back, self-promotingly
Hi gang. Back for a bit before taking a little trip. Sorry that my return message is a blast of self-promotion, but it won't happen again, I swear. Today I'm doing a two-hour special radio show, as part of WBAI's fundraising marathon. So, please listen, and if you're so moved, please pledge during my time slot, to impress the higher-ups. And, it's going to be a good program: * TARIQ ALI and NOAM CHOMSKY (in separate interviews) put the impending war on Iraq in historical and strategic context - what Bush is after, how it relates to long-standing U.S. policies, relations between the U.S. and its allies, and what might be next on the agenda. ALI also talks about the gains by religious parties in the Pakistani elections, and CHOMSKY talks about the reasonably good prospects for an antiwar movement in a country that's incomparably more civilized than it was 40 years ago. * CYNTHIA ENLOE offers a feminist analysis of the militarization of our society - what its symptoms are, how sometimes people out of uniform are more militarized than those wearing it, and ways to demobilize our minds and our culture. Plus musical interludes by CHICKS ON SPEED, and me, begging for money. WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York, and http://www.wbai.org, Thursday, 4-6 PM eastern U.S. time. Doug
Re:Saul Lecture Web site
Title: Re:Saul Lecture Web site web site for: John R. Saul. 1996 Hagey Lecture, at the University of WaterlooPower versus the Public Good: The Conundrum of the Individual and Society. http://economics.uwaterloo.ca/needhdata/SaulJRHageyLecture1996V2.PDF -- Dr. W.R. Needham Associate Chair, Undergraduate Affairs Department of Economics 200 University Avenue West, University of Waterloo, N2L 3G1 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Tel: 519-888-4567 ext: 3949 Fax: 519-725-0530 web: http://economics.uwaterloo.ca/fac-needham.html [We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. - Herman Melville] [Fascism should be more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power. Benito Mussolini]
Chutzpah (Re: back, self-promotingly)
Why apologize? Isn't self promotion all there is anyway? Doug Henwood wrote, Hi gang. Back for a bit before taking a little trip. Sorry that my return message is a blast of self-promotion, but it won't happen again, I swear.
UN resolutions that are not enforced
By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer UNITED NATIONS -- When President Bush chastises the U.N. for letting Iraq violate 16 Security Council resolutions, what he doesn't mention is that Iraq is not alone. Nearly 100 U.N. resolutions are being violated by other countries, and in many cases, a recent study notes, enforcement is being blocked by the United States or its allies. The consistent breaches highlight the essential conundrum of the United Nations: The world body has the power to pass resolutions but not always the power to enforce them -- creating sometimes catastrophic situations and, as Bush has charged, eroding its own relevance. In a review of five decades of U.N. resolutions, University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes identifies at least 91 resolutions that clearly are being violated in addition to the Iraq violations. His analysis suggests that the degree of compliance depends on the influence of each state and its backers. Israel, by Zunes' count, is in violation of 31 resolutions. The violations stem from its refusal to accept the U.N.'s land-for-peace formula put forward in 1967 and its defiance of a dozen later resolutions demanding that it cease violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention for Occupying Powers, such as deportations, demolitions of homes and seizure of property. Resolution 487, passed in 1981, has particular resonance in the debate over Iraq's disarmament because it calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. The discrepancy is not lost on Iraq. In a speech Wednesday to the Security Council, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammed Douri pointed out that by Iraq's reckoning, Israel has refused to implement 28 resolutions, but the U.S. is not talking about invading Israel. The U.S., one of five veto-holding members of the Security Council -- along with Britain, France, China and Russia -- has used its veto more than 40 times to block additional resolutions on Israel. In second place is Turkey, with 23 breaches following a resolution in 1974 calling for it to withdraw its troops from Cyprus. When Turkey -- a member of NATO and key U.S. ally -- did not comply, the Security Council reiterated its demand 11 more times over a decade. In 1996, the Security Council demanded that Turkey at least reduce its troops and military spending in Cyprus, and repeated that demand eight more times through 2001. Morocco has 18 violations, following demands in 1975 that it withdraw its occupation forces from Western Sahara and in 1991 that it allow a referendum for Western Saharans on self-determination. While some resolutions create legally binding obligations under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which allows military enforcement, others function more like formal recommendations that have no teeth but carry political weight. Despite the failures to follow them, the Security Council's decisions do matter, said Robert Rosenstock, former legal counsel for the U.S. mission at the U.N. Even if the resolution is not legally binding, there is a political price to be paid for violating it. But the fact that, in most cases, all the U.N. can do is repeat itself shows the inherent weakness of the world organization: There is often not enough resolve behind its resolutions. This has been the dilemma for the U.N.: It has the legal authority, but not always the means to follow up its decisions, said Edward Luck, director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University. It's a rare case that they do. Although the U.N. Charter authorizes military action for enforcement of Chapter 7 resolutions, there is no formal agreement about how force should be used. Each time the Security Council deems military action necessary, its member states must decide the details among themselves -- an often time-consuming process, with varying degrees of commitment. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a 1995 resolution creating U.N.-protected safe havens for Bosnian Muslims turned into a catastrophe. A safe haven at Srebrenica became a death trap when Bosnian Serbs overcame the understaffed Dutch U.N. peacekeepers and massacred thousands of Bosnian Muslims seeking asylum there. Despite periodic attempts to guarantee strong enforcement with a quick-reaction force made up from member nations' troops, the U.S. has been quick to squelch such efforts. Neither the U.S. nor other countries have been willing to allow international command of their forces, Luck said. The last thing the U.S. wants is an independent U.N. throwing its weight around. Although Bush has castigated the U.N. for its apparent weakness, historically the United States has not wanted the U.N. to become too powerful. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the 1970s, wrote in his memoirs: The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried
oil, europe and usa
[The Guardian] Blood and oil Europe and America are taking increasingly divergent approaches to the unreliability of the Middle Eastern petroleum supply - one green, the other unrepentantly black, writes Randeep Ramesh Thursday October 17, 2002 The question of whether oil is worth spilling blood over has been quietly raised by the foreign office minister, Peter Hain. In a speech today to the Royal United Services Institute in London, Mr Hain notes that the cost of protecting the Middle East's oil reserves, paid for mostly by the US and without which the west would grind to a halt, is as high as $25 (£16) a barrel - about the same as it costs to buy. Mr Hain, seen as an outrider for Blairite thinking, goes on to warn that no amount of money will guarantee petrol supplies to the west and consumers should be weaning themselves off the black stuff. At present the world remains so dependent on oil for transport, it cannot stand any disruption in supplies. Remember the chaos and gridlock that the fuel protests brought to Britain? Tony Blair does and now recognises the explosive nature of rising petrol prices. The potency of the oil weapon is not lost on Osama bin Laden, either, who has stated that crude oil should sell at $144 a barrel - about five times the price at which it currently trades. The attack on the Limburg oil tanker off Yemen's coast may prove to be al-Qaida's first targeting of the global economy. The Bush administration prefers not to discuss the economic effects of the war on terrorism as this could sap support domestically and abroad, especially in the Arab world where critics suspect, with good reason, the US of wanting to seize its vast petroleum riches. Instead the White House prefers to talk about imposing democracy and ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. These are noble aims, but they are undermined by leaks suggesting a bolder grab for oil riches. Mr Bush's senior adviser on the Middle East, Zalmay Khalilzad, has pushed the idea of a post-Saddam Iraq as a colonial outpost of the American empire. Its large oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia, could be tapped more efficiently than at present and pay for the 75,000 troops required to administer the new Iraq. This both overestimates the ease of producing oil from a battle-scarred Iraq, which only manages to pump 1m barrels a day, and underestimates the risk of a global financial shock, a serious concern given that the last three big global recessions have been preceded first by a crisis in the Middle East followed by a spike in the oil price. While bombing Iraq would not in itself cause the oil price to rise sharply, an attack by Saddam on Saudi or Kuwaiti oil fields or an uprising in Riyadh would. The loss of, say, 5m barrels a day of oil production cannot be made up quickly or easily. A big crude producer paralysed by revolution can see production fall precipitously because its workforce is out on the streets rather than manning the taps in the terminal. This is what happened in Iran during the 1979 revolution. Iranian oil production fell from 6m barrels a day to 3m and never recovered. If the same happened in Saudi Arabia, the world would see oil prices spurt upwards. America's addiction to oil is difficult for Europeans to stomach. It is not just the consumption - a US citizen consumes 2.5 times the oil required by a British one - but the differing cultural and political beliefs of two continents. For example, green parties hold power in several nations, notably Germany, whereas Mr Bush's administration prides itself on being drawn from the oil industry. The EU has already committed itself to seeing 12% of all energy by 2010 coming from low-carbon, renewable sources in a bid to prevent climate change. Although the US Congress is considering a proposal to require utilities to supply 10% of power from renewables, the White House is suspicious of the theory of global warming and refuses to sign up to international treaties on climate change. European politicians are increasingly concerned over the reliance on oil and gas imports from unstable regions. As production from Britain and Norway decreases, Europe will have to import more of its petroleum. More than 92% of the continent's oil and 81% of its gas will come from abroad by 2030 - putting the continent at the mercy of Opec and a nascent gas cartel led by Russia, Iraq and Algeria. The message from Europe is the need to move faster to renewable energies - more than 2bn euros will be spent on green fuels such as hydrogen in the next three years. The US response is to build up its strategic reserve of oil, prospect for new fields in Alaska and consider launching a war for control of the world's biggest petrol pump. Given the diverging paths taken by the two power blocs, America should be wary of taking Europe's support for its military adventures for granted. Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Digging their own grave
WSJ, Oct. 17, 2002 Did Washington Set the Stage For Current Business Turmoil? Seeking Growth, Policy Makers Made Free Markets Freer, Shot Down Naysayers By JACOB M. SCHLESINGER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL On an unseasonably warm February morning in 1987, three bank executives squared off against the Federal Reserve board in a crowded hearing room in Washington, D.C. Their mission was to persuade the Fed to start tearing down the half-century-old regulatory walls between the business of banking and the business of selling stocks and bonds. Paul Volcker, the Fed's gruff chairman, was leery. He worried that easing the limits set by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 posed dangers: lenders recklessly lowering loan standards in pursuit of lucrative public offerings; banks marketing bad loans to an unsuspecting public. Thomas Theobald, then vice chairman of Citicorp, countered that three outside checks on corporate misconduct had emerged since the financial shenanigans of the Roaring Twenties had led to Glass-Steagall. He cited a very effective Securities and Exchange Commission, knowledgeable investors, and very sophisticated rating agencies, according to a tape of the hearing. Mr. Volcker remained hesitant, but most of his colleagues thought it was time to free the markets from the restraints of Glass-Steagall. The erosion of that landmark law was one of many steps that added up to a free-market sweep of Washington over the past quarter-century. Policy makers transferred onto the shoulders of investors more of the responsibility for steering financial markets and policing wrongdoing. Republicans and Democrats joined forces to loosen federal control over crucial economic sectors. Along with banking, they unshackled telecommunications and energy. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Washington embraced an ever-greater role for the federal government. But the economic stagnation of the 1970s convinced politicians in both parties that the pendulum had swung too far. By the decade's end, Democrat Jimmy Carter launched the modern deregulation movement by freeing up the airline and trucking industries. His successor, Ronald Reagan, even more enthusiastically embraced the wisdom of markets over bureaucrats. The reforms, the officials believed, would unleash innovation and raise living standards. Those good things did happen. Deregulation and low interest rates spurred a burst of technological investment that accelerated the growth of the economy and slashed the unemployment rate. But the savviest policy makers knew they were making a choice between economic growth with associated potential instability, and a more civil ... way of life with a lower standard of living, as current Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan recently put it. Now, with corporate corruption on the upswing and the stock market on the downswing, the trade-offs are all too apparent. Deciding not to meddle, the Fed let the stock-market bubble expand and pop to devastating effect. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 cleared the way for highfliers such as WorldCom Inc., which imploded after the biggest accounting fraud ever. The airline industry, having never really learned to cope with deregulation, slid into a series of slumps including a particularly devastating one now. The decision in the 1990s not to regulate the arcane financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives made it tougher to uncover accounting tricks favored by Enron Corp. And it is now obvious that investors, and the stock analysts who advised them, weren't up to the task of making sure that corporate executives kept their priorities and books straight. In short, it's clear in hindsight that the marketplace's own checks, touted by Mr. Theobald 15 years ago, weren't enough to prevent the upheaval roiling the business world today. Blame for business's recent troubles has been assigned to everyone from greedy executives to naive investors. But there were singular moments when Washington also made decisions with serious consequences. Here are five: Chipping at Regulation The morning that Mr. Volcker played host to Mr. Theobald and his fellow executives from J.P. Morgan Co. and Bankers Trust New York Corp. was a bit of a landmark. It was only the third time in the secretive Fed's 74-year history that it had held a public hearing with outside witnesses. The bankers were seeking permission to sell certain securities. They weren't asking to sell stocks, just municipal bonds, commercial paper and securities backed by mortgages and credit-card receipts. Still, their pleas carried great symbolic value because they represented an assault on Glass-Steagall. The triumvirate of bankers faced the five Fed governors across a large oval table, their lawyers and lobbyists watching from behind. Mr. Volcker, the Fed chairman, brandished a copy of a 1934 letter to shareholders from the chairman of the National City Bank of New
