Re: capitalism = progressive?
Ultimately, the USSR stepped in the direction of capitalism and I'd contend that it was because Marxist-Leninist ruling parties have a tendency to use wage-labour and commodity prodution as a transitional measures. Mike B) --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The USSR was not socialist as we would like to see socialism. It was a first step in that direction. You probably remember as well as anyway here that Marx said that the first stage would be crude. On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 04:17:48PM -0400, Ted Winslow wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: the Soviet Union had the advantage of (a relatively crude) socialist organization of production. Was it socialist in a sense derivable from Marx? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu = Love and freedom are vital to the creation and upbringing of a child. Sylvia Pankhurst http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash
Re: mixed economic signals
I was not referring to any particular paper. I was referring to the increasingly common use of the term noise traders as a designation of all market participants not acting in accordance with economic fundamentals. I think the locus classicus of the term is a paper by Fisher Black, but I'm not an historian of financial economics. Me neither but I happen to know that the godfather of the term is Fisher Black, who happens to be a decent mathematican that I respect, unlike Scholes, a free rider. But you and I are in agreement. All, or almost all, market participants are noise traders, including my smart friend I mentioned previously. He used to manage a convertible bonds portfolio at a hedge fund. Put differently, he was the rational trader of De Long, Sheliefer, Summers and that fourth person whose name I don't remember now. Vishny maybe? These phenomena are denoted by the term noise traders, as it is currently used in the economics literature No! I knew that you were going to say this but noise traders are the irrational ones and for their existence, there has to be non-noise traders, that is, the rational ones. My claim is that all market participants are noise traders, which makes the term meaningless. So your friend turned out to be right, no? No! Because he continued to believe that he was right in 2000 as well as in 2001, so I won and he lost. The investors that resisted the increasingly shrill concerns in 1999 about speculative bubbles, and hung in through January 2000, were the big winners, right? If they got out in January 2000, you are right. They did well. But most of them did not. On Wall Street, timing is everything. I know. This is why I don't gamble. Future may be predictable in the first few moments for the forseeable future but I have never seen anyone who had a decent idea about the complete distribution of entire the future nor about the appropriate or correct _exit times_. There is no contradiction here. I am a believer in the existence of both systemic imbalances and noise traders. You are right in the sense that noise traders and systemic imbalances are not exclusive of each other. I don't deny that there are noise traders but I don't think my next door neighbor, a librarian at UC Berkeley, knows anything about these, yet she puts more than 70 percent of her money in her 401K account into stocks. This is what she learned or heard from the experts. Is she not one of those stabilizing long term investors? This seems to conflate long and short positions with buyers and sellers, two very different phenomena. There need not be a short position offsetting every long position, or vice versa. Exactly. Hence the imbalances I mentioned, among other reasons. The important issue, for the original discussion that prompted my interest at any rate, is the leverage which may underlie long and short positions. And insofar as raising short term real interest rates is concerned, the danger is blowing up highly leveraged long positions. It is about 2:40 am now and I need go to sleep. If I were not a student in these days, I would not be up at this time of the night but what can I do? I chose to go back to school at this late age and it is my mistake. Best, Sabri
[Fwd: McReynolds article on Iraq]
Iraq: A Deepening Tragedy By David McReynolds (former Chair, War Resisters International, Socialist Party candidate for President 1980, 2000. He visited Baghdad in 1991, just before the start of the first Gulf War as part of a team from the Fellowship of Reconciliation) // this article can be used in whole or part without permission. April 22, 2004 Friends have heard me say I could not believe the Bush Administration would launch the Iraq war - until the moment when shock and awe illuminated the night sky of Baghdad. My reasoning had nothing to do with the fact the US actions would violate international law (would be, in fact, criminal) but rather my conviction the war would be an act of stupidity almost without parallel. We had known that the Vulcans - that perplexing coalition of neoconservatives which draws its strength from almost equal parts of former Trotskyists, sharply pro-Israel American Jews such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle (who would do anything for Israel except go and live there), and a group of evangelical Christians, often privately anti-Semitic, led by the likes of Pat Robertson - had been in control of the Administration from the moment of Bush's appointment by the Supreme Court in 2001. We had seen them seize upon the tragedy of 9.11 as an excuse to curtail our own civil liberties and put the nation on a war footing, and invade Afghanistan. But the idea that the United States would actually attack Iraq, that it would be supported in this action by Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and would think it's Christian troops would somehow be welcomed as liberators by a deeply Islamic nation . . . this was such obvious folly that I keep thinking some committee of smart Wall Street bankers would tap Rumsfeld on the shoulder and say Sorry, Rumfeld - no way. Saddam is a nasty man, but there are no weapons of mass destruction there, no links to terrorism - this war would be genuinely crazy. (Let not forget the wave of massive demonstrations around the world in February of 2003 - demonstrations on a scale never seen before. And the urgent efforts of political leaders in almost every nation - Israel excepted - to dissuade Bush. And the extraordinary steps taken by the Pope to use his moral force - even sending a special Papal envoy to meet with Bush). The Iraq of Babylon and Baghdad, of the Euphrates and Tigris, the cradle from which Western civilization had sprung, a land which had, early in the 20th century, defeated the British - at that time the greatest Empire in the world. The US really thought it would be welcomed with flowers? That it would be seen as the liberator? After it had, for ten years, caused enormous suffering for the civilian population of Iraq by its economic sanctions? With others, I was surprised at the relative ease of the first phase - the military conquest of Saddam's forces. I had assumed there would be grinding battles in the cities, that the loss of civilian life there might cause the world to demand the US withdrawal. But with the US Occupation we saw the beginning of a dual reality - the reality of Iraq as seen by the White House and transmitted by the US media, and the reality of Iraq as seen from foreign news sources, reaching us in the US either by BBC or the internet. (In fairness, much of the truth was there in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers - but not in that part of the media which most shapes public opinion - the world of Fox News). It is possible those around Bush believed their own news reports. It is said that April is the cruelest month - for many American and Iraqi families this has been an unusually cruel and bloody month. April clearly caught the Pentagon by surprise. Even Rumsfeld admitted he didn't expect things to be this difficult a year after victory. Listening tonight to David Burns, of the New York Times, as he reported from Baghdad, it was clear there has been a breakdown of the Occupation. As Burns pointed out (and he is not a reporter tainted by ideology - just a journalist doing his job), travel is now extremely difficult and dangerous in Iraq, most roads are closed, there is no commercial air travel, and even in Baghdad things are not safe. He admitted it was almost impossible to know what was happening on the ground in any Iraq city outside of Baghdad. Americans in Iraq rarely venture outside the green zone in Baghdad, which is as secure as modern technology can make it. Paul Bremer resides in the palaces and buildings Saddam had built, strides the imperial offices in combat boots, issuing orders which are erratic (such as the dissolution of the Iraqi army - which instantly left tens of thousands of armed men unemployed!). The hearings from Washington D.C. this month, the flood of books that have come out, have defined the reality there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there was no link with Al Queda, there had never even been any plans for post-invasion Iraq, and - most
Got this from Deborah
A woman was walking along the beach when she stumbled upon a bottle. Shepicked it up and rubbed it, and lo-and-behold a Genie appeared. The amazed woman asked if she got three wishes. The Genie said, "Nope, sorry three-wish genies are a story-talemyth. I'ma one-wish genie. So...what'll it be?" The woman didn't hesitate. She said, "I want peace in the Middle East. See this map? I wantthesecountries to stop fighting with each other and I want all the Arabs toloveJews and Americans and vice-versa. It will bring about world peace andharmony." The Genie looked at the map and exclaimed, "Lady, be reasonable.Thesecountries have been at war for thousands of years. I'm out of .. shapeafter being in a bottle for five hundred years. I'm good but not THATgood!I don't think it can be done. Make another wish and please bereasonable." The woman thought for a minute and said, "Well, I've never beenable tofind the right man. You know, one that's considerate and fun, likes tocookand helps with the house cleaning, is great in bed and gets along with myfamily, doesn't watch sports all the time, and is faithful. That's what Iwish for - a good man." The Genie let out a long sigh, shook his head and said, "Let mesee thatfreakin' map again." This message (including any attachments) contains confidentialinformation intended for a specific individual and purpose, and isprotected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you shoulddelete this message. Any disclosure, copying, or distribution of thismessage, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictlyprohibited. Cheryl WhiteDomestic Relations Specialist Friend of the CourtDivorce Investigations
More Than 20,000 Iraqis Behind Bars
Stepping into Saddam Hussein's Place: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_montages_archive.html#108269182704275337. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
FW: [PEN-L] New Business Model
Title: FW: [PEN-L] New Business Model I currently work for a large financial corporation, and most of the new sotware programs we currently use are owned, hosted, serviced, and maintained by the parent company and most interactions occur over the internet. We pay a yearly rental fee. I think this is certainly the wave of the future in the financial services industry where I currently work, probably both in terms of software and hardware. Jayson Funke I imagine theyd supply the kind of computer svcs needed by large corporations or by governmentssvcs for which security, fault-tolerance, reliability are key. Such things are difficult/expensive to implement and their service would be that rather than B of A hiring consultants/programmers to do the job for them, theyd hire Sun in the same way that they pay Pac Bell to make sure all their telephone needs are taken care of. Theyd be competing with IBM and Microsoft. I imagine the target customer base would be govt and large corps. I dont quite get how falling equip prices would queer the deal. The real big expense in computing (I think) is programming/admin/support rather than hardware. Joanna The information contained in this e-mail may be confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorized. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator.(B)
Re: capitalism = progressive?
Michael, Can you explain how: 1) US manipulated oil prices and 2) how this manipulation of oil prices lead (in part) to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fabian [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/22/04 14:19 PM It might help if we could get a good picture of what collapsed the Soviet Union. Several factors quickly come to mind in no particular order. 1. Excessive defense requirements coupled with the belief that Star Wars really worked. 2. US manipulation of oil prices. 3. Dissatisfaction with the elites about a relatively flat wage scale. Professors and doctors and politicians knew that they could earn much more in a Western style economy. 4. Here I am guessing: Probably an excessive believe in the affluence of the United States system. 5. Gorbachev opening up the criticism of the system before he started fixing it. On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 11:07:24AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: In his most recent book, pen-l's Mike Yates points to a problem with this rhetoric: it seems that all of the popularly-declared economic miracles eventually collapse. The same thing happened to the USSR, no? Jim Devine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: mixed economic signals
Sabri wrote I knew that you were going to say this but noise traders are the irrational ones and for their existence, there has to be non-noise traders, that is, the rational ones. My claim is that all market participants are noise traders, which makes the term meaningless. Comment: I don't see this. That a class contains all of a given group does not mean that the class term is meaningless. Consider people killable by nuclear bombs and those non-killable by nuclear bombs. The latter class is empty I assume but this does not mean the phrase people killable by nuclear bombs is meaningless. The situation does not change if you choose classes that exhaust the universal class ie non (people who are killable by nuclear bombs). Cheers, Ken Hanly
economist-poet
See http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1847162. This guy, Robert McTeer, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, writes economic poetry. If I remember correctly, he's one of those total optimists and apologists. At least he has good taste in music, liking Robert Earl Keen's The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends. He says it represents the current era. Despite the name, the song is about larceny (quite appropriately). McTeer also missed the recent research indicating that poets on average live 6 years less than other authors. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poets23apr23,1,1600439.story. By the way, the letter I posted to pen-l got published in the L.A. TIMES. See http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-le-devine23.2apr23,1 ,4869466.story. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Mark Jones was right #2
http://www.janes.com/business/news/fr/fr040421_1_n.shtml 21 April 2004 World oil crisis looms The oil industry has been gripped by scandal since Royal Dutch/Shell twice this year downgraded its proven oil reserves by 20 per cent, or nearly 4bn barrels. Shell may not be alone. Other companies and even governments have hyped up the estimates of how much oil they have, which is a vital factor in measuring their economic health. If exaggeration proves to be widespread, it would have an immense impact on the Middle East, whose economic weight is almost totally dependent on oil and natural gas. Geologists and analysts have been saying for some time that estimates of global oil reserves may be dangerously exaggerated. If you take oil prices currently at around US$37 a barrel, the highest for nearly 15 years, US petrol prices at record levels and you add terrorist attacks and diminishing supplies, you have a recipe for inflation and economic slowdown. The question of reserves becomes a much more important factor. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that internal documents and other data indicated that Shell had over estimated its proven oil reserves in Oman by as much as 40 per cent. But that seems to have been done because everyone hoped that the latest drilling techniques would reach more deposits than in the past and merit upgrading the estimates of reserves. The Oman estimates were based on assessments made in May 2000 by a senior Shell executive who was subsequently fired. He was among several executives who were said to have known about the unrealistic estimates of reserves and to have done nothing about it. If the exaggeration is confirmed, the estimate of recoverable oil will have to be lowered. That is bad news for Oman, which claims reserves of 5.4bn barrels and is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports but it is also bad news for the world as a whole. As the world's natural resources shrink and global warming changes the environment, competition for unimpeded access to them has intensified and will continue to do so. About four-fifths of the world's known oil reserves lie in politically unstable or contested regions. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: FW: [PEN-L] New Business Model
Hasn't IBM for some time been putting multi-page ads in the WSJ proposing that data management be regarded as a fifth utility? I think that started over a year ago. Sun's program as Joanna describes it would seem to be the same sort of thing. Carrol
capitalism = progressive?
From: Michael Perelman It might help if we could get a good picture of what collapsed the Soviet Union. Several factors quickly come to mind in no particular Order ...1) -clip- *** Yes in terms of immediate causes. In terms of history, I'm tending toward the dreadful conclusion that over the long run, capitalism was able to force the SU (and the other first socialist countries) to militarize themselves in defense against the world historically gigantic wars and threats of war. In other words, imperialism ( especially German Nazis and U.S. Nuclear Cold Warriors)were able to undermine socialist democracy by forcing this militarization/undemocracy. Socialism needs democracy more than capitalism does, in order to fulfill its greater promises. The love of materialist democracy which is at the heart of Marxism and Leninism was lost in self and civil defensive organization. The full political fruits of socialism were not had by the masses of people,who were thereby less self-acting and enthusiastic in defense of the system when is was challenged. This undemocratic defect of the SU in part is a fulfillment of a more conservative Marxist principle than Marx's late discussion of Russian peasant communes that Lou Proyect has mentioned often, that of the world socialist revolution's need for revolution in advanced capitalist countries. This is not based on elitism , but the pragmatic ( vulgar materialist) , common sense that socialism in a developed industrial nation like Germany or France in alliance with the SU might have deterred remaining advanced capitalist nations with less internal militarization than economically backward Russia. There would have been no military defensive need for forced industrialization in already industrialized nations, etc. Charles Brown ^^ From: Michael Perelman It might help if we could get a good picture of what collapsed the Soviet Union. Several factors quickly come to mind in no particular order. 1. Excessive defense requirements coupled with the belief that Star Wars really worked. 2. US manipulation of oil prices. 3. Dissatisfaction with the elites about a relatively flat wage scale. Professors and doctors and politicians knew that they could earn much more in a Western style economy. 4. Here I am guessing: Probably an excessive believe in the affluence of the United States system. 5. Gorbachev opening up the criticism of the system before he started fixing it.
Cognitive Dissonance in US on Iraq
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2374 Majority Still Believe in Iraq's WMD, al-Qaeda Ties by Jim Lobe U.S. public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be reelected, according to a survey and analysis released Thursday. Despite statements by such officials as the Bush administration's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay; its former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke; former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, as well as admissions by senior administration officials themselves, a majority of the public still believes Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and had WMD stocks or programs before US troops invaded the country 13 months ago. The public is not getting a clear message about what the experts are saying about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and its WMD program, said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, which conducted the survey. The analysis suggests that if the public were to more clearly perceive what the experts themselves are saying on these issues, there is a good chance this could have a significant impact on their attitudes about the war and even on how they vote in November, he added. The survey and analysis found a high correlation between those perceptions and support for Bush himself in the upcoming presidential race in November. Among the 57 percent of respondents who said they believed Iraq was either directly involved in carrying out the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon or had provided substantial support to al-Qaeda, 57 percent said they intended to vote for Bush and 39 percent said they would choose his Democratic foe, John Kerry. Among the 40 percent of respondents, who said they believed there was no connection at all between Saddam and al-Qaeda or that ties consisted only of minor contacts or visits, on the other hand, only 28 percent said they intended to vote for Bush, while 68 percent said their ballots would go to Kerry. The survey, which was based on interviews with a random sample of 1,311 respondents in March, was released amid a series of polls that indicate that Bush and Kerry are in a virtual tie less than seven months before the actual election. While Kerry appeared to be leading in the wake of last month's congressional testimony by Clarke, who accused the administration of being insufficiently seized with the threat posed by al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks, Bush, who in recent weeks has spent an unprecedented amount of money on television advertising so early in the campaign, has closed the gap and, according to one 'Washington Post' poll published earlier this week, pulled slightly ahead. The latest PIPA study is remarkable because it shows that public perceptions about Iraq, or at least about the threat it posed before the US invasion, are lagging far behind what acknowledged experts have themselves concluded and whose findings have been reported in the mass media. Virtually all independent experts and even senior administration officials have concluded since the war that ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda before the war were virtually nonexistent, and even Bush himself has explicitly dismissed the notion that Baghdad had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. Yet the March poll found that 20 percent of respondents believe that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks - the same percentage as on the eve of the war, in February 2003. Similarly, the percentages of those who believe Iraq provided substantial support to al-Qaeda (37 percent) and those who believe contacts were minimal (29 percent) are also virtually unchanged from 13 months before. As of March 2004, 11 percent said there was no connection at all, up four percent from February 2003. Some - but surprisingly little - change was found in answers to whether Washington had found concrete evidence since the war that substantiated a Hussein-al-Qaeda link. Thus, in June 2003, 52 percent of respondents said evidence had been found, while only 45 percent said so last month. As to WMD, about which there has been significantly more media coverage, 60 percent of respondents said Iraq either had actual WMD (38 percent) or had a major program for developing them (22 percent). In contrast, 39 percent said Baghdad had limited WMD-related activities that fell short of an active program - what Kay as the CIA's main weapons inspector concluded in February - or no activities at all. Moreover, the message conveyed by Kay and other experts appears not to be getting through to the public, adds the survey, which found a whopping 82 percent of respondents saying either, experts mostly agree Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda (47 percent) or, experts are evenly divided on the question (35 percent).
Re: Cognitive Dissonance in US on Iraq
The Big Lie technique works: the Bushies lied like crazy, taking advantage of the post-911 anger toward Ayrabs. Their milder and loss-obvious retractions have had little effect, while most people don't read even half-decent newspapers. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: k hanly [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2374 Majority Still Believe in Iraq's WMD, al-Qaeda Ties by Jim Lobe U.S. public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be reelected, according to a survey and analysis released Thursday. Despite statements by such officials as the Bush administration's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay; its former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke; former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, as well as admissions by senior administration officials themselves, a majority of the public still believes Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and had WMD stocks or programs before US troops invaded the country 13 months ago. The public is not getting a clear message about what the experts are saying about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and its WMD program, said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, which conducted the survey.
FW: Cross-Blog Conversation on Stopping Walmartization
Anders Schneiderman sent me the following. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine H! Our new SEIU campaign, Justice at Work, has just launched an experiment on SEIU's blog (http://www.fightforthefuture.org/blog/). If you could spread the word about it to folks you think would be interested, that'd be great. In the meantime, you might want to check out Andy's I'm at a Wal-Mart Store in China pictures that are already on our blog. Thanks, Anders --- Dear Friend, On Monday, SEIU kicks off the first phase in a new campaign, called Justice at Work, to mobilize the power of the web to stop what commentators have called the Wal-Martization of the American economy. We're starting this campaign with a cross-blog discussion, asking people to share their ideas about our strategy. * What's the Scoop? * In this experimental dialogue, we will raise questions, ask for feedback, and solicit creative ideas on SEIU's Fight for the Future blog (http://www.fightforthefuture.org/blog/), and ask that other blogs help spread the word. The schedule for the conversations is: Part One: Define the Problem and our Proposed Solutions Part Two: SEIU and the Community, Online and Offline Part Three: Shaping the Public Debate Part Four: The Road Ahead In each of these weeks, President Stern will frame the questions and ask you to engage in a broad dialogue about tackling this issue. * We Need Your Help to Make This Happen! * Please share your ideas with us on our blog! Lurkers, don't be shy! Also, if you run a blog or listserv that takes comments, start a discussion there. If you are involved in a conversation on another blog or listserv, please send an email flagging the highlights to [EMAIL PROTECTED] We will post the best of the discussions from other blogs and ours and discuss their role in shaping our plans. Help us use blogs to start the movement that will improve the lives of working Americans and their families by fighting for a fair economy that provides equal opportunity for everyone.
Contractors and Mercenaries
Title: Contractors and Mercenaries Does anyone have any information on the accountability of PMCs? Are employees of PMCs prosecutable for killing? Can PMCs, operating in NAFTA countries, possibly sue those governments for obstructing business oportunities? Jayson Funke Contractors and Mercenaries The Rising Corporate Military Monster By RUSSELL MOKHIBER and ROBERT WEISSMAN http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber04232004.html A corporate military monster is being created in Iraq. The U.S. government is relying on private military contractors like never before. Approximately 15,000 military contractors, maybe more, are now working in Iraq. The four Americans brutally killed and mutilated in Fallujah March 31 were part of this informal army of occupation. Contractors are complicating traditional norms of military command and control, and challenging the basic norms of accountability that are supposed to govern the government's use of violence. Human rights abuses go unpunished. Reliance on poorly monitored contractors is bleeding the public treasury. The contractors are simultaneously creating opportunities for the government to evade public accountability, and, in Iraq at least, are on the verge of evolving into an independent force at least somewhat beyond the control of the U.S. military. And, as the contractors grow in numbers and political influence, their power to entrench themselves and block reform is growing. Whatever the limitations of the military code of justice and its in-practice application, the code does not apply to the modern-day mercenaries. Indeed, the mechanisms by which the contractors are held responsible for their behavior, and disciplined for mistreating civilians or committing human rights abuses -- all too easy for men with guns in a hostile environment -- are fuzzy. It is unclear exactly what law applies to the contractors, explains Peter W. Singer, author of Corporate Warriors (Cornell University Press, 2003) and a leading authority on private military contracting. They do not fall under international law on mercenaries, which is defined narrowly. Nor does the national law of the United States clearly apply to the contractors in Iraq -- especially because many of the contractors are not Americans. Relatedly, many firms do not properly screen those they hire to patrol the streets in foreign nations. Lives, soldiers' and civilians' welfare, human rights, are all at stake, says Singer. But we have left it up to very raw market forces to figure out who can work for these firms, and who they can work for. There are already more than a few examples of what can happen, notable among them accusations that Dyncorp employees were involved in sex trafficking of young girls in Bosnia. In general, the performance of the private military firms is horribly under-monitored. Sometimes the lack of monitoring is a boon to the government agencies that hire the contractors. Although there are firm limits on the kinds of operations that U.S. troops can conduct in Colombia, Singer notes, it has been pretty loosey-goosey on the private contractor side. The contractors are working with the Colombian military to defeat the guerilla insurgency in Colombia -- unconstrained by Congressionally imposed limits on what U.S. soldiers in Colombia may do. Meanwhile, in Iraq, a problem of a whole different sort is starting to emerge. The security contractors are already involved in full-fledged battlefield operations, increasingly so as the insurgency in Iraq escalates. A few days after the Americans were killed in Fallujah, Blackwater Security Consulting engaged in full-scale battle in Najaf, with the company flying its own helicopters amidst an intense firefight to resupply its own commandos. Now, reports the Washington Post, the security firms are networking formally, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence. Because many of the security contractors work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, as opposed to the U.S. military, they are not integrated into the military's operations. Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress, according to the Post, the contractors are banding together. Private occupying commandos? Corporate military helicopters in a battlefield situation? An integrated occupation private intelligence network? Isn't this just obviously a horrible idea? Given the problems that have already occurred in places like Colombia and Bosnia, the scale and now independent integrated nature of the private military operations in Iraq is asking for disaster, beyond that already inflicted on the Iraqis. Making the problem still worse is that the monster feeds on itself. The larger become the military contractors, the more influence they have in Congress and the Pentagon, the more they are able to shape policy,
Perle's of Wisdom
'Iraq Expert' Perle Shills for Chalabi at Senate Panel by Juan Cole It was quite an experience to be on the same panel on Tuesday with Richard Perle and Toby Dodge, before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Perle wasn't added until the last minute, and it is mysterious why he was there, since ours was supposed to be an expert panel. Dodge has an important book on Iraq. Originally Ahmad Hashim was going to be on with us (he came Wednesday instead), and then we heard Perle had been put on. Perle, of course, is no Iraq expert. He doesn't know a word of Arabic, and has never lived anywhere in the Arab world. Perle's entire testimony was a camouflaged piece of flakking for Ahmad Chalabi. He complained that the State Department and the CIA had not created a private army for Chalabi and had not cooperated with him. Perle did not mention Chalabi's name, but it was clear that was who he was talking about (State and CIA famously dropped Chalabi in the mid-1990s when they asked him to account for the millions they had given him, and he could not). In fact, Perle kept talking about the Iraqis when it was clear he meant Chalabi. He said the US should have turned power over to the Iraqis long before now. But here's an interesting contradiction. I said at one point that I thought Bremer should have acquiesced in Grand Ayatollah Sistani's request for open elections to be held this spring, and that if they had been, it might have forestalled the recent blow-up. I had in mind that Muqtada al-Sadr in particular would have been kept busy acting as a ward boss, trying to get his guys returned from East Baghdad Kufa, etc. Perle became alarmed and said that scheduling early elections would not have prevented the flare-up because the people who mounted it were enemies of freedom and uninterested in elections. Perle has this bizarre black and white view of the world and demonizes people right and left. A lot of the Mahdi Army young men who fought for Muqtada are just neighborhood youth, unemployed and despairing. Some are fanatics, but most of them don't hate freedom - most of them have no idea what it is, having never experienced democracy. But anyway, what struck me was the contradiction between Perle's insistence that the US should have handed power over to Iraqis months ago, and his simultaneous opposition to free and fair elections. The only conclusion I can draw is that he wants power handed to Chalabi, who would then be a kind of dictator and would not go to the polls any time soon. Perle also at one point said he didn't think the events of the first two weeks of April were a mass uprising and said he thought Fallujah was quiet now. (Nope). It is indicative of the Alice in Wonderland world in which these Washington Think Tank operators live that Perle could make such an obviously false observation with a straight face. Even a child who has been watching CNN for the past three weeks would know that there was a mass uprising. (Even ten percent of the American-trained police switched sides and joined the opposition, and 40% of Iraqi security men refused to show up to fight the insurgents.) I replied, pointing out that the US had lost control of most of Baghdad, its supply and communications lines to the south were cut, and a ragtag band of militiamen in Kut chased the Ukrainian troops off their base and occupied it. It was an uprising. I suppose Perle hopes that if he says it wasn't an uprising, at least some people who aren't paying attention will believe him. It is bizarre. It reminded me of the scene in Ladykillers where the fraudsters set off an explosion in a lady's basement, and she hears it while outside in a car, and is alarmed, and the Tom Hanks character says in a honeyed southern accent, Why, Ah don't believe Ah heard anything at all. I could just see Perle in a Panama hat at that point playing the character. It is deeply shameful that Perle is still pushing Chalabi, and may well succeed in installing him. Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassroots support
Re: economist-poet
yeh, he's been a hero of mine for years. Seems like a nice, and sensible enough bloke if you ignore some pretty frightening departures into sub-Austrianism. Bit of an irritating habit of doing the Oh yes, Texas Texas Texas, I'm from Texas, did I ever tell you about Texas? bit while not actually coming from there or having any connection at all before being posted to the Dallas Fed. But less boring than the run of the mill, and an interest rate dove so he's on our side. dd On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 08:09:25 -0700, Devine, James wrote: See http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1847162. This guy, Robert McTeer, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, writes economic poetry. If I remember correctly, he's one of those total optimists and apologists. At least he has good taste in music, liking Robert Earl Keen's The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends. He says it represents the current era. Despite the name, the song is about larceny (quite appropriately). McTeer also missed the recent research indicating that poets on average live 6 years less than other authors. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poets23apr23,1,1600439.story. By the way, the letter I posted to pen-l got published in the L.A. TIMES. See http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-le-devine23.2apr23,1 ,4869466.story. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Iraq glossary
Counterpunch, April 23, 2004 Graveyard of Justifications Glossary of the Iraqi Occupation By PAUL de ROOIJ It is amazing to me that they [CentCom] aren't more careful with their language. They are talking about it in a language very much of early colonialism, or just in a language of pure military ramboism. Rahul Mahajan, FlashPoints.net, April 14, 2004, commenting on CentCom's [US military command] use of the word cleansing. Any time there is war or an occupation of another country, propagandists or their media surrogates require language that mollifies, exculpates and hides the grim reality or sordid deeds. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of what is really happening in Iraq, this glossary elucidates the terminology commonly used in the media. Its aim is to enable us to peer through the linguistic fog. There is a fundamental problem with such a glossary. The propagandists will coin terms to exculpate or palliate aspects of the occupier's activities, and aspects of the occupation whose mention cannot be avoided. However, propagandists loathe referring to the uncomfortable and repugnant aspects of the occupation or war. For example, it is very clear that the US military will not publicize lists of Iraqi civilian deaths (NB: they compile some lists, but these aren't made public [1]). Iraqi hospital officials are discouraged from compiling lists of civilian casualties and granting journalists access to morgues. The list of forbidden compliant media topics is rather long, but a subset is presented below. Finally, the justifications for the war against Iraq, and the subsequent occupation, have changed over time, and the third list below documents the justifications proffered by the American occupiers to date. This growing list is the graveyard of justifications. The Glossary Abused terminology Translation --- Al-Qa'ida: Bogeyman Rex. There was no link between Al-Qa'ida and pre-2003 Iraq, and even now, the US can't point to evidence of an Iraqi connection. --- Ambassador: Proconsul. It is rather odd to call Paul Bremer an ambassador; the man even wears army boots! --- Anti-Iraq forces: Catchall Opposition -- (and clear example of doublespeak). Soon after the Occupation, the United States and its allies--military and ideological--referred to the Iraqi resistance as 'foreign elements' 'terrorists' or 'former loyalists of the Saddam regime'. This phraseology has now become redundant and US military spokesman are now referring to the guerrillas as 'anti-Iraqi forces' as if to suggest that the US, British, [...] and Polish troops represent Iraq but the Iraqis who resist the occupation are anti-Iraqi. --Tariq Ali, The Iraqi Resistance: a New Phase, CounterPunch, April 10, 2004. Referring to many groups conveys the impression that a significant segment of the population is ganging up against the US, and this is counter to the propaganda claim that the opposition is a small minority. Furthermore, Americans, including Bush, are notorious for not knowing who is who in a country. So, forget the details, and go for a catchall group! --- Avenge: Kill 100X of theirs for each one of ours. Iraqi history is already being written. In revenge for the brutal killing of four American mercenaries -- for that is what they were -- US Marines carried out a massacre of hundreds of women and children and guerillas in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah. The US military says that the vast majority of the dead were militants. Untrue, say the doctors. But the hundreds of dead, many of whom were indeed civilians, were a shameful reflection on the rabble of American soldiery who conducted these undisciplined attacks on Fallujah. --Robert Fisk, By endorsing Ariel Sharon's plan George Bush has legitimised terrorism, The Independent, April 16, 2004. NB: the principle of avenging the occupier's losses by collective punishment is a war crime. In Lidice during World War II, Germans killed at least 172 civilians to avenge some of their own, and this was considered a war crime. In Fallujah, the killing of four mercenaries has resulted in hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed. Ariel Sharon would approve. Full: http://www.counterpunch.org/ -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
NYT/For Japanese Hostages, Release Only Adds Stress
For Japanese Hostages, Release Only Adds to Stress April 22, 2004 By NORIMITSU ONISHI TOKYO, April 22 - The young Japanese taken hostage in Iraq returned home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow ribbon embrace but to a disapproving nation's cold stare. The first three hostages, including a woman who helped street children on the streets of Baghdad, first appeared on television two weeks ago as their knife-brandishing kidnappers threatened to slit their throats. A few days after their release, they landed here on Sunday, in the eye of a peculiarly Japanese storm. You got what you deserve! one Japanese held up a hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. You are Japan's shame, another wrote on the Web site of one of the hostages. They had caused trouble for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill them $6,000 for airfare. Treated like criminals, the three have gone into hiding, effectively becoming prisoners inside their own homes. The kidnapped woman was last seen arriving at her parents' house, looking defeated and dazed from taking tranquilizers, flanked by relatives who helped her walk and bow deeply before the media, as a final apology to the nation. Dr. Satoru Saito, a psychiatrist who has examined the three twice since their return, said the stress they are enduring now is much heavier than what they endured during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name their three most stressful moments, the ex-hostages told him, in ascending order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad; the knife-wielding incident; and the moment they watched a television show, on the morning after their return here, and realized Japan's anger with them. Let's say the knife incident, which lasted about 10 minutes, ranks 10 on a stress level, Dr. Saito said in an interview at his clinic today. After they came back to Japan and saw the morning news show, their stress level ranked 12. Beneath the surface of Japan's ultra-sophisticated cities lie the hierarchical ties that have governed this island nation for centuries and that, at moments of crises, invariably reassert themselves. The ex-hostages' transgression was to ignore a government advisory against traveling to Iraq. But their sin, in a vertical society that likes to think of itself as classless, was to defy what people call here okami, or, literally, what is higher. To the angry Japanese, the first three hostages - Nahoko Takato, 34, who started her own non-profit organization to help Iraqi street children; Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a freelance photographer; and Noriaki Imai, 18, a freelance writer also interested in the issue of depleted uranium munitions - had acted selfishly. Two others kidnapped and released in a separate incident - Junpei Yasuda, 30, a freelance journalist, and Nobutaka Watanabe, 36, a member of a pro-peace non-governmental organization - were equally guilty. Pursuing individual goals by defying the government and causing trouble for Japan was simply unforgivable. So the single government official to praise them was, not surprisingly, an American one. Well, everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into dangerous areas, said Secretary of State Colin Powell. But if nobody was willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward. We would never move our world forward. And so I'm pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose. And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this willing to do that. As an example of the unbridgeable gap between Japan and America, consider this comment by Yasuo Fukuda, the government's spokesman: They may have gone on their own but they must consider how many people they caused trouble to because of their action. The criticism began almost immediately after the first three were kidnapped two weeks ago. The environment minister, Yuriko Koike, blamed them for being reckless. After the hostages' families asked that the government yield to the kidnappers' demand and withdraw its 550 troops from southern Iraq, they began receiving hate mail and harassing faxes and email. In the village of Japan, like the one in The Lottery, one had to throw stones. Even as the kidnappers were still threatening to burn alive the three hostages, Yukio Takeuchi, a top official in the foreign ministry, said of the three, When it comes to a matter of safety and life, I would like them to be aware of the basic principle of personal responsibility. The foreign ministry, held both in awe and resentment by the average Japanese, was the okami defied in this case. While foreign ministry officials are Japan's super elite, the average Japanese tends to regard them as arrogant and unhelpful, recalling how they failed to deliver in time the declaration of war against the United States in 1941 so that Japan became forever known as a sneak-attack nation. Defying the
Muscular on defense
From Aug. 1999 Nation Magazine editorial endorsement of Hillary Clinton: Like Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she likes to identify, Hillary Clinton has spent the better part of her years as First Lady schlepping around the country and the globe, meeting as often with the powerless as with the powerful. There is nothing really new about her much-publicized listening tour of New York except the several hundred reporters who are now part of her entourage. She has visited more schools, daycare centers, hospitals, family planning clinics, model factories, housing projects, parks, micro-enterprises, agricultural cooperatives and the like than her staff can tally. She has boundless energy and enthusiasm for this sort of thing, born of her understanding that what works, and what's therefore to be taken most seriously, is rarely the product of elegant social or economic planning but rather the less predictable outcome of the often messy process of democratic politics, where policy-makers are obligated to respond to myriad interests. === NY Times, April 23, 2004 Keeping Close Eye on Senator, Clinton-Watchers Increasingly See a Hawk By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ WASHINGTON, April 22 - In 1969, Hillary Rodham, then a student, wound up on the pages of Life magazine after giving a defiant commencement speech at Wellesley College that reflected the antiwar sentiment and political turmoil of the era. We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest,'' she said, taking aim at the featured commencement speaker, Senator Edward W. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts who urged support for the Vietnam War in his address. Fairly or not, Hillary Rodham Clinton's image on defense has been largely defined by her actions during the Vietnam War, when she organized teach-ins at Wellesley, as well as her association with her husband, who aroused great suspicion within the military circles as a result of his Vietnam draft record and his position on homosexuals in the armed forces. But these days, Senator Clinton, of New York, has offered a starkly different image, presenting herself as muscular on defense even when that puts her at odds with members of her own party. Even as the war in Iraq proves unpopular with her core base of liberal supporters, not to mention some mainstream Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has emerged as one of the most prominent Democratic backers of the military activities. In recent months, in speeches and interviews, she has defended her vote authorizing the Republican president to wage war, argued for more troops in Iraq and sided with President Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein was, as she put it, a potential threat'' who was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them.'' Last week, with violence surging in Iraq, she stood by her decision to approve a Congressional resolution permitting military action there, though she did accuse the president of failing to build sufficient international support for the war and failing to plan adequately for the aftermath of Mr. Hussein's downfall. And she appeared to agree with President Bush's contention that the conflict in Iraq was part of the broader fight against terror, indicating that global threats like Mr. Hussein took on greater urgency in a post-Sept. 11 world. After 9/11, a lot of threats had to be looked at with fresh eyes,'' she said in the interview. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/nyregion/23hillary.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: capitalism = progressive?
Just because I said the issue of enlightenment was normative doesn't mean that I don't think it's important. However, my reading of Marx wouldn't emphasize individual enlightenment and capacity for judgment as much as collective (class) consciousness (enlightenment, capacity for judgment). The kind of socialism (or communism) that Marx favored was based on the class consciousness -- and collective organization -- of the proletariat. Other kinds of socialism (e.g., Owen's utopian socialism) were not. Small-holding peasants can be quite enlightened and have great capacity for judgment _as individuals_ while their economic and social situation encourages the idiocy of rural life that formed one major basis for the demagogic dictatorship of Napoleon III. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: Ted Winslow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim wrote: When you write of social relations that presuppose a high degree of enlightenment and capacity for judgment on the part of the related individuals from those that presuppose significant superstition and prejudice you help define what socialists are in favor of. That kind of normative issue should play a role, but I don't think such issues should be mixed up with fruitless questions such as should we call the old USSR 'socialist'? It's not normative in the sense of apart from and independent of understanding (as opposed to judging in a normative sense) the nature of the self-consciousness, social relations and state power involved. It's explanatory as in Marx's explanation of the nature of the state power represented by Napoleon III in terms of the superstition and prejudice issuing from the social relations of the mass of French peasants. The point of invoking what Marx means by socialism was to delineate a particular kind of state power and its class basis i.e. the social relations and self-consciousness the particular kind requires. In particular, the social relations must have generated the required degree of rational self-consciousness (i.e. enlightenment, capacity for rational judgment). I was asking whether this was true of the social relations of Russia in 1917. I'm assuming that Marx allows for degrees of rational self-consciousness ( as in the distinction between a self-consciousness characterized by superstition and prejudice on the one hand and one characterized by enlightenment and judgment on the other), that he understands the degree to be the product of social relations and that he makes it a determinant of the nature of state power (as in the passage from the 18th Brumaire). Ted
Re: capitalism = progressive?
Schweizer, Peter. 1994. Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press). 31: William Casey met with Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He showed him raw intelligence reports to make him fearful about Saudi security. What Casey was trying to do was to send a prince a message. No single world oil producer had a greater effect on world oil prices than Saudi Arabia. By raising the issues of oil pricing and the U.S. -- Saudi security relationship in the same conversation, Casey was in effect saying that the two were related. It was an element of the Reagan strategy. We wanted lower oil prices, recalls Weinberger. That's one of the reasons we were selling them arms. citing an interview with the author. 140-1: In early 1983, the Treasury Department concluded a massive secret study on international oil pricing. Treasury often did reports on such subjects, but this one received considerable interest at the NSC. Bill Casey and Caspar Weinberger also reviewed it. The study took six months to write and was hundreds of pages long; it was an impressive compilation of data. World oil prices were an important determinant of both U.S. and Soviet economic health. But exactly how significant were they to each superpower? 141: The report argued that the optimum oil price for the U.S. was approximately $20 a barrel, well below the 1933 price of $34. At the time the United States was spending $183 billion on 5.5 billion barrels of oil a year. Of that, imports amounted to 1.6 billion barrels. A drop in international markets to $20 a barrel would lower U S. energy costs by $71.5 billion per year. That was a transfer of income to American consumers amounting to 1 percent of existing gross national product. Lower oil prices were basically like a tax cut, recalls Weinberger [in a personal interview with the author]. 14l: While the effects for the United States were unambiguously good, dropping oil prices would have a devastating effect on the Soviet economy. The report noted Moscow's heavy reliance on energy exports for hard currency. By Treasury Department calculations, every one dollar rise in the price of oil meant approximately $500 million to $1 billion extra in hard currency for the Kremlin. 143: Anything that could be done to suppress prices was being pursued. The U.S. pressure in Britain to increase North Sea oil production, arguing that high oil prices would lead Europe to switch from oil to natural gas from the Soviet Union. The U.S. also stopped purchasing crude for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Press reports indicate that his new book expands on this subject. Aldo Balardini wrote: Michael, Can you explain how: 1) US manipulated oil prices and 2) how this manipulation of oil prices lead (in part) to the collapse of the Soviet Union. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: economist-poet
Bob McTeer, president of the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve Board, published a Free Enterprise Primer on the Internet. According to this Web site: ##In a free market system, the government doesn't organize, direct and control economic activity. If the government doesn't, who does? Who decides what is to be produced, and how, and in what quantities and quality, and who gets the fruits of production? The answer is that you and I decide these important questions by the way we spend our money. The market system features consumer sovereignty, meaning that the consumer is king. We decide what will be produced by casting dollar votes for the things we want and by not spending on the things we don't want. http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/dallas/primer.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeh, he's been a hero of mine for years. Seems like a nice, and sensible enough bloke if you ignore some pretty frightening departures into sub-Austrianism. Bit of an irritating habit of doing the Oh yes, Texas Texas Texas, I'm from Texas, did I ever tell you about Texas? bit while not actually coming from there or having any connection at all before being posted to the Dallas Fed. But less boring than the run of the mill, and an interest rate dove so he's on our side. dd On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 08:09:25 -0700, Devine, James wrote: See http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1847162. This guy, Robert McTeer, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, writes economic poetry. If I remember correctly, he's one of those total optimists and apologists. At least he has good taste in music, liking Robert Earl Keen's The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends. He says it represents the current era. Despite the name, the song is about larceny (quite appropriately). McTeer also missed the recent research indicating that poets on average live 6 years less than other authors. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poets23apr23,1,1600439.story. By the way, the letter I posted to pen-l got published in the L.A. TIMES. See http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-le-devine23.2apr23,1 ,4869466.story. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Got this from Deborah
the Gospel of Debbie THE GOSPEL OF DEBBIE by PAUL RUDNICK Recent works like The Passion of the Christ and The Da Vinci Code seek to illuminate the life of Jesus. Not long ago, an additional text was discovered in an ancient linen backpack found in a cave outside Jerusalem, surrounded by what appeared to be early Roman candy wrappers and covered with stickers reading I [heart] All Faiths and Ask Me About Hell. A parchment diary found inside the backpack appears to contain the musings of one Debbie of Galilee. Many of the pages are still being translated from high-school Aramaic; here are some persuasive excerpts. October 5 I saw him in the marketplace! Everyone says that he's the son of God, but I don't care one way or the other because he's just so cute!!! O.K., he's not hot like a gladiator or a centurion, but he's really sensitive and you can tell that he thinks about things and then goes, Be nice to people, and I'm like, that is so true, and I wonder if he's seeing anyone! October 21 Everyone says that he's just totally good and devoted to all humanity and that he was sent to save us and that's why he doesn't have time for a girlfriend, although I swear I saw Mary Magdalene doodling in the sand with a stick, writing Mrs. Jesus Christ and Merry Xmas from Mary and Jesus Christ and All the Apostles, with little holly leaves all around it. And I'm like, Mary, are you dating Jesus? and she says, no, he's just helping me, and I'm like, you mean with math? and she's like, no, to not be such a whore. And I said, but that is so incredibly sweet, and we both screamed and talked about whether we like him better when he's healing the lame or with a ponytail. December 25 I wanted to get him the perfect thing for his birthday, so I asked Matthew and he said, well, myrrh is good, but then Luke said, oh please, everyone always gives him myrrh, I bet he wishes those wise men had brought scented candles, some imported marmalade, and a nice box of notecards. So I go, O.K., what about accessories, like a new rope belt or clogs or like I could make him a necklace with his name spelled out in little clay letters? and Mark said, I love that, but Luke rolled his eyes and said, Mark, you are just such an Assyrian. So I go to see Mary, Jesus' mom, and she said that Jesus doesn't need gifts, that he just wants all of us to love God and be better people, but I asked, what about a sweater? and she said medium. January 2 Oh my God, oh my God, I couldn't believe it, but I was right there, and Jesus used only five loaves of bread and two fish to feed thousands of people, and it was so beautiful and miraculous, and my brother Ezekiel said, whoa, Jesus has invented canapes and I said shut up! And then my best friend Rachel asked, I wonder if he could make my hair really shiny, and I said, you are so disgusting, Jesus shouldn't waste his time on your vanity, and then Jesus smiled at me and I'm telling you, those last seven pounds, the stubborn ones, they were totally gone! And I spoke unto the angry Roman mob and I said, behold these thighs! Jesus has made me feel better about me! March 12 Everyone is just getting so mean. They're all going, Debbie, he is so not divine, Debbie, you'll believe anything, Debbie, what about last year when you were worshipping ponchos? And I so don't trust that Judas Iscariot, who's always staring at me when I walk to the well and he's saying, hey, Deb, nice jugs, and I'm like, oh ha ha ha, get some oxen. April 5 So Mary Magdalene tells me that Jesus and all the apostles had this big party and that it got really intense and Jesus drank from this golden goblet and now it's missing and the restaurant is like, this is why there's a surcharge. April 23 It's all over. And it's been terrible and amazing and I don't know what any of it means or who's right and who's wrong but maybe I'll figure it out later. Anyway, I'll always remember what Jesus said to me. He said, Debbie, I can foresee that someday you'll meet someone, someone wonderful, but for right now let's at least think about college. = On stopping terrorism: What the world needs are not armies of soldiers sowing death and destruction, but armies of physicians, teachers and engineers bringing health, education, progress and well-being...this is the only option. -Cuban diplomat Jorge Ferrer Rodriguez speaking at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. 3/23/04 __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash
Re: capitalism = progressive?
Jim wrote: Just because I said the issue of enlightenment was normative doesn't mean that I don't think it's important. However, my reading of Marx wouldn't emphasize individual enlightenment and capacity for judgment as much as collective (class) consciousness (enlightenment, capacity for judgment). The kind of socialism (or communism) that Marx favored was based on the class consciousness -- and collective organization -- of the proletariat. Other kinds of socialism (e.g., Owen's utopian socialism) were not. Small-holding peasants can be quite enlightened and have great capacity for judgment _as individuals_ while their economic and social situation encourages the idiocy of rural life that formed one major basis for the demagogic dictatorship of Napoleon III. For reasons I'll give, my understanding of the relation between individual and class consciousness differs from this. My initial point was that there is an internal relation between self-consciousness, social relations and state power. This relation is such that where the requisite self-consciousness can't develop within existing social relatons, social relations and state power can't become socialist in Marx's sense. They couldn't have done so, for instance, in mid-nineteenth century France. Moreover, their own essence is such that they can't be created for individuals; they have to be created by them. In the case of Russia in 1917, there's some evidence that the dominant social relations produced a self-consciousness characterized by significant prejudice and superstition. Another book of Worobec's containing such evidence is _Possessed: Women, Witches and Demons in Imperial Russia_. If relations are internal, the social relations and state power that emerge in a given context (no matter what we choose to call them) will be internally related to the self-consciousness that dominates the context. I think Marx's ontology is individualist in the sense that it allows only individuals to be the locus of agency and the realization of value. The importance of class derives from another ontological idea - internal relations. The nature of the individual - its essence - is the outcome of its relations. This is the way I would interpret Marx's claim about the human essence in the the sixth thesis on Feuerbach. The essence of the human individual is freedom defined, as Hegel defines it, as the potential for a will proper and a universal will. In Marx this is embodied in the idea of the universally developed individual, a kind of individual requiring for its full realization the relations that define the realm of freedom, an association in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all. The importance of class derives from role of relations of production in the development of individuality to freedom in this sense (equated, as in Kant and Hegel, with a universal will i.e. a will that places reason at the basis of its actions as in Kant's definition art as production through freedom - By right we ought only to describe as art, production through freedom, i.e. through a will that places reason at the basis of its actions.) This importance derives from the importance Hegel gives to the master/slave relation in his account, in the Phenomenology, of the development of mind to Reason i.e. to freedom. It's in this way that class - relations of production - conditions the degree of rational self-consciousness attainable by individuals. Because the degree is the outcome of the relations (they are internal relations) we can generalize to most members of the class. Class consciousness consequently means a self-consciousness characteristic of most members of a class in consequence of these shared relations. So when Marx makes the prejudice and superstition of the mass of French peasants a cause of Napoleon III, he has in mind the self-consciousness of the individuals forming this mass. As is indicated in the passage, he claims this shared self-consciousness is the outcome of their relations. This points, by the way, to another connection to Kant. The usage of the terms enlightenment, judgment, prejudice and superstition matches Kant's in the following passage from the Critique of Judgment. For instance, as Marx describes them, the social relations of French peasants were inconsistent with the development of the enlarged thought that Kant identifies with judgment. They ['maxims of common human understanding'] are: (1) to think for oneself; (2) to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of consecutive thought. The first is the maxim of the never passive reason. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent
Rogoff on Bush's political business cycle
Rogoff, Kenneth. 2004. Bush Throws a Party. Foreign Policy (March/April): pp. 80-81. How does U.S. President George W. Bush's preelection spending binge stack up against history? Any alert voter can see that U.S. President George W. Bush is engineering a remarkable election-time economic boom. But before high-minded economists and commentators start crying foul, just how excessive is the Bush business cycle? How will this president's economic pursuit of electoral success stack up against the standard for largesse set by U.S. President Richard Nixon back in 1971-72, or against the free-spending ways of politicians in the rest of the world, for that matter? In late 2003, Bush pushed through a spectacular increase in old-age benefits, offering huge subsidies for the purchase of prescription drugs. Of course, in 1972, Nixon really swung for the fences by hiking Social security benefits some 20 percent. Comparing the costs of the two policies is difficult, since it hinges on the role of drugs in future medical treatments, but my personal estimate is that the annual price tags are roughly equal. The advantage goes to Nixon, because he began indexing Social security benefits to inflation at the same time. Presidents seeking a preelection boost can also run big deficits to increase domestic demand. Bush's high spending results from homeland security and Iraqistan, whereas Nixon experienced the mother of all financial pits: Vietnam. Both presidents slashed taxes before their reelection campaigns (although Nixon recognized that the economy would pay for his profligacy later). The Nixon budget deficit in 1971 and 1972 was around 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); Bush's deficit exceeded 4 percent in 2003 and will likely reach 4 percent again in 2004. Advantage: Bush. Exporters in Bush's economy are also benefiting from a sharp depreciation of the U.S. dollar, as they did under Nixon in 1972. The ultimate decline of the dollar will likely be far more spectacular under Bush than under Nixon. But whereas the movements may have been smaller under Nixon, they were much more traumatic, because in the early 1970s, exchange rates weren't supposed to move at all! The dollar depreciation only followed the complete collapse of the long-standing Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange. So call it a tie: Bush for size of exchange-rate moves, Nixon for drama and trauma. Next, consider monetary policy. In theory, the U.S. Federal Reserve is independent of the executive branch. But just listen to the 1972 White House tapes of Nixon's blistering exchanges with then Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns. Historians can debate whether Nixon intimidated Burns or if the chairman simply succumbed to faulty economics. Regardless, Burns certainly delivered the goods. In the run-up to the 1972 election, he printed money like it was going out of style, wreaking havoc with global price stability and exacerbating worldwide inflation. Bush is the beneficiary of an extremely aggressive monetary policy, with interest rates reaching 45-year lows in 2003. And yes, if rates remain too low for too long, inflation could heat up after the election. But even in a worst-case scenario, inflation is unlikely to reach the double-digit levels of the 1970s anytime soon. While Burns's monetary policy was atrocious, current Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's hardly threatens a reckless inflation binge. Advantage: Nixon. Overall winner: Nixon-although Bush has eight months left. Does all this election-year economic engineering pay? In the short run, yes, because voters sure like a booming economy and a free-spending government at election time. They don't seem to question why anyone should reward a politician for artificially boosting an economy before elections, even if doing so produces serious long-term problems. Perhaps, like moviegoers who expect to be emotionally manipulated, voters just enjoy an election-year high. Occasionally, politicians resist temptation. In 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter replaced his spectacularly ineffectual Fed Chairman William Miller with the tough-minded Paul Volcker, who over the next five years reversed the inflation damage Burns and Nixon had wrought. In appointing Volcker, Carter did his nation a great service, yet probably sealed his fate as a one-term chief executive. But Carter was the exception. According to the diaries of former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, even a budget hawk such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pushed for looser macroeconomic policy during reelection campaigns. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: capitalism = progressive?
--- Ted Winslow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My initial point was that there is an internal relation between self-consciousness, social relations and state power. This relation is such that where the requisite self-consciousness can't develop within existing social relatons, social relations and state power can't become socialist in Marx's sense. They couldn't have done so, for instance, in mid-nineteenth century France. Moreover, their own essence is such that they can't be created for individuals; they have to be created by them. Hi Ted, I agree with most of your observations and I'm not trying to play one-upsmanship here; but Marx and many others thought that the French--espeically the workers of Paris--had reached at least a level of class consciousness sufficient to begin to junk the old State machinery and to attempt to create a class dictatorship of their own: the Paris Commune of 1871. Of course, France was awash with a peasant class as was the Czarist Empire of 1917. In the case of Russia in 1917, there's some evidence that the dominant social relations produced a self-consciousness characterized by significant prejudice and superstition. Another book of Worobec's containing such evidence is _Possessed: Women, Witches and Demons in Imperial Russia_. If relations are internal, the social relations and state power that emerge in a given context (no matter what we choose to call them) will be internally related to the self-consciousness that dominates the context. The weight of reified, religious consciouness, of superstition and so on was undoubtedly high in Russia back in '17. Again, social relations was immersed in a sea of peasants. But other facts on the ground amongst the workers were also brewing. Women weavers of Ivanovo had created the first workers' council in 1905, two years after Lenin had proclaimed in What is To Be Done? that workers by themselves could not reach anything higher than trade-union consciousness. But then, this always sounded like one of Blanqui's obeservations. The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm I think Marx's ontology is individualist in the sense that it allows only individuals to be the locus of agency and the realization of value. The importance of class derives from another ontological idea - internal relations. The nature of the individual - its essence - is the outcome of its relations. This is the way I would interpret Marx's claim about the human essence in the the sixth thesis on Feuerbach. The essence of the human individual is freedom defined, as Hegel defines it, as the potential for a will proper and a universal will. In Marx this is embodied in the idea of the universally developed individual, a kind of individual requiring for its full realization the relations that define the realm of freedom, an association in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all. Yes, the proles can't emancipate themselves from wage-slavery and the dictatorship of the capitalist class, without becoming themselves, as individuals conscious of who they are--the wealth producers of society--people who give up what they create to people who employ them for wages or salaries. As the bearded ones put it: All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html Then, you
Re: capitalism = progressive?
5. Gorbachev opening up the criticism of the system before he started fixing it. -- Well, the IMMEDIATE cause of the collapse of the USSR was the need to get rid of Gorbachev by depriving him of his country. It was a coup, really. Most of the population was against it.
