my first glimpse of it on screen, I knew it would be successful.' In fact, the possibility of making money was hardly Dutton's motivation in the early days. His concept - simple yet until last year untried - was to create a thinking person's guide, by way of 80 or so regularly updated annotated links, to interesting, stylish and original writing on the web, or 'the one place people would like to look at every day, just to see what was new in the world of the arts or ideas'. The site is divided into features, book reviews and essays, drawn from a stable of online journals and newspapers, including the Guardian, with Dutton writing pithy blurbs for each link. The current work grew out of an email list, Phil Lit, that Dutton founded as an outgrowth of his work on the Johns Hopkins journal. It was an attempt, among his 800 subscribers, to have a continuous Internet symposium based on articles and reviews he found on the web that dealt with literature, philosophy, fiction and the like. Then he thought that putting the articles together on just one page might be a good idea. While a website consisting entirely of links to other websites - 'third party content directories' - was hardly original or new (porn sites have done it for years), its use in an academic or relatively
Otto Reich
New Yorker Magazine, Issue of 2002-10-14 and 21 CASTRO'S SHADOW by WILLIAM FINNEGAN America's man in Latin America, and his obsession. At the State Department, swearing-in ceremonies for top officials take place in the Benjamin Franklin Room, an ornate hall on the eighth floor. There, in March, Otto Juan Reich was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Before an audience that included Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senator Jesse Helms, and Ambassador Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, Reich gave a strange and pugnacious speech. He declared Powell another Titán de BronceBronze Titan, the nickname of Antonio Maceo, a black leader in the Cuban war for independence from Spain. His grandfather, Reich said, had served in Maceo's army. Reich compared his own perseverance in the face of political opponents to that of the Founding Fathers when they rebelled against the British. Quoting Thomas Jefferson, he swore eternal hostility to despots, whether in Baghdad or Havana. He also used the occasion to announce his engagement to Lourdes Ramos, a very special lady, who was in the crowd. This came just after he thanked his ex-wife, Connie, who was also present, for the many sacrifices she had made for him. Strangest of all were the jokes: Reich complained that some of his critics had asked whether he had the right temperament for the post he was assuming. They said that I can't make rational decisions because of my ideology! Well, they are not saying that anymore, because I had them all arrested this morning! (clip) Reich first went to work for the Reagan Administration at the Agency for International Development, in 1981. As the civil war in Nicaragua heated up, he moved to the State Department, where, from 1983 to 1986, he headed a Contra-support program that operated out of an outfit called the Office of Public Diplomacy. The office arranged speeches and recommended books to school libraries, but it also leaked false stories to the pressthat, for instance, the Sandinista government was receiving Soviet MIG fighters, or was involved in drug trafficking. A declassified memo from one of Reich's aides to Patrick Buchanan, the White House communications director, boasted about the office's White Propaganda operations, including op-ed pieces prepared by its staff, signed by Contra leaders or academics, and placed in major newspapers. (Reich's spokesman denied this.) The office employed Army psychological-warfare specialists, and worked closely with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, at the National Security Council. When legitimate stories from Central America displeased Reich, he would confront journalists. He visited CBS News in April, 1984, after the network broadcast a documentary about El Salvador which Reich's boss, Secretary of State George Shultz, consideredas he put it in a memo to his boss, President Reaganfavorable to the guerrillas and distorting of U.S. and El Salvadoran government goals and tactics. Reich met with the CBS diplomatic correspondent and the Washington bureau chief. This is one example of what the Office of Public Diplomacy has been doing, Shultz reported to Reagan. It has been repeated dozens of times over the past few months. In 1985, Reich demanded a meeting with the senior staff of National Public Radiowhich he had taken to calling National People's Radio, or, sometimes, Moscow on the Potomacafter a report about a Contra slaughter of civilians. As Bill Buzenberg, the NPR foreign-affairs correspondent, recalled the meeting, Reich bragged that he had gotten others to change some of their reporters in the field because of a perceived bias. He warned the journalists that his office would be monitoring NPR's broadcasts. Buzenberg later suggested that Reich's attempt to intimidate people at NPR had been effective. He recounted in a speech how an editor had asked him, with regard to one of his stories, What would Otto Reich think? After a tense luncheon at the home of a diplomat in Managua, attended by Reich and John Lantigua, a Washington Post stringer, and Morris Thompson, of Newsday, an item appeared in the newsletter of the conservative press-watchdog group Accuracy in Media (AIM), calling Lantigua Johnny Sandinista and claiming that the Nicaraguan government was supplying him and other reporters with trusted Sandinista females. New York magazine later reported that Reich had been interviewed for the AIM story. Reich told New York that he had heard from defectors from the Sandinista government that it isn't only women who were supplied. (Thompson is gay.) This thing is sordid, Reich told New York. It also seems to have been untrue. Reich's office, asked for comment last week, denied that he had been the source of the AIM story. A 1987 report by the United States Comptroller General, produced in the course of the Iran-Contra investigation, concluded that Reich's office had engaged in prohibited,
RE: RE: Re: Re: National Days of Resistance...
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30958] RE: Re: Re: National Days of Resistance... according to the L.A. TIMES, there were 3 thousand or 3 1/2 thousand (beyond what was allowed by the permit) in the rally. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Devine, James Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 7:52 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' Subject: [PEN-L:30958] RE: Re: Re: National Days of Resistance... This sounds like the rally in L.A., but that one was much smaller. There was quite an ethnic mix in L.A., from Filipinos to Native Americans. Some excessive rhetoric, but no-one seemed to care (partly because it was hard to hear). Jim --- There was a good crowd in San Francisco -- average age quite low. Lots of infants, some more young kids, and lots of people in the 17 - 23 age bracket. I can't estimate the crowd but I heard the number 10,000 offered on the radio. The police were well behaved. The signs led me to believe that people aren't very focused yet, and still appealing to rationality on the part of govt officials. Gene Coyle Ian Murray wrote: - Original Message - From: Diane Monaco [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Days of Resistance to War and Repression, Oct 6-7 Nearly 500 marched in Toledo, Ohio from 2-3:30pm EDT today...with virtually unlimited support for peace from the countless passing pedestrians and cars. We jumped in coming from a youth soccer game -- let's hear it for my 8 year old who went the distance in soccer cleats against the hard pavement...ouch...(forgot to throw the street shoes in the bag :)). Peace, Diane === About 8-10,000 in Seattle 1pm, still going as far as I know--left downtown around 6pmLots of kids and families with great signs.. Ian
RE: Re: Tragedy on the docks: White House Warns of Economic Harm
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30963] Re: Tragedy on the docks: White House Warns of Economic Harm Joanna: It's interesting that Bush has not treated this situation so far as Reagan did the air traffic controllers. Any speculation as to why he's holding off? I wrote: 1) the current situation is a lock-out, not a strike. Yes, but the union had already ordered a work slow down, so the PMA will say the lockout was preemptive and designed to pressure the union for a settlement. why should anyone believe the PMA? 3) Bush's handlers think that they can blame the second dip of the Dubya recession on the long-shore union. Most Americans wouldn't even know what they are. I'd bet that most people in the U.S. can't find Iraq on a map, but the Bush propaganda machine has mobilized a lot to back his war there. Anyway, it's only the Wall Street jerks who need to be convinced on this. They'll repeat the blame the workers line enough so that it will become true-by-definition, as with blaming 911 for the 2001 recession. If these unions really are about challenging the system, why don't the east coast and Gulf longshoremen go out on strike in support of their western counterparts? That would certainly slow down the coming military strike against Iraq. Oh, I answered my own question. This misses the fact that there has been a persistent antagonism between the East West coast longshore unions. The East coast has a tradition of being mobbed up, while the West coast is more leftist in orientation. JD
RE: Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30969] Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda Mark Jones writes: [some people think that even to mention energy crises is just 'fatalism' but that's not what the Bush regime thinks. They know the oil is running out, and this is key to everything they say and do. Mark] I don't see why the obvious lust for oil has to be based on a view that oil is running out. Lots of people, including yours truly, have a lust for sex without assuming that sex is running out. An energy crisis doesn't have to be based on oil running out in the sense of a long-term disappearance. It could also be based on capitalism driving the demand for oil forward too quickly, relative to the _short-term_ supply. Also, some people blame the energy crisis of the 1970s on monopoly power of the oil-producing countries. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Oil and sperm
Jim Devine: I don't see why the obvious lust for oil has to be based on a view that oil is running out. Lots of people, including yours truly, have a lust for sex without assuming that sex is running out. But in a certain sense sex *is* running out, for reasons parallel to the LONG-TERM energy crisis (as opposed to short-term spikes in supply and demand). http://www.rachel.org/search/index.cfm?St=1 #477 - Sperm in the News, January 18, 1996 This must be the year of the sperm. The NEW YORKER magazine ran a long story[1] January 15th called Silent Sperm --a wry reference to Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, which made its debut in the NEW YORKER 35 years ago. Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Furthermore, the January issue of ESQUIRE features an article on sperm loss,[2] titled Downward Motility. MOTHER JONES magazine[3] also began the new year with a sperm story, titled Down for the Count. And the nation's newspaper of record, the NEW YORK TIMES, ran a 4-part, front-page series on increasing infertility in the U.S. January 7-10. By far the most interesting and informative of these articles are by Lawrence Wright in the NEW YORKER and Daniel Pinchbeck in ESQUIRE. Wright and Pinchbeck interviewed dozens of prominent researchers in the field of endocrinology (hormones) and reproductive health in the U.S., Britain and Europe, and their articles offer new human perspectives on the scientific information we have been presenting since 1991 (see REHW #263, #264, #323, #343, #365, #372, #377, #432, #438, #446, #447, #448). Here are some viewpoints that we have not previously offered our readers in our own coverage of this issue: ** Danish pediatric endocrinologist (hormone specialist) Niels E. Skakkebaek says that, in the late 1980s, We had also been wondering why it was so difficult for sperm banks to establish a core of donors. In some areas of Denmark, they were having to recruit ten potential donors to find one with good semen quality.[1,pg.43] ** So Skakkebaek in 1990 studied sperm quality in Danish men. He started with men working in nonhazardous office jobs and laborers who did not work directly with industrial chemicals or pesticides --men thought to be healthy. For decades it had been believed that the average man produced about a hundred million sperm per milliliter of semen, and of that about 20% was expected to be immobile. Skakkebaek reported that 84% of the Danish men he studied had sperm quality below the standards set by the World Health Organization. The men themselves seemed normal in every other respect.[1,pg.43] ** On the basis of the world's medical literature, Skakkebaek calculates that in 1940 the average sperm count was 113 million per milliliter, and that 50 years later it had fallen to 66 million. [1,pg.44] ** Still more serious is a three-fold increase in men whose sperm count was below 20 million--the point at which their fertility would be jeopardized.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, just as in Denmark, the number of donors with good-quality sperm has become distressingly low. As early as 1981, researchers at the Washington Fertility Study Center reported that sperm count of their donors, who were largely medical students, had suffered a steady decline over the previous eight years. The researchers worried that, if the decline continued at the same rate, within the decade there would be no potential donors who could meet the approved or recommended standards.[1,pg.44] ** The fact is that the number of morphologically normal sperm [meaning sperm with a normal shape] produced by the average man has dropped below the level of those of a hamster, which has testicles a fraction the size of a man's.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of infertile couples has risen from 14.4 in 1965 to 18.5 in 1995. Infertility is defined as failure to produce a child after a year of normal sex.[1,pg.44] ** There has been little published research comparing racial and ethnic sperm counts, particularly in Africa and many Third World countries. But the studies that we do have show low counts nearly everywhere: the latest count in Nigeria is 64 million per milliliter; in Pakistan, 79.5 million; in Germany, 78 million; in Hong Kong, 62 million.[1,pgs.44-45] ** Pierre Jouannet, director of the Centre d'Etude et de Conservation des Oeufs et du Sperme in Paris, simply did not believe Skakkebaek's conclusions. Jouannet had data on 1350 Parisian men, all of whom had fathered at least one child and therefore were of proven fertility, so he analyzed them, expecting to refute Skakkebaek's studies. To his astonishment he found that sperm counts in his group had dropped steadily at 2% per year for the past 20 years; in 1973 the average count was 89 million per milliliter and in 1992 it was 60 million.
RE: Oil and sperm
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30980] Oil and sperm hey man, most men don't care about the sperm as much as the act of sex itself. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 8:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30980] Oil and sperm Jim Devine: I don't see why the obvious lust for oil has to be based on a view that oil is running out. Lots of people, including yours truly, have a lust for sex without assuming that sex is running out. But in a certain sense sex *is* running out, for reasons parallel to the LONG-TERM energy crisis (as opposed to short-term spikes in supply and demand). http://www.rachel.org/search/index.cfm?St=1 #477 - Sperm in the News, January 18, 1996 This must be the year of the sperm. The NEW YORKER magazine ran a long story[1] January 15th called Silent Sperm --a wry reference to Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, which made its debut in the NEW YORKER 35 years ago. Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Furthermore, the January issue of ESQUIRE features an article on sperm loss,[2] titled Downward Motility. MOTHER JONES magazine[3] also began the new year with a sperm story, titled Down for the Count. And the nation's newspaper of record, the NEW YORK TIMES, ran a 4-part, front-page series on increasing infertility in the U.S. January 7-10. By far the most interesting and informative of these articles are by Lawrence Wright in the NEW YORKER and Daniel Pinchbeck in ESQUIRE. Wright and Pinchbeck interviewed dozens of prominent researchers in the field of endocrinology (hormones) and reproductive health in the U.S., Britain and Europe, and their articles offer new human perspectives on the scientific information we have been presenting since 1991 (see REHW #263, #264, #323, #343, #365, #372, #377, #432, #438, #446, #447, #448). Here are some viewpoints that we have not previously offered our readers in our own coverage of this issue: ** Danish pediatric endocrinologist (hormone specialist) Niels E. Skakkebaek says that, in the late 1980s, We had also been wondering why it was so difficult for sperm banks to establish a core of donors. In some areas of Denmark, they were having to recruit ten potential donors to find one with good semen quality.[1,pg.43] ** So Skakkebaek in 1990 studied sperm quality in Danish men. He started with men working in nonhazardous office jobs and laborers who did not work directly with industrial chemicals or pesticides --men thought to be healthy. For decades it had been believed that the average man produced about a hundred million sperm per milliliter of semen, and of that about 20% was expected to be immobile. Skakkebaek reported that 84% of the Danish men he studied had sperm quality below the standards set by the World Health Organization. The men themselves seemed normal in every other respect.[1,pg.43] ** On the basis of the world's medical literature, Skakkebaek calculates that in 1940 the average sperm count was 113 million per milliliter, and that 50 years later it had fallen to 66 million. [1,pg.44] ** Still more serious is a three-fold increase in men whose sperm count was below 20 million--the point at which their fertility would be jeopardized.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, just as in Denmark, the number of donors with good-quality sperm has become distressingly low. As early as 1981, researchers at the Washington Fertility Study Center reported that sperm count of their donors, who were largely medical students, had suffered a steady decline over the previous eight years. The researchers worried that, if the decline continued at the same rate, within the decade there would be no potential donors who could meet the approved or recommended standards.[1,pg.44] ** The fact is that the number of morphologically normal sperm [meaning sperm with a normal shape] produced by the average man has dropped below the level of those of a hamster, which has testicles a fraction the size of a man's.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of infertile couples has risen from 14.4 in 1965 to 18.5 in 1995. Infertility is defined as failure to produce a child after a year of normal sex.[1,pg.44] ** There has been little published research comparing racial and ethnic sperm counts, particularly in Africa and many Third World countries. But the studies that we do have show low counts nearly everywhere: the latest count in Nigeria is 64 million per milliliter; in Pakistan, 79.5 million; in Germany, 78 million; in Hong Kong, 62
Re: Global crash imminent?
At 06/10/02 09:43 -0400, you wrote: Global crash fears as German bank sinks Faisal Islam, economics correspondent and Will Hutton Sunday October 6, 2002 The Observer Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis. A leaked email about the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank, yesterday increased fears of the international stock market malaise exploding into a fully-fledged banking crisis. Commerzbank lost a quarter of its value last week, raising the spectre of Credit-anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in 1931, sparking global depression. US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow In the US, the concern is that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has insufficient room to cut interest rates if the economy falls into recession. 'The [Bush] Administration has two lines of action: tax relief for the rich [and] reliance on the Federal Reserve. Both are without effect,' says US economist JK Galbraith in an interview with The Observer. I agree with the various contributors on various lists who have clipped this article. It looks potentially very significant. It brings to mind Long Term Capital Management which Greenspan got the Fed to bail out to prevent contagion spreading from the Asian financial crisis to the capitalist heartlands in 1998. How could Commerzbank be rescued now? But this headline, and Will Hutton is very perceptive, chimed with a headline one week ago in the International Herald Tribune suggesting that the ability of all the central banks to prevent global recession is close to exhaustion. G-7 hints at need for new stimulus The global economy is recovering more slowly than anticipated, finance ministers from the group of seven industrial countries concluded Sunday [Sept 29], adding that stimulus measures may be needed to bolster economic growth. The US Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, pressed his European and Japanese counterparts to use structural reforms and other economic policies to sustain consumer demand and create multiple engines of global growth. For the US treasury secretary to suggest that the USA cannot be the single engine stimulating global growth is in itself a bit of a come down. That was the deal in 1998 when the central banks of the capitalist heartlands all reduced interest rates together to permit the USA to be that engine, to preserve them from the Asian plague. But the logic of O'Neill's appeal is now that there should be multiple engines. That is close to saying that the global economy should be stimulated in its own right. But that is too much of a conceptual leap for him to articulate. Let us try to look at what is going on from a marxist point of view (why not?). The only way out of a recession is to deepen exploitation or to destroy a portion of old capital. That means killing off a portion of dead labour in order that living labour can continue to produce commodities, and surplus value for the capitalists, who must accumulate. The choreographed reduction of interest rates by central imperialist banks has been successful in keeping the economies of the advanced capitalist countries in circulation, by postponing a financial crisis. It has done this partly at the expense of the savings of hundreds of millions of working people, who now find that their pensions are being drastically cut. They are the suckers of the capitalist boom, to use the terminology of Niall Ferguson in the article from the FT I quoted above, Full Marx. But the major capitalist/imperialist countries are close to zero or negative interest rates. This has become counterproductive as a way of boosting consumer spending. Consumer spending is close to dipping down. What is the logic of this crisis and O'Neill's plea? It is that the next step is to issue IMF special drawing rights on a large scale to increase the purchasing power of the masses in the non-imperialist heartlands, including in countries like Argentina and Brazil. And why not put his friend Bono in charge of a massive development fund for Africa? The dilemma is this: increasing the total pool of world money, dilutes the relative share of it attibutable to the USA. This therefore relatively destroys a percentage of the total capital of the USA and the freedom with which its privileged population can buy commodities from across the world. It would in fact threaten to dethrone the dollar as the nearest thing we have at present to world money. It was done before during the oil price rises in the 70's. Capitalism
Re: Denis Dutton's website goes belly up
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dutton, a New Zealand professor hailing originally from the USA, first attracted attention for handing out Bad Writing awards each year to people like Judith Butler. At the time, I was a big fan of Alan Sokal and greeted these awards with great relish just as I reacted to Alan's spoof in Social Text. Subsequently I learned that not every swipe at postmodernism is a sign that you are on the side of the angels. The animosity directed against postmodernist relativism can often drift into a kind of reactionary belief in Absolute Values such as the supremacy of the capitalist system, the right to smoke cigarettes in restaurants ... Tsk, tsk. I don't know what Marx would have made of conflating the evils of capitalism with those of secondary smoke, but, yes, Arts Letters Daily was quite a mixed bag: many interesting articles combined with a great many more instances of tiresome right-wing claptrap. Not surprising to learn Dutton is a con man. As Lou notes, Dutton isn't going away; his new site, Philosophy Literature -- http://www.philosophyandliterature.com/ -- is almost identical to ALD. Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Global crash imminent?
Chris Burford: Let us try to look at what is going on from a marxist point of view (why not?). The only way out of a recession is to deepen exploitation or to destroy a portion of old capital. That means killing off a portion of dead labour in order that living labour can continue to produce commodities, and surplus value for the capitalists, who must accumulate. What's particularly Marxist about this observation. Joseph Schumpter said something similar with respect to creative destruction. Marxism is not characterized by an understanding of the inner mechanisms of the business cycle, but by a belief that socialism can and must arise out of these periodic crises. What is the logic of this crisis and O'Neill's plea? It is that the next step is to issue IMF special drawing rights on a large scale to increase the purchasing power of the masses in the non-imperialist heartlands, including in countries like Argentina and Brazil. And why not put his friend Bono in charge of a massive development fund for Africa? And why not put Oprah Winfrey in charge of the Federal Reserve while we're at it. Capitalism has had to learn over the decades during crises that it can be very resilient so long as it ensures that the accumulation of surplus value from living labour can continue. That may require looking at an economy as a whole, and ensuring it is managed as a whole. Even at the cost of some public engineering works. In a crunch, the opportunity to coninue to exploit living labour is far more important than the maintenance of the tribute to dead labour (capital in unperforming sectors of the economy). Why don't you pass this helpful observation on to Paul O'Neill while you're at it. When Marxists think in terms of how to manage crisis rather than overthrowing the system that generates it, we need a new definition of Marxism. Maybe that's the appeal of ex-Communists in Great Britain going to work for Tony Blair. They can have their cake and eat it too. Can't you see that poodle sitting down at lunch with somebody who used to sell newspapers with a hammer-and-sickle on it to discuss how to manage the mess that the European economy is in? You need a new John Dos Passos to limn such rot in the comic detail it deserves. A Keynesian type of package to reflate the *whole* global economy could only work if it is lucky by bringing more fully into production the means of production in the middle and outer orbits of the global imperialist economy - by allowing investment so that the labour power in these economies becomes much more productive. It would be easier to pull yourself off the ground by your hair. It is like watching a juggler keeping so many plates spinning on the top of sticks. Fascinating to see which one will drop first. The Commerzbank story suggests it might be Germany and Europe. But it could be the USA, because its fundamentals will leave it more vulnerable to wobble, if a financial crisis starts to effect the core of the imperialist world economy. Let us hope so. Hope is for the religiously inclined. What we need is a revolutionary will and the clarity of mind to understand that the bourgeoisie and the working class have nothing in common. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
The Dursts have odd properties
A while back PEN-L'er Ellen Frank asked who created the Debt Clock in Times Square. It turned out to be real estate developer Seymour Durst, who somebody then characterized as eccentric. For more on his clan, check the NY Times Magazine section from yesterday: --- The Dursts Have Odd Properties By JAMES TRAUB Over the course of the last decade, a new Times Square has grown up in the place of the old -- a global entertainment-finance-media nexus of glass towers, with themed restaurants and megastores on their ground floors offering a wholesome and, on the whole, ingeniously engineered version of the famously carnivalesque atmosphere of the seedy Times Square of generations past. It is, by now, an almost wholly self-consistent world -- ''totalized,'' as the academics say. But the bubble has not yet fully closed; a few oddities still flourish. Immediately to the east of the immense, glittering bulk of the Conde Nast Building, which is on the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, is a peculiar little arts complex situated in a string of dingy buildings. Until a few months ago, the sign above the little structure next door to the Conde Nast Building featured a version of the American flag, an outline of a hand clutching a can of spray paint and the slogan, ''Declare Independence From Corporate Rule'' -- a furious protest at all that Times Square has become. It was, at the same time, a familiar enough script in New York: intransigent holdout mocks the ambitions of overweening developer. But the actual script turned out to be far stranger, for Chashama, as the arts center is called, is in fact the creation of Anita Durst, whose father, Douglas, is the developer who owns the Conde Nast Building. And Douglas is, in turn, the son of Seymour Durst, who amassed the family's vast holdings in the West 40's. Times Square is a place that every generation reimagines and reshapes. And though there is an overwhelming sense of finality about this Times Square -- the glass-tower-theme-park one -- perhaps the truth is that Times Square is always open-ended, provisional, transitory. Maybe every Durst gets a Times Square of his own. I first met Anita Durst in late March. She was sitting in her cubbyhole office on the second floor of 135 West 42nd, the Chashama office, lightly bouncing on one of those big blue balls said to be therapeutic. She was, when she stood up, tall and slender, with a ferociously cropped skullcap of black hair and the almond eyes of a Modigliani set in a narrow, triangular face. She is, at 34, the kind of woman who could war with her beauty and still look beautiful. We proceeded to have an oddly disjointed conversation; her speech was so stilted and hesitant that she appeared to be struggling with the medium of language. I later learned that as a child she had been severely dyslexic, and that she still had trouble memorizing lines for a part. Though trained as an actress, Anita was drawn to the kind of avant-garde work that often didn't require much in the way of speech. Two years ago, she played a mute and sullen secretary in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's ''Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant''; a critic in this newspaper described her as ''spectacularly creepy.'' Anita is something of a den mother for the antiglobalist left; earlier this year, in fact, Chashama was host of the Intergalactic Convention of Anarchists. But Anita herself does not appear to be against anything -- certainly not her family. The Durst Organization owns or leases virtually the entire block from Conde Nast east to Sixth Avenue, and her father has allowed her to use four or five storefronts, which alternate with the Peep-O-Rama, Tad's Steaks and a Duane Reade. She had been very close to her grandfather Seymour, who died seven years ago, and, though it sounds strange, she sees Chashama as a fulfillment of her curmudgeonly grandfather's own view of the world. ''My grandfather hated Disney,'' she said. ''He always said Times Square was meant to be built up by the community. That was one of his bottom lines.'' full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/magazine/06DURST.html Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Oil and sperm
Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Yeah, but who's counting? Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
Sabri Oncu wrote: It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Joseph Stiglitz says Korea's doing well because it ignored the IMF's advice. Does anyone really know what's going on there? Doug
Re Otto Reich
I'll say it was effective. My first encounter with NPR when I spent a half-year at Cornell in 1987-88 was hearing a vomitous romanticization of the contras as guitar-strumming guerrileros. Obviously something written to please Reich. He warned the journalists that his office would be monitoring NPR's broadcasts. Buzenberg later suggested that Reich's attempt to intimidate people at NPR had been effective. He recounted in a speech how an editor had asked him, with regard to one of his stories, 'What would Otto Reich think?' Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Global crash imminent?
At 06/10/02 09:43 -0400, you wrote: Global crash fears as German bank sinks Faisal Islam, economics correspondent and Will Hutton Sunday October 6, 2002 The Observer Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis. A leaked email about the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank, yesterday increased fears of the international stock market malaise exploding into a fully-fledged banking crisis. Commerzbank lost a quarter of its value last week, raising the spectre of Credit-anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in 1931, sparking global depression. US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow In the US, the concern is that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has insufficient room to cut interest rates if the economy falls into recession. 'The [Bush] Administration has two lines of action: tax relief for the rich [and] reliance on the Federal Reserve. Both are without effect,' says US economist JK Galbraith in an interview with The Observer. I agree with the various contributors on various lists who have clipped this article. It looks potentially very significant. It brings to mind Long Term Capital Management which Greenspan got the Fed to bail out to prevent contagion spreading from the Asian financial crisis to the capitalist heartlands in 1998. How could Commerzbank be rescued now? But this headline, and Will Hutton is very perceptive, chimed with a headline one week ago in the International Herald Tribune suggesting that the ability of all the central banks to prevent global recession is close to exhaustion. G-7 hints at need for new stimulus The global economy is recovering more slowly than anticipated, finance ministers from the group of seven industrial countries concluded Sunday [Sept 29], adding that stimulus measures may be needed to bolster economic growth. The US Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, pressed his European and Japanese counterparts to use structural reforms and other economic policies to sustain consumer demand and create multiple engines of global growth. For the US treasury secretary to suggest that the USA cannot be the single engine stimulating global growth is in itself a bit of a come down. That was the deal in 1998 when the central banks of the capitalist heartlands all reduced interest rates together to permit the USA to be that engine, to preserve them from the Asian plague. But the logic of O'Neill's appeal is now that there should be multiple engines. That is close to saying that the global economy should be stimulated in its own right. But that is too much of a conceptual leap for him to articulate. Let us try to look at what is going on from a marxist point of view (why not?). The only way out of a recession is to deepen exploitation or to destroy a portion of old capital. That means killing off a portion of dead labour in order that living labour can continue to produce commodities, and surplus value for the capitalists, who must accumulate. The choreographed reduction of interest rates by central imperialist banks has been successful in keeping the economies of the advanced capitalist countries in circulation, by postponing a financial crisis. It has done this partly at the expense of the savings of hundreds of millions of working people, who now find that their pensions are being drastically cut. They are the suckers of the capitalist boom, to use the terminology of Niall Ferguson in the article from the FT I quoted above, Full Marx. But the major capitalist/imperialist countries are close to zero or negative interest rates. This has become counterproductive as a way of boosting consumer spending. Consumer spending is close to dipping down. What is the logic of this crisis and O'Neill's plea? It is that the next step is to issue IMF special drawing rights on a large scale to increase the purchasing power of the masses in the non-imperialist heartlands, including in countries like Argentina and Brazil. And why not put his friend Bono in charge of a massive development fund for Africa? The dilemma is this: increasing the total pool of world money, dilutes the relative share of it attibutable to the USA. This therefore relatively destroys a percentage of the total capital of the USA and the freedom with which its privileged population can buy commodities from across the world. It would in fact threaten to dethrone the dollar as the nearest thing we have at present to world money. It was done before
Re: Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
Korean workers' resistance has been relatively strong. Other than that I don't know of how the country has been resisting the IMF. As I understood it, Korea wanted to join with the big boys so it reformed its financial sector in the mid 90s, leading to all kinds of trouble. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 12:50:45PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Sabri Oncu wrote: It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Joseph Stiglitz says Korea's doing well because it ignored the IMF's advice. Does anyone really know what's going on there? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
question answer
Now THERE'S a question that is it's own answer! How would a US professor do coming on like that? On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 07:38:48PM -0700, Dan Scanlan wrote: Professor Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist, said in response to the report that the British have every right to feel degraded and humiliated at our government's cringing subservience to the illiterate, uncouth, unelected cowboy in the White House. http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/
Re: question answer
Someone in an obscure position like mine can speak up, but once they have a platform in the media, On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 10:04:15AM -0700, Dan Scanlan wrote: Now THERE'S a question that is it's own answer! How would a US professor do coming on like that? On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 07:38:48PM -0700, Dan Scanlan wrote: Professor Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist, said in response to the report that the British have every right to feel degraded and humiliated at our government's cringing subservience to the illiterate, uncouth, unelected cowboy in the White House. http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
employment
Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30986] Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 12:50:45 -0400 Sabri Oncu wrote: It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Joseph Stiglitz says Korea's doing well because it ignored the IMF's advice. Does anyone really know what's going on there? Doug The following papers by left-Keynesian James Crotty et. al. may help: http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/PS5.pdf http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/WP23.pdf http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/PS9.pdf From: http://www.umass.edu/peri/research.html#gm -Frank G. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: employment
Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? -- Michael Perelman Frankly, I would be skeptical about labor statistics at this point considering all of the garbage that came down the pike about corporate profitability in the 1990s. We have a tendency to put a halo around data coming from impartial government sources, but when you really get down to it, the top directors of such agencies come from the same class that made Enron possible. From Bureau of Labor Statistics website: Kathleen P. Utgoff Commissioner* --- The Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1995 Firms must disclose underfunded pensions Large companies that do not have enough money in their pension plans to pay promised benefits must send their workers letters this year disclosing the shortfall and the potential consequences under a new federal rule. (clip) The need for many of the letters was questioned by Kathleen P. Utgoff*, who was the agency's executive director during President Ronald Reagan's second term. Most pension plans are very healthy, but that was true a year ago,'' said Utgoff, an economist who represents some of the large companies on the list. She said many healthy pension plans appear underfunded because the agency uses the wrong interest rate and the wrong mortality table. '' Utgoff contends that tables used by other government agencies are more reliable. Such tables would produce more favorable results for many large companies in projecting their pension liabilities. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Integrity at LA Times
The SF Chronicle ran a story this morning about the refusal of Gov Davis to allow a guest in the room during a planned debate today with Wm. Simon. Simon invited the Green candidate, Peter Camejo as his guest. The LA Times is quoted below as being concerned with integrity. Gene Coyle Today's long-awaited debate between Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and Republican Bill Simon could be scrapped over a dispute about what to do with Green Party candidate Peter Camejo. Simon has threatened to pull out if the Los Angeles Times, the debate's sponsor, does not allow Camejo to attend as his guest. Davis' campaign has said the governor won't show up if Camejo is even in the audience. Camejo said Sunday that he has been banned from the debate, invited to attend and then barred once again by the Times, all in the course of a day. He plans to be there, invitation in hand, for the noon debate, which is the only one scheduled in the campaign. All I'm asking for is the most minimal respect, he said. If the governor is so insane that he won't debate Bill Simon because I'm in the room, that's his problem, not mine. The Times responded Sunday afternoon with a prepared statement saying that Camejo is not going to be allowed in the newspaper's downtown headquarters, where the debate is scheduled to take place. The Camejo campaign has made several attempts to place their candidate into the debate or into the media room on the debate day, David Garcia, a spokesman for the Times, said in the statement. This pattern of behavior has led us to decide that we're not willing to risk the integrity of the debate by allowing Camejo to attend. snip
Re: Integrity at LA Times
The SF Chronicle ran a story this morning about the refusal of Gov Davis to allow a guest in the room during a planned debate today with Wm. Simon. Simon invited the Green candidate, Peter Camejo as his guest. The LA Times is quoted below as being concerned with integrity. Gene Coyle Camejo is an ex-friend of mine from long ago. We worked closely together in the early 1980s to launch a new Marxist formation but he soon discovered that social investing was his real passion. The Green Party is a perfect match for his talents. Like the ex-CP'ers around Tony Blair, it allows him to have his cake and eat it too. This was the response of an LA ex-Trotskyist to this article on Marxmail: The article makes Peter appear to be a spoiler in this race, but it's really the LA Times which is spoiling the event by not even allowing Peter into the room. Supporters of the Camejo campaign will picket the event. Walter === Camejo wrote a rebuttal to Robert Brenner in Against these Current shortly after his NLR article came out. It displayed an irrational exuberance that very likely reflected his vested interest in the bull market. My rebuttal to Camejo's rebuttal is at: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/economics/peter_camejos_long_wave_l.htm Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
We Build The Internet. WebXperts Design, Inc. (Design / Programming / Consultation)
Title: We Build The Internet. WebXperts Design, Inc. If This Flyer does not appear correctly and/or images do not appear, please click the following link: www.webxwireless.com Your email address was obtained from a purchased list. You are receiving this from Eluxmedia LLC, and are a part of their mailing list. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, please click here and enter your name into the remove box. If you have previously unsubscribed and are still receiving this message, you may email our Abuse Control Center.
Oil Be Seeing You
http://www.sundayherald.com/print28224 http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/Pubs/workingpapers/cfrbipp_energy/energyc fr.pdf
Greenspan on risk management apologetics
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan Banking At the annual convention of the American Bankers Association, Phoenix, Arizona (via satellite) October 7, 2002 It is a pleasure to once again join the members of the American Bankers Association at your annual meeting. This morning I would like to explore the apparent incongruity between the recent substantial losses on corporate credits and the continued strength of the U.S. banking system. Over the past two or three years, the U.S. financial system has suffered a sharp run-up in corporate bond defaults, business failures, and investor losses. At commercial banks, troubled loans--including charge-offs, classified loans, and delinquent credits--have also climbed to quite high levels. At the same time, banks in this country remain quite healthy--with strong profits and rates of return and with capital and reserves not much below recent historical highs. Our banks have been able to retain their strength in this business cycle, in contrast to the early 1990s when so many either failed or had near-death experiences. Why is this? The answer may tell us much about the changes in our financial and economic system over the intervening dozen years or so. Part of the answer, of course, is that the real economy was different during these two intervals. The most recent recession was less severe and centered mainly in the business sector. After years of rapid growth, capital spending plunged as firms realized that investments in capital goods, especially in the telecommunication and other high-tech sectors, were excessive. The financing of this high level of spending with debt, which was seen as prudent when equity valuations were high, led to a rise in defaults when firms were no longer able to repay bank loans and other debt through equity issuance in a depressed stock market. In contrast, despite the substantial destruction of wealth reflected in the decline in equity prices, households, encouraged by ongoing increases in income and housing wealth, have maintained their expenditures. Low mortgage rates encouraged households to purchase both new and existing homes, the latter enabling sellers to extract large amounts of home equity, previously enhanced by capital gains. Low rates also encouraged refinanced mortgage cash outs and rapid expansion of home equity loans. Consumer and mortgage loans have not suffered the sharp run-up in delinquencies that loans in the business sector have, and they have contributed significantly to the earnings of the banking system, providing it with the ability to absorb losses elsewhere, to maintain loss reserves, and still to show significant profits. Those banks with relatively large exposures to the business sector and insufficient offsets from other earning flows were able to avoid stresses because they entered the period with both substantial capital and reserves. These positions reflected not just diligent supervision and the Basel I capital reforms but also a marketplace that increasingly demands strength in financial institutions that serve as counterparties in frontier financial risk-management transactions. And bank managers who lived through the late 1980s and early 1990s found capital buffers comforting as well as useful. That banks had impressive earnings and balance sheets going into the current period of stress is of key significance. The strong balance sheets lowered funding costs and provided needed buffers. Some banks also benefited from the increased diversification and scale of their operations that had resulted from previous consolidations. The larger banks were better able not only to spread their portfolio risks across a wider range of customers but also to broaden their funding sources. An analysis of the resiliency of the U.S. banking system would be far from complete without a recognition of the new techniques in risk management that have been applied in banking during the past few years. To be sure, at most banks the application of these practices has just begun, and even the most advanced banks still have significant strides to make. Nonetheless, the efforts to quantify risk have provided management with a far more disciplined and structured process for evaluating credits, pricing risk, and deciding which credits to retain. In the process, banks are becoming much less dependent on the analysis and subjective judgments of lending officers. Although such judgments in the end are indispensable to the lending process, a methodical, systematic, and quantitative review of facts--including the effects of material new exposures on the lender's consolidated risk--provides a greater depth to risk management than we have had in decades past. Improved risk management and technology have also facilitated, of course, the growth of markets for securitized assets and the emergence of entirely new financial instruments--such as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. These instruments have been used to
FW: Russian strategists debate the future
TITLE: MAIN REMARKS AT A ROUND TABLE ON IRAQ, GEORGIA, BUSH DOCTRINE AND RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS [UL. MOSFILMOVSKAYA, 40, 15:10, OCTOBER 2, 2002] SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/) [Alexei] Pushkov: Let us start our Round Table meeting. Let me begin by saying that as always, American imperialism has sprung a surprise on us. Dim Simes has not come. He has been infected. I don't know by whom. Voice: Iraqis. Pushkov: I don't know. The Iraqis or al Qaeda. He called me yesterday and said he was running a fever and he canceled his trip to Russia. So, he cannot physically take part in our Round Table. Which is a pity because he could have given us an authentic picture of what is happening in the United States around Iraq. But since this is the 11th Round Table organized by Postscriptum program and the previous ten round tables took place without Simes -- I am told that he did take part in one Round Table -- so, nine round tables took place without him. But I hope any way that it will be just as successful without him. Our discussion will focus not so much on the Russian-American perspective as on the Russian perspective. That is, in what situation do we find ourselves in connection with the recent developments. I will permit myself to make a brief introduction just to outline the main parameters of the discussion. First, it is obvious that Iraq is just a field where a very powerful world-wide trend is manifesting itself. And if it weren't Iraq, it would have been some other country. The trend is as follows. To prevent the United States becoming a latter-day Roman Empire, and to prevent the establishment of a Pax Americana is practically impossible. But there are empires and empires. Some empires have unlimited sway and some have limited sway. There are reasonable empires and unreasonable empires. The question is, what will the United States be like and accordingly, what will we be like. And the question is whether Vladimir Putin would like to become a governor of one of the provinces in this empire or to be a partner, if not an equal partner, who will take part in solution of issues that affect the new empire and the destinies of the world. This is the choice facing Putin, but it also faces the whole nation because with all due respect, even if he is reelected in 2004, his tenure is finite. Meanwhile, for Russia this will continue to be a dilemma. Iraq is only the beginning. That was my first point. Second point. The second point is that we have had signals indicating that international events will go in this direction. The first signal was the situation around Bosnia. It was very complicated, involving as it did ethnic conflicts and so on and not everybody could get the message. The second failed signal was Somalia when the Americans had to retreat when they met with stiff resistance from Somalian warlords. And the third and most convincing signal was Kosovo. Obviously, Kosovo was to be followed by something else. Let me remind you that the Pentagon is seriously discussing a report on what is to be done next, after Iraq. The issue of Iraq has practically been closed. What next? Several influential intellectuals in America led by Ronald Asmus, one of the three people who first promoted the idea of NATO expansion to the East in 1993. That is, they made that idea public triggering a debate in America. They were Asmus, Kruger and Talbott. Asmus leads a group which says that the next task of American policy and NATO is to bring about a change of regime in Iran. If you raise this issue in Washington today everybody will tell you, who is listening to Asmus. This is some strange piece of paper. I've been hearing from the Americans for ten years, don't pay attention to it. In 1993 I was told, don't pay any attention to it. You must be mad to talk about the Baltic countries joining NATO. This is impossible. Now the Baltics are in NATO. Then they started talking about Ukraine joining NATO. You must be crazy, I was told. But now we see that Kuchma is about to be replaced and three years later Ukraine will be a member of NATO. Obviously, this is an on-going trend and we will see a progressive change in the world order. Nobody will stop at Iraq. It won't be a one-off affair like after September 11 when America had to be backed, what with the national syndrome and so on. This is my second point. Point three. On September 20, America adopted a new national security doctrine, a very interesting doctrine developed by Condoleezza Rice. Condoleezza Rice is a very charming and intelligent woman, she obviously tries to emulate George Kennan who in his time thought up the doctrine of deterrence which for some 40 years formed the content of America's foreign policy. The new doctrine, called the Bush Doctrine, or Preemptive Action Doctrine boils down to two points. First, the United States should promote a balance of forces
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30994] Re: employment Even though pension numbers are iffy, the employment numbers are calculated using a relatively simple sample survey. One of the things that they indicate is that even though (in recent months) the over-all unemployment rate has fallen, so has employment. A lot of people have left the labor force (those with jobs + those actively seeking employment). In fact, some have gone back to college. Others are discouraged workers. For example, employment by businesses has fallen from 132,135 thousand in Sept. 2001 to 131,151 thousand in Sept. 2002 (not seasonally adjusted). (This is from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t11.htm.) Over the same period, the unemployment rate including discouraged workers rose from 4.9 to 5.6 percent (n.s.a.) (From: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm.) The most common view I've seen is that the stats indicate that even if we avoid the second dip of the Dubya recession, the economy is growing too slowly to provide enough jobs to avoid rising unemployment -- or constant high unemployment. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? -- Michael Perelman Frankly, I would be skeptical about labor statistics at this point considering all of the garbage that came down the pike about corporate profitability in the 1990s. We have a tendency to put a halo around data coming from impartial government sources, but when you really get down to it, the top directors of such agencies come from the same class that made Enron possible. From Bureau of Labor Statistics website: Kathleen P. Utgoff Commissioner* --- The Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1995 Firms must disclose underfunded pensions Large companies that do not have enough money in their pension plans to pay promised benefits must send their workers letters this year disclosing the shortfall and the potential consequences under a new federal rule. (clip) The need for many of the letters was questioned by Kathleen P. Utgoff*, who was the agency's executive director during President Ronald Reagan's second term. Most pension plans are very healthy, but that was true a year ago,'' said Utgoff, an economist who represents some of the large companies on the list. She said many healthy pension plans appear underfunded because the agency uses the wrong interest rate and the wrong mortality table. '' Utgoff contends that tables used by other government agencies are more reliable. Such tables would produce more favorable results for many large companies in projecting their pension liabilities. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
RE: Re: Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30993] Re: Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy here's the abstract from the second paper listed below: This paper evaluates the neoliberal economic restructuring process implemented in Korea following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We first argue that the austerity macroeconomic policy of late 1997 and early 1998 was the main cause of the economic collapse in 1998, and that the decision of the IMF and President Kim Dae Jung to impose a radical neoliberal transformation of financial markets and large industrial firms in the depressed conditions of 1998, though defensible on political grounds, made the failure of these reforms virtually inevitable. A detailed analysis of the macro economy, labor markets, financial markets, and nonfinancial firms in Korea in the past three and one-half years shows that neoliberal restructuring has created a vicious cycle in which a perpetually weak financial sector fails to provide the capital needed for real sector growth, investment and financial robustness, while real sector financial fragility continuously weakens financial firms. Neoliberal policies may have pushed Korea onto a low-investment, low-growth, development path, one with rising insecurity and inequality. Meanwhile, the removal of virtually all restrictions on cross-border capital flows has led to a dramatic increase in the influence of foreign capital in Korea's economy. The paper concludes by arguing that Korea should reject radical neoliberal restructuring and instead adopt reforms designed to democratize and modernize its traditional state-guided growth model. from the third: Over the last two years, South Korea's economy has recovered from the 1997 East Asian economic crisis faster than anyone expected. Indeed, Korea has become the new poster child for the freemarket or neoliberal economic restructuring the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is peddling to a suspicious public in the developing world. In early 2000 the IMF touted Korea's dramatic turnaround after the crisis. Not only was Korea's output above what it had been before the crisis but, the IMF gleefully proclaimed, over the past two years bold policies and a commitment to reform have made Korea a more open, competitive, and market driven economy. There is a more pessimistic interpretation of Korea's experience under IMF and U.S.-sponsored economic restructuring since late 1997. The harsh policies the IMF imposed on Korea immediately after the start of the Asian crisis actually caused the Korean economy's 1998 collapse. Now, three years later, Korea faces an unbalanced recovery of questionable durability and a labor movement badly, perhaps fatally, wounded by neoliberalism, while the majority of its people suffer rising insecurity and falling incomes. If the IMF and the U.S. government succeed in their drive to transform Korea from an East Asian-style state-guided economy to a market-driven, globalized economy, future progressive political movements will find it exceedingly difficult to create an efficient, egalitarian economic system designed to meet the needs of the majority of its people. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: F G [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 10:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30993] Re: Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30986] Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 12:50:45 -0400 Sabri Oncu wrote: It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Joseph Stiglitz says Korea's doing well because it ignored the IMF's advice. Does anyone really know what's going on there? Doug The following papers by left-Keynesian James Crotty et. al. may help: http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/PS5.pdf http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/WP23.pdf http://www.umass.edu/peri/pdfs/PS9.pdf From: http://www.umass.edu/peri/research.html#gm -Frank G. _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
German Commerzbank isn't really in trouble?
Title: German Commerzbank isn't really in trouble? [in a recent e-mail, someone likened this bank to the Creditanstalt, the failure of which helped trigger world depression in the 1930s.] Commerzbank may sue Merrill over email Jill Treanor Monday October 7, 2002 The Guardian Germany's Commerzbank may take legal action against Merrill Lynch after the Wall Street firm questioned its financial health. The query made to the Standard Poor's ratings agency by Merrill Lynch's credit department was blamed for a 6% fall in the bank's share price on Friday in markets already very concerned about the strength of financial firms. The falls in share prices and the general deterioration in the economic backdrop have led to fears - so far unfounded - that European financial firms are facing severe difficulties. Merrill Lynch insisted yesterday it was mystified as to how what it regarded a routine inquiry to the ratings agency became public. The Wall Street firm's queries prompted an angry denial by Commerzbank which said it had not suffered losses in the derivatives markets so large that rivals would not deal with it. A spokesman for the German bank said: We don't have any specific problems with liquidity or losses on derivatives. The bank, which has a large investment banking arm in the City, is thought to be considering whether it should make a legal claim against Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch refused to comment on the prospect of court action by Commerzbank, which is one of its clients. Paul Roy, co-head of the global markets operation at Merrill Lynch, tried to play down the nature of the email to Standard Poor's which he said had been blown out of proportion. In an attempt to soothe the market's nerves, he insisted that Merrill was still doing business with Commerzbank. This over-reaction is part and parcel of the nervous frame of mind of the market at the moment, Mr Roy added. We have made no change in our credit policy for Commerzbank. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
US GM food aid
Title: US GM food aid US 'dumping unsold GM food on Africa' John Vidal Monday October 7, 2002 The Guardian Two leading international environment and development groups accused the US yesterday of manipulating the southern African food crisis to benefit their GM food interests and of using the UN to distribute domestic food surpluses which could not otherwise find a market. In response to criticism by senior US officials that they have been playing with people's lives by encouraging countries to resist GM food sent as aid, Greenpeace and Actionaid also accused the US government's overseas aid body of offering only GM food when conventional foods were available. The US, the largest donor to the crisis affecting more than 14 million people in six countries, has offered more than $266m (180m) of GM maize to southern Africa through the UN World Food Programme. But while the EU and other countries have mostly given money for countries to buy food on the open market, US food aid to southern Africa has been tied to heavily subsidised GM food grown only in the US. Greenpeace accused the US government and the biotech industry of using the aid system as a covert subsidy for US farmers. Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique have accepted the GM food but Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe are reluctant to import it in seed form. They fear that farmers may plant some of the seeds, and that it may affect both their environment and future food exports. Yesterday Andrew Natsios, the head of the US agency for international development (USAid), rejected the accusations and said that it was bound by Congress to offer food and not money. There is no way that any responsible country can deal with this drought with cash for work, he said. The food deficit in southern Africa is so big that there's no way people can buy it on the local market. It has to come from outside. We offered non-GM foods but they all declined to accept it. We would have preferred to send non-GM wheat, or rice but they only wanted maize. We tried to source non-GM maize but the industry said they could not guarantee that it was GM-free. Mr Natsios denied that the US was profiting from the crisis. They [the critics] may know about the environment, but they don't know about famine relief, he said. Starving people do not plant seeds. They eat them. These groups are putting millions of lives at risk in a despicable way. But he was not supported by the latest UN figures on food availability in the region, which showed that 1,160,000 tonnes of cereals are available in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. More than double that amount is available on the world market, according to the UN's global information and early warning system. This shows that the alternative to rejecting GM food aid is not starvation, Alice Wynne Wilson, of Actionaid, said. Good practice in emergency aid is to provide cash support to the UN's World Food Programme, so that it can buy grain from the most cost-effective sources. Bringing large volumes of food into a region that has areas of surplus can lead to a situation where there are food shortages in one part of a country, and locally produced food rotting in other parts. Yesterday both the Zambian and Malawian governments said that they could easily source non-GM food locally if they had the resources. SK Mubukwanu, the Zambian high commissioner in London, said: We can get more than 200,000 tonnes from South Africa and our neighbours. All we need is help with the logistics. We have sent our scientists to Europe, the US, to find out more and they should be reporting back soon. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: employment
Devine, James wrote: Even though pension numbers are iffy, the employment numbers are calculated using a relatively simple sample survey. And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. One of the things that they indicate is that even though (in recent months) the over-all unemployment rate has fallen, so has employment. There are some strange seasonal adjustment quirks that may be affecting the unemployment figure - for example, all the drop in unemployment for September was the result of a fall in teen unemployment, a calculation that's highly complicated by back-to-school adjustments. Employment - as measured by the survey of employers, not households - is basically flat. Were this a normal recovery, employment would be rising by around 300-400k/mo; instead, it's virtually unchanged from December 2001. Doug
Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: Employment has held up fairly well. Where are the new jobs coming from to balance off the large layoffs in the news? If you're talking about layoff announcements from large public corps of the sort collected by Challenger, Gray, Christmas in their monthly tally - well, they're fairly meaningless. They don't correlate with employment numbers or the BLS's count of mass layoffs. The reason is that lots of them are PR intended to please stockholders and scare workers into productive submission. Or they're a cover for replacing older, expensive workers with younger, cheaper ones. Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought In his column, Main problem in Quebec is the government itself, (Gazette, Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the United States. Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually registered as unemployed. The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: US GM food aid
On Monday, October 7, 2002 at 13:50:31 (-0700) Devine, James writes: US 'dumping unsold GM food on Africa' ... But while the EU and other countries have mostly given money for countries to buy food on the open market, US food aid to southern Africa has been tied to heavily subsidised GM food grown only in the US. ... Gee, sounds like the Marshall Plan all over again, don't it? I'm shocked, shocked to learn this... Bill
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought In his column, Main problem in Quebec is the government itself, (Gazette, Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the United States. Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually registered as unemployed. The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
Michael Perelman wrote: I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. Doug I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: Well, damn, I only spend my life with this stuff, so I guess I'm at a disadvantage not having just done a five minute Lexis search. The reason we know how many discouraged workers there are - and how many people are classified as not in labor force - want job now (BLS series ID LFS7300) - is because the BLS counts them and publishes the data regularly. Ditto part time for economic reasons, other measures of marginal labor force attachment, and the employment/population ratio. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31008] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment Michael Perelman: I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the discouraged workers being excluded. The BLS currently calculates an unemployment rate that includes discouraged workers. In fact, I cited it in my previous missive on this subject. But such matters are transparent, not the result of skulduggery. Even if the estimates are totally wrong, there is no way that the BLS could hide the rise of unemployment. Unless, that is, they changed the definition of unemployment. This is something the Thatcherites did again and again, but in the US, it's only been done once: the Reaganauts decided that domestically-stationed U.S. military personnel should be counted as employed to lower the unemployment rate. This didn't have much effect and the attempt was eventually abandoned. This doesn't say that it won't be tried again, though. I guess an alternative method would be to tell the BLS samplers to be sloppy. But if that happened, it would come out pretty quickly. It's not like corporate finance, where it's easy to fudge if one has a captive board of directors and auditors. JD
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment
There are some minor differences in the definition/determination of the rate of unemployment in the various western, industrial countries. Canada's definition (I'm not sure exactly what the difference is) results in a rate that is slightly higher than the US definition, but most conform to the ILO definition which does not include the registered unemployed which greatly inflates the unemployment rate -- I think because it includes all those who register who want to change jobs and for other reasons. For instance, the Slovenian rate using the ILO method (similar to the US and Canadian method) is in the low 7% range, but using the registered method is in the 13-14% range. The ILO method is done by a labour force survey -- a sample survey of x number of households over a sample week. There is one problem in that workers are considered 'employed' if they work one hour per week. However, at least in Canada, we have statistics on the number of 'involuntary part-time' which allows for a truer estimate of unemployment and underemployment. (My estimates, for instance, show that in the late 90s, female unemployment was slightly higher than male unemployment due to involuntary part- time employment, whereas the basic statistic shows female unemployment slightly lower than male unemployment.) Also, the labour force survey also gives the numbers for discouraged workers so it is possible to correct the figures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that these corrections don't make *huge* changes in the reported rates, nothing comparable to the differences between the survey method and the 'registered' method. i.e. if the survey unemployment is 7%, the 'corrected' (for discouraged and involuntary part-time) rate will be ~ 10% compared with a registered rate of 14%. In any case, all countries adjusted rates tend to move together. Nevertheless, there are some differences in definition that make the published US rates lower than in other countries. My understanding is, however, that this is only a fraction of a per cent. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 14:39:46 -0700 From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:31008] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: employment Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I don't think that there is a contradiction between Doug and Lou. There > are criticism's about the method of calculating unemployment -- the > discouraged workers being excluded. But such matters are transparent, not > the result of skulduggery. > > On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > >And, fevered claims to the contrary, they're not cooked by Enron-style > > >accountancy. The people who collect and process the U.S. jobs data are > > >honest, competent professionals. If anything, the political sympathies of > > >BLS employees are slightly to the left of center. > > > > > >Doug > > > > I don't have time to delve into this question in any depth, but a five > > minute search on Lexis-Nexis turned up the following: > > > > The Gazette (Montreal), September 15, 1994, Thursday, FINAL EDITION > > > > U.S. jobless rate is much higher than commonly thought > > > > In his column, "Main problem in Quebec is the government itself," (Gazette, > > Sept. 8), Jay Bryan states that there isn't any excuse for our unemployment > > rate, 10.2 per cent in July 1994, to be nearly twice as high as that of the > > United States. > > > > Like so many others, Bryan appears to have been misled by the official U.S. > > employment figures, which commonly peg the American unemployment rate at > > somewhere around 6.4 per cent. U.S. unemployment figures are determined by > > polls, whereas most other nations use the number of persons actually > > registered as unemployed. > > > > The American means of determining unemployment levels is so inaccurate that > > both the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and the U.S. Bureau of > > Labor Statistics consider the official figures to be grossly inexact; in > > fact, their calculations led them to conclude that the real unemployment > > rate in the U.S., as of the end of 1993, is 12.47 per cent. > > > > Even the American Express Bank considers the official figures inaccurate > > and itself calculated a U.S. rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent. > > > > > > > > > > Louis Proyect > > www.marxmail.org > > > > -- > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 530-898-5321 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Re: employment
Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Doug Henwood wrote, Well, damn, I only spend my life with this stuff, so I guess I'm at a disadvantage not having just done a five minute Lexis search. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: employment
Tom wrote: Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Thank you Tom!.. There is a saying in Turkish that goes like this: Hislerime tercuman oldun. Which would literally translate as: You became a translator to my emotions. I know it sounds awkward in English but hey! Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! I hope, Sabri
Re: RE: Re: Tragedy on the docks: White House Warns of Economic Harm
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joanna: It's interesting that Bush has not treated this situation so far as Reagan did the air traffic controllers. Any speculation as to why he's holding off? I wrote: 1) the current situation is a lock-out, not a strike. Yes, but the union had already ordered a work slow down, so the PMA will say the lockout was preemptive and designed to pressure the union for a settlement. why should anyone believe the PMA? The union site itself talks about the slowdown. Who is going to believe the PMA? Perhaps the current president? 3) Bush's handlers think that they can blame the second dip of the Dubya recession on the long-shore union. Most Americans wouldn't even know what they are. I'd bet that most people in the U.S. can't find Iraq on a map, but the Bush propaganda machine has mobilized a lot to back his war there. Anyway, it's only the Wall Street jerks who need to be convinced on this. They'll repeat the blame the workers line enough so that it will become true-by-definition, as with blaming 911 for the 2001 recession. Yeah, but it's easier to do high elevation bombing of a country than a union. If these unions really are about challenging the system, why don't the east coast and Gulf longshoremen go out on strike in support of their western counterparts? That would certainly slow down the coming military strike against Iraq. Oh, I answered my own question. This misses the fact that there has been a persistent antagonism between the East West coast longshore unions. The East coast has a tradition of being mobbed up, while the West coast is more leftist in orientation. Yeah, sure. From what I see, the ILWU talks the talk and that is it. I support their right to collectively bargain and to go on strike. But Ted Daschle is their go-to man on the Hill, so like I said when it's time to pay the devil his due... CJannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: Re: employment
Tom Walker wrote: Well, gosh, I spend my life with this stuff, too as do the follks on the unemployment statistics list. Michael Perelman is right. There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. But I also said that the agency produces additional numbers that give you a more accurate idea of what's going on under a better definition of unemployment. The unemployment rate is a measure of labor market slack, which is what employers care about. They want to know the state of the labor market and the limits on militancy. The reserve army is important but it doesn't enter immediately into the wage equation. That's why bourgeois governments define unemployment the way they do. But bourgeois governments are kind enough to produce enough additional statistics that tell you a lot of the rest of the story. It's silly to say they're Enronish, too. Doug
Re: U.S. port closures batter Korea's economy
--- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Korean workers' resistance has been relatively strong. Other than that I don't know of how the country has been resisting the IMF. As I understood it, Korea wanted to join with the big boys so it reformed its financial sector in the mid 90s, leading to all kinds of trouble. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 12:50:45PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Sabri Oncu wrote: It appears that Korea is not doing well in these days. I remember that my first exchange on PEN-L was with Brad DeLong. I just casually wrote, without giving any reasons, at the time that Korea was at risk and he said, without giving any reasons other than quoting the Economist, that the IMF bailout of Korea worked fine. I wonder if he can say the same now. Joseph Stiglitz says Korea's doing well because it ignored the IMF's advice. Does anyone really know what's going on there? Doug The IMF is not monolithic. They come in swarms and put forth all sorts of proposals. Then they negotiate with the government, the bureaucrats and the captains of industry. Then some IMFers will say it's too little too late. Others will say they are pleased with the progress that has ben made. Others will say nothing is being done. I think Stiglitz has been weak on the follow through with Korea. Initially, the IMF planS met with a lot of resistance. But the current US yes man in office has really worked to give the US and the IMF what it wants. For example, ways into the banking system and complete control of the auto production. As for Japan, the key word out of the mouths of the investment bank 'analysts'/myrmidons is 'recapitalization'. Just as US private equity is 'recapitalizing' Korean banking, the same process must be alllowed to happen to Japan. How ironic. The reason these banks have so many bad loans as a % of their loan portfolios is they can't make enough good loans. Which means they can't use all the savings they have (their liabilities). They don't need recapitalized. They need a new economy. Recapitalization just means foreign--often US private equity--interests get control. But you can't manage a bank through shareholding (I say), nor is it really realistic to expect 20-40% per annum on such investments from retail banking in a very competitive market such as Japan. C Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Re: German Commerzbank isn't really in trouble?
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [in a recent e-mail, someone likened this bank to the Creditanstalt, the failure of which helped trigger world depression in the 1930s.] Commerzbank may sue Merrill over email Jill Treanor Monday October 7, 2002 The Guardian This is reminiscent of all the propaganda US venture bank interests have used against Japanese banks in order to drum up better 'business conditions' for their private equity collaborators. Of course, Germany's Daimler-Benz used something similar to help Mitsubishi Motors collapse so they could take it over on the cheap. C. Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos More http://faith.yahoo.com
Is consumer debt a problem?
Business Week gives this article, but it also has a report about the prospects for falling auto sales. Don't Sweat the Debt With housing markets booming, consumer mortgage debt has soared almost 70% since 1995, according to the Federal Reserve. The share of disposable income going to pay mortgage debt has risen, too. Many economists worry that this debt burden will crimp consumer spending, which has given the recovery what little momentum it has. However, the burden of mortgage debt isn't as heavy as it seems, according to a study by William C. Natcher, an economist at National City Corp., a Cleveland-based bank. Natcher observes that a rising percentage of Americans own their homes. As people switch from paying rent to paying a mortgage, that increases the national-debt burden automatically and boosts the overall amount being paid on mortgages. Yet people who buy a home for the first time are spared paying rent. Once you account for the fact that more people own homes, the average share of household income dedicated to mortgage payments this year is almost exactly the same as it was in 1995, says Natcher (chart). The current adjusted level of 5.94% is well below the peak of the last 15 years--6.5% in 1991. Similarly, Natcher believes concern over swelling credit-card debt is exaggerated because credit cards have increasingly replaced cash as the most convenient way to pay for things. Many people who pay their cards off in full each month nevertheless show big balances on their cards during the month, and that's partly what shows up in the aggregate data. Overall, says Natcher, Rising debt is an issue, but it's not as big as everyone thought We think the consumer has some lasting power. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31015] Re: Re: employment Tom Walker writes: There isn't really a contradiction between saying the methodology is flawed and the numbers are misleading yet recognizing that the people who collect the data are honest and well-intentioned. Tom, could you explain, specifically, what's methodologically flawed with the various U.S. BLS measures of the amount of labor market slack (unemployment, the size of the reserve army)? What phenomenon or phenomena would you like to have measured? how do the various BLS measures fail to gauge these phenomena? what systematic biases do you find? or do you reject measurement _per se_? JD
Re: employment
I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri
Re: Re: employment
Sabri Oncu wrote: I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. About what? We're talking about life under capitalism. The conditions of the labor market matter to working people. The limits to our social imaginations aren't defined by BLS categories. Could you parse your sadness? Doug
Re: Re: employment
I am not reading anyone saying anything terribly different from what Tom and I said. I believe that the BLS people do a good job with the parameters that they are given. Doug is correct that they collect much of the information necessary to give a better picture of unemployent -- except for the general problem of counting the people who live at the very margin of the economy or even beyond. The common unemployment rate gives a reassuring picture of the economy relative to the actual number of unmployed, but we can dig out better indicators from the data they supply. On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 06:12:02PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: employment
Title: Re: employment Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. What is the problem with using some (but not all) government statistics as a half-bad/half good way of understanding what's going on, in conjunction with other information and reasoning? There seems to be a spectrum of positions on this debate. Which do you fit? (1) we can reject all statistics, even as a part of a more complete analysis; (2) we can reject all government statistics; (3) we can accept some government statistics, suitably massaged; (4) we can accept some government statistics, but treat them critically; (5) we can accept most government statistics, as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world; (6) we can accept all government statistics as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world. Perhaps there's a 7th position: we can accept all those statistics (government-produced or otherwise) that reinforce our pre-determined political position and rect all those which conflict with that position. BTW, I fit under #3 or #4. JD -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 6:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31020] Re: employment I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri
FW: Peace Conference
Title: FW: Peace Conference FYI, FWIW: You are invited to attend an informative and interactive Peace Conference on the Immoral Illegal U.S. War Against Iraq, sponsored by Interfaith Communities United for Justice Peace (ICUJP) Please join us for this educational forum on the "war without end" Who: Students, Faculty, Staff at LMU What: Peace Conference on the War Against Iraq Where: Roski Dining Room - University Hall When: This Sunday, October 13, 2002 2:00 - 5:30pm Cost: $10 donation requested but not required (students free) Please RSVP to 626.683.9004 or online at http://icujp.org/calendar.shtml For questions contact Fr. Felix, at the Center for Religion Spirituality, x82799 http://extension.lmu.edu/religion This event is co-sponsored through LMU by the Center for Religion and Spirituality, the Office of Campus Ministry, the Department of Theological Studies, the LMU Jesuit Community, the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, the Center for Service and Action, and the Human Rights Coalition.
Re: Re: Greenspan on risk management apologetics
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Chairman commends banks for shifting risk onto pension funds. Wonderful! -- What would life be like without risk dispersion? Ian
Re: employment
Jim said: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. I don't know how to describe it, although I am sure I would sound racist if I say this but I think you don't get this because you are Americans. You don't know the difference because you have never experienced it. As I said I don't know how to describe it. It is just a matter of tasting it, at least, for once. Life is not as rational as you think it is. Best, Sabri
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31027] Re: employment I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. JD -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 7:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31027] Re: employment Jim said: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. I don't know how to describe it, although I am sure I would sound racist if I say this but I think you don't get this because you are Americans. You don't know the difference because you have never experienced it. As I said I don't know how to describe it. It is just a matter of tasting it, at least, for once. Life is not as rational as you think it is. Best, Sabri
Re: employment
Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri
RE: Re: employment
Title: RE: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment There's Western rationality and there's Western rationality. The main -- hegemonic -- form is the capitalist rationality that wants to reduce everything -- and all people -- to things that can be manipulated to attain the predetermined goal (primarily, profit). the counterhegemonic form includes that of Marx, which involves the struggle to liberate people from this nonsense (and from exploitation, domination, and alienation), or rather to help people liberate themselves. I don't see why the use of statistics in any way leads to me agreeing with capitalist rationality (or encourages anyone to think that I agree with that so-called rationality). After all, Marx used them. Also, I don't see why the sins of modernism (a.k.a., capitalist rationality) should encourage rejection of logic, scientific thinking, the use of evidence, etc. I doubt this is what you advocate. Jim -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 8:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment Jim said: I hope you're not saying that it's a Turkish thing; you wouldn't understand it. Not at all. It is about that Western Rationality thing that I personally object. But I took the risk of being misunderstood nevertheless. At least, I took the risk with you and Doug, which made me barve enough to take it. Otherwise, I am not as brave as I may have sounded. Best, Sabri
Re: employment
Just noticed this by Doug: Could you parse your sadness? Don't expect from me a rational explanation Doug. As they say, logic and rationality are not the same. As a mathematician, I am quite logical but not necessarily rational. My sadness is about your personal attitude, together with Jim's, together with Lou's and what have you. I guess my attitude would approach in the limit as n goes to somewhere, to Victor Hugo's, at least, as I know him from a few of his novels that I read when I was young. Here is another thing you wouldn't understand Jim. Now, if this is a Turkish thing, so be it. Sabri
Re: RE: Re: employment
RE: [PEN-L:31029] Re: employment - Original Message - From: Devine, James There's Western rationality and there's Western rationality. The main -- hegemonic -- form is the capitalist rationality that wants to reduce everything -- and all people -- to things that can be manipulated to attain the predetermined goal (primarily, profit). === You mean there's only 2 types of Western Rationality? Isn't the binary you're proposing part of the pitfalls of at least one of the forms of Western Rationality? And if it's not a binary, then don't we have an incipient, proliferative pluralism that some groups obfuscate because they seek political advantage through an insistence in using the very reductionism they claim another group is using as a manner of interpreting/organizing the social system[s] they're immersed in? the counterhegemonic form includes that of Marx, which involves the struggle to liberate people from this nonsense (and from exploitation, domination, and alienation), or rather to help people liberate themselves. Exploitation, domination and especially alienation are irreducibly contestable concepts in a pluralistic world and we have no evidence that getting rid of capitalism would get rid of them, no? I don't see why the use of statistics in any way leads to me agreeing with capitalist rationality (or encourages anyone to think that I agree with that so-called rationality). After all, Marx used them. Marx used lots of stuff that's turned out to be incorrect too. Also, I don't see why the sins of modernism (a.k.a., capitalist rationality) should encourage rejection of logic, scientific thinking, the use of evidence, etc. I doubt this is what you advocate. Jim = Why the sin metaphor? Indeed, lots of the problems of modernity are the uses to which logic, scientific thinking etc. have been put and those problems are not reducible to the problems created by capitalism. Ian
Re: Re: employment
Title: Re: [PEN-L:31024] Re: employment OK fellas, I am going to imagine what Sabri could have meant. JD's are not the the only perspectives on how we can treat statistics, government or otherwise. Yes, even statistics are subject to perspective, numbers may be objective but their presentation has its purposes. Here are some alternative attitudes about statistics which arise from my own experiences: we can recognize that statistics can be manipulated in order to shape public opinion 700 people a year die of disease x vs. less than .03% of the populations dies from disease x. Crime is up 16% over the past ten years vs. crime is down 5% in the past two years --both of these last two statements can be true at once and used to encourage differing opinions regarding what to do about crime. we can realize that the government has its own agenda and that the statistics the government releases and the way those statistics are handled will reflect that agenda. we can realize that statistics don't mean much when the point is to build a better world beginning with your own here and now. If you donate blood to a white male victim of a freak accident in Pittsburgh you have saved a valuable life. If you donate blood to save the 9004th Iraqi victim of cluster bombing you have saved a valuable life. If everyone would simply do what they can to make the world a better place then it would be ridiculous to prioritize according to quantifiables. People fulfill the needs with which they are presented no matter how those needs can be measured statistically. Well, I hope I have gotten us a little closer to being able to meet Sabri half way. Too tired to keep writing. Lisa S. on 10/07/2002 9:35 PM, Devine, James at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Like Doug, I don't get this, Sabri. What is the problem with using some (but not all) government statistics as a half-bad/half good way of understanding what's going on, in conjunction with other information and reasoning? There seems to be a spectrum of positions on this debate. Which do you fit? (1) we can reject all statistics, even as a part of a more complete analysis; (2) we can reject all government statistics; (3) we can accept some government statistics, suitably massaged; (4) we can accept some government statistics, but treat them critically; (5) we can accept most government statistics, as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world; (6) we can accept all government statistics as a good estimate of what's going on in the phenomenal world. Perhaps there's a 7th position: we can accept all those statistics (government-produced or otherwise) that reinforce our pre-determined political position and rect all those which conflict with that position. BTW, I fit under #3 or #4. JD -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu To: PEN-L Sent: 10/7/2002 6:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:31020] Re: employment I said: Maybe I am just a dreamer, but I am not the only one! After reading Jim's and Doug's comments, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one. This is sad, very sad. Not best, Sabri
Tony Mazzocci died Sunday
Tony Mazzocci died Sunday. I haven't seen any mention of it in the media. Gene Coyle
Re: Re: RE: Re: Tragedy on the docks: White House Warns of Economic Harm
Charles, you don't seem to be familiar with the record/behavior of the ILWU. Gene Coyle Charles Jannuzi wrote: This misses the fact that there has been a persistent antagonism between the East West coast longshore unions. The East coast has a tradition of being mobbed up, while the West coast is more leftist in orientation. Yeah, sure. From what I see, the ILWU talks the talk and that is it. I support their right to collectively bargain and to go on strike. But Ted Daschle is their go-to man on the Hill, so like I said when it's time to pay the devil his due... CJannuzi
statistics - two results
Reasonable people can differ? Gene Coyle Power lines cancer risk 'may be non-existent' Oct 07 - Irish Times - The risk of childhood leukaemia being caused by overhead electricity power lines is either extremely small or non-existent, a conference on science and the quality of life was told in Limerick on Saturday. Prof Philip Walton, who specialises in applied physics at NUI Galway, told the gathering that a person who stood under a power line was exposed to a much lower magnetic field than that of an electric oven or a hair-dryer. He said results from a major study in Britain of cancers in children living near power lines had shown that leukaemia caused two extra deaths a year - over and above 500 expected deaths - in children aged zero to 16. "Prorated for Ireland, which has about one-fifteenth of the population, this means that one death from childhood leukaemia every 71/2 years in addition to 33 expected deaths might be due to this effect, if it exists at all," he said. "It could be due to chance." Childhood leukaemia was the only cancer which had shown a rise. He said the total figures for cancers in children living near power lines had stayed the same because other non-leukaemia cancers showed a slight decrease. He said the independent body in Britain dealt with protection from radiation had said it was pointless to further investigate the possible effects of overhead lines. This was because the population was too small to show up any conclusive variations. [Image] == Fresh evidence links power lines to cancer Oct 06 - The Sunday Telegraph - London - OVERHEAD POWER lines and household electrical appliances increase the risk of developing cancer, according to the findings of an eight- year study into the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs). The pounds 4.5 million study, the largest held into the effects of EMFs on health, suggests that hundreds of thousands of Britons, particularly children, are at risk from life-threatening illnesses linked to the emissions. Pregnant women are also at greater risk of miscarrying. Its findings will be seized on by campaigners who argue that EMFs from overhead power lines and mobile phone masts are responsible for cancer and leukaemia "clusters" across Britain. The National Radiological Protection Board, the Government watchdog on radiation, reported last year that its studies into the effect of EMFs had been inconclusive. The latest study was commissioned by the California Public Utilities Commission, which is expected to publish the full report in the next few months. Scientists reviewed scores of previous studies from all over the world, including Britain, and carried out new research in the San Francisco area. The researchers told The Sunday Telegraph that they believed that EMFs increased the risks of life-threatening illnesses, including childhood leukaemia, adult brain cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Dr Raymond Neutra, of the California Department of Health Services, who led the research, said: "In Britain, hundreds of thousands of homes are exposed to levels [of EMFs] that mean they could be at risk." Dr Vincent DelPizzo, a senior member of the research team, said: "People have a right to be warned, but whether a major effort to reduce EMFs is appropriate must still be decided." The first suspected link between overhead power lines and cancer was made in America in 1979. Some reports, however, have dismissed a connection, while others have said that evidence is inconclusive. Until now, those considering long and costly legal action have been advised that it would probably fail because of lack of proof. John Scott, the Conservative MSP for Ayr who led an unsuccessful campaign to stop the erection of more than 200 pylons in South Ayrshire, said yesterday: "The implications of this [study] could be enormous for the power-generating companies." If the report bolsters demands for the burying of all power cables, the cost will run into billions of pounds. A spokesman for the Electricity Association said: "If the Government ever decreed that power lines had to be placed underground then the costs would be passed straight on to the consumer." Every mile of underground cabling costs nearly pounds 16 million to install, whereas overhead cables cost about pounds 800,000 over the same distance. The power companies could face a string of lawsuits from families who claim to have been affected by EMFs, as could manufacturers of domestic appliances. Martyn Day, a solicitor representing a dozen families who are considering legal action against power companies they claim were negligent, said: "The evidence has been accumulating over the past 23 years and this sounds a very significant
